Guild Wars 2

we’re being put on the leash

First of all I have to say that I really like Anets work and love the game. The patch was great. But it was not the patch we needed at the moment.

The meta was in a bad state. It was for a long time. Stated as the worst meta ever. Too long since no change. Many teams quit, even the teams who where very loyal (most loyal and consistant = paradigm).

Why did they quit? Not only because the meta is just plain boring no skill cc/condi spam (like stated a 1000 times in the forum) or the class balance is not good or there are too less game modes (which all are a factor for the pvp and the game being not satisfacting).

But because: We feel betrayed! seriously. I’m patient, always have high hopes and get kicked in the balls every time.

I will speak about the patch later..

I really don’t get why you don’t listen to your playerbase. You guys don’t play pvp seriously (and that’s nothing bad), if you would, your changes would be different.
But you have a huge amount of experts (!) regarding pvp questions. People who play it every day and know the problems. And guys.. they even post in the forums! Literary EVERY fix or change needed was in the pvp forums for months. You just had to open your eyes. After 1 week ppl wrote what was bad, what needed changes. But what do you do is make always the same statement “thank you for your constructive feedback I will pass it on to the team” … and then we will laugh about it and do something different. That’s how we feel.. it makes people mad and angry, me included. Because we care about this game. Why write constructive feedback if it gets ignored anyway? (why write this thread?). Because I still care and I hope you guys actually respond with something that doesn’t just keeps us on the leash.

Most players hoped for this update to really balance things and bring another meta!

So if you want to make your playerbase more happy; Communicate! And interact! You need to show that you take us seriously. And you really should take players more seriously (not all.. but the about 300 players who have more insight then you in pvp!)
So:
- give us more insight on what you planed with TIMEFRAMES.
And please don’t talk about that you don’t want to give too much insight beforehand too avoid kittenstorms. You get MORE kittenstorms if you do it the current way. If you would “leak” your patchnotes beforehand you would have much feedback and could actually make changes BEFORE you patch.
- Listen to the huge amount of experts you have. There are so many players who could balance pvp to a good amount with just alittle tweak in numbers (like often stated).

General changes

- AOE cap including dodge + block is a change who is really interesting. This probably takes out a little of the dmg and will be felt to some degree.
- QoL: Condition floaters, new ground targeting option, player over npc target priorisation, better trait facts, all GREAT and a step in the right direction.
- The bugfix on sigil of paralysation was great, but it was long due.
- immobilize stacks duration? wow cool —> change that back immediately. Do you even test internally?

So the general changes are great and address important problems, but not really address the problem of the meta.

- Make a debuff for Daze and Stun. 50% less stun duration if you got stunned a second ago.

The problem of the meta

We have too much high reward/no risk builds. The meta is focussed around Hardtargets. The team with more hardtargets probably wins, because you just train down the soft target of your opponent (and if they even have 2 softtargets they have 1 rezzer less..). That’s why the classes who don’t have the same surviveability as warrior/ranger/S/D-thief are not viable.

Warriors

The sigil bugfix (it was not a nerf!) was a huge drawback for warrior builds. But stun duration is still to high and the stun duration is not the main problem. The problem is the frequency a warrior can AOE stun / AOE Bowblast a point. Warriors will continue to dominate the meta

Warrior will continue being OP and teams will at least take one with them.
- reduce healing amount of healsignet slightly
- reduce adrenalin gain on F1 abilities SLIGHTLY. They’re used a little too often.
- NORMALIZE stun duration to 1 second. —> Erase sigil of paralsation
- Change condition duration reduce from 100% to 90% or something. So that the dmg from condition is near 0, but so that you can escape a stun chain by fearing or blinding at the right moment.
- Permaimmob with leg specialist? seriously remove immob stacking in duration

This would leave warrior at a good position in the meta while making other classes more viable.

Elementalist

He literary has no survivability in the current meta. The solution is not giving him more invulnerabilities but to give the elementalist more options to disengage. At the moment an elementalist who gets focussed dies. He is invulnerable, then he dies. He disengages, thief jumps after him, he dies. So ele needs more options to disengage and/or more passive survivability (possibility of more toughness i.e.). Staff changes and Conjure changes are ok. But I don’t see ele being a part of the meta due to this changes. The only solution to bring back dead classes is either to fix the ones who make them obsolete or to make them a counter to another overpowered class.
- Tune down elementalist burst dmg SLIGHTLY
- Give Focus a movement skill like RTL (like the fire roll on staff)
- Reduce cooldown of RTL again SLIGHTLY
- Give options in earth for more survivability (like warrior stances) -> change traits
- Give options on fire for more mobility/disengage (like acrobatics for thief, but not in that amount) --> change traits

These changes would make elementalist more viable while providing an option to trait something different than 30 in arcana.

