Guild Wars 2

So. Since apparently Helseth has some kind of quarantine from the forums, and I couldn’t find the video posted, I’ll just go ahead and do it.
I do this mainly because I agree with everything he says. A lot of the things mentioned I’ve discussed in a lot of other threads, and I believe it’s important to enlighten the rest of the community.

Link to the video:
http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/c/2749342

Last week he talked about Animations and if you have not seen it yet, you can find the video here:
http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/c/2696189

A lot of noteworthy things are mentioned in this rant as well.
So that’s basically it.
I am NOT Helseth and therefore I obviously did not create the video. I do not know Helseth personally either, I simply posted this video because I believe we agree on which direction we want GW2 to move in.

The problem he is mentioning would require a complete overhaul. There was done so many balancing in the wrong way, just by increasing damage numbers that the system is not gonna working anymore. Actually I think they should have started with switching traits or developing new ones…this would have helped for example when BM ranger was OP. There were specific traits like +33% regeneration up time, which should not have been in adept line and which are not relevant for damage builds. When you increase or nerf numbers you will always affect every builds, which is sometimes necessary (ele at the beginning for example) but often its just bullkitten because just a specific build is OP.

Consider a meta with 1/5th amount of dodges, like he is mentioning, that would make a lot of people just victims to warriors …dont mater which skill they have because already now they will hit there burst sooner or later and classes with low health pool and especially no stunbreaker as it is very common right now, will not even have the slightest chance against that.

Next example: HGH engineer he is mentioning. It is quite true that the HGH engi dominated the scene for a while, however to become extremly effective you always needed a backup class like necro or another HGH. This is why I think that this time was more balanced than now because there was at least some coordination necessary.

In the last weeks they did so many stupid changes that, the current meta was more than predictable. There was no clever balancing (Not possible when they are not listening to top players (I think forum QQ should be ignored because alot of top players know exactly whats OP and whats not) and do there internal testing stuff). The first think a friend told me when the leaked patch notes of the necro buff were released : “Necro will become freaking OP”. This was just predictable from the notes. Every half decent player could have told that arenanet before the patch was released but they just hiding the upcoming changes like NSA Prism documents.

Another big flaw: I feel like they balancing alot around NA meta but tbh the community is so small (even smaller than EU) that you dont get reliable data. How much teams are there? 2 maybe 3? Ofc they will deny this fact but even before the necro buff teams in EU played with engineer + necro combo because the synergy was pretty good. I mean this was also alot about just spamming conditions but if you were able to kill 1 of them the extreme pressure stopped for a while. I dont want to say that EU has better players but the chance to see a new working combo is just higher because there are at least 5-10 teams left.

Next thing the warrior animations: Yes they are predictable to some point (at least bullscharge and 100 blade) but the most important skills like the 3-4 sec stun have just standard animations, thus they hit very reliable after your opponent chained all his defensive skills. In addition the warrior can just wait currently. Against condition classes he just enables berserker stance, against direct damage classes he uses aoe counter pressure( longbow+hammer) or uses shield block (longbow+ axe+mace/shield). For example if I am playing against a warrior with axe+mace his eviscerate will hit every time if I am not on my ele and able to apply blind in the right moment. Why? because he is using mace(5) if I dodge he is timing his eviscerate that he will hit me right after my dodge or I take the stun and also get hit by the eviscerate. There is not much I can do because fighting against a warrior in melee range is overkill but if I am not close to him I cant apply blinding but also he has superior damage with his longbow. That is a good example just to see that animations are not the holy grail – Espescially when you want to reduce the amount of dodges.

Spamming: Currently almost every class is spamming (I would say only guardian needs some coordination). However you will not see changes simply due to the fact this game is about pve and for them it doesnt matter if you need coordination or not because NPCs will never dodge an attack. It maybe would have been better to give NPCs some kind of dodge mechanics in this game and not letting them 1 shot everything. For example staff ele’s are viable in PVE just because an NPC never runs out of an AOE attack – He just gets 100000000000 HP and every 30 sec he randomly killshot 1 person. Aggro tanking? Not possible – Everything is more or less pure random. And due to that the big bosses of arenanet dont care much because PVP is still a niche.
In the first weeks it was all about coordinate teamplay: “Hey I run low” – Ele/Guard: “Ok where are you I will heal you”. I mean it doesnt happen that often but combofinishers and teamplay was a possible way to become the better team. Currently everyone is just concentrated not to die to class xy during teamfights. Every Guardian must be very carefull with his shouts – 1 wrong decision and you get corrupted or you are on cd and you will go down even before your teammates due to your low health pool.
They just have to overhaul the complete system. Conditions should not be a way to burst and instant kill the opponent in less than 5 seconds. That was the reason why there was not condition protection buff implemented. The should work like what necromancers did before – Constant pressure if you dont focus him. And yes it might need more than 1 condition class in the team comp BUT you also need more than 1 burst class to be effective. “But we always rely on a partner which cover our conditions” This argumentation of some necromancers is just dumb. A burst Ele on his own is not capable to kill everything apart from a mesmer with a 1shot. And already this is considered as overpowered, despite you have a heavy cd afterwards. If you wanted to be effective you needed a second burster and coordinate your spike. Necromancers just spam (like rangers, s/d thief’s) … because it simply doesnt matter…if you miss your burst attacks you still do some decent damage and if you hit you kill him almost instantly and after about 10-15 sec your burst is up again. In addition you are way more tanky than all burst classes in the game. With full deathshroud and plaque you can bunker a point for quite a while and still doing some decent damage. I think this was never intended and should be removed out of the game.

