Guild Wars 2

It goes way beyond what you are saying. The problems are so huge that they cannot be fixed except maybe in a completely reworked expansion.

The combat is flawed and unsatisfying because of things like passive procs. BUT that is only 1% of the problem. And just add to the power of auto attacks, which are way way too strong.

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

i like this idea with no random procs but a number to trigger the effect

like every 5th hit do it – maby in a given time (when no kittens in 20 sec than reset)
so the guy can utilitie the effect and the enemy has a chance to counter it

this could even be something for defensive traits/runes
something like this
-3th stun in 15 sec give stunimunity for 10 sec – or protection
- get knocked 3x in 15 sec give stability

im all for everything need somehow counterplay

The other big things are cooldowns on skills and weapon swap. Most of them are way too short and on many professions you just roll through all skills → swap set → reapeat.
Which is terrible, it wasn’t the case in GW1 cause of energy management. IMO every class should have resource like thief (initiative) and cooldowns on skills, to provide skillful and timed use of abilities.

I like the counter idea, but its still just as RNG b/c crits are RNG. Take for instance the “vigor on crit trait,” even if it was every 3rd crit or something, the game wouldn’t know if the hit was a crit unless it hit (say that 5 times fast), so it couldn’t be dodged. You don’t want to just “apply on every fifth hit” because then the incentive to take precision is gone (which does raise a challenge for many builds). What it could do is say:

“Gain a vigor opportunity on your next attack after a critical hit” and apply a debuff. If you whiff – no vigor, if you hit – vigor. This would slow down its application and allow counterplay.

Also, are you still enjoying your “maximum passive play thief build”? :-)

That’s the thing, the combat provides so much promise just it’s stained with too much passive skills and mindless play that’s rewarded way beyond those that actually require some thought.

The biggest offender in the game, IMO, is passive and AI based play.

Healing signet is too much healing for no action required (I main warrior, 1700+ games in PvP, level 80), Ranger spirits are too good in PvP, etc etc. We have all been hearing these complaints for several months, if not for just over half a year.

ANET, PLEASE actually do something about this, nerf all passive and AI builds in PvP, thank you.

I can support all of your points
- As another guy said, auto-attacks simply has to be reduced in dmg and/or secondary effects like conditions.
- Another thing that needs to be fixed is the vigor inflation that is still ongoing. Every class has so much access to vigor that 100% extra endurance regeneration is now the standard.
- Instead of reducing the cooldown on skills, they should have a much higher cooldown and duration decreased accordingly. This would take away the spam, because using your skills at the wrong time would basically make you a punching-bag.
The new warrior healing is a pretty good example of a short duration counterable skill, and is how the game should have been from the start. The problem with adding it so late is that it’s now much worse than Healing Signet and other skills.
- As well as adjusting the defensive/condi amulets, everything granting healing should have a much much lower base-heal and scale better with healing power.
The amount of sustained regeneration a warrior can have with berserker amulet should only be possible with supportive amulets.
- Skills that heal allies should be much stronger than selfish healing/defensive skills, because right now it’s much better to be egoistic that try to support your allies.

Arken.3725:

That’s the thing, the combat provides so much promise just it’s stained with too much passive skills and mindless play that’s rewarded way beyond those that actually require some thought.

+ 1

At this point, everything is just due to the lack of experience. The direction they’ve taken the game is pretty much rewarding any form of casual and cheap style of play.

The game is dominated by passive and cheap builds. As well as builds overriding any form of skill.

Also condi-classes get to run rampant without a true counter; Monk. Normally a classic counter for things of that nature are dedicated healers. There are many innovating ways to deal with the spam, which would force more thought and tactics.

Any condi-meta or strong condi class may have be okay if they had more innovating play to things. Such as bringing back true interrupts like an interrupt mesmer. That would balance not only spammy condi classes, but a would-be Monk as well. Since mesmers in GW2 play different from their GW1 counter-parts, maybe give special-like abilities to an entirely new class.

