Guild Wars 2

Tbh, it’s a bit of a storm in a teacup scenario. The balance in this game is more than fine and actually quite commendable.

Lack of features and infrastructure has been its undoing since day one, not balance.

100% agree with the idea…PVP and PVE/WvW are already taking place in totally different areas/instances, in disconect with one another. Tweaking with the classes separately, to achieve desired ends in both PVP/PVE seems like a logical idea. I see no reason why this wasn’t done from the very beggining.

Things am most curious about:

1) Why did they, bar for a handful of random exceptions, abandon the pve-pvp balance split (ala GW1 approach).

2) Why did they NOT replace 8-team premades with 2-team premades, and have instead implemented what we know as the solo que farming 2-team ‘free tournaments’ featuring super serial esportz wanna-be premades on voice chat rolling over groups of random players, or dual/tripple queuers at best. I am MOST certain the imaginary ratings that we cannot yet behold (lollerskates) will make for spectacular and most credible of player ratings known to ‘competitive’ games. Whose spectacular idea was it, for the love of meow, to use the one-size-fits-all approach for this? Are you meow kitten purr woof woof crazy?

Dear Anet, you once said you took ‘the best’ from GW. SINCE WHEN WERE PETS, RUNNERS AND WAMMOS THE BEST THING ABOUT GW? Did you ever even set foot in a GW pvp arena?

P.S. What did you do with my ‘What pvp needs most atm’ thread? Huuuh?

Valkyriez.6578:

Lack of features and infrastructure has been its undoing since day one, not balance.

I agree with this. My impression was always that between dodging and superior awareness/experience the better players tend to win. Of course this doesn’t apply when 10 good players are in the same match, but I’d imagine everyone with the aforementioned perception of balance hasn’t had too much / any experience with high tier premade vs high tier premade – let’s be honest, there aren’t that many high tier players.

That said, it’s obvious that pve and wvw considerations for pvp don’t make sense. The master nerd pvers still run 4 warriors and one guardian for their dungeon farms, does this mean that warriors will be nerfed further? Let’s hope not.

If nothing else, numbers can be changed for pvp only. Wvw already has consumables + ascended items which results in far greater stats than pvp already, so it really doesn’t make a difference. Maybe that approach doesn’t work for everything, but reducing things here and there can be bandaids for balance until they decide they’ve found a good rework. What would the big deal be in making frenzy deal slightly less damage and 100b casting slightly faster in pvp? Nobody would notice.

Another 100% agree. The good thing is Anet only has to deal with 8 classes. Three different gamestyles = 24 classes need balancing. Many of them only need tweaks.

The first company that realizes and balances accordingly will have much success.

+1 Ostrich.

my suggestion is to have a custom tooltip on abilities that are split between PvE/WvW & PvP, & show both tooltips ( similar to how you show weapon combo steps on mouseover, but with clearly marked Headers, like PvE/WvW would be in bold blue at the top & PvP would be bold red ). then you can add a checkbox in options to let a player only show PvE/WvW tooltips or PvP tooltips.

so by default all players would have clear information that abilities function differently in different game modes, & they can customize the UI to suit their style of play.

balancing across gametypes is every bit as complicated as balancing for dual class spec options.

eg. ppl have no problems bringing 4 warriors to a fractal, but there are problems bringing 1 warrior to tPvP. this is perfect evidence of a lack of balance that exists due to these gametypes being tied together. something that works in PvE, simply won’t work in PvP.

so, while players have the choice to bring any traits, weapons & utilities they want, the choices are artificially reduced by the game design requiring 1 pool of abilities to apply to 3 different game types. if Ability A is great for PvE but useless in PvP, then Ability A may as well not even exist in the game for a PvP player.

this brings us to where we are now, which is that people feel corralled into playing a very small selection of specs because many of the abilities available to us simply are not viable for our mode of play ( while they may be perfectly viable elsewhere ).

Blizzard addressed this in Warcraft by stating that as long as 1 spec for each class was viable, they didn’t care. do you, ANet, agree with this philosophy?

Valkyriez.6578:

Tbh, it’s a bit of a storm in a teacup scenario. The balance in this game is more than fine and actually quite commendable.

Lack of features and infrastructure has been its undoing since day one, not balance.

