Guild Wars 2

Hello Guys, I wanted to give some feedback on game balance specifically when it comes to the Player vs Player Combat, but i want to also include some more advanced discussion about the overall design philosophy as its important to the topic.

<b>Design positions</b>

As far it seems, Guild wars two is running off a balance concept with intentional design of complexity. What this means, is the game has intentionally been designed with large amounts of complexity. This is both good and bad, but in general application complexity is massively more negative than positive. More hardcore players will not agree with this, but this is largely due to the fact that hardcore players make up much smaller amount of the population than casual players.

When it comes to pvp meta, especially involving that meta that is at the lower tiers (Amber, Emerald, Sapphire) there is a large amount of issue with this, and even if there was not the issue you would still have a fairly or even massively large stepping stone from that meta to end game.

Lastly, Complexity itself is the result of imbalance in the game (Especially extreme versions of that). For example, it is from learn A + B * C = Broken Build (D) That you arrive to these positions; however if everyone knows you have a+b*c, and all builds are equal to the same output, you will have balance. Unfortunately, that means everyone is using the same builds unless the developer wish to great large amounts of variations. That being said however, even in that application all power would be relative to other aspects and so subsequently would be “dull” or “boring”. Basically that means that the game would be like world of warcraft with the various builds (but only potentially more of them).

Now that being said however, with lots of builds you have another type of complexity, and that is “meta related complexity”, so your down to changing the complexity from learning builds to learning meta, and while that in general is better is not the best way to ultimately do it (Which is why wow’s balance is so exceptional).

It has caught my ears that the developer of gw2 is taking the opinions of players on how to balance the game, and this is largely a very broken position. You cannot obtain any reasonable amount of balance off this principle so i am here to help (with my experience) on resolving these issues.

Now on to the topic at hand.

It seems to me that there is some massive instability in the current meta.This is as follows.

- Tanks (or bunker) Builds seem to be very inconsistent. In low end meta they are exceptional, and in high end meta they are useless (or near to).

- Necromancers Second life bar is a serious balance issue, and needs to be addressed.

-Some classes are at significant disadvantages in upper end meta, like warriors and thiefs.

-Some other classes are forced to play very limited options and specs, Like rangers and guardians.

- Some mechanics in game are overly powerful, Like trap spamming (guardian).

- The game should never be balanced on a secondary stat, The game needs to be reverted back to power building. (i’d like to know more why this was changed).

<strong>Changes/Strong>

From what i can gather, a large amount of the issues seem to be largely mechanically based (that means the initial equations, or operation).

<strong>Condition Damage</strong>

Condition damage issues can be resolved by a change in the base way the conditions work. This would be to limit conditions so that they have a max application. Setting this than at the level of say 10, would really inhibit and disencourage double class builds.

Additionally at current the build up time , and the reward for dot damage is insufficient to be competitive on some classes (Like Elementalist). For this reason 10 stacks should be converted to having equal damage to the current 20. This will help move some new builds into play like earth elementalist, or bleed ranger.

Next on the topic of condition damage, and how it is displayed and works,
The current set up of the system is counter-intuitive. All dots should be on a single timer, and should simply act as an additional stack, (or if at max) or a refresh to the timer.

The current mechanics of the GUI display of the dot effect makes dots feel unrewarding, wonky in their optional, unpredictable at being able to upkeep, and so forth. This is unneeded levels of complexity, and a highly unprofessional design aspect for the system.

With regards to Conditional related effects and expertise new runes should be added with various types of combinations like “Vitality(900), Condition (1200), Expertise(900)”.

Finally, When it comes to condition related effects, the duration needs to be improved to various degree’s and should be something like

Weakness – 10% Improved Damage, 8-10 Seconds
Tourment, Chill – High Damage, 4-6 Seconds
Poison – 18-22 Seconds
Bleeding – 14-18 Seconds
Etc

<strong>On the topic of Toughness</strong>

At current the toughness is overly rated for all classes. The current meta is encouraging players to ignore their base stats in favor of this stat. While this should be a viable option, it should however not be a necessity for the builds. For this reason either classes should more easily acquire interval based (Ie, on and then off for some time) “Protection” effects or all classes should by default get around 20% Damage reduction.

