Guild Wars 2

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Wait sorry. To clarify. The PVP team. The player vs player team is in fact NOT in charge of game balance? As in major trait, boon, weapon dps changes? What the F? Does anyone else find that to be a big problem considering PVP is the game type where balance matters the most? I mean not to belittle PVE but it’s player versus environment. I don’t wanna say who cares but like, for a game trying with the “esports” scene, don’t you think PVP balance is kinda way more important?

Raiding also requires a fine balance, to a certain extend it’s possible to balance both at the same time since they require different builds. PvE builds are mostly focused around minimum sustain and high DPS output which never works in PvP.
By having a different set of traits to choose from they can cater to both.

A solution takes 10 minutes to implement:
- bring celestial back
- unnerf CD trait and lava font for pvp
- unnerf the fire line nerfs

Instead of all this useless talk about how broken the class is just revert us back to a meta that worked and provided variety.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

I thought announcing PvP/PvE skill splits would allow more freedom for the PvP team to balance PvP but it seems it wasn’t the case. Not surprising poopy devs.

Xillllix.3485:

A solution takes 10 minutes to implement:
- bring celestial back
- unnerf CD trait and lava font for pvp
- unnerf the fire line nerfs

Instead of all this useless talk about how broken the class is just revert us back to a meta that worked and provided variety.

To an Ele, this may be a distraught to them; the worse meta ever.

For everyone else, well, they’re not Eles and absolutely don’t want Cele back in the game.

Fought an ele they seem fine in pvp. Idk why people think its the end of the world because the good ones never rely on the cleric build. They punch harder actually.

Warrior sustain vs power builds is ridiculous though. Only condition can kill them. They are immortal vs power completely.

The problems in PvP parallel the problems in WvW. Their respective teams don’t get involved in balancing their own game mode!

Instead you have ONE balance team that has to balance for all game modes! It’s a freakin ridiculous system!

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Seriously?

The balance team should be responsive to your pvp team feedback, and help avoid u guys taking such decision of removing trinkets from pvp, in a matter of fact they should be asking instead of removing they should be questining what is the best aproach to make the trinkets back to the game… what classes re broken in wich stats and start tweakin from that point?
I dont know who they are, but this game is not that hard to balance arround 3 modes…

Cant u guys lock trinkets by class? nerf in that way, instead of removing completelly the trinket??

-Guard as acess to trinkets a,b,c,etc
-engineer as acess to trinkets a,d,f,etc
-warrior… etc

The real joke is that the ‘balance’ team is actually a skills team that spends 99% of their time working on making power creeped skills & traits for the next expansion. The ‘balance’ changes are just an afterthought, put through to keep up the pretense of caring about balance.

Making amulets exclusive to specific professions is like admitting that they can’t balance the game properly which is something I don’t see Karl and his team do. But hey, what else can the PvP Balance team do when the Profession Balance team screws things up every patch?

virus.4370:

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s review our history. We lost Minstrels, Mercenary, Soldiers and NOW Clerics.

What’s the next amulet on the chopping block? Menders? Sage? It seems like every amulet removed is a defensive one. Do we just hate defense/support? Do we just like to spam DPS to death without a second thought? At what point, do we realize, that removing amulets will NOT solve the problem? At what point do we realize the OBVIOUS problem? Balance and HoT builds.

HoT builds simply do too much damage. The amount of conditions they pump out is absurd. With the removal of clerics, it’s even WORSE. Removing clerics did nothing but kill support builds and especially Eles. We’re killing builds, folks.

well to me it’s discrimination. the discrimination of bunker build players..they hate us..and they took our amulets..and add more damage based ones..it’s nothing more then hate and discrimination against bunker, healers, and def. players

Join the club, as a solo queue PvPer GW2 is one of the only games/MMOs that I played that will refuse to give me a fair match up, just because I will not join a pvp team. So you are not the only ones ANet is discriminating. As a solo queue PvPer I just can’t subject myself to the torment of Season 2 and 3, it’s just to hard for me to even player unranked in this game because of how Jaded Arena Net and the majority of the sPvP community have made me in this game. But now you Elementalists mains, will feel how I felt midway through Season 2. But now I digress.

gavyne.6847:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

Well now I see what the problem is. How could you possibly create a good balance when you only have access to tweak sigils, amulets, and runes? And that your hands are tied at the mercy of another “skills team”?

