Guild Wars 2

Now, in case there are people who don´t know what cheese is referring to here, a cheese/cheesy spec is a build which requires no knowledge of game mechanics, no skill and is highly effective.

In my opinion such builds need to be purged.
How can it be that:

A engineer spamming his autoattack and occasionally 2-5 is more efficient then an mesmer or elementalist who needs to time his damage, has high cooldowns and puts him self at great risk while going offensive?

A warrior can just chainstun his target to death while outregenerating most offensive builds damage?

A thief can be basically invulnerable for 80% of his fights while being able to disengage with the press of a single button at any time and putting out more damage then again, a elementalist or mesmer who must invest to get this damage out. People say you have to time the damage between the dodges. That might work. But why doesn´t the thief have to time anything? Why can he achieve more with less effort?

Can anybody explain to me where the logic is?

Now my suggestion:
1. Either dump conditions all the way, they are way too easy to use and too axcessible, or at least remove the random procs.
2. Don´t allow condition damage based amulets to have toughness on them. Weakness alone hardcounters any sort of offensive gameplay. Power should be a counter to conditions and vice versa.
3. Halve all the warrior stun durations. May sound extreme, but then they would actually need to be set up and timed correctly. That or remove ALL mobility from warriors having access to ANY sort of CC.
4. Remove vigour or halve its effects. It makes many traits obsolete due to the endurance regeneration cap and allows massive random evade spamming without penalty.
5. Remove the thief endurance regain on dodge trait. Its kittened.
6. Remove thief sword dagger 2 and 3, or remove 2 and cut down the damage of 3 by 50%. Again, sounds extreme, but thats just fair with the amount of survivability this set gives.

And if anyone says elementalist is fine:
If you are not an ele: Make one, slap on zerker ammy and scepter dagger and try to be useful. The infamous 100->0 combo will break your neck 90% of cases, if you get to use it. So it is not an argument.

If you are an ele, make a warrior and go for the meta stun spec with healing sig. Feel the difference?

I disagree with everything you said. Further than that, i actually believe that you have no knowledge of this game whatsoever end/or are trying to make fun of people by making pointless statements that lack a factual backup.

You disagree with warrior stunspam, conditionspam and infinite evasion are broken? My suggestions may seem over the top/stupid, but the issues are just facts.

Agree with all points, and please also remove the weapons from all professions, they deal and unfair amount of dmg, and they give OP skills too.

I’ve been doing nothing but tournaments lately and it shows just how cheesy some specs are and how they require the least amount of effort to be effective. This is highlighted by thieves, every single thief I’ve come across in solo tournies is using conditions and just literally spams death blossom with the odd other skill every now and then.

In what other game that offers “tournament” level play and certainly a game that’s aspiring to be an e-sport (which it never will be) has a profession who’s rotation involves spamming 3 until initiative runs low, stealthing then continuing to spam 3. If that does not tell you alone that this game requires very little skill and that in tournaments you can have a profession that effectively presses TWO buttons to be effective. It is BEYOND a joke and the perfect example of utter cheese and the things that are currently wrong.

Get rid of the cheesy specs, give people actual rotations to use and apply that may take some minor degree of skill.

Blimm.5028:

A engineer spamming his autoattack and occasionally 2-5 is more efficient then an mesmer or elementalist who needs to time his damage, has high cooldowns and puts him self at great risk while going offensive?

Link to this build?

In seriousness: I’m sorry the profession you like feels weak right now. There were none in the MLG tournament so I can’t argue too much with you.

However, Anet already has quite a few buffs lined up for Oct. 15th. I don’t think it’s necessary to re-design the game (remove conditions? huh?) to achieve balance, and frankly it’s not worth it. Anytime someone suggests pre-alpha level changes that would take 2+years of development to implement, you can bet that Anet will be ignoring that.

Buffs=Power creep, and a stronger staff auto heal and conjour improvements are not rly a buff, its some PR gag ala"look, we help u, but we still want u to eat dirt to noob facerollers who pay gemstore stuff"

I main a mesmer and they don’t do more stuff than us with their autoatack plz shush get condi cleanse lyssa runes mass invis BOOM back into the meta k thx

Blimm.5028:

Buffs=Power creep, and a stronger staff auto heal and conjour improvements are not rly a buff, its some PR gag ala"look, we help u, but we still want u to eat dirt to noob facerollers who pay gemstore stuff"

It’s more like “we aren’t going to create monsters by responding to demands for knee-jerk balancing any more.” Eles are a well-designed profession. They’ll be back in tournaments in no time; remember that a few months ago it was warriors that were completely absent from nearly every good team.

