Guild Wars 2

Jewels honestly aren’t any sort of barrier of entry. It’s quite a basic concept and prevalent across all forms of gear. Not to mention it’s also literally impossible to mess up; you cannot have an amulet without a jewel.

And Allie, I’m not assuming that this is going to ruin the game. It’s just slightly asinine to me and a bit problematic because it’s literally the only form of stat diversification allowed. It’s also damaging to balance because it disrupts the status quo that has been balanced around since day 1. I’m not saying the sky is falling, I’m just expressing that I think this change is a mistake.

Also, as I said before, I agree that stat diversification to a large extent isn’t exactly good for balance. But as it stands the stat diversification in PvP is far too limited. It’s kinda comical it’s being limited further.

If you wish to remove jewels, would you consider making jewel-less rings/accessories to complement the single jewel-less amulet? I can’t imagine that would be difficult for a new player…

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.
Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

The last time I read it was 16 weeks ago and the best thing that happened since there was the “All is vain” thread.

There is no one in this game that is overwhelmed by jewels. Removing them IS dumbing your game down.

I don’t understand how you can think this is a good change.

Benefits of jewels: Stat diversity.
Downsides of jewels: Some builds might hit the sweet spot of stats? or something?

Having that separate jewel was completely pointless in the first place. I like this change.

It’ll affect condi survivability/soldiers dps

Not losing much sleep over this TBH

Maybe some Mesmer condition damage too…

Wow so much rage here.
I’m a casual player and I really like this change. I admit I am pretty new to GW2 but these changes bringing me more and more to pvp.
I think people writing here are pvp cracks who enjoy to calculate and doing the maths behind.
I mean how do you actually create your builds? Do you f.e. just change the jewel and then started to fight and afterwards researched the battle log for changes?
I pretty like when changes are visible. And for me it is rather visible if you only have to focus on changes in a certain direction, f.e. skills and traits.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

I think that there are two ways to simplify the experience for new players:

• Making a gradual discovery of the game, which is quite what happens in PvE. You start with just one weapon, 3 skills and no traits and the more you progress, the more you unlock and discover in the game, giving you the time to get confident with the new mechanics you’ve unlocked.

• Dumbing down the game mechanics for the sake of simplicity, which is, in my humble opinion, the worse way to achieve simplicity.

PvP stat distribution has always been an issue in my opinion, because a whole lot of builds are unviable just because you can’t get the stat tuning you needed to make it to work. For instance, hybrid condition damage+power builds are completely unviable because the only amulet available which is best suited for hybrid build is Rampager, which has kind of a bad stat distribution.

Still, even if you cut customization in order to make it easier for new players to pick an effective build, players can still pick a bad or unviable amulet and get into the fights while having bad results.
I mean, how can someone can consider to run a viable build running Rampager or Barbarian amulet right now? I don’t think that much.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

Yes Allie, that is the thread I was talking about in my post as well. Please stick with it and don’t listen to the complainers. We want balance in this game or as close as you all can get to it and that is the way to do it. Everyone should read that thread and learn a thing or two. Seriously, it needs to happen if this game is ever going to get a glimpse of the competitive scene or for PvP to even have a bigger dedicated playerbase.

Tbh, I can’t believe people are complaining about such a small stat such as the jewel. It barely made a difference. Playerbase always screams at Anet for not listening and I now understand why sometimes now even though they did listen and took it right out of that thread. This is a great step towards achieving balance even if it’s a baby step.

Justin ODell.9517:

What are your arguments for the fine-tuning approach that jewels give? What exactly did it open up? What is now going to disappear? I’m genuinely interested in both sides of this one.

Removing the jewel isn’t a huge loss. But that’s because the jewel didn’t offer enough fine tuning. Players have been asking for more fine tuning in sPvP for a while and we’re baffled by ANet going in the completely opposite direction.

TLDR at end.

Rigidity of the Current & New System
Stats come from three sources in sPvP: traits, runes, and amulet/jewel. Traits provide 800-1400 stat points (depending on which lines you choose). Most runes provide 165 to a single stat. However, traits and runes are chosen for their effects over their stats. Some trait lines and runes just aren’t as good as others, cater to certain weapons or utilities better, or just pair nicely. This will always be true, though the disparity will lessen over time.

That leaves amulets(with jewels) that provide 2211 stat points. That’s a lot of points, but most or all of it is in a fixed combination of stats. In the current system and discounting stats from traits (still counting runes), a heavy character can have either 2127-2367 armor or 2696-2936 armor but nothing in between. The new system increases the gap to 468 from 329. If there’s no decent effect on a toughness rune for my build, the gap just grows. I can’t fill in the holes! The same happens with other stats.

Further, I can’t pick and choose what stats are combined. If I want power and higher armor, then I can’t get precision. I can’t get high power and condition damage. Celestial is nice, but then power is low.

