Guild Wars 2

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

Errant Venture.9371:

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

I also heard that game was funner and more balanced then this one. Funny huh?

its funny because what you’re suggesting is the most lazy whack-a-mole thing they could do

ahuba.6430:

its funny because what you’re suggesting is the most lazy whack-a-mole thing they could do

How is it Whack-a-mole?

http://guildwars2pc.com/2012/guild-wars-2-daily-news-class-balance-wont-be-whack-a-mole-tank-spike-and-aoe-builds-getting-nerfed/

They nerf/buff things every few months, that IS whack a mole.

Honestly, the game balance isn’t that bad if you ask me. The problem is players have fallen into the mindset that conditions are the most unbeatable builds ever and that if you don’t run them you aren’t competitive. It seems like many GW2 players have no concept of counter-meta. Look at Warriors, we get the ability to counter the condi meta and suddenly we’re OP. Some players also seem to think that balance means being able to have a fair chance at winning every 1v1 engagement which isn’t how the game works. If you run a condition build and bring no stun breaks or stability you have no right to complain when you get CC’d to death. The same applies to me, if I focus so much on condi removal I can’t complain when I get bursted down because I didn’t have Endure Pain.

This game’s balance feels more like a Moba than your standard MMO. A certain hero may be a bit too strong but if there’s a way to counter said hero then you can start using said character to make the OP guy less effective. This game feels like it has that same dynamic but the players haven’t been taking advantage of it.

I can’t think of any build out there that has no counters whatsoever meaning that the balance isn’t as terrible as it’s being made out to be.

Daecollo.9578:

Errant Venture.9371:

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

I also heard that game was funner and more balanced then this one. Funny huh?

I agree with you to an extent, GW1 was more fun just because there was a ton more abilities and customization/builds that could “possibly” be used.

Powercreep is definately a thing, but I do feel Arenanet went overboard trying to control the balance for this game and ended up strangling the life and (fun) out of it.

What’s funny (and sad) is that they did so to make it easier to balance, and a year in and it’s worse than it was before, arguably.

Knote.2904:

Daecollo.9578:

Errant Venture.9371:

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

I also heard that game was funner and more balanced then this one. Funny huh?

I agree with you to an extent, GW1 was more fun just because there was a ton more abilities and customization/builds that could “possibly” be used.

Powercreep is definately a thing, but I do feel Arenanet went overboard trying to control the balance for this game and ended up strangling the life and (fun) out of it.

What’s funny (and sad) is that they did so to make it easier to balance, and a year in and it’s worse than it was before, arguably.

As a Warrior I’d have to disagree, we were only useful for one shotting noobs. Now we have the ability to counter builds other players consider OP like Spirit Rangers and Necros. I know build variety isn’t very high but the fact is there will probably always be a “meta” build that is considered to be the best, but if there’s a way to beat that build then the players should move to counter it rather than going to the devs and saying that something needs to be nerfed. We as players should determine the meta, because most of the balance changes have come at the request of the players so we aren’t blameless in this.

lol… you do realize Anet tried to bring condi damage to HGH level, and now thats why we have this horrible meta ?

they need to:…

• Turn down all the damage
• Make single target damage worth it..
• Dont allow AI pets to play the game for players
  and more importantly…
• Fix Bugs on non-changing stuff such as runes, sigils!!!

BurrTheKing.8571:

Knote.2904:

Daecollo.9578:

Errant Venture.9371:

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

I also heard that game was funner and more balanced then this one. Funny huh?

I agree with you to an extent, GW1 was more fun just because there was a ton more abilities and customization/builds that could “possibly” be used.

Powercreep is definately a thing, but I do feel Arenanet went overboard trying to control the balance for this game and ended up strangling the life and (fun) out of it.

What’s funny (and sad) is that they did so to make it easier to balance, and a year in and it’s worse than it was before, arguably.

As a Warrior I’d have to disagree, we were only useful for one shotting noobs. Now we have the ability to counter builds other players consider OP like Spirit Rangers and Necros. I know build variety isn’t very high but the fact is there will probably always be a “meta” build that is considered to be the best, but if there’s a way to beat that build then the players should move to counter it rather than going to the devs and saying that something needs to be nerfed. We as players should determine the meta, because most of the balance changes have come at the request of the players so we aren’t blameless in this.