Thieves are totally broken right now. They are basically unbeatable one versus one and can disengage at will and do insane damage. The people that defend them are usually bad thieves. The same can be said for Warriors as well. Close to unbeatable 1v1 and can disengage at will and very high damage. A-net has no clue how to boost classes without doing it by adding op cheese. Its sad really. In every other game thieves have the initial advantage and then are vulnerable the longer they stay around to fight. That is not the case in this game. Revealed needs to be longer like 10 seconds. Ive never seen more nonsensical game play then the blinking in and out of stealth in combat that goes on in this game. Its totally ridiculous. Thieves pop into stealth at 40% health and then come out a few seconds later at fullhealth. Also, damage should break stealth that’s how it works in every other game Ive ever played. A-net knows better though. They always know better then every other game developer.

Blimm.5028:

A engineer spamming his autoattack

Explosive shot sure is op

Remove condition damage……….oh my

There are definitely a lot of cheese specs out there but this isn’t the way to go about it
FWIW: I made a warrior for the first time in any game I have ever played yesterday and I’m destroying everything to the point where I feel sorry for anyone who can’t spam stability….so basically other warriors

I know this was made as a challenge to condition damage specs, but making a Godmode class was a very bad move, doesn’t reward skill at all

Kwll.1468:

That is not the case in this game. Revealed needs to be longer like 10 seconds. Ive never seen more nonsensical game play then the blinking in and out of stealth in combat that goes on in this game. Its totally ridiculous. Thieves pop into stealth at 40% health and then come out a few seconds later at fullhealth.

10 seconds is too short, it should be like 10^6 seconds at least. Also did you know that
if the Thief goes into stealth earlier he doesn’t just get 100% hp regen in those 4 seconds,
but also full initiative, and a 100% crit change, a 33% dmg multiplier and a 50% faster
Revealed regeneration? And they can do all that while staying on a point, while you
as an enemy can’t do anything against him. And most of them are also immune to AoE
CC since thieves have a way too easy access to Hard to Catch.

Also their class mechanic, Steal is way too unbalanced, with just one skill they can
daze you, stealth, deal massive dmg, heal big amounts of hp, rip of 2 boons from you,
grants might, swiftness, fury and vigor to all of his allies, gain 3 initiative, inflict poison
to you, recharges their utility skill’s CD’s. All that while obtaining your most powerful
ability, teleporting to you at 1500 range, while having a 21 second CD. And all of these
traits are possible in a single build, without sacrificing anything else like the stuff which I mentioned above. Did I mention that steal has no cast time?

Anybody who doesn’t tell you that the thief isn’t the most OP thing ever in gaming history should learn more about that history.

Blimm.5028:

A thief can be basically invulnerable for 80% of his fights while being able to disengage with the press of a single button at any time and putting out more damage then again, a elementalist or mesmer who must invest to get this damage out. People say you have to time the damage between the dodges. That might work. But why doesn´t the thief have to time anything? Why can he achieve more with less effort?

Probably one of the most profound statements I’ve seen. Its a valid question and concern, one that thief fanboys will argue to death about. Gw2 is a low risk high reward game, its what you observed in a nutshell. A thief has no trouble hitting you with attacks but you are required to have strict timing to avoid them.

In a balanced game, it would require strict timing to pull off the attacks and strict timing to avoid them. So yes, they can achieve more for less but its not just thief that has this problem but every class.

Imbalance exists in gw2 because a lack of counter skills. When one opposite exists with out the other then its easily abusable. Skills such as stealth, evade, thief not being affected by chilled are just examples of skills that have no polar opposite to counter them.

Definitely agree about thief being low risk-high reward, but as you said, those specs are the ones which make it into the meta.

Why?

Because for some reason the specs which have high risk like melee necro, have little-no reward. Which is a pity.

i came here expecting some1 to qq about mesmers and this wasn’t the case, impressive. I gotta say one thing i do not compute since game’s release. Why the adrenaline bar isn’t emptied when warrior’s attack is missed or blocked (the F1 attack that is)? We all know how gw2 is aiming for casual friendlyness n all but wtf is up with this? This is a small but important little thing that needs to be changed pronto.

Nuka Cola.8520:

i came here expecting some1 to qq about mesmers and this wasn’t the case, impressive. I gotta say one thing i do not compute since game’s release. Why the adrenaline bar isn’t emptied when warrior’s attack is missed or blocked (the F1 attack that is)? We all know how gw2 is aiming for casual friendlyness n all but wtf is up with this? This is a small but important little thing that needs to be changed pronto.