Those are the two biggest issues I have with this game’s pvp, outside of the current state of balance. But, I wonder, is Anet willing to fix this? Do they have the budged, the manpower or the will for this? Improving several poorly-telegraphed animations, perhaps, but how to fix the spammy nature of pvp?

I can think of several solutions to fix it, but they would require changes to the core systems of the game.

Problem One
The passive buffs in this game almost completely revolve around adding: a) passive stat boosts; b) boons, conditions or cleansing. In addition to that, there are two main sources of passive boosts in this game: traits and equipment upgrades. When it comes to traits, each character has access to fourteen traits. That’s a big number of passive effects. When all things considered, this overloads the game with boons, with conditions and with cleansing.

Solutions
1) Overhaul the character customisation system. There’s an saying that’s key for design: less is more. My suggestion is to fuse the skill system with the trait system. Have the traits give access to 7 skill slots and 7 passive slots, instead of 14 passive slots. These numbers are also arbitrary and can be changed. Elite skills could lose their own slot, the number of utility slots could increase to 4, and an elite skill would in fact be a grandmaster trait skill that would be used in an utility slot. Or alternatively, it would just unlock skills, but you would still have to equip them.

EXAMPLE
Elementalist’s Fire Magic Traitline
5 points: Unlocks Fire Signet and Conjure Flame.
15 points: Unlocks Cleansing Fire.
25 points: Unlocks Conjure Fiery Greatsword.

This system would work better with more utility skills available, which we know Anet is planning to add in the future.

With less passive traits, it means less passive conditions/ boons overload.

2) Overhaul the resource system and add an Energy bar. Energy bar is probably the easiest means to control the combat’s pace. If you are to accept traits at their current state, a system to slow down the application of the skills will help. Too many boons or too many conditions won’t become a problem if you can’t spam all of them in a matter of seconds, or if doing so would come at a huge cost. An Energy System can also help balancing, because devs can always just up or down the energy of the skills to adjust the combat pace, instead of overhauling cast times, animation times, etc. It can contribute to more skill/ trait diversity (energy denial and energy management). This change will also make the game more friendly to a stream’s audience.

3) Rethink the philosophy behind trait design. Don’t rely too much on boons and conditions. A suggestion I can give, is to increase the number of traits that support specific roles.

EXAMPLE
Elementalist’s Water Trait:
Your healing skills have a slightly higher radius and heal other allies 25% more.

Problem two
Cooldowns are not enough to control skill spam completely. There are times where you might not want to waste your cooldown immediatly, but there are many other situations where doing so is “better than nothing”.

4) Rethink the philosophy behind skill design. An energy cost is not needed if there’s other cost mechanics already in the game. Abilities that cost movement, or that cost time, or both, should appear more often. Hundred Blades (for pvp only), Churning Earth and Dragon’s Tooth are great examples of abilities that cost movement, time or both. They also incentivate more team playing or skill synergy to make sure those skills hit. Add more channeling skills, add more skills with delayed damage input, add more skills that prevent movement, add skills that slowdown movement, etc. Alternative costs like health loss and self-application of conditions should be more frequent than they are now, especially for the professions that already have a few of them, like necros, the self-sacrificing guardians and the frenzy-rushing warriors. Other costs can include adding boons to our opponent – perfect for our illusionist mesmers, as they used to do that in GW1.

EXAMPLES
Elementalist’s Obsidian Flesh
At the compensation of lower cooldown, eles under this skill’s invulnerability would move 50% slower. You would protect itself for four seconds at the cost of not being able to run away or chase targets.
(Focus is not a mobility set like oh dagger, so this would also make it more distinct).

Mesmer’s GS Mind Stab
Similar as it is now, except with an extended animation and a channeling time. Deals half the damage, but hits again a second time, and maybe even a third time. Perhaps an increased radius, and boon removal on each individual hit. Higher aoe damage and better boon removal would come at the cost of movement and time.