Ranger

Healing spring change —> great. Ranger has less dodge, that’s good. But he has more protection (or more effective protection). That’s a change I understand tough. The big problems still remain. Spirits and passive play is too strong. The abilities of the spirits need nerf.
- take out the dmg from storm spirit, make a stun field instead.
- take out the dmg from earth spirit.
- normalize evade duration from evading skills to 1/4 second.

If the spirits where somewhat only a support, I think many ppl could live with it. The burst of the spirits with the lizard is just ridiculous at the moment. This would tune down spiritrangers immensely while still leaving them viable.

Engineer

Bomb change is BIG but of no use in this meta. Elixirs are nice now, but the are still elixirs. Turrets is just a failed mechanic. Only healing turret is useful (and rifle only for the tool belt ability). Engineer still is not viable in this meta, because warriors/necros/rangers still give you a too hard time and you just get trained down in teamfights. (bunker engi is somewhat viable)
- Bringing back the engineer is done by tuning down the other classes
- If you want useful turrets give all of them a passive effect (like healing turret). Make them “support machines” like spirits. Make traits so that they can follow you. Then MAYBE I will choose a turret over a kit.
- Hitting multiple targets with AoE will cause the new turret AI to break. Your turret will now spend time slowly turning between targets instead of shooting if you’re hitting more than one foe. Ridiculous xD

Guardian

Fury trait may bring new builds (bunker/dmg hybrid maybe?). But guard still stays the same as ever.
- Rethink spiritweapons. Make them more supporty for the team.
- Since every build HAS to build around shouts. Think about transforming other skills in shouts. This would offer more real options.

Necromancer

I think I will get stoned for this, but I think necro is OK at the moment. The siphon stuff is interesting and offers more builds probably. But maybe it will make minion master aka spiritranger2.0 viable which would be very bad..
The survivability and mobility of a necro is not THAT high. He is has risks if you want to do more dmg. Which is good. Maybe he needs a little tweak in dmg numbers.

Mesmer

Interesting changes. But mantras probably cast too long to be used in teamfights. Again like engineer Mesmer would get more viable again if the other classes would be tuned down.
- Make the illusionary leap more like a thief port so that you can port in Z axis and overall more reliable. It’s a bad gap closer.

Thief

Thief is highly viable at the moment. But in my opinion in a very bad position. You are forced to play S/D (with the nerf to S/P due to sigil more than ever). D/P is somewhat viable, but you are by no means as effective as S/D and you will get trained down. Please stop trying to make condition thief work! It will never work! And when it does it will make the other condition classes obsolete because of the thieves high mobility and survive with dodges.
The survivability increase with dodges was good and a step in the right direction. Stealth is nothing on which you can rely in spvp (a good thief would never use refugee to save himself for example).
1 Boon remove instead of 2 is meh. It’s a good change, but it’s so random. You can’t choose which boon you steal. When you want to steal a boon your opponent probably has at least 3 boons.
- The amount of dodge is too high. Reduce the free dodge from the trait 15 in acrobatics
- Infiltrators strike is a free “get out of prison” card. You can never catch a good S/D thief due to it. So either reduce the dodge or the ports.
- Dont focus too much on the stealth (traits AND skills). And don’t focus on conditions. Give more options for power builds.
- Too make Main pistol viable it had to be similar to short bow. Number 3 with dagger and pistol should probably be an option for ranged AOE like cluster bomb , number 1 should not deal condis but be somewhat AOE like shortbow autoattack and overall powerdmg and number 2 should be an evade backward which could be used for mobility.

One of the most constructive posts I’ve seen lately. Gj

Like Helseth said very well on his stream:

“There was a point where they just had to nerf Ele and Mesmer and EVERYTHING would have been viable”

Not exact words.. but it’s the truth

Thanks for the constructive post Django! Keep it coming! I will pass it on to the team. Just so you know, we discuss these things internally all the time! Then we decide to ignore it all and stay the cheezy course.

Django.5923:

Like Helseth said very well on his stream:

“There was a point where they just had to nerf Ele and Mesmer and EVERYTHING would have been viable”

Not exact words.. but it’s the truth

The worst thing about this it’s so kitteng true.. They had only to tone down these 2 classes BEFORE the wtfsmackyourheadondesk necro/spirit ranger buff where this terrible balancing got out of control. It’s literally snowballing right now, everything is getting worse. Where is the logic behind making stuff OP then buff things to be even more OP to counter it?!

Phantaram said it lately on stream quite good: If they would erase this Necro and Ranger crap while shaving some other (like warrior) it may all could be in a right spot.

