Guild Wars 2

Well Anet let me list some of the biggest mistakes you make:

Prefer casuals over veterans/hardcore. Eventually almost all casuals get to the level of at least veteran or novice. They have to learn it. It’s like a jumping puzzle, you have to practise it, it can’t be born into your fingers. The confusion mesmer nerf is a 100% focus towards casual, and a hit in the face for veterans. It was so easy to counter. It basically was a mind game. Now it’s 100% useless. Just a super small bonus to power builds.

‘Necro cannot have any of the following survival tools: Vigor, utility stability access, Heavy self sustain (read 200 hp per sec passive permanent, regeneration hard to keep up on necro, doesn’t count imo), Disengages from combat, in combat mobility, blocks, invulnerabilities’. You deny access of SO MANY survival tools of necro to them, that you will create problems why? Either you make them like now, the easiest profession EVER to focus down, creating frustration, forum whining (legit though), etc. Or you give them so much damage to compensate, they can aoe backstab everyone, every 5 secs. Wich you won’t do. So back to square one, Necromancer is underpowered, because they are the most squishy profession in the game, (hitpoints, even with new DS, 50k total hp, still kittenty, people eat true it, there no way to keep it up from burst). The slight improvement they have to enemy damage pressure just doesn’t cut it.

I just farmed 120 wxp levels together on my necro. And in the end useless, cause this update (and here I amdit it, personal decision, but still, opinion matter imo, some say they don’t), renders my beloved necro main into hibernation. Other profession have less downsides now, even though meta wise, they seem almost equal.

For you making greater marks a master trait, while making base marks bigger may be a small thing. But at the same time you destroyed my build. I need 80 traits to make the same build now. You also nerfed Terror. As someone who NEVER EVER, used dhuumfire (just tested it once, not impressed), you nerfed me in terror damage.

And the jump feature. While it could be seen as exploit, I see it as class unique feature. Vampires can jump high after all? Either way other classes have unique capabilities too. Say engi/ranger 1500 range. Mesmer portal. Ranger healing spring. Etc Etc. This gives professions unique’ness. It was also a way for me to compensate for the lack of complete mobility/survival skills. With those gone, to me personally, necromancer has fallen below the tresshold for ‘minimum survivability to be playable’. While the nerf is not big, hell maybe 5-15% overall, you nerfed survivability of a profession already sitting at the bottom. My personal tresshold (minimum survival – wvw), is Exceeded.

You guys have big and good idea’s. But what you may see as small update, cause me (and probably a lot of others) to completely drop necromancer, and having to start all over on another main.

PS this counts for pvp too, that i do daily. The weaker stat balancing in pvp, makes it slightly easier for a berserker necro to get away though. But that’s where it ends. Focusing down necro is just as easy. All the updates are both wvw/pvp. They affect both as badly. And in pvp necro’s are punished with 0 life force at start of battle. If a thief decides to focus you, you must really have the perfect thief counter build, or you’ll die. All of my post applies to pvp, except the wxp anekdote and the deathshroud-jump part.

you are in wrong section – this here is about pvp

Romek.4201:

you are in wrong section – this here is about pvp

I’d never post in pvp section if i didn t read that PvE is ever taken in account for balancing

We have a completely broken meta in PvE and even when dev talked about underpowered PvE profession they eaten the most serious nerfs in the name of PvP.

So i won t waste more of your time but if pve is treated as expendable in balancing, at least don t use PvE as an excuse forr pvp balance…

Its not fair.
If some skill is OP in PvE the mob or dungeon is buffed or the reward is lowered but NEVER the skill is touched.

well, it seems like every part of the game is not happy about the balancing that is going on..

still waiting for a GW2-like MMO (instant access to all classes) with only pvp so they can balance it only for pvp.

as it is right now noone is really happy with the state of the game and it feels like people get demotivated. I even started playing PvE again because there you see new things from time to time (living world).

LeGi.3921:

I even started playing PvE again because there you see new things from time to time (living world).

Many PvP-Players searching for alternatives to fight boredom.

JonathanSharp.7094:

…I think the “high level” and the “casual” are equally important to the health and life of the game.

The truth is that we need to balance for both, …

Chap, I like you more every time I see you post. You contribute well thought out commentary on the discussions, and I really appreciate that you make that effort. Of course, I have to disagree with you on a few things here though.

The “high level” player is not relevant to the balance discussion in this game’s current state. Moderately skilled players with a reasonable level of experience understand all of the issues that the “high level” players think about, but they fail in execution by comparison. Lets be honest too, the design of this game is such that there is very little in gameplay that separates the “high level” player from the average player. This isn’t news since the recent patches, it has always been this way. The best teams are the best teams due to the way that they work together strategically and make crisp point to point rotations when called for; it has very little to do with them being superior at mashing buttons in this combat system that has no skill shots and no active aiming. If every top 1000 player stopped playing the game permanently today, but the population increased in tPvP by15%, then the game would be on a better path to tPvP success. The objective needs to be growing the overall population and making the game fun. “Balance” is an unattainable ideal, just like skill cap. As much as I agree with Xeph and others that the more skilled/experienced players have a better understanding of the state of balance, the tPvP population is not dependent on their presence. If they leave, then others will take their place. So it has always been with every PvP game ever released and so it is with GW2.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Keep the other game types in mind and thanks for being cool/calm/collected when discussing such a volatile issue.

Keep them in mind, yes, but you absolutely MUST balance around tPvP with the other aspects of this game being only afterthoughts.

1) WvW is just kittened from the start in terms of balance. The combat system simply doesn’t translate to 125v125v125 in any balanced way, especially when you throw in the siege weapons and WvW buffs. The balance team need only concern themselves with avoiding the creation of something that makes this mode completely unplayable.

2) PvE’ers won’t like to hear this, but they are irrelevant to the Character side balance of the game. PvE IS BALANCED BY ADJUSTING CONTENT, NOT SKILLS. That is the ONLY way that PvE and PvP balance can coexist.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

LeGi.3921:

I even started playing PvE again because there you see new things from time to time (living world).