I agree with the lack of infrastructure, also in my opinion in this mmorpg the class balance is by far better in comparison to any others that I have played (aion, l2, wow). Also I do not think that so many people think balance is off to this or that class, in my opinion major concern is viability – this game was advertised as any class can be played in any way, so that makes it sound that thief bunker should be as viable as ele, but currently it is not what we are seeing.

P.S. But splitting PvP and PvE would have only benefits in easing the workload for developers, so I have no idea why to they want to keep juggling 3 different things.

I think it was a mistake not to split the game into 3 components — wvwvw, pve, Pvp, resources and balancing can be split equally. I know many wvwers would never choose to pve if they had a choice, pve players who never pvp and same goes for the other groups of players.

seriously are they thinking that you can balance a profession in pve and pvp and wvw at the same time? I really think that first that you must do is divide pvp from pve

I’d like to add to this conversation. This is a point I agree with 100%.

The main argument the dev’s have offered for not doing this is a consistent player experience. They want players to be able to make the switch from pve to pvp as seamlessly as possible. Ok I get that but I think there is another point to consider.

What needs to be consistent is the MECHANIC of the ability, not its power. A player going from pve to pvp and noticing different heal values on his tooltip wont be confused by this. In fact, its likely to occur even if the skills mirror each other exactly, due to the fact that pve itemization is likely to be different than pvp.

Believe me , nobody will be confused by how the same mechanic works, if it produces a different value. That’s easy to learn, and its a bullet arenanet have already bitten on several skill, like clusterbomb and the ele heal.

You can tweak the numbers without confusing players, its only the mechanic that might be confusing.

Even if the mechanics of some skills will differ to a certain extent, I see no problem with this either…no one’s advocating for a full makeover of everything, but take into account that most players have alts, many of them playing different classes quite efficiently. If a player can transition from one class to another, where the mechanics of them are totally different from one another, without the said confusion, then I see absolutely no issue for that player to adjust to minor differences in a class when going from pvp to pve and vice versa, as long as he is aware of the said differences.

100% agree they should split it, vast majority of pvp players dont give a kitten about pve/wvw and vice versa.

I think they realized by now that its’ impossible to balance a game around 3 completely different modes with complete different gearing-possibilities. This will never work, not in a complexe game like that.
And I can promise: We won’t see a good balanced PvP when they refuse to split things between these modes. Seems like in the end this issue will ruin PvP.

Great post Ostricheggs. Unfortunately as long as the Devs continue down this path of folly by refusing to admit that at minimum pvp skills need to be split from pve/wvw things will never improve. The other huge issue is the Devs abandoned dozen of good game types that they had in GW1. Devs when and if you read this than please stop the madness that has already cost you 75% of PVP player base.

Perceived balance issues won’t really be the death toll for PvP IMO. I am in support of lacalized balancing, if it happens but as it stands, I think arena net is doing a bang up job so far on getting it relatively right albeit with some minor hurdles.

The community is much more harmful in balancing arguments than any of arena nets changes could possibly be. What’s imbalanced for one, is always “fine, L2P” for others, who’s opinion is right? Top, middle or low skill players? Who has right of way in balance discussions? What if top players disagree? It’s never easy and alot if it is always self serving to a degree.

I’m personally happy with how it is at the moment all though minor tweaks and bug fixes are welcome. I’ve played a few classes and varying builds on them and have my own opinions, but overall I think the “lack of build variety in tPvP” is a community generated myth. Maybe in the top 1% of skill level it comes down to class and within that class builds, but for the rest of us 99% the build variety is there, it’s just the sheep mentality stopping any progression in the average meta.

Anyway, I still believe 90% of dev effort needs to be focussed into features and infrastructure for competitive play and growth of the game from the ground up. The other 10% can be a balance focus cause realistically that’s all it should take.

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.
Surely it’s not priority one on the list, but it’s a big issue that this game gets boring and predictable.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.
Surely it’s not priority one on the list, but it’s a big issue that this game gets boring and predictable.

It’s the same meta because of the sheep mentality of the community.

Me personally Ive been playing phantasm Mesmer, greatsword dps guardian and axe/mace warrior and enjoying it immensely and that’s in tournaments, not hot join. You choose to play those specs, as good as they are because the rest of the community tells you to and that its the only one that’s viable.