As for AI builds, they just shouldn’t exist or be taken seriously. It turns the game into player vs AI + player. Too much clutter and it’s like a handicap. The game already has AI specific classes such as Mesmer and Ranger’s pet. Those are fine, but when you allow strong Spirits and Minions to the point where they’re viable or the meta, then the game just has way too much AI going-on. I rather see a new Rifle Ranger and or a buffed BM build, yet allow more readable play and cast time for pets so people can counter things such as pet knockdowns.

Arken.3725:

Balance should take presedence above all else for pvp. For me, a somewhat balanced fight against another player is all the reward I need. The recent changes to glory and adding vendors in the HoTM are nice but honestly, balance should be the #1 priority. I’m not saying you can’t do both because i’m sure they’re different teams for different content.

agree, my main issue with the current meta atm is that there is just way too much damage being put out atm and no real way to counter much of it and it’s bad for both players and spectators; players don’t like not being able to counter and spectators have no idea how someone died because everything happens so fast.

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

nice theory, but i think the implementation would be a nightmare and the UI clutter would change how the game is played as it would pull your eyes off the game and onto the UI elements that would alert you. i would like them to rather change icds on these traits to make them less game changing and instead be a nice complement to the weapon choices.

-Adjust Defensive/Condi amulets. I don’t like the idea of having amulets that are both tanky and provide damage. You’re getting the best of both worlds, this should NEVER happen. You are supposed to take a loss in this game when you spec into something. Whether it be damage, support or bunker. There needs to be give somewhere.

as long as all the amulets are balanced against each other then i think that these could be fine, the issue atm comes from professions with high base attributes that are further augmented by traits then further exacerbated by amulets and that should be where ANet should look first is at the professions base attributes then how traits and amulets, runes and sigils effect them based on the viable builds that can created.

- AI/Passive skills should never see the light of day in a tournament. These skills should be available for new players to break into the game but should never be taken seriously. These specs require little thought involved and provide too much benefit.

they should remain to offer build variety and choice, but they should be toned down to not be as strong as they are atm e.g. Spirit Rangers and Phantasm Mesmers.

-Skills that require effort(activation) should be heavily rewarded compared to those that do not(passive procs). This goes back to my previous points if you are to keep passive skills/traits as reliable as they are.

yes go back to the mantra of rewarding skilled play over passive play please!

If anyone here has any other suggestions, please post it.

the only other main issue i have with tPvP atm is the prevalence of certain immunities like berserker stance. a good standard for immunities is Warrior Block and Guardian Renewed Focus, they are immunities but they are channeled so there is a meaningful decision that has to be made in deciding when to use those skills; if i decide to go immune i CANNOT do any damage, control or support my team. an example of a bad immunity is the Warrior Berserker Stance (BS), as it has zero counterplay and thought required AND it still allows you to damage, control and support. yes it may just give immunity to conditions but that should not matter as it gives an immunity it should have a meaningful sacrifice other than the cd. a good change, if you do not want to make it a channel, is make BS allow you to take more physical damage by 50% while it is active that way it’s not such an easy-mode skill and has counterplay. or allow BS to reduce the duration of condis but not make you immune to them so there is counterplay to it as well.

GW2 PvP has a lot of potential to just be a great gaming experience, it just gets bogged down by some very questionable decisions, some of which can only be discovered on “live” but it the rate at which these issues are addressed is the problem for those who PvP currently and those who have stopped PvPing. i hope the devs can get into the right groove and give us the content we are after in the MMO PvP space and have a higher interaction with the players and faster turnaround time for bug fixes and needed changes to make the overall PvP experience more enjoyable for top-tier players and newbies alike.

So Thieves were nerfed to the point where they are nearly as useless as Elementalists?
I’ll take that as a win.

Arken.3725:

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

What I’ve felt for a long time about these on crit traits is that they should be modelled more like some of the guardian minors and majors. Instead of being a counter or on crit (I am against a counter because seriously the bars are so full of boons and crap I don’t want to be counting numbers in the middle of a crazy particle fight) why not have them act as modifiers to skills? Add x effect or condition on a particular skill – this would make weapon skills more customizable depending on traits. Most importantly it would allow people to dodge things such as incendiary powder and dhuumfire as they would be watching for a particular move and not taking massive damage because they got hit by 1 auto attack.

