Guild Wars 2

ronpierce.2760:

There is a bit of truth in that, considering Necro has Terror, they have an additional unique hard-hitting condition.

That said, IP still needs nerfed.

Ele Vigor could use a nerf too. In general, the Arcana tree is too powerful, while other trees aren’t good enough. Long story short, a lot of major rebalancing is needed, not necessarily just small changes here and there.

And engie has confusion. You cannot compare two identical traits when one is major and another is minor.

rotten.9753:

ronpierce.2760:

There is a bit of truth in that, considering Necro has Terror, they have an additional unique hard-hitting condition.

That said, IP still needs nerfed.

Ele Vigor could use a nerf too. In general, the Arcana tree is too powerful, while other trees aren’t good enough. Long story short, a lot of major rebalancing is needed, not necessarily just small changes here and there.

And engie has confusion. You cannot compare two identical traits when one is major and another is minor.

Uh, I can compare the fact that Ele has more than enough longevity and survival and that the Arcana tree completely dominates the Ele’s choice?

I think while I’m going to go ahead and acknowledge that there are a lot more pressing balance issues to discuss, particularly with high end meta skills, that a few of the completely wild ranger balance ideas need to be discussed that have been thrown out there.

So, in a thread full of recognizably competent (for once) players that don’t need to be told to learn to play, let’s address the elephant in the room for ranger:

• Rapid Fire does not to be nerfed
• Range does not need to be nerfed

One suggestion is a complete reversion to the weapons quality of life improvement, and the other is an assumably hefty investment in a programmers time to go into the game, change the projectile algorithm that dictates how all ranged attacks act in the game, and split off and reprogram a single attack, which is a large time and money investment, and not even a necessary one.

So, the elephants in the room with the build that nobody ever hits on the head or discusses are this:

• The autoattack on the LB is much too powerful.
• Read the Wind makes arrows completely unavoidable, even by actively strafing.

These are the underlying issues. If you actively mitigate the weapons burst skill, it doesn’t matter, because at range you’re still eating 2-3k crit autoattacks which fire off at 1 per second, and you can’t actively reposition your character’s movement patterns (aside from Line of Sighting) to avoid damage. Clearly projectiles aren’t instantaneous, and while I’m speculating by making the statement that I don’t think it was the developers intent when they introduced Read the Wind to make a completely unavoidable set of weapon skills (outside of blinds, dodges, blocks, etc), in any case, they did so, and you should be able to actively alter your movement course at range and avoid a projectile, simple as that.

Knockback shot, on the other hand, needed more than just a tell. Hard CC skills in general should never be instant activation, so while it isn’t the only offender, the skills in general that are offenders all need to be addressed.

With the other balances, in general, I think from a competitive standpoint we can all agree that passive procs aren’t fun for a high level competitive environment. There are absolutely times in this game when a worse player wins over a more skilled opponent because the way they built with their stats and passive procs carried their build to do things that they as a player would not have had the skill to do otherwise, and the end result is a game with competitive potential that is kneecapping itself by allowing too many random factors to dictate the outcome of matchups.

arcana has 3 good traits: renewing stamina, elemental attunement and evasive arcana. all other arcana traits suck and are bad. furthermore does this tree reduce attunement cooldowns which makes this a must have.

to make other trees more viable they would practically have to overshadow those must haves, not only because they are good but also because of the attunement cd.

water tree is also a must have because of the low base health of elementalists.
there is more to it than just “op traits”.

Jekkt.6045:

arcana has 3 good traits: renewing stamina, elemental attunement and evasive arcana. all other arcana traits suck and are bad. furthermore does this tree reduce attunement cooldowns which makes this a must have.

to make other trees more viable they would practically have to overshadow those must haves, not only because they are good but also because of the attunement cd.

water tree is also a must have because of the low base health of elementalists.
there is more to it than just “op traits”.

I’m well aware of that, it doesn’t change the fact though that certain traits in the tree are OP, and it doesn’t take every trait to make it the dominating tree. Just enough to make a build from (which is the case).

Also, I’m well for changing the HP bases to 14/16/18k, but it would require a LOT of rebalancing of certain sustain tools some people have,and I’m just not sure ANet has the resources, nor the insight to do that in a fair swoop.