Not every profession is the same / the hybrid problem
The need for fine tuning stats varies by profession. A thief can evade damage or escape combat often; if they play well, they can survive without defensive stats. So the current system isn’t so bad for them. A warrior will usually need to spend more time in combat, so more defenses are good for them (current balance issues aside). But they already have high HP, so they’d want a bit of toughness, but not a lot of vitality. In comparison, a guardian in a similar role would want a bit more vitality than the warrior due to their lower base HP, and maybe some healing power because some builds scale well with it. An elementalist has low base HP, but being a light armor class, also has low armor. They may want a bit more toughness compared to a guardian, but they still need offensive stats too.

Ideally for any power damage build that can’t avoid the majority of damage through dodges, evades, etc, you power, precision, and maybe some ferocity, but you also want enough vitality to survive burst, and some toughness to handle sustained damage and help with burst damage. It may also want some healing power if it scales well. The toughness, vitlity, and healing power numbers desired are around 200-400 each. Not 75 (jewel secondary) or 569 (amulet secondary). On the topic of ferocity, the returns on damage pale in comparison with precision at lower critical chances. But ferocity is tied to many of the offensive power amulets.

Many potential and promising hybrid builds are not viable simply because these hybrid builds either die too quickly or survive more than adequately but lack damage. Elementalist example.

<continued>

But it’s Too Hard for Little Timmy to Understand!
What’s so hard to understand about stats? Character stats are at the core of all RPGs with a fairly universal subset. What each does is pretty simple and can be described in a simple sentence, i.e. power increases damage, toughness increases armor and armor makes you take less damage, vitality increases your HP. Even a new player can identify which are for damage and which are for defense.

Choosing two to four stat items that add together is not complicated. Players do it all the time, not just in PvE, but in other games they play or have played.

Yes, players will always make bad choices. But the current rigid system is contributing to bad choices, not preventing them. For power damage builds, which are usually more newbie-friendly, the two predominant choices are Berserker and Soldier. Berserker usually leads to quick and frustrating death; you can’t learn because you die so fast. At best, they stick with an easy combo like 100blades warrior and don’t learn much else. Soldier means their damge is weak, but at least they have time to learn before dying. Unfortunately, that causes many to build around it and not be an effective team member. If the amulets were split, new players could find a happy medium between survival and damage or wein themselves off the tanky amulet. More flexibility allows more room for error in learning weapons, traits, and utilities.

In addition, many of us have friends who tell us that they want to try sPvP, but they can’t make their PvE/WvW build there (no matter how good or bad it is), because they can’t get the stats they want. The current and new system are actually creating a barrier to entry, not making it easier.

Restricting stat combinations doesn’t stop players from making bad builds. But it does penalize and restrict knowledgeable players.

It makes it more difficult to balance!
To be clear, what is being requested is dividing up the single amulet into multiple items that use the current stat cominbations with a better division between them (the current in 86/14% amulet/jewel). This isn’t a request for total control over stats. You wouldn’t be able to reach an extreme further than what’s currently possible, and you won’t have extra stat points.

At face value, allowing more customization of stats introduces additional permutations which means many more balance possiblities. But when the extremes are immobile, you can’t look at stat balance that way. Unlike new skills or traits, stats don’t fundamentally change what a build does; they just strengthen or weaken particular aspects of it. If a mix of stats makes something too powerful, it’s only unmasking an ability or combination of abilities that was already broken but not as easily exploitable.

I would go as far to say that more stat customization within the current bounds would actually make balance easier. With the current system, a small tweak to a trait or ability can render it useless and destroy an entire build or create a new overly powerful build. This occurs because there is no way to augment offense by trading some for additional defense. Either the trait or ability is good enough to keep you alive when you have a Berserker’s amulet, or it’s not worth using. When such a trait or skill gives so much defense, it allows for excessive damage. Now you now have to change other traits as well to reign in the damage. You end up nerfing a perfectly balanced trait because another trait in the build is making the sum too good. Instead, if you could tweak a trait to a lesser degree, which would increase or reduce the need for defense slightly, there’s less dramatic shifts in builds and no need to touch traits that work well in other builds.

And if anything, allowing for a larger variety of builds is a good thing for the game, even if some are initially too powerful.

Pls reconsider this change. Given how amulets are coming with jewels by defaul and how just as said its a small % of the build stats..theres no freaking point to remove it.
What you gain isnt that much in terms of streamlining the game at all. No new player will ever have trouble picking up a jewel and if they did .. well i dont think the small difference in stat will save them at all against more experienced players.
Dumbing the game WONT make it easier for new players ..new players fighting new players will do

Recommendations

• Create three stat slots either of equal weight (33/33/33%) or one has double weight (50/25/25%).
• Add the PvE Knight’s prefix.
  That should allow enough customization to make any build with “close enough” stat points, while still preventing overly tanky builds. Adding the Dire prefix would help customization, but that would be too powerful for some builds right now. By making them separate slots, rather than an upgrade to an item, it’s not as “hidden”.

TLDR
*Current system is too rigid. Traits are used for abilities over stats. Resulting customization range leaves no middle ground, particularly with precision and toughness.
*Stat extremes like full damage aren’t good for everyone. Each profession and builds within a profession value stats at different weights and may want 4 or 5, not 3.
*Players understand what stats do, but are bad at choosing “correct” ones. Restricting stat customization doesn’t fix that. Good players suffer from loss of depth/diversity.
*The balance issue is overblown. The extremes of offense and defense won’t change. Many additional builds become viable. Abilities can be tuned without destroying builds completely.
*Split the amulet into three items using current combos at either 33/33/33% or 50/25/25%.