Arken.3725:

-Adjust Defensive/Condi amulets. I don’t like the idea of having amulets that are both tanky and provide damage. You’re getting the best of both worlds, this should NEVER happen. You are supposed to take a loss in this game when you spec into something. Whether it be damage, support or bunker. There needs to be give somewhere.

I agree with this, a major part of the problem in my opinion lies with the speed at which conditions can kill / be applied. The time to kill for condi spam is way too fast given the defensive nature of the amulets that the builds stem from. Not to mention the fact that most condi spam comes from aoe that is incredibly difficult/pointless to dodge given low cooldowns (nades/bombs) or near invisibility (necro marks that pop before you even realize they’re there).

Arken.3725:

- AI/Passive skills should never see the light of day in a tournament. These skills should be available for new players to break into the game but should never be taken seriously. These specs require little thought involved and provide too much benefit.

No arguments here, spirit ranger is boring to play – phantasm mesmer as well.

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts Arken. Some good stuff. Hopefully it will allow for some changes.

I would like to add that Stacks need to be removed from the game as well.

I know this will never happen but the risk/reward highly favors the reward in this case.

It only promotes bad game play and habits and will never give the player an “even” ground to gauge the viability of their build on (whether they are running stacks or the other player they are fighting does).

I will not go into how they are abused in WvW because this is PvP.

Appreciate it, I just want this game to flourish(pvp wise). It’s got the greatest combat system of any game to date and the balance issue is what’s holding it back. No game will ever become perfectly balanced however, you can do your best to get as close as possible.

Good thread, good points Arkas. Allow me to shamelessly copy/paste a large post I made about the state of PvP some 2 months ago, as it seems to fit nicely in here.

Lower Autoattack Damage
- As of now, simply spamming #1 is a very efficient strategy. The base damage is so high, that any profession can apply immense pressure, by nothing but their autoattack. Add conditions to that (Ranger etc.), and entire fights can be won by spamming #1, and nothing else (Spirit-Rangers).

Remove all passive traits
- There’s absolutely no counter to these. If I dodge the Dhuumfire proc, it doesn’t reset/go on a cooldown, it simply trigger on the very next attack. Regardless of how well I play, Dhuumfire will hit me every single time. The same thing applies to passive healing/condition removal. There’s no counter, and it promotes brainless play. Removing X conditions every X seconds is not rewarding skill. It’s lazy design at best.

Adjust Risk vs. Reward / Melee vs. Ranged
- In general, the Risk/Reward ratio is way off. Pretty much everyone is running ranged builds, as they deal equal damage, with the added bonus of being at range. Ranged skills should, in general, be ’worse’ than melee. This is how Risk/Reward ratios work: You’re sacrificing the ability to kite, for a bit more added damage (In Melee), or: You’re sacrificing a bit of damage, and gaining the ability to kite (In Ranged).
This section should also cover mechanics like Warriors Adrenaline. Missing an adrenaline skill has no risk. If you miss, there’s a small internal CD. I propose; If any Warrior F1 skill misses, the Warrior loses all Adrenaline.

Fix the effectiveness of AoE
- There’s simply too much, it’s too strong, and it’s too easy to land. Make more AoE act like the Warriors Whirlwind Attack. Reintroduce Charged Skills (These are great, as their Risk/Reward ratio is excellent), and reduce the overall damage of AoE skills. Preferably, introduce some kind of diminishing return on them, like: 100% damage when 1 enemy is hit; 90% damage when 2 is hit; 80% damage when 3 is hit, etc.

Redesign Elites - They should be gamechanging
Look at how Dota 2 / HoN / LoL incorporates elite-skills. A well placed elite can change everything. There’s an absurd amount of skill involved in these, as placing, interrupting, positioning etc., all decide the effectiveness of said elite. In GW2, a Warrior will spam Signet of Rage every single time it’s off Cooldown. No one really notices it, and no one cares.