Play the weapons you like the play style of. I prefer control to outright damage and I get that more in my weapon and trait selection. I don’t lose too many games where I think being a different spec would have changed the outcome much.

Valkyriez.6578:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.
Surely it’s not priority one on the list, but it’s a big issue that this game gets boring and predictable.

It’s the same meta because of the sheep mentality of the community.

Me personally Ive been playing phantasm Mesmer, greatsword dps guardian and axe/mace warrior and enjoying it immensely and that’s in tournaments, not hot join. You choose to play those specs, as good as they are because the rest of the community tells you to and that its the only one that’s viable.

Play the weapons you like the play style of. I prefer control to outright damage and I get that more in my weapon and trait selection. I don’t lose too many games where I think being a different spec would have changed the outcome much.

Actually I prefer to win. Against competitive teams you won’t stand a chance with these “builds”. Ergo: you’re forced to play with these pigeon holded builds.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.

Since the devs changed D/P #3 to not root on hit thieves got a complete new, viable und refreshing playstyle!!!!!

I’ve said this before as well…until they take down this giant barrier which is balancing skills in relation to pvp+pve+wvw, the pvp community is going to remain upset. There is no reason why you should balance pvp like pve…how does that even make any sense? The needs of pve classes and pvp classes are on totally opposite sides.

GW1 was successful and achieved good balance in pvp because pvp was separated from pve’s balance. IT WORKS!

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Valkyriez.6578:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.
Surely it’s not priority one on the list, but it’s a big issue that this game gets boring and predictable.

It’s the same meta because of the sheep mentality of the community.

Me personally Ive been playing phantasm Mesmer, greatsword dps guardian and axe/mace warrior and enjoying it immensely and that’s in tournaments, not hot join. You choose to play those specs, as good as they are because the rest of the community tells you to and that its the only one that’s viable.

Play the weapons you like the play style of. I prefer control to outright damage and I get that more in my weapon and trait selection. I don’t lose too many games where I think being a different spec would have changed the outcome much.

Actually I prefer to win. Against competitive teams you won’t stand a chance with these “builds”. Ergo: you’re forced to play with these pigeon holded builds.

I also prefer to win and solo que tournaments all the time when I play. Admittedly, I run into teams sometimes but that’s a by product of a bad system more often then not.

When we lose those matches, it’s a teamwork and communication issue 99% of the time, not a build issue. Teams beat solo quers because they can coordinate better.

In a team v team environment I can maybe see what you are saying, but I believe that the meta can be broken by players themselves already. Shout guardian? Bring a necro. Little counters like that can turn games. DD Ele? Arcane thievery and Null Field will destroy an Ele that’s getting focussed fired. Sure, that means the Mes can’t run mirror images anymore, and pick between decoy and blink, but it is a choice based system based on trade offs.

Just because the majority either don’t or won’t change to at least attempt to counter do e of the current meta doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s a community issue, not arena nets.

1.) A necro is not a counter to a shout-guardian, it’’s vice-versa. A shout remove 2 conditions (if you run the proper build).

2.) A good mesmer never run decoy/blink/null field/arcane thievery, because his other utilites like IoL and Portal are much much stronger.

In conclusion that means: (team vs. team) you have to focus on these single builds to be competitive enough. SoloQ is a different story.

Valkyriez.6578:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Valkyriez.6578:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Have you realized that we play for over 5 months the same meta? d/d thief, shout-guard, cantrip-ele, nade-engi, shatter-mes, bm-ranger /trap-ranger (wow there are 2 viable builds!!!) sometimes I see a dps-guard. And that’s it.
Surely it’s not priority one on the list, but it’s a big issue that this game gets boring and predictable.

It’s the same meta because of the sheep mentality of the community.

Me personally Ive been playing phantasm Mesmer, greatsword dps guardian and axe/mace warrior and enjoying it immensely and that’s in tournaments, not hot join. You choose to play those specs, as good as they are because the rest of the community tells you to and that its the only one that’s viable.

Play the weapons you like the play style of. I prefer control to outright damage and I get that more in my weapon and trait selection. I don’t lose too many games where I think being a different spec would have changed the outcome much.

Actually I prefer to win. Against competitive teams you won’t stand a chance with these “builds”. Ergo: you’re forced to play with these pigeon holded builds.