Many PvP-Players searching for alternatives to fight boredom.

raises hand

Or to actually use weapons/specs outside of the 1 viable weapon/spec for each class in pvp.

Thanks for addressing this, Myrmidian (otherwise I would have written it). Couldn’t have done it better!

As someone who does pve/spvp/wvw it sounds a little crazy that people think balance isn’t mainly prioritized to spvp… I don’t know what (if any) prioritization there actually is but I hear guild members/wvwers complaining all the time about spvp hurting wvw. Anyway, just wanted to throw that in for perspective and I don’t think its an issue of the grass always being greener elsewhere.

It seems to me all people who complain over balancing issues, forget some crucial points. Firstly and most important of all: We should know through experience, after every patch regardless how much changes, there will always be people complaining. I believe there is not a single game outside there which is perfectly balanced.

The thing is, players will always find ways to exploit new changes, or at least develope new tactics which are OP in certain parts of the game.

My point is, I don’t see meta is broken anywhere. It just changes from patch to patch and some people like it, some not.
Playing Necro doesn’t give you any advantage in sPvP, I play a lot, even free tournaments and the team with necro/ more of them isn’t bound to win at all.
With the trait change for marks, I can still be as effective in WvW as before, since you have epidemic. Torment even gives you more survivability through its disable.
True is, of course, enemies without proper cleansing abilities will now go down faster, but they would anyways. Against enemies with those, like elementalists, its now at least a bit less frustrating
As for getting no disengages for necro, they don’t need to. They have this incerdible build of lifeforce, which gives them really heavy sustain in battles, making it hard enough to kill them. If they then could jump around like thieves or so, THAT would be OP, you would never get to kill just one.
All in all, you can still bring everything down on player skill, how he manages his class, how the team overall is composed, and how well you work together. This is true for dungeons as well as sPvP. While there may are certain parts of the game, which favor some builds/teamcombinations as far as time efficiancy goes, there is no need to always stick with those to actually do the content.

Lastly, I may remind you all that GW1 had major balancing updates even WITH splitting PvE/PvP skillsets after YEARS. SC2 had a lot balancing updates after Stephano found a way to do macro just like a AI would making Zerg nearly impossible to beat for a time. And this game was developed for about 12 years or so?
The current meta will change, if you want it to, or not. For some it will be for the worse, for some for the good. But you all can be certain Anet will ALWAYS work on it, it takes time, and people will find ways to use it for OP tactics. Thats how it goes. No developer ever could foresee just what players would use changes for which they were not intended.

tl;dr: People will always complain since meta will always change for the liking/disliking of somebody and Anet is still doing a great job, with all flaws they may bring to the game. In time, they will fix it for the better!

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say I’m watching this, but I didn’t want to derail this thread.

I think the “high level” and the “casual” are equally important to the health and life of the game.

The truth is that we need to balance for both, and we need to use 1 set of #‘s for THREE game types, which all have “high” and “casual” markets. So, in a sense, the balance team is balancing for 6 different types of players, all while trying to keep the #’s as consistent as possible for all game types.

Keep the other game types in mind and thanks for being cool/calm/collected when discussing such a volatile issue.

yup you guys are all genius to balance all 6 different game types, BUT SEEMS LIKE IT’S ALREADY BEEN A YEAR AND YOU STILL HAVE NOT YET SUCCEEDED, look at all the top teams and you see exact same comp exact same builds

IMO balacing all 6 different game types will work if all the people in the balance team are Einstein.

I know its extremely important to satisfy the PvE and WvW people because of money issues, so just let the PvP to kitten up and stop doing the E-sports false advertisement because you guys can never do it, in other words I mean you guys are too greedy, you cannot do this big project with little investment.

Put more money and talented engineers into PvP first before you start this greedy talks.

Because necro condition meta build was strong direct dps or tanky build cannot be viable. Well gee go figure.

Remove stealth. In fact remove stealth for only the thief thief and let everyone else have stealth.

Let me have the damage output of a real assassin instead.

Feel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyLRi6TmSE

To summarize,

So you don’t want a thief excelling in DPS.
So you don’t want a thief excelling in mobility.
You don’t want a thief excelling in survivability.

Short version;

You clearly don’t want to have a thief. You want to have your own little version of a wet towel thief. You probably want him to get kited to death while you are in your airplane dropping bombs on him.

I will also make a post regarding the viability of a mesmer.

For the time being, I am pretty sure this thread will lead “If you are a Mesmer reroll to a Necromancer”.

Warriors are popping up and players are rerolling from their mesmers. Guess we have got many players that want to do things easy cheesy fotm.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh, also, to the Op’s point (sorry, I’m about to present in China, my mind is elsewhere, didn’t mean to ignore the OP):

The reason we did a “big” change for the Necro, as I’ve stated before, is that we had the Pax tournament coming. We knew we wanted to get Necros and Warriors up with the other classes, and that’s why we had big changes.

Also, a lot of our changes happen VERY far ahead of what you guys see on live. What do I mean?

• It takes us time to get our changes to editors for writing (any text/trait change has to be edited). This can take a week or more.
• We have to then get changes to writers.
• We then have to make sure we work with artists for any visual changes
• We also have to work with sound to make sure we have sound for any changes
• We have to work with icon artists for icons if they’re needed (in the case of Death Shroud 5)
• We have to make sure the changes get through multiple stages of QA testing
• Then with the changes in, we get time to play them before we do final changes
• While doing all this, we have to take the current meta, be it in dungeons/wvw/pvp, and from that, try to extrapolate what we think needs to be done a few months in advance.

This process can take a LONG time, as you can imagine. It’s not as simple as, “Oh, let’s change this to a 2, and change that to a 7.”

I know the video game industry in general is not very transparent when it comes to how things actually work, but I wanted you guys to know that a lot of times, there is a LOT of process for even the SMALLEST balance/content changes.

