Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why ArenaNet decided to shoot themselves in the foot with the elite specs. By far the biggest issue with the elite specs is not how powerful they currently are but how much of a nightmare they will forever be to balance.

Game developers everywhere, take heed and do not fall into the hole.
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Chronomancer: Rewinding time sounds pretty awesome, you can do anything you want twice. While there is nothing really wrong with it’s design, the issue comes in doing everything twice. Because of Continuum Split, the balance team must always consider the mesmer being able to do all of it’s abilities twice. So that means the base for mesmer must be gutted in order to confiscate for the fact of it can be used twice. Shatterspiking is the core damage for mesmer outside of phantasms. There is the big balance hole, whatever extra is added to mesmers, The balance team must ask themselves, “Hey, what happens if they use this twice in a row?” The biggest issue of why this will forever plague chronomancers is simply they can still shatterspike. If the balance team changes the way F1-F4 works for Mesmer means they can more easily adjust this classes defensive and offensive capabilities.
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Heralds: Broken OP Viper Revenants aside, Heralds actually provides the most problems when it comes to balancing Revenants for two reasons. ArenaNet must always consider the Revenant to have a perma fury, swiftness, regeneration and 15+ stacks of might AND must always consider Revenants having 50% boon increase. That is insane! That means everything the Revenant has must take into consideration to have a free boost to damage and support. So the base of the Revenant must be gutted or else it will simply be to strong. Revenants must also be dry of boons or else they will simply get out control because of their upkeep passive that grants 50% longer boon duration.
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Even ArenaNet is fully aware of this, you want to know a fun fact? Lets compare a full berserker Warrior with a full berserker Revenant, not a single point put into condition damage and both with mainhand swords. A level 1 burst Warrior’s Flurry does more POWER damage than the Revenants Unrelenting Assault. A condition attack, at it’s lowest point, does more power damage than the Revenants power attack!! See what a big hole you dug yourself ArenaNet? To make something balanced you had to gut it massively. Heralds needs to be looked at again and redesigned to be healthier.
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Reapers: Chill simply cannot work for balance. It amazes me when ArenaNet announced Reapers, they had no clue how deadly chill is. Oh, chill really does nothing to damaging classes but chill absolutely destroys any tanky class. Any build that relies on quick recovery is doomed by the reaper, not matter what class, chill hurts all that is tanks because of the slowed skill recharge means skill recovery is also slowed. So obviously, they cannot just give reapers perma chill so they made sure to limit how much they can output, making so the chill attacks are easily seen and dodgeable on the greatsword and reaper form.

Except no one uses the greatsword, everyone always goes staff and dagger just because they gutted the chill from the greatsword. Players found ways around the reapers limited chill with the aid of the natural necromancer. So in order to balance the reaper, they must gut the necromancer. As a class that can destroy tanks with ease yet still be able to survive very well cannot be healthy. What a nasty balance hole, Reapers are designed entirely around chill but making the condition healthy for PvP is simply impossible.

The same issue is with necromancers healing power, they must gut the necromancers ability to recover because of Death Shroud. They had a big hole with necromancers from the start and now they just made it deeper.
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Sorry about the lengthy post, but ironically that’s about it. All the other classes, all the ones that are overpowered with too much healing, damage, CC or support is not because of a design hole but rather a balance issue, number tweaking.

Nova Stiker.8396:

They clearly have no idea what they are doing.

What are they doing?

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Nova Stiker.8396:

They clearly have no idea what they are doing.

What are they doing?

That is a good question, sir. Asking good questions is, of course, the only to way to receive full anet enlightenment.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Balance Team needs to go

They already did so, thats why there is no balance team ;-)

You never want to balance mid-season unless it’s a game-breaking thing. So we will have to reserve our opinions until the post-season patch. I think the best way to handle it in the future is breaking down builds into a categorization system, then building a pre-game mode in ranked where you can ban builds. This puts the power in the users to dictate what’s an “unfair” build during the season while we wait for the next patch.

I don’t think this is a problem of the balance team, it’s probably upper management that isn’t allocating enough ressources to the PvP balance-team and doesn’t think more frequent changes are necessary.