I also prefer to win and solo que tournaments all the time when I play. Admittedly, I run into teams sometimes but that’s a by product of a bad system more often then not.

When we lose those matches, it’s a teamwork and communication issue 99% of the time, not a build issue. Teams beat solo quers because they can coordinate better.

In a team v team environment I can maybe see what you are saying, but I believe that the meta can be broken by players themselves already. Shout guardian? Bring a necro. Little counters like that can turn games. DD Ele? Arcane thievery and Null Field will destroy an Ele that’s getting focussed fired. Sure, that means the Mes can’t run mirror images anymore, and pick between decoy and blink, but it is a choice based system based on trade offs.

Just because the majority either don’t or won’t change to at least attempt to counter do e of the current meta doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s a community issue, not arena nets.

The problem with this is that the meta is directly changed and by the devs moreso than any player or team. Eles came into favor when the devs made changes to vapor form and fixed ride the lightning (amongst other things).

Arguing that the meta is mainly influenced by the playerbase and that players just need to “counter” todays meta would be right if not for the fact that most specs are severely hampered by useless utilities/traits.

I have theory crafted every single possible build for the engi and came up with the HgH build. There is no better build for the engi, I can promise. You will not see me running gadgets, turrets, flamethrower, bomb kit or elixir gun because they simply suck in comparison. There is no way to advance the engineer meta at this point because one build is simply incredibly dominant. It’s even worse on other classes. Shatter mesmers FAR outdo mantra, glamour, tanky and phantasm mesmers. Thieves will always have a shortbow and dagger mainhand.

Of course there are incredibly niche builds out there that “counter” certain classes, but sacrificing your own viability against multiple classes to hard counter a particular class is asking a bit too much. It’s possible, but only against extremely specific teams. It’s also very clear to me that arena-net doesn’t want this to happen; you have to log out and log back in to respec now once a tournament pops.

And just so everyone knows it’s not as if the sky is falling. Before the last patch I think that the game was probably the most balanced it has been. Sadly, especially after last patch, multiple classes and a massive number of traits/utilities seem to lag behind. The reluctance to do something about it is getting a bit out of hand 9 months into the game

I didn’t write this wall of text for it to be on the second page, dad gummit!

This is important stuff

And right after Jonathan Sharp said that in your quote i said right below him:

pedrst.3127:

JonathanSharp.7094:

So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker), but a lot of other things are weak in comparison, which is bad.

The goal is to allow them to punish boons (something we also want to try with the Warrior) while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).

As Allie said, we want to be careful to balance their WvW/PvE potential against their PvP potential, and then inside of PvP, we have to be careful to watch how they perform at high ranks vs. low ranks.

Do yourself a favor a split PvP from WvW/PvE.

Thief will still be the thief, the class will not change, but some values should in order to balance out PvP. It will not be a big impact for people who come out of WvW/PvE into PvP… the mechanic is the same, just some values and %s should be different.

Same for other classes… this is a very friendly advice that will make your work at least 2x easier..

So yeah.. Totally agree, it’ll make everybody’s life easier and easier to balance it out too.

Everything else in SPvP is already separate from PvE and PvE’s form of PvP (WvW). It is both logical and healthy for the future of SPvP balance that skills be separated between SPvP and PvE.

Varyag.3751:

Everything else in SPvP is already separate from PvE and PvE’s form of PvP (WvW). It is both logical and healthy for the future of SPvP balance that skills be separated between SPvP and PvE.

Yo
Hold on
According to this
Ok
Yo
According to this
We should’ve been getting pve rewards
This whole time
!

One of the prime examples to me now is the Quickness update.
Certainly, it needed a fix in sPvP.
Certainly, the Mesmer’s elite skill could do with a little balancing. Thief, Ranger, Warrior; same difference.

But the way they now halved Quickness’ potential all throughout all of the game, rather than just tweaking it in the places where it actually had to be fixed… that seems a little unnecessary.

Speaking of splitting PvE and PvP skill editions: the original Guild Wars went through years and years of skills getting buffs and nerfs before someone chose to set the two types apart. By the time they did, it was somewhat too late, and a lot of skills were never restored to their former glory.

