Guild Wars 2

Let’s try for once to have a civil conversation outside the constant nerfcry that this forum has become, try to be realistically objective, giving suggestions based solely on the knowlegde of the strenghts and weaknesses of your class and those you know.
For starter many whine threads are started by new players who in most cases rather than receive help from more experienced players they mostly receive biased comments that does nothing more than hurt them in the end as the new players don’t learn anything and will possibly leave the game in frustation.

Every new player out there should know this before trying any PvP/PvE mode:

- GW2 is a very visually intensive game, over 80% of informations are delivered in the form of visual clue and it’s up to you to precisely decipher them
- GW2 is not your average MMO where standing there in one spot will bring you good, constant re-positioning is essential, consider this as it would be an action MMO
- GW2 for most parts works like a FPS, where map awareness is fundamental, failure to realize the enemy team composition and movements on the map..will lead you to a quick death
- Learn to enjoy the game and learn from your defeats, you can’t always win, there is always someone better than you out there, to be proudful is ok..to be a complete kitten is not

Said so, this is my suggestions which would push GW2 toward a new meat , even though the current phase is not wrong, is simply what most people feel comfortable with given the current traits/skills balance.

-Thiefs = They need to remove the auto-face from HS then it’s ll be fine, without the auto-face unskilled thieves won’t be much of a threat anylonger, assuming you’re not unskilled as well; there is need to increase the reveal stealth timer by 2-3s for now at least while they remove the culling issue, after that they can go back to the original version. Better team support options are necessary if Anet want to see a team with thieves support and not simple burst, let them be strong offensive option on par with the burst options, other than this burst thieves are very fragile once you catch them so if you get killed by a thief in the middle of a zerg…well tough luck, try again and this time keep your eyes open

-Mesmers = It’s extremely painful for new players to go against a mesmer, this is one profession that leaves loads of visual clues before striking so you need your time to learn all of them ( hint- make one and play with it), as a general rule wasting dodges and stunbrake will get you killed fast; regarding any balance Anet need to get rid of the might stacking bug ( this bug still doesn’t increase the chances of bad mesmer players anyway) and give more team support options to this profession.
Burst mesmers are very fragile like burst thieves, once you learn where their teleport will land them next, it’s easy to follow their movements ( learn the movement path of phase retreat and wait for decoy to vanish); MoA form is infuriating I know but not broken ( Underwater I have been morphed in a tuna -_- dozen of times), portal and Time Warp are there to remind me why I have always hated mesmers since GW1 lol, mesmer is a profession made to kitten you off..and they do that in style, don’t rage just counter them with skillfull gameplay

I agree 100% but you will find no logic or support on these forums because the developers agree with the fanboys.

I’ve never seen a game that they gave a burst class re-stealth over and over again WHILE giving them the best mobility+highest dmg on easy mode attack spams.

They buff mesmers over and over again, giving them the best avoidance(clones) plus invis, plus insane dmg output.

Basically the guys making the game are absolutely crazy, biased, and have made this a funland for the classes they like while ignoring reality on every level.

Unless they fire the two guys driving pvp balance down a sheer faced cliff this game will continue to be the joke of modern pvp that is with the highest attition rate of a pvp community ever seen.

Unless this is done^ this game will be a cautionary tale of what not to do in a pvp enviroment, avoided like a leper colony by future pvp designers.

-Elementalist= A profession that will attract loads of anger from new players, both the ones trying it and the ones going against it, again there are strong visual clues left by an ele when he use its defensive and offensive skills, like any other profession when mastered the ele can become your nightmare if you let them to.
Regarding balance, I see loads of complaints regarding defensive eles, for starter all ele heal skills/trait scale with the healing power amount, logically an ele investing in healing power will see his healing output increased by 50%, it’s not overly problematic to bring down an ele if you know their strenghts and weaknesses but simply button smashing at them will net you a slow and agonising death.
Anet need to improve the offensive skill in terms of efficiency rather than numbers where is not needed at all, also the offensive traits don’t take in consideration the low base HP of this profession, hence they don’t see much use, the drop in survival once investing in fire/air is huge.
The attempt with " Tempest Defense" was a good attempt, but the huge CD is a problem, the trait doesn’t give you any invulnerability only a defensive mechanism that works at close range not enough, nevertheless we need more staff like this in fire/air traits

So far these are the professions I have seen most complaints about, but pls let’s have everyone here putting down their analsys for the professions

Fellknight.4820:

I agree 100% but you will find no logic or support on these forums because the developers agree with the fanboys.