I am mainly a wvw player, although i do occasionally soloq and enjoy watching tournamets.
One of the reasons i never tried spvp more actively is the lack of build diversity, mainly because of the amulet+jewel system.
I was geting more and more interested with the upcoming changes, until the reveal that there will be even less options to customize builds and the introduction of perplexity runes to spvp.
For me, those two changes cancel everything good coming from this patch.

Although I get that removing the jewels will take complexity out of the game I still don’t like it. Yes, the stats comming from the jewels are minor so we might not feel a difference when playing most builds. But at the same time this also means that the change is only a minor factor for balancing. So why do it in the first place and take away the customization? I also don’t think that picking a jewel on top of the amulet is ‘confusing’. The new PvP interface should make this extremly easy.

I understand the change to some degree but I disagree.
I think we will be fine but I feel limited in customization.

Cush.4063:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

Yes Allie, that is the thread I was talking about in my post as well. Please stick with it and don’t listen to the complainers. We want balance in this game or as close as you all can get to it and that is the way to do it. Everyone should read that thread and learn a thing or two. Seriously, it needs to happen if this game is ever going to get a glimpse of the competitive scene or for PvP to even have a bigger dedicated playerbase.

Tbh, I can’t believe people are complaining about such a small stat such as the jewel. It barely made a difference. Playerbase always screams at Anet for not listening and I now understand why sometimes now even though they did listen and took it right out of that thread. This is a great step towards achieving balance even if it’s a baby step.

And your opinion represents the %100 of the player base, from the number of the posts here it doesn’t seems to be that way to me.

Some cheese classes like Thief, Warrior only need Berserker, some border line hopeless classes like Elementalist need every piece of fine tuning to be able to exist.

I am extremely happy with my D/D elementalist in WvWvW because I can fine tune every piece of it, I don’t touch it in sPVP because either I am glassier then glass or tanky like hell with no middle ground anywhere.

Cush.4063:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

Yes Allie, that is the thread I was talking about in my post as well. Please stick with it and don’t listen to the complainers. We want balance in this game or as close as you all can get to it and that is the way to do it. Everyone should read that thread and learn a thing or two. Seriously, it needs to happen if this game is ever going to get a glimpse of the competitive scene or for PvP to even have a bigger dedicated playerbase.

Tbh, I can’t believe people are complaining about such a small stat such as the jewel. It barely made a difference. Playerbase always screams at Anet for not listening and I now understand why sometimes now even though they did listen and took it right out of that thread. This is a great step towards achieving balance even if it’s a baby step.

I totally agree with you.
I think it is good that anet get rid of all those combinations and should focus on implementing more skills and traits. Maybe anet could even introduce more trait points, increasing them from 70 to 100 (after update 14 to 20), and add traits beyond grandmaster for more specialisation.

ronpierce.2760:

Not sure if that’s sarcasm or not, but, whatever. In LoL you don’t have much choice of how the characters are made up. That’s easy to balance. The problem with GW2 isn’t the variation it’s the freedom of variation. If they did away with talents, stats, sigils, runes and gave you 40 classes it’d be more balance than it is currently because they could reach a certain margin on each character over a course of time without worry of theory crafters shaking that balance. Are you even trying to use your brain, or are you just screaming that the sky is falling? Be honest so I don’t waste my time.

That’s not quite right: In lol some items are incredibly build defining.

Example: if I play Cho’gath, I can build him as a tank. But I can also build him as an AP bruiser, or an AP assassin (I mean heavily burst-oriented). Or as a jungler.

Not mentioning there are a lot of things I can specialize in. If you consider items as traits, many have potentially gamechanging effects as well.

And I don’t want 40 classes. That’s too few. I want 118 of them like in lol. Not considering different stats combinations.

However, the problem in GW2 isn’t much balance, but the fact that top tier builds are the worst possible.

Rezz.8019:

Having that separate jewel was completely pointless in the first place. I like this change.

exactly

it was always a mostly pointless extra option and shouldn’t have been in the game to begin with. more pointless choices != better gameplay

but of course people will cry because they’ve grown used to things being a certain way and now they redesign things (again) which is symptomatic of poor initial design

This is strange – how can Jewel in Amulat be confusing?!
Espiecially with new and beautifull PvP panel! (wink GJ Evan ^^) If you put Jewel next to Amulet it will be clear in a second what is what. (Ooo great Lesh Prince, make it happen plz!)
Does somebody made IQ test of average GW2 player? Did it went so bad as lower than 90 or 80?! Come on!
Removing Jewels and locking stats with trait lines (that people choose becaus of skill and not stats – as some of people mentioned earlier) is just pigeonholing build.

