Guild Wars 2

So with all the balance talk going on I’m gonna post my ideas and suggestions here for you to agree with, ridicule, argue with, whatever the heck you feel like doing with, etc. Right now, this is what I feel would be the best changes to make in the game.

General Balance:
-Ports no longer proc effects from traps and aoe cc (ring/line of warding, test of faith, static field, etc.)
-Boon access reduced (boons should be present but not permanent, there are too many out there right now and it skews balance too much when you have to take into account how many perma boons are possible to achieve)
-Stealth removed from all classes except thief to allow for a change in interaction and behavior (stealth stripped but revealed not applied when you hit a block, evades behave the way they do now. S/d 3 will cycle using this interaction as well)
-CC access reduced significantly
-Overall condi access reduced and duration increase stats no longer exist in pvp (for boon and condi both). condi is split between pvp and pve (pve stays the same, pvp takes the pre stacking change approach and most are limited to 1 stack with confusion no longer having ticking damage)
-All base damage and healing reduced and scaling increased (forces people to invest into what they want to do, no more tanks hitting like zerkers)
-Thief, elementalist, and guardian health pools increased to match mesmer health pool
-All passive counter-cc traits removed (players should be rewarded for timing and landing cc properly, idiots should be punished for eating it)
-All passive low hp procs removed (people shouldn’t get freebies when it comes to combat, if you take too much damage you die learn to survive if that’s a problem for you)
-All passive procs on runes, sigils, and on hit traits removed (random procs have nothing to do with skill. Removing them is the best way to make the game more competitive and easier to understand.)
-Krait rune 6th effect dodgeable/blockable

Elementalist:
-All scepter autos have increased attack speed/shorter cast times to allow synergy with on cast healing signet and damage increased by 15% across the board
-Phoenix speed increased by 20-30%
-Ether renewal cast time reduced to 2 seconds, conditions cleansed reduced to 6
-Glyph of elemental power trigger chance increased to 33%, cd reduced to 40 sec
-Glyph of storms cd reduced to 45 sec
-Arcane shield cd reduced to 60 sec

Tempest (or things associated with it)
-Aura heals reduced by 30%
-Protection duration of elemental shielding reduced to 2 seconds
-Hardy conduit reduced to 10%
-Invigorating torrents reduced to 3 seconds per boon instead of 5

Thief
-Shadow shot damage reduced by 20%
-Auto attack damage reduced by 5% (dagger)
-Backstab buffed by 20-25%
-Unload might removed, damage buffed by 7%
-Body shot now rolls back and evades (similar to staff 3)
-Vital shot when p/p is equipped changes to remove bleeding and buff auto damage by 30% (stays the way it is now when p/d is equipped)
-Trickster recharge reduction removed and replaced with gain 1 stack of stability when you use a trick (5 sec)
-Withdraw returns to 15 sec cd
-Roll for initiative 45 sec cd
-Haste cd reduced to 50 sec
-Scorpion wire reliability issue fixed
-trapper’s respite cd reduced to 15 seconds (allows it to be used with any heal)
-deadly trapper gets a 5 sec internal cd (helps to stop extreme might stacking)
-Improvisation changed to recharge one random skill on your skill bar (allows good thieves to time their steals with certain skill recharges to gain the benefit they want) cd given of 40 seconds (once every 2 steals if the skill was used off cd)
-Practiced tolerance changed back to buff vitality instead of ferocity
-pain response regen duration reduced to 7 seconds
-upper hand regen duration reduced to 3 seconds cd increased to 3 seconds
-slight of hand recharge reduction now made baseline

Daredevil (or things associated with it)
-Impacting disruption damage reduced by 50% internal cd of 5 seconds
-lotus training condi durations halved and impacts changed so that each enemy may only be hit by 1 impact
-bound damage removed but leap finisher stays (should be a utility not a burst skill)
-Dash has a 3-5 sec cd on condi removal
-Bandit’s defense cd increased to 18 seconds

