Guild Wars 2

Anyone else getting tired of:

Remove retaliation from the game
Remove quickness
Nerf burst
Increase health pools
Nerf burst
Nerf burst
Why can’t I do everything, I was promised I could do anything I wanted so why can’t I do EVERYTHING.

What happend to just enjoying a game for what it is? I agree with slow changes over a long period of time but is seems like most people who come on forums these days really just want a game tailored for them.

Nerf forum qq Plz.

Most people here will never be top tier players, and their competitive tournament play will be amateur at best. Depending on the nature of whatever imbalance in meta exists, it will almost always look like a bigger deal than it actually is, because putting the effort into circumventing the problem is hard and stuff.

It is the nature of forums to blow everything in the game out of proportion, and it is the job of ANet to filter the feedback into reasonable and unreasonable requests, then iterate on changes. Nothing new, really.

Part of me wishes people could take a local instance of the game that would magically turn their wishes to reality, just to see how broken the game would be without it. Ah well. The best you can do is temper wild accusations of imbalance with reasonable suggestions for dealing with it.

One of the big issues with this all, is the following for me:

I’ll try to explain by exagerating and generalising a bit.

Let’s take rank 10 spvp players for example. They have basic notions of the professions, and they have decent notions of their own skills.
In terms of real strategic play, these rank 10 players aren’t fully grown into the knowledge of other professions yet.

Now take a rank 10 extreme burst prof, going to call it a thief, but it doesn’t matter what you pick, as long as it’s one people currently complain about.

This rank 10 thief has a relatively easy time unleashing his burst. he knows his profession well enough by now to do this.

ok, now take any other rank 10 prof or build (excluding the bunker guardian for the sake of argument here).
While it is true, as you both say, that this rank 10 player could survive the burst, he needs to play really well to do this.

In fact: to survive that rank 10 burster, you are asking the other to play like a rank 30 player (for example). While that thief can just spam his buttons as a rank 10 could do…

When both thief and that other prof reach rank 30, that thief will have to have his playstyle improved, or he simply gets countered each time.

The main point is: some have it easier to get quick gain out of their class than others.
This is where most complaints come from.

I find it very important to take these complaints serious, even if a rank 50 player doesn’t encounter them anymore.

They are signs that the prof design needs tweaking, that some things are done too easy, or countered by too many more complicating reactions.

These many ‘nerf this and that, except me’ posts, maybe are not that valid when all play at the top of the game, but they are a good sign of how the progression to that level should be developped or changed.

small note: some things might just be too weak or too strong, but those usually are the ones where the top players agree on…

oh, for those who care: I’m only a rank 10 player myself so far.
I realise I should learn other classes more before calling for nerfs.

I have issues with the point system, or the spvp system in general. I have some issues with certain mechanics of my own class (engineer), as Coglin knows from other posts.

But before I say something should be nerfed, I will usually say that they kill me very fast and that I want to learn how to counter them.

Just throwing that in here before anyone thinks I take myself for a pvp pro in this game.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Most people here will never be top tier players, and their competitive tournament play will be amateur at best. Depending on the nature of whatever imbalance in meta exists, it will almost always look like a bigger deal than it actually is, because putting the effort into circumventing the problem is hard and stuff.

It is the nature of forums to blow everything in the game out of proportion, and it is the job of ANet to filter the feedback into reasonable and unreasonable requests, then iterate on changes. Nothing new, really.

Part of me wishes people could take a local instance of the game that would magically turn their wishes to reality, just to see how broken the game would be without it. Ah well. The best you can do is temper wild accusations of imbalance with reasonable suggestions for dealing with it.

True.

I actually wish we could have a local instance of the game as well, but only so we could test some ideas we have, measure and record the data and then present it to ANet with any suggestions we have so it is a far more informed suggestion than napkin math’d theorycraft.

Even something as simple as making HB the burst skill and making arcing slice the GS2 attack (baselined as if it was used with only 1 adren stack) and seeing how that works out. Small changes with measurable data would be nice to have access to.