Another alternative is add more conditional skills, but while this works fine for utility skills, it has a problem for weapon skills: no one is going to use those condition skills until the condition is met, and once that happens, they’ll be used without much thought. Also brings another problem: adds over-reliance on auto-attacks. Look at Ranger’s shortbow.
Yet another alternative, which is what Anet has taken since before launch, is to add universal effects to conditional skills, making them good even when the conditions aren’t met. But the end results aren’t the greatest. It makes some skills too busy (I click one button and BOOM! so much has just happened! Read: heartseeker, magnetic wave, etc), or too spammable (bleeding and weakness in one skill? Who cares if I have to time my weakness or not, I’ll just use it so I can stack damage! This is a problem Helseth made very clear with necromancer’s marks used as an example).

The best, in my opinion, is really to make skills more universal, but with universal costs. This leads to more strategy and demands more skillful play at the heat of combat.

I’m actually agreed with almost all of points. We need to go more far than what’s he says, this is a very good start.
In this game, what afraids most of my friend, is the lack of synchronisation in every skills classes offers, I mean we have a game with an amazing skill composition and we can actually do some real combo only in the engage, and when someone in your team tell “Burst” to the target, but no one knows actually what is casting his mate.
I think we should have lot of skills without damage, only cc or remove conditons etc… Cause like he saids, we are only spaming hoping we gonna spam more and faster than the ennemies!
We maybe have some strategy in the position of players, but we actually have not really decent strategy about how use properly every skills we have in teamfight.

Pls hire Helseth anet

It sounds like this guy should just play a different game instead of trying to turn this game into what he wants.

Alkaholic.3875:

It sounds like this guy should just play a different game instead of trying to turn this game into what he wants.

There’s a large difference between wanting the game to be better at what it currently does, which is what he wants, and wanting the game to be different, which is what you think he wants.

Diogo, all very very good ideas that could work within the weird combat system anet imposed on themselves. energy would help, but as you said there could be other costs instead — there just need to be many more of them.

I seriously doubt Anet will bother to watch Helseths Rant of the week, due to the current state of their relation.
Even if they do watch his rants its unlikely they will admit having watched it, but I would like to be proven wrong.

If that pax incident never happened, helseth’s dedication to gw2 would be unquestionable and probably followed Powerr’s path becoming a part of Anet

Alkaholic.3875:

It sounds like this guy should just play a different game instead of trying to turn this game into what he wants.

I don’t think this is a matter of turning the game into what the wants.
At the current state GW2 will never become an e-sport. It simply does not meet the basic and most important requirement: Skill.
Sure you can be better than others, but the gap between the skill-floor and skill-ceiling is incredible low compared to games such as Dota and CS.

Consider this:
A new player with an average amount of talent for gaming starts playing CS (could do the same example with Dota, but let’s just take CS).
He has probably watched a few videos, to make sure that he does not do something completely stupid.
Tries to stay with his team etc.
In reality, he will have no clue about what is actually going on. His crosshair placement, map awareness, general aim, listening abilities and his ability to assist correctly will be non-existant, making him an incredibly bad player.

If the same thing happened in GW2, the guy would be much more useful.
He looks up a few guides, get’s the current necro meta-build going, joins solo-q and starts spamming his skills on a node while dodging randomly when he has enough endurance.
Already at this point he will already be an asset for his team, and a threat to his enemies. He will spread insane amounts of conditions just by spamming his attacks either on a node or on a player.
Sure he would lose to an experienced player, but the gap is minimal compared to other competitive games.

Furthermore it wouldn’t take him much more than a few months of regular playing, to be a very strong player. Where as in CS it took me many years just to become an average player (some might consider me above average, but really besides the point), still way below the professional skill-level.

I believe this is really Helseth’s point, as well as mine and probably many others.
GW2 has a very strong core. Fluent movement and animations built on a solid engine. Unfortunately there has been made some severe mistakes in skill-design, that really holds the game back.

We need that skill ceiling higher! I wonder if Anet is ever gonna try and adress this. To be fair, it requires a big overhaul and I don’t know if they have the resources/balls to do it.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I seriously doubt Anet will bother to watch Helseths Rant of the week, due to the current state of their relation.
Even if they do watch his rants its unlikely they will admit having watched it, but I would like to be proven wrong.

If that pax incident never happened, helseth’s dedication to gw2 would be unquestionable and probably followed Powerr’s path becoming a part of Anet

of course they might watch it. the point is if they do anything about it.

butch.8136:

I wonder if Anet is ever gonna try and adress this. To be fair, it requires a big overhaul and I don’t know if they have the resources/balls to do it.

And that seems to be the common opinion around here. We see anet’s comments about the need to add more viable counter options, and we are seeing their efforts to improve the infrastructure for this game. All good stuff, but that means they’re probably busy with all of this, and the company as a whole has shown signs of being a bit under-staffed.

However, we also know that they are working on new utility skills (confirmed in the blog post) and that they are working on new weapon’s skillsets (based on interviews and leaks). If they have the resources for this, maybe they could have to tweak current skills, as well.

butch.8136:

We need that skill ceiling higher! I wonder if Anet is ever gonna try and adress this. To be fair, it requires a big overhaul and I don’t know if they have the resources/balls to do it.

