Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I am currently ranked no.1 (or was at the time of writing this OP) on the EU. I appreciate that the game is hard to balance for the developers because it is hard to distinguish useful feedback from meaningless QQ from people with less experience.

With that being said, let me tell you the OP/lame stuff at high level solo Q. Hopefully this feedback can be of use:

1, Elite ranger spirit – even at 320/second this heal will be too strong.

2, Ranger shortbow 1 – too high dps for an auto attack where there is no risk/reward to using it.

3, Warrior sustain – is too high. I know they need high sustain but with their immunities/lyssa then things aren’t good. Something needs to give.

4, Warrior longbow burst skill – its bugged so it clears 3 condis even when it hits nobody. This bug have a big effect on gameplay. Needs some creative design thinking to fix this. And maybe reduce the area of this skill which is too large to allow skillful counter play.

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

For build diversity:

Guardian needs some mobility help deep into an offensive trait line to help roaming builds.

Necro needs a viable defensive line by fixing the minor traits in death magic.

Ranger needs some active condition removal (such a condi loss on pet swap low in a power line) and its shouts buffed to make it so emphatic bond isn’t required.

Warrior needs significant nerfs so other builds on other classes can have a chance to breath and exist.

Elementalist needs its RTL nerf reverted to just 20 seconds always cooldown, and should have slightly stronger sustain but reduced damage at certain times. Almost diamond skin should be reworked so it is useful always and never just brokenly lame (like lose 2 conditions when changing to earth)

Thief is fine except for some nerfs needed.

Mesmer should be in a good place after the vigor nerf.

Engineer needs its condi immunity removed/nerf to 90%, incendiary power made skill based, but improvements to the scaling of some of their attacks with power.

GL everyone, and thanks to the devs for a fun game which hopefully can keep improving and hopefully no more power creep

Obviously this is just solo Q as I don’t play in a consistent team ever.

I played solo queue up until they buffed the rewards for team queue to be more than double the solo queue rewards, so now I play team queue.

Everything you said applies to team queue too.

LOL
This guy doesn’t even know how he jumped on first position.
Like, he won one single match and climbed about 3500 positions.

Just tell us the trick already.

Here is my response to OP post:

My guess is you don’t play any of these builds. Ranger elite spirit with it’s huge cooldown and with it being so easy to kill and even easier to interrupt the rezz that never goes off against good teams definitely shouldn’t be nerfed. Shortbow damage is just ridiculous.
RTL is perfect the way it is. Thief should have couple skills nerfed as well as couple skills buffed. Warrior healing signet should be completely reworked, also they should deal way less damage unless they spec berserker. Warrior longbow is fine the way it is.
Engineer nade spam lowers down FPS too much, performance should be improved somehow.

Also, ranger does have active condition removal. There is signet that does exactly that. Also there is bear pet.

Necro with minions or death shroud is already very defensive with pretty decent offence, it should stay the way it is.

While some things are getting balanced,
this:

Rickster.8752:

Engineer needs its condi immunity removed/nerf

Rezz.8019:

Here is my response to OP post:
RTL is perfect the way it is.

Bullkitten it is. It’s horrible how it is now. I could sort of live with the concept if the devs had actually stuck to their word and made it so it still goes on reduced CD if used offensively but avoided (block, evade, invuln, etc), but right now there are so many ways to avoid being hit by RTL that if you are using it as a gap closer, it’ll still go on full CD kitten near every time. They need to either reduce the CD, or make it work the way they said they were going to.

You should consider changing the thread title.

At 1st I thought this was a troll post about all those “XYs thoughts about pvp” stuff.

Then, I realized, you claim to be RANKED No.1 in Solo q,
not like the thread says you are RANK 1 (rabbit) ^^

So, not a troll post, just another one of those “thoughts”-posts.

1.- in 1vs1 is OP, in teamfights is fine.

2.- lol.

3.-Agree.

4.-Agree.

5.-Agree, lyssa too strong.

6.- A thief who isn’t evading or getting stealth is a dead thief.

7.-Agree, ele burst is insane, but need huge buffs to their survivability and diversity to nerf it.

I want to know what nerfs are you expecting for thieves? Because they have nerfed us pretty much since release.

sorrow.2364:

LOL
This guy doesn’t even know how he jumped on first position.
Like, he won one single match and climbed about 3500 positions.

Just tell us the trick already.

he actually does have good w/l ratio however amount of games he played is rather interesting compared to other players in top 10
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/de/eu/soloarena

if you look at the list you can see there are quite few people who got high ranked with very few matches; something is definitely fishy

Regardless of rank, this guy is near the mark in identifying the outliers that have needed to be fixed for a long time.