We get to see how Ridley Scott made Blade Runner with a companion DVD special, but in video games, no one talks about all the complex processes that go into making and balancing a game as complex as GW2 (which is basically 3 games in 1, all using the same balance #’s).

Hope this makes sense.

Oh, also, the reason we can’t give Necro’s too much disengage has to do with the point of “purity of purpose”.

In this game, we want to allow classes the ability to deal with all situations but in different ways. But, if we give all classes all TOOLS (which is a different thing), then players get confused as to which classes fill which roles, and in what way they fill those roles

Example: In PvP, the Necro and Engi both vie for the position of condition pressure. The engineer has more physical alternatives, the Necro has more boon/condition manipulation, the Engi has more escapability, and the Necro is a little squishier. If we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role. So, in order to prevent this, we try to make it so that the classes don’t have all their tools overlap perfectly. This means you have to say (following our example), “Well, if we take a Necro, we get more condies, but a squishy body that can’t disengage…..but if we take Engi, we lose some DPS and control (depending on utils), but we get someone who can stand up to a spike better”.

Make sense? If we just gave the escape to Necro’s, then all of a sudden, the Necro is just the clear choice. Not all decisions come down to a clean break like this, but this is the type of thing we’re trying to do when we “deny” some classes certain tools.

This is the same reason that Red doesn’t get interrupts in Magic, the reason that Zergs, normally, have much more mobility than Protoss (since Toss are usually stronger unit-by-unit), and why Karthus has no escapes. By denying tools, you create choices for the players. We sometimes do a poor job of this, sorry. But overall, we try to make it so that all classes have choices, and teams have choices in which classes they bring.

Also, keep in mind we’re trying to get 8 classes to fit into 5 slots, for PvE, Dungeons, and PvP.

This is all high level, and I’m in a rush, but I just wanted to explain this real fast…..

It’s funny, being in China, I have more time to post on the forums than I do while in the office. That’s irony or something….like 10,000 spoons….

-Chap from China

I love posts like this. When a dev takes the time out of their day to sit down and go through a conversation with the fans about what is happening behind the scenes. Thank you, Chap, for being an exemplar to the rest of the Arenanet team when it comes to community interaction.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

PvE’ers won’t like to hear this, but they are irrelevant to the Character side balance of the game. PvE IS BALANCED BY ADJUSTING CONTENT, NOT SKILLS. That is the ONLY way that PvE and PvP balance can coexist.

usual PvPers elitism that thinks to be the gold childs.
In th emeantime the pvp forum is full of complaints about the Pets/illusions/minons that are so OP.

._.

Also its what is happening nowaday and we have a completely broken meta.
Not to mention that forum is full of posts about PvE balance that requires less than 2 seconds to understand they are clueless.

Luckily there are strong PvP players that play PvE also and understand that a split is needed.

PvP tolerates errors to some degree allowing come backs and stuff, but have to fight an unmpredictable foe.

PvE has 0 tolerance, everything oneshots you, yet you are paired with an inferior AI.

AI can t be sofisticated in a mmorpg thus PvE and PvP balance can t cohexist.
You either destroy one or the other with nerfs and buffs.

Stop being elitist and fight our common enemy.

“coherence between pve and PvP” (from devs)

nobody wants it, nobody will leave because the lack of it, and even if somone did, there are way more people leaving due to imbalance created by such coherence.

A total split instead means even more longevity having access toa different game.
And you don t even need to grind.

LordByron.8369:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

PvE’ers won’t like to hear this, but they are irrelevant to the Character side balance of the game. PvE IS BALANCED BY ADJUSTING CONTENT, NOT SKILLS. That is the ONLY way that PvE and PvP balance can coexist.

usual PvPers elitism that thinks to be the gold childs.
In th emeantime the pvp forum is full of complaints about the Pets/illusions/minons that are so OP.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying that PvE should not have balance, or that you should be ignored. Correct balance in PvE is a content design consideration. It isn’t an issue of elitism, but rather a philosophy on the proper way to allow balance to coexist for everyone.

LordByron.8369:

Luckily there are strong PvP players that play PvE also and understand that a split is needed.

A split generates a larger work load for a balance staff that is clearly overwhelmed already, and is thus impractical. That is why it isn’t going to happen to the extent that would be necessary to truly balance all game modes. This is a resource allocation problem that is solved by properly balancing PvE from the Content Side rather than the Character Side.

LordByron.8369:

…A total split instead means even more longevity having access toa different game.
And you don t even need to grind.

A total split means more work for A-net, requires more employees, reduces profitability, and ultimately accomplishes the same goal as balancing PvE from the Content side while Balancing PvP from the character side. I see your point, and agree that you deserve to have a “fun” PvE game to play just as much as I deserve to have a “fun” PvP game, but from a practical perspective no for profit entity will pursue the path that you suggest.

Just throwing this out there in a sea of text because the current rampantness of conditions has been mentioned a few times.

If conditions are powerful, shouldn’t they be single target based? It’s seems odd to me that power skills are usually single target or something that hits a group right in front of you, yet conditions are more AoE, even when condition mitigation requires utility sacrifice and mitigating power can be done through blocks, dodges, toughness, high vit, etc.

Anyone else of the mindset that heavy condition cleave is supposed to be aimed at a single target to be a fair alternative to a power build?

1) did you notice they are balancing PvP around PvP modes?

If it was about Killing we ’d never see the bunker issue……
And being bunker worthless in PvE that proves how silly the balancing is

2) balancing doesn t require so much effort as you think its more cheap than the living story.
And a split makes thing EASIER not harder.

A split would made both PvE and PvP more balanced
Coherence is not needed.

The developers have a wait and see approach to balancing.

When they change or add something they don’t know the effects of what they’ve created. They let the community play with it then turn the knobs to adjust it. In other words the developers have no templates; they have no idea what each class is supposed to be or supposed to do.

I think the developers don’t have a main design idea of what sPVP should be and how the game play should feel.

They’re just reacting to player feed back and not being proactive at anything. It’s one giant experiment with chemists randomly mixing things together hoping they’ll stumble on a solution.