If this change is implemented it should improve the livability of the classes enough to swap off these builds.

Additionally, Toughness needs to reduce income condition damage by around 65% of the base damage (as opposed to direct damages 100%) This would help validate “bunkering” Builds in the meta.

<strong>On to Class Mechanics</strong>

Rangers are in need of some serious love when it comes to pets. A lot of the pets are heavily invalidated due to bristle backs over powered damage. The Other popular pet provide a significant advantage also, leaving the others far in their dust.

I think a good solution to this is to modify the base attack of all pet types, into some cool effects like

Cats – Bleeding
Spiders – Poison
Bears – Tanking/agro (pve oriented)
Hyena – Buffs
Dragonkin – Damage (Ranged oriented-Direct Burst Damage)
Canine – Attack Speed (Melee Oriented Direct damage)
Pigs – Gizmo’s And Invisibility Detection.

Additionally when it comes to ranger, The Short bow needs to be improved (Dot oriented).

Ranger spirit abilities seem to be almost useless, i recommend a change to passive stat increases like “Poison damage on hit applied” and “bleed on hit” “Pet damage” and “range damage increase”. this should synergism well with the class talents.

Necromancer.

The second life bar of this class needs to have one of the following changes.

- Removed, 3 seconds of immune to damage when hitting 0 hit instead (can heal during this period)[recommended]
- A Long duration cast time ( 5 seconds)
- Removed, Replaced with a buff + 20% HP (passive). Rework Regeneration (heal) that necro’s have to drain durance in replacement of life (low cd).

Warriors

When it comes to warriors, they simple just need their hp amount tuned, say another 30% hp from the equation?

Mesmer

A new passive that is attached to clones. For each clone active you gain 20% Damage reduction. This application should allow power mesmer builds to be viable again, and encourage hp related talents etc to keep them active. Additionally a slight reduction to number 4 ability for Greatsword would be merrited to help burst with this class (-15% of current cd)

Elementalist

Cd of overlord on aura’s is reduced to 5 seconds.
Cast time of reflect (Warhorn # 4 ability) removed, now instant cast.

1. Ability (Secpture) Of lightning improved damage significantly (to have burst or pvp).
   Fire (#3) time to fall is reduced by 50% of current value.

This seems to be it for feedback now, I’ll see what we have going in replies. Thanks for the read.

stat changes naw

mesmer would be so op and that would in fact make an insane OP condi-bunker build even worse than now, and would not help power

necro wat? no

ranger and ele I guess I agree, ele scepter especially is such a joke and rangers could use more pet options

For how long that must have taken there is so much wrong and not helpful. Maybe get a few thousand hours in spvp before you offer such broad sweeping changes, and even then, probably only on what you’d actually know. There’s no way you are an expert on all those classes. Or let me put it another way, its very clear you are not.

This is both good and bad, but in general application complexity is massively more negative than positive.

Only because of human error on the devs’ parts. Complexity has the potential to the genre quite amazing. Maybe devs need a certain AI to help aid with balancing?

While I’m for necro nerfs 5 seconds is way too much, maybe two seconds instead?

Completely gut necromancers unique mechanic, and it’s only, rather meagre defence, instead of reversing the unnecessary buffs they got after Season 1? How about removing the buffs they shouldn’t have got, and maybe toning down chill a bit?

Agemnon.4608:

This is both good and bad, but in general application complexity is massively more negative than positive.

Only because of human error on the devs’ parts. Complexity has the potential to the genre quite amazing. Maybe devs need a certain AI to help aid with balancing?

While I’m for necro nerfs 5 seconds is way too much, maybe two seconds instead?

While I agree there may be some way to change complexity (in theory) to be simple, that would really negate the purpose of complexity to start with, wouldn’kitten

I think the problem is player(s) think that you need “complexity” to have choices, and that is far from the truth. In general, the only people i EVER see advocate for complexity are the ones that have some insistent need to “1 shot noobs” which is in no way shape or “good” for the game.

That being said, Even if it was possibly to display complexity in a simplistic way, there is no need to try to do that when you can just water down the game and make it simple to begin with.