I’ve been saying similar things.

The game is pretty well balanced except for certain outlier abilities that are just ridiculous and in obvious need of fixing.

They are finally addressing the most obvious (i.e. warrior healing signet) after months of people telling them this had to be done. It’s debatable whether they are doing enough for people to choose the active/other healing skills, but at least they finally recognize the problem.

You can’t have one class/profession never have to click a healing skill and have it properly balanced. It’s like getting an extra turn in tic-tac-toe. On top of that, warriors have so many immunities and stuns that it can put even the most skilled players on their heals against average players. The abnormal growth in warrior pvp population should have tipped them off long ago about the skill-less-ness of warrior gameplay.

Eles have problems that need fixing ASAP, but the ridiculous burst build is another obvious outlier that should have been identified and fixed long ago.

Pet AI dominating PvP builds for rangers, mesmers and necros is another really bad decision. It looks like that is getting addressed fairly nicely this next patch, but it’s been a problem far too long.

Things like Diamond Skin and Automated Response are obvious outliers with far too big a delta between being worthless and OP in different situation. These type abilities totally REMOVE skill from the equation and make outcomes strictly dependent on build matchups.

Lyssa runes has been an issue since day 1. Not sure how they can say it’s balanced for all elites, yet they tie the 6 piece bonus to elite usage….This is BAD design and should be fixed.

dreztina.4820:

Rezz.8019:

Here is my response to OP post:
RTL is perfect the way it is.

Bullkitten it is. It’s horrible how it is now. I could sort of live with the concept if the devs had actually stuck to their word and made it so it still goes on reduced CD if used offensively but avoided (block, evade, invuln, etc), but right now there are so many ways to avoid being hit by RTL that if you are using it as a gap closer, it’ll still go on full CD kitten near every time. They need to either reduce the CD, or make it work the way they said they were going to.

Well the problem with RTL before was that it was 1600 range. Also not effected by chill or cripple. However at 20 seconds it would be fine. It used to be 15 seconds and 1600 range which was obviously the most broken thing ever. The reduced range does matter though, so 20 seconds would be fine (15 is too low imo)

wow, gz for rank 1 in soloq…

for me is the most high reward even to play a soloq match.
and if i play one, the next reward is to do it without destroy my keyboard in the first 5 minutes.

I stopped playing for a week and went from rank 800 to 425. Came back, won 6 matches in a row and went to top 100. Ranking system is bogus.

Rickster.8752:

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

About these three…

5. The solution here is not to nerf Lyssa, but to nerf SoRage. Right now, all of the thief elites are absolutely godawful. The only way to make even one of them good (Basi Venom) is to use Lyssa Runes, in which case the elite’s combined effects are pretty good but then also requires you to sacrifice an entire rune set. Nerfing Lyssa is a significant nerf to thief that would render all of our elites completely useless. Signet of Rage, on the other hand, is an extremely good elite even without Lyssa. It’s far more logical to nerf that than it is to nerf Lyssa in general.

6. I would agree that Feline Grace needs a nerf, but the most significant issue here is- what defensive mechanism will replace evasion? Right now, virtually every non-glass build in the game has at least some sort of defensive mechanism to support it. For instance, guardian builds have healing on meditation/boon application/symbol to supplement them. Warrior builds are just naturally hardy, with heavy armor, 18k base health, and an extremely powerful heal. Engineer builds have a wide variety of different healing options and fleeing abilities, as well as good area control. Necromancers have DS. However, of the two main branches of thief builds- evasion-reliant builds and stealth-reliant builds- both completely depend on their respective mechanism in order to survive. As a result, nerfing dodge will render one of the two types of thief builds completely horrible. I would not be so opposed to this change if other classes similarly got some of their primary defensive mechanisms (warriors especially) nerfed, but I feel like thief’s ability to dodge is much further down the priority list than many other different defensive options for other classes. If I could guarantee that this nerf came with many nerfs to many other classes, I’d happily accept it, but knowing ArenaNet, that’s not going to happen any time soon.

7. It’s really not “instant burst”, it’s extremely predictable and gimmicky. If you can’t deal with this then you shouldn’t have made this post.

