Guild Wars 2

Zinwrath.2049:

garethh.3518:

I would rather a larger base switch before going into all these details, they are nicely written fixes for the details though, don’t get me wrong.

GW2 is balanced around extremes, you either need high power a good source of crit chance along with crit dmg (to deal viable physical dmg), if you can’t, since physical dmg stats scale so much off of each other, you will deal negiligble physical dmg and be forced into bunker or condi/half-bunk…

That is crippling GW2, the build diversity blows, no matter where the meta is, high phys dmg (scrubs hate dying in a blink of an eye), condi (everyone hates being helpless and losing to players that are waaaay worse than them) or bunk (plz god no) many people are going to be annoyed….

That’s a core issue in GW2 and won’t change with minor tweaks to balance.
If stats scaled differently, like crit dmg was bonus dmg based off of the base ability dmg (barely if at all scaling with power), then more middle of the line power specs would open up, more power/condi specs would open up, the meta would explode…

What would be great is that then the game could then move over a large chunk of the condi dmg over to physical (high dmg specs that use conditions would be dealing that high dmg partly through physical dmg since phys dmg already has good play/counter play) that would also let condi dmg better fits the cleansing in the game (a nice perc but not god-kitten necessary to stack as much as possible).

That’s the only way I see GW2 surviving after new MMOs are released…
It’s the only step I can see to allowing this shenanigans to begin to play like a real AAA MMO.

Before the game came out I suggested this suspicion that the game would suffer due to the amount of stats one could chug into one area, forcing the glass cannon or immovable object specs being the most viable ones. But much like 90% of good comments in their early beta they ignored them…… ironicly changes people made back then, they’re just NOW starting to do….guess it took the game losing 100,000+ active pvp players for them to acknowledge they werent perfect and their community wasn’t stupid. Not to sound cynical but it is what it is.

If find it kind of commical that feadback like that around beta was largely brushed off as ‘haters gonna hate’ and pessimistic entitled QQ’ers.

So much potential, if only the devs actually stepped up and reached for it.

All gw2 PVp need is ladder system viewable from game level, like starcraft 2. Second thing is gold or crystals for pvp. Then real gcg 15-20 min matches.

Not bad Sensotix, not bad! I’ll give my opinion on the condition and necromancer changes.

Bleeding/Burning:
You would have to separate the two for this to be alright. The way bleeding damage scales with condition damage is fine when combined with certain other damaging conditions like poison, confusion and maybe torment to some degree. Bleeding is not fine when combined with burning and terror because these conditions just do way too much damage combined with a high number of bleeds.

Lowering the damage of burning would be the best solution. Maybe by 30-50%. This would maintain burnings position as the highest non-traited damaging condition.

Blind:
If all blind skills are made instant you would have to change skills like deathly swarm. An instant deathly swarm would be insanely over-powered due to the transfer of conditions.

In general i think this suggestion has to be based upon specific skills and abilities.

Poison:
Removing damage on poison is not needed. The damage from poison is by no means over the top and can be dealt with. Removing it would not bring substantial changes to the overall balance of the game.

Torment:
Torment Torment Torment? Why was this condition ever implemented, Anet? Just remove the dang thing or change it to something that does not do damage. We already had enough damaging conditions in the game before torment saw the light of day.

Fear:
Moving the terror trait to grandmaster could work. I would rather have changes made to Dhuumfire. Terror was never really a problem, before Dhuum brought burning upon the necromancers enemies, and is a cooldown reliant trait that requires some degree of skill to pull off.

Dhuumfire: Remove burning. Change it to a non damaging condition as a cover for the necromancers other damaging conditions. If this suggestion is implemented necromancers will be more balanced in terms of condition damage spikes. The necromancer is one of the only professions that has access to long duration bleeds and if these bleeds are covered the damage will go up just like we have seen with the addition of burning. Although as mentioned, burning is not a viable solution for a covering condition because its damage is way too high when combined.

Weakness:
let it stack in intensity and reduce the duration of weakness applied by skills a little bit – Good suggestion!

djooceboxblast.9876:

Not bad Sensotix, not bad! I’ll give my opinion on the condition and necromancer changes.

Bleeding/Burning:
You would have to separate the two for this to be alright. The way bleeding damage scales with condition damage is fine when combined with certain other damaging conditions like poison, confusion and maybe torment to some degree. Bleeding is not fine when combined with burning and terror because these conditions just do way too much damage combined with a high number of bleeds.

Lowering the damage of burning would be the best solution. Maybe by 30-50%. This would maintain burnings position as the highest non-traited damaging condition.

Blind:
If all blind skills are made instant you would have to change skills like deathly swarm. An instant deathly swarm would be insanely over-powered due to the transfer of conditions.