It’s like blaming the overworked burger-flipper in Maccy Dizzle that gets paid minimum wage and works with bad ingredients and you are mad when your burger isn’t up to gordon ramsey’s standards. :P

Again, they introduced drastic changes. Every time a new class is released balancing is wonky until they have the proper metrics for fixing.

Still, thief was in a bad spot for quite some time other than decapping.

I have to enjoy Mallyx while I still can before they bring it in line. As someone who plays Mallyx/Shiro or sometimes Mallyx/Glint I’ll admit that necroes give me trouble so there’s a counter somewhere in there. Can’t kite when you too are a close range fighter and it isn’t smart to load someone down with conditions when they can reflect them back to you and Shiro feels like an uphill battle against them. The Mallyx/Shiro meta does seem to counter pretty much everything else though especially guardian. A well played thief can be trouble but passive conditions add up against them. Druid has great celestial form cleanses but outside of that tends to be vulnerable to conditions (I know too well since I also play druid :( ) Even bad mesmers are an uphill battle but good mesmers…“fudge” it. Mesmer has clones that mess up targeting and whose shatter gives buffs and/or damage, alacrity which reduces their cooldowns and fields that cause chill, stability, portal cheesing between points, etc. I knew chrono would be broken the moment I read about what it can do.

I don’t know if it’s a low skill class since I don’t have a mesmer but what if chrono has a very high skillcap and they actually earn that tankiness and support effectiveness by reading the situation and pressing the right buttons at the right time? On a Mallyx/Shiro rev I need to have the proper weapon set with the proper stance, manage energy, when to boon strip, when to superspeed, etc. You’ll fail if you just mindlessly press buttons hoping stuff will die. Still, even factoring this in revenant feels a bit overpowered and conditions do a lot of the work for you, but applying them takes tactical awareness no use wasting energy if it’ll be cleansed by celestial avatar skill 2 the next moment. .

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

This is true. I’m not saying its fixed yet. I’m saying I’m willing to hold my complaints until I see how frequent this iterative balancing is.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Was it a…

Morwath.9817:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Was it a…

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

…bird?!

Stop =w=

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I’m rescinding my sarcastic comment on this thread and saving it for a later time, due to word from balance devs.

Yeah, still doesn’t help that all mesmer balance must consider any action being able to be preformed twice. All balance must consider Revenants 50% free boon duration and all balance must consider Reapers access to perma-chill.

If you compare Facet of Nature with the Warriors Signet of Rage, Facet of Nature has the same power as the warrior elite skill AND it comes with a bonus boon duration.

This is true. I’m not saying its fixed yet. I’m saying I’m willing to hold my complaints until I see how frequent this iterative balancing is.

The problem is it should have never have happened in the first place. No one looked at it and went, “maybe this is a bit much.”

Which is exactly what is wrong with Guild Wars 2 combat, too much of everything. Just look at raids, it was entirely designed with the mindset that 10 people have 25 stacks of might, perma fury, protection, regen and so on.

It doesn’t feel rewarding to get 25 stacks of might, protection, fury, regen because of how out of control all the mechanics are.

I can go on and on about what ArenaNet should do to start making a healthy combat system but meh, wasted words.

Reaper’s does reap hard on chill but at least it’s a removable condition and going too far with chilling will hinder other condition/power options.

But someone tell me the counter for mesmer’s ability to rewind their skill and character status or their mega spammy evades/blurs/invulnis…

at OP, what about diamond skin? Is that fine to you?

^ Ah right you are. Almost forgot my own trademark beef with game’s balance.

Balancing is an absolute disgrace. ANET has one of two options: 1. Fix the game 2. Close threads like this and pretend the issues don’t exist.

Umm you do realize that you can only use ONE elite spec at a time, they dont have to account for ANY of these things going forward because all these things are isolated to that single elite spec

Any future elite specs only need to be balanced in the vacuum of their core specs. None of these issues will ever overlap with new specs

Kayberz.5346:

Umm you do realize that you can only use ONE elite spec at a time, they dont have to account for ANY of these things going forward because all these things are isolated to that single elite spec

Any future elite specs only need to be balanced in the vacuum of their core specs. None of these issues will ever overlap with new specs

I… am not sure I follow.