Jon, we appreciate transparency but certain things don’t line up with your “purity of purpose”. Escapes weren’t the move needed to make necros superior to engi, you did that with burning and essentially solidified the idea that to be viable a condi class you need burning (pre-patch necro was the only one who stood thier ground without it). We didn’t need it, we didn’t want it, and it is the sole reason we have become the monsters we have. The balance you have done to keep that trait in has greatly lowered the necro skill cap and the diversity we used to bring (corrupts/transfers/DS/terror all took hits so your could give us a condi that doesnt fit). Where is the purity of role or purpose there?

edit: spelling

30 pts to get burning in a poor tree is certainly an opportunity cost. The condition issue is more about the strength of bunkers/their lack of ability to deal with that type of damage. It isn’t like one necro is going to solo a team, multiple classes are running conditions to get past protection etc.

Whenever a class gets multiple changes people are going to try it out, especially when it was one of the least popular classes in the game. Give them some time to work out the kinks, the latest changes haven’t even been out for a day…

^ not referring to any of the things added this last patch. And it isnt about the cost of trait allocation, it is the loss of a skill cap because a new poorly implemented RNG trait took necros from “non-viable” to the top condi pressure. It’s the fact that it limits team and class diversity. Also, if we do want to mention changes from this patch, bringing terror down essentially makes any condi necro who doesnt run burning even LESS effective than they were before we got majorly buffed. Balance isn’t the only thing that effects a games health. Build diversity used to be a necro strength and now it is a crutch for less skilled players

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh, also, to the Op’s point (sorry, I’m about to present in China, my mind is elsewhere, didn’t mean to ignore the OP):

The reason we did a “big” change for the Necro, as I’ve stated before, is that we had the Pax tournament coming. We knew we wanted to get Necros and Warriors up with the other classes, and that’s why we had big changes.

Also, a lot of our changes happen VERY far ahead of what you guys see on live. What do I mean?

• It takes us time to get our changes to editors for writing (any text/trait change has to be edited). This can take a week or more.
• We have to then get changes to writers.
• We then have to make sure we work with artists for any visual changes
• We also have to work with sound to make sure we have sound for any changes
• We have to work with icon artists for icons if they’re needed (in the case of Death Shroud 5)
• We have to make sure the changes get through multiple stages of QA testing
• Then with the changes in, we get time to play them before we do final changes
• While doing all this, we have to take the current meta, be it in dungeons/wvw/pvp, and from that, try to extrapolate what we think needs to be done a few months in advance.

This process can take a LONG time, as you can imagine. It’s not as simple as, “Oh, let’s change this to a 2, and change that to a 7.”

I know the video game industry in general is not very transparent when it comes to how things actually work, but I wanted you guys to know that a lot of times, there is a LOT of process for even the SMALLEST balance/content changes.

We get to see how Ridley Scott made Blade Runner with a companion DVD special, but in video games, no one talks about all the complex processes that go into making and balancing a game as complex as GW2 (which is basically 3 games in 1, all using the same balance #’s).

Hope this makes sense.

Oh, also, the reason we can’t give Necro’s too much disengage has to do with the point of “purity of purpose”.

In this game, we want to allow classes the ability to deal with all situations but in different ways. But, if we give all classes all TOOLS (which is a different thing), then players get confused as to which classes fill which roles, and in what way they fill those roles

Example: In PvP, the Necro and Engi both vie for the position of condition pressure. The engineer has more physical alternatives, the Necro has more boon/condition manipulation, the Engi has more escapability, and the Necro is a little squishier. If we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role. So, in order to prevent this, we try to make it so that the classes don’t have all their tools overlap perfectly. This means you have to say (following our example), “Well, if we take a Necro, we get more condies, but a squishy body that can’t disengage…..but if we take Engi, we lose some DPS and control (depending on utils), but we get someone who can stand up to a spike better”.

Make sense? If we just gave the escape to Necro’s, then all of a sudden, the Necro is just the clear choice. Not all decisions come down to a clean break like this, but this is the type of thing we’re trying to do when we “deny” some classes certain tools.

This is the same reason that Red doesn’t get interrupts in Magic, the reason that Zergs, normally, have much more mobility than Protoss (since Toss are usually stronger unit-by-unit), and why Karthus has no escapes. By denying tools, you create choices for the players. We sometimes do a poor job of this, sorry. But overall, we try to make it so that all classes have choices, and teams have choices in which classes they bring.

Also, keep in mind we’re trying to get 8 classes to fit into 5 slots, for PvE, Dungeons, and PvP.

This is all high level, and I’m in a rush, but I just wanted to explain this real fast…..

It’s funny, being in China, I have more time to post on the forums than I do while in the office. That’s irony or something….like 10,000 spoons….

-Chap from China

Thanks for the extensive reply John, that clears a lot of things up.

reedju.5786:

^ not referring to any of the things added this last patch. And it isnt about the cost of trait allocation, it is the loss of a skill cap because a new poorly implemented RNG trait took necros from “non-viable” to the top condi pressure. It’s the fact that it limits team and class diversity. Also, if we do want to mention changes from this patch, bringing terror down essentially makes any condi necro who doesnt run burning even LESS effective than they were before we got majorly buffed. Balance isn’t the only thing that effects a games health. Build diversity used to be a necro strength and now it is a crutch for less skilled players

There has rarely been build diversity in this game or any other right? There is almost always a correct answer and once that is discovered everyone is going to copy it. As far as the burning I’d rather not have it and not see terror nerfed but w/e.

I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with lower skill cap (if that is the case here) builds being viable, the more people who are able to enjoy pvp and compete the better. LoL has a huge range of characters/difficulty and look how successful it is, every character doesn’t need to be purely skill shots etc.

