Guild Wars 2

Before this patch my opinion of PvP in this game was that it is fairly fun but quite imbalanced compared to other PvP based games I play (DotA). So rather than playing lots of PvP in its frankly, broken form (lolol airrune or thief ability hitting for half my hp) I decided to play the PvE content and WvW while waiting for things to be fixed.

The last two patches have convinced me that you do not know how to balance this game properly and that it will always have terrible balance. Among other things (these just stand out as especially bad):

- Everyone said thief burst is ridiculous, backstab untouched, mug untouched. Only CnD got a token nerf. Nerf daze instead. Force every thief to play backstab lol.
- Everyone uses bunker guardians in tpvp, you nerf staff ele.
- Air rune 25% damage nerf is a complete joke. The problem is that it can crit and scales with your abilities. Lets nerf protection instead, so that you definately get 1shot.
- Shatter burst is the same, but phantasms nerfed into buggy oblivion. Newsflash: nobody played phantasm even before you started nerfing it 3 patches ago. Side effect is that mesmer in WvW now has nothing to do in a siege. They are a portal-bot now.

I imagine that before this patch many people were like me and very much on the fence about if this game will become an esport. I’m fairly certain that most if not all of these people will now have decided that gw2 is basically a PvE only game and will play whatever game they usually play when they want to play PvP.

P.S. I know alot of replies to this will be “blablabla you’re a noob you dont understand pr0 balance” or whatever. Here’s a screenshot of me playing in a game that had more viewers than the entirety of gw2 and is me solo queuing and getting matched with professional players: http://i.imgur.com/0ZpuK.jpg.

Well some people are just a little upset about their $60 investment. Not to mention that many people wanted to play a game that was a spiritual successor to Guild Wars 1 in game mechanics not only in lore.

Sam Pan.3651:

Well some people are just a little upset about their $60 investment. Not to mention that many people wanted to play a game that was a spiritual successor to Guild Wars 1 in game mechanics not only in lore.

This^^^^

GW1 = Decent PVE great PVP
GW2 = Lets only focus on PVE for everyone/casuals and ZergVZergVZerg (aka WvWvW aka Casual PVP). Real PVP aka sPVP…meh…slap a few maps together all the same game mode (the lest populaer mode from Gw1 iirc..its beena while) and go with it!! =/= win

I consider the balance pretty much good compared to others MMOs and with this patch even better.

What do agree is that Thiefs Bacstab is untouched. Nerfing CaD doesnt make sence in any way.. Especiatelly when almost all people are saying (including me) that the problem is you can pre-cast steal – which is leading to time attack where 3 abilities land at once.

But anyway.. balance is good and with this patch will be a bit better..

Sam Pan.3651:

Well some people are just a little upset about their $60 investment. Not to mention that many people wanted to play a game that was a spiritual successor to Guild Wars 1 in game mechanics not only in lore.

Ya… ya thats me.

First of all, I was kinda disappointed with the patch as well, because the changes were just so minuscule, but that’s just how ANet wanted to approach the game; don’t get hasty with decisions they’d later regret, just because there wasn’t really enough time for the metagame to develop and to truly see what’s actually imbalanced.

Now to the changes:

1) Thief wasn’t broken because of his ridiculous DPS, but because he was good in all important aspects of an sPvP-game (mobility, sustainability, teamfight, DPS). With Dancing Dagger nerfed, one of the Thiefs best Team-fight-abilities was nerfed, which is a good thing.
—→ I think they still want the Thief to be a glassy burst-char with heavy DPS and good mobility, but not make him the jack of all trades he was before; a step in the right direction, nothing big, but at least sth.

2) Bunker Guardian: Very minor nerfs, I’m not satisfied with it, but I see why ANet wants to be cautious about this stuff.