SPESHAL.9106:

Lyssa runes has been an issue since day 1. Not sure how they can say it’s balanced for all elites, yet they tie the 6 piece bonus to elite usage….This is BAD design and should be fixed.

lyssa runes are not broken. the only thing i ever see lyssa runes doing is giving classes like thief survivability against condition burst and cc with the few seconds of stability it gives (whereas the thief has practically no other source of stability). how can you honestly say it’s broken? you wanna talk broken? let’s talk condition bunkers.

amazingly anet refuses to talk about it, but the fact a build can both have high HP/toughness and still be able to pour out damage (i.e. engineer) through conditions is ridiculous. the whole idea behind balancing is to make people decide between raw defense or raw offense. giving people access to both is flat out broken.

Rickster.8752:

Hi,

I am currently ranked no.1 (or was at the time of writing this OP) on the EU. I appreciate that the game is hard to balance for the developers because it is hard to distinguish useful feedback from meaningless QQ from people with less experience.

With that being said, let me tell you the OP/lame stuff at high level solo Q. Hopefully this feedback can be of use:

1, Elite ranger spirit – even at 320/second this heal will be too strong.

2, Ranger shortbow 1 – too high dps for an auto attack where there is no risk/reward to using it.

3, Warrior sustain – is too high. I know they need high sustain but with their immunities/lyssa then things aren’t good. Something needs to give.

4, Warrior longbow burst skill – its bugged so it clears 3 condis even when it hits nobody. This bug have a big effect on gameplay. Needs some creative design thinking to fix this. And maybe reduce the area of this skill which is too large to allow skillful counter play.

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

For build diversity:

Guardian needs some mobility help deep into an offensive trait line to help roaming builds.

Necro needs a viable defensive line by fixing the minor traits in death magic.

Ranger needs some active condition removal (such a condi loss on pet swap low in a power line) and its shouts buffed to make it so emphatic bond isn’t required.

Warrior needs significant nerfs so other builds on other classes can have a chance to breath and exist.

Elementalist needs its RTL nerf reverted to just 20 seconds always cooldown, and should have slightly stronger sustain but reduced damage at certain times. Almost diamond skin should be reworked so it is useful always and never just brokenly lame (like lose 2 conditions when changing to earth)

Thief is fine except for some nerfs needed.

Mesmer should be in a good place after the vigor nerf.

Engineer needs its condi immunity removed/nerf to 90%, incendiary power made skill based, but improvements to the scaling of some of their attacks with power.

GL everyone, and thanks to the devs for a fun game which hopefully can keep improving and hopefully no more power creep

Obviously this is just solo Q as I don’t play in a consistent team ever.

Wow, I actually agree with almost all of your post besides the thief nerfs. A thief is supposed to evade, it’s the only way they survive as well as stealth. Thief needs some more diversity actually……like more weapons. Sword, Dagger, Pistol, and Shortbow is not that great. Not to mention that Shortbow is the only 2 handed weapon so the whole 2 sigils on 2 handed weapons now is almost worthless to thieves.

Also, Lyssa Runes….I don’t know how I feel on them really. I don’t feel like they are that op, but they are getting changed anyways this patch so don’t really have much say.

I can’t believe you’re talking about solo queue… yet you don’t mention bleephammer.

so you are rank 1 soloq, tell me more about the game …

srly what is this post?
i dont think you said anything thats wasnt said a hundred times. so what is this thread about?

to be constructive:
i can only tell you about the engi-pov and i dont think they need to change ar or incedary powder. engi is balaced well. hes not op and not really up. so why change it. you can outplay ar and engis have a lot of options so there is enough skill needed on higher niveau. why change something that isnt broken?

lyssa in my opinion should be like: convert all condtition into boons not remove all and give all boons

thief for sure has a little bit to many evades. if you watch a thief 1 o 1 they sometimes just evade without anything happening. and the chain 4 evades. thats too much. but it isnt easy to nerf it bc you destroy them with a nerf really quick

Sli Fi.7980:

I can’t believe you’re talking about solo queue… yet you don’t mention bleephammer.

It sucks but at least its only 1 of 6 maps. It changes things up about. Although it does suck. Some might enjoy it so why not let them have fun 1 in 6 times?

dear Rickster,

your opinion as a top ranked player does not really matter as they balance the game for casual players.

ITT: Thieves desperately trying to defend the broken runes that are lyssa.

Dojo.1867:

ITT: Thieves desperately trying to defend the broken runes that are lyssa.

ITT people who can’t counterplay thieves complain about their only option for stability.

Completely agree with Rickster on all points. Tho would just add some points:

7. Move Mug (Thieves) higher on tier. Its just too powerful skill to be so easily accessible.

8. Condition immunity trait on ele and engi must go away (as he said later in post).

9. something about MM necro (but i think the new patch will fix that, will see).