Who gets to be featured in streams? Who gets to be idolized by spectators? The top players. So you gotta balance the game from their PoV. For they are like the vanguards. A casual player will always lose to an experience top player and the only way to replace the top players is when they quit, retire, get old and carpal tunnel. Do you think that Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant during their prime will get outshone by an Average Joe playing bball in the park or even a player from say the old LA Clippers? no. if they win all the time, that follows that they know the full potential of the class they are playing, and it is wise to learn from the knowledgeable.

You don’t have to worry about the casual players. We will gravitate to our own community/tier over time (akin to a Major League and the Minor League, Pro and Amateur). you are separating Team Play with Solo Que, remember? good. Casual players won’t have anytime to form, think tank, practice and they will most likely join Solo Ques, which will have its own ladder. The skills you need to be of top a solo que ladder is different from team play, for skills like fast adaptability, instant synergizing with random comp, etc etc will play a part. it’s like you, your mailman, a guy from iowa, girlfriend’s barber and your mayor are placed in a team to play basketball versus a team different from your comp but in essence the same since its random. fun right? no one has the advantage and there is no team that is autolose.

and if they are truly casual, that’s what they’ll do. otherwise, that means they are not casual. if they consider themselves casual still and form teams, experience will be key when seeing the final results. Top players with their comfy and optimal roles will always beat a “casual” team. and A.NET, you need to showcase/advertise the PvP of the game? Get the proper endorsers – that are the top players.

Maybe Dhuumfire would work better as a skill than as a trait.

Like for a future weapon skillset.

I play mainly WvW and a very casual bit of PvE. So I absolutly do not care for s/tPvP.

For me as WvW player its like this:
Marks are smaller, cannot reach some points so well i.e. towers battlements or fear 3 ACs the same time, also marks are much easier to evade on large battle grounds. And the tiny bit of damage they produce can now even be blocked… I would still like to invest 10 points, but 20 cost way to much damage and so on… Maybe it would worth if they would double in size.
DS was awesome for WvW. I dont know if it was intended or not, but it was there for nearly a full year. I’m used to it and now? In WvW it was a great way to escape, know your terrain and utilize it… I’m so sad about that we lost this little nasty jump of everything. I also cannot block an attack aegis like anymore. That’s very sad, because it was so great if you know your enemies…
So from my wvw-pov this changes hit my favorite class very hard and nec was already pretty weak in many wvw situations.

What I want to primary add here is, that I think on the long run you really should split PvP and PvE/WvW. Those game types are just too different…

Calae.1738:

I think the developers don’t have a main design idea of what sPVP should be and how the game play should feel.

I would say that is very naive thing to say. Another more logical way to look at it would be that they are looking to see how the numbers play out and how the player base react to these changes. Look at the warrior, the archetype they set for it works extremely well in PvE, but it doesn’t translate into High Level PvP. one simple change can place a class well beyond other classes in real world settings because no matter how well you plan stuff, players are more creative than QA.

However, I do agree especially with respect to the elementalist. it is like the developers secretly hate the class and and love torturing the poor idiots dumb enough to want to play that class, it is either bunker or air fresh with the added bonus of long CD on active defenses which makes you wander their justification of their kittenty tough and vitality, high CD and low damage. (trolling for developer response with respect to their future plan with elementalist).

Authority.6145:

Remove stealth. In fact remove stealth for only the thief thief and let everyone else have stealth.

Let me have the damage output of a real assassin instead.

Feel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyLRi6TmSE

To summarize,

So you don’t want a thief excelling in DPS.
So you don’t want a thief excelling in mobility.
You don’t want a thief excelling in survivability.

Short version;

You clearly don’t want to have a thief. You want to have your own little version of a wet towel thief. You probably want him to get kited to death while you are in your airplane dropping bombs on him.

I will also make a post regarding the viability of a mesmer.

For the time being, I am pretty sure this thread will lead “If you are a Mesmer reroll to a Necromancer”.

Warriors are popping up and players are rerolling from their mesmers. Guess we have got many players that want to do things easy cheesy fotm.

To continue my previous post.

First of all claiming that a mesmer is not only viable but rerolling to something else is the way to go is absolutely BS.

Let us look closer in which situations a Mesmer will not belong to any meta;

1.When portal and illusion of life is removed from the class.
2.When another classes has portal and illusion of life.
3.When one class has got portal and another class has got illusion of life.
4.When there is nothing unique about the class and everyone can do better than mesmer in everything.

Advantages with Team comps with a Mesmer

1.Portal, Illusion of Life, Moah or Stealth (the most fundamental team utilities for plays and counterplays, openings and so on and so forth in game right now).
2.Artificial Intelligence/A.I – Strong by itself, compliments other A.I comps i.e Spirit Rangers.

Regarding the implications of meta in the sense of meaning shifting;

a.When the meta shifts it doesn’t mean automatically that a class that has been the best close-holder (adding up like we said portal, illusion of life and moah or stealth) is not viable. It means thakittens fundamental role has change/is different.
b.Roles have changed in this meta (who goes where and who does what).
c.Focus has changed in this meta (who goes down first in order)
d.Classes that have adapted are thieves (Sustained Damage), Warriors (CC) and engineers (Aggressive far-pointers and close-defenders to death).

Mesmers need to realize their role since guarding/protecting their close is not their role anymore but rather “roaming”. They need to concentrate on two builds

1.Full condition Glass Cannon or High Condition Bunker with sword/pistol and scepter/focus or one of them as offhand with Staff.
2.Mass support.

If you keep on insisting that there is no meta for a mesmer now, then you openly state that Portal, Illusion of Life, Stealth or Moah and A.I are completely useless. If you keep on insisting that there is no meta for a mesmer now, then I am pretty sure you are the laughing stock of every single warrior right now. You get the drift.

Every single time where balance discussion was on, everyone agreed that Necromancer and Warrior were not as effective as other classes so to come out and state that suddenly a monster-class such as the mesmer is out of meta is sad, pathetic and weak. You are not even to the warrior’s state yet you claim or you pretend to be and justify your delusional position on the matter. Its like because you can’t one-shot or troll people with GS from a range then that is the end of your class.

Maybe it is time to man up and suck it up to the challenge.