Just look at this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQBYCITBAAgpAAAueAAAAA-TgAgzCmIySllLLTWyssZB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vUAQBYCITBAAgpAAAueAAAAA-TgAgzCoIySllLLTWyssZB
Take a look at stats – 4% to 8% crit chance. 100% more chance to crit than before – this changes whole game so much with minor traits like Selfless Daring – without Jewel for me its making this build almost disqusting – lower HP and almost no crit, and why? Because of some people IQ…

Sorry about my english, it’s not my native language and this topic makes my blood boil.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

So you agree it’s not about balance, but about simplifying the game.

Because let’s face it, jewels don’t make much of a difference, except giving some builds an easier time working.

I might agree it might have been something redundant, but IMHO it didn’t hurt to leave it alone.

Oh, another thing: reducing stat customizability might actually hinder balance. Why? Because by making stat optimization harder to obtain, you reward classes that can modify their stats best by other way. AkA Warriors. And I don’t need jewels management in order to do that.

One might also say that the more freedom you give to players, the higher the chance they can sort something out to counter enemy builds, then you show up and nerf the ones no one managed to counter. Or just make them harder to play.

Another thing:

I don’t think that simplifying the game is casual friendly at all.

It follows the philosophy of “you are casual and shall remain one”. Reducing things to learn means reducing the chances of a player to grow and lear more about the game.

In general the game is already very casual unfriendly, because you have a very hard time telling if you are actually improving or not.

And animations are not clear enough to make you understand what’s going on during a fight.

Dark Souls is casual friendly, because it offers you a challenge (challenge = fun), and rewards you everytime you understand something about the game. After giving you the chance of understanding it, without flashy effects. You don’t need to do the same thing over and over again to react on reflex, be fast and so on.
If you make a mistake, the game makes you know that by killing you. If you did something right, the game makes you know that with the defeat of a boss or something else.

In GW2 I might play hundreds of tournaments doing something wrong without knowing it, because in the mess of the fight it went unnoticed.

If you want a player friendly game, think about the reward and the punishment. And the room a player has to understand what’s going on.

I’m not saying it’s easy in a MMORPG, but I think that’s the goal I’d strive for.

First the unnecessary nerf to Crit Damage in sPvP from the Traits, now no jewels. My Power Necro concept is basicly gone and build obliterated. Such a shame, I had a lot of fun running something more active, engaging, fun and refreshing than Condi or MM… I guess you don’t want any diversity and only one spec per profession…

Now as you talk about reducing customization in your game I have to ask – Why do you keep stats in the game?.
I mean, you could instantly fix all support/condi/zerker problems existing in the game without much effort, expand the trait system to be more defining/important.

It isn’t a bad change. We could have an armour purely for the looks and armor rating when all customization with DoT damage etc. would be moved to tra

I don’t understand your idea behind the game at this point because you go against your vanilla promises of customNow we will pick certain roles in PvP : Bunker, Kamikaze DPS, Condi, Support..
Holy Quattro ?

Its too hard to balance the game?
@
Decrease build diversity!

Seriously. Lets just remove all classes except warrior then. Then it will be much easier to balance this game. Lalilulelo.

sonic.7592:

Wow so much rage here.
I’m a casual player and I really like this change. I admit I am pretty new to GW2 but these changes bringing me more and more to pvp.
I think people writing here are pvp cracks who enjoy to calculate and doing the maths behind.
I mean how do you actually create your builds? Do you f.e. just change the jewel and then started to fight and afterwards researched the battle log for changes?
I pretty like when changes are visible. And for me it is rather visible if you only have to focus on changes in a certain direction, f.e. skills and traits.

You basically make a build by playing it.
You have an idea, maybe to exploit a specific trait, maybe to fulfil a specific role, but you start with an idea.
You select your traits, make your choice of stats and try to find good runes to complement your build.
As it’s a new build, you are not familiar with, you may die quite often. However, at that point, you don’t really know, whether it’s a flaw in the build or just you being stupid. So you simply beef up your build by throwing in some hitpoints or make your attrition build a bit more aggressive by slotting in more damage. You basically try to put on some bandaid with the jewels, so you can properly test the build for flaws.
Changing the jewels is the easiest way to make a build more stable, because you can round up the often times pretty onesided stat distribution. Swapping runes or traits, till you find something, which works by chance, is a bad thing. You are basically guessing at that point. The mixed stats from jewels will allow you to make the build a bit more playable. At this point, they are basically training wheels. You can examine the flaws of your build easier, when it’s a bit less of a loose canon.
Changing stuff wildly is, again, not how you should approach things. Mix jewels, till you find something, which works, then stick with it and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the build. Before you try to fix the weaknesses by swapping in new runes or changing traits, you gotta consider, whether this will destroy any strengths, you may want to keep.
Then, you just test the new setup. Usually, having a full amulet is stronger than mixing(read: your build is more streamlined towards one goal), so you may want to put back the original jewels, once the build becomes stable enough to do so.
On the other hand, however, there are builds, where the jewel will stay in forever. Instead of a bandaid fix, it may be build defining here to have that little bit of extra whatever.

Swapping out jewels often times does not happen in order to fix weaknesses of the build, it will often times be an attempt to make the build playable, so you can properly examine it and fix its flaws.

It is probably a programing decision, like the underwater weapon removal, just to make it less complicated to them to implement the new changes, otherwise it doesnt make much sense.

