Guild Wars 2

Sagat.3285:

Acrisor.8097:

I love it how everyone makes an opinion, writes it here, and after changes come they start raging on forums because the balance is not right in their personal opinion.
I think customers should start acting like customers and just enjoy the game as is.

Are you saying the game had a soft balance and fairness since beta?

No, because customers always complain, and they complain too much. When players complain a lot, changes are big. If they would not complain, changes would be very small. It is our big and large feedback combined with raging opinions that define what designers do.

My biggest issue is the needed sPvP changes that are specific to sPvP aren’t being made period.

What is happening is that ANET is once again impacting the entire game while trying to balance sPvP when nearly all the changes they are putting in for class balance isn’t relevant or needed outside of sPvP.

This is just not a smart way to do things and reeks of laziness.

Acrisor.8097:

If they would not complain, changes would be very small. It is our big and large feedback combined with raging opinions that define what designers do.

This is absolutely not how it should be.

Designers need to be the final bastion of judgement when everybody else is QQ’ing. They should really know when something is broken, or just advantaged by circumstance.

cillard.3986:

My biggest issue is the needed sPvP changes that are specific to sPvP aren’t being made period.

What is happening is that ANET is once again impacting the entire game while trying to balance sPvP when nearly all the changes they are putting in for class balance isn’t relevant or needed outside of sPvP.

This is just not a smart way to do things and reeks of laziness.

Honestly, the WvW and PvE game modes .. how shall I put this. They’re an endless blackhole of balance resources. There’s significantly more variables, outliers, and imbalanced number of players.

Individual profession balance is more magnified in a 5 person team comp. When it’s 4 vs. 14, each player varying in performance by 40% depending on food and buffs, I can see why Arenanet doesn’t seem concerned with item & profession balance.

However, I think a perception by players that Anet doesn’t care is bad, and they should at least throw some ez-pity balance changes WvW/PvE’s direction.

Acrisor.8097:

I love it how everyone makes an opinion, writes it here, and after changes come they start raging on forums because the balance is not right in their personal opinion.
I think customers should start acting like customers and just enjoy the game as is.

We try to but then they nerf our favourite character class, or weapon or skill/trait in the name of ‘balance’.

Yet there are dozens, probably over a 100 traits. utility skills, healing skills, elite skills across the entire 8 classes that are ‘rubbish’ and hardly any player uses them because they are so useless. So how can they be ‘balancing’ the game when they never, ever in 3 years try to make those abilities viable by buffing them? Buffing those abilities will not upset balance at all but it may increase the number of useable builds by a lot.

Do they have metrics on all traits, healing/utility/elite skills in the game which show them the most/least popular ones? If they do use them to help balance the game in that positive way.

Meglobob.8620:

Yet there are dozens, probably over a 100 traits. utility skills, healing skills, elite skills across the entire 8 classes that are ‘rubbish’ and hardly any player uses them because they are so useless. So how can they be ‘balancing’ the game when they never, ever in 3 years try to make those abilities viable by buffing them? Buffing those abilities will not upset balance at all but it may increase the number of useable builds by a lot.

Do they have metrics on all traits, healing/utility/elite skills in the game which show them the most/least popular ones? If they do use them to help balance the game in that positive way.

Now this is correct. Most players use about the same builds but I don’t think official staff knows it. If Anet would have statistics about this, those numbers would be worrying and balancing would be totally different.

^ Sometimes people use certain builds because it’s the meta and they think that’s just the thing they have to use cuz everyone else uses it. So the more people use it, the more others will think that’s what they themselves should be using. It’s a weird cycle. I think there’s a lot of builds out there that people are not using because they haven’t been made popular, but they are still amazing in the right hands. An example is the Sword/Warhorn + Bow shout warrior build and the Wurm/S.Walk Terrormancer Necro.

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

This is 100% wrong, and causes people to leave the game. After the first summer the game was out, ANet stuck a stake through the heart of eles and made them largely unplayable for over a year. Most of those eles left the game and didn’t come back. It was also really unfun as an ele player for people to tell you how trash your class is and to pls play anything else.

Drastic over-reaction also led to things like the condi meta, the hambow meta, and the bunker meta which were universally loathed. At this points, even the “best specs” (cele ele, engie, shoutbow, condi necro) are just VERY slightly better than the next level of specs. At MOST levels of play, your skill determines the outcome when fighting these classes. Giving a small shave to these top-tier specs while gradually buffing the garbage evens the playing field even more and leads to more diversity overall.

The only thing they are being very slow with is buffing the garbage.