In general i think this suggestion has to be based upon specific skills and abilities.

Poison:
Removing damage on poison is not needed. The damage from poison is by no means over the top and can be dealt with. Removing it would not bring substantial changes to the overall balance of the game.

Torment:
Torment Torment Torment? Why was this condition ever implemented, Anet? Just remove the dang thing or change it to something that does not do damage. We already had enough damaging conditions in the game before torment saw the light of day.

Fear:
Moving the terror trait to grandmaster could work. I would rather have changes made to Dhuumfire. Terror was never really a problem, before Dhuum brought burning upon the necromancers enemies, and is a cooldown reliant trait that requires some degree of skill to pull off.

Dhuumfire: Remove burning. Change it to a non damaging condition as a cover for the necromancers other damaging conditions. If this suggestion is implemented necromancers will be more balanced in terms of condition damage spikes. The necromancer is one of the only professions that has access to long duration bleeds and if these bleeds are covered the damage will go up just like we have seen with the addition of burning. Although as mentioned, burning is not a viable solution for a covering condition because its damage is way too high when combined.

Weakness:
let it stack in intensity and reduce the duration of weakness applied by skills a little bit – Good suggestion!

Thanks for the very good suggestions

I agree with just about everything here. I give you a lot of credit for bringing up Thieves. The average thief player stinks but a very good thief is almost impossible to beat one versus one or kill without strong aoe/swami like prediction powers. I am not sure if it is a problem because there are not many that are very good quite frankly.

brannigan.9831:

I agree with just about everything here. I give you a lot of credit for bringing up Thieves. The average thief player stinks but a very good thief is almost impossible to beat one versus one or kill without strong aoe/swami like prediction powers. I am not sure if it is a problem because there are not many that are very good quite frankly.

I’m not sure they’ll survive as they currently are next patch. They’ll have lost thier only way to sustain versus CC builds.

Sensotix.4106:

*
Healing Signet: One of the main sources why warrior is so strong.. (also it’s passive play again that doesn’t acquire any skill) no matter how hard hammer longbow will be nerfed next patch..healing signet will still be one of the main factors why other warrior builds will still be too strong

Noob, haven’t you learnt yet- you’re supposed to counter passive play actively! Yeah!

Arganthium.5638:

Sensotix.4106:

*
Healing Signet: One of the main sources why warrior is so strong.. (also it’s passive play again that doesn’t acquire any skill) no matter how hard hammer longbow will be nerfed next patch..healing signet will still be one of the main factors why other warrior builds will still be too strong

Noob, haven’t you learnt yet- you’re supposed to counter passive play actively! Yeah!

I am soo sorry man i think i need to practise more! i should put perma poison on the warrior with my mesmer!

About the Diamond skin trait; i think i understand what anet is trying to do.
This seems like a classic case of good for the game, bad for the player. 1 Ele with diamond skin will necessitate the use of a direct damage class and a direct damage class will in turn necessitate the use of a Condi class and then a Condi cleansing class and so on.

The thing about this chain is that it breaks down when the team begins to split up to take different points, it becomes less about team fights and more about solo 1v1 battles. And in those cases trump cards like diamond skin stand out a lot.
If anet wants to introduce diamond skin and also keep the other slightly powerful traits they’ll need to change the game mode because like i was alluding to earlier only the re-enforcement of the team fights will make such a change stand.

I think it’s funny that one of the biggest “thoughts on the December patch” (that is, the next patch) was a massive redesign of the whole condition system.

Dirame.8521:

About the Diamond skin trait; i think i understand what anet is trying to do.
This seems like a classic case of good for the game, bad for the player. 1 Ele with diamond skin will necessitate the use of a direct damage class and a direct damage class will in turn necessitate the use of a Condi class and then a Condi cleansing class and so on.

The thing about this chain is that it breaks down when the team begins to split up to take different points, it becomes less about team fights and more about solo 1v1 battles. And in those cases trump cards like diamond skin stand out a lot.
If anet wants to introduce diamond skin and also keep the other slightly powerful traits they’ll need to change the game mode because like i was alluding to earlier only the re-enforcement of the team fights will make such a change stand.

It’s things like this that remind me how much I’d love it if the game used the push style TF2 control point system, rather than cap whatever you can conquest.

RoyHarmon.5398:

I think it’s funny that one of the biggest “thoughts on the December patch” (that is, the next patch) was a massive redesign of the whole condition system.

imo there are quite some things that need to be reworked for example the whole ranger class in pvp but these are things that can be fixed rather easily if you have enough resources

I agree with almost everything you said. Just the torment change doesnt make sense to me.
What about this: deal 75% damage of bleed while not moving, deal 125% damage of bleed while moving OR 200% damage while under a movement-impairing effect (immobilize, launch, knockdown, stun etc. But not daze, cripple or chill)

I also like the idea of making blind skills instant. Right now conditions are mostly fire and forget, and makkng them an active choice to save them for when you need them (like most other damage skills), is always a good thing.
I’d suggest we do the same with poison! Maybe it can do a little bit more damage, but has the duration decreased alot, and make it nearly instant. It’s like a counter to healing, if one doesn’t have control effcts to interrupt it.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey Sensotix,

Thanks for the write-up.