Yeah, they’re did a nice job there, but we’re a year in and still need help elsewhere.

Knote.2904:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Knote.2904:

Daecollo.9578:

Errant Venture.9371:

Daecollo.9578:

Don’t change anything you’ve added already, if something is OP, add new skills to other classes that are on-par, then add new skills to those classes beyond that.

Don’t play Whack-A-Mole and ruin current abilities please..

Obviously you didn’t play GW1.

The massive power creep caused by the addition and buffing of new skills over the years majorly damaged balance and produced a really dysfunctional meta.

I also heard that game was funner and more balanced then this one. Funny huh?

I agree with you to an extent, GW1 was more fun just because there was a ton more abilities and customization/builds that could “possibly” be used.

Powercreep is definately a thing, but I do feel Arenanet went overboard trying to control the balance for this game and ended up strangling the life and (fun) out of it.

What’s funny (and sad) is that they did so to make it easier to balance, and a year in and it’s worse than it was before, arguably.

As a Warrior I’d have to disagree, we were only useful for one shotting noobs. Now we have the ability to counter builds other players consider OP like Spirit Rangers and Necros. I know build variety isn’t very high but the fact is there will probably always be a “meta” build that is considered to be the best, but if there’s a way to beat that build then the players should move to counter it rather than going to the devs and saying that something needs to be nerfed. We as players should determine the meta, because most of the balance changes have come at the request of the players so we aren’t blameless in this.

Yeah, they’re did a nice job there, but we’re a year in and still need help elsewhere.

They no doubt had a rocky start, but most games be it CoD, Halo, WoW, BF3, etc. tend to have trouble balancing their game. They seem to be turning away from doing massive changes and instead are focusing on one class at a time, and so far that worked really well for Warriors. It’s annoying to have to wait but it seems to be working well.

Remove stealth from game, problem solved. And yes, I even sacrifice the stealth my mesmer has as well. Something need to be done to those thieves.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Honestly, the game balance isn’t that bad if you ask me. The problem is players have fallen into the mindset that conditions are the most unbeatable builds ever and that if you don’t run them you aren’t competitive. It seems like many GW2 players have no concept of counter-meta. Look at Warriors, we get the ability to counter the condi meta and suddenly we’re OP. Some players also seem to think that balance means being able to have a fair chance at winning every 1v1 engagement which isn’t how the game works. If you run a condition build and bring no stun breaks or stability you have no right to complain when you get CC’d to death. The same applies to me, if I focus so much on condi removal I can’t complain when I get bursted down because I didn’t have Endure Pain.

This game’s balance feels more like a Moba than your standard MMO. A certain hero may be a bit too strong but if there’s a way to counter said hero then you can start using said character to make the OP guy less effective. This game feels like it has that same dynamic but the players haven’t been taking advantage of it.

I can’t think of any build out there that has no counters whatsoever meaning that the balance isn’t as terrible as it’s being made out to be.

This is also true. We do have more classes viable for PvP at the moment
but the attitude of not making changes due to PAX just seems prideful to me

Ferik.3127:

BurrTheKing.8571:

Honestly, the game balance isn’t that bad if you ask me. The problem is players have fallen into the mindset that conditions are the most unbeatable builds ever and that if you don’t run them you aren’t competitive. It seems like many GW2 players have no concept of counter-meta. Look at Warriors, we get the ability to counter the condi meta and suddenly we’re OP. Some players also seem to think that balance means being able to have a fair chance at winning every 1v1 engagement which isn’t how the game works. If you run a condition build and bring no stun breaks or stability you have no right to complain when you get CC’d to death. The same applies to me, if I focus so much on condi removal I can’t complain when I get bursted down because I didn’t have Endure Pain.

This game’s balance feels more like a Moba than your standard MMO. A certain hero may be a bit too strong but if there’s a way to counter said hero then you can start using said character to make the OP guy less effective. This game feels like it has that same dynamic but the players haven’t been taking advantage of it.