10. Nerf guardian team support or survival, or make them decide between support and survival, so other bunkers get a chance. Realy, no one complaining about guards, while there is not a single good competitive game without them. (bunker guards ofc)

I agree on the guardian thing and I think biggest part of the problem is Stand your Ground.

Stunbreak, AoE stability and Retaliation on a 24 second cooldown always has been silly.

mug is OP now? i saw everything now

mug? lol its like the perfect definition of a tier 1 skill.

Dojo.1867:

I agree on the guardian thing and I think biggest part of the problem is Stand your Ground.

Stunbreak, AoE stability and Retaliation on a 24 second cooldown always has been silly.

Yeh possible

Like people have said, thief evades are their only real survivability mechanism.. without it they are dead very fast. Stealth is not a valid argument because they still take damage in stealth and it’s not that hard to hit them. That being said, I sort of agree with Jumper’s suggestion to add an aftercast to SB#3 because I do think that SB#3 evade is a bit over the top. You cannot just nerf thief evades without giving them something else to survive.

Also, people tend to give balance suggestions with the implication that all classes should be able to beat all classes – I disagree because it’s a team game and I think it’s OK for certain classes to do well against other certain classes.

Lastly, Deimos comment is pretty ridiculous, maybe trolling – they balance the game as best they can for everyone and a person who gets high rank in soloq’s opinion is just as valid as that of a casual 10 percenter…

Even though I agree with what OP said, come back when you have 500+ wins and your opinion will matter.

I disagree with most all of his points. I don’t want to take the time to explain why though.

Rezz.8019:

Also, ranger does have active condition removal. There is signet that does exactly that. Also there is bear pet.

Lol. This guy.

Well, the OP is good at summing up some of the most debated forum issues that have been pestering the game in the last half a year or so, although they missed a couple, while not really touching on (m)any of the core issues.
Gz on #1 though. Hard earned, no doubt.

Gratz to #1. I like the feedback. Make sense for me

Dojo.1867:

I agree on the guardian thing and I think biggest part of the problem is Stand your Ground.

Stunbreak, AoE stability and Retaliation on a 24 second cooldown always has been silly.

In the current landscape dominated by condtions and passive gameplay Guardians doesn’t have a chance against classes as Necros, doesn’t matter if we talk about Guardian bunkers or meditation builds. Of course, with the vigor nerf which the new patch introduces they will be even more useless.

Once more teams find out how extremely weak are Guardians against builds capables to spam conditions they will be erradicated from any decent roster, and after their fall their absence will collapse the lifespan of non-condition builds. Soon every match will be not “only” dominated by condispammers and passive builds but entirely consistent on them.

Well done on becoming #1, incredible that you haven’t lost since November 2013!

I agree with warrior sustain being too high and ranger needing some better condition removal- you have some good ideas for that btw. However, I don’t really agree with many of your other points and I see greater issues in other areas, like the strength of aoe.

In particular, I don’t understand your problem with ranger shortbow and the elite- if the bow is doing a lot of damage the ranger is glass, if the ranger is tanky the bow does low damage and relies on condition damage from flanking or sun spirit procs.

If condition damage is high the ranger either has low hp or low toughness, if the condition damage is not high I am not sure that it does enough damage on a tanky/heal build to even out-damage healing signet.

In addition the shortbow has already been severely nerfed since launch. Its strong against some classes/builds and weak against others. Certainly not something that merits the second place on your list of nerfs, considering what else is in the game.

I would love for other classes besides guardian to be able to bunker mid. Since release guardians hogged that spot and never let it go. Ele was close to their ability in bunkering mid at release but was nerfed into the ground.

I’d really love to see staff ele being able to bunker mid like guard again. Would do a lot for teamcomps too.

As others said, stand your ground is probably the biggest offender for guard mid bunker ability.

A rank one giving opinions on how to fix things does not make a lot of sense. A rank fourty+? Sure.

being rank 1 in solo q says nothing lol
it doesnt say that you know the game nor the balancing nor that you can play your class or know how to balance this game..
this thread is sad

Sensotix.4106:

being rank 1 in solo q says nothing lol
it doesnt say that you know the game nor the balancing nor that you can play your class or know how to balance this game..
this thread is sad

It certainly does say he knows it more than the average poster in this forum though.

Kanto.1659:

A rank one giving opinions on how to fix things does not make a lot of sense. A rank fourty+? Sure.

lol..

Buran.3796:

Dojo.1867:

I agree on the guardian thing and I think biggest part of the problem is Stand your Ground.

Stunbreak, AoE stability and Retaliation on a 24 second cooldown always has been silly.