I hope that if they decide to perform the split and fix here, they go through all their old skill versions to restore whatever has been broken in PvE to aid PvP, and vice versa.

Aren’t they already doing this?

There have been a fair number of balance changes for professions that have been sPVP only.

Not quite. My quote by John Sharp himself shows their reluctance to do it.

The only real splits that come to mind is the changes to boon duration runes and save yourselves, the guardian shout that gives most boons in the game.

I wholeheartedly agree. Confusion being what it is in WvW is a bit stupid, and several skills & traits (and a class or two) are complete garbage in PvE, all of it culminates to them either being lazy with design choices, or reluctant to confuse more casual players (who, by the way, probably won’t ever touch sPvP anyway bar the fast travel to LA).

They’re not gonna do it, especially at this point.

PvP is worth more to Anet as a tack-on side-game for the PvE players than it is as a stand-alone mode for the small remaining PvP player base.

People say pvp just doesn’t make any money, so that’s why they’ll never alienate the PvE player base by making separate skill sets, and I totally agree, but isn’t PvP what made GuildWars famous in the first place? Sad

The long and short of it is, they knew PvPers were gonna flock to this game no matter what, so they sank most of their investment money into the PvE side. Unfortunately, they put in way too many wild, unchecked abilities (condition spam, a.i. spam, stealth spam, retaliation, the moa ability, rtl, downed states, ect…) for PvP to ever be balanced fairly, and they’re not gonna remove them just to please the small PvP audience.

They’ve basically got all the money they can get out of us with that initial $60. Whats left is the kabuki theater of SOTG, where carrots are dangled in front of our faces to keep us hanging on till the next expansion.

I completely agree with the OP.

Devs have been telling us since day 1 that they want to avoid splitting skills for PvP and PvE/WvW because of new people on PvP will get overwhelmed with the same skills they use in PvE/WvW are different in PvP.
The problem is if they continue in this way…. there won’t be any new players for PvP because it’s already dead.

The solution? One could be that when the first time a character goes to the mists, show a window, an alert or something else that skills have changed their functionality for PvP.
I don’t think people will become very overwhelmed with those changes. They already have their weapons fixed skills for newcomers, a limited amount of utility skills for the same reason and only one PvP mode. Do you really think it isn’t enough? Are you making the game for 5yo kids? Because every problem with PvP I see in this game is because of trying to not overwhelm newcomers.

Master Charles.7093:

They’re not gonna do it, especially at this point.

PvP is worth more to Anet as a tack-on side-game for the PvE players than it is as a stand-alone mode for the small remaining PvP player base.

People say pvp just doesn’t make any money, so that’s why they’ll never alienate the PvE player base by making separate skill sets, and I totally agree, but isn’t PvP what made GuildWars famous in the first place? Sad

The long and short of it is, they knew PvPers were gonna flock to this game no matter what, so they sank most of their investment money into the PvE side. Unfortunately, they put in way too many wild, unchecked abilities (condition spam, a.i. spam, stealth spam, retaliation, the moa ability, rtl, downed states, ect…) for PvP to ever be balanced fairly, and they’re not gonna remove them just to please the small PvP audience.

They’ve basically got all the money they can get out of us with that initial $60. Whats left is the kabuki theater of SOTG, where carrots are dangled in front of our faces to keep us hanging on till the next expansion.

I agree with the fact that Pv kitten idelined to PvE for good reason, but I would argue that this is the easiest thing for them to do at this point. They were hemorrhaging players by the time they released 2 new maps, something far harder than simply balancing the game. All they need to do is change a few numbers here and there and suddenly they’ve got the base for actually improving PvP in meaningful ways if they ever choose to do it. If they choose to not invest in PvP then the LEAST they can do is actually make the current and dwindling player base happy.

Again, balance is by far the easiest way to improve SPvP. Their reluctance to actually dive in and make changes is unjustifiable under any scope. My only answer as to why they haven’t is that they’re either too stupid or only have one team under orders to balance both PvP and PvE under the same umbrella. If that’s the case then at least man up and admit it.

In my opinion, the devs are doing the right thing about having as few skill splits as possible. And it’s good to know that all the skill splits so far have been separated by number changes only.