3) Bunker-Ele: First of all, I have no Idea why ppl think that the only viable option to play Ele in sPvP/tPvP is Bunker-Ele, secondly, the Staff-Ele isn’t a Bunker-Char, it’s a support Char. If u wanna Bunker with ele, go for S/D, cuz you’ll need the Extra Armor from Rock Barrier. And the true Bunker Ele got a HUGE buff: Obsidian Focus now applies to Stone Shards! This means that on the biggest Spam-ability on the Bunker-Ele, which he has in the Earth Attunement (+90 toughness), he’ll get an additional 170 armor. This is huge and IMHO, makes up for the Healing lost on soothing wave. Besides that, Ether renewal (which works with Obsidian Focus as well), has become a viable option. If a player can watch out for interrupts and time it well, the healing output and condi-remove is just insane.

4) Mesmer-Nerfs: Okay, I don’t really get the Phantasm-nerf as well, but it’s a nerf, so I’ll take it. ^^
The Portal-Nerf was much needed though.

All in all, the changes won’t really change all that much, all the classes played before are still very viable. It’s just a very little push in the right direction and nothing too drastic and game-changing and that is the balance-philosophy ANet wants to follow with GW2. Once you get your head wrapped around it, that there won’t be any huge balance-changes, the patch makes IMHO quite a lot of sense.

Balance is much better than every other MMO.

The changes are small, but noticeable.

Bunker guardians and eles are not as broken as before.

Thief is no major issue unless you are a hotjoin pugger.

Mesmer damage is a lot less fire and forget, which is a good thing.

xiv.7136:

Balance is much better than every other MMO.

The changes are small, but noticeable.

Bunker guardians and eles are not as broken as before.

Thief is no major issue unless you are a hotjoin pugger.

Mesmer damage is a lot less fire and forget, which is a good thing.

I believe you do mis understand some things:-
1. Bunker ele was nowhere near bunker guardian (in terms of teams actually picking it over guardian), but it was nerfed more.
2. People are hotjoin puggers, ignoring them is why the mists is empty.
3. Mesmer was never fire and forget. The phantasm build was already very inferior to the shatter build.

I don’t mind shatters, I can deal with those. A bunch of clones rushing you = dodge. Deal with it.

People are hotjoin puggers, but the metagame should always be balanced around top end play. You can’t balance around bad players. It’s up to bad players to get better, not the game to suit them.

Bunker ele and guardian are both an issue that is being addressed. I’ve seen plenty of unkillable ele bunkers, it was broken before. Also, I actually think with the boon duration reduction and the seemingly small guardian tweaks, you’ll see guardians will be a lot more reasonable too now. It’s all in the details.

That the class balance changes are not massive sweeping changes is very good. They are taking it slow and careful and watching what players do. Bad players will still die to thieves and 100b warriors. Good players will start to comp and strat differently.

It’s a complex and quite balanced metagame so far (for a MMO). Just watch the effects of this patch and see.

xiv.7136:

I don’t mind shatters, I can deal with those. A bunch of clones rushing you = dodge. Deal with it.

- The Problem with Shatter-Mesmer is the very low-cooldown Immobilize, which makes it hard to dodge the shatter without firing off a defensive CD with a much longer CD than the shatter-combo (Mist-form, Elexir S, Endure Pain, Shield Stance, Rocket boots, Teleports etc. with 3+ times higher CD).

- Another factor is Magic bullet, which makes it impossible to dodge the Immobilize; first pressure a bit and maybe fire off a combo to make the opponent use his CD, then go into the full combo with magic-bullet + immobilize + shatter → guaranteed combo that deals insane amount of DPS. With such a low cooldown Immobilize and an insanely strong follow-up combo come other problems as well for Chars with defensive cooldowns that do nothing against immobilize, like Lightning Reflexes, Armor of Earth, Spectral Armor etc.

- To top that all off, the combo even rips off boons, negating even more defensive CD’s, like Armor of Earth, Spectral Armor, Save yourselves etc.

And this all comes for the prize of not even sacrificing a single utility-skill to make the combo work!