I’ve never seen a game that they gave a burst class re-stealth over and over again WHILE giving them the best mobility+highest dmg on easy mode attack spams.

They buff mesmers over and over again, giving them the best avoidance(clones) plus invis, plus insane dmg output.

Basically the guys making the game are absolutely crazy, biased, and have made this a funland for the classes they like while ignoring reality on every level.

Unless they fire the two guys driving pvp balance down a sheer faced cliff this game will continue to be the joke of modern pvp that is with the highest attition rate of a pvp community ever seen.

Unless this is done^ this game will be a cautionary tale of what not to do in a pvp enviroment, avoided like a leper colony by future pvp designers.

Well the game was advertised as a visual intense action MMO, reaction time come in huge play in this game and you need to train in it, but trust me once you do learn, to dodge incoming attacks will be quite easy.
Most times you’ll need to predict the enemy next move and memorize their attack pattern ( everybody use a different methodology more or less) once done that you’re basically done

Arheundel.6451:

Fellknight.4820:

I agree 100% but you will find no logic or support on these forums because the developers agree with the fanboys.

I’ve never seen a game that they gave a burst class re-stealth over and over again WHILE giving them the best mobility+highest dmg on easy mode attack spams.

They buff mesmers over and over again, giving them the best avoidance(clones) plus invis, plus insane dmg output.

Basically the guys making the game are absolutely crazy, biased, and have made this a funland for the classes they like while ignoring reality on every level.

Unless they fire the two guys driving pvp balance down a sheer faced cliff this game will continue to be the joke of modern pvp that is with the highest attition rate of a pvp community ever seen.

Unless this is done^ this game will be a cautionary tale of what not to do in a pvp enviroment, avoided like a leper colony by future pvp designers.

Well the game was advertised as a visual intense action MMO, reaction time come in huge play in this game and you need to train in it, but trust me once you do learn, to dodge incoming attacks will be quite easy.
Most times you’ll need to predict the enemy next move and memorize their attack pattern ( everybody use a different methodology more or less) once done that you’re basically done

Dude i’m a rank 30 champion, i have won tournaments in games with 40x these players for real life cash and have been in the top ranked pvp guilds in real pvp games. so wth are you talking to with pvp advice?

Totally agree with auto-facing. In fact, I think damage was only a very small problem to begin with. It’s the fact that the ability steers for you, and the range must have been at least doubled since the beta weekends. I was originally really excited to play the thief when it’s focus was on movement in early beta, but they ended up making it heavy stealth. Burst should never come out of nowhere. Control out of stealth, or stealth to escape is good, but not burst. Burst should always be telegraphed.

Fellknight.4820:

Arheundel.6451:

Fellknight.4820:

I agree 100% but you will find no logic or support on these forums because the developers agree with the fanboys.

I’ve never seen a game that they gave a burst class re-stealth over and over again WHILE giving them the best mobility+highest dmg on easy mode attack spams.

They buff mesmers over and over again, giving them the best avoidance(clones) plus invis, plus insane dmg output.

Basically the guys making the game are absolutely crazy, biased, and have made this a funland for the classes they like while ignoring reality on every level.

Unless they fire the two guys driving pvp balance down a sheer faced cliff this game will continue to be the joke of modern pvp that is with the highest attition rate of a pvp community ever seen.

Unless this is done^ this game will be a cautionary tale of what not to do in a pvp enviroment, avoided like a leper colony by future pvp designers.

Well the game was advertised as a visual intense action MMO, reaction time come in huge play in this game and you need to train in it, but trust me once you do learn, to dodge incoming attacks will be quite easy.
Most times you’ll need to predict the enemy next move and memorize their attack pattern ( everybody use a different methodology more or less) once done that you’re basically done

Dude i’m a rank 30 champion, i have won tournaments in games with 40x these players for real life cash and have been in the top ranked pvp guilds in real pvp games. so wth are you talking to with pvp advice?

