Guild Wars 2

I have to admit that it’s rather depressing to read the sPvP forum, over 80% of threads..are based on complaints.

Right now , I believe that both the devs and the community should focus the attention on what is not considered “OP” aka not viable, this is the only possible way to create a healthy environment for old and new players, in my opinion, right now the general atmosphere on these forum is rather…toxic, radioactive I’d say, people seems to be more concerned in suggesting nerfs for other professions than giving buffs suggestions for their own professions.

Despite all the negative comments, we as a community must admit that the last balance patch was a success, we saw the creation of quite few new builds, but this has not changed the number of possible playstyles available to each profession, the options are still limited and this because there are weapon sets on each profession that cannot be considered accomplished, there are entire trait lines that don’t get used at all.

So everybody, let’s find ways to improve what doesn’t work instead than damage what works now, do we want a set of strong builds ( with none overshadowing the others) for each profession or a set of mediocre builds( with some completely unusable) for every profession?

I agree, but you know this happens in every game. The atmosphere on this forum is definitely toxic, that’s true. Every time they buff something and make a new spec viable for a class, the qq on the forumZ starts. I’m not saying the buffs are always good or totally and perfectly balanced, but according to the players posting in the pvp section every class is op except for the one they play/like the most. As a result after one year we still have like 2 (if you are lucky) decent specs for every class.

Idk, both my ele and mesmer have been nerfed to kitten.
Too late to be constructive.

Valneer.3854:

Idk, both my ele and mesmer have been nerfed to kitten.
Too late to be constructive.

IKR. Now I have to level some other kitten until it gets nerfed to pieces too.

You have to level something for sPvP? This is the sPvP forum, so I’m assuming you’re talking about sPvP. Leveling to 2 doesn’t take long.

Also, the problem with a competitive PvP community is that they’re going to look for the top build for every class, then call every build other than that non-viable. In many cases, for the absolute top PvP players, that could be accurate. For the other 95% of us, there are a slew of other builds that you can have fun with that work.

I run a Hammer/GS 0/10/30/10/20 build. I get plenty of kills and have all kinds of fun. I’m not going to win tournaments with it, but if you want to talk about builds that win tournaments, you’re only going to be talking about a very small subset that fills a very specific role.

So in short, I love the idea of trying to improve builds that “don’t work”, but you have to first define your criteria for what makes something viable.

And I haven’t ever seen an official forum for an MMO be anything but mostly toxic. Part of that is probably because more often than not, what pushes someone to provide feedback is a negative reaction to a situation. Hence, complaints out-weighing positive threads.

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

The problem with continually killing builds is that it results in a reverse power creep. I feel that MOST of the classes are in a worse place than they ever have been. On top of that the current condy meta isn’t really what I’d consider to be a happy place. The classes that do fill a role in the current meta fill a very specific role only and nothing is on the horizon to change that. Additionally all of the sPvP Nerfing really upsets the PvE Player base. And as much as I hate to admit it PvE Players are Guild Wars 2.

PC Sales are on the decline. PS4 and X-Box One will be released in a few months. A ton of new and great games are going to be released such as GTAV, BF4, and some heavy hitting MMO’s such as TESO and Wildstar. The buzz around EQ Next is blowing up like Selena Gomez. When the PvE player base dies funding dies which means zero support for sPvP. I hate to beat a dead horse but I don’t think GW2 will ever reach the PvP success in from GW1.

I am not the smartest man in the universe and I don’t have all of the answers but I do know that GW2 is going to have to make some drastic changes to remain competitive and retain/increase market share.

Theplayboy.6417:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

The problem with continually killing builds is that it results in a reverse power creep. I feel that MOST of the classes are in a worse place than they ever have been. On top of that the current condy meta isn’t really what I’d consider to be a happy place. The classes that do fill a role in the current meta fill a very specific role only and nothing is on the horizon to change that. Additionally all of the sPvP Nerfing really upsets the PvE Player base. And as much as I hate to admit it PvE Players are Guild Wars 2.

PC Sales are on the decline. PS4 and X-Box One will be released in a few months. A ton of new and great games are going to be released such as GTAV, BF4, and some heavy hitting MMO’s such as TESO and Wildstar. The buzz around EQ Next is blowing up like Selena Gomez. When the PvE player base dies funding dies which means zero support for sPvP. I hate to beat a dead horse but I don’t think GW2 will ever reach the PvP success in from GW1.

I am not the smartest man in the universe and I don’t have all of the answers but I do know that GW2 is going to have to make some drastic changes to remain competitive and retain/increase market share.

I like how you immediately went defensive with things instead taking the wisdom presented as something to build off of. You should’ve mentioned something about balancing nerfing and buffing, or introducing new mechanics as a form of build creation. You should’ve taken into consideration the fact that yes, continually buffing the lower builds does cause power creep.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

I have to agree. In fact I’d wager that Anet has been trying it’s best to do exactly what OP is saying they should do, and all that’s contributed to the game is adding in a ridiculous amount of cheese to every class, because they had to improve these skills to match the already existing cheese in the game.