This problem with combos that are very hard to evade, deal insane amounts of DPS, require no additional Utility-skills to work well and have very low CD, exists only on Mesmer and Thief. All the other strong burst-combos, like the ones on the Ele, Warrior etc. require a much bigger investment in Utilities, have bigger drawbacks if they don’t work, are easier to evade and have much longer cooldowns.

I don’t necessarily think that this is imbalanced, as long as those very strong burst-chars don’t do all the other stuff very well too. So far, they’ve at least nerfed the Thiefs teamfight-potential (Dancing Dagger) and the Mesmers Movement and Team-support and sustained DPS (Portal and Phantasm-nerf), so it’s at least a step in the right direction.

i didn’t read anything about stealth rendering? so i guess that is still in the game besides promises otherwise

Pray.9751:

i didn’t read anything about stealth rendering? so i guess that is still in the game besides promises otherwise

As far as I heard, people say it’s fixed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Culling-has-been-improved-in-PvP/first#post745690

samo.1054:

Pray.9751:

i didn’t read anything about stealth rendering? so i guess that is still in the game besides promises otherwise

As far as I heard, people say it’s fixed.

Eh… I’m still backstabbing fools in PvP while they are just standing there or running around freaking out because they can’t see me.

I honestly don’t think it’s been completely fixed. If only we had duels so that we could test these things out more reliably.

PowerBottom.5796:

3) Bunker-Ele: First of all, I have no Idea why ppl think that the only viable option to play Ele in sPvP/tPvP is Bunker-Ele, secondly, the Staff-Ele isn’t a Bunker-Char, it’s a support Char. If u wanna Bunker with ele, go for S/D, cuz you’ll need the Extra Armor from Rock Barrier. And the true Bunker Ele got a HUGE buff: Obsidian Focus now applies to Stone Shards! This means that on the biggest Spam-ability on the Bunker-Ele, which he has in the Earth Attunement (+90 toughness), he’ll get an additional 170 armor. This is huge and IMHO, makes up for the Healing lost on soothing wave. Besides that, Ether renewal (which works with Obsidian Focus as well), has become a viable option. If a player can watch out for interrupts and time it well, the healing output and condi-remove is just insane.

The lower rank of viable elementalist major traits starts at about 225 average stat points worths. Obsidian Focus gives 170 conditional stat points. Only a total noob would even consider that trait.

@Powerbottom, the changes weren’t miniscule because of design philosophy. They were that way because they don’t have the resources to make the changes in a shorter time frame.

I completely agree, guys it’s ridiculous, I’m a Hunter and dude, I got backstabbed 8k? What the hell?

Could you explain why you thought the game was more fun before this patch? Coming from a purely tournament perspective, the meta we saw before yesterday was absolute garbage. From what it was originally, the power of bunkers and portals was utilized by everybody. Fights were often 4v4+ and lasted entirely too long and really just turned into glorified button spamming. Contesting Foefire’s Graveyard and other mids took the majority of the match.

While other bugs got introduced, they aren’t as game breaking as Svanir glitching or block bug. There really wasn’t a need for high mobility or real strategy. In my opinion, the patch brought these types of things back in line, we’re potentially back to the high rotation, high communication, high coordination meta.

demonstrative.9176:

Could you explain why you thought the game was more fun before this patch? Coming from a purely tournament perspective, the meta we saw before yesterday was absolute garbage. From what it was originally, the power of bunkers and portals was utilized by everybody. Fights were often 4v4+ and lasted entirely too long and really just turned into glorified button spamming. Contesting Foefire’s Graveyard and other mids took the majority of the match.

While other bugs got introduced, they aren’t as game breaking as Svanir glitching or block bug. There really wasn’t a need for high mobility or real strategy. In my opinion, the patch brought these types of things back in line, we’re potentially back to the high rotation, high communication, high coordination meta.