That would be a buff to warriors, you know that dont you? Right now you can avoid the warrior to efectively use cleansing ire to clean 3 conditions when you make them miss/interrupt because the adrenaline stays on the bar. Its a thing called counter play.

And mesmer is also cheesy.

I run PU along with traited Torch on my mesmer, and I have to say, that even when timing all my stealth-skills perfectly (and that is frankly a lot) I can’t keep up with how a thieves do it …. because he has no cd’s to manage. He can disengage/engage at any given time. If he is not the over-eager type, he will win every single time, if he has half a brain. Same goes for evade-spam. Even if he is brand-new and utterly clueless.
My suggestion, is the one thieves hate: Remove initiative, and let them manage cd’s like all other classes.
As it is now, the only counter to stealth/evade-spam is AoE and Condi-spam. These are things we would like to get rid of, but frankly these are some of the things, that keep thieves in place … fighting fire with fire.

The best way to get rid of cheese is with

silentnight warrior.2714:

Nuka Cola.8520:

i came here expecting some1 to qq about mesmers and this wasn’t the case, impressive. I gotta say one thing i do not compute since game’s release. Why the adrenaline bar isn’t emptied when warrior’s attack is missed or blocked (the F1 attack that is)? We all know how gw2 is aiming for casual friendlyness n all but wtf is up with this? This is a small but important little thing that needs to be changed pronto.

That would be a buff to warriors, you know that dont you? Right now you can avoid the warrior to efectively use cleansing ire to clean 3 conditions when you make them miss/interrupt because the adrenaline stays on the bar. Its a thing called counter play.

And mesmer is also cheesy.

The simplicity of people sometimes amaze me*. Of course you would also change cleansing ire so that it only triggers if the attack actually lands. Duh.

*Though chances are, that this guy just wanted to be a smart kitten .

Blimm.5028:

Now, in case there are people who don´t know what cheese is referring to here, a cheese/cheesy spec is a build which requires no knowledge of game mechanics, no skill and is highly effective.

In my opinion such builds need to be purged.

Agreed. Nothing new. Everyone that is a decent player is pretty sick of the current meta.

Blimm.5028:

Now my suggestion:

While I agree the current state of things is not ideal your suggestions are a tad over the top.

1. Removing on-crit effects (not just conditions) is something they should seriously consider. It makes for way too much RNG that takes away from skill based play. Also, there is no real counter-play for on crit traits. If they miss an attack, or are blinded, or get blocked, then it just proc’s the next time they connect. Most of the “on-crit” procs in this game are way over budget in terms of effectiveness because of this issue.

Removing conditions is crazy-talk though man. Cutting down base durations (particularly on auto-attacks) is a far better solution. There is no reason why a condition user’s auto-attack can be justified to do comparable DPS to a full zerker anything auto-attack, and yet the unmitigatable condi-applying AA’s usually do out DPS builds that go all in for offense. The math is just off right now. Super short duration condi’s on short CD’s are logical. If the condi builds couldn’t stack more than a few bleeds with AA’s then a lot of the issues would be solved.

2. There are a lot of issues with the amulet system in this game, but I don’t think that the solution is to place more limitations on it. If you address #1 above, then I don’t think the Rabid and Shaman’s ammy’s are particularly problematic.

3. The implementation of stuns in this game is really frustrating. Any stun (even if it was only 2s) on a 10s or shorter CD is ridiculous, and then traits that boost your damage 50% or more against stunned foes make them even more ridiculous. I really think the combat in this game begs for the mechanic change of “Damage Breaks Stun”. Stuns would then become a critical tool in facilitating wins in out numbered scenarios instead of an “I Win” button. They would be used more intelligently and be a real skill-based play.

4. The endurance system is fundamentally flawed since there is a huge disparity in the amount of endurance some classes have available, and other classes can just about ignore endurance all together and just spam evade skills that don’t even consume it. Vigor access is only a small part of the problem, and I believe that if the evade skills consumed endurance and there were more ways to remove and/or punish excessive boon application (which is needed but not specific to vigor only) that Vigor would be fine.

5. Yeah. More passive garbage that doesn’t need to be there, just like gaining protection on Dodge or AoE Healing on Dodge. All of these incentivize random-dodging, which is the antithesis of skilled play.