I’ve been seeing a lot of threads like this on the forums lately, often accompanied with an itemized list of suggestions or concerns. I think the reason we’re seeing them pop up so often is because people aren’t exactly sure what direction we’re heading in terms of PvP – and that’s understandable.

This thread is slightly ill-timed. I say that because, yet again, I have to say that we’re almost ready to release a ton of information on PvP, but we’re not quite there yet. Next Monday (after the long holiday weekend) we’ll be releasing a blog post that will road-map a great deal of things our team will be working on implementing through the end of this year and going into next year. This should address a lot of the concerns you’ve raised and answer many of your questions. Starting next week we’ll be able to engage in discussion regarding future changes like we’d like to.

After the blog post we’re going to take strides to keep you guys in the loop as much as possible. This is a big priority for our team. As I’ve mentioned in previous threads, we’re going to start running a bi-weekly livestream that will give updates on PvP, tournaments, balance updates/previews, and just about anything else PvP related. That should help fill the gaps. Plus, you guys will get to see my baby blues again.

As for the balance changes – I’m not a part of that team so I can’t speak on their behalf. I hop into meetings from time to time to give feedback on changes or to present feedback from the forums, but that’s about the extent of it. I will, however, pass the thread along to them in case they haven’t seen it already. (Hint: They probably have.)

Personally, I think the changes coming on December 10th will have a significant impact on our current meta. The full implications? I don’t think anyone can predict that quite yet. There may even be a few surprises in there…

Next year is going to be a great year and I’m happy that we have so many devoted and dedicated players that are coming along for the ride with us. For those of you that have drifted away from the game for one reason or another – I honestly hope we’ll see you in-game again.

GROUCH OUT!

Edit: Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I cant wait

I’ll admit i didn’t read through all the comments, but these are a few opinions about Sensotix posts:

A lot of very good ideas there, very few bad ideas though.
I won’t focus on the good ones since we probably all agree to that.

I think that bad is the whole discussions about elite pvp such tiers, high rewards for top teams and so on.
Gw2 pvp, with all the gear normalization and such, is very casual friendly. It needs to stay that way. I agree in upgrading rewards for top teams, but my feeling from sentotix post was that being a top team has to be the only way to be rewarded in pvp. That can’t work.

Everything must be achievable without being a “top team”, could take longer, could be harder, but tying rewards to some playstiles (fixed builds, fixed setups, voice communication, long knowledge of eachother and so on, all good things in pvp that makes a team win against one that doesn’t have these things) may kill the already not so good situations of casual pvp.

I am a casual pvp player, more or less soloq and some teamq with guildies (the most of them are much more casual than me). I won’t be complaining about a top team winning a tournament and getting a legendary, i know they are better players then i’ll ever be. That’s because i’m a pvp-oriented players from 10 years of MMOs. Most of the real casual players won’t understand that though.

This has by no means to be read as a critique to Sensotix post or a nuub calling for his rewards. It’s just an opinion based on my knowledge of how many people (how many friends) came to gw2 with me because of it’s attention to casual gaming. Loose that, and loose those players..

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

isendel.5049:

I’ll admit i didn’t read through all the comments, but these are a few opinions about Sensotix posts:

A lot of very good ideas there, very few bad ideas though.
I won’t focus on the good ones since we probably all agree to that.

I think that bad is the whole discussions about elite pvp such tiers, high rewards for top teams and so on.
Gw2 pvp, with all the gear normalization and such, is very casual friendly. It needs to stay that way. I agree in upgrading rewards for top teams, but my feeling from sentotix post was that being a top team has to be the only way to be rewarded in pvp. That can’t work.

Everything must be achievable without being a “top team”, could take longer, could be harder, but tying rewards to some playstiles (fixed builds, fixed setups, voice communication, long knowledge of eachother and so on, all good things in pvp that makes a team win against one that doesn’t have these things) may kill the already not so good situations of casual pvp.

I am a casual pvp player, more or less soloq and some teamq with guildies (the most of them are much more casual than me). I won’t be complaining about a top team winning a tournament and getting a legendary, i know they are better players then i’ll ever be. That’s because i’m a pvp-oriented players from 10 years of MMOs. Most of the real casual players won’t understand that though.