What are you saying?

All blocks stop capture points,boom bunker meta fixxed Anet should hire me

Kayberz.5346:

Umm you do realize that you can only use ONE elite spec at a time, they dont have to account for ANY of these things going forward because all these things are isolated to that single elite spec

Any future elite specs only need to be balanced in the vacuum of their core specs. None of these issues will ever overlap with new specs

I suggested in an earlier thread that elites should not be stackable if more are introduced (such as no stacking berserker with ninja on warrior or monk with daredevil on thief).

New elite specs would be this season all over again and would be OP compared to the current elites.

Don’t forget that without Druid, Ranger would be the worst class in the game, bringing essentially no useful utility, mobility, or worthwhile damage. Druid is now a must-take on Ranger until we either get another spec, or Druid gets nerfed so hard that the entire class is viable.

The overpowered chill trait on Necro has done the same thing for Necro, but not quite as badly.

Agemnon.4608:

Kayberz.5346:

Umm you do realize that you can only use ONE elite spec at a time, they dont have to account for ANY of these things going forward because all these things are isolated to that single elite spec

Any future elite specs only need to be balanced in the vacuum of their core specs. None of these issues will ever overlap with new specs

I suggested in an earlier thread that elites should not be stackable if more are introduced (such as no stacking berserker with ninja on warrior or monk with daredevil on thief).

New elite specs would be this season all over again and would be OP compared to the current elites.

Thats already exactly how its going to work, you can only have 1 elite spec slotted at a time (the bottom slot)

@Nova Striker, do you see a problem only with chill uptime, or the Deathly Chill Trait? IMO chill uptime is fine but Deathly Chill trait could use a dmg coefficient reduction from 0.3→0.25.

Source: necro main.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Chronomancer: Rewinding time sounds pretty awesome, you can do anything you want twice. While there is nothing really wrong with it’s design, the issue comes in doing everything twice. Because of Continuum Split, the balance team must always consider the mesmer being able to do all of it’s abilities twice. So that means the base for mesmer must be gutted in order to confiscate for the fact of it can be used twice. Shatterspiking is the core damage for mesmer outside of phantasms. There is the big balance hole, whatever extra is added to mesmers, The balance team must ask themselves, “Hey, what happens if they use this twice in a row?” The biggest issue of why this will forever plague chronomancers is simply they can still shatterspike. If the balance team changes the way F1-F4 works for Mesmer means they can more easily adjust this classes defensive and offensive capabilities.

CS… really? I mean… you’re right it’s so strong that shatter mesmer is definitely on meta and roflstomp everything on its path
OH WAIT it’s not…
I hardly doubt that the chronobunker (which is the only remotely viable mesmer build at the moment) stands where he currently is because of a shatter of, like 1s1/2 per shatter and self on a 90 second CD (72 if traited if my memory serves me right) that makes you go backward in time of every thing beside condition application and boon application…
It’s definitely the most broken thing of Mesmer and everything should be nerfed in accordance that you can possibly, once every 90 (72) second go back in time for a few second…/s
Can we look at Alacrity uptime that has no counter, or WoP giving evade to all the team for quite a lengthy amount of time without preventing point cap before looking at CS?
Your logic didn’t make sense

rchu.8945:

at OP, what about diamond skin? Is that fine to you?

Diamond skin is also a massive balance problem, but it’s not a design problem. Diamond skin only affects other players and not much the elementalist itself.

A design problem for elementalist would be like Water Magic trait line as it offers the elementalist needs for survival. When you combine all survivability into one package you encounter a nasty problem. If ArenaNet really desires to balance Tempest, ideally they would move Powerful Auras to Arcana grandmaster line and remove the regen from the Tempest trait Invigorating Torrents, which sounds like not a big deal at first but that would mean elementalists lose the perma protection from earth magic and will be vulnerable to conditions at any point.