Really I don’t like it either. I hate carebear games in general. However, if this makes it easier for new players then it is good for everyone as more players = more fun. So I trust anet on this one. Either way it is a minor issue and perhaps this is actually a way of reversing the power creep which has ruined the game.

This patch is shaping up to be incredible. Amazing rewards, balance, new traits, new sigils, new runes, new stat combos. It went from disaster to awesome with these latest balance changes. Now new builds could actually flourish in this game without being held down so much by pistol whip or warrior. So lets see how things go.

This change might be meh, but I kind of think it might be awesome for the game (no jewels) by reversing power creep. But overall I think the devs have done an awesome job.

@ ANET,

Will this make balance easier? Yes, but at the cost of frontloading several problems that were otherwise “half-hidden” until now. What I mean is, on a short term basis, this change will actually create more balance problems, but on a long term basis, it’ll make those balance problems clearer for you, skill balancers, to see and react to.

The first thing this change will make, is that it’ll promote extreme builds and demote balanced builds. Which is a different way to say, it’ll discriminate current professions based on their base design.

Professions with a high amount of non-stat defenses will be unchanged by this – they will be able to continuously wear zerker amulets, and still survive like gods.

Professions that make use of all stats will get discriminated by this.

For example, the elementalists. Building an elementalist is all about giving them enough survival first, because they have meaningfully none at a base level, and only then invest on offense. (The extreme fresh air build will be an exception – because it’s already an extreme.)

The difference in base survival between ele and other professions is so high, that investing points in earth, water and arcana, and relying on overpowered vigor and protection traits, is not enough. That’s why players would pick a zerker amulet + valkyrie jewel, or vice-versa, to get that small added bonus to vitality, toughness and healing. That’s why players would pick divinity runes. And if celestial jewels were any good, they would have picked it as well. This would allow them to get just enough health and toughness without pidgeonholing eles into 30 water and 30 earth for minimal (read: NOT bunker-ish) survival, and still be able to invest 20-30 in air.

This, of course, is a problem with the elementalist class. You have originally designed this profession to have unsustainable base survival, because active defenses were supposed to be a pretty big deal about this class. But then, most of the active defenses you have given to the elementalist, are reliant on healing + toughness (heal skills), toughness + vitality (aura skills), or under high cooldowns due to the attunement system (aka, the few remaining defensive conditions and cc), while the thief class and the mesmer class are overflowing with so.many.stat.irrelevant.active.defenses, that they can go full berserker and still have high survival.

Elementalists, and I assume they aren’t the only ones, are heavily reliant on a balanced stat set up, but unlike what the celestial amulet offers, many of these builds will still wish to specialize at something.

In the end, we’ll be heavily restricted to valkyrie amulet, with some extreme exceptions aside, and perhaps to celestial amulet as well. With the removal of jewels, going into soldier amulet offers so much toughness and vitality, more than what is required, that investing points in earth and water might seem a bit wasted – yet, if we want the traits in those lines (rock solid, stone splinters, cleansing wave, cantrips), we would only want a little extra toughness and vitality, and then specialize on something else (like power). Runes are mostly only specialized at giving one extra stat bonus. So our solutions will be valkyrie or celestial – only – because they offer that little extra survival we need, without making is bunkers. And valkyrie might have a wasted stat (ferocity) in a non-precision build, and celestial can’t specialize in anything.

Maybe if elementalists were redesigned as such, so that they wouldn’t need any toughness or vitality higher than they base value, unless they wished to specialize as bunkers/ healers, that would be fine. But because they really need more than their base values to have most of their offensive/ balanced builds work (aka, we’re talking about a broken class), with the exception of a cheese instant-burst build, then this change to amulets is going to force them into bunker roles, and remove potential that balanced or non-fresh air offensive builds would have to become viable next patch.

The solution for this, in addition to fixing the elementalist’s ineffective base values, is to add more hybrid amulets to pvp, much like what valkyrie already is. And, ideally, make a last hour change and add at least one more hybrid amulet right for this patch.

To repeat my initial words, this change might make things easier to balance, but it’ll do so by frontloading some design flaws and making them easier to detect. But if they’re easier to detect, we expect you to be faster to react too. Which means that, if you skill designers continue to take 2-4 months for each patch, it’ll do a lot more harm than good.

Put me as a player that’s fine with the removal of jewels. It’s just not what I was attracted to PvP for. A lot of the problems we’ve had in the game have come from how weighted amulet/jewel stats were compared to everything else. Moving in the direction of more stat customization instead of less would just make it easier for more overpowered builds to exist in the future.

And yes if you’re going to use something like Valkyrie or Cavalier you’re going to have to make more of a tradeoff in traits/runes/sigils. That’s the entire point.

Why not just remove amulets/stats in general from PvP?

If what you want is easy-peazy balancing, then just have stats revolve around some other mechanic like:

• fully trait dependent
• “role”(ie: bunker, dps, condi, mix)

Removing jewels, which INCREASED build diversity, isn’t going to make your balancing any easier, because amulets were never the issue to begin with.