I don’t get it, you win tournaments and you complain about thieves and mesmers, if anything in tournaments all the strenghts of the game are more easily identified.
Against an organized team the mesmer/thief burst become far too easy to counter, for example I go staff ele in tournament , from safe distance ( insert here troll face ^^), I just target the area where the mesmer keep summoning all his clones and then my thief ally finish the job, with a staff I can hit mesmers for 4k dmg with lightning surge like a laser, the things that make mesmer/thief apparently overly strong are the very reason for their quick downfall.
In spvp thief and mesmer are perceived as overly strong because of the confusion but really in a zerg fight you can get killed by anything ( E.G me as target of a combined guardian+warrior hammer, chill/fear necro and shatter mesmer), in a 1vs1 the situation is extremely balanced for all professions

It’s been stated many times over, fix the bugs, then look at balance. Also the way burst is used currently is an issue, mostly due to the fact that it has no ramp up time, it’s just push the buttons and wham, instant gratification.

I’m reminded of several other games, where you had procs to look for when going for burst, you lined up your cooldowns with a specific proc then went at it. The proc normally involved making something that was slow much much faster, and coupled with some cooldown gave you a huge burst of damage, normally not quite enough to beat someone, but enough to put hurt on them so that if they weren’t at full life they might well die. This element doesn’t work as well here since there is no dedicated healer. . . however some sort of proc or build up until you can pop some good damage would be far preferred over this current, see opponent unload. Is it outside reason to think they could adjust the damage in such a way to allow for even MORE powerful finishing AFTER a certain stimulus has taken place?

Furthermore, is it possible for them to vary the stimuli in such a way that it’s not the same for each profession? In theory: yes. It does, however, need to be something they would want to do in the first place, which at this point they have made no hint towards heading to such sophisticated methods of winning fights whether 1v1 or 1v2 or otherwise.

A simple example might be to give thieves a build up of a secondary resource that builds when they are in combat, at a certain threshold it allows them to do double damage for 5 seconds. Having done such, you could safely reduce their damage by 30% or there about without hugely reducing their damage in PvE. (ensuring of course that the uptime of the buff should be roughly often enough to equate to the same 30% damage lost. . . some math would be needed here but simply numbers I don’t have)

Another example might be that Mesmers Shatter damage gets a huge buff every 3rd Shatter with their normal shatter damage being reduced the rest of the time, to counter balance it their shatter could come off cooldown whenever they get to 3 clones! The burst isn’t as front loaded, doesn’t come quite as often, but allows a shatter mesmer to create situations in which they could shatter 3 to 4 times in a row in quick succession to set up that Burst Shatter.

These could all be based on the flavor of the profession, Warriors could get a cooldown reset on a weapon skill of their choice after having taken so many blows (not condition damage but actual landed attacks)

It’s a rough idea, but a very little tuning could make such an idea easily possible, or these could replace passive bonuses in the trait lines, or even be optional choices there.

I think that other than bunkers, d/d eles and portals the balance is perfectly fine.
Problem with PvP is that rank system is nothing but grind.

Like i said in an other thread, the problem is the capping system which requires only 1 person to hold the shrine.

I did play Hero Battles at a very high level in Guild Wars 1 ( but the system was same in some of Heroes Ascent maps) and you generally had to watch map, see where the player was going/sending his heroes to anticipate and keep the shrine, etc…
If a player decided to gank some point then you either decided to not care ( overall you have other shrines) or to go yourself there with all your party, etc…

Here, it’s mostly about just standing on a point with a very defensive build that’s all. Sure you could do the same on GW1, but you at least could recap shrines 2v1 and there were 4 shrines for 4 players ( 3 being heroes, not players), so it wasn’t so easy to do so ..
Here, you can’t even try some tactics ( push a point 5v2, go ninja on an other point, etc…) If it’s working on some matchs, it’s generally not against experienced players or guilds..

A lot of players hate to fight an enemy that has stealth abilities. The same goes for clones and illusions. I don’t think it’s just a matter of whether the stealth and illusion of abilities are balanced or not, because even if everything was perfectly balanced these complaining players would still prefer that the stealth and illusion abilities be taken out of the game.

