Guild Wars 2

So, is the promised balance patch 2 weeks before a league starts already thrown away? Because according to https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/ the league will start on december 1st.

And according to the league twitch reveal there will only be balance patches 2 weeks before a league starts (http://dulfy.net/2015/09/25/gw2-twitchcon-pvp-leagues-info/).

So, no balance patch until the league starts (because the 2 weeks deadline is already gone)? That means no balance patch until the second league starts sometime in spring 2016.

Really?

It seems like this is the case. It’s unfortunate for the players, but probably more so for the developers because losing half or more of their PvP player base isn’t gonna look so good come evaluation time.

ummm when watching the live stream on twitch pre hot launch when the pvp devs said they would balance every single season. I really hope this isnt called balance~ Some of the older specs like warrior older specs(no1 likes beserker) etc and some of the OP new elite specs. I stopped playing wow for balancing and im playing gw2 for something new but unbalanced plus 250 ping because i live in oceanic idk.

Dont give up hope we still have a 2 weeks.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

So, is the promised balance patch 2 weeks before a league starts already thrown away? Because according to https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/ the league will start on december 1st.

And according to the league twitch reveal there will only be balance patches 2 weeks before a league starts (http://dulfy.net/2015/09/25/gw2-twitchcon-pvp-leagues-info/).

So, no balance patch until the league starts (because the 2 weeks deadline is already gone)? That means no balance patch until the second league starts sometime in spring 2016.

Really?

This is pretty unbelievable, just when I thought they’d got at least some sort of a clue about the importance of balance. It raises the whole issue about being able to rely on them to even do it between every season now and their original statement looks like a complete falsehood.

Anyone believe they will do some balance patch in 2016? Stop kidding yourself

Lets be honest, thats “strategy” doesnt work. Its basically lets do balance patch 2 weeks before leagues and hope we dindt broke the game. #esport

Here is the scary part… they announced that they have a team who only has the job of balancing. I wonder what they do all day.

style.6173:

Here is the scary part… they announced that they have a team who only has the job of balancing. I wonder what they do all day.

Play Guardian and Revenant. Balance is honestly one of the minor problems with PvP at the moment. So many other issues exist. If they don’t pull their heads out of their kittens this game is so kittened.

Eisenwald.8562:

style.6173:

Here is the scary part… they announced that they have a team who only has the job of balancing. I wonder what they do all day.

Play Guardian and Revenant. Balance is honestly one of the minor problems with PvP at the moment. So many other issues exist. If they don’t pull their heads out of their kittens this game is so kittened.

How is balance minor…. there are soooooo much specs that are doing poorly atm… how is that a minor thing.

BlackBunny.3681:

Eisenwald.8562:

style.6173:

Here is the scary part… they announced that they have a team who only has the job of balancing. I wonder what they do all day.

Play Guardian and Revenant. Balance is honestly one of the minor problems with PvP at the moment. So many other issues exist. If they don’t pull their heads out of their kittens this game is so kittened.

How is balance minor…. there are soooooo much specs that are doing poorly atm… how is that a minor thing.

I’m honestly baffled at how they don’t have a whole team dedicated to balance basically 100% of the their time for at least some weeks after their first major expansion launched.

Sure we got some ultra-needed hotfixes like the druid-blind nerf the first week after launch. But since that week we haven’t really seen any balance changes – and there are many that are thoroughly needed.

I always hated ANet’s slow balance changes for pvp, but after a major expansion launch I really expected 1 or 2 months of (bi-)weekly balance changes, like any MMO does.

Well it is a large issue, I just feel like they have a lot of other big fish to fry as well. Such as cc being out of control, bugs, terrible build diversity, too many face roll aoe abilities, too many blocks, blinds, and evades, ect.

So what classes are doing poorly save warr and thief. There were so many others metas where only 4 or 3 classes could compete. Now we have 7 classes that can. I like those odds.

Timston.1976:

So what classes are doing poorly save warr and thief. There were so many others metas where only 4 or 3 classes could compete. Now we have 7 classes that can. I like those odds.