This

I laugh when people say you used dancing dagger as a team fight. You only used DD in teamfights because it was bugged. Your 4k crit on a glass cannon could crit for 14k on the 4th hit. It increased in damage exponentially and only ate 1 charge of Sin Signet. Not to mention it was a projectile, which would miss half the time if someone was strafing.

If you wanted teamfight AoE you used shortbow. Cluster bomb hits more people, does more damage, you have an AoE poison that lasts for 10+ seconds, and any blast finishers apply weakness. Not to mention you could do this all from range and not have to risk a random swap/focus without being able to see it coming from a mile away.

The whole mesmer fix was entirely needed. They were the ONLY class in the game that didn’t play by the rules.
Every other class needed LOS. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blinded. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blocked. Not mesmers.
It was a complete fire and forget class. Now the mesmer has to actually pay attention. Any well-timed dodges/blocks will shut down a shatter mesmer. It’s going to be much more difficult to get off a shatter combo outside of spamming dodge for illusions.

But let’s talk about the biggest change. You can no longer DS Moa. Why? Because in ANets mind Mesmers would go “Oh watch out! That Necro is in DS! Holy crap I need to MOA him now and stop his massive damage output!”.

In my opinion you’re wrong. They revitalized PvP and gave new life to tpvp meta. All the serious pvpers know so. They did kill some extremely cheesy builds.

Non subscription based game it does not matter if the masses like the pvp or not. As if I get tired of it and cancel my sub well there is not a sub. Im a part of the masses. Esports would be the only way for Anet to make money off of pvp. So expect no love unless it will improve their esport dream. But if I were Anet I wouldnt care about me either. I dont watch esport and never will so am not exposed to the advertising. I am of no use to their bottom line and am not part of their target audience. I get it. Really the new hotjoin map is another capture the point? What are these points and why do I care about them?

Even with some things I dont prefer I still have some fun. Impossible to please everyone in every area. Enjoy your esport and best wishes Anet.

Guardians w/o mace bug + svanir runes can be taken down 100 x faster than it was before so now guardians will be harder to kill than other proffesions, but calling them bunkers… nah bros. (They have got the lowest HP base in game)
Elementalist bunker staff, finally nerfed.
Now those randomly using skills ele’s will have to l2p actually. Treb cant be takend down with meteor shower on tanky builds that’s good.
Thiefs: -50% dancing daggers, guys open your eyes.
That skill could hit 3 times and hit 2/3 of backstab dmg, lets count: it used to hit twice backstab dmg. If you play w/o using any defensive strategy, or escape mechanism, dont be suprised that theif can take you out. You just play bad.

The bad thing is QP ranking, because u never lose your QP, so the player who plays more, can earn more.
My team is casual, we still got 15 QP, because we play good, but we can’t play every day for 4h+ so we will never catch up even if we beat the top teams.

Air rune -25% sure sir: it will hit now much less in whole game. Every 10 seconds you lose 25% of burst you used to have. Whole game is 15 min, do the math.

Arena.net cant buff you guys they strive for perfect balance. I’m former closed beta player of league of legends, there was “jax” then “mr. yi” OP, but they did the nerfs, not instantly, but after long time this game came up to something. So will GW 2 do, because I like this game much more than i used to like League of Legends.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V my post from other topic, it will fit well here.

Just because you can’t take on a particular build 1vs1 doesn’t mean the game is unbalanced. These builds cater to a specific type of play style and are easily defeated by not playing them at their own game. The spike counter is easy… don’t stand still. The bunker counter is just as easy – go around them, not through them.

I have had a LOT of success running around in sPvP and WvW with a ranger/spirit build using sword/torch and short bow and a ranger/traps build post patch.

Spirits are awesome if you intend to run around with the main zerg, whereas traps work better for going out objective capping with a partner.

In general I walk away with multiple top awards per map in sPvP, simply through intelligent play while using badly optimized builds. I don’t consider myself to be particularly good, yet this is a consistent result.

Don’t play the players, play the map.