Chaith.8256:

Acrisor.8097:

If they would not complain, changes would be very small. It is our big and large feedback combined with raging opinions that define what designers do.

This is absolutely not how it should be.

Designers need to be the final bastion of judgement when everybody else is QQ’ing. They should really know when something is broken, or just advantaged by circumstance.

cillard.3986:

My biggest issue is the needed sPvP changes that are specific to sPvP aren’t being made period.

What is happening is that ANET is once again impacting the entire game while trying to balance sPvP when nearly all the changes they are putting in for class balance isn’t relevant or needed outside of sPvP.

This is just not a smart way to do things and reeks of laziness.

Honestly, the WvW and PvE game modes .. how shall I put this. They’re an endless blackhole of balance resources. There’s significantly more variables, outliers, and imbalanced number of players.

Individual profession balance is more magnified in a 5 person team comp. When it’s 4 vs. 14, each player varying in performance by 40% depending on food and buffs, I can see why Arenanet doesn’t seem concerned with item & profession balance.

However, I think a perception by players that Anet doesn’t care is bad, and they should at least throw some ez-pity balance changes WvW/PvE’s direction.

You are making my point even more valid. ANET has in the past made changes specific to sPvP that didn’t affect other portions of the game. Why are they choosing not to at this time?

Do they lack the resources? If so, it is going to take far more resources to fix balance issues they cause in other aspects of the game.

Or do they just not care anymore? I find that one hard to believe about PvE as it is their cash cow, but I totally get it for WvW as they abandoned that a long time ago.

So what is it? Internal dysfunction? Lack of foresight? It would be interesting to get a dev response, but I am willing to bet that never happens.

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

That is thoughtless and silly. There is nothing wrong with those classes outside of sPvP. Hell, there is nothing wrong with those classes IN sPvP if the celestial gear combined with might stacking weren’t a problem.

cillard.3986:

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

That is thoughtless and silly. There is nothing wrong with those classes outside of sPvP. Hell, there is nothing wrong with those classes IN sPvP if the celestial gear combined with might stacking weren’t a problem.

Yet Cele Engi can easily be run to a pretty unnoticeable difference in performance with 0 might, no battle sigil.

It’s the Cele professions that trait for pure defense (Ele/War) whose success hinges on might stacking with Cele.

If not for a Celestial stats & Might stacking combination, explain Engi QQ?

alanis.6094:

Darnis.4056:

Old school Shatter mesmer is getting hit really hard by the blanket Might nerf.
We’ve been picking up 3-5% damage buffs for like a year and now you drop 14% Damage off might?

But WAIT your useless weapons are still useless because the buffs don’t go far enough.

How are you computing 14% damage loss from might?

My math is wrong.. :/

Might was cut 35 to 30 = 14%~
I can stack might and upkeep it at 20-25, by myself.
How much is that in relation to total damage? I’d wager it’s at least half
So maybe 14% is a little heavy handed, maybe more like 7%~ compared to current if might stacks =>20

Blanket Nerf Might was the Wrong way to fix this problem, It was the easiest.
They could have nerfed the higher tiers of might maybe from 18+ to give exponentially less Pow/cd to equal out to the new number of +750 p/cd
This would have been better in conjunction with a -20 stat nerf to cele and sigil nerfs.

Darnis.4056:

alanis.6094:

Darnis.4056:

Old school Shatter mesmer is getting hit really hard by the blanket Might nerf.
We’ve been picking up 3-5% damage buffs for like a year and now you drop 14% Damage off might?

But WAIT your useless weapons are still useless because the buffs don’t go far enough.

How are you computing 14% damage loss from might?

My math is wrong.. :/

Might was cut 35 to 30 = 14%~
I can stack might and upkeep it at 20-25, by myself.
How much is that in relation to total damage? I’d wager it’s at least half
So maybe 14% is a little heavy handed, maybe more like 7%~ compared to current if might stacks =>20

Blanket Nerf Might was the Wrong way to fix this problem, It was the easiest.
They could have nerfed the higher tiers of might maybe from 18+ to give exponentially less Pow/cd to equal out to the new number of +750 p/cd
This would have been better in conjunction with a -20 stat nerf to cele and sigil nerfs.

You cannot have fewer than 975 Power at level 80. It is simply impossible, because that’s your base stat value. Currently, the max Power you get from Might is 875, meaning Might is, at max, 47% of your damage (condition damage gets murky, because then you have to account for what mix of conditions, stacks, and uptime on all of them).

