Guild Wars 2

(Premise: I’ve been playing every profession about equally for a long time, strictly on PvP Tournaments; I’m definitely not a Great player, but I have a lot of experience and I play non-meta builds on all characters fairly succesfully)

If I had to pinpoint the biggest issue I have with Gw2 PvP, I’d say it’s “Too much of Everything”.

There is too much damage/damage avoidance/healing/crowd controlling/stun-breaking/boon application/condition application/condition cleansing/gap closing/mobility available to players at any given time, on too short CDs.
I’ll be honest, for the most part this is all remarkably balanced (yes, I said it), because you can counter their “too much” with your own “too much”.

But this makes for an extremely chaotic and spammy experience, where careful planning is often unrewarded compared to thoughtless skill rotation.

Another effect is that people favor defensive mechanics and tanky builds because nothing that is active is reliable: you never know for sure if your CC or damage will land or be avoided/broken/cleansed in one of countless ways that are basically untrackable, so it is always best to focus on what works all the time.
Long story short, skills/traits that affect yourself beat skills/traits that affect the opponents, for the average player at least.

My advice would be to simply “Reduce Everything”.

If people didn’t have a cleanse/gap closer/dodge available at all times, that Cripple you landed on them would actually be a reliable defense.
At the same time, if people didn’t have a hard or soft CC available at all times, you wouldn’t need so much cleansing/stun-breaking.
The same of course applies to damaging conditions vs. cleansing, or simply to damage vs. healing.

You would actually have to be mindful about the much scarcer impactful skills you and your opponents use and when, because they won’t be available again for a relevant amount of time.
Both the reward for success and the punishment for failure would be greater.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

Yes. Yes, yes yes.
But I have a feeling the devs are not listening.

Well, yes. This has been brought up time and time again, but every single patch we see a huge reduction in cooldowns across all classes.
This would definitely be a way to balance the game, but I am pretty sure the developers have already discussed and trashed the idea of slowing down the game.
Let’s hope whatever they have in store will work.
If I recall correctly they made a statement that they were scared of making the game too slow, so that it would become a stare-contest.

^ That is a fair counter-point, to an extent.

But if there is such a thing as a sweet spot where the game is neither too slow, nor too mindlessly spammy, I feel that Guild Wars 2 is leaning way more towards the latter, which is as much of a problem as a “stare-contest”.

Also, I’m not just refering to short Cooldowns when I say “too much of everything”: they could keep the same active Tempo to the gameplay and still tone down the effects of most skills (damage, quantity and duration of conditions/boons/cc/cleanses…) to reduce chaos and redundancy, and increase readability.

Or they could do a bit of both, nerf spammable skills (but keep them spammable) and increase CDs on the more impactful ones; this way you’d always have something relevant to do, but you’ll still have to be mindful of your and your opponents’ “big guns”.

Here’s the pickle ANET created though…

They intentionally made some professions – like a necro – with little mobility and no immunities. Instead, they made their defenses based on DS and tanking damage, instead of avoiding it.

Thus, if you change the amount of damage being shelled out, it impacts different professions unproportionately. Reducing damage would help Necros and some other professions/builds much more than others.

For example… stealth, mobility, and immunities can help you avoid infinite amounts of damage…so “reducing everything” won’t impact those “defenses” as much as it would a profession that uses non-infinite damage defenses.

ANET keeps affirming that they INTEND things to be this way, so it really puts them in a pickle in terms of balancing the professions and increasing/decreasing damage.

For example, should a Necro be balanced on having 100% LF at the start of a fight, 50%, or 0%…Since DS does not have the “infinite” defense capability of other defenses, should DS allow a Necro to tank 1v1 damage, 2v1 damage, 3v1 damage???

In short…it seems obvious to say “reduce everything”…but they made some fundamental design decisions that make it a little more complex…and can actually harm balance more than it helps.

ilcane.3081:

^ That is a fair counter-point, to an extent.

But if there is such a thing as a sweet spot where the game is neither too slow, nor too mindlessly spammy, I feel that Guild Wars 2 is leaning way more towards the latter, which is as much of a problem as a “stare-contest”.

Also, I’m not just refering to short Cooldowns when I say “too much of everything”: they could keep the same active Tempo to the gameplay and still tone down the effects of most skills (damage, quantity and duration of conditions/boons/cc/cleanses…) to reduce chaos and redundancy, and increase readability.

Or they could do a bit of both, nerf spammable skills (but keep them spammable) and increase CDs on the more impactful ones; this way you’d always have something relevant to do, but you’ll still have to be mindful of your and your opponents’ “big guns”.