Now I can really see why people in WvW and PvP are angry at the class balance. Because neither of these teams could really balance classes according to their proper game-modes. In my opinion, you guys really need to speak to a higher up to separate skills team into their respective game-modes, and balance them properly that way.

This is critical.

Each team needs to take care of balancing their own game mode.

JTGuevara.9018:

This is critical.

Each team needs to take care of balancing their own game mode.

Wvw isn’t that much different from pvp – it would work if either of the modes were balanced and taken to the other mode – you don’t need independent balancing.

(It’s not that hard to get, right: we really don’t have any balance team at all – that is the root of the problem).

ETA: You have a different point of view than me – I’m a wvw player and know that we have no balance team in wvw and it would be stupid to really balance classes from watching wvw alone, because you have 1 vs x. Pvp would make more sense and all of us assumed that the game was balanced on pvp anyway, which it maybe was in the past, no idea.
If you now say that each mode needs their own balance team, then you would have a PvP balancing team and some PvE players who would pump more powercreep into the game. WvW would still be completely unbalanced.
The PvP team could become the “skills team” – that would actually make sense. As long as anet understands that they might have to tweak pve if they still don’t want a separation between the 3 modes. And that the PvP/then skills team would have to get into wvw at least a bit.
You get what’s happening and why I repeat the same stuff over and over, right? We actually already have what I said above.

Why not make everything do same dmg like footmen and grunts in warcraft 2. Perfect balance, vvery much esport and much fun. /s

Zelulose.8695:

I loled hard great comparison. Let them fix sustain fist then we can see this power creep go away.

There are two steps.
1. Nerf Rev, Ranger, Warrior, Engi, mesmer sustain.
2. Fix rediculous damage such as Rev. Gurd. Mesmer. Thief. Warrior.

At that point GW2 will be based on skill alone. Noone can out heal you noone can one shot you. You have time to react but not too much.

healing you and your team takes alot of skill..with no monks

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Just to let you know, this is the reason you are failing

Is the management at Anet doing something to solve the problem? The pvp team shouldn’t have to come here and say it’s not their fault that the elementalist class balance is kitten. Players just want fixes and build variety, not excuses.

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

to the attention of Grouch : as the team pvp according to you are not responsible balance pvp , please tell your patners read this post to understand the pvp and see what they are doing bad.

Thank you.

Sorry mi bad english.

Grouch, is the pvp team able to remove that terrible team and scoreboard pop up at the end of the match? Or do they need clearance from the CFO?

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

Yet they are making decisions on amulets

why not force people to use their pve gear and weapons..most lack 100% ascended. so that would lower their stats. that’s how it worked in gws 1 and still does..let people use what they earned in pve only..if they aren’t wearing it and not in their inventory..they can’t use it. no auto full stats, no changing runes any time you aren’t in a match, no changing sigils..make people use what you normally use. that way everyone is on their top game and no one gets called favorites and no one can say it’s stacked against them. as far as lower lvled players give them a lower lvl arena like gws 1. where they can fight..so people get matched by lvl, so no lvl 80 is fight a lvl 3 starter

Inb4 they remove Diviner amulet cause 100% boon uptime Kappa . I did 1v2 casually with 16k hp on diviner though so i guess Amulet is OP eh 4Head

Proof: http://www.twitch.tv/xkratosz/v/80929388

JTGuevara.9018:

Let’s review our history. We lost Minstrels, Mercenary, Soldiers and NOW Clerics.

What’s the next amulet on the chopping block? Menders? Sage? It seems like every amulet removed is a defensive one. Do we just hate defense/support? Do we just like to spam DPS to death without a second thought? At what point, do we realize, that removing amulets will NOT solve the problem? At what point do we realize the OBVIOUS problem? Balance and HoT builds.

HoT builds simply do too much damage. The amount of conditions they pump out is absurd. With the removal of clerics, it’s even WORSE. Removing clerics did nothing but kill support builds and especially Eles. We’re killing builds, folks.

yea this just ruined my retaliation support build on my guardian

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

I can accept that argument, but my primary point still stands.

Balance philosophy needs to change. Anet needs to properly balance PvP independent of the other game modes.