Might is getting nerfed to a max of 750 from 875. At absolute maximum, which is assuming 0 investment in Power from either traits or gear, this change will lower your damage output by ~7%.

If you have any improvement in your Power stat from gear or traits, the damage loss is even lower.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Darnis.4056:

alanis.6094:

Darnis.4056:

Old school Shatter mesmer is getting hit really hard by the blanket Might nerf.
We’ve been picking up 3-5% damage buffs for like a year and now you drop 14% Damage off might?

But WAIT your useless weapons are still useless because the buffs don’t go far enough.

How are you computing 14% damage loss from might?

My math is wrong.. :/

Might was cut 35 to 30 = 14%~
I can stack might and upkeep it at 20-25, by myself.
How much is that in relation to total damage? I’d wager it’s at least half
So maybe 14% is a little heavy handed, maybe more like 7%~ compared to current if might stacks =>20

Blanket Nerf Might was the Wrong way to fix this problem, It was the easiest.
They could have nerfed the higher tiers of might maybe from 18+ to give exponentially less Pow/cd to equal out to the new number of +750 p/cd
This would have been better in conjunction with a -20 stat nerf to cele and sigil nerfs.

You cannot have fewer than 975 Power at level 80. It is simply impossible, because that’s your base stat value. Currently, the max Power you get from Might is 875, meaning Might is, at max, 47% of your damage (condition damage gets murky, because then you have to account for what mix of conditions, stacks, and uptime on all of them).

Might is getting nerfed to a max of 750 from 875. At absolute maximum, which is assuming 0 investment in Power from either traits or gear, this change will lower your damage output by ~7%.

If you have any improvement in your Power stat from gear or traits, the damage loss is even lower.

4-7% is a lot when you take into account Vuln and crits though :/

I feel like I need Every point of damage to kill Cele Engineers/warriors/eles at the moment….

Their ability to cleanse vuln, facetank burst and put-out enough damage to make me disengage really makes me wonder why I play mesmer.

That 7% loss only applies if you have 25 stacks of Might and zero other sources of Power, though. Any excess Power, the damage loss is smaller. Any fewer stacks of Might, the damage loss is smaller.

Your friendly neighborhood SotF Ranger here would like to say he approves of these changes and would like to leave you with the following heart felt comment:

1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1…

:)

All joking aside, I think the balance changes are just about right. I think small incremental changes are the best way to fine tune balance. I am glad nothing got severely nerfed, but some of us rangers will have an easier time now. The addition of torment sigils and mildly better warhorn skills will nudge us just a little closer to being almost viable in team setting. We still lack the considerable stomp prevention and general group support abilities the meta carries, but I am betting we’ll be able to contribute more now.

Darnis.4056:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Darnis.4056:

alanis.6094:

Darnis.4056:

Old school Shatter mesmer is getting hit really hard by the blanket Might nerf.
We’ve been picking up 3-5% damage buffs for like a year and now you drop 14% Damage off might?

But WAIT your useless weapons are still useless because the buffs don’t go far enough.

How are you computing 14% damage loss from might?

My math is wrong.. :/

Might was cut 35 to 30 = 14%~
I can stack might and upkeep it at 20-25, by myself.
How much is that in relation to total damage? I’d wager it’s at least half
So maybe 14% is a little heavy handed, maybe more like 7%~ compared to current if might stacks =>20

Blanket Nerf Might was the Wrong way to fix this problem, It was the easiest.
They could have nerfed the higher tiers of might maybe from 18+ to give exponentially less Pow/cd to equal out to the new number of +750 p/cd
This would have been better in conjunction with a -20 stat nerf to cele and sigil nerfs.

You cannot have fewer than 975 Power at level 80. It is simply impossible, because that’s your base stat value. Currently, the max Power you get from Might is 875, meaning Might is, at max, 47% of your damage (condition damage gets murky, because then you have to account for what mix of conditions, stacks, and uptime on all of them).

Might is getting nerfed to a max of 750 from 875. At absolute maximum, which is assuming 0 investment in Power from either traits or gear, this change will lower your damage output by ~7%.

If you have any improvement in your Power stat from gear or traits, the damage loss is even lower.

4-7% is a lot when you take into account Vuln and crits though :/

I feel like I need Every point of damage to kill Cele Engineers/warriors/eles at the moment….

Their ability to cleanse vuln, facetank burst and put-out enough damage to make me disengage really makes me wonder why I play mesmer.

It’s a plethora of problems that those three possess. The only real reason Warriors aren’t top-tier atm(they’re close) is because Engies/Ele’s are keeping them in check. If we see a significant nerf to both professions, Warriors will be at the top again.