In GW1, there was a crazy, unnecessary number of skill splits. Pvp splits that were still pointless in pvp, pve splits that were still pointess in pve, and even skills that were radically different depending on their format. To give one example, Signet of Spirits summons 3 spirits in pve, but for pvp it is an energy management skill instead. Outside of sharing the same name, they are pretty much two different skills that are locked to each mode. It’s ridiculous.

There are changes that can be done, that would nerf or buff a skill more in a format than in the other, due to the nature of how both formats work. It is possible to make skills balanced in both formats without skill splitting, and only when that is not possible, is that splits should be made. For example, confusion is splitted because enemies in pve attack at a much slower pace. It’s impossible to balance confusion without a split, or without a radical and unrealistic change to how pve enemies work.

Spvp was a failed experiment, at this point its best for them to ignore it and focus on pve and WVWVW.
Introduce new wvwvw maps, introduce Arena and Deathmatch, but not in heart of the mists.. use Tyria instead, let us use our REAL characters! The ones we actually leveled and grew fond of…. I hate logging into the mists and all my character’s exotics are gone… thats not my character and I dont want to play him.

DiogoSilva.7089:

In my opinion, the devs are doing the right thing about having as few skill splits as possible. And it’s good to know that all the skill splits so far have been separated by number changes only.

Then why doesn’t 100b have a slightly faster cast time in pvp only and frenzy do slightly less increased damage to self? They nerfed something without compensating, even if what I suggested would be a temporary fix until they achieve their vision for the warrior.

aaron.7850:

I hate logging into the mists and all my character’s exotics are gone… thats not my character and I dont want to play him.

Gear standardization is the best thing that happened in spvp. Rewards being littered at random throughout the ranks is a different issue.

DiogoSilva.7089:

In GW1, there was a crazy, unnecessary number of skill splits. Pvp splits that were still pointless in pvp, pve splits that were still pointess in pve, and even skills that were radically different depending on their format. To give one example, Signet of Spirits summons 3 spirits in pve, but for pvp it is an energy management skill instead. Outside of sharing the same name, they are pretty much two different skills that are locked to each mode. It’s ridiculous.

Bad splitting is a whole, other, story.

Splitting is necessary, in this game splitting is ABSOLUTELY NEEDED and needs to be done a lot more than how it’s done currently.

Classes like the war/thief/mesmer ( guess what, those with the smallest number of viable builds) are held down by them being too stronk in PvE or WvW where they have much more viable builds and /or are extremely powerful.

DEVS SAID IT CLEARLY.

This is ridicolous and needs to stop asap.

i would not mind if PvP skills/traits/u-skills were COMPLETELY different from PvE ones, because i want the game to be as balanced/competitive as possible.

They won’t do it and i’m fine with it, but then we need a mid ground ( split some traits, some utilities as well as buffing all this uselessness that is , guess what, a good 50/60 & of all professions aside maybe the guardian and the ele).

You can split perfectly without smiter’s booning.

The only thing i can ask for from devs is:

L2split.

Balance isn’t the reason people are leaving. So while I agree splitting more stuff from pve and wvwvw is a good idea it’s far down on the list of important things.

People are leaving cause there isn’t a real “competition”, actually spvpers can just farm rank points, but is true some classes are too OP like ele bunker and beastmaster.

In AN defense GW1 skill splitting happened years down the line. Originally it was one continuous game. I think that is just their company philosophy. Not that it is good or bad one way or the other, it is just what they like to do.

IMO, I think it is the food and the trait system that make the game hard to balance. Adds way too many variables to the mix.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

1.) A necro is not a counter to a shout-guardian, it’’s vice-versa. A shout remove 2 conditions (if you run the proper build).

2.) A good mesmer never run decoy/blink/null field/arcane thievery, because his other utilites like IoL and Portal are much much stronger.

In conclusion that means: (team vs. team) you have to focus on these single builds to be competitive enough. SoloQ is a different story.

Honestly mesmer IOL isn’t as strong as signet of undeath, battle standard, or signet of mercy… I say this because those three fully res a player no matter what… You also have ranger search and rescue which while not as instant is still pretty darn good… And a shatter mes is more powerful at removing boons than null field because getting out of the AOE is pretty easy… Shatter skills removing a boon on hit is much faster and more effecient at removing boons than null field.