Fix the way Condition Damage / Conditions work
- As of now, you only need 1 stat to deal great damage through conditions, and that’s ’Condition Damage’. If you wanted to spec into power, you’d need: Power, Precision and Critical Damage. This means, that speccing in to Condition Damage, leaves you a lot of stats to put in defense (Healing, Toughness, Vitality). Again, there’s no risk. You get the damage as well as the defense with conditions.

I propose something drastic: Make Burning and Bleeding the only conditions that deal damage over time. Make Torment deal 0 damage to anyone who stands completely still, but up the damage if they move (Like Bloodseekers Elite, from Dota). Make conditions, and condition removal, less spam-able, by either;

a) Increasing the cooldown on skills that inflict conditions, or
b) by removing conditions from a lot of skills.

This would promote a meta, where conditions were to be applied effectively and situationally, and removal-skills saved until completely necessary. Imagine using Poison just before an enemy heals, Blind before the big Churning Earth, Chilled right after (to prolong the cooldown), Vulnerability before a burst, Weakness when he’s out of dodges, etc.

Clearer animations on important skills
- A game-changing skill should be accompanied by a very visual animation. Give us a chance to dodge / block / interrupt that skill. Churning Earth is an example of a good skill, while Signet of Spite is an example of a bad skill.

Reducing Endurance regeneration
- I saved this one for last. It’s a huge problem at the moment. Dodges should be preserved and timed, but the endurance regeneration is so high, that the best use of dodges, is to spam them. All passive endurance-regenerating traits / skills needs to go. Sigil of Energy needs to go, Vigor needs to be toned down.

Excellent points, all should be taken into consideration.

the game is sligthly less worse than before after patch, but bunkers are still everywhere.

we need to go back to power meta, that’s the only thing that will save this game: we can talk about all this stuff as much as we want but we just need to go back in time, no escape.

There’s no way to make this game better without nerfing HARD bunkers and conditions ( which favour attrition so BUNKERS even more).

Condi wars are the worst of this world, bunker engies follow, even without stability.

Lets just wait for devs toughts about condition damage, and how they can explain WHY condition damage is so strong atm.

Rickster.8752:

It goes way beyond what you are saying. The problems are so huge that they cannot be fixed except maybe in a completely reworked expansion.

The combat is flawed and unsatisfying because of things like passive procs. BUT that is only 1% of the problem. And just add to the power of auto attacks, which are way way too strong.

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

It is unsatisfying to see your skills being so bad that you lost to an autoattacking ranger. Seriously, the situation you’re describing with such passion here is only your lack of skill. Maybe the ranger had no reason no press any other buttons since you didn’t actually do anything to him, and that was your fault.

Arken.3725:

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

-Adjust Defensive/Condi amulets. I don’t like the idea of having amulets that are both tanky and provide damage. You’re getting the best of both worlds, this should NEVER happen. You are supposed to take a loss in this game when you spec into something. Whether it be damage, support or bunker. There needs to be give somewhere.

- AI/Passive skills should never see the light of day in a tournament. These skills should be available for new players to break into the game but should never be taken seriously. These specs require little thought involved and provide too much benefit.

-Skills that require effort(activation) should be heavily rewarded compared to those that do not(passive procs). This goes back to my previous points if you are to keep passive skills/traits as reliable as they are.

By far, the best and most contructive suggestions ever posted in this forums. I don’t know who you are (shame on me probably) but thank you for not being a typical QQer who complained about ranger auto attacks like the guy above. You are the type of guy arenanet should listen to, not the usuall QQers of the forums.

Just looking to make this game better. It will never be perfectly balanced, but i’ll do my best to help get it as close as possible.

If you don’t mind Arken, I’m going to speak specifically from a ranger perspective here because otherwise it’s just too much to discuss and I’m afraid I’ll make too many blanket statements.

So, starting off:

-Ranger Shortbow: Absolutely terrible weapon design for competitive. The weapon reaches it’s max DPS by just autoattacking, and actually loses DPS by using skills, depending on aftercast. All of the cooldown skills are great utility functions, but weapons should never, ever rely on autoattacking alone to do damage. There needs to be a skill rotation required to create the damage necessary to beat another player, in order to create play (landing the rotation) and counterplay (avoiding the play and creating a period of reduced pressure to retaliate).