This has by no means to be read as a critique to Sensotix post or a nuub calling for his rewards. It’s just an opinion based on my knowledge of how many people (how many friends) came to gw2 with me because of it’s attention to casual gaming. Loose that, and loose those players..

I completely see your point and I agree!
I am sorry that I didn’t see it from that perspective of course casual players should be rewarded as well…hmmm..the problem here is finding a compromis and concerning this I would love to see a kind of meeting on teamspeak between developers some very high rated players and some casuals to try to work on such a compromis…thanks for pointing that out I agree!
I should have said that the things are mentioned are the things that I am missing for myself in this game

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

I agree here…the problem is that let’s take ele for example there is almost no situation where an ele is not attacking so you will probably always interrupt something..speaking for myself I sometimes feel that I did very well when interrupting a necromancer heal for example when I kept my possible daze just for the heal but to be honest the rest of the times I just hope that I interrupt an attack since the attacks happen very fast (mostly instant) and the interrupt takes some time as well so you kind of have to predict an attack which is 80% luck I would say

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

If there’s one thing I learnt from playing my Shutdown specc, it’s that spamming is a bad idea. You can say it is all about spamming from an audience point of view but when you play it, it’s a whole different ball game.

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

It’s just as it currently is, you forget that
A) The extra reward for interrupting a key skill is still the fact that you interrupted a key skill. The only thing I can see added as a conditional is forcing the interrupted skill onto cooldown, which may not be a bad idea if only specific skills (or a specific trait) allowed this. But then that one skill/trait may become too powerful.
B)The Mesmer is built to not have a lot of reliable interrupts, and it’s also already a class where utility bar space is at a premium. Spamming your interrupts for an early advantage usually means you lose the fight unless you’re playing a burst spec. At which point there is counter play from popping your stability early or some other defensive cooldown. Halting Strike alone isn’t enough to make a kill, so you still have the option of just dodging the incoming Mind Wrack or whatever is coming afterward.

Dirame.8521:

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

If there’s one thing I learnt from playing my Shutdown specc, it’s that spamming is a bad idea. You can say it is all about spamming from an audience point of view but when you play it, it’s a whole different ball game.

Okay, but I as I said, if you’re interrupting right, then the interrupt itself should be a reward. There shouldn’t be extra rewards (such as more damage) just for simply landing an interrupt on anything. If you throw down a Staff #5 on a group of players or three-clone Diversion a single target from a distance you’re practically guaranteed to interrupt something. My issue isn’t with interrupts it’s with these bonus traits that ask so little from us as players.

shimmerless.4560:

Dirame.8521:

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

If there’s one thing I learnt from playing my Shutdown specc, it’s that spamming is a bad idea. You can say it is all about spamming from an audience point of view but when you play it, it’s a whole different ball game.

Okay, but I as I said, if you’re interrupting right, then the interrupt itself should be a reward. There shouldn’t be extra rewards (such as more damage) just for simply landing an interrupt on anything. If you throw down a Staff #5 on a group of players or three-clone Diversion a single target from a distance you’re practically guaranteed to interrupt something. My issue isn’t with interrupts it’s with these bonus traits that ask so little from us as players.

Well, we have the traits because interrupting by itself isn’t strong enough, since for most skills it just puts them on a 3-second cooldown.

Dirame.8521:

shimmerless.4560:

Proven.2854:

Sensotix.4106:

Dirame.8521:

Sensotix.4106:

Blimm.5028:

Senso, I DO time my interrupts. My entire build revolves around shutting down my target not by permanent daze, but by precise interrupts. I do predict casts from time to time, like people tend to mash a skill when they are dazed to use it as soon as daze ends so I do an other daze 1/4 second after the first ends.
The only random interrupt in my build is F3.
I have sword offhand, Greatsword and the daze mantra.

yea but the problem is that such a lockdown build is hardly tourny viable..especially not in the current meta

That depends on how your team is built. Such a build can shutdown a Necro or an Engineer or any class that is a problem for that matter.

yea but those two classes arent really played atm..we see a lot of thieves warris guards and spirit rangers and a lockdown build vs warri is not really effective thats what i meant

Then what do you want the reward for timed interrupts to be? You can have damage, buffs, or debuffs, and all of them were considered crappy until the buff choice became easier to grab and the damage choice did more damage.

The problem with these new interrupt traits like Bountiful and Halting Strike is that while from your perspective, these are timed interrupts, there’s in truth no real skill involved whatsoever. There’s no mana system in GW2, so people are almost always casting skills; against a class like an Ele or a Thief it can often be more difficult not to interrupt something with a daze.