The game has been progressively getting worse with every patch because of their irrational fear of nerfing things hard, if they don’t start reversing some of this power creep we’re just going to end up with an unplayable game; people just dying by being grazed by extremely powerful AoEs, the only way to survive this is by spamming evades and invulnerabilities of which there will be plenty of…. These things are already happening on a smaller scale right now.

boosting useless builds is not the answer, they can be made a little bit more viable but more important thing is to also nerfbat some specific things which are clearly stupidly good (i.e. clearly overused, if some class is using weapon x 99% of time there can be something wrong, should be no brainer) but in same time NOT nerfing something else in process.

it is very usual mistake to take easy way and buff something else even more powerful thinking it is the other things are bad not this specific thing being too good. i’ve seen this happen in so many games.

Jzaku.9765:

Anet has been trying it’s best to do exactly what OP is saying they should do, and all that’s contributed to the game is adding in a ridiculous amount of cheese to every class, because they had to improve these skills to match the already existing cheese in the game.

Cogbyrn.7283:

You have to level something for sPvP? This is the sPvP forum, so I’m assuming you’re talking about sPvP. Leveling to 2 doesn’t take long.

Also, the problem with a competitive PvP community is that they’re going to look for the top build for every class, then call every build other than that non-viable. In many cases, for the absolute top PvP players, that could be accurate. For the other 95% of us, there are a slew of other builds that you can have fun with that work.

I run a Hammer/GS 0/10/30/10/20 build. I get plenty of kills and have all kinds of fun. I’m not going to win tournaments with it, but if you want to talk about builds that win tournaments, you’re only going to be talking about a very small subset that fills a very specific role.

So in short, I love the idea of trying to improve builds that “don’t work”, but you have to first define your criteria for what makes something viable.

And I haven’t ever seen an official forum for an MMO be anything but mostly toxic. Part of that is probably because more often than not, what pushes someone to provide feedback is a negative reaction to a situation. Hence, complaints out-weighing positive threads.

Ok yes we should start with defining the criteria of viability for a build/weapon set, on top of my head got these questions for the community.

Should a build be:

1. 1vs1 capable?
2. support?
3. good survivability?
4. A combination of the three above?

For me for example would be 1. and 3. as priorities, for somebody else it may different, we may have different priorities all together, so let’s see what people think in general, after this I believe it’d be easier to identify what is not considered viable and for what reasons

Theplayboy.6417:

The problem with continually killing builds is that it results in a reverse power creep. I feel that MOST of the classes are in a worse place than they ever have been. On top of that the current condy meta isn’t really what I’d consider to be a happy place. The classes that do fill a role in the current meta fill a very specific role only and nothing is on the horizon to change that. Additionally all of the sPvP Nerfing really upsets the PvE Player base. And as much as I hate to admit it PvE Players are Guild Wars 2.

PC Sales are on the decline. PS4 and X-Box One will be released in a few months. A ton of new and great games are going to be released such as GTAV, BF4, and some heavy hitting MMO’s such as TESO and Wildstar. The buzz around EQ Next is blowing up like Selena Gomez. When the PvE player base dies funding dies which means zero support for sPvP. I hate to beat a dead horse but I don’t think GW2 will ever reach the PvP success in from GW1.

I am not the smartest man in the universe and I don’t have all of the answers but I do know that GW2 is going to have to make some drastic changes to remain competitive and retain/increase market share.

You can’t stop the Human Hype Machine. Guild Wars 2 needs to refine its strengths and trust in itself. Making “drastic changes” based on the forum’s subjective opinions is an absolutely terrifyingly huge mistake at this point, and it won’t ever happen.

If you haven’t noticed, buzz about anticipated games does tend to blow up. People will hype themselves over the next year+ while the game is in development, then a percentage of those people will be let down and spam the forums with their vitriol.

“Oh but this time it’s different because the game does X and Y and..”

No. It won’t be different. This isn’t the time and place to analyze exactly where the hype of that game will fail (even if I think that overall it’s heading in a directly that’s really excellent for the MMO genre, and I hope they do it right).

What ANet can’t/won’t do is knee-jerk react to the rest of the market. If anything, what they should work on is making tournament matches based on some matchmaking scheme visible to players in PvE, whether it’s little windows you can put the match in while you play, or going full-spectator mode in-game and returning to your character when you want, etc.

And GW1’s PvP success is… relative. GW2 won’t be competing with games like DOTA 2 and LoL, but it can still build a strong, fun competitive community. Which is really all I think they want when they say “e-sport”.

But yes. Buffing the low-end creates an arms race. That doesn’t always necessarily mean “nerf the high end”, but it does mean they need to continue to take it slow. And really, I’ve seen a fair amount of variety made viable already. Top-tier tPvP is not where you’re going to see a lot of different builds work, and you never will. They just need classes to fill niches that don’t overlap completely, and eventually I think they’ll create something fairly stable.