Daays.4317:

The whole mesmer fix was entirely needed. They were the ONLY class in the game that didn’t play by the rules.
Every other class needed LOS. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blinded. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blocked. Not mesmers.
It was a complete fire and forget class. Now the mesmer has to actually pay attention. Any well-timed dodges/blocks will shut down a shatter mesmer. It’s going to be much more difficult to get off a shatter combo outside of spamming dodge for illusions.

.

you serious? ever seen a elementalist miss his “fire storm” because of line of sight or because he was blinded?

If anything they need to nerf rogues damage so you actually can be a “tank” instead of getting 2 shot like everyone else.

Instead they nerf reflects and protection for guardians, so thieves have it even easier.

khadorian.6417:

Daays.4317:

The whole mesmer fix was entirely needed. They were the ONLY class in the game that didn’t play by the rules.
Every other class needed LOS. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blinded. Not mesmers.
Every other class could be blocked. Not mesmers.
It was a complete fire and forget class. Now the mesmer has to actually pay attention. Any well-timed dodges/blocks will shut down a shatter mesmer. It’s going to be much more difficult to get off a shatter combo outside of spamming dodge for illusions.

.

you serious? ever seen a elementalist miss his “fire storm” because of line of sight or because he was blinded?

Ever seen a mesmer miss his portal because he was blinded?? Ground targeted aoes are ground targeted.

khadorian.6417:

I use the pets as my fire storm since thats what i got, and now i dont even have that since it will fail to do anything.

Mesmer phantasms aren’t a ground AoE. If so, then they should never move past their cast point and only attack players within a 240 radius like every other ground AoE in the game.

No. They’re targeted. And all targeted abilities could be blocked/blinded/dodged and required LoS. Except Mesmers. Now they do. It’s a great fix to stop the fire & forget mechanics of the class.

Don’t ever compare phantasms to ground targeted AoE. They aren’t even close.

So basically your saying mesmers should not do wvw if they dont have full condition spec,,

Chaos storm and staff is totally useless otherwise.

Now that they reduced the HP on downed players it’s hard to rez your allies, even with skills like Elixir R. You can DPS way more than you can rez, it’s not even necessary to stomp anymore since you can destroy downed players faster than before.

The patch definitely improved PvP, even if some players don’t think it went far enough. Balance is a razor’s edge proposition though, so better to do too little than too much.

The real issue is that the current players are impatient about the promised PvP features. But that’s life. More players will leave because it takes a long time to roll these features out, but players will return once they are actually launched. There might be a handful of players who have moved on or refuse to return and relearn the game, but you can expect the PvP population to grow once sPvP is actually feature ready.

The change to c&d while leaving backstab and mug intact is proof positive the devs who do class balance have no clue. They took the least problematic part of the 3 ability combo and nerfed it for some completely inexplicable reason while leaving the two problematic parts untouched.

Yukishiro.8792:

The change to c&d while leaving backstab and mug intact is proof positive the devs who do class balance have no clue. They took the least problematic part of the 3 ability combo and nerfed it for some completely inexplicable reason while leaving the two problematic parts untouched.

The whole point of the rogue is to be able to generate opening burst from stealth. They can’t just take the whole thing away from them.

Honestly, I didn’t have one issue with BS last night. I ate a couple when they surprised me, but it wasn’t instagib like it used to be. Same with Trick Shot and Dancing Dagger.

Thieves are far more manageable now. Devs are getting it right so far.

Guys, please. There are 9000 much weaker thief builds that are not backstab instagibbers. And they got hit by cnd nerf much more than backstab did.

they did’nt kill it, they just did’nt bother fixing it,
they nerfed random things, and buffed random things.

ehtom.5047:

Before this patch my opinion of PvP in this game was that it is fairly fun but quite imbalanced compared to other PvP based games I play (DotA). So rather than playing lots of PvP in its frankly, broken form (lolol airrune or thief ability hitting for half my hp) I decided to play the PvE content and WvW while waiting for things to be fixed.