In essence, if the interrupt was timed against a critical skill and planned out properly, the interrupt itself should be reward enough. If you still want to keep the idea of rewards on interrupts, there needs to be some sort of conditional attached (for example, a trait that rewards interrupting leaping skills, or heal casts, or elites, etc). At the moment, these traits are thoughtless damage heaped on to our class, and they mostly encourage spamming interrupts off cooldown. There’s no skill at all in it, an overhaul is sorely needed.

If there’s one thing I learnt from playing my Shutdown specc, it’s that spamming is a bad idea. You can say it is all about spamming from an audience point of view but when you play it, it’s a whole different ball game.

Autoattacks can be interrupted too in gw2 and most of the times that is what you interrupt,some of them have 0.5 casting time but many have 0.75 or 1 second because of aftercast and bad design(take warrior mace autoattack for example).Basicly if you just spam ccs regardless of the class you are playing 90% of times it will cause an interrupt.Has nothing with smart play like in other mmos where you have casting bars and only utilities or stances that can be interrupted.

Nicely objective, but 100% immunity is needed at this point.

5 of the 8 professions work largely at range and only 3 mostly work off physical damage. Range is defensive. If they can’t hit you, they can’t hurt you. In the case of range vs melee creating space is defensive. In the case of range vs range no defense or offense is gained so therefore neutral. In the case of long range vs short range advantage goes to longer range.

The amount of auto attacks that naturally cause conditions is heavy. Unlike gw1 where hits from behind or the side or bow preparations/ slotted skills did conditions. This means as long as you have some range you can invest solely in condition damage and spend your remaining points in defense. This leads to conditions+defense+defense+defense > melee+power+crit damage+defense.

Much the same as blocks/evade/protection/immunity all negate physical damage there is no series or combo that can be used to negate conditions apart from cleansing..even then they’re applied gain from casual auto attacking.

Without immunity this leads to a situation where power builds needs to focus on constant cleansing and gap closing. That means they have to invest heavily into defense..which as stated above..if they have range and it is longer than yours, your already at the disadvantage.

By lowering healing signetthe natural regen is what allows warriors to engage necro/engineer at close quarters and create breathing space for shortbow rangers and earth ele’s. All of these professions can tank remarkably adequately, if not fantastically for their lack of heavy armor. They benefit from opponents being closer than distant. This leads to that the one heavy based melee profession in game now is on the back foot and creates a feeling of -“screw it” -I’m using longbow/rifle..and that leads onto..you guessed it..condition dmg+defense+defense+defense with only furthers the current meta and pushes the notion of viable heavy physical melee into an even more unpopular niche.

I like how objective you are, but i think reducing healing signet is myopic in the long run. Sure healing sig maybe passive..but your attention is largely tied up when in melee doing your best to keep in melee range with the abundance of evading and distance creating currently in game.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Nicely objective, but 100% immunity is needed at this point.

5 of the 8 professions work largely at range and only 3 mostly work off physical damage. Range is defensive. If they can’t hit you, they can’t hurt you. In the case of range vs melee creating space is defensive. In the case of range vs range no defense or offense is gained so therefore neutral. In the case of long range vs short range advantage goes to longer range.

The amount of auto attacks that naturally cause conditions is heavy. Unlike gw1 where hits from behind or the side or bow preparations/ slotted skills did conditions. This means as long as you have some range you can invest solely in condition damage and spend your remaining points in defense. This leads to conditions+defense+defense+defense > melee+power+crit damage+defense.

Much the same as blocks/evade/protection/immunity all negate physical damage there is no series or combo that can be used to negate conditions apart from cleansing..even then they’re applied gain from casual auto attacking.

Without immunity this leads to a situation where power builds needs to focus on constant cleansing and gap closing. That means they have to invest heavily into defense..which as stated above..if they have range and it is longer than yours, your already at the disadvantage.

By lowering healing signetthe natural regen is what allows warriors to engage necro/engineer at close quarters and create breathing space for shortbow rangers and earth ele’s. All of these professions can tank remarkably adequately, if not fantastically for their lack of heavy armor. They benefit from opponents being closer than distant. This leads to that the one heavy based melee profession in game now is on the back foot and creates a feeling of -“screw it” -I’m using longbow/rifle..and that leads onto..you guessed it..condition dmg+defense+defense+defense with only furthers the current meta and pushes the notion of viable heavy physical melee into an even more unpopular niche.

I like how objective you are, but i think reducing healing signet is myopic in the long run. Sure healing sig maybe passive..but your attention is largely tied up when in melee doing your best to keep in melee range with the abundance of evading and distance creating currently in game.

Just throw the towel and spare yourself the trouble..They will NEVER get it.

shimmerless.4560:

Dirame.8521:

If there’s one thing I learnt from playing my Shutdown specc, it’s that spamming is a bad idea. You can say it is all about spamming from an audience point of view but when you play it, it’s a whole different ball game.