3 years ranger pets are still crap, can’t save pet names, multiple aspects bugged, etc,. This is ranger only. I am guessing a lot of the core stuff for classes are bugged as well. Pages and pages of em reported on the bug forums

7? how bout the warrior? balance = everything. NOT just the ones they wanna buff and fix

StickerHappy.8052:

Timston.1976:

So what classes are doing poorly save warr and thief. There were so many others metas where only 4 or 3 classes could compete. Now we have 7 classes that can. I like those odds.

3 years ranger pets are still crap, can’t save pet names, multiple aspects bugged, etc,. This is ranger only. I am guessing a lot of the core stuff for classes are bugged as well. Pages and pages of em reported on the bug forums

7? how bout the warrior? balance = everything. NOT just the ones they wanna buff and fix

Yeah, I don’t understand how they don’t allocate more resources to pvp balance. I’d much rather they’d have spent all the time they used on the stronghold map and mode on more and faster balancing. And I’d say I’m not the only pvp player thinking that.

Did people actually think Anet would keep their promises? Suckers.

Eisenwald.8562:

Well it is a large issue, I just feel like they have a lot of other big fish to fry as well. Such as cc being out of control, bugs, terrible build diversity, too many face roll aoe abilities, too many blocks, blinds, and evades, ect.

Would think balance comes before any of that, well maybe not huge bugs but its not like they’re fixing a large amount of bugs either.

Guys, please, calm down. They have more important things to worry about. Have you never heard of PvE?

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

StickerHappy.8052:

Timston.1976:

So what classes are doing poorly save warr and thief. There were so many others metas where only 4 or 3 classes could compete. Now we have 7 classes that can. I like those odds.

3 years ranger pets are still crap, can’t save pet names, multiple aspects bugged, etc,. This is ranger only. I am guessing a lot of the core stuff for classes are bugged as well. Pages and pages of em reported on the bug forums

7? how bout the warrior? balance = everything. NOT just the ones they wanna buff and fix

Yeah, I don’t understand how they don’t allocate more resources to pvp balance. I’d much rather they’d have spent all the time they used on the stronghold map and mode on more and faster balancing. And I’d say I’m not the only pvp player thinking that.

I have no idea too, I do not even think the forums have any use, they do not take feedback, they just whatever “Oh this skill looks cool” but in reality it was useless see Tempest Air Warhorn 5

More important things than some few balance issues on PvP.

Wouldn’t even be surprised as they seem absolutely reluctant to even post about balance or classes being completely useless. Feels like they just don’t care, but sure why not “esports” ha. Since gw1 anet has taken years to balance things so why would it change now.

style.6173:

Here is the scary part… they announced that they have a team who only has the job of balancing. I wonder what they do all day.

There has to be a Gif for this….

Why assume no balance patch until Spring 2016? That’s a pretty extreme position. A patch between now and pro league seems quite likely, despite it not falling on the. “two weeks before” timetable as outlined.

Assuming the worst is understandable but in my humble opinion, a bit full on.

They didn’t want to nerf DH or Rev.

Photinous.4628:

Did people actually think Anet would keep their promises? Suckers.

And this is the main reason why I didn’t buy HoT. I could give them my money, I could pay 50€, 80€, 100€, 150€ for a game…..

They promise stuff, to make people buy the game, and then…. LOL

Anet just does not deserve my money… not yet…. not until they start doing things right for PvP players.

I’m a hardcore PvP player, I only play PvP. In these 3 years they have not done a full good patch for PvP, they have done medium good patches at the same time destroying other good already implemented stuff, never a complete good patch.

Examples:

• We had SoloQ and TeamQ, but Skyham and Spirit Watch were in SoloQ and not in TeamQ, so hardcore PvP players who wanted to play for real made solo queue in TeamQ

• UnrankedQ and RankedQ was basically the same, they could have done both queues equal being the only difference one counted towards Ladder the other not…. but hey! they 4ked it up and left Skyham, Spirit Watch and Courtyard in Unranked, so again Hardcore PvP players queuing in Ranked

• Same with standard models…. finally we can get rid off those asuras without animations…. but no! not in Unranked! So another reason to play Ranked even if solo, not even thinking on Ladders

• Old ladder system was a joke: play one game, win, jump to top 50, dont play anymore, stay in top 50. They tried to fix that, and what came?? lol another joke system: play 50 games a day you can be top 1, no matter if win or lose or how bad you are, just play!!