As it stands right now, the autoattack is constant pressure than with flanking can start snowballing more damage, while the cooldowns are purely there for utility function that really don’t have much necessity (aside from using poison to deal with all the passive health regen) in order to obtain kills. That needs to change.

-Pets: Also terrible in design. As they stand, they are just tacked on DPS that basically allows a ranger to build with any stats they want and still a pet for very decent direct damage pressure. They are built extremely linearly so that there is really no way to build outside of this focused function, which is limiting to how the ranger can perform, frustrating to play against because an AI can train you down and damage you, and contradicting by design, which really makes it hard to give the class any additional option or make any additional improvements to it if you have this constant that is always there, and very capable of over-performing for lower skilled players.

Ranger Spirits: Very very much just another of the games passive procs that needs to be dealt with in order to make the game more competitive. Spirits are basically just mobile AoE passive procs for teammates, that have utility AoE active effects, and really just work to clutter the battlefield more and more, procing each others passive effects for more damage, or in Storm Spirits case, doing unjustified amounts of damage for the stat investment needed to make it do damage (aka zero). Sun Spirit basically gives Dhuumfire to a whole team every 10 seconds.

Passive procs with an RNG nature need to be removed in every form, as does the screen clutter. Spirits may as well have been made preparations from guild wars 1 (or passive trait procs from GW2), but instead, they have to be out on the screen, bogging everything down. Just, bad.

Not enough focus on available active playstyles: Where are shout rangers? Well, not being used, because shouts are terrible utility that have no synergy with each other. Where are Survival Rangers? Same issue, weak utility. Where are Signet Rangers? Well, that would be a glass cannon build, which is on the brink of being viable, except that it is one of the least forgiving builds in the game, that either doesn’t have enough damage, or enough boon removal, to deal with bunkers or defensive based characters, and die to breezes unless played absolutely perfectly. Even when played perfectly, they don’t outperform other available cheese builds that are more forgiving, so it’s a pointless endeavor.

Finally, where are Trap Rangers? Well, the build is active enough, and plays similarly to a bomb/nade engi in terms of performance, why aren’t these a thing? Well, traps haven’t been “updated” enough to keep up with the power creep introduced into the game that would be necessary in order to deal with options in the current meta. Why take flame trap, when my Sun Spirit can proc a single pulse of a flame trap to me, my pet, and my entire team? Offhand Torch and Dagger basically give access to all of the functions that traps are capable of, and to make traps only slightly better, but still not competitive with other classes options, it takes a heavy trait investment and what’s left over doesn’t have the same defensive capabilities that the other classes that are capable of the same things have either.

So in summary, there is just a whole lot of design issues holding back a competitive atmosphere, and this is coming just from the class that I (unfortunately, I’ve branched away) started off main’ing, as there are other cheese builds out there that I can’t analyze as in depth as this one.

So, I would really like ANet to do something about issues like these (I miss my interrupt ranger from guild wars 1, with high effectiveness but a high skill floor), in order to create a better competitive atmosphere, but also to make classes more interactive and fun to play.

So, definitely support this Arken, and every other good point other thread contributors have made.

interesting to note that none of these problems were problems in the original game.

design regressions FTL.

Excellent response jcbroe, couldn’t agree more man. I honestly believe we all want this game to thrive(pvp wise). Even though some of us may come off a little too compassionate, we all want the same thing.

Giving aoe’s a form of diminishing returns is interesting. My concern with otherwise lowering the power of conditions is the fact that a power build can kill almost any class in under 4 seconds. If they toned down conditions that would be great, but they would also have to lower power damage or we would be right back to before the dhummfire buff ie:useless cond classes. Honestly I don’t see this happening, it seems to be part of the games design vision for it be reaction/dps based (viewed as more interesting to watch?). But lets face it, stack and dps is the motto in all areas of play.