The last two patches have convinced me that you do not know how to balance this game properly and that it will always have terrible balance. Among other things (these just stand out as especially bad):

- Everyone said thief burst is ridiculous, backstab untouched, mug untouched. Only CnD got a token nerf. Nerf daze instead. Force every thief to play backstab lol.
- Everyone uses bunker guardians in tpvp, you nerf staff ele.
- Air rune 25% damage nerf is a complete joke. The problem is that it can crit and scales with your abilities. Lets nerf protection instead, so that you definately get 1shot.
- Shatter burst is the same, but phantasms nerfed into buggy oblivion. Newsflash: nobody played phantasm even before you started nerfing it 3 patches ago. Side effect is that mesmer in WvW now has nothing to do in a siege. They are a portal-bot now.

I imagine that before this patch many people were like me and very much on the fence about if this game will become an esport. I’m fairly certain that most if not all of these people will now have decided that gw2 is basically a PvE only game and will play whatever game they usually play when they want to play PvP.

P.S. I know alot of replies to this will be “blablabla you’re a noob you dont understand pr0 balance” or whatever. Here’s a screenshot of me playing in a game that had more viewers than the entirety of gw2 and is me solo queuing and getting matched with professional players: http://i.imgur.com/0ZpuK.jpg.

My main is a mesmer, my favorite current toon is an elementalist.

Theif burst: air rune damage nerf (80-100% crit is a reasonable assumption on their initial burst), c&d damage nerf, stealth rendering nerf = less damage, greater ability to avoid effects. Small steps lest we alianate 1/8th of the community (1/4 of the pvp community).

Phantasms: These were strong and often complained about for good reason. They fixed a trait bug which, left without a new counter balance, would have made a really good thing way too really good. It is a shift, maybe it tests to be too much and they adjust, maybe it is right, maybe it is not enough. LOS and defendability were bugs mate. This is a game based around out playing your opponent. If he has no way to counter your attacks how are you out playing him?

Esport: Countering your enemy as he acts is what differentiates a pvp game from the masses. These adjustments definately push us further in that direction.

And although you did not touch on it, it has been mentioned several times on these forums…

Bunker: Yea a nerf to healing is a detriment to bunker builds. Once again small steps. The two most offensive bunker classes, guardian and elementalist, took the largest hit on the healing front.

Wow, what a great topic. I really hope the devs read this; its just one of the most well informed and thought-out collection of responses I have seen on these forums.

I was going to write up my own thing, but after reading everyone’s response…. Yes, I agree with most of those things =P

khadorian.6417:

portal is not a aoe damage skill. like a mesmer pet is or are to us.

Neither is it ground targetted. But I don’t suppose we should let facts in the way of a good mesmer-hate rant. They never stop arenanet from basing their nerfs on it

The biggest joke is that the vast majority of these changes don’t affect WvW.

Ryuujin.8236:

khadorian.6417:

portal is not a aoe damage skill. like a mesmer pet is or are to us.

Neither is it ground targetted. But I don’t suppose we should let facts in the way of a good mesmer-hate rant. They never stop arenanet from basing their nerfs on it

Who cares if Mesmers are OP anyway, the only reason half the people in 8v8 play Mesmers and Thieves is because invis spamming and driving people insane with clones are actually fun to do in pvp. They need to concentrate on a less board to tears approach to pvp, it doesn’t matter if all the boring as hell to play classes are perfectly balanced if you have the most boring pvp on earth. Christ can we do something other than Zerg dps.

Bombul.2506:

Theif burst: air rune damage nerf (80-100% crit is a reasonable assumption on their initial burst), c&d damage nerf, stealth rendering nerf = less damage, greater ability to avoid effects. Small steps lest we alianate 1/8th of the community (1/4 of the pvp community).