I can’t think of any build out there that has no counters whatsoever meaning that the balance isn’t as terrible as it’s being made out to be.

This is also true. We do have more classes viable for PvP at the moment
but the attitude of not making changes due to PAX just seems prideful to me

Well, from what I understand the PvE and PvP teams argue a lot about certain balance changes, which isn’t bad but it does slow up the process. Now say they do make a major balance change before PAX, depending on the changes team may have to make major changes and theorycraft new builds and master them before the tourney. In the worst case scenario something gets terrible over buffed or nerfed and the PvP team has no time to get out a fix and all spectators see at PAX is a terrible mess. So I can understand holding off any changes for now. Also, I am a big supporter of players being forced to find a way to affect the Meta and not just relying on the Devs to set it for us.

The problem is people think you’ll achieve balance in an MMO

You will never Achieve Balance, quit acting like things being unbalanced is somehow new.

There will always be something Overpowered and there will always be something underpowered.

I have seen that type of balance method before. Back in City of Heroes, there was always a “cottage rule” that the devs should never take anything away from the game, and only add to the game.

It is a fine philosophy, but it does have problems. People have already talked about power creep, but there’s another one hiding in its shadow: The fear of power creep.

The biggest anxiety when balancing a game with the “take nothing” philosophy is that there is always the ever-present fear that they’ll ruin everything. If they overbuff the class, then that causes a big problem because then they have to use similar but incomparable buffs on other classes to bring those in line. They also have to do this with alternate builds and utilities to bring those up to par. Then they have to deal with the implications it has in PVE, where enemies objectively become easier and easier to fight. So they buff enemies, but this is more or less just a global nerf to all classes in PVE that takes an extremely convoluted and roundabout path to do so.

The end result being the devs lightly tapping class balance with a 50 foot pole for fear that doing anything more would ruin everything. They’ll make skills and content that is purposefully underpowered, and then hesitate strongly to bring it into power. This can lead to skills and classes getting stuck in a perpetual rut.

The way that anet does balance now is “fine” in the sense that they are trying to sustain a hard average that classes should stick toward. This, again, is a fine philosophy, were it not for the fact that it irritates the community to no end, and the flexibility can easily lead to overbuffing or overnerfing. You end up with players losing their favorite tactics, and things they never want to use getting buffed up, so it is a net loss on their part. Even though freely nerfing and buffing lets the devs reign in the beast they created, fact is the players want its fluffy wuffyness.

If you figure out the ultimate method for balancing classes while maintaining incomparable diversity, let us know. Please.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I have seen that type of balance method before. Back in City of Heroes, there was always a “cottage rule” that the devs should never take anything away from the game, and only add to the game.

It is a fine philosophy, but it does have problems. People have already talked about power creep, but there’s another one hiding in its shadow: The fear of power creep.

The biggest anxiety when balancing a game with the “take nothing” philosophy is that there is always the ever-present fear that they’ll ruin everything. If they overbuff the class, then that causes a big problem because then they have to use similar but incomparable buffs on other classes to bring those in line. They also have to do this with alternate builds and utilities to bring those up to par. Then they have to deal with the implications it has in PVE, where enemies objectively become easier and easier to fight. So they buff enemies, but this is more or less just a global nerf to all classes in PVE that takes an extremely convoluted and roundabout path to do so.

The end result being the devs lightly tapping class balance with a 50 foot pole for fear that doing anything more would ruin everything. They’ll make skills and content that is purposefully underpowered, and then hesitate strongly to bring it into power. This can lead to skills and classes getting stuck in a perpetual rut.

The way that anet does balance now is “fine” in the sense that they are trying to sustain a hard average that classes should stick toward. This, again, is a fine philosophy, were it not for the fact that it irritates the community to no end, and the flexibility can easily lead to overbuffing or overnerfing. You end up with players losing their favorite tactics, and things they never want to use getting buffed up, so it is a net loss on their part. Even though freely nerfing and buffing lets the devs reign in the beast they created, fact is the players want its fluffy wuffyness.