Like I said, they simply don’t enjoy playing against those abilities. They would rather have clean fights. You can tell them to learn to predict how a thief is going to behave once he stealth’s or tell them to try to learn how to identify which clone to kill, but at the end of the day they just don’t enjoy learning how to play against those abilities. They would rather enjoy learning how to play against abilities that they feel offer them the most enjoyment during a pvp session.

I remember reading a post where someone said that he only played games with no thieves or Mesmer’s and at the sign of a thief or Mesmer he would just quit the game and try to find a new one. I’m not sure why but maybe each of us just have not only a different play style but also our personal taste for enemies to fight.

Maybe it’s because these complaining players take it personally when they assume that behind the Mesmer or the thief is a player who plays that class because he enjoys frustrating other players. Therefore we have a personality clash kind of like how the good guy does not like the bad guy and vice versa. For example the player who plays a warrior assumes that thief players are cowards in real life, and then Mesmer’s are not much better either when it comes to real life personality. The warrior player, being the antithesis of these personality types, wants to assert his dominance in the game over these other players whom he dislikes.

Fellknight.4820:

Dude i’m a rank 30 champion, i have won tournaments in games with 40x these players for real life cash and have been in the top ranked pvp guilds in real pvp games. so wth are you talking to with pvp advice?

watchout we got a badas here

mesmer’s blurred frenzy autoface during channeling is nice..better nerf thief.

Delofakitten.4231:

It’s been stated many times over, fix the bugs, then look at balance. Also the way burst is used currently is an issue, mostly due to the fact that it has no ramp up time, it’s just push the buttons and wham, instant gratification.

I’m reminded of several other games, where you had procs to look for when going for burst, you lined up your cooldowns with a specific proc then went at it. The proc normally involved making something that was slow much much faster, and coupled with some cooldown gave you a huge burst of damage, normally not quite enough to beat someone, but enough to put hurt on them so that if they weren’t at full life they might well die. This element doesn’t work as well here since there is no dedicated healer. . . however some sort of proc or build up until you can pop some good damage would be far preferred over this current, see opponent unload. Is it outside reason to think they could adjust the damage in such a way to allow for even MORE powerful finishing AFTER a certain stimulus has taken place?

Furthermore, is it possible for them to vary the stimuli in such a way that it’s not the same for each profession? In theory: yes. It does, however, need to be something they would want to do in the first place, which at this point they have made no hint towards heading to such sophisticated methods of winning fights whether 1v1 or 1v2 or otherwise.

A simple example might be to give thieves a build up of a secondary resource that builds when they are in combat, at a certain threshold it allows them to do double damage for 5 seconds. Having done such, you could safely reduce their damage by 30% or there about without hugely reducing their damage in PvE. (ensuring of course that the uptime of the buff should be roughly often enough to equate to the same 30% damage lost. . . some math would be needed here but simply numbers I don’t have)

Another example might be that Mesmers Shatter damage gets a huge buff every 3rd Shatter with their normal shatter damage being reduced the rest of the time, to counter balance it their shatter could come off cooldown whenever they get to 3 clones! The burst isn’t as front loaded, doesn’t come quite as often, but allows a shatter mesmer to create situations in which they could shatter 3 to 4 times in a row in quick succession to set up that Burst Shatter.

These could all be based on the flavor of the profession, Warriors could get a cooldown reset on a weapon skill of their choice after having taken so many blows (not condition damage but actual landed attacks)

It’s a rough idea, but a very little tuning could make such an idea easily possible, or these could replace passive bonuses in the trait lines, or even be optional choices there.

I understand where you’re coming from , but we must remember that in case a ramp up system get introduced I don’t see how a burst build will survive long enough to reach the critical point, furthermore this would enhance even more the many defensive builds out there

Abazigal.3679:

Like i said in an other thread, the problem is the capping system which requires only 1 person to hold the shrine.