Yes. For the game to be more skill-based and to raise the skill-ceiling (and naturally lowering the skill-floor), it would mean a pretty huge overhaul.
However, it does not have to happen in a single patch.

A viable start would be for the balance team to look the traits of each class, and simply remove every single passive effect.
Burning on crit. Protection when stunned, condition removal, vigor on crit.
Minor traits would have to be redone, but I believe we would survive a few patches until new major traits could be introduced.
I don’t believe the reason for this not to happen is because Anet does not agree. I think they see potential in a game without too many unknown/unavoidable passive effects.
But for a large company with a good reputation, simply to remove traits and not immediately replacing them would require enormous balls.
Removing traits that has been recently introduced, would also require some serious courage from a company with millions of players.

Stuff like that is more often seen when the game is run by a smaller company or a single guy, like IceFrog did most of the balancing in the old-school Dota days. He ensured that the game would have a competitive and strong core-game, even if it meant redesigning base-concepts. Why? Because he had nothing to lose.

KrisHQ.4719:

A viable start would be for the balance team to look the traits of each class, and simply remove every single passive effect.
Burning on crit. Protection when stunned, condition removal, vigor on crit.

But it’s not that simply. Would you substitute them for what? I’d say a bigged problem is the fact that characters have access to 14 passive traits in addition to the equipment’s passive effects. It’s too much for a fast-paced combat like GW2’s.

Why guys like this are not the devs…

BTW what are anets problems with him, is he saying so much truth that they cant stand it?

HPLT.7132:

Spamming: Currently almost every class is spamming (I would say only guardian needs some coordination).

Ok man now everybodie knows that you dont know the warrior class, the only balanced class of the entire game.

Fenrir.5493:

Why guys like this are not the devs…

BTW what are anets problems with him, is he saying so much truth that they cant stand it?

Nope, the problem was he threatened to bring a gun to PAX to teach ANet a lesson (since he thought Necros were too OP), ANet banned him from the tournament, and possibly the forums.

Fenrir.5493:

HPLT.7132:

Spamming: Currently almost every class is spamming (I would say only guardian needs some coordination).

Ok man now everybodie knows that you dont know the warrior class, the only balanced class of the entire game.

Sorry to dissapoint you but warrior is now the exactly opposit of “balanced”. It was so most balanced class beside some other builds like trapper ranger but 8 sek invul against conditions, 5 sek stun, alot of stability, high healthpool alot of direct damage made it to 1 of the faceroll classes. You think it was love to the warrior that every 3rd gamer is no playing warrior in solo q? It is the most effective build against necro, spirit ranger, other warriors, engineers….

Every kittening noob started to play warrior, your complain about my statement is 1 month to late bro…adapt to the meta.

HPLT.7132:

Fenrir.5493:

HPLT.7132:

Spamming: Currently almost every class is spamming (I would say only guardian needs some coordination).

Ok man now everybodie knows that you dont know the warrior class, the only balanced class of the entire game.

Sorry to dissapoint you but warrior is now the exactly opposit of “balanced”. It was so most balanced class beside some other builds like trapper ranger but 8 sek invul against conditions, 5 sek stun, alot of stability, high healthpool alot of direct damage made it to 1 of the faceroll classes. You think it was love to the warrior that every 3rd gamer is no playing warrior in solo q? It is the most effective build against necro, spirit ranger, other warriors, engineers….

Every kittening noob started to play warrior, your complain about my statement is 1 month to late bro…adapt to the meta.

Warrior is the most balanced class, FACT, it is the only class that everyobodie knows how to win to them because you know what?, they have clear animations of what they are doing, they dont instagib you like other classes do, really you cant win to a warrior?, then that says how skilled you are as a player.

-8 second invul against conditions is not like every other class have protection acces or blind spams or evasion frames spam warrior needs to have something or do you expect them to be a freekill forever so you can say they are ok?…

-5 seconds stun… ok kid we really know right now that you dont know a damm of warriors, you are for sure one of the QQers that can use stun breakers.

-A lot of stability… yeah for sure they can build to have like 20 seconds stability i think? but guess what?, it does nothing compared to have perma protection, stealth, evasion, vigor, deathshroud, stability dosent make you a god you can still die like an insect.

-High health pool… yeah its not like damage eats through it like nothing having no protection or a lot of negating damage skill like other classes.

-FACE ROLL CLASS… NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BS.

Show us how facerool it is in tpvp then, for sure with all that stability and your 5 second stun and your 8 seconds invulneravility to conditions which cleanses your conditions when you use it right? right? there is no one stoping you, hell every team runs at least 8 warriors with this setup, specially with the 5 seconds stun.

DiogoSilva.7089:

KrisHQ.4719:

A viable start would be for the balance team to look the traits of each class, and simply remove every single passive effect.
Burning on crit. Protection when stunned, condition removal, vigor on crit.