Authority.6145:

Authority.6145:

Remove stealth. In fact remove stealth for only the thief thief and let everyone else have stealth.

Let me have the damage output of a real assassin instead.

Feel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyLRi6TmSE

To summarize,

So you don’t want a thief excelling in DPS.
So you don’t want a thief excelling in mobility.
You don’t want a thief excelling in survivability.

Short version;

You clearly don’t want to have a thief. You want to have your own little version of a wet towel thief. You probably want him to get kited to death while you are in your airplane dropping bombs on him.

I will also make a post regarding the viability of a mesmer.

For the time being, I am pretty sure this thread will lead “If you are a Mesmer reroll to a Necromancer”.

Warriors are popping up and players are rerolling from their mesmers. Guess we have got many players that want to do things easy cheesy fotm.

To continue my previous post.

First of all claiming that a mesmer is not only viable but rerolling to something else is the way to go is absolutely BS.

Let us look closer in which situations a Mesmer will not belong to any meta;

1.When portal and illusion of life is removed from the class.
2.When another classes has portal and illusion of life.
3.When one class has got portal and another class has got illusion of life.
4.When there is nothing unique about the class and everyone can do better than mesmer in everything.

Advantages with Team comps with a Mesmer

1.Portal, Illusion of Life, Moah or Stealth (the most fundamental team utilities for plays and counterplays, openings and so on and so forth in game right now).
2.Artificial Intelligence/A.I – Strong by itself, compliments other A.I comps i.e Spirit Rangers.

Regarding the implications of meta in the sense of meaning shifting;

a.When the meta shifts it doesn’t mean automatically that a class that has been the best close-holder (adding up like we said portal, illusion of life and moah or stealth) is not viable. It means thakittens fundamental role has change/is different.
b.Roles have changed in this meta (who goes where and who does what).
c.Focus has changed in this meta (who goes down first in order)
d.Classes that have adapted are thieves (Sustained Damage), Warriors (CC) and engineers (Aggressive far-pointers and close-defenders to death).

Mesmers need to realize their role since guarding/protecting their close is not their role anymore but rather “roaming”. They need to concentrate on two builds

1.Full condition Glass Cannon or High Condition Bunker with sword/pistol and scepter/focus or one of them as offhand with Staff.
2.Mass support.

If you keep on insisting that there is no meta for a mesmer now, then you openly state that Portal, Illusion of Life, Stealth or Moah and A.I are completely useless. If you keep on insisting that there is no meta for a mesmer now, then I am pretty sure you are the laughing stock of every single warrior right now. You get the drift.

Every single time where balance discussion was on, everyone agreed that Necromancer and Warrior were not as effective as other classes so to come out and state that suddenly a monster-class such as the mesmer is out of meta is sad, pathetic and weak. You are not even to the warrior’s state yet you claim or you pretend to be and justify your delusional position on the matter. Its like because you can’t one-shot or troll people with GS from a range then that is the end of your class.

Maybe it is time to man up and suck it up to the challenge.

Mesmers haven’t been close point holder for like months (since bm rangers stole their spot), and have been roamers since then. However, given their lack of condition removal, they have NO PLACE in the current condition spammy meta. And if they want to have condition removal, they have to remove either portal or illusion or life (or both), which leads to the question: why bring a mesmer in the first place?

Authority.6145:

Authority.6145:

Remove stealth. In fact remove stealth for only the thief thief and let everyone else have stealth.

Let me have the damage output of a real assassin instead.

Feel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJyLRi6TmSE

To summarize,

So you don’t want a thief excelling in DPS.
So you don’t want a thief excelling in mobility.
You don’t want a thief excelling in survivability.

Short version;

You clearly don’t want to have a thief. You want to have your own little version of a wet towel thief. You probably want him to get kited to death while you are in your airplane dropping bombs on him.

I will also make a post regarding the viability of a mesmer.

For the time being, I am pretty sure this thread will lead “If you are a Mesmer reroll to a Necromancer”.

Warriors are popping up and players are rerolling from their mesmers. Guess we have got many players that want to do things easy cheesy fotm.

To continue my previous post.

First of all claiming that a mesmer is not only viable but rerolling to something else is the way to go is absolutely BS.

Let us look closer in which situations a Mesmer will not belong to any meta;

1.When portal and illusion of life is removed from the class.
2.When another classes has portal and illusion of life.
3.When one class has got portal and another class has got illusion of life.
4.When there is nothing unique about the class and everyone can do better than mesmer in everything.

Advantages with Team comps with a Mesmer

1.Portal, Illusion of Life, Moah or Stealth (the most fundamental team utilities for plays and counterplays, openings and so on and so forth in game right now).
2.Artificial Intelligence/A.I – Strong by itself, compliments other A.I comps i.e Spirit Rangers.

….

I really think you will revise your post after you played mesmer on your own and instantly get focused by necro and especially s/d thief. You can’t stand a chance and this is the reason why mesmer is not viable currently. The first target is the mesmer and you will never be able to shatter a good s/d thief (which can back line very hard) while you are also get kittened by conditions. You die before you can play out your advantages. Sad but true.
So another approach would be going phantasms than you are harder to kill but sacrifice at least portal or Illusion – Also you will use mass invisibility instead of moa because otherwise you are still an easy target for the thief and, in addition, your condition remove is still kitten.

And no, I am not playing Mesmer and try to complain here.

f we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role.

so what you are saying is basically WvW since the beginning of guild groups

Guard and Warriors are the most important classes, an average guild group runs like 10 war, 10 guard,2 mesmer (only for invisibillity at all), a few necros and some mages for water fields.

if you say splitting WvW,sPvP and PvE is no option, then how is the balance between those 3 parts?

Azunai.1065:

f we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role.

so what you are saying is basically WvW since the beginning of guild groups

Guard and Warriors are the most important classes, an average guild group runs like 10 war, 10 guard,2 mesmer (only for invisibillity at all), a few necros and some mages for water fields.

if you say splitting WvW,sPvP and PvE is no option, then how is the balance between those 3 parts?