6. S/D needs a look but whack-a-mole-ing it into oblivion isn’t really what I would like to see. #2 needs to have a cleanse on it, but the teleport is just a bit too good. Perhaps shorten its time frame and range slightly. #3 would be fine if it didn’t ignore endurance.

Blimm.5028:

And if anyone says elementalist is fine:

Elementalist is not fine. You can safely ignore anyone who says otherwise and not dignify them with a response.

Master of Timespace.2548:

silentnight warrior.2714:

Nuka Cola.8520:

i came here expecting some1 to qq about mesmers and this wasn’t the case, impressive. I gotta say one thing i do not compute since game’s release. Why the adrenaline bar isn’t emptied when warrior’s attack is missed or blocked (the F1 attack that is)? We all know how gw2 is aiming for casual friendlyness n all but wtf is up with this? This is a small but important little thing that needs to be changed pronto.

That would be a buff to warriors, you know that dont you? Right now you can avoid the warrior to efectively use cleansing ire to clean 3 conditions when you make them miss/interrupt because the adrenaline stays on the bar. Its a thing called counter play.

And mesmer is also cheesy.

The simplicity of people sometimes amaze me*. Of course you would also change cleansing ire so that it only triggers if the attack actually lands. Duh.

*Though chances are, that this guy just wanted to be a smart kitten .

That is another change and its not related to what he said about adrenaline.
If the warrior misses one burst attack, don’t do any damage, loses all adrenaline and get its burst on CD, he doesn´t need cleasing ire to be nerfed. Only one thing or the other. Not both.

Though chances are, that this guy just want to nerf warriors.

Not just warriors.
And yes, removing condition totally is an insane idea, but short duration short cd condis are worse. The problem is not the duration of the condis but their reapplyability. If I cleanse the entire necro condi burst I´l have most of it back on me in no time.
Duration doesn´t matter. I say same/longer duration, WAY longer cooldowns. Make conditions a strategic force, not a spam away kind of thing.

Warrior needs a nerf, and a kittene. Everyone who says something else is kittened all over. And necro, thief and MAYBE bunker guard need downtuning as well.
In fact I´d say everything needs to be put down UNDER current ele state, and ele needs to be nerfed to be even with that. Using ele as an reference cus its undiscussably bottom line.
But this isn´t mainly about nerfing classes, but playstyles.

Why is someone who has 10% of the skill I have more efficient because he uses a braindead build.
My build is bad?
Tell me a non-braindead build for any profession which is tPvP viable.

To me even shatter mesmer is too shallow, but whats dominating now turn casual friendly in to skill unfriendly.
Also: Stop playing warrior. You will get worse at the game.

Blimm.5028:

Tell me a non-braindead build for any profession which is tPvP viable.

There is a challenge.

You are probably looking for Rifle Burst Engi or 3 Kit Engi. Those seem to be the most viable “skill-based” builds that the game has to offer at the moment. I suppose you could argue how much skill they actually take, but relative to the main builds of the meta you need to be Einstein to rock one of those engi builds.

Blimm.5028:

Tell me a non-braindead build for any profession which is tPvP viable.

I’ll bite.

Bunker guard—hard to play right, mandatory for top teams.
Dps guard.
Burst/control engineer. (Five gauge)
3-kit engineer. (Got might)
Point control engineer. (Teldo)
Bunker engineer. (Voz)
Any mesmer build.
D/P thief.
Any non-staff necro.

I’m leaving out any warrior build, because they’re arguably all somewhat simple, and any ele build, because I know if I called an ele build viable I would receive death threats from ele players. I’m also leaving out rangers, because there are very few people who don’t play spirits and so it’s hard to say if there are any other viable builds.

Nice list, but seriously.
Bunker guard is rather easy.
DPS guard has ridiculous survivability, while remaining insane damage, not in teamfights but you know what I mean.
Burst/CCengi is an argument!
3-kit is really not that hard.
Point control is not viable in such a CC + condition heavy metagame… Sad
Bunker engineer. Nice! But lacks teamsupport to replace a guardian.
Mesmer builds: Either cheesy+only 1o1 viable or not viable at all, might be possible to build a good build here tho, but those out there… not really…
D/P: Too forgiving if its not 5o5
Non-Staff nec: Only thing I can think of is critmancer. DS1 crits for 4k with 90% chance on soldier ammy. Lulz. WTB 100% crit chance when in air grandmaster, thanks.

Sorry for being pessimistic and fun-killing, but this is just my perspective.
Also death threats for calling a mesmer build viable :P