Please listen to the based god anet

I’d also like to see a pretty decent reduction in AoE damage, both power and condition. As it stands, there’s no reason for someone to focus on single-targetting when AoE is supreme.

Not only is there no reason to go single-target, it’s pretty terrible to do so, which is why dagger/pistol thieves actually aren’t meta again yet.

The fact that the dagger has no cleave is the biggest drawback one can imagine and why sword thieves are still the prevalent build.

Body blocking is incredibly frustrating, closely followed by the feeling of helplessness you get when you down somebody and they are getting revived. You can’t build pressure on both, which means as long as they can revive faster than you can damage, you are just taking damage for no reason.

all in this game needs to be toned down: damages , condition application, condition removal , dodges …

I’m sure it’s a little more complicated than that. Dodging is a very important mechanic in this game that allows for skillful play. One of the issues I’ve seen is that in a lot of cases, there’s so much you need to dodge because it seems like everything triggers such a negative effect on your character that you’re almost forced to have permanent vigor(energy sigils) just to stay alive.

Arken , they wont change amulets stats , u know why?? They had to change some class mechanics , imagine necro without toughnes , atm so easy target so after change…

Arken.3725:

I’m sure it’s a little more complicated than that. Dodging is a very important mechanic in this game that allows for skillful play. One of the issues I’ve seen is that in a lot of cases, there’s so much you need to dodge because it seems like everything triggers such a negative effect on your character that you’re almost forced to have permanent vigor(energy sigils) just to stay alive.

This is one side of the coin. The other one is that since you can avoid so much, the effects have to be all the more powerful, so that landing just a few can severely impact the opponent, which is why we need to scale down both damage/effects and avoidance.

Extrapolating from that, however, also means admitting that the dodge mechanic is problematic at a basic level. If you change endurance so that you can only avoid an attack every 10 seconds and thus scale the damage down accordingly, then all of a sudden avoiding attacks becomes nothing more than flavor, because each individual attack would only do a fraction of the total damage needed to kill somebody.

In order to combat that we then would have to redesign skills to have their very own specific effect ranging from #1 to the #5 skill in terms of effectiveness and without any abilities crossing over by applying multiple effects, let alone procs that deal the same amount of damage regardless of the attack they trigger from.

That would make it possible to keep your dodges for very specific attacks only, which are so terrifying that you would want to dodge them.

And once you are done digesting all this and the thought at what is involved in terms of bringing such a change to the game, you then expand on that thought and imagine how all this has to be done for every single class, build and weapon-set in the exact same way and still keep them diverse.

It’s definitely no simple task.

Arken.3725:

I’d also like to see a pretty decent reduction in AoE damage, both power and condition. As it stands, there’s no reason for someone to focus on single-targetting when AoE is supreme.

Don’t hold your breath. They are trimming AoE down for the past year and still couldn’t do it. They clearly said they will do it and It is a serious topic. If you don’t belive me check some of the early SOTGs.

People who have decent pvp experience in MMOs know classbalance isnt the core issue. The main issue is a huge gap between risk and reward if you compare the different professions. Its made somewhat worse to create something that resembles class balance.

With a huge number of professions being some of the most shallow classes you can experience in any MMO, this game will be nothing but a snack in between for "
real" pvpers.

Spiritrangers, necros, guardians and warriors being “3 button classes/specs” doesnt help this game at all. To make them somewhat on par with other professions they are stuck with spamming 1 and a very limited number of extra abbilities. Those 3 (and some others i didnt mention) need a total revamp.

Once Anet decided that every class needs to be easy to get in to but really hard to master….thats when we are moving in the right direction.