Warrior
-Defiant stance changed to behave like the glint heal
-Body blow only has an effect on interrupt
-Fast hands made baseline

Berserker (or things associated with it)
-Smash Brawler trait removed (too much spam with it)
-Quickness on Fatal Frenzy replaced with 5 might
-Bleed duration on Skull grinder halved
-Only 2 confusion stacks are applied per normal hit (4 if it interrupts)

Ranger
-Spike trap cd reduced to 30 seconds
-All base ranger pets become more reliable when it comes to hitting the target
-Pet base damage reduced by 7% (allows them to have similar damage to now because the pet will hit more often instead of missing the target)
-Pet stats now match that of the ranger rather than each pet having their own stats (will stop full bunker builds from being able to deal significant damage through their pets, but will make full glass builds very threatening as both the pet and the ranger will deal high damage but be very squishy)

Druid (or things associated with it)
-Ancient seeds cd increased to 20 seconds
-Primal echos no longer dazes
-Natural convergence no longer roots the player

Necromancer
-Boons are no longer corrupted by scepter auto
-Deathly swarm projectile moves 30% faster
-Corrupter’s fervor toughness per stack reduced to 20 duration increased to 10
-Vital Persistance baseline

Reaper (or things associated with it)
-Deathly chill bleed duration reduced to 5 sec

Guardian/DH
-I don’t have enough experience playing on this class to even take an informed guess at what needs to change. If some ideas are posted below I will add them to this

Engineer
-Rifle damage increased across the board
-Net shot projectile speed increased and reliability increased
-Shield 5 reduced to 30 sec cd
-Glue shot immob increased to 2 sec
-Grenade 5 made a poison field again
-Ground target bug fixed (the one that causes nade and mortar to fire into the ground and get no effect)

Scrapper
-Hammer damage reduced across the board
-Rocket charge only gives 1 leap finisher
-Final Salvo stability duration reduced to 3 seconds (gets an internal cd of 5 seconds)
-Gyros get a cast time of 1 second
-Bulwark, purge, and medic gyros cd increased to 30 sec

Mesmer
-Greatsword 2 gets it’s extra bounce back
-Greatsword auto damage increased by 5%
-Sword auto damage increased by 7%
-Blurred Frenzy damage increased by 7%
-Illusionary counter torment duration reduced to 5 seconds
-Confusing images confusion duration reduced to 6 seconds
-Main the disillusioned torment duration reduced to 4 seconds
-Mantra cast times reduced to 2 seconds

Chronomancer (or things associated with it)
-Continuum split no longer affects elites (as a result moa cd reduced to 100 seconds and time warp cd reduced to 100 seconds)

Revenant/Herald
-Given more condition clears through traits
-Direct damage mitigation reduced (fewer evades on weapon skills like surge of the mists and unrelenting assault and a cd of 5 seconds of the shiro evade)
-Facet of strength base might duration reduced to 10 seconds

PvP system changes:
-No class stacking in queues (premades will not be allowed to queue until all duplicate classes are changed)
-Profession based mmr introduced to make learning a new prof easier
-No swapping inside matches (both before and during will be locked)
-No more forcing players to 50% wins (if a player is good enough to win 99% of their matches then let them, don’t try to rig the system as it frustrates the good players forced to carry noobs and it frustrates newer players who feel they can’t contribute due to all their opponents being beyond their skill level)

There ya go

General Balance:
-Ports no longer proc effects from traps and aoe cc (ring/line of warding, test of faith, static field, etc.)

Disagree, ports need counterplay.

-Boon access reduced (boons should be present but not permanent, there are too many out there right now and it skews balance too much when you have to take into account how many perma boons are possible to achieve)

Agreed. Boons can turn a tanky build into something that can have everything without giving anything up. A good defensive sustain build can hold off well playing defensively, but give that guy 20 stacks of might and now his attacks have bite even against fellow tanks.