But it’s not that simply. Would you substitute them for what? I’d say a bigged problem is the fact that characters have access to 14 passive traits in addition to the equipment’s passive effects. It’s too much for a fast-paced combat like GW2’s.

I kinda answered that question in my post as well.

Regarding Warrior:
Warrior has always been the better balanced class, due to very few spammable yet deadly skills.
However, with the recent changes I believe Warrior has become the new old-Beastmaster. Thing is again, that you’re not punished for playing badly.
You have incredible amounts of PASSIVE (again) healing, which require no skills to use at all. If you miss a skullcrack you do not lose the adrenaline, which results in you gaining additionally 300 hp pr. sec (Adrenal Health ticking with 3 stages of adrenaline). If you hit, then you lose 3 conditions and stun your opponent for 3 seconds. No downsides.
With 600 Healing Power, 3.1k tougness and two blocks you’re a freaking tank.

Fenrir.5493:

HPLT.7132:

Fenrir.5493:

HPLT.7132:

Spamming: Currently almost every class is spamming (I would say only guardian needs some coordination).

Ok man now everybodie knows that you dont know the warrior class, the only balanced class of the entire game.

Sorry to dissapoint you but warrior is now the exactly opposit of “balanced”. It was so most balanced class beside some other builds like trapper ranger but 8 sek invul against conditions, 5 sek stun, alot of stability, high healthpool alot of direct damage made it to 1 of the faceroll classes. You think it was love to the warrior that every 3rd gamer is no playing warrior in solo q? It is the most effective build against necro, spirit ranger, other warriors, engineers….

Every kittening noob started to play warrior, your complain about my statement is 1 month to late bro…adapt to the meta.

Warrior is the most balanced class, FACT, it is the only class that everyobodie knows how to win to them because you know what?, they have clear animations of what they are doing, they dont instagib you like other classes do, really you cant win to a warrior?, then that says how skilled you are as a player.

Clear argumentation indeed.

KrisHQ.4719:

DiogoSilva.7089:

KrisHQ.4719:

A viable start would be for the balance team to look the traits of each class, and simply remove every single passive effect.
Burning on crit. Protection when stunned, condition removal, vigor on crit.

But it’s not that simply. Would you substitute them for what? I’d say a bigged problem is the fact that characters have access to 14 passive traits in addition to the equipment’s passive effects. It’s too much for a fast-paced combat like GW2’s.

I kinda answered that question in my post as well.

Regarding Warrior:
Warrior has always been the better balanced class, due to very few spammable yet deadly skills.
However, with the recent changes I believe Warrior has become the new old-Beastmaster. Thing is again, that you’re not punished for playing badly.
You have incredible amounts of PASSIVE (again) healing, which require no skills to use at all. If you miss a skullcrack you do not lose the adrenaline, which results in you gaining additionally 300 hp pr. sec. If you hit, then you lose 3 conditions and stun your opponent for 3 seconds. No downsides.
With 600 Healing Power, 3.1k tougness and two blocks you’re a freaking tank.

With that stats you are not doing any damage only of course to glass cannons and that is not the warriors fault, its the glass cannon fault.

Also about the passive healing is not that good, healing signet is bad i dont know why people complain about it i dont even use it, i see it like a crap healing skill, its not a good healing ability if you are facing good players, they know that you cant stand a burst or poison, so they pressure you and when you reach what i call “the point of no return”, then the healing signet user freaks out and starts running away, they look patethic if you ask me, and they run because they do not have any way to heal themselves, unless they are running shouts, but again, if you invested 30 in tactics you are not doing any damage, i tried it and used a regen build with shouts a long time ago, yeah had some kind of sustain against 1 player (no chance a warrior is tanking more than 1 player, and that shoudlnt be called tanking) but as soon as you face a burst player, like a zerk thief and your heals cant heal you enought to overcome the damage, warrior has no protection so it dosent matter how much he heals (which is isnt a lot) it still dies with ease to burst, and of course with that build i only deal a fair amount of damage to glass cannons and they still could survive my attacks very well.

HPLT.7132:

5 sek stun…

1 of the faceroll classes…

…Every kittening noob started to play warrior…

@Fenrir
It seems to me like you just come bursting into a thread and start agreeing/disagreeing on stuff that you have not really thought through.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAR5ejkO1wxQqQMxBEkCNsKOKUCmQ9AP2w4A-TsAA0CvIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYhw+DA
This warrior build has excellent offensive stats.
With the added 20% crit chance from fury and 50% at stunned foes, your offensive stats are the following:
Attack: 2999 (Will increase with Might on crits with GS)
Crit chance: 86% with Fury against Stunned Foes.
Crit. Dmg: 62%

Furthermore, you have a lot of defensive utilities, as well as approximately 764 healing pr. second with stage 3 adrenal health and the regeneration triggered from Dogged March. 764 healing pr. second with access to two blocks and 3.1k armor is insane.
Warrior is NOT difficult to play, just slightly more difficult than Rangers, Necros and probably on the same level as Engineers.