If you figure out the ultimate method for balancing classes while maintaining incomparable diversity, let us know. Please.

Then they should add new things to SPVP (A new server created JUST to test new things, like hotjoin) for example first, then see how it is. Then judge if it has power creep value. Then once it is set in stone add it and never remove it.

guild wars 1 pvp was “FUN” because they had more modes, so it could appeal to a wide variety another possibility is that because guild wars 1 had no forums the wasn’t a centalize location to complain about it. The other posibility was that guild wars 1 was the only MMO to have a decent SPvP at the TIME. So the standard have improve while Arenanet hasn’t improve with respect to PvP.

All i know is that over the years the balance of guild wars 1 went out of whack. It got progressively unbalance to the point where some classes operated on a different level in PvE than PvP, which is the reason arenanet is afraid of doing major splits.

google.3709:

lol… you do realize Anet tried to bring condi damage to HGH level, and now thats why we have this horrible meta ?

they need to:…

• Turn down all the damage
• Make single target damage worth it..
• Dont allow AI pets to play the game for players
  and more importantly…
• Fix Bugs on non-changing stuff such as runes, sigils!!!

They need to bring the damage of all class to the elementalist level. The amount of work elementalist have to do for decent amount damage is perfect for every class.

They have to make a way for things like illusions to be hard to summon because I see no reason to just press a button and have a Free damage A.I. Bring global CD for every skill except 1, reduces spam.

Make it harder to stack conditions other than pressing a button, same with AI. Give a requirement whether is by positioning or what not. All AOE should have a long animation time and not instant cast or tone down the damage.

Remove all percentage based sigils or tone them down.

Side note: There is this thing called “Mechanically broken.” What that means is that whatever mechanic you’re looking at is fully incapable of being sufficiently balanced. It will either always be too strong or always be too weak unless it is mechanically changed.

They tried to make it so that there was minimal cost to overlapping conditions and IMO created something that was mechanically broken because of this. In most situations you had to make sure you were making the most of the skill set you had and there were some marginal cost to your actions, the current condition mechanics mostly removed that marginal cost.

In GW1 you had to be intelligent to spread pressure with conditions, not just a button masher. For a matter of fact, it was one of the most important jobs of a good 8v8 ranger at stand (During balanced-ish build eras ofc). If you could keep poison on 3-4 people you were causing significant pressure which would cause the prot to start to overcast their RC and leave them open to easy shutdown. This would be followed by the ranger swapping to a short bow and going on a poison spread frenzy and the warriors pushing the midline hard. The mesmer would sit on the heal and a spike would go off soon and most likely result in a kill.

Of course, if that sort of intelligent play is overlooked… you get someone who is benefited by just sitting and auto attacking.

The best way to balance this game is to ignore Daecollo.9578

Daecollo.9578:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I have seen that type of balance method before. Back in City of Heroes, there was always a “cottage rule” that the devs should never take anything away from the game, and only add to the game.

It is a fine philosophy, but it does have problems. People have already talked about power creep, but there’s another one hiding in its shadow: The fear of power creep.

The biggest anxiety when balancing a game with the “take nothing” philosophy is that there is always the ever-present fear that they’ll ruin everything. If they overbuff the class, then that causes a big problem because then they have to use similar but incomparable buffs on other classes to bring those in line. They also have to do this with alternate builds and utilities to bring those up to par. Then they have to deal with the implications it has in PVE, where enemies objectively become easier and easier to fight. So they buff enemies, but this is more or less just a global nerf to all classes in PVE that takes an extremely convoluted and roundabout path to do so.

The end result being the devs lightly tapping class balance with a 50 foot pole for fear that doing anything more would ruin everything. They’ll make skills and content that is purposefully underpowered, and then hesitate strongly to bring it into power. This can lead to skills and classes getting stuck in a perpetual rut.

The way that anet does balance now is “fine” in the sense that they are trying to sustain a hard average that classes should stick toward. This, again, is a fine philosophy, were it not for the fact that it irritates the community to no end, and the flexibility can easily lead to overbuffing or overnerfing. You end up with players losing their favorite tactics, and things they never want to use getting buffed up, so it is a net loss on their part. Even though freely nerfing and buffing lets the devs reign in the beast they created, fact is the players want its fluffy wuffyness.