-Stealth removed from all classes except thief to allow for a change in interaction and behavior (stealth stripped but revealed not applied when you hit a block, evades behave the way they do now. S/d 3 will cycle using this interaction as well)

I’d remove it completely but since it’s in the game we have to respect it. I’d give guardians some stealth (I’d remove trapper runes however) and superspeed still but somewhat nerf scrapper stealth. Mesmer stealth isn’t meta but a meta where it is can make them too dangerous.

-CC access reduced significantly
-Overall condi access reduced and duration increase stats no longer exist in pvp (for boon and condi both). condi is split between pvp and pve (pve stays the same, pvp takes the pre stacking change approach and most are limited to 1 stack with confusion no longer having ticking damage)

Agreed on both counts. Agree to such an extent we could safely remove resistance.

-All base damage and healing reduced and scaling increased (forces people to invest into what they want to do, no more tanks hitting like zerkers)

Agreed

-Thief, elementalist, and guardian health pools increased to match mesmer health pool

Don’t agree. The lower healthpool is because they have aspects that balance themselves out. But due to power creep however it might be plausible in ele and maybe guardian’s case.

-All passive counter-cc traits removed (players should be rewarded for timing and landing cc properly, idiots should be punished for eating it)

Agree, counts for rune procs too and retaliation too.

-All passive low hp procs removed (people shouldn’t get freebies when it comes to combat, if you take too much damage you die learn to survive if that’s a problem for you)

Agreed here. This is why I want to replace Function Gyro and Proc Elixir S with an Exo-Suit mechanic, so scrapper can stay competitive, have a final form profession mechanic (like reaper shroud or CA form), and due to the skills being active still maintain a decent skill cap.

-All passive procs on runes, sigils, and on hit traits removed (random procs have nothing to do with skill. Removing them is the best way to make the game more competitive and easier to understand.)

Yes!

-Krait rune 6th effect dodgeable/blockable
Elementalist:
-All scepter autos have increased attack speed/shorter cast times to allow synergy with on cast healing signet and damage increased by 15% across the board
-Phoenix speed increased by 20-30%

Yes on all counts

-Ether renewal cast time reduced to 2 seconds, conditions cleansed reduced to 6

Maybe. With drastic condi removal such a reduction seems reasonable.

-Glyph of elemental power trigger chance increased to 33%, cd reduced to 40 sec
-Glyph of storms cd reduced to 45 sec
-Arcane shield cd reduced to 60 sec

I’d reduce Arcane Shield to 20 seconds accounting for invulns and other ele defensive mechanics. Bandit’s Defense is on a 10 second cooldown.

Tempest (or things associated with it)
-Aura heals reduced by 30%

With reduced healing and damage maybe agree. Reducing is typically a nerf but we have to look at it in relative terms. If all damage has reduced 30% too nothing really changed whereas if it’s reduced by 40% it’s a net buff.

-Protection duration of elemental shielding reduced to 2 seconds

Agreed. Fighting other eles is annoying.

Thief
-Shadow shot damage reduced by 20%

Yes it needs it

-Auto attack damage reduced by 5% (dagger)

Agree.

-Backstab buffed by 20-25%

Disagree. A marauder thief can already hit 4,500 critical not counting other procs.

-Unload might removed, damage buffed by 7%

Agree on removing might, damage is still too much as it is. Reflects keep it in check however.

-Body shot now rolls back and evades (similar to staff 3)

Actually…agree.

-Vital shot when p/p is equipped changes to remove bleeding and buff auto damage by 30% (stays the way it is now when p/d is equipped)

Might be OP.

-Trickster recharge reduction removed and replaced with gain 1 stack of stability when you use a trick (5 sec)

One stack of stability for 5 seconds might be a bit much for thief.

-Withdraw returns to 15 sec cd

Might be OP

-Roll for initiative 45 sec cd

Agreed.