Worst thread ever. Teams are chock full of engineers and ele’s at top level of play but somehow they are 100% ok. Lets nerf everyone else. I don’t know whats hard to understand but if every class doesn’t have multiple roles they can play in a meta the whole thing is broken. It’s not good for the game that as we move forward in time there is less variety in what is considered working at top tiers of play compared to the past. The game is actually getting worse balance wise.

Engi only needs one adjustment: Remove the water field from healing turret.

The issue with engi is sustain. This change will reduce the effectiveness of both the turret engi spec as well as the cele nade spam spec.

ronpierce.2760:

Ele Vigor could use a nerf too. In general, the Arcana tree is too powerful, while other trees aren’t good enough. Long story short, a lot of major rebalancing is needed, not necessarily just small changes here and there.

Generally, yes: Vigor that just stays permanent on you by choosing a trait is pretty dumb, but almost every class has perma-vigor and easier ways to get to it than Ele.

With ele, at least on some builds I have to make choices and set priorities (staffbunker), because I can’t get to the vigor easily.

I’d be happier if the traits that gave vigor involved some sort of skill, rather than “press buttons long enough with right stats for perma vigor.”

You know, like: “Interrupting a skill for gives you X seconds of vigor” for the mesmer or “get vigor for X seconds after performing a combo-finisher” for Ele or sth. like that. Generally lower amounts of Vigor but higher impact of vigor would encourage good play as well, since then it would actually be important to rip the boon away.

As for the Arcana Trait: It’s actually stupid how necessary this Trait-Line is and every build has them almost set in stone. Not only are the alternatives in the trait-line itself bad, the traits that arcana gives you actually make Ele viable and are of crucial importance for every build I know. The minor traits are kinda “meh” though on most builds, so I think there could be done sth. with slightly nerfing some traits anyone takes anyways and putting them into the given traits you can’t choose.

Yeh, give me a bit less vigor and switch it out with lingering elements or arcane precision, those traits suuuuuck! ^^’

Exedore.6320:

Mesmer
- Halting Strike unable to crit
Cap burst potential of stack-able instant damage.
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

are you freaking kidding me? Mesmer is out of the meta currently, is hard countered by thieves? You might as well remove Mesmer with your suggestions.

make renewing stamina the minor master trait with 10s icd so that i can tage vigorous scepter as adept.

nerf to d/d, buff to scepter fresh air, would totally aceept this.

rchu.8945:

Exedore.6320:

Mesmer
- Halting Strike unable to crit
Cap burst potential of stack-able instant damage.
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

are you freaking kidding me? Mesmer is out of the meta currently, is hard countered by thieves? You might as well remove Mesmer with your suggestions.

We are hard countered by Thieves. But Thieves aside, shatter is a very valuable and viable build.

Jekkt.6045:

make renewing stamina the minor master trait with 10s icd so that i can tage vigorous scepter as adept.

nerf to d/d, buff to scepter fresh air, would totally aceept this.

This is a net nerf to both specs. Vigor doesn’t stack (positively) with the passive “vigorous scepter.” Whereas fresh air can achieve perma-vigor now (and isn’t even really viable at the highest levels even WITH that), the proposed change gives them about +75% endurance regen. It also removes whatever passive buffs you are getting from Lingering elements, which is usually 120 toughness or soothing mist depending on whether you specced your fresh-air build into earth or water.

I agree that perma-vigor can be too much on a d/d ele, but its necessary on other ele builds. If the goal is to nerf d/d, focus on some of the recent buffs (like adding that evade to burning speed and blast finisher to to frozen burst).

However, as ronpierce as pointed out, ele is one of the WORST balanced classes because it requires 4 points in arcana to even think about playing ball (and usually 6 unless you are also going 4 in water). Eles have never really found a middle-ground between “top-tier” and “garbage-tier” because most of their defense comes from some incredibly OP traits, while many trait trees are littered with useless and weak traits.

ugh didn’t know that endurance traits and vigour don’t work, that’s pretty bad then.

while d/d doesn’t need the trait to be 100% uptime fresh air does. i wouldn’t mind some small nerfs (question is what nerfs) to d/d if fresh air recieves buffs for it.

gotta wait for expansion and see (and hope) i guess.

ronpierce.2760:

rotten.9753:

ronpierce.2760:

There is a bit of truth in that, considering Necro has Terror, they have an additional unique hard-hitting condition.

