Guild Wars 2

What ever happened to eliminating apex builds? Increasing build diversity? All that nice stuff? Did someone bump into the white board and erase it off the list? The difference in power between the top builds and everything else is insane. It’s so big that the build is 90% of the fight, and the 10% skill only comes into play if both players are running fotm builds.

Game has been out for over a year and the balance now is every bit as horrible as it was at release. How many years do you need to get even a minimal level of balance?

Never, they dont want to touch the people that do pve and wvw on their no-no place, so what is good for them, sucks for us!

Maybe you guys should go and play pve and wvw a bit. PvP is way more balanced than they are.

Don’t worry, in the next patch they will remove the ele from spvp, so spvp will be way more balanced.

Baldric.6781:

Don’t worry, in the next patch they will remove the ele from spvp, so spvp will be way more balanced.

Came to say this, was beaten. +1

To be honest, a lot of the issues with balance exists because of confused identity. When it was stated that all professions can play all roles it caused more harm than help. The simple fact is that a DpS guardian is limited. A DpS ele is limited. A support ranger is almost non existent. A mesmer support is limited to specific situations. Each profession has some abilities that can help those surrounding, but it is only to increase dmg or lessen it and the range these support skills cover is small. As a result you see people getting frustrated that their mediation guardian only does well in certain situations. The DpS ele just doesn’t ever quite get the job done unless played extremely well against a person who doesn’t have the optimal counter weapons equipped. However despite this being jarringly obvious, some people refuse accept the fact that their DpS ele just shouldn’t go toe-to-toe with a warrior. In gw1 this was well understood and caster took great pains to create space or blind spam like crazy around melee professions and melee professions would work like crazy to close space and cause them to stop casting and move. It is like saying to a kid, “you can be anything when you grow up.” Technically this is true, but the chances of them growing up to be a CEO of 7 fortune 500 companies is marginal to slim at best. It is the same currently in PvP..can all professions be DpS focused?..sure they can in that marginal to slim situation where they might get their big break all match. Can all professions be support?..definitely..some will have good all round support, others maybe waiting all match to use their one trick support pony that never comes their way. Rather than trying to balance all this out a decision just needs to be made about which piece of the pie each profession is meant to excel at and every endeavor made to make them so good at that spot that it is near pointless to try and use any other profession for that task. This will have consequences though. Currently some professions double up. Having an engineer and necro is near pointless as condition stacks quickly max and they have similiar condition types. A return to older thinking of where a necro could be hexes, anti melee, minion, aggressive defense as in the old Iway teams is what gave necro the versatile play. True balance can not really be achieved until each profession has it’s own broad niche of what they’re meant to contribute to a party. Currently in PvE 3 warriors and 2 guardians can do everything and there is no need to bring anything else. In PvP 3 DpS and 2 bunkers can do everything, so there is no need to bring anything else but that. Can a ele stack might?..sure..but so can a guardian just as well and they heal better. Can a ranger do damage?..sure..but warrior’s do it better. Can a thief be agile and hit hard? yup..so can a warrior. Can a necro support their team? sure..but the all warrior/guard combo and still do that without them. The game has been reduce to DpS/support, of which the heavy armored have both of these categories tied nicely and there is no need to bring anything else.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

The game has been reduce to DpS/support, of which the heavy armored have both of these categories tied nicely and there is no need to bring anything else.

Then, take 2 team at EQUAL skill level, one with only War/guards (builds and number of war/guards doesn’t matter) against a balanced team with like 1 war, 1 guard, 1 necro condi/mm, 1 spirit ranger, and 1 whatever you think will suit more efficiently (would say a D/D or D/P backstab thief).

Make them play 100 games. And you’ll see that the full heavy team won’t do so well

@OP: You do not understand the philosophy. They do not intend to balance the game. Instead they want to keep it dynamic.

I’m sure anyone with half a brain knows if balance was the goal, it is a total fail.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Can a thief be agile and hit hard? yup..so can a warrior.

Warriors can’t even compare to the amount of mobility that a thief or a mesmer can do. They have more presence in a fight, but they absolutely do not have the same mobility. They also can’t even remotely disengage combat as easily. Do warriors require the least amount of teamwork to get things done? Yeah, there is a reason why you see so many of them in soloque. But all warrior teams are terrible.