If you figure out the ultimate method for balancing classes while maintaining incomparable diversity, let us know. Please.

Then they should add new things to SPVP (A new server created JUST to test new things, like hotjoin) for example first, then see how it is. Then judge if it has power creep value. Then once it is set in stone add it and never remove it.

They should do that for every type of balancing, really. Hardest part is, the true nature of the beast isn’t known until its released fully into the wild.

Strong builds and counter builds are welcome when there are good mechanicals. But countering evade skills + ia with cc lock is a bad design on both sides.

it’s too late. i’m over it and they’re way behind the curve. i hoped and prayed for this game to come around for a year and i’m so sorely disappointed

Diage.6451:

In GW1 you had to be intelligent to spread pressure with conditions, not just a button masher. For a matter of fact, it was one of the most important jobs of a good 8v8 ranger at stand (During balanced-ish build eras ofc). If you could keep poison on 3-4 people you were causing significant pressure which would cause the prot to start to overcast their RC and leave them open to easy shutdown. This would be followed by the ranger swapping to a short bow and going on a poison spread frenzy and the warriors pushing the midline hard. The mesmer would sit on the heal and a spike would go off soon and most likely result in a kill.

Of course, if that sort of intelligent play is overlooked… you get someone who is benefited by just sitting and auto attacking.

Couldn’t have said better myself. Spot on!

For me (and for alot of players from other MMOs or PvP games) guild wars 2 PvP feels like more like “press everything on cooldown”, rather than “wait for it… wait for it… opening! NOW!”. Pressing everything on cooldown should not be promoted that’s why I miss resource management like mana/energy. Even the dodges are used too much imo.

I’m all up for buffing AoE damage (you gotta look where you stand) but give it cast time (not instant) and/or longer cooldowns. Spamable AoE is just a joke. On a necro you basically just put down everything you can, wait for cooldown and do it again. Meanwhile you have to maybe to some kiting and fear someone of and that’s it. Playing necro in a nutshell.

Wouldn’t it feel much much better if you hide your marks behind weak enemies , stack them, then fear him over them and get the kitten out of there? You job is done. Or wait for that thief to jump your team mate and fear him off while your ele casts aoe under his feet? There’s so many examples how synergies worked well in gw1. They work extremely good in some MOBA games. Even if you’re not that good in MOBA you can do some pretty decent combos. And noone just spams skills because you don’t have mana and cooldowns are not just few seconds. And also if you want to kill someone with a combo and you miss your 1 skill or kitten up your part of the gank your enemy will just escape to safety, while in gw2 you forgot to cripple? Well no problem just throw everything at your enemy and hope he has no condi cleanse / heal.

To fix this the whole traits/skills stuff should be revised imo and that will not happen. So we’re just stuck with this casual button mashing PvP game. Feels like palying Street fighter or Mortal Combat when I was 8 years old. Just smash the keyboard, press that kick as fast as you can and hope for a win. Then your friend starts yelling at you “You can’t just press one key, that’s cheating!”.

Just my 2 copper.

matjazmuhic.1649:

Diage.6451:

In GW1 you had to be intelligent to spread pressure with conditions, not just a button masher. For a matter of fact, it was one of the most important jobs of a good 8v8 ranger at stand (During balanced-ish build eras ofc). If you could keep poison on 3-4 people you were causing significant pressure which would cause the prot to start to overcast their RC and leave them open to easy shutdown. This would be followed by the ranger swapping to a short bow and going on a poison spread frenzy and the warriors pushing the midline hard. The mesmer would sit on the heal and a spike would go off soon and most likely result in a kill.

Of course, if that sort of intelligent play is overlooked… you get someone who is benefited by just sitting and auto attacking.

Couldn’t have said better myself. Spot on!