That said, IP still needs nerfed.

Ele Vigor could use a nerf too. In general, the Arcana tree is too powerful, while other trees aren’t good enough. Long story short, a lot of major rebalancing is needed, not necessarily just small changes here and there.

And engie has confusion. You cannot compare two identical traits when one is major and another is minor.

Uh, I can compare the fact that Ele has more than enough longevity and survival and that the Arcana tree completely dominates the Ele’s choice?

That longevity and survival is mostly related to the skill level of the player behind the ele, same cannot be said for some other professions, where survival is attained with far less effort.

This thread has become pointless :A wants nerfs and B disagree with it…same old story, same old subject, same old actors and in the end nothing change.

You made your point…countless time, and yet you never provide any tangible proof, other than simple word of mouth..you have nothing to show.

By the devs standards, a double profession in a team is an issue but the devs always balance around the top level, at least that’s what is commonly known

So mind to tell me where are these double ele dreadnought teams at top level?
You only have Abjured as an example, a team not only made up by experienced PvPers but that also got beaten quite badly at the last WTS.

So other than word of mouth and the support of the same old 5-6 people who hate the ele to bits…what else have you got?

BlackBeard.2873:

Jekkt.6045:

make renewing stamina the minor master trait with 10s icd so that i can tage vigorous scepter as adept.

nerf to d/d, buff to scepter fresh air, would totally aceept this.

This is a net nerf to both specs. Vigor doesn’t stack (positively) with the passive “vigorous scepter.” Whereas fresh air can achieve perma-vigor now (and isn’t even really viable at the highest levels even WITH that), the proposed change gives them about +75% endurance regen. It also removes whatever passive buffs you are getting from Lingering elements, which is usually 120 toughness or soothing mist depending on whether you specced your fresh-air build into earth or water.

I agree that perma-vigor can be too much on a d/d ele, but its necessary on other ele builds. If the goal is to nerf d/d, focus on some of the recent buffs (like adding that evade to burning speed and blast finisher to to frozen burst).

However, as ronpierce as pointed out, ele is one of the WORST balanced classes because it requires 4 points in arcana to even think about playing ball (and usually 6 unless you are also going 4 in water). Eles have never really found a middle-ground between “top-tier” and “garbage-tier” because most of their defense comes from some incredibly OP traits, while many trait trees are littered with useless and weak traits.

You’re beating a dead horse..what you say about ele, never bing able to find a middle ground…has already been discussed for years, there are dozen after dozen of threads explaining it.

Jekkt.6045:

ugh didn’t know that endurance traits and vigour don’t work, that’s pretty bad then.

while d/d doesn’t need the trait to be 100% uptime fresh air does. i wouldn’t mind some small nerfs (question is what nerfs) to d/d if fresh air recieves buffs for it.

gotta wait for expansion and see (and hope) i guess.

An extre dodge or two is not what scepter/focus build desperately needs.

The builds needs effective ways to deal with other zerker specs in a teamfight environment:

-better active defense( too high CD on skills like arcane shield and a couple blind, not enough to deal with current meta builds that try for the same burst role)

-better ways to deal with stealthed enemies( unless you have effective ways to deal with stealthed enemies in a teamfight environment, then no serous team will ever use a fresh/air ele. Nobody can babysit you 24/7 against some d/p thief or similar)

-better ways to disengage ( more mobility, like swiftness or similar)

-less clunky weaponset ( scepter feels too rigid, too many after cast and long animations)

-ability to remain at range( ways to increase range of LF, a retreat skill or moderate CD teleport)

An extre dodge is always welcome, but it’s not like fresh air is considered unviable because of lack of dodges

i did provide suggestions on how to improve scepter skills (page 1) a bit without completely changing them. to make fresh air truly viable we need new skills and traits – specialisation pls – and who knows if there won’t be coming a better berserk build than fresh air.

The conceit that four completely trivial tweaks would somehow perfect a near-perfect game is absolutely hilarious. Please never change, e-sporterinos.

More reliable boon-stripping/-stealing or something else to make boon-stacking not as effective as it currently is. I don’t think boon-stacking (e.g. stacking passives) should be as powerful as it currently is in an Action-Combat MMORPG.

i dont think boon stacking is as strong as it used to be some months ago, the only class that still effectively stacks might is warrior. for other classes boons are their defensive mechanic.

we have necros and mesmers that can strip boons and we will get the revenant who will be able to do so too.