I agree with you, I’d like to see decisions being made in GW2. Nobody takes any decisions right now, they just use their skills whenever it seems fit.
However, if they were not to increase the cooldown, we would end up having:
A lot of really low-dmg skills with spammable cooldowns. Keep in mind that healing and defensive utilites would also have to be toned down. This would result in the game being just as spammy, just using different numbers to indicate what’s high and low dmg.
They would need to make more important high-impact skills. 3-4 second channel-time for a devastating melee attack. This would:
Make the caster very vulnerable to interrupts, stuns therefore forcing some kind of support team-play. It would also force the other team to react, either a) Run away for a period of time, allowing them to decap but avoid getting hit. b) somehow interrupt the attack.
In the current game this would not work at all, which is why skills like Judgement do not work. Too much blind/aegis/dodging, the risk/reward balance is simply not there.
I believe it’s too much work for the developers to simply reduce everything, if that’s not the case I believe they would have done it a long time ago, they might not always make the best decisions but they are not kittened.
I think they already have some kind of long-term agenda they’re hoping is going to work, otherwise they wouldn’t keep introducing strong passive traits etc.
As I said, I really hope it’s something great.

well though I agree with the OP I think it’s too late to completely overhaul the game. Anyways here’s some advise or wishes ^^ maybe for future-addons:

• tone down #6 heals (CDs should be >60s) or completely remove them on certain classes; increase scaling of weapon-spell heals. Heals should be an ace in your sleeve once in a fight, not part of your “standard-rotation” -> this ensures that some classes (like thief or old D/D ele) can’t quit combat anytime they want (very frequently) and reset the fight by outranging or hiding from enemies via stealth, heal up and engage combat again with full HP. In addition this would make supporter more important
• restrict certain boons to certain classes or very distinct builds (regeneration only for ele/guard, fury only warrior, might only engi, etc.) -> promotes build/class-variety
• same goes for conditions: restrict certain conditions to certain classes (confusion only for mesmer, weakness only for guard, bleed only thief warrior and necro, burn only ele and necro, vulnerability only for ranger etc.)
• give classes more distinct roles, don’t try to enable all playstyles for all classes. When I choose a class I want to have a defined role and stand out in that role. Why create 8 professions when every class can do everything anyways?
• create more skillshots -> high risk and high reward. CCs and some conditions should be stronger (like a 5-6s stun) but also have a long CD. Burst-spells (like meteor shower, skullcrack, backstab) should have high CDs too but also hit like a truck when they actually hit something -> would promote more coordinated play, people will have to time and combine their offensive spells to kill an enemy (this is already possible but not necessary due to low CDs)
• balance defensive spells (and dodges) based on those strong skillshots (defensive spells should always have larger CDs than offensive spells to avoid endless duels → things like perma-vigor or perma-dodge-thiefs are extremely boring)
• tone down autohits – make classes more reliant on landing their spells
• also avoid spam of mediocre spells by higher CDs to enforce intelligent gameplay and …
• … introduce a (in combat slow recharging) resource like mana/energy/etc. for every class -> gives builds and gameplay more depth and punishes players for spamming skills and wasting their resource
• don’t let every class be effective at both melee and ranged combat at the same time just by switching weapons – ranged classes should be punished when in melee range but be rewarded when they can avoid melee combat. (same goes for melee-classes vice versa)
• don’t add too much passive traits like healing signet, regeneration, immunity etc. they’re boring and let people “outplay” others not by skill but by those passives winning the game for them.
• reduce the inequality of stats between the classes (warriors having 1000P worth of attributes more than eles) – compensate low defensive stats with higher offensive stats
• remove or alter downstate in PvP. At least make it harder to revive allies (remove the mechanic that revives all players once an enemy is finished).

ilcane.3081:

There is too much damage/damage avoidance/healing/crowd controlling/stun-breaking/boon application/condition application/condition cleansing/gap closing/mobility available to players at any given time, on too short CDs.
I’ll be honest, for the most part this is all remarkably balanced (yes, I said it), because you can counter their “too much” with your own “too much”.

It’s not too much.
It’s too much badly made.

When it comes to skills ‘how should i use this skill right now’ and ‘which of my skills should i use at the moment’ is basically the MMO gameplay style. Saving/timing next to every ability is EXTREMELY moba.

Where GW2 goes wrong is that it is based on conquest which points out how shallow and unengaging every other part of the game is since it’s a bad MMO map type. It forces small/scattered fights and boring roles (afk’ing at a back point/bunkering) those put extreme focus on each spec in and of itself…

And, I mean, the specs are terribly made, like there wasn’t much good thinking going on there. Conquest forces the game to survive off of class/skill design… and GW2 can’t.

Fixing that is not something so simple as longer CDs or less effects, its an issue of the devs and their choices.
Only large, constant and well done fixes can save GW2.
Tragically the current guys haven’t done ANY of that.

We’ve been saying this for ages, but no one seems to be listening.