I did play Hero Battles at a very high level in Guild Wars 1 ( but the system was same in some of Heroes Ascent maps) and you generally had to watch map, see where the player was going/sending his heroes to anticipate and keep the shrine, etc…
If a player decided to gank some point then you either decided to not care ( overall you have other shrines) or to go yourself there with all your party, etc…

Here, it’s mostly about just standing on a point with a very defensive build that’s all. Sure you could do the same on GW1, but you at least could recap shrines 2v1 and there were 4 shrines for 4 players ( 3 being heroes, not players), so it wasn’t so easy to do so ..
Here, you can’t even try some tactics ( push a point 5v2, go ninja on an other point, etc…) If it’s working on some matchs, it’s generally not against experienced players or guilds..

What you’re suggesting would increase the already present zerg mentality where a huge mob move from one point to the other, the current system allows for a more tactical approach to the usual cap point mode.
Tactics and builds are required to get rid of the player defending a node

gwawer.9805:

A lot of players hate to fight an enemy that has stealth abilities. The same goes for clones and illusions. I don’t think it’s just a matter of whether the stealth and illusion of abilities are balanced or not, because even if everything was perfectly balanced these complaining players would still prefer that the stealth and illusion abilities be taken out of the game.

Like I said, they simply don’t enjoy playing against those abilities. They would rather have clean fights. You can tell them to learn to predict how a thief is going to behave once he stealth’s or tell them to try to learn how to identify which clone to kill, but at the end of the day they just don’t enjoy learning how to play against those abilities. They would rather enjoy learning how to play against abilities that they feel offer them the most enjoyment during a pvp session.

I remember reading a post where someone said that he only played games with no thieves or Mesmer’s and at the sign of a thief or Mesmer he would just quit the game and try to find a new one. I’m not sure why but maybe each of us just have not only a different play style but also our personal taste for enemies to fight.

Maybe it’s because these complaining players take it personally when they assume that behind the Mesmer or the thief is a player who plays that class because he enjoys frustrating other players. Therefore we have a personality clash kind of like how the good guy does not like the bad guy and vice versa. For example the player who plays a warrior assumes that thief players are cowards in real life, and then Mesmer’s are not much better either when it comes to real life personality. The warrior player, being the antithesis of these personality types, wants to assert his dominance in the game over these other players whom he dislikes.

Nicely well thought can’t really disagree with you….still how much easy a game should be to let everybody pick it up fast and how hard should it be to maintain a certain level of challenge?
As a rule of thumb:
-People will complain if something is too easy
-People will complain if something is too hard
But balance is a subjective therefore you will never please everybody, still the game is designed in a way that everybody can chose his level of challenge.
And got other two questions now:

-If a player is just in for the fun like a casual player, why does he care that much to die in a sPvP match? You just there to have a laugh, to kill and be killed…so why the kitten?
- If a player is in for the win, why does he not practice and learn as much as he can before complaining?
It seems to me that even casual players these days are in for the win and yet they don’t want to put in the effort to learn, I mean somebody buy a game..and three days later come complain on the forum that this is OP and that is broken

Shukran.4851:

mesmer’s blurred frenzy autoface during channeling is nice..better nerf thief.

The skill itself is not the main cause for the huge burst dmg, mind wrack is the culprit, a mesmer with no clones will at most crit for 3-4k dmg with blurred frenzy and in case you’re able to dodge you’ll have a spare 2s to catch your breath and prepare your own burst

Arheundel.6451:

Shukran.4851:

mesmer’s blurred frenzy autoface during channeling is nice..better nerf thief.

The skill itself is not the main cause for the huge burst dmg, mind wrack is the culprit, a mesmer with no clones will at most crit for 3-4k dmg with blurred frenzy and in case you’re able to dodge you’ll have a spare 2s to catch your breath and prepare your own burst

tell it to my PW thief. he is crying a lot in his room

In terms of blurred frenzy auto facing, it’s hilarious to see the response from other Mesmer players when this issue is brought up. They immediately try to diverge the issue and say that the auto facing isn’t the issue to be concerned about when it comes to blurred frenzy.

You’re telling me that the only ability in the game which auto faces you during the channel, I repeat: during the freaking channel. How much of a easy noob face role ability do you want in this game?

I mean it’s one thing when all the abilities in this game will initially auto face you if you are not holding down your strafe keys or other movement keys, but that’s only initially. Blurred frenzy is the only ability that auto faces you during the channel so that as long as the player is in melee range you’re always going to be facing him.

I thought this game was about skill not pressing a button that disregards so many risk factors.