For me (and for alot of players from other MMOs or PvP games) guild wars 2 PvP feels like more like “press everything on cooldown”, rather than “wait for it… wait for it… opening! NOW!”. Pressing everything on cooldown should not be promoted that’s why I miss resource management like mana/energy. Even the dodges are used too much imo.

I’m all up for buffing AoE damage (you gotta look where you stand) but give it cast time (not instant) and/or longer cooldowns. Spamable AoE is just a joke. On a necro you basically just put down everything you can, wait for cooldown and do it again. Meanwhile you have to maybe to some kiting and fear someone of and that’s it. Playing necro in a nutshell.

Wouldn’t it feel much much better if you hide your marks behind weak enemies , stack them, then fear him over them and get the kitten out of there? You job is done. Or wait for that thief to jump your team mate and fear him off while your ele casts aoe under his feet? There’s so many examples how synergies worked well in gw1. They work extremely good in some MOBA games. Even if you’re not that good in MOBA you can do some pretty decent combos. And noone just spams skills because you don’t have mana and cooldowns are not just few seconds. And also if you want to kill someone with a combo and you miss your 1 skill or kitten up your part of the gank your enemy will just escape to safety, while in gw2 you forgot to cripple? Well no problem just throw everything at your enemy and hope he has no condi cleanse / heal.

To fix this the whole traits/skills stuff should be revised imo and that will not happen. So we’re just stuck with this casual button mashing PvP game. Feels like palying Street fighter or Mortal Combat when I was 8 years old. Just smash the keyboard, press that kick as fast as you can and hope for a win. Then your friend starts yelling at you “You can’t just press one key, that’s cheating!”.

Just my 2 copper.

In gw1 they would of gave us skills that remove necro marks, so specialized builds could be made that shut down necros with that playstyle. Which would force them to bait out the anti mark skill so they could place their marks.

People aren’t complaining because they are failing to try new things to counter the meta. They are complaining because there are no counters to the meta. Overpowered stuff only exist because there is nothing to keep it in check.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Honestly, the game balance isn’t that bad if you ask me. The problem is players have fallen into the mindset that conditions are the most unbeatable builds ever…

You’re right, balance in this game is good, it’s actually better than most MMOs.

Everything after that though…
The problem with GW2 isn’t the thoughts about condi’s being OP… it isn’t about learning to counter spec the meta. It isn’t about people not knowing the game isn’t balanced around 1v1…

Sure, because of that, the game ended up decently balanced, but so is flipping a coin.
No one kittening plays a game for balance.
It’s all about engaging gameplay, and GW2 is lacking that sorely.
That is the issue.

I don’t mind aspects that touch on a MOBA in an MMO, I actually think a half-MOBA MMO would be amazing.
But Anet took the worst aspect of MOBAs (the rock-paper-scissors speccing) and left out every good feature of a MOBA map… I mean they left out literally every strength in the MOBA genre… its things like that that make me hate the devs.

GW2 is basically a bunch of nifty ideas with obviously no thought behind when enacting, its why so few people play GW2 and every legit esports team left after a month or two…

To make this game good they have to change Mechanics. At the moment the fight are only a lot of effects and brainless use of skills. That is an enormous problem.

The only thing that introduce some of good play are the objective that make it a little tattics. But the mechanic of points bring ppl to be more tanky as they can, and this isn’t controlled, because the game haven’t a mechanic that create a pressure to tank, and spikes are prevented with protection, instant skills, weakeness, blindness, random evasion and others thing.

All I can say is keep the op’ness of all those op abilities and make other ones as op as the current ones.

The game would be a lot more fun faster, nobody wants to spam the same combo on people because everyone is bunkery enough for anything. People want to one shot others and if you mess up you mess up, should be all about skill and quickness and fluidness. There really should be a class that’s anti bunker and when I say anti bunker I mean he really is good at kittening up bunkers, like when a bunker sees him he gets kittened fast.

uberkingkong.8041

: should be a class that’s anti bunker and when I say anti bunker I mean he really is good at kittening up bunkers, like when a bunker sees him he gets kittened fast.

Bring boon removal on utility skills, weaponslot or traits. Your wish will result in a meta where teams of Fresh Air elementalists 321 spike and wipe the floor too quickly for anyone to comment on the gameplay.