• Matchmaking system…. well here they just got drunk one night, started writing code, went to sleep, woke up next day and finished code on the hangover.

I could continue but I just feel it is completely useless.

They have been given feedback from players: for matchmaking (not allow 2 or more of same class in same team, there are already 9 classes, it should not be so difficult), for balance (high sustain with high damage is a flawed concept), for PvP implementations (SoloQ with standard models and only official competitive maps).

But Anet will never listen.

It is so sad, really, so sad…

Well if abjured think the current balance can help them win some monies then I doubt arenanet are going to make any changes! Just like celestial, if they are happy with it then anet are happy too!

Balance? Expansions still have to be sold and that means leaving elites op for awhile longer. Notice when people are the unhappiest the devs become the most scarce. If they wanted to someone could come here and post and say there will be a balance patch next week for sure. That no one is saying that tells me there won’t be. These people are all frauds as far as I am concerned. They rarely keep there promises at least in terms of time frames.

Rickster.8752:

Well if abjured think the current balance can help them win some monies then I doubt arenanet are going to make any changes! Just like celestial, if they are happy with it then anet are happy too!

Sad but true we all know how this works. For some reason we have devs that are fanboys of a certain group of people and they think there opinion means more then the opinions of thousands of other players.

Please don’t derail the thread with silly conspiracy theories.

Rickster.8752:

Well if abjured think the current balance can help them win some monies then I doubt arenanet are going to make any changes! Just like celestial, if they are happy with it then anet are happy too!

I remember Chaith suggesting shaving Celestials like year ago… but I may be mistaken.

Fistandanthilus.6824:

And this is the main reason why I didn’t buy HoT. I could give them my money, I could pay 50€, 80€, 100€, 150€ for a game…..

They promise stuff, to make people buy the game, and then…. LOL

Anet just does not deserve my money… not yet…. not until they start doing things right for PvP players.

I’m a hardcore PvP player, I only play PvP. In these 3 years they have not done a full good patch for PvP, they have done medium good patches at the same time destroying other good already implemented stuff, never a complete good patch.

Examples:

• We had SoloQ and TeamQ, but Skyham and Spirit Watch were in SoloQ and not in TeamQ, so hardcore PvP players who wanted to play for real made solo queue in TeamQ

• UnrankedQ and RankedQ was basically the same, they could have done both queues equal being the only difference one counted towards Ladder the other not…. but hey! they 4ked it up and left Skyham, Spirit Watch and Courtyard in Unranked, so again Hardcore PvP players queuing in Ranked

• Same with standard models…. finally we can get rid off those asuras without animations…. but no! not in Unranked! So another reason to play Ranked even if solo, not even thinking on Ladders

• Old ladder system was a joke: play one game, win, jump to top 50, dont play anymore, stay in top 50. They tried to fix that, and what came?? lol another joke system: play 50 games a day you can be top 1, no matter if win or lose or how bad you are, just play!!

• Matchmaking system…. well here they just got drunk one night, started writing code, went to sleep, woke up next day and finished code on the hangover.

I could continue but I just feel it is completely useless.

They have been given feedback from players: for matchmaking (not allow 2 or more of same class in same team, there are already 9 classes, it should not be so difficult), for balance (high sustain with high damage is a flawed concept), for PvP implementations (SoloQ with standard models and only official competitive maps).

But Anet will never listen.

It is so sad, really, so sad…

sadly, but + over 9000

I think this unbalance think is workin in the favor of anet. SO many of us are bored to the limit with our main’s bugs. I used to play ranger until this latest patch. But when I saw that there was not a single decent bug fix for our profession, I gave up. I have a warrior now ( kitten thing is worse than a ranger I know, but still I will choose archery when I can find it).

There are many players lvling new chars. Strong ones especially. That means money, that means new slots, new transmutation charges, new items.

And also I think Anet needs to find better devs. With every patch we have a server crash, client crash, map bug, skill bug…etc. Do they test these patches with bloody gorillas?