Oh, and I’ll admit that I would like to see frenzy removed. Not because I believe it’s “OP” but because I believe that the class was balanced around having that ability, which makes everything seem really lackluster without it… could be wrong about that, but it’s how it feels. I’d rather get rid of it and make the class solid without a large CD gimmick being mandatory.

I’m certainly not a PvP pro. I’ve spent more time in WvWvW tooling around and diving into zergs with my hammer than sPvP. I think I’m rank 7, and I’m still experimenting with various timings to see when other classes are invulnerable and when they aren’t. I actually just recently started to really enjoy sPvP using my trusty GS/Hammer build. I don’t put a whole lot of stock in rank myself, as I see warriors decked up to the nines in spiky armor and fancy swords dying to my hammer after their burst combo failed miserably. However, I still think I need a lot more experience with the various classes to get my tactics down better, and everyone can always improve their muscle memory/response times.

However, I’m also not really calling for any balance changes. I have yet to run into something and die horribly that I didn’t think “Well, I handled that like trash. Hopefully I can find that situation again”. My girlfriend has asked me on several occasions what I would like to see changed about the Warrior class, and my main response has been “I can’t really think of anything, because I don’t feel like I’ve collected enough data points to say I think anything needs to be changed.” With the help of some level heads on these forums, I’ve seen that additional dynamics could be added to make the Warrior class more engaging in certain areas, but that’s about it from me.

I’d also be silly not to think that I wouldn’t love the pants off of the ability to test my own personal changes to the game. If I didn’t get caught up making whimsical changes to abilities just to see them act crazily in-game, I’d be all about testing all sorts of different subtle changes to see how they play out.

As far as removing frenzy, I’m torn. On one hand, I think Quickness in general adds an element of burst excitement to the game that could benefit GW2 as a spectator eSport. A moment where the crowd goes “OooooOOOOOOH!”, and you either have well-coordinated kills or a well-countered play by the defenders that turns the game to their advantage. Metered chess matches are all well and good, but I absolutely love standing up and screaming while watching an exciting event play out. Also, Frenzy warriors by and large are ridiculously easy to kill, so I personally have no problem with it.

On the other hand, it seems to be the elephant in the room, and if it’s going to cause continual balance issues down the road, I can deal with it leaving. Perhaps they could change the Quickness mechanic by cutting all of the effects in half and doubling the duration. Instead of 100% increased attack animation speed, you get 50% (or whatever the numbers are, divide the current by 2). The game speeds up, but not to the point where things are instantly popping. Additionally, instead of something like 50% increased damage taken for the duration, you take 25% additional damage. Instead of 4 seconds, it now lasts 8 seconds, so you have a period of “Alright, Team A just blew Quickness”, the pacing picks up, and it’s like a “play”. You try to maximize the amount of increased damage you do, but you have to mitigate the effects. Perhaps you use Quickness mechanics to draw out aggression on your focused target, and for example for Warriors, you use defensive cooldowns to negate the counter-burn and have your team make a move on some other target. Or whatever.

I’m rambling at this point, because I’m bored at work. In summary:

1. I’m no pro at PvP.
2. I’d love a local instance to test all of my whims on.
3. I’m perpetually torn on Quickness as a mechanic.

balancing around the 1 percent elite players will result in problems because you will have the elite players finding something not over powered and all the lower level players will be getting owned and get discouraged and quit the game.

welcome to why mmos dont make good esports. you dont cater to the masses and they quit thus no spectator interest

I’m not torn on Quickness as a mechanic. I’ve a pretty established opinion that it should be an “All or Nothing” situation in which case ever profession should have some form of it within their kit, or none of them should, regardless of the circumstances.

The concept of bursting your character’s normal movement and action is no different in my eyes than the concept of having some form of defense mechanism that negates incoming damage, such as dodging, stun breaking and the immunity skills each class has in some manner.

