Guild Wars 2

This “big” patch is a cruel joke or something. Such things should be 4 times more often

Perhaps the idea is that the relatively large number of balance changes significantly alters S PVP and that’s the implementation of S PVP content. After all, Collins said new game types won’t be introduced until “January” so we still have many patches to go before we can see something on that level of significance.

I hope this is just the half patch because there are a lot of things missing like:

a) Why arent cd skills with recharge traits with the blue mark? (showing the cd skill is affected by a trait)
b) Superior Sigil of Perception, bloodlust, corruption are with the pve description…yet
c) Perfect Inscriptions: This trait now increases the effectiveness of the passive condition removal on Signet of Resolve (not working…)

I was posting more things but i think i just dont care anymore.

The patch was bad for pvp. Really not much things changed what many players were wishing, besides the UI changes e.g. the new condition tick visualization is better.

Warrior got even slightly stronger (the sigil nerf wasn’t warrior specific). Necromancer was also buffed. And obviously rangers were so rare in pvp that they also needed a buff.

Warrior has always been king of pve with guardian. Yet every single patch buffs them in all game modes. Hammer + sword/warhorn shout warrior has been the meta in WvWvW since Autumn 2012. In fact some commanders openly wish that they would have all their players running warriors to win easier. Now that got buffed.

That all makes so much “sense”.

It seems Arenanet doesn’t want this game to be skill based at all, rather more just a casual game, accessible for all. Like the WvWvW lead wrote in forums “WvWvW isn’t supposed to be balanced at all”. So I guess it applies to tpvp/spvp as well

The activation time of skills gets reduced, cooldowns get reduced, AoE radius get larger so that even a person with bad mouse aim and no anticipation skills has a good chance of landing them. Allowing more easier, beginner friendly spam.

In classic game design it should be “high risk and high reward vs. low risk and low reward”. Things really appear upside down in this game. If I spam my damage skills and miss, where is the risk? If stealthed person tries to hit an opponent true block, he doesn’t get revealed. Where is the risk?

Powerful game mechanisms should be made very scarce (rare) or have a hard counter easily accessible for all. Teleportation (shadowstepping) still has no hard counter. Even ancient pen & paper role-playing games like D&D have anti-magic field and dimensional anchor, anti-teleporation field. Stealth makes a character invisible to enemies, but not immune to damage. Thus is should be actually called invisibility, but also see invisibility and invisibility purge. Now it finally got one hard counter (Sic’ Em), but other professions don’t have access to it. Two very badly designed game mechanisms. Granted the small size of pvp maps and the nature of contesting the points, which doesn’t work stealthed, makes this too less powerful in pvp, but extremely powerful in WvWvW.

Classic MMORPGs have both energy/mana and skill cooldown for a good reason. 7 out of 8 professions in GW2 only have the skill cooldown. Thus you can spam your skills as soon as they are free from cooldown without any penalty at all. You don’t lose any energy/mana. Thief weapon skills have no cooldown, but have initiative, allowing potentially even more abuse, by enabling to spam the same powerful skill several times in a row until initiative runs out. Dodging + evading is also a form of spam.

In general a skill should do either:
1) one powerful thing
2) two semi powerful things

E.g. well designed skill does a lot of damage, but nothing else e.g. kill shot (warrior’s rifle burst skill) or net shot (engi rifle #2), which does only 2 second immobilize, but no damage at all. Both skills are easy to dodge and kite, thus allowing smart counter play.

Badly designed skills do 2 or more things at same time e.g.
body shot (damage, invulnerability stacks + now immobilize)
putrid mark (high damage ranged aoe, transfers all conditions from allies to foes, which itself is very powerful alone)

Very high damage skills should have slow activation time and clearly telegraphed animation to make avoiding them easier, while very quick attacks and most auto attacks should do low damage. A well designed skill in that sense is churning earth (ele dagger 5).

High damage output and powerful healing should require player to do lots of interaction. Now AI can do the damage for you (ranger spirits, mesmer phantasms, necromancer minions). But where is the skill? Several professions have very powerful passive heals (warrior, guardian) and even passive condition removal (guardian, ranger). Instead we should have more skills like engineer’s medkit, which really requires the engineer to spend most of time healing if he wants to take every ounce of the healing out of it.