-Haste cd reduced to 50 sec

I still don’t see it being competitive.

-Scorpion wire reliability issue fixed

Agree. Maybe redesign traits so it adds some chill.

-Mug heal baseline

Disagree.

-trapper’s respite cd reduced to 15 seconds (allows it to be used with any heal)

Not familiar enough to comment :(

-deadly trapper gets a 5 sec internal cd (helps to stop extreme might stacking)

Agree.

-Improvisation changed to recharge one random skill on your skill bar (allows good thieves to time their steals with certain skill recharges to gain the benefit they want) cd given of 40 seconds (once every 2 steals if the skill was used off cd)

Way too OP but I understand the logic.

Daredevil (or things associated with it)

-Impacting disruption damage reduced by 50% internal CD of 5 seconds
-lotus training condi duration halved and impacts changed so that each enemy may only be hit by 1 impact

Warrior

-Defiant stance changed to behave like the glint heal
-Body blow only has an effect on interrupt
-Fast hands made baseline

Agree

Ranger
-Spike trap cd reduced to 30 seconds
-All base ranger pets become more reliable when it comes to hitting the target
-Pet base damage reduced by 7% (allows them to have similar damage to now because the pet will hit more often instead of missing the target)
-Pet stats now match that of the ranger rather than each pet having their own stats (will stop full bunker builds from being able to deal significant damage through their pets, but will make full glass builds very threatening as both the pet and the ranger will deal high damage but be very squishy)

Agree so much. On druid I’d rather the pets have more damage if I’m going Mender’s but sacrifice some toughness for it.

Necromancer
-Boons are no longer corrupted by scepter auto

Agreed.

Guardian/DH
-I don’t have enough experience playing on this class to even take an informed guess at what needs to change. If some ideas are posted below I will add them to this

Incremental buffs, no nerfs. Increased damage on sword by 15%, Flashing Blade’s range increased to 750 or even 900, and sword auto no longer projectiling. Make stealth and superspeed part of the DH traitline instead of needing runes for it.

Engineer

-Grenade 5 made a poison field again

Disagree. Game still has so much poison.

Scrapper
-Hammer damage reduced across the board
-Rocket charge only gives 1 leap finisher
-Final Salvo stability duration reduced to 3 seconds (gets an internal cd of 5 seconds)
-Gyros get a cast time of 1 second
-Bulwark, purge, and medic gyros cd increased to 30 sec

Agreed.

Mesmer
-Greatsword 2 gets its extra bounce back
-Greatsword auto damage increased by 5%
-Sword auto damage increased by 7%
-Blurred Frenzy damage increased by 7%

Agreed with greatsword buffs, but what will Mesmer give up?

-Illusionary counter torment duration reduced to 5 seconds
-Confusing images confusion duration reduced to 6 seconds
-Main the disillusioned torment duration reduced to 4 seconds
-Mantra cast times reduced to 2 seconds

Sometimes those shatters coming at you one by one with their superspeed is just too much.

• Chronomancer (or things associated with it)

-Continuum split no longer affects elites (as a result moa CD reduced to 100 seconds and time warp CD reduced to 100 seconds)

I don’t think it needs to effect elites either, but keep current cooldowns.

Revenant/Herald
-Given more condition clears through traits
-Direct damage mitigation reduced (fewer evades on weapon skills like surge of the mists and unrelenting assault and a cd of 5 seconds of the shiro evade)

Disagree. Active defense is just about the only way rev can stay alive outnumbered since disengage is relatively poor.

PvP system changes:
-No class stacking in queues (premades will not be allowed to queue until all duplicate classes are changed)

Agreed.

-Profession based mmr introduced to make learning a new prof easier

I want to agree but in principal I don’t know if Anet’s servers have the FP64 compute for it.