Anet, just apologize to Helseth and make him lead of the balancing department.

This guy makes more sense then all the balance happened to this game since launch.

Watched his rant — agreed.
For Anet dev, spell are to be used to deal damage: NOTHING MORE. No spell are to be used for a dedicated effect: fear is not a CC, its a damage spell. All area spell are casted in order to deal damage, not trying to control the flow of fight. Its basically: dmg dmg dmg…

But Anet is ignoring the community. Great compagny, really.

Its sad to say, but gw2 is broken: way too much bug (this is really funny when talking about a “competitive” mode).

Plus, I read that Anet banned this guy for telling a joke: only truth hurts guys, looks like he was right about the game being kitten right now.

I wonder when the game will be fixed? Maybe never, it seems easier / more fun to add pve content than trying to balance pvp. Quitting till then.

the truth is this game is not meant to be pvp-based, so it is unlikely we will see any significant changes. there will only be small nudges to get the game slightly more in balance, but the core issues of dodge and dmg spam go far too deep to change.

milo.6942:

the truth is this game is not meant to be pvp-based, so it is unlikely we will see any significant changes. there will only be small nudges to get the game slightly more in balance, but the core issues of dodge and dmg spam go far too deep to change.

Im afraid you are right. It’s a shame really, I really like the looks and feel of GW2.

Used to think that Helseth is just an arrogant idiot who knows everything better – well he clearly has that side too (I think that’s the main reason Arenanet ignores him), but has really constructive and good thoughts and a good sight about what’s going on an and he is giving voice to his concers which are 1000% right.

I agree with some of his stuff, but his stuff about S/D thieves and there being “too much damage” in this meta is complete crap.

Looks like he has also figured out that condition spam was a response to the evasion meta. I better step up my game soon, or Helseth might come up with something before me next time. Though I’m betting his next video will be about the lack of stability in the game.

Anyway, I suppose the biggest problem with his suggestions are that they are opposed to each other: if you are going to have less dodges, you have to make dodges meaningful. The only way to make dodges meaningful is to have high burst damage in the game.

If you reduce both overall damage and overall dodges, you end up with less of an action MMO and more with a turn based one. At that point, you might as well take the effective power and effective HP of the two characters, multiply them together, and then whomever is highest wins. Because of this, you need to have meaningful burst which necessitates high damage. Then, with bursts and high damage, you need enough skills to mitigate those bursts, and the easiest way to give that to every class is with dodges.

Though I do agree that, currently, the damage and evasion are a bit ridiculous. I would attribute this more to two things in general:

#1: the general inefficiency of defensive stats. Even though most builds now have some form of defense, the fact remains that everyone still gears largely for offense. The reason why is quite simple: dead players deal no damage. The quicker the opponent dies, the less damage you yourself take. The defensive stats in the game are largely ineffective, so even when you invest 1000 points into toughness or vitality, your opponent gets a greater return investing that into power or crit damage.

#2: The ease at which every class can dodge. Rangers, Mesmers, Engineers, Guardians, and Elementalists all have extremely easy access to permanent vigor. requiring only minor and adept traits. Thieves and Warriors have access to high vigor uptime, and the necromoancer has almost no vigor at all. Mesmers, Rangers, and Thieves have a large access to skill dodges (blurred frenzy, flanking strike, etc.), which they can use to evade enemies nearly permanently.

No class should ever be able to permanently evade. As for my fixes to these problems, It would be quite long, however:

#1: All weapon skills that evade should no longer give invincibility frames. Their evasion will be only in movement and changing position.
#2: Only thieves and elementalists should have access to permanent vigor. All other classes should either have limited access to vigor (33% up time at most, but I see 25% uptime as a reasonable starting point), or no vigor at all. Maybe rangers can have a higher uptime as well. Maybe. Also, permanent vigor will not be granted by an adept trait, but by a grandmaster major or minor trait.
#3: There should never be procs that do a substantial amount of damage. Procs are ultimately unavoidable and therefore have nothing to do with skill.
#4: Give nearly every class a whole lot more stability. I am talking about doubling the boon duration for nearly every stability granting skill in the game, and giving classes who don’t have a lot of stability skills that grant stability. That way, CC is to be used tactically instead of spammed.
#5: increase the effectiveness of invested toughness and vitality by about 20% or so. For vitality this is easy: each point in vitality gives 12 health instead of 10. Toughness is harder, since you’ll have to tweak the armor value at the end with some kind of multiplier that raises the influence of toughness by 20%.

And that would be to start.

I usually dislike his persona he has going on his stream(gets to much sometimes).. But the rants he provide about the game is so spot on(most of the time..)

I think most people can agree the whole interaction of opportunity cost/effectiveness + dodging is quite off base, along with a number of other issues. This leads to the game lacking much of the tactical gameplay that was present in the original. Tactical play here is mostly centered around rotations which I am not a fan of as the combat should be the more indepth aspect.