Logically the professions with the highest armor and health should have the least mobility and then vice versa for low health and armor. Yet in GW2 warrior has highest mobility (rivaled only by thief, but thief needs to sacrifice all initiative to keep up with perma swiftness sword/warhorn + greatsword warrior).

Maybe I am a too demanding customer? Maybe I think things too much, but all this really hurts my logic and sense of fairness.

The patch says to me that it might be time to get rid of Peters and move forward. He does not seem to be in touch with what is going on or he is either unable or unwilling to admit mistakes.

It might be time to move forward with someone else at the helm.

To me he seems like a young guy who has found himself over his head.

The best thing they could do for the game would be to find a way out of the current comdition meta and this might require more leadership.

From a Guard stand point it was ok. All meds being instant is nice, and the gaining fury is good too. It’s not what we really needed, but a solid buff.

Purging Flames and Hallowed Ground again solid buffs. I just personally don’t like Consecrations. I hate being forced to stay in a certain area, but I can see a lot of bunker guards using it them now.

Pure of Voice was a pretty big nerf, even though it was a bug. So I can’t complain.

Glacial Heart this just needs to be reworked. Either make it apply to all weapons, or give it a lower CD. Sorry 30 seconds is way too long. I’d rather use Ice or Hydromancy.

tichorum.2415:

The patch did a lot. Helped solve a Warrior issue and helped balance s/d thief somewhat; evades are still broken, but they do less boon strip which is a bonus.

As far as classes being broken, I literally see nothing that stands out. Anyone who is QQing about things being unreasonably broken is just mad that their spec can’t beat it. Mesmers aren’t broken, yet they destroy most warrior builds.

Actually Chaos Storm is broken atm. So welcome mesmers.

Krakah.3582:

tichorum.2415:

The patch did a lot. Helped solve a Warrior issue and helped balance s/d thief somewhat; evades are still broken, but they do less boon strip which is a bonus.

As far as classes being broken, I literally see nothing that stands out. Anyone who is QQing about things being unreasonably broken is just mad that their spec can’t beat it. Mesmers aren’t broken, yet they destroy most warrior builds.

Actually Chaos Storm is broken atm. So welcome mesmers.

yeah… doing 63k dmg in wvwvw (yes you read correctly 63k dmg)

Absolutely terrible patch. I wish I could play my thief, but they just suck compared to the kind of pressure warriors can apply.

I’m not sure what to say. There are many things I wish I could say, but I somehow lack the continued strength to say them. It is as if I have finally realized that the light at the end of the tunnel for PvP will never get closer. Why bother to say anything? What good will it do, when months and months of the same feedback provided by players much better than I seems to do nothing?

It is a small patch of many patches that we’ve had, but there were some expectations here. Supposedly, the developers were listening and understood the terrible state of the game and would take measures to correct it. People waited because there were some big tournaments. That was the justification, right? No changes before tournaments were done, wait for the October patch for real change?

This patch had some good things. The QoL changes are all good. Nice job done there. Love the new trait descriptions and stuff. But what about the things that are really ruining build diversity and gameplay? What about fixing the faceroll, FOTM, broken nonsense that permeates the game and people have been complaining about for months on end? I had understood that the devs knew about this, did they not? Did they choose to leave it for later? Have I just gone mad? Did I hear something wrong? Are they hoping we’ll find out some incredible secret they know but we don’t, and haven’t suspected in all these preceding months?

I’m not sure I understand the patch changes. Does Anet believe that if they buff all the useless abilities that it will somehow stop Necromancers from melting everything except Warriors with conditions? That a new Purging Flames, a single ability available to a single class, will somehow stop condi spam for everyone else? Will Conjure Earth Shield do it?

It’s great that they are buffing useless things. However, these things will still be useless if the FOTM craps all over them anyway.

WvW is dead to me. Anet killed it with gear grinding, rank grinding, and unbalancing Bloodlust. sPvP is very literally the only other type of PvP I could do that lacks any of the aforementioned issues, and yet I feel as if it is equally dead.

I don’t even.

My friends went back to Star Wars. The Old Republic. That terrible game, that’s so horrible, and yet the friends I convinced to purchase this game are playing that right now.

I can’t

what

how

Just wait people get things with a delay :P

“Shaving” is fine as a concept, but it’s just done too slowly. ArenaNet shouldn’t be slightly tweaking the classes every couple months; it should be done every two weeks or month.