The gameplay needs to be slowed down, using skills should have more significant consequences ie Shockwarrior where Exhaustion would wipe the Warrior’s power if he spammed it too often. Shock in this game? Hmm, close range Elementalist skill, knocks down opponent on touch range and chills yourself for 8 seconds if you fail to hit.

WhimsicalPacifist.2943:

The gameplay needs to be slowed down, using skills should have more significant consequences ie Shockwarrior where Exhaustion would wipe the Warrior’s power if he spammed it too often. Shock in this game? Hmm, close range Elementalist skill, knocks down opponent on touch range and chills yourself for 8 seconds if you fail to hit.

Yeah the problem is that to do this there should be a mechanic that slow the skill casted during a fight, but i don’t know wich one… Maybe Shock of GW1 have something else than the recharge…..

I’ve only recently started playing some sPvP. Two things I noticed :

1) The downed state takes away from the action and makes an uneven fight even more uneven

2) A lot of condition builds are just silly and promote lazy play.

In GW1 conditions felt more balanced then they do in this game. I haven’t played that much, but so far every game I played consisted mainly of necromancers and engineers who spammed conditions. The necro builds are especially moronic. What’s fun about spamming AoE conditions? I just stopped attacking necros with my thief, because there passive condition play gives them an edge when you go in aggressive. There really is no strategy or skill involved and I would rather see direct damage making a comeback. The need to constantly attack makes it a more action oriented and skilled way of play.

The current meta feels a bit like the sl/sl locks in WoW. Apply dots and leech leech leech.

Diage.6451:

Side note: There is this thing called “Mechanically broken.” What that means is that whatever mechanic you’re looking at is fully incapable of being sufficiently balanced. It will either always be too strong or always be too weak unless it is mechanically changed.

They tried to make it so that there was minimal cost to overlapping conditions and IMO created something that was mechanically broken because of this. In most situations you had to make sure you were making the most of the skill set you had and there were some marginal cost to your actions, the current condition mechanics mostly removed that marginal cost.

In GW1 you had to be intelligent to spread pressure with conditions, not just a button masher. For a matter of fact, it was one of the most important jobs of a good 8v8 ranger at stand (During balanced-ish build eras ofc). If you could keep poison on 3-4 people you were causing significant pressure which would cause the prot to start to overcast their RC and leave them open to easy shutdown. This would be followed by the ranger swapping to a short bow and going on a poison spread frenzy and the warriors pushing the midline hard. The mesmer would sit on the heal and a spike would go off soon and most likely result in a kill.

Of course, if that sort of intelligent play is overlooked… you get someone who is benefited by just sitting and auto attacking.

About this – and the whole “Why Gw1 PvP was better – Why we don’t have deathmatch or GvG” argument i’m thinking, lately, that it’s something very related to the removal of Monks or, in general, of the healer.

I’m deeply against trinity, both for pvp and for pve. I was kinda hyped by the no trinity approach of Gw2. But after 1 year, it looks like the solution is worse than the problem – see DG meta being 5 DPS and rest is trash, see PvP where Devs can’t go further than Conquest mode and Damage is simply out of whack.

The Gw1 model, with a non prof-locked DPS/CC role, absence of “tank” profession and presence, only one forced and similar to a traditional trinity, of the healer, was perfect, at the end. Both for pve (not forcing in the usual trinity) and pvp (see below).

GvG/HA teams always had 2 monks as standard. Prot and Heal. This thing alone means that anybody of the other 6 player on the field was a though nut to crack and kill, regardless of skills and profession, as long as they’re in range of Monks (and they have energy/room for react). Things like Infuse Health, Prot Spirit, WoH, and so on has always been in place with a single mission: save the a** of somebody near to death and under heavy fire – in 1/4 of sec casting time.
Due to that, you had to bait heals, lure enemy positioning and coordinate 4/5 ppl to spike at same time for scoring a single kill. As long as there were monks in range, with energy, no pressure, skills off CD and your spike was slower than half a sec, the chances to kill anybody were slim.
That made automatically combat needing much more field/positioning awareness and much more tactical regarding splitting your group, movements, attacking or retreating in/from a base.
Also, because it forced a slower pace, where every move was visible and counters moves between teams much more thought out.