Now I want to ask is what does everyone think of the games potential if it received the overhaul it needed? If it had proper risk reward, visibility, counterplay options and more team oriented effects that require coordination. Also if a better game mode was employed that was less static with progression and gave an individual player more reach. Then if the pvp side was given a sustainable monetization system and better rewarded a players achievements as well as of course more refinement of all the systems that support e-sports. If all that was done do you think the game could compete with genres such as League of legends as an esport?

This guy should stop playing, wait for gw3, enter the beta, try to make it less spaming and play.
Right know the game requires a redesign of 90% of skills, utilities and traits to stop the aoe-condi-spam madness, it’s not gonna happen, and even if they start changing things now at this pace it will take 10 years, more or less.

The true downfall of this game is that anet decided not to have skynet run the game engine. There is no real reason anet can’t simply add 800,000+ lines of coding for idea’s on how players think this game would be better. We can blame this directly on John Conner. He may’ve saved the world, but it has come at the expense that we can’t wet wire into our games now and insta-morph coding to best suit our play styles so we never lose.

The limiting factors here is that it is a free to play game once the box price has been paid. WoW has an estimated 5.5 million lines of code that requires $175,000 up keep on servers. To date in their analyst disclosure they have recorded $200 million in up keep since 2004 (Not including development cost.) Albeit they generate approx 120 million per month.

A lot of what players want simply requires man power. This man power is not free, nor should it be. Players may as well ball of these idea’s/complaints into one thread and label it, “Things I would pay monthly to see.” if you’re not prepared to fund it, maybe it’s time to let it go and just find aspects you enjoy that are free to you once you outlay the box price.

It is easy to ask for all this stuff when we’re not the ones who have to develop it and implement it. I can’t flaw anet if on some aspects of this game the answer they gave me was , “We thought about that, but instead we went for low hanging fruit because it was more cost effective and fit within the labour resource we had at the time.”

People seem to forget that even virtual realities are generated by real world realities.

What in the world is the guy above me rambling about ? Altering the behavior of skills surely can’t be very difficult technically. At least it isn’t in other games as modders very well know.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Anyway, I suppose the biggest problem with his suggestions are that they are opposed to each other: if you are going to have less dodges, you have to make dodges meaningful. The only way to make dodges meaningful is to have high burst damage in the game.

If you reduce both overall damage and overall dodges, you end up with less of an action MMO and more with a turn based one. At that point, you might as well take the effective power and effective HP of the two characters, multiply them together, and then whomever is highest wins. Because of this, you need to have meaningful burst which necessitates high damage. Then, with bursts and high damage, you need enough skills to mitigate those bursts, and the easiest way to give that to every class is with dodges.

The way I interpreted his point was he meant that yes; Reduce overall damage and overall dodges. This doesn’t mean that dodging is useless because there’s less damage! I think he meant that skills do less damage overall but you still have your Killshots, Eviscerates, Earthshakers, these big, important skills with clear animation that scream “dodge me!” or you’re going to get into a ton of trouble. The end result being that you save your dodges for these big telegraphed moves which ideally every class should have, rather than just dodging whenever you have spare endurance because it’s so available and autoattack damage does high enough damage to warrant dodging anyway.

And once again, I completely agree with his points.

Jzaku.9765:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Anyway, I suppose the biggest problem with his suggestions are that they are opposed to each other: if you are going to have less dodges, you have to make dodges meaningful. The only way to make dodges meaningful is to have high burst damage in the game.

If you reduce both overall damage and overall dodges, you end up with less of an action MMO and more with a turn based one. At that point, you might as well take the effective power and effective HP of the two characters, multiply them together, and then whomever is highest wins. Because of this, you need to have meaningful burst which necessitates high damage. Then, with bursts and high damage, you need enough skills to mitigate those bursts, and the easiest way to give that to every class is with dodges.

The way I interpreted his point was he meant that yes; Reduce overall damage and overall dodges. This doesn’t mean that dodging is useless because there’s less damage! I think he meant that skills do less damage overall but you still have your Killshots, Eviscerates, Earthshakers, these big, important skills with clear animation that scream “dodge me!” or you’re going to get into a ton of trouble. The end result being that you save your dodges for these big telegraphed moves which ideally every class should have, rather than just dodging whenever you have spare endurance because it’s so available and autoattack damage does high enough damage to warrant dodging anyway.

And once again, I completely agree with his points.

Exactly. I was just going to write this exact reply.
Thankfully you saved me some time.

Keep up the great suggestions and feedback. Even if it seems very unlikely that all of our wishes would be met, the best we can do is to voice our opinions in a healthy matter and hope the developers swing by.

Master of Timespace.2548:

What in the world is the guy above me rambling about ? Altering the behavior of skills surely can’t be very difficult technically. At least it isn’t in other games as modders very well know.

i don’t know either, i think he is a crazy wow guy. that was a really strange post.