At the end of the day, this will only force people to run specific builds, which is kind of funny coming from the game that touted your ability to “play it how you want to”. Sorry, but the jewel allowed me to pick up some prec, which was needed for some procs in my build; without it, I’m going to have to run a TOTALLY different build, which I do not want to do(aka: I’m being forced to run a FoTM build now).

tl;dr: ANet thinks this will encourage people to try out PvP, when in reality it is going to drive people who actually play it away.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

I’m not surprised that focus groups were confused by the game, but I AM surprised that the jewel was an issue in it! From my experience back when I was new I didn’t find the amulet/jewel issue confusing at all. Even back in BWE1, when I first zoned into the pvp lobby, it was self-evident to me that the jewel was just an optional piece of fine-tuning that, as a new player, I could afford to ignore. The visual design of the Equipment panel in the Hero window (where the jewel didn’t even have a separate slot of its own), and the fact that the amulets the NPC sold already came with a slotted-in jewel, were a pretty blunt “look you don’t need to worry about this now” to everyone.

I personally would love to see jewels come back. And not just because I’ve been using carrion amulet with rabid jewel for the past several months – I’m sure I’ll find some wya to cope. Only a few builds used them, but I think with the rune rebalancing, the ferocity changes, and the celestial amulet buff that more such builds would be possible. It’s a completely optional piece of fine-tuning that increases build variety without at all, imho, impacting new players’ understanding of the game. Seems a pointless removal.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

How about you guys do us a favor and implement a PTR so things can be tested. Instead you break things on live and force us to wait 8-9 months before something is even “shaved”.

I find it a bit curious that NOW you quote a forum post, being that is supports your position (even moderately at best). Yet, all the other posts (hello skyhammer and skyhammer farming threads) were thought of as not valid enough.

I think Justin touched base with the major part of the confusion. If you’re going to dumb down the game, why introduce new traits? Why introduce new sigils and runes? Why not just make heroes, with no build diversity and call it a day? And Jonathan, if it such a minor part of your build, why remove it?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

Templates can save the world Chap

A Template System, with suggested build (the op build of the month! ) and a chance to save builds, can be incredibly usefull for pvp/pve/www, everything

We want this in the next feature patch, let’s go with the CDI

From a bunker guardian perspective, this will affect the build to a very minor amount. Normally bunker guardian would take a barb jewel so that they can reach a 8% crit rate instead of 4% for the purpose of proccing vigor on crit. With the vigor being nerfed, I think bunker would probably want to shift back to cleric/cleric anyway, though cleric/magi might have been a fun combo to try out. In general, I think people overestimate the effect of mixed amulet/jewel combos; in comparison to the amulet and the trait point allocation, the jewel stats are very small, bordering on insignificant. This is a fine change that will streamline the build process for newer players IMO.

Also, keep in mind that for combinations where the jewel was significant (like in valk/zerk and soldier/zerk), those sorts of anomalies will be going away in the next patch with the ferocity changes. So keep that aspect in mind.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m just asking you guys to be open to it. If this goes out and it didn’t work out as we had planned, then we are open to change too.

open to change after 6 months. everyone here knows when anet messes up and puts something terrible into the game, it won’t get fixed for who knows how long. decap engi and hambows have been in the game for how many months now? it’s only now getting any sort of change. that is sad. if this change goes through and it turns out to be horrible like we expect, it won’t change. it will never change.

This change by itself isn’t a deal breaker but it’s the direction that PVP is heading to that ticks me off. All this stuff catering to the new players is way too restrictive and down the line is making the game more shallow. First it was the new heals and then the traits and sigils that are now behind a lock system in the name of dumbing down, I mean “streamlining” the game for new players. Then disabling the ability to mix and match rune sets. And now we have the removal of jewels. Again, none of these changes by themselves are game breaking but it’s the cumulation of them all and the direction the game is heading to. Sorry but how dumb are these new players who can’t even figure out this stuff? Maybe we should remove dodging too since that’s going to be too confusing to new players as well.

I’m all for streamlining but you’re choosing the wrong way to do it and choosing the wrong mechanics to do it with. You did a great job with retooling the sigils since they were a mess and had hidden mechanics to them. Now THAT was a mess. What about map tutorials? For a new players those would be more confusing than anything else. There are still people that don’t know what Tranquility does or where it is.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Jewels honestly aren’t any sort of barrier of entry. It’s quite a basic concept and prevalent across all forms of gear. Not to mention it’s also literally impossible to mess up; you cannot have an amulet without a jewel.

And Allie, I’m not assuming that this is going to ruin the game. It’s just slightly asinine to me and a bit problematic because it’s literally the only form of stat diversification allowed. It’s also damaging to balance because it disrupts the status quo that has been balanced around since day 1. I’m not saying the sky is falling, I’m just expressing that I think this change is a mistake.

Also, as I said before, I agree that stat diversification to a large extent isn’t exactly good for balance. But as it stands the stat diversification in PvP is far too limited. It’s kinda comical it’s being limited further.

If you wish to remove jewels, would you consider making jewel-less rings/accessories to complement the single jewel-less amulet? I can’t imagine that would be difficult for a new player…

This ^^. and agreed with the last paragraph as well.