Okay, but I as I said, if you’re interrupting right, then the interrupt itself should be a reward. There shouldn’t be extra rewards (such as more damage) just for simply landing an interrupt on anything. If you throw down a Staff #5 on a group of players or three-clone Diversion a single target from a distance you’re practically guaranteed to interrupt something. My issue isn’t with interrupts it’s with these bonus traits that ask so little from us as players.

What’s wrong with more damage as a reward for successfully landing an interrupt? Even people who spam won’t find the benefits they get from spamming to last very long.

mini.6018:

Autoattacks can be interrupted too in gw2 and most of the times that is what you interrupt,some of them have 0.5 casting time but many have 0.75 or 1 second because of aftercast and bad design(take warrior mace autoattack for example).Basicly if you just spam ccs regardless of the class you are playing 90% of times it will cause an interrupt.Has nothing with smart play like in other mmos where you have casting bars and only utilities or stances that can be interrupted.

If auto-attacks are what you interrupt then more power to you but don’t put us both in the same box.

The difference between a skilled player and a bad one is in how many charges of mantra he has left after a fight. I usually have one charge left in my daze mantra after a fight but another guy may finish with none.

Sifu.6527:

Sensotix.4106:

Some things for the end here:
I know that I have listed a lot of things and didn’t provide a solution for everything but the aim of this thread is to point out what is going wrong atm and to solve those problems I think Anet will find a lot of experienced players that will help find solutions for the problems because imo it is not a good idea if I tell Anet how to balance the Engineer for example if I don’t know everything about this class – what I would suggest here is sitting together with some really good/experienced engineer players and ask them what they think needs to be done and then sit together with good/experienced players of other classes and ask them what they think about the suggested engineer changes.

If I forgot anything I will add it to the thread later.

Writing this thread took me quite some time so I would appreciate constructive feedback and no offensive behavior in the comment section below. If you find any mistakes in this thread since English is not my mother language and I don’t really have the time to control everything I wrote three times you can keep them and eat a cookie.

What is your view on Phantasm Mesmer? Is it passive play? If so, do you think it needs a nerf so that the class may get buffs in other areas?

Hi Sensotix,

I was wondering if you had a chance to look over my comment? I would appreciate a response. Thanks.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Nicely objective, but 100% immunity is needed at this point.

5 of the 8 professions work largely at range and only 3 mostly work off physical damage. Range is defensive. If they can’t hit you, they can’t hurt you. In the case of range vs melee creating space is defensive. In the case of range vs range no defense or offense is gained so therefore neutral. In the case of long range vs short range advantage goes to longer range.

The amount of auto attacks that naturally cause conditions is heavy. Unlike gw1 where hits from behind or the side or bow preparations/ slotted skills did conditions. This means as long as you have some range you can invest solely in condition damage and spend your remaining points in defense. This leads to conditions+defense+defense+defense > melee+power+crit damage+defense.

Much the same as blocks/evade/protection/immunity all negate physical damage there is no series or combo that can be used to negate conditions apart from cleansing..even then they’re applied gain from casual auto attacking.

Without immunity this leads to a situation where power builds needs to focus on constant cleansing and gap closing. That means they have to invest heavily into defense..which as stated above..if they have range and it is longer than yours, your already at the disadvantage.

By lowering healing signetthe natural regen is what allows warriors to engage necro/engineer at close quarters and create breathing space for shortbow rangers and earth ele’s. All of these professions can tank remarkably adequately, if not fantastically for their lack of heavy armor. They benefit from opponents being closer than distant. This leads to that the one heavy based melee profession in game now is on the back foot and creates a feeling of -“screw it” -I’m using longbow/rifle..and that leads onto..you guessed it..condition dmg+defense+defense+defense with only furthers the current meta and pushes the notion of viable heavy physical melee into an even more unpopular niche.

I like how objective you are, but i think reducing healing signet is myopic in the long run. Sure healing sig maybe passive..but your attention is largely tied up when in melee doing your best to keep in melee range with the abundance of evading and distance creating currently in game.

Respect man it has been a long time that one started thinking outside of his small box and just qqed about his class getting nerfed
I agree on everything you said and concerning the healing signet the thing is warrior has many things that are pretty strong and one of the things need to be nerfed..nerfing hammer is a good way to start but after the patch warrior will still be a truck running over everything with his sustain mobility and just with a different weaponset i predict longbow and axe mace and these weaponsets are hardly touched so nerfing hammer will not change the state of the warrior after the patch..it will make him a little bit harder to play since he cant rely on his cc but it will still be too tanky for the dmg he does

Sifu.6527:

Sifu.6527:

Sensotix.4106:

Some things for the end here:
I know that I have listed a lot of things and didn’t provide a solution for everything but the aim of this thread is to point out what is going wrong atm and to solve those problems I think Anet will find a lot of experienced players that will help find solutions for the problems because imo it is not a good idea if I tell Anet how to balance the Engineer for example if I don’t know everything about this class – what I would suggest here is sitting together with some really good/experienced engineer players and ask them what they think needs to be done and then sit together with good/experienced players of other classes and ask them what they think about the suggested engineer changes.