I would take Helseth’s criticisms with a grain of salt. From all appearances he has not played any other esport game on a competitive level. If this is indeed the case then he has no frame of reference by which to judge.

Geff.1930:

I would take Helseth’s criticisms with a grain of salt. From all appearances he has not played any other esport game on a competitive level. If this is indeed the case then he has no frame of reference by which to judge.

he said exactly what all of us have said since game launch. if anything, he could be accused of saying things we already know to be true.

Fourth.1567:

Now I want to ask is what does everyone think of the games potential if it received the overhaul it needed? If it had proper risk reward, visibility, counterplay options and more team oriented effects that require coordination. Also if a better game mode was employed that was less static with progression and gave an individual player more reach. Then if the pvp side was given a sustainable monetization system and better rewarded a players achievements as well as of course more refinement of all the systems that support e-sports. If all that was done do you think the game could compete with genres such as League of legends as an esport?

Without a doubt, just look at the hype behind GW2’s pvp pre-launch and the streams that followed it right after. GW2’s pvp has a lot of potential, and we are all hoping for this potential to be fulfilled someday.

And would some of those things require huge overhauls? I’ve written in my lenghty post that they probably do, but let’s look at what you said:

If it had proper risk reward
- This is already the case with plenty of skills, especially for warriors and non-instant burst elementalists. It can be acchieved by giving costs to skills that go beyond cooldown numbers. Timing costs, movement costs, etc. As meta builds come in, Anet should take a look at them to make sure they have the proper risk vs reward balance. They don’t even need to change a huge number of skills at once: just focus on current meta builds’ skills, and make new changes as new meta builds come in.

visibility
- As with the former, many of the risk/ reward skills are tied to costs, which almost always involve obvious animations. Anet would need to get some animation artists for new changes, but considering that they’re already working on new skills, they should have them. It’s about how they priotize now. Outside of that, stealth should be tweaked and asura’s sizes normalized. Anet has commented that they’re slowly shifting the thief’s playstyle from stealth bursts to harassing, but let’s see how far that will go. They have also talked about the possibility of asura’s models, which would bring some issues and it would not be easy to do; and they’ve stated they’re planning to tone down the over-reliance on aoe in this game, but that was many months ago, and I’m not sure if that’s still in the works.

counterplay options

One of J.Sharp’s latest posts in this forum have been exactly about adding more counter options, so that’s good.

more team oriented effects that require coordination

Yeah, the game needs more of this! I’ve suggested more traits for specialized support and control builds, and the community has a whole has been suggesting stronger effects for combos. The problem with combos in this game is that they’re a bit too accidental and “spammy” too, at least in specific situations where everyone is throwing combo fields and spamming como finishers over a point. They’re also harder to see. Combo effects need to be stronger (exceptions aside) and there should exist more UI support for them (to tell you which combo fields you are stepping on, for example). I’d say the spammy nature is the consequence of skill design.

better game mode was employed that was less static with progression

We know they’re working on new game modes, one of them being a more “push-it” base/ conquest game which – do not let the word “conquest” scare you, should be less static than current conquest modes. And are you talking about mid-match progression like a moba? I can actually see that work in this game.

*better rewarded a players achievements as well *

And for this, we also know it’s in the works.

Ultimately, we know most of the things you mentioned are in the works, or planned, or were commented by Anet. It might take some time, but it is nice.

What we don’t have any to no confirmation, though, is about the animations and the “spammy” nature of skills. We have no idea what is Anet’s opinions on that (or do we?), nor if they’re planning to do something about it.

Blimm.5028:

Anet, just apologize to Helseth and make him lead of the balancing department.

This guy makes more sense then all the balance happened to this game since launch.

Apologies need to come from both sides imo. What he did was also extremely childish.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Blimm.5028:

Anet, just apologize to Helseth and make him lead of the balancing department.

This guy makes more sense then all the balance happened to this game since launch.

Apologies need to come from both sides imo. What he did was also extremely childish.

I’m curious, what did he do?

Master of Timespace.2548:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Blimm.5028:

Anet, just apologize to Helseth and make him lead of the balancing department.

This guy makes more sense then all the balance happened to this game since launch.

Apologies need to come from both sides imo. What he did was also extremely childish.

I’m curious, what did he do?

Nothing special. Just joking on livestream about bringing a gun to PAX tournament to teach Arenanet a lesson.

Happens all the time.

He should know Americans take every gun threat very seriously, considering the amount of gun massacres they have.

You have to understand although it was clearly a joke, what if he actually brought a gun? ArenaNet would be held responsible and they have to play safe, as you can imagine.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

He should know Americans take every gun threat very seriously, considering the amount of gun massacres they have.

You have to understand although it was clearly a joke, what if he actually brought a gun? ArenaNet would be held responsible and they have to play safe, as you can imagine.

As much as I am against over reactions, that’s a valid point.