There are plenty of t1 5-10 man groups that run mesmer/ele, but yes you aren’t going to see them charging into the other zerg with the melee classes. =P

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

2) PvE’ers won’t like to hear this, but they are irrelevant to the Character side balance of the game. PvE IS BALANCED BY ADJUSTING CONTENT, NOT SKILLS. That is the ONLY way that PvE and PvP balance can coexist.

Honestly don’t know how many times this has been said since Guild Wars 1 and it has stopped clicking over there.

When devs added Skeleton of Dhuum to the underworld to PvE that was changing the content to get some balance and dissuade farmers in end-game content. That is what you’re supposed to do. When they changed Afflicted so that Assassin’s and Warriors stop getting blown up to the same extent that made sense. PvE is well known for being a DPS race atm, the nuances of the professions that make them have “purity of purpose” gets widely ignored because the encounters do not take this into account. You have to stop looking at PvE for balance because the main issue for PvE balance is that it doesn’t give a kitten about half of the things classes bring to the beginning.

Moving on.
You pretty much have to balance around top-level players but you have to design with the casual player in mind. Instantaneous burst from Mesmers, Arcane Eles and Scepter 2? You can’t tell a new player “you’re going to want to dodge this because it’s instant” because you can’t knowingly dodge something that is instant. You infer it based on other actions leading up to it such as seeing the earthquake animation, the professions efficiency should be based on the top-level of play but the design on how they’re achieving success is frankly ridiculous at times.

Oh also. Why the hell does Runes of nightmare hit through evade frames. Annoying as all hell.

Uhh the pros don’t set the rules…they were already in place they just understand how to use them to their advantage. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player but failed as an owner, meaning he doesn’t know everything about basketball. It would be different here. The elites may have a great understanding of the game but no nothing about its development. Relying on their opinions alone will leave you with no playerbase.
A net is a business, and businesses make money. So they will always cater to the larger playerbase because that’s where the money is!

Azunai.1065:

so what you are saying is basically WvW since the beginning of guild groups

Guard and Warriors are the most important classes, an average guild group runs like 10 war, 10 guard,2 mesmer (only for invisibillity at all), a few necros and some mages for water fields.

if you say splitting WvW,sPvP and PvE is no option, then how is the balance between those 3 parts?

This is indeed a very good question!

Here in EU the meta is pretty much the same. Guardians and warriors are the most common professions and the base of the melee train, assisted by a few staff elementalists, necromancers and mesmers. Some top guild teams also use thieves and rangers. On dry land thief is by far the most common roaming professions and underwater I encounter more rangers than other professions. Engineer is the rarest profession in WvWvW and generally seen only as a roamer (our server has 3 engineer commanders, but I haven’t seen any enemy engi commanders).

From WvWvW point of view the repeated buffs to warrior (and to a smaller degree) guardian seem hilarious. It is same as if everybody complains that spvp/tpvp is full of profession XXX, yet developers keep buffing that particular profession. Necromancer got much more popular in WvWvW as well due the recent buffs, which has actually been a nice change to at least shuffle a bit that WvWvW meta, which has been so static for months. Now the brand new changes to ranger are gonna make it a bit more popular as well, but I can imagine we can see even more warriors.

I think Arenanet needs a person, whose sole task is to think profession balance for WvWvW. It would mean playing all 8 professions there and attending some top guild-vs-guilds matches and playing on both heavily outmanned side and top server facerolling the weaker one.

As an investor, i’m worried about this spvp balancing. It’s a death side of the game that generates almost 0 income and it’s only played by weirdos that believe in the bright future of the ezport.
I would like to see balance for pve and WvW, mainly focused on that.
The company it’s not yours to throw away the investor’s money!! No matter how much you love spvp, the customers don’t and you have a work thanks to them!

pls

Benjamin.7893:

pls

But balance affects every part since it isnt splitted, right? ^^

LeGi.3921:

well, it seems like every part of the game is not happy about the balancing that is going on..

This is what I’m saying.
The only exception was some weird longbow/ranger changes yesterday that still clearly weren’t helpful to PvE. The WvW crowd which is very vocal in the forum were singing praises for the first time in (except for heavy condition Settlers Roamers who relied on GS for Defense and were getting a little too much out of GS’s #2 skill with Bleed abuse when compared to what the rest of us are getting out of GS’s historically multi-nerfed Damage) …. been months and months now since ANYONE had anything good to say in there that wasn’t pure sPvP gimmick based.

While it would be great to see the trend reverse like this ALL the time, I think we all know it’s not just going to happen on coin flips. There has to be concerted efforts here to include PvE balance or atleast base it more off WvW if they’re going to continue to outright refuse us lots of minor (increasing stats instead of changing entire function) Skill Splits.

Benjamin.7893:

pls

We’ll be more than happy to leave your little private club here…

…Just as soon as this Balance Team starts talking to THE REST OF US out in the other forums where they should have been all along. …..that’s what this thread is about isn’t it? Communication??

They still haven’t answered the BIGGEST question:
—> Why balance 90% of the game around 10% of its Playerbase?

shimmerless.4560:

Kavia.8249:

Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.

Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).

this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.

on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.

I know the Veil reason is Viel has no AoE limit.

The skill cap needs to be higher. Therefore lots of RNG needs to go. Instant skills can’t be instant anymore, animations for everything (Particle slider, subtle animations to counter the clutter), rune/sigil ‘stuff’ needs to be avoidable, etc. The few RNG I don’t mind is those on main skills (like on the engi) and the crits. But even those could be revised, but only after doing the first things.

As too many animations might be hard to track you can add some UI for it too. However, I support your goal to make us play the game and not the UI.

This would increase the individual skill cap.

As for the team skillcap/synergy/play I would expand on the combo field. Make more possibilities, make it deeper and add another skill layer/ team comb diversity through this.

I feel like a lot of the complaints really boil down to 2 things: the power of aoe (especially in ranged situations), and the amount of evades that can be available.