Allie Murdock.8152:

This is why I ask that you guys try things out before assuming this will hurt build diversity or the game in general. We are shaking things up and changing systems that we have not liked for a long time. Yes, it’s going to be a renaissance of GW2 PvP.

I’m just asking you guys to be open to it. If this goes out and it didn’t work out as we had planned, then we are open to change too.

I just don’t understand how you can argue that it will not hurt build diversity. Less options always mean less diversity. That is a fact and isn’t really something that can be argued.

The issue I think is the difference between changes in the meta and build diversity. These are completely different things. All of the other GM traits, runes, sigils, etc will likely cause changes to the meta. That is a good thing. They have nothing to do with the jewels though and the reduction of build diversity that will cause.

ANET is already reducing build diversity by forcing us to have 6 runes of 1 type. Between that and the removal of jewels is why people say that ANET is dumbing down build diversity.

Hope that answers your question.

Allie Murdock.8152:

You act like it is ArenaNet vs. the community, and that is just wrong on so many levels. When you see me picking apart your arguments and pointing things out, it’s because I want to make sure you have thought everything through before I raise it to the team.

This is where the continuity of communication with the forum users and players is lost to Anet. Please hire a Communications Manager, someone well versed in public communication and interaction. When thoughts are not related properly from the Anet side, vision is lost by the people on the other end of the conversation.
PLEASE hire a communications expert to help the brand, and help the end product of the communication be more transparent, more precise, and finally, more attuned to how we expect it to be communicated.

And then we are going to fight the same Thief/War/Ele/Mes/Nec/Rang/Engi/Guard’s build over and over again.

And the next step Anet going to take would be, Auto-pilot mode. With this new awesome mode, players won’t have to deal with complexity anymore because the game will take care everything for players. It will become so much easy for players that they don’t have to use their brain anymore they simply pick their awesome character and then watch the game play for themselves. I am drooling just thinking of it.

Like others have said, by itself its not a big deal(besides the fact that you did the complete opposite of what a lot of us wanted) but combined with the fact that your restricting runes to one set, and locking new traits/sigils it all seems like you just want yo dumb down the game because you think new players are stupid.

Besides that its ruining build options in depth for us vets of gw2, not just us vet pvpers. Wvwers dont want to come because of lack of options(I used to be a heavy wvwer myself) pvers wont be confused because they are used to many more options. New players aren’t as kittenuggested, we were all new once. Everyone knows when they start a new game that there will be a learning curve, so being confused for a lil while isn’t an issue. I’ll even go as far as to say things were more confusing when I started pvping in early beta and yet me and everyone else learned. You have to make a choice about if you want to have extreme hand holding while dumbing down the game or if you want to make an more in-depth game that rewards us who want to stick around.

I guess my point is you seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

I wrote this on my phone so excuse any errors.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Can you explain which builds you feel this will affect? I’m asking this because I am seeing posts from others that say it’s not really going to change much.

I can give you examples from ele builds I have made: D/D ele builds that don’t spec at least 20 into air will feel this pretty hard. The option for D/D has generally been to take either soldier or valks amulet, neither of which has precision. Taking a jewel with precision at least allows some extra customization for more precision such that I can proc renewing stamina (vigor on crit) more reliably, and make use of the crit damage on the valks amulet.

That said, to get the necessary access to enough crit. chance on those kinds of builds, I am either forced to take precision runes (which I sometimes took before anyway), sigil of accuracy (which I often took before), or just intelligence sigil (which make precision unnecessary anyway and are REALLY strong now).

Well here I go Ill thrown in my 2 cents Allie the builds I run as it hurts half of them:

If hurts my engineer build. It runs half power based half condi yet runs rabid/soldier jewel. Engi doesnt have a good form of carrion due to bad firearms traits. Therefore no crit chance. This is a 125 power 800 hp nerf to my engi (AE I get 2 crit chance and extra condition damage that wont scale well past 1100~)

It hurts m/s gs warrior. It currently runs 100 critical chance. Now it’ll be 96. In the 9 hits on gs if 1 of those hits doesnt crit it does HALF the damage of that hit (I have 45~ crit damage)… So 500-1k damage less if I dont crit. ( btw 9 hits at 4 percent chance is 1/3 of my hundred blades getting a non crit hit) Doesn’t seem like much but still irritating.

Bunker builds (eles and guards have low hp maybe they wanted soldier for the 750 hp..) are now lower hp. Maybe that’s good change but still irradiates the player base.

Haha, this is always such a scene to watch. Players complain = Anet does something = Players still find fault = back to square 1.

Indeed. Its always Anet vs the community.

Another example is engineer. It’s quite useful to have a little bit of extra healing. Over time it really adds up. However it’s not always desired to go full into healing as that removes a lot of precision (needed for on crit procs).

PvP was already hard for hybrids. After this anything hybrid will pretty much go out the window.

Aberrant.6749:

Another example is engineer. It’s quite useful to have a little bit of extra healing. Over time it really adds up. However it’s not always desired to go full into healing as that removes a lot of precision (needed for on crit procs).