But it has been too long. So in two weeks Anet will start to lose some players I guess.

People just like to whine. Besides warriors being especially weak, balance right now is no worse than usual imo. I’ve played games long enough to know that this balance is nowhere near as bad as it could be.

All I can say is there won’t be another warrior in competitive play for a very long time… Sucks for those who made the mistake of maining it…

Hopefully it’s sooner than later, in my view, this is some of the worst balance I’ve seen in a long time. If this league starts with no balance patch, I don’t even really a desire to participate.

Seems about par for the course. Even though they said they want to promote balance, they honestly aren’t even trying. All they do is make large meta shake-ups so that people need time to figure out what is optimal, then it grow really stale after 1-2 months because glaring problems aren’t addressed, then they hit the reset button every 6 months-1 year.

If they wanted actual balance, they would have stuck with the approach they had back when Chap was head of balance, but with greater frequency. Make minor adjustments every 2-3 weeks would be amazing and allow them to promote true diversity, as opposed to “cyclic diversity” where every class has exactly 1 viable build (if that) and everything else is trash, with that 1 build rotating depending on the meta.

morrolan.9608:

Please don’t derail the thread with silly conspiracy theories.

Hardly silly conspiracy theories. Their balance process involves sykping with abjured (and a few other) players and getting feedback. So these players get to shape balance towards their needs and desires. They also get 1 month + advanced warning of what is coming balance wise. So they are ready for every new meta when other players and teams are not. And then anet run supposedly fair tournaments and give away real money. This is how the system works and it is a complete joke. I have told friends from other competitive games about this process and they are shocked.

Imagine mesmer is good and you dont have a mesmer main? Well they get it nerfed via skype. Imagine you know mesmer is going to be good 1 month before everyone else. Now you have 1 month extra to get good at it. Things similar to this have happened.

im too busy playing LotV ladder to care. but if I did care, id feel pretty disgruntled. I play a druid so it’s not like I was having issues. but honestly I got bored of playing against the same 5 specs over and over again after two weeks (cele scrapper, carrion necro, chrono, DH and other druid cheese). state of pvp got especially sad with two profs basically MISSING from competitive pvp ayy lmao. Anet antics, and so on. it’s always the same story with this game’s pvp man. everything is always half-baked. the xpac was the last attempt for me before leaving and never re-installing again. it took a lot of deliberation and effort to buy HoT, most likely a mistake. just need to buy some time till Overwatch, at least sc2 is good that way. so my days here are numbered if there isn’t a serious balance patch soon, which is unlikely.

warrior utilization rate in higher leagues : 0%

Chaith.8256:

Why assume no balance patch until Spring 2016? That’s a pretty extreme position. A patch between now and pro league seems quite likely, despite it not falling on the. “two weeks before” timetable as outlined.

Assuming the worst is understandable but in my humble opinion, a bit full on.

Two problems, even if they are intending to patch prior to the start of the pro league:

1) They haven’t made any effort to communicate as such. If plans change, so be it, but why leave your playerbase completely in the dark about what’s going on when all you need to clarify the situation would be a single, brief paragraph on the forums? It would make everyone feel a lot better and lead to more productive discussion. Instead we get threads like this one, where people are just complaining and trashing the dev team.

Supposedly the policy is to avoid making promises to the players because people get upset when plans change and can’t be realized. What gets people a lot more upset, though, is when you promise something, fail to deliver, and then don’t communicate about what went wrong or how goals have changed. Right now, we don’t even know if there was ever intended to be a balance patch for this cycle. We thought so, but maybe we were wrong to assume that? I wish I knew, but we’re being left to guess.

2) If they’re still planning to do a balance patch before Leagues begin, how long are they going to have to test the changes they’re making? How many times are they going to be able to iterate on those changes before they just have to say “good enough” and leave things in whatever state they are? Profession balance is fairly awful right now, with 6 elite specs comprising the majority of the meta and non-elite specs growing scarce.