I’m leaning more on the side of “Give it to everyone.” to be honest, because some builds in classes could really benefit and would enable them to use certain combos that are just very difficult to pull off.

The game can then be balanced on the idea that, hey, anyone can blow up and be super-quick briefly, now it’s not a matter of just this one mechanic. And deal with issues on who’s benefiting the most from it, and how the root skills can be toned down to accommodate its presence.

Sprawl.3891:

balancing around the 1 percent elite players will result in problems because you will have the elite players finding something not over powered and all the lower level players will be getting owned and get discouraged and quit the game.

welcome to why mmos dont make good esports. you dont cater to the masses and they quit thus no spectator interest

I’m not sure you can single out MMOs for this. I bet I could log into SC2 right now and 4-gate my way into the Diamond league. That build received a slight, professional-timing grade nerf, and as far as I know, that’s about it. It might be nerfed even more now, but I bet it would still be moderately effective on the masses.

Every game of every genre is going to have a skill-level rift that will upset balance. The issue for eSports is that you have to balance with the professional tournaments in mind. There’s really no way around it. If Johnny Everyamateur gets Frenzy/100B’d, is that much different than me playing Lina in DotA 2, walking through the forest beside someone, then hitting them with LSA/Dragon Slave/Laguna for an easy kill, does Lina suddenly need fixing? There have been a number of games I’ve queued up with my girlfriend (new to the game, so she’s in a lower bracket) where I’ve basically had free farm, after which I could just do whatever I wanted to rack up kills.

Is it the hero that needs to be rebalanced for a lower tier because it can instakill another hero? No. It’s the fact that the player had a slip in awareness, or the team communication failed (imagine how often that happens in pugs), or the support failed, or whatever.

If anything, GW2 needs to shake the coil of “game accountability” that MMOs tend to develop and evolve into a game that takes an attitude of “personal accountability”. You died to Frenzy/100B and are complaining? You were either outplayed, or you’re bad. Get better. You died against a class/spec that is designed to counter your playstyle? Without proper teamwork, you’re specifically designed to lose, so either try to play better or accept that you can’t always win every situation with every build.

Perhaps it just needs time. Maybe once the eSports developments start taking place, that attitude will set in more quickly. Maybe GW2 will fail miserably as an eSport for lack of depth/skill ceiling/whatever. Regardless, balance must be placed at the top tier as long as general consideration for the lower tiers is kept. The Frenzy combo is so mind-numbingly easy to counter for what seems like every class I can think of (maybe not necros? I’m too unfamiliar with their traits/utilities), and with an iota of teamwork, it becomes even less of an issue. If anything, it’s a wonderful tool to get people to examine the game more closely and work towards improving.

Sprawl.3891:

balancing around the 1 percent elite players will result in problems because you will have the elite players finding something not over powered and all the lower level players will be getting owned and get discouraged and quit the game.

welcome to why mmos dont make good esports. you dont cater to the masses and they quit thus no spectator interest

the point of my lenghty post was somewhat that the current balancing IS around high ranked players.

To counter the simple to execute burst you see ‘normal’ players use, you need the knowledge, experience and reactions of a much higher ranked player.

The one is simpler to do than the other.

My solution: keep the burst if you must (I never liked burst in pvp) but make it as difficult to pull of as it is to defend against it.

Good players can set up burst, avarage players should only be skilled enough to set up average burst… make it require fast reactions and chaining of skills, just like the defense against it requires.

Kimbald.2697:

My solution: keep the burst if you must (I never liked burst in pvp) but make it as difficult to pull of as it is to defend against it.

When someone blows 2 utilities and gears their entire spec towards the combo, and all I do is press “Endure Pain” to counter all of it, how does your solution hold up?

I get that you want a burst sequence to be difficult to execute, but I’m not sure how you even achieve that, mechanically. It isn’t a fighting game, which is the only type of game I can see that working as intended.

Thanks for turning this into an actual discussion guys. It gives me hope for this forum community yet.