In the current landscape dominated by condtions and passive gameplay Guardians doesn’t have a chance against classes as Necros, doesn’t matter if we talk about Guardian bunkers or meditation builds. Of course, with the vigor nerf which the new patch introduces they will be even more useless.

Once more teams find out how extremely weak are Guardians against builds capables to spam conditions they will be erradicated from any decent roster, and after their fall their absence will collapse the lifespan of non-condition builds. Soon every match will be not “only” dominated by condispammers and passive builds but entirely consistent on them.

It is still in every kittening guardian build ever since always which seems wrong. Also part of the problem you mention are necros and their easy peasy untelegraphed ranged condition spam.

Just wanted to say that he’s no longer rank 1.

Sensotix.4106:

being rank 1 in solo q says nothing lol
it doesnt say that you know the game nor the balancing nor that you can play your class or know how to balance this game..
this thread is sad

^ this

Good job Shad! Atleast someone with a decent amount of games is r1 now

The guy at rank 11 has 14 games under his belt, I never realized how bad the leaderboards actually were

Player’s info
Username Rickster.8752
Character No Way We Win
Server Vabbi
Names played with We Wont Win, No Way We Win
sPvP info
sPvP rank 2
Personal best rank 2 (0 hour ago)
Wins 91
Loses 36
Wins Percent 71.65%
Reached top1000 2013-10-04 20:20:17
you were never rank 1 btw

Sensotix.4106:

Player’s info
Username Rickster.8752
Character No Way We Win
Server Vabbi
Names played with We Wont Win, No Way We Win
sPvP info
sPvP rank 2
Personal best rank 2 (0 hour ago)
Wins 91
Loses 36
Wins Percent 71.65%
Reached top1000 2013-10-04 20:20:17
you were never rank 1 btw

gw2 shack player info has been broken for a long time.

He’s been rank 1.

But what’s the point when people up there play a game every 3 days just to not drop lol.

The only ones i see consistently are cheese mode guys ( with Rom believing war is fine LOL)

Elxdark.9702:

7.-Agree, ele burst is insane, but need huge buffs to their survivability and diversity to nerf it.

I really want the ele super burst to be toned down a bit. I main ele… but love my staff. We’re not going to be able to get major quality of life improvements while the S/D types can dish out that much damage at once – especially if RTL gets its (necessary, I believe) un-nerf.

Rickster.8752:

Hi,

I am currently ranked no.1 (or was at the time of writing this OP) on the EU. I appreciate that the game is hard to balance for the developers because it is hard to distinguish useful feedback from meaningless QQ from people with less experience.

With that being said, let me tell you the OP/lame stuff at high level solo Q. Hopefully this feedback can be of use:

1, Elite ranger spirit – even at 320/second this heal will be too strong.

2, Ranger shortbow 1 – too high dps for an auto attack where there is no risk/reward to using it.

3, Warrior sustain – is too high. I know they need high sustain but with their immunities/lyssa then things aren’t good. Something needs to give.

4, Warrior longbow burst skill – its bugged so it clears 3 condis even when it hits nobody. This bug have a big effect on gameplay. Needs some creative design thinking to fix this. And maybe reduce the area of this skill which is too large to allow skillful counter play.

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

For build diversity:

Guardian needs some mobility help deep into an offensive trait line to help roaming builds.

Necro needs a viable defensive line by fixing the minor traits in death magic.

Ranger needs some active condition removal (such a condi loss on pet swap low in a power line) and its shouts buffed to make it so emphatic bond isn’t required.

Warrior needs significant nerfs so other builds on other classes can have a chance to breath and exist.

Elementalist needs its RTL nerf reverted to just 20 seconds always cooldown, and should have slightly stronger sustain but reduced damage at certain times. Almost diamond skin should be reworked so it is useful always and never just brokenly lame (like lose 2 conditions when changing to earth)

Thief is fine except for some nerfs needed.

Mesmer should be in a good place after the vigor nerf.

Engineer needs its condi immunity removed/nerf to 90%, incendiary power made skill based, but improvements to the scaling of some of their attacks with power.

GL everyone, and thanks to the devs for a fun game which hopefully can keep improving and hopefully no more power creep

Obviously this is just solo Q as I don’t play in a consistent team ever.

As current (at time of writing) rank 1, I would like to just say I agree with this post 100% and anet should consider this when balancing this game.

Just came here to say this thread is a farce.

As current rank 1, I would like to say this thread is not a farce and the OP has my full support and confidence. The ideas he presents are amazing and he should be supported.