Here, pace is too fast, dmg is too high. And on top of that, there is nobody that can counter them by effectively save your back. Period.
There isn’t anybody to bait/rupt, cause there isn’t anybody with proper healing/protting to watch out. There isn’t anything to make overcast, cause there is no energy. There is nobody to be aware of position, cause there isn’t a Monk you’re getting too far. There is just the dmg. And you don’t even need a split second coordinated spike like in Gw1 to hope kil..ehm, downing somebody.

Sure, there are dodges to take in account, but the depth is on complete different levels.

This means that anything like deathmatch mode or tactical modes like Gvg/HA are just unpraticable. DM would become a “spike first” race. GvG/HA wouldn’t work, at all.

And all of this reflects as said in PvE too, with a extremely swallow design of bosses/DGs.

Ofc, the whole issue is so radicated that probably will be part of Gw2 till the end, so this whole talk might be just theorycrafting or nostalgia, on top of personal opinion.

Seriously, getting rid of it would need a work comparable to the “redoing” of the game that FFXIV did. Rebalancing every single prof, adding maybe another one with the function of main “healing” class, doing a 180 on a couple of points…
Not going to happen.

Just like a decent pvp as GvG/HA were.

AndrewSX.3794:

About this – and the whole “Why Gw1 PvP was better – Why we don’t have deathmatch or GvG” argument i’m thinking, lately, that it’s something very related to the removal of Monks or, in general, of the healer.

I’m deeply against trinity, both for pvp and for pve. I was kinda hyped by the no trinity approach of Gw2. But after 1 year, it looks like the solution is worse than the problem – see DG meta being 5 DPS and rest is trash, see PvP where Devs can’t go further than Conquest mode and Damage is simply out of whack.

It’s so easy to make a 5v5 game where dedicated healers and tanks don’t exist yet there isn’t 5 spike dps.

If the game had well made conditions and countergank abilities along with some sort of healing for the sake of sustain…
The core of it is actually jokingly easy to make, in my mind.
You don’t have dedicated healers, instead you have something like current heal skills except they tend to aoe out a portion of their healing to allies, like rangers healing spring would burst out a heal on cast, and one 3-4s later, necros heal will be like troll ungent except aoe out healing while in death shroud.
It’d keep the sustain needed for a fight to keep going on, short of a spike dps based rampage.

That is something easily stopped.
Having blind not go away when attacking (also never last more than 2s and have a duration cap of around 4~) be a 30-50% dmg debuff, weakness being something like ‘1/2 dmg on crit’ and combo fields be a large part of doing good spike dmg… well then there are easily enough counters and situational factors to running a spike that there’s a game capable of good gameplay.

The GW2 devs just suck balls.

@Andrew

Actually, I would argue you don’t need healers one bit. You do need a support however. In GW1 there was the prot and the redbar. All the redbar did was sit and watch the redbars on the side and watch players move for a spike (depending what type of team you were against.) The prot on the other hand had to make sure he was utilizing his skills properly. A great prot could carry a bad healer since well placed prot drastically reduced the energy consumed by almost every player in the backline and midline.

POINT BEING – The important thing is proper damage mitigation. Passive healing is always bad, you want something active. But all healing should be converted from a retroactive act to a proactive act and the management of the actual health should fall to the individual player (In this context of course).

So basically, you could keep most things the same if you shifted passive healing to active healing, improved the effectiveness of damage mitigation, improved the effectiveness of individual heals, fixed conditions, and shifted the notion of damage to act as an attrition factor as opposed to a death mechanic.

As the game plays out a health bar shouldn’t be spiked. Health should take on the role that energy did in past games and the downed state is the role that health once took. So at a quick glance, you can see just how both teams are doing in pressure. Then once someone is down you have to shift the game and play off of it (Just like in GW1 when a monk ran out of energy you had to react as a team quite quickly.)