If I forgot anything I will add it to the thread later.

Writing this thread took me quite some time so I would appreciate constructive feedback and no offensive behavior in the comment section below. If you find any mistakes in this thread since English is not my mother language and I don’t really have the time to control everything I wrote three times you can keep them and eat a cookie.

What is your view on Phantasm Mesmer? Is it passive play? If so, do you think it needs a nerf so that the class may get buffs in other areas?

Hi Sensotix,

I was wondering if you had a chance to look over my comment? I would appreciate a response. Thanks.

sorry might have overlooked it..the thing about phantasm mesmer is that you can counter it pretty easily..second of all talking about tournaments this build focuses on duels so it is pretty much useless in teamfights which makes it pretty balanced imo
about being passive I would say it’s a pretty much a passive build but i wouldnt change it at all since it is only really effective in duels which makes it balanced

Sensotix.4106:

nerfing hammer is a good way to start but after the patch warrior will still be a truck running over everything with his sustain mobility

Hambow has very limited mobility. Not sure how this is a problem.

and just with a different weaponset i predict longbow and axe mace and these weaponsets are hardly touched so nerfing hammer will not change the state of the warrior after the patch..it will make him a little bit harder to play since he cant rely on his cc but it will still be too tanky for the dmg he does

Axe/Mace has no stun and given the fact that most Hambow Warrior’s are using Soldier’s, there is no way that the damage is comparable to what it currently is, as you are not able to take advantage of Unsuspecting Foe.

Sustain will also drop in such a build, because you can’t lock down the opponent like you can with the hammer.

Slim.3024:

Sensotix.4106:

nerfing hammer is a good way to start but after the patch warrior will still be a truck running over everything with his sustain mobility

Hambow has very limited mobility. Not sure how this is a problem.

and just with a different weaponset i predict longbow and axe mace and these weaponsets are hardly touched so nerfing hammer will not change the state of the warrior after the patch..it will make him a little bit harder to play since he cant rely on his cc but it will still be too tanky for the dmg he does

Axe/Mace has no stun and given the fact that most Hambow Warrior’s are using Soldier’s, there is no way that the damage is comparable to what it currently is, as you are not able to take advantage of Unsuspecting Foe.

Sustain will also drop in such a build, because you can’t lock down the opponent like you can with the hammer.

when i talk about mobility i talk about 25% movement speed increase while wielding a melee weapon all the time
and when i talk about sustain i mean immunity to condi dmg immunity to physical damage and the signet in combination with lyssa runes as well as healing signet

Sensotix.4106:

when i talk about mobility i talk about 25% movement speed increase while wielding a melee weapon all the time

Warrior’s Sprint in a Hambow build only increases your movement speed while using the hammer, which might not seem important, but it means half the time you are not getting the bonus.

and when i talk about sustain i mean immunity to condi dmg immunity to physical damage and the signet in combination with lyssa runes as well as healing signet

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Slim.3024:

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Yes it will be, and that needs to happen. Healing signet is still going to be very strong post-patch, something has to give

Damage
Defence
Control

Pick one.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Much the same as blocks/evade/protection/immunity all negate physical damage there is no series or combo that can be used to negate conditions apart from cleansing..even then they’re applied gain from casual auto attacking.

Everything you listed except protection all negate conditions from being applied unless it is a skill that specifically says it cannot be blocked. Remember that a condition being applied is equal to a direct damage hit. What you want is blocks/evades/immunity to remove/negate already applied conditions, to give you an idea why that’s wrong, it would be the same as blocks/evades/immunity healing the last direct damage attack you took. If the condition is already applied you should count it’s damage as already done unless you have a cure. If you want to push the protection front then you need to compare that to condition removals. Protection is only available to a few classes in certain builds where condition removal is available to all classes and easily accessible. Protection only mitigates 33% damage where condition removal can negate 90%+ of a conditions damage as well as some removing all conditions.

azuzephyr.7280:

Slim.3024:

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Yes it will be, and that needs to happen. Healing signet is still going to be very strong post-patch, something has to give

Damage
Defence
Control

Pick one.

If you follow the discussion a couple posts above yours, you will see that I never stated the changes as proposed in the december 10th preview are unwarranted.

I am simply trying to convey that nerfing the healing signet on top of the changes that will undoubtedly already affect sustain and damage would be premature and probably turn out to be too much.