With that said, the changes to Sigil of Paralyzation, stun-breakers and group-wide condition removal will do a lot. All of those changes directly address things people are complaining about in this thread, yet few people seem to be acknowledging them.

I think people generally exaggerate the imbalances in the game. Most high-end players I know are completely flabbergasted by the complaints about the “condition meta,” which stopped existing one or two months ago.

My only real disappointment is that the non-viable builds still aren’t getting enough attention. Buffing staff elementalist is nice, but one specific build for one specific class shouldn’t be the only build to get love for an entire patch.

As an aside, some of you should consider adopting more humility. Just remember how many of you were saying that nothing will change about the metagame when warriors and spirit rangers got a couple buffs. I know some of you won’t publicly admit to missing the impact of those changes, but at least acknowledge the oversight privately and consider it before posting.

Lopez.7369:

I think people generally exaggerate the imbalances in the game. Most high-end players I know are completely flabbergasted by the complaints about the “condition meta,” which stopped existing one or two months ago.

Which meta are we in now? Which builds stopped it? Can these builds be replicated in every class? How many builds are now viable?

No surprises here. I’ve just figured out that you should have have extremely low expectations with each balance patch so you aren’t dissapointed. I’m not impressed by the lack of caring from ANet, and for this reason I won’t be returning to the game. By the rate they’re working at and how much resources they invest in PvP, I wouldn’t expect much until S1 or S2 of 2014.

If you guys get off the forum and play for a bit you’ll see the new possibilities from immob stacking that are opened up for a ton of classes.

Landing ele burst is a lot easier when they can’t dodge… same with mesmers.

TainoFuerte.8136:

Which meta are we in now?

None :P
By buffing necromancers the age of Condition came
Then on the white horse a Warrior came and vanquised the evil lord :P

Now that immobilize stacks , its time to get rid of the useless Warrior hero and try to balance the classes around the new modes , either they are 1v1 or have <<big clutches plays>> :P

Killthehealersffs.8940:

By buffing necromancers the age of Condition came
Then on the white horse a Warrior came and vanquised the evil lord :P

Well, that’s kinda what I thought, but I don’t know if I had all the information.

I would not call the existence of one single build in one single class that can counter another build that melts basically everything else while also being of such power that it crushes everything not specifically suited to dealing with it “balance”.

TainoFuerte.8136:

Lopez.7369:

I think people generally exaggerate the imbalances in the game. Most high-end players I know are completely flabbergasted by the complaints about the “condition meta,” which stopped existing one or two months ago.

Which meta are we in now? Which builds stopped it? Can these builds be replicated in every class? How many builds are now viable?

It doesn’t have a snappy title, but it’s no longer the condition meta.

Case in point: The team that won MLG didn’t have a necromancer.

MLG was a joke the 2 top teams had dc’s causing them to lose. You cant use MLG as a example.

Deniara Devious.3948:

It seems Arenanet doesn’t want this game to be skill based at all, rather more just a casual game, accessible for all. Like the WvWvW lead wrote in forums “WvWvW isn’t supposed to be balanced at all”. So I guess it applies to tpvp/spvp as well

The activation time of skills gets reduced, cooldowns get reduced, AoE radius get larger so that even a person with bad mouse aim and no anticipation skills has a good chance of landing them. Allowing more easier, beginner friendly spam.

In classic game design it should be “high risk and high reward vs. low risk and low reward”. Things really appear upside down in this game. If I spam my damage skills and miss, where is the risk? If stealthed person tries to hit an opponent true block, he doesn’t get revealed. Where is the risk?

^ This, a thousand times.

This patch was the last straw for me. I supported the game, I posted lengthy, friendly, constructive posts and I stuck around in the hopes that things would change for the better. It didn’t, and likely never will. As an avid PvP’er, I’m officially done with GW2 – There’s simply nothing left to enjoy.

- sPvP is completely broken, with a spammy, low-skilled meta, where passive traits and AI is superior to anything else.
- WvW is ruined with a massive power creep (Bloodlust buff, WXP Buffs and Ascended Equipment), and a meta where mindlessly zerging is king.

If this patch is any indication, ArenaNet will never change anything significant, because they actually enjoy the current state of GW2 themselves. Well, have fun playing alone ANet – I’m out.