Edit: Not to mention that as a Mesmer, you already have to deal with Thieves on your kitten .

Archon.6480:

Your friendly neighborhood SotF Ranger here would like to say he approves of these changes and would like to leave you with the following heart felt comment:

1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1…

:)

All joking aside, I think the balance changes are just about right. I think small incremental changes are the best way to fine tune balance. I am glad nothing got severely nerfed, but some of us rangers will have an easier time now. The addition of torment sigils and mildly better warhorn skills will nudge us just a little closer to being almost viable in team setting. We still lack the considerable stomp prevention and general group support abilities the meta carries, but I am betting we’ll be able to contribute more now.

so true stomping is difficult if you not using a lb or Signets or a soimoth , other set ups suffer quite a bit and only have rampage as one for a option.

you know what search and rescue should effect the ranger + the pet for a total of 15% res-speed each for the duration (10secs) it is up and grant the ranger and the target you are ressing Protection(8secs)+swiftness(4secs) than stick a 60sec cooldown on it
with the shout trait you can do the resing / mild tanking for 8secs because it would also grant regen on point for downed targets and allies nearby.

this could be used in beastmaster builds that run 0,0,4,6,4 or 6,2,0,6,0 power pet buffed with regen shared boons every time you help a target (using search and rescue or use a shout) .

guard needs the grant the pet aegis instead of protection , the ranger traits grant enough protection for pet use , the aegis could be used so it can charge into aoes after using guard( with regen and protection from ether dodge rolls or plasma) passes onto the pet and the aegis will provide it some Aoe protection vs the first spike every 12secs.

pet protection solved, while boosting shout utility .

of course the aegis won’t effect the ranger so it still leaves you open for counter attacks while resing targets and with the added protection the targets will have to focus you to prevent you resing , making the skil search and rescue A real rescue with a risk factor rather than just melting.

hope to see some shout changes next time not just a gimick increase in reveals.

BlackBeard.2873:

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

This is 100% wrong, and causes people to leave the game. After the first summer the game was out, ANet stuck a stake through the heart of eles and made them largely unplayable for over a year. Most of those eles left the game and didn’t come back. It was also really unfun as an ele player for people to tell you how trash your class is and to pls play anything else.

Drastic over-reaction also led to things like the condi meta, the hambow meta, and the bunker meta which were universally loathed. At this points, even the “best specs” (cele ele, engie, shoutbow, condi necro) are just VERY slightly better than the next level of specs. At MOST levels of play, your skill determines the outcome when fighting these classes. Giving a small shave to these top-tier specs while gradually buffing the garbage evens the playing field even more and leads to more diversity overall.

The only thing they are being very slow with is buffing the garbage.

Stop defending your class. Ranger and necro got nerfed after months of qq but ele and engi stayed on top of the meta for than year. We would love to see those 2 to take a hugeleap down and let other classes replace then. You are just saying those thing becaise you are a powee creep. Its people like who ruin the game.

I can’t believe this is all there is for 6 months.

It’s been over 2 years now and we still have largely the same skill set that was there at release with the same tired weapons, a large number of bugs unaddressed, and the same, shallow build diversity with still a huge number of blatantly terrible skills/traits around.

I realise there’s an expansion in the works but this game has been seriously boring for far too long.

scerevisiae.1972:

I can’t believe this is all there is for 6 months.

It’s been over 2 years now and we still have largely the same skill set that was there at release with the same tired weapons, a large number of bugs unaddressed, and the same, shallow build diversity with still a huge number of blatantly terrible skills/traits around.

I realise there’s an expansion in the works but this game has been seriously boring for far too long.

there is an expansion?

Cheri Wolf.3056:

scerevisiae.1972:

I can’t believe this is all there is for 6 months.

It’s been over 2 years now and we still have largely the same skill set that was there at release with the same tired weapons, a large number of bugs unaddressed, and the same, shallow build diversity with still a huge number of blatantly terrible skills/traits around.

I realise there’s an expansion in the works but this game has been seriously boring for far too long.

there is an expansion?

No. It’s just another PvE patch.

BlackBeard.2873:

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

This is 100% wrong, and causes people to leave the game. After the first summer the game was out, ANet stuck a stake through the heart of eles and made them largely unplayable for over a year. Most of those eles left the game and didn’t come back. It was also really unfun as an ele player for people to tell you how trash your class is and to pls play anything else.