Rickster.8752:

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

It’s funny you mentioned the ranger. I was playing against a Spirit Ranger today on my mesmer, and all he did was spam 1- he didn’t even bother to use any of his other buttons. Still took me a minute or two just to take down. Ridiculous.

some general thoughts:

• tone down auto-attacks, maybe boost other spells but at the same time increase their CD → would promote more intelligent use of spells instead of spamming everything you have (I think elementalist has the best balance in terms of weapon-spells) and well-timed dodges would be more important
• tone down overall damage and the power of #6 heals → would slow down the fast pace of the game a bit
• increase effectiveness of weapon-spells that heal (better scaling with healing-power)→ would boost support-builds/classes and make them important for competetive play
• fine-tune base-stats of every class based on their current performance; balancing the game this way is simple but effective (instead of constantly creating overpowered traits that promote power-creep)
• restrict boons to certain classes → so every class has a unique boon to share and class-diversity would gain importance in groups
• give strong defensive cooldowns (like invulnerability) higher CDs (in addition to above changes)

Arken.3725:

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

One of the worst ideas ive heard on these forums. Making the game UI based and telling us when to dodge doesnt make it skillbased at all. It reminds me of stuff like gladiatorlossa in wow.

Id rather see the impact of burn traits etc toned down (and dmg in other areas buffed to compensate).

It doesn’t even have to be on the UI, it could be above your character’s head. Either way, I respect your opinion but I disagree. Regardless of how you tone it down, it’s still mindless play which, to me, should never exist.

Here’s another idea: If you’re going to balance different skills when it comes to mobility, static skills(ones that require pretty much zero movement) should be more powerful than those that allow you to stay mobile. While this game is all about mobility, remaining within a small area to gain benefit should be significantly higher than those that work regardless of where you are.

Still a bad idea…id rather see casttimes on all high impact abbilities including burns. Or give that burn to another abbilitie that is well telegraphed/ has a casttime. Or like i said before, tone them down alltogether.

I think every single high impact abbilitie should be relatively hard to set up or land. Guardian might stacking for example is far to easy for the enormous impact it has on the entire team. Id rather see something like what we see on eles when getting might stacks after landing a blast finisher in to a firefield (preferably landing that on an enemy + with enough teammates close so they benefit from it).

And it doesnt have to be a firefield perse. It can be abbilitie X and Z landed = … number of migth stacks. But no, now one of the major ways to stack migth as guardian is standing out of los for 2 secs and pressing 1 button.

There are risks for a lot of skills in this game, might-stacking as a Guardian requires you to stand completely still without use of any skills(shouts aside). More skills need to be like this, the risk for a great reward.

Arken.3725:

There are risks for a lot of skills in this game, might-stacking as a Guardian requires you to stand completely still without use of any skills(shouts aside). More skills need to be like this, the risk for a great reward.

Are you kiding me? Its far too easy for the impact it has….just stand out of LoS for two seconds thats all there is to it.

In fact guardian in general is far too easy (comparable to spririt ranger, necro warrior etc). Its one of the professions that gave GW2 its bad name for being shallow combat wise. If you dont see that you probably didnt play other MMO extensively and/or you didnt play some of the professions in this game that have a bit more depth.

Yeah i do agree with you guys. Something needs to beto make more counter play in this game(but not dumb passive counter play) and something to be done with all the spamming of skills.. its just so chaotic you can’t always tell wtf is going on lol.
I forget who i read it from but the idea with making other classes kind of have what theif has would be interesting but even thief… can spam to much. One day i hope areanet net can figure out a way to make fights a little more interesting and make teamfights less chaotic so people can see whats going down.

Arganthium.5638:

Rickster.8752:

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

It’s funny you mentioned the ranger. I was playing against a Spirit Ranger today on my mesmer, and all he did was spam 1- he didn’t even bother to use any of his other buttons. Still took me a minute or two just to take down. Ridiculous.

The even more ridiculous side of this is that the game actually punishes the ranger player for using any skills (assuming it was a shortbow) other than the auto attack by lowering DPS (not a meta build, but the ranger longbow is actually designed the same way, with the auto attack achieving max damage alone, definitely at max range, and the math hasn’t been done yet with the new update to see if the same holds true for mid range).

What kind of weapon is designed like that in a competitive atmosphere?

It brings up the issue of a seemingly disconnected logical design. In what universe is it okay to have 2 different classes that are able to accomplish the same output, but one can do it through autos and passive procs, while the other has a very high APM requirement necessary to achieve the same result?