Phantaram.1265:

Balance isn’t the reason people are leaving. So while I agree splitting more stuff from pve and wvwvw is a good idea it’s far down on the list of important things.

You’ll see, now that leaderboards are up and it is going to be easier to spot cheese comps, how many people will leave due to balance being so bad.

And i wonder how much PvP population is going to grow now that there are no more macro thieves killing rank 2 players in a sec with haste.
( said by a former haste thief who rerolled to signet).

There’s no game out there where the extremes are so wide and strong ( burst and bunker), in this game balance is a quite good portion of people frustration, especially when an ele chases you for the whole map while replenishing his life simply to go back bunkering far point against 3 people ( unless you have a thief+ mesmer or engie).

The only thing i think they need to do is nerf def stat scaling it will fix tpvp wvw but make instances harder that is fine though cause everyone just exploits through them anyway.

It’s hard to believe anything the devs say anymore since most of what they say never happens. Remember when they said aoe damage was too much in there State of the game? and what has happened since then? More skills got changed to do aoe damage.

Phantaram.1265:

Balance isn’t the reason people are leaving. So while I agree splitting more stuff from pve and wvwvw is a good idea it’s far down on the list of important things.

I agree with this, but the problem is that balance is the easiest thing to do with the current state of affairs.

It’s pretty obvious to everyone how PvP has taken a backseat to PvE. All balancing needs is a few changes to numbers and some smart people. To actually implement the things required takes both money and population in-game. I can assume that they don’t have the devs they need to implement the features that would best revive PvP. AKA they don’t have the money for it. I KNOW they don’t have the population for it.

Balance is a simple and effective way to satisfy a dissatisfied playerbase. The cost to effect on player morale as a whole is the greatest IMO. The fact that they’ve barely even stuck their toe in the water over the past 9 months is insane and damages their players faith in the games future.

jportell.2197:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

1.) A necro is not a counter to a shout-guardian, it’’s vice-versa. A shout remove 2 conditions (if you run the proper build).

2.) A good mesmer never run decoy/blink/null field/arcane thievery, because his other utilites like IoL and Portal are much much stronger.

In conclusion that means: (team vs. team) you have to focus on these single builds to be competitive enough. SoloQ is a different story.

Honestly mesmer IOL isn’t as strong as signet of undeath, battle standard, or signet of mercy… I say this because those three fully res a player no matter what… You also have ranger search and rescue which while not as instant is still pretty darn good… And a shatter mes is more powerful at removing boons than null field because getting out of the AOE is pretty easy… Shatter skills removing a boon on hit is much faster and more effecient at removing boons than null field.

You aren’t taking into account the fact that mesmers drop very little for IOL (unlike battle standard and mercy), has the lowest cooldown of all utilities that rez, has the shortest cast time of all utilities that rez (by a LONG shot, it’s easy to interrupt a necro’s signet), AND puts players back into downed state once it wears off. The effect is far exaggerated for these factors and makes it a pretty imbalanced ability ovreall.

The mesmer loses out on either all defense or most of it by taking IOL (if they also have portal that leaves ONE defense utility for either illusions or condi removal.)… yes they go back downed but I was highlighting how there are other classes that can fully res much better than mesmers… And I forgot to mention engineer toss elixir R and ele glyph of renewal… All classes have the ability to res people better than mesmer, mes has the shortest CD because the downside is the stipulation is they have to kill someone to fully res.

That stipulation is minor when you compare it to the length of IOL and how the game works. If there is not chance for them to kill someone they can either portal out or run away and get ressed. Furthermore, cooldowns (like their healing abilities) tick down while they’re in down state. That’s a pretty big factor when someone is IOL’d because the best way to counter it is to rekill that person. Not an easy thing to do against most classes.

Elixir R and the glyph are also far inferior to IOL. The glyph because of its massive cast time (longer than a stomp’s cast time, lol) and elixir R because it can be poisoned to the point of worthlessness and because of the difficulty in bringing elixir R into any build.

It is arguably one of the most important utilities to bring as a mesmer because of its power. The sacrifices they make for it are negligible for how it works. I understand that mirror images is their only stun break in most situations, but energy sigils, perma vigor and distortion make up for it for survivability. Their lack of condi cleanse and their single stun break is their only sacrifice for IOL. It’s barely a sacrifice and that’s why they run it.