Is this really the way that Anet wants to kick off its first professional season? The vast expansion of the prize pool made it seem like they wanted to get serious about PvP, but we’re not seeing much follow-through when it comes to making PvP enjoyable to play or watch at a competitive level. It really doesn’t inspire much confidence that they had laid out a concrete plan for change, but now seem to be starting to slip before they’ve even begun.

Last point – I know that developing an MMO is tough, complicated work, and I’m sure that things are busy at their office with all of the content and changes they’re trying to push through for all of the different game modes. However, profession balance is relevant to all of those game modes, it’s something they’ve historically underperformed at, and it’s something they promised to try and do better with. They’ve even staked $400,000 on their ability to create a compelling PvP environment for players and viewers, so why does balance still not seem to be a priority? The way this season goes is going to have a significant impact on future viewership and the profit Anet can make from PvP, so why would they not push to make sure PvP is as healthy as they can get it in the days leading up to the competition?

Maybe there are good answers to all of these points, but Anet hasn’t given us any insight into what those answers may be. Until we get some clarification, I’m going to feel justified in being disappointed with them.

We’re getting to a point where you get into a game and the 9 other people are composed of 6 Dragon Hunters and 3 Revenants.

This has nothing of an eSport when heavy armor high health pool classes do more damage than light classes.

Something is really wrong when a revenant hits an ele for 14k with hammer 2, specially since it’s on a super low cooldown.

Never expect any huge changes. For example the DH damage will never change a lot at this point.

Why you might ask…

Players are also playing those classes in PvE. And thanks to ascended gear they made a quite massive commitment towards a singular build. Changing a class will also change their PvE effectiveness, and might cause players to have invalidated ascended gear which took them weeks if not months to acquire as well as a lot of ingame or worse real money.

We can assume that there are more PvE players, so a change which might be good for PvP which in return would make the build unviable for PvE will result in a massive backlash from the PvE community.

Many of these problem would have been solved if exotic stayed as the highest possible stats, which could be acquired fairly easily. The commitment to a single build was much less than what we have now.

It worked fine for GW1. A build was nerfed in both PvE and PvP? Well changing your equipment for a new build was quite easy.

What you say is true, but they already changed many aspects of core professions. And also with the latest patches new and annoying bugs have came in our lives. Before a balance change, a bug fix for many professions should be applied. Because of the bugs we can not really see how powerful a build/class was intended to be.

Devs think only in numbers I guess. But there is a huge difference in theory and practice in this game. Many aspects are not working properly due to bugs. So that hampers the power lvl. As a result there is a huge imbalance. What we need is a “total” bug fix.

Varonth.5830:

Never expect any huge changes. For example the DH damage will never change a lot at this point.

Why you might ask…

Players are also playing those classes in PvE. And thanks to ascended gear they made a quite massive commitment towards a singular build. Changing a class will also change their PvE effectiveness, and might cause players to have invalidated ascended gear which took them weeks if not months to acquire as well as a lot of ingame or worse real money.

They just should make separate balance from spvp and pve.
If a PvE build is good enough and not overpower, and a PvP build instead is overpower/underpower in spvp, just modify spvp skills.

Its not that hard for em, and its easy for us all.

For an instance: Skill A deal too much dmg in spvp, but it’s ok in pve.

1) Skill A remain the same in pve
2) Skill A will be reworked in spvp

So, there will be no future issues about pve, and spvp could be fixed with a nerf/buff.

Also, they should declare a specific “role” or “build” for spvp, working on it.
If they are not able to follow spvp with fix ( maybe not good enough or just a too low team ), they should accept it and work towards classes chosing a single role for each of em, and working on it comparing it with other classes and their roles.

I would prefer a Class packet instead a “build your chara” for an spvp match.
Put limits and just work on balance and fun.

Ex: Chosing a thief for ranked will be “only s/d with there traits, sigils, runes, skills”… i i would appreciate it, cause it will bring balance.
Also limit, on ranked, 1x class

It will lower the choice for the single player, indeed.
But people who wants to play ranked spvp pretend balance and fun with it.

I think they don’t really care if they can only choose a class, like street fighter.

Shirlias.8104:

Varonth.5830:

Never expect any huge changes. For example the DH damage will never change a lot at this point.