If there is any balance philosophy even remotely centered around risk/reward and how that factors into output in this game, it is in a very bad place right now, and a new baseline needs to be established and balanced around.

It’s good that some of us are trying to come up resolutions to some of the games balance issues. And to Locuz, I wasn’t trolling. Finding better ways to make the game more fun through more fair fights is something I think we all look for.

Arken.3725:

This is my first topic made on the Spvp forums so here go my thoughts on the current state of pvp and the outlook on Esports. While many of us have our own idea’s of what needs to be adjusted and what pvp needs to be relevant and how we should be rewarded. We all have idea’s of what should take priority, whether it be balance, rewards or whatever. Here’s my take on it,

Balance should take presedence above all else for pvp. For me, a somewhat balanced fight against another player is all the reward I need. The recent changes to glory and adding vendors in the HoTM are nice but honestly, balance should be the #1 priority. I’m not saying you can’t do both because i’m sure they’re different teams for different content.

Here are my opinions on what needs to be adjusted:

-All proc on crit traits should be changed to a counter system. What I mean by this is instead of it being a mindless proc on your opponent, let it trigger every few critical hits with a counter on your bar so your enemy knows when to dodge/block. This will promote counter-play which is great for balance. This should also apply to passive traits that apply too much of a benefit without any thought process involved.

-Adjust Defensive/Condi amulets. I don’t like the idea of having amulets that are both tanky and provide damage. You’re getting the best of both worlds, this should NEVER happen. You are supposed to take a loss in this game when you spec into something. Whether it be damage, support or bunker. There needs to be give somewhere.

- AI/Passive skills should never see the light of day in a tournament. These skills should be available for new players to break into the game but should never be taken seriously. These specs require little thought involved and provide too much benefit.

-Skills that require effort(activation) should be heavily rewarded compared to those that do not(passive procs). This goes back to my previous points if you are to keep passive skills/traits as reliable as they are.

If anyone here has any other suggestions, please post it.

All of your suggestions I love and heavily agree with. I especially like the second one.

Another idea to address Elites is to make the ones that replace your current skill bar instead of the “one and done” skills to be more effective. A lot of us take the easy route when it comes to skills and in truth, they’re more effective than the ones that will replace your skill bar with new abilities.

I dont think balance is the highest priority. This is a pretty silly example but say two spirit rangers are duelling, or all classes can auto attack for the same damage. Would be really balanced, but who in their right mind would actually watch, play, or care?

Stop having everything do everything. Reduce AI, AA and AoE. Make power builds worth something. Dont just have downed state in because you are unable to create flow in the actual combat.

We can reroll easily. I know we all want to play our eles and power necros in tournaments someday, but as long as there are other options that require any semblance of thought then what class im playing just isnt as important.

You can have perfect balance but still no reason to play.

It is quite hilarious that you guys are mainly focusing on Spirit ranger to complain about, Ranger players are complaining about spirits boredom and lack of pet control and the whole bit where you HAVE TO use the pet, yet nothing changes… In fact , we got another spirit !!! YAY!!!! not…..

Having said that , the spirit ranger is a boring and relatively easy to play build , but it does not have everything by design, it just relies on silly mechanics. Elementalists, irrelevant of how weak they are percieved, are a class that by design has everything . Any stronger and people will complain again how OP they are, which they were at one point . Now they made warriors stronger with HS, ire and adrenal health. Engi has stupid passive imunities…. Etc, etc

I do not think things will change. A design decision as already been made, for better or worse. We might see more of the same balancing/rebalancing but nothing major

None of us are here to just target the Spirit Ranger. We’re looking at all aspects of the game that could use adjustments to make it not only better for us players, but a much better viewing experience for the audience.

Heh, I would actually be quite happy if they nuked the spirit ranger. Hell, I would love it if the pet was optional or if we had full control over it . Sadly it aint happening

Two of the biggest issues in this game its stealth, the amount of times you can use it in a fight and AI based builds. (both as risk vs reward issues) I dont think we will see some fix to those issues in this game. They are in the game since the beginning and some people enjoy the game that way, others dont like it, but in the end it will be as ANet want this game to be.