The current state of the meta is unfun. Spammable, abusable, mindless.

This is called Power Creep, and is the result of overbuffs. There’s a reason why nerfing is as important as buffing, which is to prevent power creeping. To prevent the game from ever breaking a “pre-defined limit” between what is fun and what is not.

There’s this popular belief that nerfing makes the game less fun (it certainly will, when it’s poorly done or/ and it destroys viable and fun builds), but nerfing can also make the game much more enjoyable by toning down all the spam this game’s combat is riddled with.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The current state of the meta is unfun. Spammable, abusable, mindless.

This is called Power Creep, and is the result of overbuffs. There’s a reason why nerfing is as important as buffing, which is to prevent power creeping. To prevent the game from ever breaking a “pre-defined limit” between what is fun and what is not.

There’s this popular belief that nerfing makes the game less fun (it certainly will, when it’s poorly done or/ and it destroys viable and fun builds), but nerfing can also make the game much more enjoyable by toning down all the spam this game’s combat is riddled with.

Well, lets talk about spam…. THIEF.

Honestly, the best build are fairly easy to execute . The necromancer, for example , just spamms condition circles without giving it any thought or actually having to jump through hoops for them to hit .

IMHO, the one of the best dynamics for condition application are ranger traps , but traps without the stupid 50% increase in AOE and throw range . It makes an interesting dynamic of having to bait into them , and placing them while running .

Also, for some classes to have effective bursts in PvP, means that their PvE and WvW becomes utterly cheesy . Warriors and Thieves come to mind . The 2 dominant plays both can do , build-counter at least 70% of the builds in WvW . So to have any semblance to 1v1 either of these , you have to go full sustain , which again completely shrinks the usable builds . Heaven forbid you are a DPSer , you will die to a skull-cracker or thief in 3 seconds without being able to do ANYTHING .

People also vastly overestimate their own abilities. The “I just died super quickly, so there must not have been anything I could have done” attitude completely kills forums like this. How are we supposed to have honest discourse about balance when people can’t take a step back and look at a situation objectively to understand what they could have done better?

Maybe you build support and have a disadvantage in certain 1v1 scenarios, but shine in groups. Maybe you don’t bring stun breakers, but have other tools that help other situations. Or maybe your build isn’t cohesive, and you could do better.

My Hammer/GS warrior has a huge disadvantage against blind-spam, so when it happens, I try to do my best to outplay it. If I die, I acknowledge that blind spam is a fairly strong counter, but still look for ways I could have done better.

Some mechanics could probably use work, but people need to realize they aren’t infallible as well.

When a single build of a single profession after a buff pushes out multiple builds and professions from the meta-game that were all mostly balanced and viable before, you have to nerf the overpowered profession.

A healthy meta-game allows for varied team make-ups with different strategies. If certain professions can’t fit well into a healthy meta-game, they need to be buffed.

You can’t only do one, but it’s better to first address the handful of professions that complete destroy a previously healthy meta-game.

another issue is that sPvP build variety is not really independent from the rest of the game.
iv’e said it before, but competitive sPvP screws up competitive WvW, and the other way around. These two kinds of PvP cannot be balanced equally. sPvP should become its own thing, and have an complete stand-alone balancing process. Completely cut off from the other “modes”.

Until a proper split is in place, competitive PvP will be forced to be compared and restricted by casual “PvE/WvW” play…. This is what will kill the game in the end. The hopeless balancing between open world and closed arena battlefields. Their literally trying to make a regatta work both for oceans and small ponds…

If one ability out of five hundred is completely overpowered, you reign it in instead of boosting four hundred ninety nine abilities to match it. This isn’t exactly rocket surgery.

Cogbyrn.7283:

You have to level something for sPvP? This is the sPvP forum, so I’m assuming you’re talking about sPvP. Leveling to 2 doesn’t take long.

Leveling to 2 doesn’t take long? My charr engineer is level 1 and chills out in the Mists. It has 0 xp towards level 2.

Cogbyrn.7283:

People also vastly overestimate their own abilities. The “I just died super quickly, so there must not have been anything I could have done” attitude completely kills forums like this. How are we supposed to have honest discourse about balance when people can’t take a step back and look at a situation objectively to understand what they could have done better?

Maybe you build support and have a disadvantage in certain 1v1 scenarios, but shine in groups. Maybe you don’t bring stun breakers, but have other tools that help other situations. Or maybe your build isn’t cohesive, and you could do better.

My Hammer/GS warrior has a huge disadvantage against blind-spam, so when it happens, I try to do my best to outplay it. If I die, I acknowledge that blind spam is a fairly strong counter, but still look for ways I could have done better.

Some mechanics could probably use work, but people need to realize they aren’t infallible as well.

Generally I wonder if everything has really been tried out for a profession, before complaints start to fire off