The issue with AOE is that isn’t used to promote synergy in pvp, but to instead spam out damage over many targets. With conditions, there is poor scaling with access via aoe, so aoe condition spam just blows up everybody. AOE direct damage can be a problem, but is not as bad as it is usually scaled down due to the ability to affect many targets.

In PvE, which is more solo-based, however, this usage is expected and actually more working-as-intended. This leaves the devs with a very difficult dilemma, as they want skills to work the same across game-modes, but it is impossible to balance with this approach.

Here is my solution: Change the sizes/damage of aoe’s by game-mode, keeping all their effects the same. This would not be very confusing to a new player, lets say a necro, to show up and have smaller marks when he finds out how much havoc he can cause because he is dealing with a much smaller playable space (the point). The general gameplay would also be the same.

Similarly, evades could simply apply shorter durations of evasion on skills in pvp, such that using flanking strike is no longer optimal, as you evade for a third of the duration but are fully hit-able for the rest. This keeps the game-play almost the same but cuts down the reward of simply spamming evades. New pvp’ers coming from pve would not even notice the difference, and would only eventually find out about the decreased efficacy.

TLDR: Balance game modes by changing lengths of evades/sizes of aoe’s while keeping the rest of the skill the same. Numbers are easier to balance than entire skills.

Just came back from vacation and saw the patch. Would fire the balance team if I could despite playing with them and thinking they were nice enough fellows.

Why necromancers didn’t get the nerfs they needed and why spirit rangers are completely the same I don’t really understand.

The comps on both teams in the game I watched today were the exact same and I have been seeing the exact same team comps for a while now. I just wish I had the power to actually do something to balance this game since I know new balance team members is what everyone secretly wants. Some new blood and somebody with the drive and desire to make this game better would really be a breath of fresh air.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say I’m watching this, but I didn’t want to derail this thread.

I think the “high level” and the “casual” are equally important to the health and life of the game.

The truth is that we need to balance for both, and we need to use 1 set of #‘s for THREE game types, which all have “high” and “casual” markets. So, in a sense, the balance team is balancing for 6 different types of players, all while trying to keep the #’s as consistent as possible for all game types.

Keep the other game types in mind and thanks for being cool/calm/collected when discussing such a volatile issue.

I don’t think you should ever balance the game on casuals. It dumbs down the game. If any of the current competitive games out right now(i.e. not League of Legends) balanced for casuals, then it would instantly become a joke. If you really want GW2 to be competitive then only the high-level balance matters. I’m not saying make the game stupidly hard but rather reward players that can play well and not those who just mash their heads on the keys and watch the conditions stack up.

shimmerless.4560:

Dual.8953:

shimmerless.4560:

Kavia.8249:

Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.

Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).

this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.

on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.

I know the Veil reason is Viel has no AoE limit.

i am not sure what this means i figure you’re referring to the cap on the number of players who can benefit from a combo field?

Yeah. Veil can stealth an infinite number of players, while smoke blast caps at 5. It’s the same reason Temporal Curtain doesn’t stack swiftness.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Example: In PvP, the Necro and Engi both vie for the position of condition pressure. The engineer has more physical alternatives, the Necro has more boon/condition manipulation, the Engi has more escapability, and the Necro is a little squishier. If we gave the Necro too much mobility or escapability, then all of a sudden their “tools” start to line up exactly. If this is the case, one of them will simply be better than the other, as far as efficacy goes, and thus, one will push the other out of the meta for that “role” on the team. This class would then be the “apex” predator for that role. So, in order to prevent this, we try to make it so that the classes don’t have all their tools overlap perfectly. This means you have to say (following our example), “Well, if we take a Necro, we get more condies, but a squishy body that can’t disengage…..but if we take Engi, we lose some DPS and control (depending on utils), but we get someone who can stand up to a spike better”.

Make sense? If we just gave the escape to Necro’s, then all of a sudden, the Necro is just the clear choice. Not all decisions come down to a clean break like this, but this is the type of thing we’re trying to do when we “deny” some classes certain tools.

I disagree with some of this. I understand that the classes should feel different and be diverse, but i think the opposite has happened where engi becomes a clear choice. The big problem with necro is that most of our kiting and dmg mitigation come from hitting and debuffing other classes with things like weakness, cripple, boon stripping, fear, etc; while the dmg mitigation on other classes comes from negating hits or becoming invulnerable: aegis, distortion, vigor, stealth, etc. Essentially, every class has nice access to different forms of immunity to serve their dmg mitigation functions, which will negate the stuff necromancer’s NEED to hit them with to stay on par, and given the long cooldowns (and sometimes cast times) of these skills, coupled with lack of stun breaks, escapes in general, and the endless counters for the things we do manage to apply, we fall behind rather than gain alternative methods of achieving similar results.

Other classes negate the necromancer dmg mitigation skills, but there is no negating distortion, stealth, stun breaks, dodging, etc. of other classes. Because of boon removal cast times + cooldowns, and the invuln / practically invuln stuff mentioned, it makes removing boons like vigor and stability pretty difficult as well.

shimmerless.4560:

Dual.8953:

shimmerless.4560:

Dual.8953:

shimmerless.4560:

Kavia.8249:

Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.

Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).

this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.

on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.

I know the Veil reason is Viel has no AoE limit.

i am not sure what this means i figure you’re referring to the cap on the number of players who can benefit from a combo field?

Yeah. Veil can stealth an infinite number of players, while smoke blast caps at 5. It’s the same reason Temporal Curtain doesn’t stack swiftness.

on the other hand though surely this only has ramifications for WvW and not sPvP where teams are capped to 5 anyway. (i do not include 8v8 hotjoins in this case)

Yeah. I gather Spvp isn’t where 100% of the balance is decided. WvW is probably how Mesmer got 90% of it’s nerfs. Mesmer’s may complain, but it’s undeniable the impact one mesmer can have on a large group fight.

ahha! this is why pets cant hit moving targets! too much job for the graphic team to re-animate the hit effect on every single pet