Why you might ask…

Players are also playing those classes in PvE. And thanks to ascended gear they made a quite massive commitment towards a singular build. Changing a class will also change their PvE effectiveness, and might cause players to have invalidated ascended gear which took them weeks if not months to acquire as well as a lot of ingame or worse real money.

They just should make separate balance from spvp and pve.
If a PvE build is good enough and not overpower, and a PvP build instead is overpower/underpower in spvp, just modify spvp skills.

Its not that hard for em, and its easy for us all.

For an instance: Skill A deal too much dmg in spvp, but it’s ok in pve.

1) Skill A remain the same in pve
2) Skill A will be reworked in spvp

So, there will be no future issues about pve, and spvp could be fixed with a nerf/buff.

Also, they should declare a specific “role” or “build” for spvp, working on it.
If they are not able to follow spvp with fix ( maybe not good enough or just a too low team ), they should accept it and work towards classes chosing a single role for each of em, and working on it comparing it with other classes and their roles.

I would prefer a Class packet instead a “build your chara” for an spvp match.
Put limits and just work on balance and fun.

Ex: Chosing a thief for ranked will be “only s/d with there traits, sigils, runes, skills”… i i would appreciate it, cause it will bring balance.
Also limit, on ranked, 1x class

It will lower the choice for the single player, indeed.
But people who wants to play ranked spvp pretend balance and fun with it.

I think they don’t really care if they can only choose a class, like street fighter.

Sometimes a skill isn’t simply bad/good in PvP but require a mechanical change. In the more such cases exist the more sPvP would become it’s own game compared to the other parts of the game.

Totally agree.

But what im claiming is “when a skill is ok, you should change it to make another new one that will be both ok with spvp and pve. you should take that skill where is ok, and try modify it where its not”

More safe for everybody.
And easier to balance.

shortly, a double tooltip. one for spvp and one fove pve ( which include wvw ).

What kind of balance patch do you really want?

Most of classes right now are broken. DPS compare to defense mechanics is kitten, most of time if you play vs premade group they will focus you in 1 sec, you wont even notice what killed you.

Same thing right now is with condictions. People still didint realized that condi is again out of control, when you dont have any real mechanics to deflect it.

Wont mather if they nerf skills, cuz its not problem with damage but of defence. Go berk or go home.

That was HoT fault, for being released with no balance at all.

Indeed we needa big patch instead a balance one, but season 1 is too close, so lets hope for some good fix at least.

Shirlias.8104:

Totally agree.

But what im claiming is “when a skill is ok, you should change it to make another new one that will be both ok with spvp and pve. you should take that skill where is ok, and try modify it where its not”

More safe for everybody.
And easier to balance.

shortly, a double tooltip. one for spvp and one fove pve ( which include wvw ).

Now you change a weaponskill and someone dislikes the new feel of the full weapon (as changing a single skill changes the weapon as a whole as there are no swapable weapon skills). That person crafted ascended or worse a legendary weapon for the old weapon but now no longer wants to play with the new weapon.

There is no way ANet can win this in the current state of the game. There needs more wide reaching changes like weaponskills having alternatives which can be swapped like utilities.

LoL if it they want to hold balance patches back just for tournament for THAT long, they’d better not do it. league players are a minority, and they can adapt…

Varonth.5830:

Shirlias.8104:

Totally agree.

But what im claiming is “when a skill is ok, you should change it to make another new one that will be both ok with spvp and pve. you should take that skill where is ok, and try modify it where its not”

More safe for everybody.
And easier to balance.

shortly, a double tooltip. one for spvp and one fove pve ( which include wvw ).

Now you change a weaponskill and someone dislikes the new feel of the full weapon (as changing a single skill changes the weapon as a whole as there are no swapable weapon skills). That person crafted ascended or worse a legendary weapon for the old weapon but now no longer wants to play with the new weapon.

Wardrobe as balancing argument… lol.

So I guess the complete developer silence on this topic means that it’s true that we won’t get a balance patch for about 4-5 month…

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

So I guess the complete developer silence on this topic means that it’s true that we won’t get a balance patch for about 4-5 month…

Well no, that’d be a logical fallacy.