Anyways, some rly good points there Django. But i doubt anything will change. ANet and their balancing kids just follow their own direction of balancing skills. Feedback accepted? Yea if something isn’t working correctly like bugfixes (i.e. sig of paralization). For everything else follow these step → balance OP stuff with even more OP stuff in a timeframe of 4 months.

that’s why the thread title also is “writing gas”. I know I wrote this for nothing.

But I still hope that if you point it out enough they will at some point at least crawl in the right direction.

Django.5923:

Like Helseth said very well on his stream:

“There was a point where they just had to nerf Ele and Mesmer and EVERYTHING would have been viable”

Not exact words.. but it’s the truth

It’s difficult for me to agree with this even more than I already do.

I also remember those times on SOTG when it was stated that (old, unbuffed) Warrior was the most balanced class in the game – that other classes should hope to be like the Warrior. Burst that can be seen, requires setup, and countered, a class with limitations and no ridiculous FOTM. It was other classes, classes with OP builds that needed to be brought down to their level.

Instead, we have had an ever increasing power creep. Constant buffs to deal with overpowered nonsense that then results in more overpowered nonsense.

It is always much easier to bring down the few outliers than to buff everything in hopes of making them like those outliers. There are less variables at play when you do the former.

A pity that we’ve already come so far since then. It almost seems impossible to go back and do things the right way.

They sadly don’t realize that they have to bring down everything than to buff everything into the clouds.. But as said, all constructive feedback is wasted and fades into the abyss of nothingness

The patch wasn’t good though. It’s bug riddled and filled with a bunch of questionable changes. Some are good and some are bad. That is not what makes a good patch in most people’s eyes. It may not be the worst patch ever but good is stretching it.

It’s almost how I imagined it. I thought they would buff some more ridiculous stuff and the meta would have other classes which are more OP but at least the meta would change!

Well.. xD

By itself, I think this last patch was decent. Small steps (mostly) in the right direction. It reminds me of the monthly balancing patches we used to have before the big powercreep storm, except with more QoL changes this time. And to be honest, the game’s balance was getting slightly better before june’s/july’s (?) patch, and will pobably get slightly better with this one.

What I think was -and still is- Anet’s big mistake, is their extremely slow reaction to the other big patch before this one. The game went crazy with powercreep, and the pvp’s community pretty much broke. Anet should have hotfixed it with deeper changes, yet, for every single excuse, they’ve been delaying it, and delaying it, and now that a new patch is out, not enough was done because they only want to “shave” it.

Here’s the thing: I like Anet’s shaving approach, but if a single patch bursts the pvp down with negative consequences, Anet should fight fire with fire. Which they didn’t, they let – and are still letting – those negative consequences to exist out there and slowly tarnish the state of pvp.

Also, in a slightly unrelated way, I don’t think their shaving balance process works very well in a 3-month schedule, because it means too little for too long. I don’t mind bigger patches dealing with underpowered stuff and new build options, but serious balance problems should be “shaved” every two weeks and not every month and a half or more.

My recommendation to Anet: adding counters is cool, but unless you want to make this game a rock-paper-scissors game, seriously consider toning down or upping the skill floor/ ceiling of some of the current troublesome builds. Every two weeks. It can be little changes at a time, it doesn’t matters. But don’t make whatever remains of this community to wait three more months for a small shaving of a monstrous meta.

DiogoSilva.7089:

By itself, I think this last patch was decent. Small steps (mostly) in the right direction. It reminds me of the monthly balancing patches we used to have before the big powercreep storm, except with more QoL changes this time. And to be honest, the game’s balance was getting slightly better before june’s/july’s (?) patch, and will pobably get slightly better with this one.

What I think was -and still is- Anet’s big mistake, is their extremely slow reaction to the other big patch before this one. The game went crazy with powercreep, and the pvp’s community pretty much broke. Anet should have hotfixed it with deeper changes, yet, for every single excuse, they’ve been delaying it, and delaying it, and now that a new patch is out, not enough was done because they only want to “shave” it.

Here’s the thing: I like Anet’s shaving approach, but if a single patch bursts the pvp down with negative consequences, Anet should fight fire with fire. Which they didn’t, they let – and are still letting – those negative consequences to exist out there and slowly tarnish the state of pvp.

Also, in a slightly unrelated way, I don’t think their shaving balance process works very well in a 3-month schedule, because it means too little for too long. I don’t mind bigger patches dealing with underpowered stuff and new build options, but serious balance problems should be “shaved” every two weeks and not every month and a half or more.

My recommendation to Anet: adding counters is cool, but unless you want to make this game a rock-paper-scissors game, seriously consider toning down or upping the skill floor/ ceiling of some of the current troublesome builds. Every two weeks. It can be little changes at a time, it doesn’t matters. But don’t make whatever remains of this community to wait three more months for a small shaving of a monstrous meta.

The scary thing, is it really seems like they have the game where they want it.