Slim.3024:

azuzephyr.7280:

Slim.3024:

Yep, which still means that your sustain with an Axe/Mace + LB is lower than the current Hambow build, while at the same time losing a ton of damage from Unsuspecting Foe.

Yes it will be, and that needs to happen. Healing signet is still going to be very strong post-patch, something has to give

Damage
Defence
Control

Pick one.

If you follow the discussion a couple posts above yours, you will see that I never stated the changes as proposed in the december 10th preview are unwarranted.

I am simply trying to convey that nerfing the healing signet on top of the changes that will undoubtedly already affect sustain and damage would be premature and probably turn out to be too much.

It will already be too much.They just needed to delete UF from the game.That’s it,

this was the most constructive feedback i have ever had

what did you expect? haha

Slim.3024:

Sensotix.4106:

nerfing hammer is a good way to start but after the patch warrior will still be a truck running over everything with his sustain mobility

Hambow has very limited mobility. Not sure how this is a problem.

and just with a different weaponset i predict longbow and axe mace and these weaponsets are hardly touched so nerfing hammer will not change the state of the warrior after the patch..it will make him a little bit harder to play since he cant rely on his cc but it will still be too tanky for the dmg he does

Axe/Mace has no stun and given the fact that most Hambow Warrior’s are using Soldier’s, there is no way that the damage is comparable to what it currently is, as you are not able to take advantage of Unsuspecting Foe.

Sustain will also drop in such a build, because you can’t lock down the opponent like you can with the hammer.

Axe/mace has no stun? Do you even play the class? You got a ranged conal stun on it.

And axe/mace users run that setup with hammer, the rationale being that targets only have so many dodges that force them to choose between eating axe auto+eviscerate or use the dodges for the hammer lockdown.

The fact is with axe/mace+hammer you got 3 relatively low cd stuns, 2 spike burst skills, incredibly high sustained damage from axe autoattack, 2 low cd ranged cripples.

All you miss is the burning from the longbow, but gain control/better spike or sustained pressure.

Signet of rage+lyssa+healing signet+cleansing ire+berzerker+balanced stance+signet of the dolyak and you got a warrior you can’t CC at all for a long time, with near permanent swiftness uptime, with good gap closing capacity and extremely high single and aoe damage on top of hammer CC while being ridiculously durable for the damage you do.

Zenith.7301:

Axe/mace has no stun? Do you even play the class? You got a ranged conal stun on it.

Tremor is a knockdown, not a stun, thus Unsuspecting Foe’s condition is not met. It’s one thing being wrong and another one making an kitten of yourself.

And axe/mace users run that setup with hammer, the rationale being that targets only have so many dodges that force them to choose between eating axe auto+eviscerate or use the dodges for the hammer lockdown.

Whatever.

We were discussing Axe/Mace + Longbow, because Sensotix assumed that Hambow warriors would migrate to that weapon combo after the hammer was nerfed.

A stun is a stun. The utility of the stun from UF is hardly an issue considering the stunned person is taking mainhand axe levels of damage, which actually outdamages UF hammer.

Zenith.7301:

A stun is a stun. The utility of the stun from UF is hardly an issue considering the stunned person is taking mainhand axe levels of damage, which actually outdamages UF hammer.

Indeed, a stun is a stun, not a knockdown.

“mainhand axe levels of damage” means absolutely nothing considering how backloaded its damage is. You are working with a 2 second knockdown on a 25s CD. Axe/Mace warriors will be chasing their targets 80% of the time and have very low crit chance, making Eviscerate pointless other than for the fire aura after combustive shot.

There is absolutely no evidence for Axe/Mace + Longbow being anywhere close to on par with the current Hambow in terms of survivability, damage or control and that’s what this argument has been about.

Slim.3024:

Zenith.7301:

A stun is a stun. The utility of the stun from UF is hardly an issue considering the stunned person is taking mainhand axe levels of damage, which actually outdamages UF hammer.

Indeed, a stun is a stun, not a knockdown.

“mainhand axe levels of damage” means absolutely nothing considering how backloaded its damage is. You are working with a 2 second knockdown on a 25s CD. Axe/Mace warriors will be chasing their targets 80% of the time and have very low crit chance, making Eviscerate pointless other than for the fire aura after combustive shot.

There is absolutely no evidence for Axe/Mace + Longbow being anywhere close to on par with the current Hambow in terms of survivability, damage or control and that’s what this argument has been about.

Every build is viable in hotjoin if you never move one inch from the zerg.He knows that
What he doesn’t know is that his daamage will drop by 50 % if not more because no more uptime on stunned foe, no more free crits and because no range ;and his survavibility will drop by 70 % because no more stunlock for free HS ticks.Let him be happy.