-No swapping inside matches (both before and during will be locked)

Disagree, I think it should be made easier like Overwatch does. If comping and counter comps are part of the game then you shouldn’t be screwed over by having the bad luck of facing an equally skilled team that counter comps yours.

-No more forcing players to 50% wins (if a player is good enough to win 99% of their matches then let them, don’t try to rig the system as it frustrates the good players forced to carry noobs and it frustrates newer players who feel they can’t contribute due to all their opponents being beyond their skill level)

Agree totally. I was in a match where I announced home but two others capped so I had to bail and head mid, but we were outnumbered there so I also had to bail from there to cap far (I was a thief, and the far was in Forest.)

There was a point where I even capped far and then capped mid with no resistance. Some ele came and contested then had to bail when his ranger teammate came.

I appreciate the time it took you to write this up, but none of these changes will ever happen. The most realistic thing the pvp team can do to improve the gaming experience is remove class stacking and changing classes once they enter the match.

I like most of the change you lost here. I would love an lower cd than 60sec on elementalist’s arcane shield. Like 30. Even without the damage part to balance it.

Agemnon, I’m going to rebuttle (and agree with) some things for the sake of discussion and the fact that I’d like to hear more of what you have to say regarding some of these things.

1) Regarding ports, yes there should be counterplay BUT there should also be counterplay to the cc’s you may get caught in. You can’t dodge through the walls, classes like thief and Mesmer don’t have stab so they can’t use that to get out, most of the port focused classes lack blocks long enough to protect them during the duration of the cc. I personally could settle with leaving the cc procs there but not the damage ones. The fact that I get killed despite using escape utilities because porting through a trap did huge damage to me doesn’t make sense imo. Plus it would help to reduce the severity of guardian hard countering thief.

2) Regarding hp pools, the reason I suggested this is because the game has evolved past the old system where the lower hp pools had better active defenses because now pretty much everyone has the same defenses. Add to the fact that build diversity is severely limited due to the fact that 11k hp is simply not enough to survive at all anymore. These classes NEED to build heavily into vitality in order to function which imo should never be the case. The less you force people to take or do things to be effective, the more diversity you will achieve.

3) Ok I’ll agree backstab doesn’t need 20% but maybe 10% because it’s damage is not good right now when you compare it to the other options you have to burst with. Backstab needs to be the best damage option a d/p or d/d thief would have when it’s set up properly and right now that isn’t the case. Only time you end up seeing anywhere near 4k is when you’re hitting squishies (pvp talking ofc, wvw is a whole different ballpark)

4) With other changes to thief then I can accept not making the heal base.

5) Regarding pistol auto, I don’t think it would be OP at all. If I remember right it would only end up critting for like 2k w/ mara ammy. If I estimated too high then that would need to be adjusted. With p/p though the bleed would be gone so the skill would need some solid damage.

6) Withdraw can be 14 sec cd now with trickster and It’s nowhere near op. I think making it 15 sec but the cd being unadjustable would be perfectly acceptable.

7) Yeah improv needs some sort of change cause right now it’s too random to be balanceable so the function needs to change

8) With engi nades, if my condi suggestions in pvp went through then the poison field would be fine as there’d be no stacks in pvp, only duration increases.

9) Power Mesmer as it is now just needs straight buffs. After it takes some buffs then sacrifices can be looked at based on what it ends up utilizing best. Right now I just think it needs some love to get it back into the game.

10) Reason I suggested giving rev more condi removal is right now they gut completely shut down by anyone with condi. Soft counters are fine imo but hard counter shut downs are a big no no.

11) Elementalists arcane shield I could see as a 20-30 sec cd given that it only blocks 3 attacks

12) For class swapping, Again, with changes going through you wouldn’t have straight up hard counters so every challenge would be able to be overcome with skill. Also with 0 class stacking it’s highly unlikely you could be up against a full counter comp without having some advantage of your own to utilize. The issue is when you allow class swapping that defeats the purpose of no class stacking because people can swap to the same class inside a match.