JinDaVikk.7291:

MLG was a joke the 2 top teams had dc’s causing them to lose. You cant use MLG as a example.

I don’t need to use it as an example, but I think it’s a valid one because, at the very least, it shows a top 3 team can work without a necromancer.

The current meta comp is guardian, warrior, ranger, thief and another class, which can be a warrior, ranger, necromancer, engineer or mesmer. In other words, necromancers aren’t necessary.

neither are thieves

Were in the mesmer jumping meta. 5 coordinated portal mesmers nuking nodes without any tell.

lol why did they give guardians fury

I don’t think I ever read anywhere of guardians complaining that they had no access to fury so that they can instagib people

Might as well give warriors protection and retal while you’re at it.

just lol

Lopez.7369:

JinDaVikk.7291:

MLG was a joke the 2 top teams had dc’s causing them to lose. You cant use MLG as a example.

I don’t need to use it as an example, but I think it’s a valid one because, at the very least, it shows a top 3 team can work without a necromancer.

The current meta comp is guardian, warrior, ranger, thief and another class, which can be a warrior, ranger, necromancer, engineer or mesmer. In other words, necromancers aren’t necessary.

the current meta is:
Guardian Bunker, Guardian DPS, Guardian DPS, Spirit Ranger, Hammer Warrior

thieves soon or later will be out of the meta too

Warriors have access to retal on block as a Grandmaster trait.

Just sayin.

I’m gonna be cautiously optimistic but I think all 8 classes are viable now.

Ctrl+F “PvP” in Patch notes – 3 matches found….

jmatb.6307:

I’m gonna be cautiously optimistic but I think all 8 classes are viable now.

they always were! the problem is each one only has 1 viable spec and every one specs the same throughout the classes, and in some of this classes, the specs are stronger that the best possible spec from another profession.

If you saw the last A-net stream you’d know what to expect from the balance team.
They have no freeing idea what they are doing and cant even articulate a phrase… Grats to the brilliant mind that decided to put these 2 in front of a camera!

Dardamaniac.1295:

Nothing, we waited 4 months for nothing..

But, but.. Ele Conjures!!

Adian.8756:

This patch was the last straw for me. I supported the game, I posted lengthy, friendly, constructive posts and I stuck around in the hopes that things would change for the better. It didn’t, and likely never will. As an avid PvP’er, I’m officially done with GW2 – There’s simply nothing left to enjoy.

- sPvP is completely broken, with a spammy, low-skilled meta, where passive traits and AI is superior to anything else.
- WvW is ruined with a massive power creep (Bloodlust buff, WXP Buffs and Ascended Equipment), and a meta where mindlessly zerging is king.

If this patch is any indication, ArenaNet will never change anything significant, because they actually enjoy the current state of GW2 themselves. Well, have fun playing alone ANet – I’m out.

I know exactly how you are feeling. I was also advocating this game to a lot of people. I managed to pull some people from other MMORPGs to Guild Wars 2, but now they are all back to their old MMORPGs, because they all got bored by this game and the massive power creep (game is just years of age, and we got crazy power creep in pve/WvWvW). I have been semi-prominent figure on my server as a PuG commander. Now I am using this game as an example in my game design lectures. A good example when it comes to making amazingly beautiful visuals, audio and world design and intro for pve (the 1st 30 levels of pve personal story are generally very well made) and very bad example of how to make pvp and perfect example how to ruin and destroy open world pvp (WvWvW).

I am nowadays only doing my daily in pve and then I just sign out. I completely stopped WvWvW after the September 17th patch and borderland changes. Words fail to describe how utterly I hate those BL changes, the BL bloodlust (it is nerfed now, but still exists) and spvp alike map in middle of map, which feels completely forced and unnatural and very few people are there. Almost everybody in the WvWvW map spends their time elsewhere than in that spvp map alike middle zone with the 5 capture points. It just tells how few people actually like to stand, cap and defend points. That type of game play appeals to a very tiny minority.

I know that new game modes are coming, but still the issues I pointed out in my earlier post about the spammy, low skill, low risk-high reward meta and profession imbalances are all there.

The skill balance of this game would actually be better if they would just revert stuff to Autumn 2012 situation (with bug fixes and UI improvements staying).