Jekkt.6045:

i dont think boon stacking is as strong as it used to be some months ago, the only class that still effectively stacks might is warrior. for other classes boons are their defensive mechanic.

we have necros and mesmers that can strip boons and we will get the revenant who will be able to do so too.

Necro and mesmers are inferior right now but of course revenant ftw. So yeah real boon hate need to be a thing.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

ronpierce.2760:

The irony (or maybe not so much irony) that he somehow managed to not notice the clear biases in the proposals. Ring of warding is some how trouble some, yet D/D ele and Cele rifle is perfectly fine. Just doesn’t really jive with me, honestly.

Btw Slick shoes is a bit more frustrating than RoW.

Considering he somehow forgot this very article he wrote four months ago, I will wisely just abandon this thread before being called a “Troll” again for daring to speak up…

#receipts #shade

The entire environment is going to be changed with the HoT expansion, so I’d rather not get used to insane changes before then. There’s definitely some stuff they could work on to make the game more balanced.

MailMail.6534:

#receipts #shade

The entire environment is going to be changed with the HoT expansion, so I’d rather not get used to insane changes before then. There’s definitely some stuff they could work on to make the game more balanced.

Certainly… I mean, perfect balance is neigh impossible with different professions/buids being about – some people even debate whether Chess is balanced due to who sets first

And like you say, with HoT, everything will be flipped turned upside down – though I do think that Anet needs to look closely at Rangers and Mesmers, since those fall apart by a large margin on certain levels of play – and that is something you do not want if you thrive for a healthy competitive community (I remember half of the Ele community leaving after trashing the profession)

Jekkt.6045:

i dont think boon stacking is as strong as it used to be some months ago, the only class that still effectively stacks might is warrior. for other classes boons are their defensive mechanic.

we have necros and mesmers that can strip boons and we will get the revenant who will be able to do so too.

I’m not too concerned about the strength of boons or conditions, but I’m worried that atm. it’s just spamming for a large part. This is true for boonstacking, conditions being applied and conditions being removed, only for boons removed not; Necro at least has to do this very delibaretly.

I’d be happier with just reduced durations on boons and conditions alike, but slightly higher impact: The impact of smart boonremoval and condition-removal would be higher and the stacking of boons and conditions needed to be coordinated better and you’d actually have to keep CD’s of the enemies team in mind.

Take GW1 as an example (yes, I looooove this game, it did so much right in terms of PvP): The Conditions often had very huge impact on what players were able to do and the condition-removal was way lower (mostly 1 very strong removal on one monk and the other monk and maybe 1-2 supporter had minor condition-removal). The Monk had to often decide if he want or needs to remove conditions offensively or defensively, what I mean with that is:

- Conditions like crippling or blind (which was a way better version of blind that made almost all atks miss for a few seconds, not just the first atk) could be used to take out DMG from your team.
- Crippling could also be applied to make your backline be trained down by warriors easily.
- Of course there was also a lot of DMG in conditions.
—> The backline had to decide which conditions to remove from which character – do we need to make the warriors be able to burst sth- down or is the backline falling apart and we need to remove the conditions on them, while sacrificing DPS?

In GW2, every condition is jsut spammed and every removal is AoE: just toot your Horn whenever the CD is up.

Yes, GW2 has a lot of mechanics that make it a very skill-intensive game and I wouldn’t say it’s easier to play than GW1, but in terms of teamplay and coordination, it falls way short of GW1, which is kinda sad IMHO and could be improved very easily.

Jasher.6580:

rchu.8945:

Exedore.6320:

Mesmer
- Halting Strike unable to crit
Cap burst potential of stack-able instant damage.
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

are you freaking kidding me? Mesmer is out of the meta currently, is hard countered by thieves? You might as well remove Mesmer with your suggestions.

We are hard countered by Thieves. But Thieves aside, shatter is a very valuable and viable build.

many other classes have more than one “viable” build in sPvP, currently there’s mTD condi shatter for Mesmer that’s gaining some recognition, but beyond that there’s no other “viable” builds. The point is Mesmer and few other classes are not in meta, and to make sPvP better we need as many classes can compete in high tiers of the competition. Thieves pretty much is a better option than Mesmers and Rangers at that level, and that needs to be addressed.

rchu.8945:

Jasher.6580:

rchu.8945:

Exedore.6320:

Mesmer
- Halting Strike unable to crit
Cap burst potential of stack-able instant damage.
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

are you freaking kidding me? Mesmer is out of the meta currently, is hard countered by thieves? You might as well remove Mesmer with your suggestions.