Django.5923:

Thief

Thief is highly viable at the moment. But in my opinion in a very bad position. You are forced to play S/D (with the nerf to S/P due to sigil more than ever). D/P is somewhat viable, but you are by no means as effective as S/D and you will get trained down. Please stop trying to make condition thief work! It will never work! And when it does it will make the other condition classes obsolete because of the thieves high mobility and survive with dodges.
The survivability increase with dodges was good and a step in the right direction. Stealth is nothing on which you can rely in spvp (a good thief would never use refugee to save himself for example).
1 Boon remove instead of 2 is meh. It’s a good change, but it’s so random. You can’t choose which boon you steal. When you want to steal a boon your opponent probably has at least 3 boons.
- The amount of dodge is too high. Reduce the free dodge from the trait 15 in acrobatics
- Infiltrators strike is a free “get out of prison” card. You can never catch a good S/D thief due to it. So either reduce the dodge or the ports.
- Dont focus too much on the stealth (traits AND skills). And don’t focus on conditions. Give more options for power builds.
- Too make Main pistol viable it had to be similar to short bow. Number 3 with dagger and pistol should probably be an option for ranged AOE like cluster bomb , number 1 should not deal condis but be somewhat AOE like shortbow autoattack and overall powerdmg and number 2 should be an evade backward which could be used for mobility.

More thief abilities should be like flanking strike.
Not in OP’ness, but in the first ability, second ability chain.

It’d make the class soooooo easy to fix and balance, and increase the skillcap to boot.
All you have to do is add a second ability chain or blank slot to most weapon attacks, then make it cost 3-5 ini to use.
Put notable ‘ini regen’ traits as 3rd tier… bam… a good class.

It’d create a psuedo CD system where you can pay initiative to get an ability off CD. You can wait the 7-15s while the second chain ability/blank is up, or pay the 4~ ini to use it and get the first ability in the chain back.
With much less possible ini regen in the thief class, it’d open up either building for ini heavy ini regen (grabbin tier 3 traits for it) to be able to spam a number of abilities, or build for normal ini regen and gain notably more dmg/utility but have to manage your ini allot better.

milo.6942:

The scary thing, is it really seems like they have the game where they want it.

I’ve noticed that.
It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen about this game.

I really don’t get why they don’t ask the good players.

Take like 10 top players and talk 10 hours with them about every class and every skill. Do what they say and the meta would probably be sooooooo good…

It’s like I said. You want to do something and enhance something of which you have no idea off. But INSTEAD of asking the ones who are experts in it (who would LOVE to help for free! Dudes! high quality experts about the theme who would work for kittening free for you!) instead of that… they do it all alone. And fail miserably

Django.5923:

I really don’t get why they don’t ask the good players.

Take like 10 top players and talk 10 hours with them about every class and every skill. Do what they say and the meta would probably be sooooooo good…

Ehh.
It’d probably end up like state of the game.
I mean, that’s a step forward, but I don’t know how big of a step it’d end up being.

People tend to be extremely biased towards their own class/spec. It tends to get to a point where it’s a balance off, people just focusing on keeping what they play relevant and working down its counters and keeping what it can counter…
No where in that is better gameplay actually the goal…
You know, that thing that is supposed to be the only goal…
—————-
There are rarities though, people who don’t can keep their head when it comes to tweaking a game, people who are objective about how the game plays, and able to see quality fixes.
Those people are supposed to be devs.

Funny how that never happens…

Their justification for not having patches every 2 weeks seems to show they don’t understand their own patch process.

You don’t need to wait and see that certain classes are OP, you don’t need to wait and see that the following:
1. TTK ratio is too high. Powercreep.
2. certain classes are extremely OP.
3 certain classes are unfairly punished. I mean does it make sense that the classes with the lowest armor, hp, have less than the class with the highest, hp, armor?

state of the game is a joke. A few players who have insight talking with ppl who have no idea and make fake promises… It’s sad but true.

I’m talking about giving the top players FULL power to make the patch. Do everything they discussed. I’m sure it would turn out good…

Django.5923:

state of the game is a joke. A few players who have insight talking with ppl who have no idea and make fake promises… It’s sad but true.

I’m talking about giving the top players FULL power to make the patch. Do everything they discussed. I’m sure it would turn out good…

If top players had a PTS, then Anet brought over, to the actual game, things from it that the population really enjoyed… I’d wholeheartedly agree.

Short of that, having top players just be the devs, it’d be an improvement, there isn’t much in this world that starts with ‘replace these devs with… ’ that wouldn’t be an improvement. But it’d be a very unpredictable one (could end very good or only a lil better, being good at a game gives little to how well you hold up to having near complete control over it)

kitten TOP players.

Their opinions don’t mean much more than the opinions of others.