ArenaNet have said, on multiple occasions, that they want to make the game more newb-friendly, and that they don’t want players to have ’nothing to do’. Basically, another way of saying: "We would rather cater to low-skilled casuals".

The forums have continuously been screaming for;
- Less AI
- Less condition spam
- Less passives
- Less vigor/endurance
- Less autoattack damage
etc.

And what did we get?
- Another Spirit
- A new condition (Torment)
- Cooldown reduction across the board
- More conditions on certain professions (Burn on Necros, which they never wanted)
- Stronger passives (Healing Signet, Traits)
- New passives (Mesmer Heal)
etc.

We basically got the exact opposite of what we wanted. Geez, thanks ANet.
OP, I agree completely - GW2 has too much of everything, which results in nothing being impactful on its own. I doubt it will ever change though, as ArenaNet seems to have quite a different view on the game, than us PvP’ers do.

garethh.3518:

When it comes to skills ’how should i use this skill right now’ and ’which of my skills should i use at the moment’ is basically the MMO gameplay style. Saving/timing next to every ability is EXTREMELY moba.

Where GW2 goes wrong is that it is based on conquest which points out how shallow and unengaging every other part of the game is since it’s a bad MMO map type. It forces small/scattered fights and boring roles (afk’ing at a back point/bunkering) those put extreme focus on each spec in and of itself...

You’re insinuating that a MOBA style PvP would be bad, and that the traditional MMO style is good. However, that’s just not the case, is it? GW2 was advertised as a PvP game, a would-be successor to GW1, with an eSport future. How many MMOs have ever had an eSports scene? Exactly 0, that’s how many.
Doing things differently is not bad, but not necessarily good either. We all hoped GW2 would be different, and I believe that’s why people are so disappointed.

I do however sort of agree on your Conquest point. It’s not a great gamemode, as it promotes idling on point, avoiding fights and building for 1v1s.

SPESHAL.9106:

Here’s the pickle ANET created though…

They intentionally made some professions – like a necro – with little mobility and no immunities. Instead, they made their defenses based on DS and tanking damage, instead of avoiding it.

Thus, if you change the amount of damage being shelled out, it impacts different professions unproportionately. Reducing damage would help Necros and some other professions/builds much more than others.

For example… stealth, mobility, and immunities can help you avoid infinite amounts of damage…so “reducing everything” won’t impact those “defenses” as much as it would a profession that uses non-infinite damage defenses.

ANET keeps affirming that they INTEND things to be this way, so it really puts them in a pickle in terms of balancing the professions and increasing/decreasing damage.

For example, should a Necro be balanced on having 100% LF at the start of a fight, 50%, or 0%…Since DS does not have the “infinite” defense capability of other defenses, should DS allow a Necro to tank 1v1 damage, 2v1 damage, 3v1 damage???

In short…it seems obvious to say “reduce everything”…but they made some fundamental design decisions that make it a little more complex…and can actually harm balance more than it helps.

The thing is NOT running away is BETTER on this node point system, so the player that tanks more damage has the advantage, so reduce or give more game modes….

Reduce everything… it’s just so unspecific and overreaching. I can understand where you’re coming from with the criticism , but it’s not really a legitimate suggestion for fixing the game. If you really want to make a suggestion, say specifically, exactly, what you’d change.

Along those lines too, I really think only a few classes/builds are over the top for the defensive spam you’re talking about. Mesmer would be on my list, maybe warrior and thief, but that’s about it. Condi spam I would agree is an issue for necro, engi, and maybe mesmer.

Adian.8756:

You’re insinuating that a MOBA style PvP would be bad, and that the traditional MMO style is good.

I’m insinuating that the MMO style works.
Gearing a game more towards which skill should I use instead of when should I use one of my few skills isn’t unworkable…
I am not and was not saying anything more or less.

That means the main issues in GW2 are elsewhere so this fix by OP, it would increase depth and so make the game a lil less mindless, but it’d be a shoddy fix at best since it doesn’t actually address any of the major underlying issues in the game.

I absolutely agree with the OP.

I think the state of Boons and Conditions highlight this problem best.

Weakness is a great tool to counter high-melee damage pressure. But instead of being a targeted ability used at a specific moment, Weakness has to be the most abundant condition there is. It’s literally applied by every second auto-attack and thus extremely over-used.

That’s why everyone has to run so many condition removals because otherwise they are severely hampered by all the conditions flying around.

Boon are in a similar boat. The whole concept of targeted boon-removal, boon-stealing and boon-corruption falls apart when boons are applied so liberally by such a vast number of traits.

Elementalists have all boons rolling on them for the vast majority of time and Guardians too have excessive and easy access to them. It just makes the whole system moot when there’s no tactics or counter-play involved in boon management because they are being constantly applied.