It’s the only way that PvP can possibly thrive in the long-term. Otherwise, PvP will die.

JTGuevara.9018:

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

I can accept that argument, but my primary point still stands.

Balance philosophy needs to change. Anet needs to properly balance PvP independent of the other game modes.

It’s the only way that PvP can possibly thrive in the long-term. Otherwise, PvP will die.

like i said why not make players use their pve gear, stats, and skills. works for gws 1 and thats been running 10 years…you use what you are wearing that you have earned.

virus.4370:

JTGuevara.9018:

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

I can accept that argument, but my primary point still stands.

Balance philosophy needs to change. Anet needs to properly balance PvP independent of the other game modes.

It’s the only way that PvP can possibly thrive in the long-term. Otherwise, PvP will die.

like i said why not make players use their pve gear, stats, and skills. works for gws 1 and thats been running 10 years…you use what you are wearing that you have earned.

Like Guevara pointed one thing out,but i am that all amulets or pve related gear gets removed.Then only then we can hope on classes true balance and work on skill of classes what they using.Every class need fixed stats and maybe 3 stats setup or more depending on class.That somebody focused on balancing game have less headache and start working on skills and balance.Then getting problem from runes or gear that bug or cause some issues to put into calculation.Cause i never seen more nonsense then here in gw2 pvp ingame where a tank wins a fight.Not to mention healers…

Shala.8352:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Just to let you know, this is the reason you are failing

Even worse

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season.

Making changes without detailed impact analysis on the full system is known as hacking in developer circles.

The way it seems to work the more you delve into balancing and pvp changes at anet, the more incompetent ideas you have the more you get paid, there’s more wrong with pvp and balancing then there is right. The incompetent ideas are what makes gw2 so fun!

Sismis.5390:

virus.4370:

JTGuevara.9018:

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

I can accept that argument, but my primary point still stands.

Balance philosophy needs to change. Anet needs to properly balance PvP independent of the other game modes.

It’s the only way that PvP can possibly thrive in the long-term. Otherwise, PvP will die.

like i said why not make players use their pve gear, stats, and skills. works for gws 1 and thats been running 10 years…you use what you are wearing that you have earned.

Like Guevara pointed one thing out,but i am that all amulets or pve related gear gets removed.Then only then we can hope on classes true balance and work on skill of classes what they using.Every class need fixed stats and maybe 3 stats setup or more depending on class.That somebody focused on balancing game have less headache and start working on skills and balance.Then getting problem from runes or gear that bug or cause some issues to put into calculation.Cause i never seen more nonsense then here in gw2 pvp ingame where a tank wins a fight.Not to mention healers…

trying to balance..don’t work..if it did we wouldn’t have this problem..i think to big problem is to much balancing..we need more choices not less..if you make players use their pve stuff , instead of making every use the same items..i think you would see more players and more builds in pvp.

No did you play any other game related to pvp.They got problems if they would remove specific for arena anything related to PVE it would improve.Giving 5 stats choices,Healer,Support,Tank,Hybrid would then remove their issue to mess Class skills in the wrong way.That done the attribute condition as totally separate thing would get out of picture and heal and other.They would be able to go back old way skills that does periodic dmg and thats it.Then they could start reworking all class skills and loots skills would then get back to light and use.For the issue then about stability and stun breaks.Still do not understand that in gw2 is no feature that multiple time use of same mechanic vs stun and daze there is no system in place.Continued use of stun after first time there is 25% to resist or lover its duration after second 50% 3rd and 4th the skill should become non effective.That would improve pvp and nobody would get stun locked and evolve the pvp further.That would even prevent total of stun locking a person not being able to do nothing.

That way with these options at hand we would even get better Match Making. Then every persons chosen role the system would make pairing the teams proper and we would then even have nice matches.

Trigr.6481:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

-Grouch

Even though grouch isn’t to blame, he essentially just told you the problem regardless if you’ve realized it or not. Since PvP is not being balanced separate from the rest of the game, the most “balance” you’re going to get is from a team who’s main concern is not SPvP. There’s a reason why every major balance patch there’s an amulet gone and a new one taking it’s place, because that’s the only thing other than runes and sigils that the PvP team in particular has complete control over, it’s just the only thing they have to change that won’t effect the rest of the game. So of course that’s the only action they can take, however that doesn’t mean it’s the right move, just a desperate one.