PvP was already hard for hybrids. After this anything hybrid will pretty much go out the window.

bro can’t you see that everyone in pvp is apparently a moron and that build making is waaayy too complex. i wish they could make it easier and just hold my hand through the whole game, oh and just hand me a kittenin dragon rank too.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Pyriall.5027:

I find it a bit curious that NOW you quote a forum post, being that is supports your position (even moderately at best). Yet, all the other posts (hello skyhammer and skyhammer farming threads) were thought of as not valid enough.

Pyriall, I don’t HAVE a position. If anything, my position tends to stand with the community. Sometimes, you guys send mixed messaging, which is what I am trying to understand. If I go back to the devs and tell them the feedback you give in this thread, then what should I say when they bring up the point I made?

I’m not going to get into detail on the Skyhammer point because I don’t want to derail this thread, but I will say that using Skyhammer to argue your point is backwards. The only reason I commented on that thread is because I needed to know what I was going to say when I went to the team and explained how the community feels it should be removed. It was literally the first issue I raised to the team the day I came back.

You act like it is ArenaNet vs. the community, and that is just wrong on so many levels. When you see me picking apart your arguments and pointing things out, it’s because I want to make sure you have thought everything through before I raise it to the team.

We all want the same thing. For GW2 to be the best it can be.

Now, back on topic. OE, I think your points are valid. I feel like your thread has mixed messaging in it, though. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you started this thread with the concern that we are removing a piece that you feel is tantamount to build diversity. Can you explain which builds you feel this will affect? I’m asking this because I am seeing posts from others that say it’s not really going to change much.

Everyone kept asking me “Is this patch going to shake up the meta?” and it always made me chuckle knowing what was coming. Given that we are changing so much, it will be a major shake-up for those of you that have known our game through it’s ups and downs. In that sense, it will be a big adjustment.

This is why I ask that you guys try things out before assuming this will hurt build diversity or the game in general. We are shaking things up and changing systems that we have not liked for a long time. Yes, it’s going to be a renaissance of GW2 PvP.

I’m just asking you guys to be open to it. If this goes out and it didn’t work out as we had planned, then we are open to change too.

Now, I won’t post for the rest of the weekend, but I had to get that off my chest. The movers are going to be here in 30 minutes so I need to go scramble to get things ready.

Your position as in this is what A-net is doing. This being the case, your position is to remove the jewel under the auspice that balance is achieved by minimizing large variations. Yet you contradict yourself by adding more variation (traits, sigils, and runes) Thus you posted a thread where people are having that discussion. In the past, you have completely ignored/dismissed that sentiment altogether.

A-net vs the community? This is the overwhelming feel I get, when I see things like perplexity runes make their way into the game followed with, “we knew it was a touchy subject.” Every step of the way you guys stumble through things, yet here we are still supporting you. We don’t have to, we want to. However, when we see the same mistakes over and over again why should we.

I use the barbarian amulet as it provides so much extra health
but without the option of finetunig via the gem
that results in 800 not needed extra health instead of 5% crit dmg in case of berserker gem

@Devs..for an example an elementalist without water traits will have only 10.8k health using valks, rabids,settlers,clerics
That hp is gonna get almost halved just by an incendiary proc from an engi.Its outright UNVIABLE.
Prior to that you could mildly fix that by getting a barbarian jewel or mix a few runes with vitality or whatever and now you wont.
Point is there are a ton ! of builds that wvw players use and are unviable in spvp purely due to stats. I know you all play warrior! And that 125 stat points are nothing to you .But for the rest of the classes and especially those at the low end the % of choice you lose by that restriction is not .. “nothing”

And even if it honestly proves to be no big deal for most builds.. i still cant find a reason for this change for the general good of the game ,other than break our hearts and make us feel even more restricted compared to pve. Everything would be perfect about the new patch without this

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

No. Sadly my Elementalist build will die because of this. I will fill my need of PvP elsewhere. With the removal of jewels, it just doesn’t make me want to try. I play for diversity; I enjoy MTG because of this. Good bye. Ladderless and pointless solo roaming in WvW is now more appealing (I am not kidding at all).

Just to point out, my Staff Elementalist build wins duels, it’s not glass. It’s Celestial with a twist. Now, you are removing the “twist”. How will you convince me to play again?

Fresh-Air-One-With-Air Staff Elementalist, Celestial-Zealot-Zerker Stay-on-Threshold-Self-Heal build. You’ve never heard of that. And it’s super functional, but a lot more in WvW roaming due to stat diversity.

Alekt.5803:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

No. Sadly my Elementalist build will die because of this. I will fill my need of PvP elsewhere. With the removal of jewels, it just doesn’t make me want to try. I play for diversity; I enjoy MTG because of this. Good bye. Ladderless and pointless solo roaming in WvW is now more appealing (I am not kidding at all).

Just to point out, my Staff Elementalist build wins duels, it’s not glass. It’s Celestial with a twist. Now, you are removing the “twist”. How will you convince me to play again?

Celestial amulet is getting a buff, im going to try it too this patch + the water trait nerf being reversed in pvp is going to give more resilience against the condi spam it’s going to come.

Regarding this I really have to try it first.

This is going to bring WvW and Pve players to spvp and they are the ones making money to A-net, they will have to listen to the increasing players and $$