We are hard countered by Thieves. But Thieves aside, shatter is a very valuable and viable build.

many other classes have more than one “viable” build in sPvP, currently there’s mTD condi shatter for Mesmer that’s gaining some recognition, but beyond that there’s no other “viable” builds. The point is Mesmer and few other classes are not in meta, and to make sPvP better we need as many classes can compete in high tiers of the competition. Thieves pretty much is a better option than Mesmers and Rangers at that level, and that needs to be addressed.

Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m in 100% agreement with you. Mesmers need some serious buffs especially when it comes to the variety of playstyle (or lack thereof).

Not everyone enjoys the idea of glassy burst builds or bunker builds.

Chaith.8256:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Phantaram.4816:

Warrior:
Call to Arms – Vigor Duration reduced to 6 seconds base
Charge – Cooldown increased to 20 seconds base
Reason: This ability currently cures cripple, immobilize, chill + converts 1 more condition to a boon and removes 1 more condition on a 12s cooldown in a 1200 aoe, just absolutely crazy powerful.

Warrior Warhorn dont need nerfs. Warrior have little acess to vigor and that acess is not viable in any trait line. Also warhorn is not a ofensive weapon so its better to be good at something and for all of those things to happen warhorn needs to be traited in a pure defensive trait line.

If you think warhorn does too much then what you think about thief steal?

It’s not really about looking at individual skills

Phanta’s thinking is more so about looking at the landscape of 4v4 / 5v5 teamfights in PvP, where condition removal is so pervasive with Guardian’s double Virtue of Resolve, Shouts/Warhorns, and/or Cleansing Water with an occasional Healing Turret is nullifying condi reliant builds completely.

Hmmmm, you think the current setup of spamming condi vs. removal is… baaaad?
Who… Who could have seen that coming? Who could have told everyone how poisonous design it is?!

Oh wait…

_

There are no abilities dedicated to reducing condition damage, there are so very few that reduce incoming durations and when they do reduce, it’s something stupidly high like 50%

In my opinion, it should be impossible to flat out remove conditions, just reduce the damage or duration. You don’t need an entire stat dedicated to it but plentiful with traits or abilities.

To much condition removal can completely shut down builds, not just condition builds but power as well. In team fights it can be a real pain when your effectiveness is completely nulled because they have so much AoE condi-removal.

So you nerf it? Er, maybe? Nerfing the amount of condition removal will just usher in condi-meta which no one wants.

_

Spoilers: This is GW2 meta apex, it won’t get much better. Every class has a viable setup and the most possible builds out of all the meta’s, there are some classes above others but nothing that isn’t god-tier. Unless there is a significant change to the way stats work, Guild Wars 2 PvP is stuck in it’s own created hole.

Buff turrets health by 100%, nerf all other classes.

Phantaram.4816:

Hey. Just thought I’d throw some nerfs/changes/ideas and stuff out there. Make your own short list!

Thief:
Serpent’s Touch – Reduce poison duration to 6 seconds base
Reason: This wouldn’t effect much other than the fact that mesmers get rekt by the current long duration it has.

Warrior:
Call to Arms – Vigor Duration reduced to 6 seconds base
Charge – Cooldown increased to 20 seconds base
Reason: This ability currently cures cripple, immobilize, chill + converts 1 more condition to a boon and removes 1 more condition on a 12s cooldown in a 1200 aoe, just absolutely crazy powerful.

Guardian:
Ring of Warding – 50 second cooldown
Reason: at 40 seconds the cooldown too conveniently aligns with judges intervention. Not to mention it’s just an extremely powerful ability.

Elementalist:
None: increase the power of some of the weaker classes/specs and dd ele is fine at a competitive level. Certainly still a very strong spec for solo queues and such.

I dunno what changes I’d make to cele engi if any. If vamp runes get changed to where you can’t use tool belt abilities they kinda go back to just dying really easy to the current meta. (still kind of do)

Increase turret healing to 50% because else can insta kill turrets