Ideally, I’d like to see the ele and engi be on equal grounds for the best jack-of-all trades class. There is something to be said about a class that can be everywhere to support the team where something is lacking.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Do warriors require the least amount of teamwork to get things done? Yeah, there is a reason why you see so many of them in soloque. But all warrior teams are terrible.

Ah. Yeah, I think 3 Warriors per team is the magic number, not 5. You’re right.

well im currently banned on another certain mmo with smexy fox gurls in it so im killing time in gw2 till it wears off and i used to play gw2 a lot etc i used to spam paid tourneys when they just came out and got one of the first titles

anyway the pvp now is a complete joke, it wasn’t so pretty before but the patches that for some reason boosted condition damage and nerfed real damage just completely killed it
it seems like the majority of the community agrees as i’ve seen in some other topics and nobody enjoys conditions – they are incredibly badly designed, low effort big dps skills and if anything – not all classes are balanced around conditions making some classes stand out more. Idk why mesmers and necros got so many buffs when they were already top tier on release and they existed in every single team and were pretty much mandatory

I don’t think gw2’s pvp will ever become good no matter how much effort anet puts(if they do at all). The problem is that there are way too many cheap mechanics and way too many cheap things / low effort low risk high reward things. Even if they manage to figure all that out which someone who pvps for 10+ years like me can’t really tell them how to (well i could but it wont be pretty, requires a huge overhaul) then theres the problem with too much set customization and too much difference between stats

> To be good DD
> Power
> Precision
> critical damage
even if you get all these you get completely reckt by everyone cus u lack survivability of any sort and then theres RETALIATION which only works for normal damage as it figures

To be good tank against normal damage
> toughness

To be good condition dmg
> condition dmg

i somehow fail to see how anet thinks this is fair or makes any sense? Some builds are just so “expensive” to play and people like me completely resent conditions and the idea of them so im forced to play something underpowered like backstab thief (which for some reason got nerfed when it should’ve been boosted but i guess classes that pwn noobs / pubs get nerfed first cus majority of casuals and people with no clue how to play go and cry about it).

The game:
~Has too much conditions, waaaaaaaaaaay waay too much and they are ridiculously overpowered
~Stats are imbalanced / theres too much min-max difference which means ur just as good as ur build is and ur skill is hardly even taken into account in most encounters
~Big chaos in pvp. Chaos is good you may think but GW2 chaos is just so bad it just is stupid. You go mid some engi throws 300 mines and a bomb while they have MM necro with 20 pets and ranger with 20 spirits and your teammate is a MM necro as well and then some guardian to push people here and there and then a thief with ambush trap and thieves guild and you get a bit clusterphuck and this after all is just a game and is supposed to be fun and enjoyable yet the pvp is so chaotic and messy there are conditions flying here and there 3000 mesmer illusions (each of which can solo a berserker – elementalist in one spin lol) which do ridiculous dmg then blow up and put 4 conditions on you yeah just yeah

If you don’t know how to play, play some easy class. Very good idea start to boost some classes just because most of people can’t even choose right weapon. If you play ele use frigging staff and heal.

Just wait, eventually the meta will evolve to 5 tank warriors per team running each of the banners with 1 token warrior using healing shouts and everyone will just meet in the middle spamming sword autos.

incisorr.9502:

well im currently banned on another certain mmo with smexy fox gurls in it so im killing time in gw2 till it wears off and i used to play gw2 a lot etc i used to spam paid tourneys when they just came out and got one of the first titles

anyway the pvp now is a complete joke, it wasn’t so pretty before but the patches that for some reason boosted condition damage and nerfed real damage just completely killed it

I agree about the condi-spam and the game being overly chaotic, but that game you are banned from (which I also really like) is way more imbalanced and there is no robust spvp/battleground system-although the castle raid is pretty cool.

Zirith.6429:

Just wait, eventually the meta will evolve to 5 tank warriors per team running each of the banners with 1 token warrior using healing shouts and everyone will just meet in the middle spamming sword autos.

This. Also, from another post “hope you have quickness cause first team to the point wins”