Until this changes the overall player population will suffer, pro league will continue to suffer in both team participation, team quality, and so on. Primarily fueled by players who are not even in it for the competitive aspect or even enjoying the game as a whole, but to siphon off whatever money is left in a dying community, it’s sad really.

Countless

Exactly. This is what needs to change.

I am barely enjoying PvP right now, even with the new map.

The balance team is not in touch with their respective communities. Robert Gee came out of the dark to try and make all of the specializations he was in charge of release with what the players wanted out of them. Since then, all of the balance team has gone back to incognito mode and resumed making backhanded balance decisions that don’t make sense. WvW balance is at an all time low with broken stat combos like Minstrel’s and Dire being ignored because they are absent in sPvP.

Robert should be head of balance and everyone knows it.

DeceiverX.8361:

Robert should be head of balance and everyone knows it.

I second this.

But what if he is actually part of this controversial, mysterious balance team? We technically have no concrete knowledge of who is doing the balance. They need to let us communicate to the people involved and those involved in actual skill balance need to be the ones responding to us. Not the messenger boys who currently do.

Zelulose.8695:

But what if he is actually part of this controversial, mysterious balance team? We technically have no concrete knowledge of who is doing the balance. They need to let us communicate to the people involved and those involved in actual skill balance need to be the ones responding to us. Not the messenger boys who currently do.

As far as I know, Karl is in charge of ele balance. That’s probably why the negativity is mostly pinned on him.

Cecilia.5179:

Zelulose.8695:

But what if he is actually part of this controversial, mysterious balance team? We technically have no concrete knowledge of who is doing the balance. They need to let us communicate to the people involved and those involved in actual skill balance need to be the ones responding to us. Not the messenger boys who currently do.

As far as I know, Karl is in charge of ele balance. That’s probably why the negativity is mostly pinned on him.

To be honest it’s hard to say how much Karl influenced ele balance. Most of ele’s remember him being owned by svanir during tempest presentation.

I dislike how there’s pretty much zero interaction between the “skills team” and us players. And we have to resort to pleading and yelling at the poor PvP & WvW teams for changes. Of course we didn’t know until now that these teams didn’t even have the abilities & authorities on making skills balance changes. No effing wonder.

I miss the HoT beta weekends where skills team actually talked with players on the forums, and they went on GW2’s twitch streams every week to talk about upcoming changes and to answer questions. Imagine what class balance would be like if they still did that, I think things would’ve been much better.

Robert Gee was a rock star who made beautiful elite specs out of necros & mesmers. I remember early HoT launch necros even had viable power reaper builds. Of course things got quickly nerfed down over time and now we’re left with only viable condi reaper builds for any competitive play. Blarggh.

My guess is that Anet locked them away to work on the next expansion. Just a guess. Because wheover’s in charge of this “one size fits all” skills team is doing a terrible job. Players across PvP, WvW, and to some extent PvE are quite unhappy with class balance. Oh yeah and I’m thinking Grouch probably took some heat for speaking the truth, because he kinda pulled a whistleblower heh.

Well i don’t work at arena net, or know anything about inside dynamics, but it seems to me that they are understaffed. Stop being cheap and hire more balance dev’s. They have 3 mnt’s to “let the meta settle” And then make changes. which might work If it was one dev per profession. which it is not.

Karl (the last i checked) balances three professions
mesmer , Ele and thief. he has 2 months to do so (random number based on letting the meta settle). It’s not surprising that they are constantly running out of time. if you look at the patch notes it seems every single patch there is one profession that get’s the bare minimum of changes.

1 dev per profession would be a great luxury. Maybe then our respective devs would have enough time to actually read and comment on their respective forums. Silence makes people angry. Look at Pokemon Go. The most popular game of all time’s reddit went from happy to savage overnight because Niantic makes frustrating changes without talking about it.
Ideally, a dev would appear to the Necro forum, get the scoop on what people want, and then work to implement it (aka make Necro axe and greatsword viable). Since the dev doesn’t need to leap to another profession right away, he or she can also look at what is sub-par in WvW and make WvW exclusive changes to improve it.

virus.4370:

JTGuevara.9018:

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

I can accept that argument, but my primary point still stands.