Deniara Devious.3948:

Badly designed skills do 2 or more things at same time e.g.
body shot (damage, invulnerability stacks + now immobilize)
putrid mark (high damage ranged aoe, transfers all conditions from allies to foes, which itself is very powerful alone)

Very high damage skills should have slow activation time and clearly telegraphed animation to make avoiding them easier, while very quick attacks and most auto attacks should do low damage. A well designed skill in that sense is churning earth (ele dagger 5).

Ehh.
If devs are halfway decent, they can balance out, and should have these things to balance out.

But I guess, since GW2 devs blow, that to simplify it to the point where ‘every ability should be of the same power’ would slap back on the training wheels for balance…

But balance isn’t GW2’s biggest issue and never was.
Anways.

DeterminedPanda.1274:

The pvp community has waited for months, watching new content come consistently for pve and wvw. We have posted our concerns/ideas/criticism on forums, getting responses like “This is something we are working on” from the devs. I dont doubt you are working, but very little work is being completed……….

With this patch………….. You have got to be infant catting me. This is such a steamy, moist, sloppy bucket of kitty. A few nice additions for sure, a little bit of balance, but for us to have been waiting for this long with hopes that things would get significantly better…. Not cutting it. So many issues not addressed..

Skyhammer is still being farmed…. I don’t even need to go into how that is unacceptable, there are plenty of forums dedicated to that. I don’t even care that much about rank, but that is the single thing pvp people have. That’s it. “We’re working on it.” – It has been mentioned many times, pull SH til you fix the system, and even though you don’t want to ban people, you really should ban the people taking the most advantage.

The tournament system is still a wreck. If there was a bigger community I don’t think it would be as much of an issue, but there is still a concern with (in my experience) over half the matches in solo que(and team if not in full group) are decided by the teams the computer generates. Sometimes in my advantage, other times not. Either way it is not satisfying gameplay and something needs to be done.

Obviously you need new game types. That would solve so many issues, and the excitement of a new game would hide other problems

As far as balance is concerned, you have a decent idea with shaving, but you need to shave more often. If you let your beard grow 8 inches long giving it a little shave isnt going to clean that face. At least half this ammount of balance should be in all of those biweekly pve patches until things are relatively balanced.

How the flying kitty did you not change warrior healing signet? Imo it is the stupidest skill in pvp right now. Other classes have healing signets that give healing per attack or spell or cure conditions passively. That makes sense. The warrior healing signet promotes a hands off play style that drives me crazy. If you are going to make something so OP, make it something that is hard to use, not something passive. I can’t get the point across just how stupid the warrior signet is. And after months of waiting……. you didnt fix it.

Not to mention berserkers stance still being an amazing op bug making you immune to some conditions entirely….

We could point out specifics forever….

I love the mechanics of this game, I will continue to play the game(though considerably less) but the amount of work that gets completed and implemented in pvp is disheartening. There are giant problems that are starting to pile up, and when the finally our aid arrives, they arrive to apply antibiotic ointment and gauze up the gunshot wound in our arm.

The problem is that majority of players will always prefer pve, hence why pve is always in focus and pvp gets less love.
Since pvp gets less love it is usually poorly designed compared to pve making it as not as fun as pve.
Conclusion? Even more ppl will prefer pve to pvp -> pvp is bound to die out in mmorpg unless the game is developed only around pvp like LoL for example.

From financial point in long run it is not worth working on pvp at all unless you invest in it right away so pvp actually has a lot to offer from begin with and servces as good basis for big pvp community that eventually spends a lot of money for game -> profit for company.

The mistakes done by Anet were:
- bad start for pvp in this game -> not many ppl will pvp
- pvp doesn’t have much to offer, has too many issues, buggy etc. compred to pve -> ppl stop pvp and do rather pve or quit all together -> pvp community becomes even smaller
- gem store offers pretty much nothing for pvp only content, the money could be made there though

Since pvp community just gets smaller and there is almost no money made from pvp, the future for pvp in this game looks rather bad since it is currently not profitable to work on it right now.

What could be done? One step is rather hard. They would have to make quite some investments into balancing pvp, make new maps, add more and better rewards + archives, add pvp only items in gem store that ppl would actually want to buy. If they actually did that investments, pvp community could potentially grow -> more ppl buying pvp stuff from gem store -> more money. The problem there is that profit from pvp items would have to cover the investment costs in given time. Too high risk, so probably won’t happen :/