Phantasms: These were strong and often complained about for good reason. They fixed a trait bug which, left without a new counter balance, would have made a really good thing way too really good. It is a shift, maybe it tests to be too much and they adjust, maybe it is right, maybe it is not enough. LOS and defendability were bugs mate. This is a game based around out playing your opponent. If he has no way to counter your attacks how are you out playing him?

Yes, the changes nerfed thief backstab build slightly.

Yes, the phantasm change has nerfed the shatter build slighly.

They also (un-necessarily, imo) annihilated other semi-viable builds, the patch has forced every thief to play backstab, every mesmer to play shatter. Instead of nerfing the things which were central to those builds they nerfed them by nerfing everything else about the class. Furthermore in the case of mesmer the changes were clearly done without any regard for WvW – mesmer is a portal bot there and has absolutely nothing to do in a siege.

P.S. before this patch you could los/dodge/invuln the phantasm’s actual attack. It was not unavoidable damage like you are suggesting. Now, however, you have 2 changes to dodge/block/invuln the damage.

Rhydian.5412:

Ryuujin.8236:

khadorian.6417:

portal is not a aoe damage skill. like a mesmer pet is or are to us.

Neither is it ground targetted. But I don’t suppose we should let facts in the way of a good mesmer-hate rant. They never stop arenanet from basing their nerfs on it

Who cares if Mesmers are OP anyway, the only reason half the people in 8v8 play Mesmers and Thieves is because invis spamming and driving people insane with clones are actually fun to do in pvp. They need to concentrate on a less board to tears approach to pvp, it doesn’t matter if all the boring as hell to play classes are perfectly balanced if you have the most boring pvp on earth. Christ can we do something other than Zerg dps.

Cool, let’s leave the OP classes alone because it’s fun for them to roll the others…

GlockworK.2954:

samo.1054:

Pray.9751:

i didn’t read anything about stealth rendering? so i guess that is still in the game besides promises otherwise

As far as I heard, people say it’s fixed.

Eh… I’m still backstabbing fools in PvP while they are just standing there or running around freaking out because they can’t see me.

I honestly don’t think it’s been completely fixed. If only we had duels so that we could test these things out more reliably.

I think you gave yourself the answer why there is no duel option .)

Asmodean.5820:

GlockworK.2954:

samo.1054:

Pray.9751:

i didn’t read anything about stealth rendering? so i guess that is still in the game besides promises otherwise

As far as I heard, people say it’s fixed.

Eh… I’m still backstabbing fools in PvP while they are just standing there or running around freaking out because they can’t see me.

I honestly don’t think it’s been completely fixed. If only we had duels so that we could test these things out more reliably.

I think you gave yourself the answer why there is no duel option .)

Haha, wait… i think you REALLY gave the answer why there is no duel option

Lol, in one thread you’ve got people saying this patch wasn’t enough.

Thieves still do too much damage, Ele / Guardian bunkers are still too tanky etc etc

Then in a bunch of other threads Thieves are complaining that they aren’t competitive anymore and are gonna re-roll as Warriors.

Guardian and Ele bunker say they were nerfed too harshly and they can’t play now.

Seriously guys, how would the devs possible balance this and satisfy all of you?
You can’t possibly be satisfied with such polar and selfish viewpoints.

You act like two squabbling children saying “He did it! No, he did it” A Parent wouldn’t take sides they would just tell you to shut up and frankly most people need to with these daft hyperbole thread titles like YOU KILLED PVP WITH THIS PATCH.

The devs collect HUGE amounts of data on what everyone is doing and how it impacts things, tiny changes can make a big impact when considered fully, hence the nature of their changes. (Thank god most of our loud forum posters are not in charge of balance).

Ele and Guardian bunker specs just lost 25% of their self healing with two heal ratio nerfs (and by extension, possibly up to 50% of group healing), that’s a significant change, and perhaps you should go and play and see the difference for yourself.