Balance philosophy needs to change. Anet needs to properly balance PvP independent of the other game modes.

It’s the only way that PvP can possibly thrive in the long-term. Otherwise, PvP will die.

like i said why not make players use their pve gear, stats, and skills. works for gws 1 and thats been running 10 years…you use what you are wearing that you have earned.

Because sPvP is inherently a competitive game mode based on the ideal of having fair conditions, including team size, composition, build variety, stat quality, etc.

The purpose of gear in an MMO, is a grind to artificially extend content beyond it’s natural lifespan. The addition of more grind is detrimental to the playerbase. The current system where players can alter build before a match, to choose how they will counter the enemy team’s composition is very important in making a match fair and competitive.

Cecilia.5179:

Zelulose.8695:

But what if he is actually part of this controversial, mysterious balance team? We technically have no concrete knowledge of who is doing the balance. They need to let us communicate to the people involved and those involved in actual skill balance need to be the ones responding to us. Not the messenger boys who currently do.

As far as I know, Karl is in charge of ele balance. That’s probably why the negativity is mostly pinned on him.

Karl is also in charge of the overall balance team. He was introduced as such by MOB on 1 of the reddit AMAs in the last few months.

gavyne.6847:

Robert Gee was a rock star who made beautiful elite specs out of necros & mesmers. I remember early HoT launch necros even had viable power reaper builds. Of course things got quickly nerfed down over time and now we’re left with only viable condi reaper builds for any competitive play. Blarggh.

My guess is that Anet locked them away to work on the next expansion. Just a guess. Because wheover’s in charge of this “one size fits all” skills team is doing a terrible job. Players across PvP, WvW, and to some extent PvE are quite unhappy with class balance. Oh yeah and I’m thinking Grouch probably took some heat for speaking the truth, because he kinda pulled a whistleblower heh.

This is also my conclusion. Robert Gee should be in charge of the balance team.

DeceiverX.8361:

Robert should be head of balance and everyone knows it.

Yeah, Ice Bow in PvP was really a huge problem… /sarcasm “drops mic”

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

-Grouch

Theres the problem. Just split the game mode balance so pvp can be fun again.

Xillllix.3485:

A solution takes 10 minutes to implement:
- bring celestial back
- unnerf CD trait and lava font for pvp
- unnerf the fire line nerfs

Instead of all this useless talk about how broken the class is just revert us back to a meta that worked and provided variety.

And next Thread will be “Delete cele amulets bcs Druids are OP” XD

TheAngryDuckling.5481:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

-Grouch

Theres the problem. Just split the game mode balance so pvp can be fun again.

Bingo!

another day of giving away free pvp points..in ranked

Xillllix.3485:

DeceiverX.8361:

Robert should be head of balance and everyone knows it.

Yeah, Ice Bow in PvP was really a huge problem… /sarcasm “drops mic”

Yeah a skill useless in PvP but breaking PvE was nerfed. And this was a problem how? Are there not already skills useless in PvP anyway?

stof.9341:

Xillllix.3485:

DeceiverX.8361:

Robert should be head of balance and everyone knows it.

Yeah, Ice Bow in PvP was really a huge problem… /sarcasm “drops mic”

Yeah a skill useless in PvP but breaking PvE was nerfed. And this was a problem how? Are there not already skills useless in PvP anyway?

the problem isn’t balance, the problem is a lack of skill choices and DPS players wanting fast easy matches.. they want matches handed to them on a silver platter. so since i’m a bunker build, and now can’t bunker..i will just stand there and give away free points, while spamming 1. that what they want, so they will get it.

Ensign.2189:

JTGuevara.9018:

How is the PvP team not involved in balancing their own game mode!

The PvP team is a sales and marketing team comprised of brand and community managers, not designers. As you would expect in any other context, sales and marketing give feedback to, but do not have control over, design and development.

I think there’s a perfectly valid complaint that the balance team is not keeping up with the evolving demands of the game. The individual balance changes and bug fixes that have been made since the departure of John Peters have generally been really good – well targeted at real problems with appropriate fixes – but the scope of balance passes has been too limited for a 3 month release cycle.

Still, that’s an argument for funneling resources to or restructuring the balance team, not for handing design authority over to the marketing team.

How the pvp “dev” team, are not developer?