Drastic over-reaction also led to things like the condi meta, the hambow meta, and the bunker meta which were universally loathed. At this points, even the “best specs” (cele ele, engie, shoutbow, condi necro) are just VERY slightly better than the next level of specs. At MOST levels of play, your skill determines the outcome when fighting these classes. Giving a small shave to these top-tier specs while gradually buffing the garbage evens the playing field even more and leads to more diversity overall.

The only thing they are being very slow with is buffing the garbage.

In worst case scenario Elementalists have Fresh Air build. From announcements posted so far, it seems that it will not be nerfed. Elementalists will still have something to play and not leave the game.

Darnis.4056:

Old school Shatter mesmer is getting hit really hard by the blanket Might nerf.
We’ve been picking up 3-5% damage buffs for like a year and now you drop 14% Damage off might?

But WAIT your useless weapons are still useless because the buffs don’t go far enough.

They are buffing condi mesmer…again…instead of working around mesmer’s only viable build that is shatter…condi mesmer is not viable and won’t be after this patch, get over it anet

BlackBeard.2873:

Valentin.2073:

Just kittening nerf the hell out of eles and engis and eveyone would be happy. Serously, they should have not let the meta stay stale and dry like that in a kitten long period of time. Not everyone wants to play those two professions. Balance should be done more frequently but if they cant do it then there .should be huge changes not just some minor shavings.

This is 100% wrong, and causes people to leave the game. After the first summer the game was out, ANet stuck a stake through the heart of eles and made them largely unplayable for over a year. Most of those eles left the game and didn’t come back. It was also really unfun as an ele player for people to tell you how trash your class is and to pls play anything else.

Drastic over-reaction also led to things like the condi meta, the hambow meta, and the bunker meta which were universally loathed. At this points, even the “best specs” (cele ele, engie, shoutbow, condi necro) are just VERY slightly better than the next level of specs. At MOST levels of play, your skill determines the outcome when fighting these classes. Giving a small shave to these top-tier specs while gradually buffing the garbage evens the playing field even more and leads to more diversity overall.

The only thing they are being very slow with is buffing the garbage.

Eles have the meta for PvP the most out of all the classes in the game.

Infact they’ve been the best class in the game for a long time when you add things up.

I’m sorry but they need a serious adjustment

Dev note: In addition to gaining a little more healing from this skill, guardians will be able to use skills much sooner after casting it.
Re litany of wrathe, this skill will only ever be viable if its instant cast and even then it wont be dont bother buffing something that noone uses by a pathetic amount cause it wont change anything

Soon the wrecking ball that is zerker necro will rule all.

Incoming ranger necro meta!

As powerful as a power Necro can be aren’t they countered a bit too easily? Medi guard, Thief, and even Ranger do quite well against them. Warrior isn’t exactly an easy fight either.

Atherakhia.4086:

As powerful as a power Necro can be aren’t they countered a bit too easily? Medi guard, Thief, and even Ranger do quite well against them. Warrior isn’t exactly an easy fight either.

Oh you just won a teamfight? here have huge 100% LF for next fight
Oh you just died and need a comeback? here, have 0% LF for next fight

(side note: its actually around -23% LF on death, yes minus)

We keep asking for the good stuff to actually fell like we a bit of control, and not a pingpong ball flying through space, but given that Radioactive is pretty successfull and probably lots of “poeple who cant counter” complain about the “111 LICH 111” i dont see them turning their back on the casuals.

The warhorn change is just a 0.5s DPS increase but the big counters remain.

this thread too l0ng

i dont read it anymore b/c too l0ng

maybe it should split into separate threads about each significant balance change?

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

Dev note: In addition to gaining a little more healing from this skill, guardians will be able to use skills much sooner after casting it.
Re litany of wrathe, this skill will only ever be viable if its instant cast and even then it wont be dont bother buffing something that noone uses by a pathetic amount cause it wont change anything

The problem with Litany of Wrath is that a medi guardian has most control of its damage burst when opening up on someone. And given their usually squishy nature, by the time they need to heal the block on Shelter is way more useful.

I would make it so that for 10sec the guardian gets something like +500 vitality, so the heal can be used as part of the opener which is a lot of what medi guards are about.

Chaith.8256:

Sol.4310:

So going by your info every class beats Engineer

So going by this answer you aren’t worth arguing with

Well yes, pretty much all classes beats engineer, given time. However if it is a case of “gotta kill it fast” then very few classes can actually do that, and most classes will lose that fight because engineer simply has too much pressure for them to deal with.

But given time, yes, every class can beat engineer. Just like engineer can beat every class.

Still. PvP does not favor lengthy duels, its the start opposite, so Sol is by all means wrong, but still has a valid point.