Grort.2750:

Completely gut necromancers unique mechanic, and it’s only, rather meagre defence, instead of reversing the unnecessary buffs they got after Season 1? How about removing the buffs they shouldn’t have got, and maybe toning down chill a bit?

All i read from this is “i want to rofl stomp people”.
you could get a unique mechanic by just saying “when you hit 0 hp, your become immune to damage for 3 seconds” and than limit it to a 40 second cooldown or something.

So much in the OP is 100% wrong, I just don’t know where to begin.

looking for more feedback

Not terrible suggestions, well in comparison to that other thread “Comprehensive dream balance patch” and many other mindless posts this one isn’t as terrible.

in short, you would do yourself good writing less suggestions and learning more game

I do not understand the idea behind the change to toughness… You want toughness to be activated for a certain amount of time, and also reducing incoming damage?

Bunkering is definitely possible right now… Most of the metabattle builds use the paladin’s or mercenary’s amulets.

I hope you mean changing just bleed stacks in particular to do more damage. A burn guardian burst does enough damage. Doubling it would be disgusting. I can see a fix to bleeding for PvP, but in PvE, bleeds are in a good spot right now.

The duration of those conditions are brutal. Every class would 100% need to go full condition cleanse to even attempt to survive that (if they don’t already do that already. Engineers and Scrappers MUST go into alchemy to survive as it is).

Necromancers, as strong as they are in the meta right now, are only strong because of their chill damage and durations. They are very vulnerable to crowd control, and adding a cast time to death shroud would just add more to that weakness. There are ways to prevent Necromancers from getting life force, and the easiest way to understand that is to play as one.

The Ranger pet changes I can approve of, since the HoT pets are just that much stronger than the base pets.

Simply adding health to the Warrior would not fix what they need to survive. Warriors lack condition removal and can only get it with cleansing ire, trooper runes, and weapon swapping in the discipline line. That’s why some people have adopted to stances to simply ignore the conditions and kill the other person faster than they kill you.

Mesmers can already be bunker enough. The last PvP season of mesmer bunker is one I do not want to relive.

Overall, a lot of this post is in good faith, but was not executed correctly. Condition ranger and condition elementalist were the first addressed, and both of them are not spectacular at what they do (specifically Elementalist. Condi druid with traps is hell to deal with on a point), and do need reworks, but a lot of the changes are over the top. The changes to conditions would only help the builds that already deal disgusting condition damage (Necromancers and mesmers). Individual tweaking to skills would be a better place to start than rewriting the entire game.

Condition damage at the moment ignores toughness, I want to change that so that it now reduces the damage by 50% of what the 100% value of toughness is for Power.

In other words, If you deal 100 damage direct (power) and have 50% Damage reduction, you will receive 50 damage. However, if you deal 100 Damage condition damage, and you have 50% Damage reduction (from toughness) you will receive 100 damage. So i want to change this so that if you have 100 condition damage, and 50% Damage reduction, you will take (a total of 25% Damage in this case) 75 damage instead of 100, there by improve the viability of toughness, and improving bunker builds.

As for necromancers,

They are strong because of the lifebar, the improvements to chill etc put them in a competitive position, however with the addition of the second life bar that push them over. In short, they deal more damage then other classes and have way more life. The latter is the issue, not the fore. If you nerf their chill and their damage, you will take away their power to threaten rival teams (as they would basically just become annoying condi-tanks). So removing the Hp bar and replacing it with a sort of “ok, your about to die but you have 3 seconds to counter that” or “get kicked to stop the shroud” provides a lot of counter play with out significantly hurting the class (like a damage nerf would).

I don’t know what are you smoking but seriously, do you really think giving mesmer 60% damage reduction is good? Bulwark gyro, Rise! and dwarf passive trait are kittened enough with their 50%.

Petoox.6570:

I don’t know what are you smoking but seriously, do you really think giving mesmer 60% damage reduction is good? Bulwark gyro, Rise! and dwarf passive trait are kittened enough with their 50%.

It does not have to be 60% Dr. But i think 30% is merited at the minimum.
It changes the strategy of meser to suit what it currently is, which is to focus
the clones. Meser is really squish and needs more livability in heavy combat.
Power build is just shy of the damage it needs to be viable dps wise, but livability has a long way to go, so the dr would help the non-chrono related builds.