We could kill bunkers before and now it’s easier.
Perhaps some people need to try some different tactics, a little more than faceroll the damage buttons and complain that the bunker didn’t die all over the forums.

Liewec.2896:

they did’nt kill it, they just did’nt bother fixing it,
they nerfed random things, and buffed random things.

If these changes seem random to you, then maybe we weren’t playing the same game.

milo.6942:

Liewec.2896:

they did’nt kill it, they just did’nt bother fixing it,
they nerfed random things, and buffed random things.

If these changes seem random to you, then maybe we weren’t playing the same game.

you mean the game where thieves have been one shotting people for months and the “fix” is a Scorpion Wire nerf? while mug/backstab/heartseeker stay exactly the same.
because everyone knows Scorpion Wire was the thing that was OP about the thief…
you’re right, we must have been playing different games if Scorpion Wire was the thing causing grief in your game.

Bads get one-shot by thieves. You only undermine your credibility by acting like they cut through you like paper. Maybe you really are made of paper and should revisit your stats. Or do what I do and maintain a field of awareness such that you’re prepared for a thief burst. I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how else to help all the thief cry babies. What would you prefer then? That thieves burst on you and you don’t have to concern yourself with defense? That any spec you feel like running is a viable one? That is the dream of bads — to play any way their heart desires and expect that their opponents are equally clueless.

SPVP (or TPVP) consists of Thieves, Guardians, warriors, and Mesmers. You see a few well played rangers, and necros around, but let’s face it, ANET has created a 4 class war pvp system. That is one huge factor with pvp being boring and underwhelming. The fights are always the same, because the same class combinations are up. There is no balanced, and the classes that are played the most are the most powerful classes with regard to class balance and utility.

My suggestion is for ANET to take some of the income, hire some kitten developers that have knowledge of the other classes that are hardly played, and get some kitten balance. Stop inputing new content and fix your classes. 3 months after release and your having to put in new content because your game model is failing. You have a high attrition/low retention rate because the more pvp oriented players want more variety and better balance. All your drawing is pve casual gamers, and to be honest I dont see your gem sales going up with casual gamers.

You really need to take a look at your model.

IMO the latest patch has moved the game closer to balance – small nerf to bunkers, small nerf to burst. 5v5 hotjoin awesome. Keep it up anet.

Just thought I would throw this in there since it wasn’t mentioned. The problem with the steal/backstab/heartseeker builds isn’t backstab or heartseeker. It’s the part most people forget to mention which is Cloak and Dagger.

So your a thief running around, you see a target, pop your Basilisk Venom and Assassin Signet and then one of your 3 stealth abilities, all while lining up behind them.
At a distance you begin to cast Cloak and Dagger then immediately hit Steal.

Steal teleports you to your target, hits heavy armor for about 1.7k, and AT THE SAME TIME C&D goes off for 2.5k , makes you invisible and your Basilisk Venom turns your target to stone. Now, instead of being able to just roll away, your target has to hit his cc break button before he can roll and in the time it took him to do that you have Back Stabbed for 6k+. At this point even if your Heavy Armor target rolls away, Heart Seeker leaps to him for another 5k+ dmg.

(edit: was running around on my warrior after posting this, got hit for 4k by steal and 5k by c&d. ouch. the numbers I was posting were from me messing around on my rogue against pvp target dummies. apparently the numbers are larger when you’re a thief who knows what he’s doing XD )

Again, the problem is that casting Steal does not break your Cloak and Dagger cast timer and instead ports you in range for it to go off uninterrupted.

The drawbacks to this build are it doesn’t really bring anything to a team other than you can instagib light armors, and some glass cannon builds every 45sec. Most Bunker builds won’t be worried by this build.

Even after you’ve blown your cool down wad, you still have 2 vanishes to mess with and deal damage to players, but you don’t bring a lot of utility, which is why it’s a problem in random pick up matches but not in tplay.

If you make it so casting Steal breaks the casting time of Cloak and Dagger, that build will go away.

Just a thought.