Guild Wars 2

I know you took much time to write this out. Now could you apply QoL to the post so it is easier to decipher wall of texts.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I know you took much time to write this out. Now could you apply QoL to the post so it is easier to decipher wall of texts.

Ay, fair point, not enough line breaks in there, I added a bunch : )

I’ve always been a fan of the idea of “soft counters” like the berserker stance example. In this line, do you think that stability should reduce the duration of disables / distance of knockbacks by a percentage (50, 66%…) instead of fully? Should there be a boon (fury, perhaps) that reduces the efficiency of conditions on you?

Big fan of this post. We are not devs so no one can say that these changes are viable but no matter what they are GREAT ideas. I really like the points made on the Warrior’s bezerker stance and Necromancer’s fears.

Oxygen.5918:

I’ve always been a fan of the idea of “soft counters” like the berserker stance example. In this line, do you think that stability should reduce the duration of disables / distance of knockbacks by a percentage (50, 66%…) instead of fully? Should there be a boon (fury, perhaps) that reduces the efficiency of conditions on you?

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

I’m not sure about a boon, adding that effect to an existing boon could really throw off balance by suddenly making it a lore more desirable. In the suggestions I made I tried to either make changes that would affect everyone (like the vitality budget change and reduced stamina regen) or very specific to an OPness problem like condi duration to fears, because it’s easier to balance around. Changes to buffs, since each class has very different access and uptime on each buff, could throw things off quite a bit.

I find a large bulk of your post extremely well thought out and brilliant specific suggestions, but I have to disagree with reducing BASE endurance regeneration rate. I find base regeneration rate pretty much ideal and it’s vigor/access to vigor (especially those traits that grant perma vigor on crit) that should be nerfed.

I think every class skill to some degree should operate like the elementalist staff skills.

They are all telegraph, they give enough time for the player to react. All but one of the skills are instant cast unavoidable damage skill. Most their rate of projectiles are slow enough that even a blind man can dodge. Obviously, reduce the rate of endurance regeneration.

get rid of all instant cast damage skill, but make certain CC skills instant cast but put them up on a long CD, to reward smart play while punishing mindless spamming. If skill gets interrupted by CC put the skill on a longer CD.

This might sound a little extreme but except for self healing skills make all support skills automatically apply to up to a max of 5 allies and actually make it rewarding to share the wealth. Aka u shouldn’t need power aura for example to share auras with your team makes. Cross profession combo suck and require too much setting up in a combat system that is way too fast. But what do I know.

Julius.1094:

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

And technically, if a warrior is immune to conditions (new conditions mind), your attacks still deal direct damage no? So you are at a disadvantage but can still damage and kill him.

stof.9341:

Julius.1094:

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

And technically, if a warrior is immune to conditions (new conditions mind), your attacks still deal direct damage no? So you are at a disadvantage but can still damage and kill him.

If there weren’t multiple builds that did almost all their damage from conditions that would be a good point. But since there are…

Well, if you put all your eggs in the same basket, don’t complain later. You could try using Rampager gear instead of Rabid next time.

Julius.1094:

Reduce hard counters
1- Increase duration of Berseker stance to 12 sec base and make the engineer’s Automated Response trigger at 33% health BUT make them reduce condi duration on you by 50%, not 100%. It should be a defense against condi not completely neutralize certain builds entire offensive ability with their current fairly high uptime. Specially if other anti condi measures previously listed were implemented.

And it would make Automated Response completely useless.
Why should you even risk staying at less than 33% hp – making you extremely susceptible to burst damage – if you’re getting the same damage from conditions, just with a shorter duration?
You still don’t get the point of that trait – exposing yourself to bursts in exchange for that condition shutdown. Something me and other people explained and argumented in a lot of threads before this one, anyway, and i won’t spend any more time on the matter.
Especially since there aren’t armies of engineers using that trait even with a condition meta – where it should shine.

For you to just ignore dodge on weapon abilities as not a problem is ludicrous imo. Its one of the biggest problems with too many evades. Remove weapon evades, remove energy sigils, and remove vigor regeneration procs. Dodges should be limited and very important to manage correctly.

Kwll.1468:

For you to just ignore dodge on weapon abilities as not a problem is ludicrous imo. Its one of the biggest problems with too many evades. Remove weapon evades, remove energy sigils, and remove vigor regeneration procs. Dodges should be limited and very important to manage correctly.

I suggested cutting base endurance regeneration in half (which is what I think should be done) that would also cut vigor effectiveness in half since it’s a percentage. Once you do that on weapon skill dodges become a much smaller problem, it’s the chain between those skills AND constant dodges that’s a problem. Weapon skill dodges are part of the game mechanic, getting rid of it would throw off balance badly, tackling vigor is a better way to lower the number of dodges in a balanced way because it affects everyone thus balancing itself. I did suggested sightly nerfing the duration of dodge on skill use as well. With lowered base endurance regen the current energy sigil would be OP so that would have to be cut in half to to regenerate just a quarter of endurance, i don’t think it needs to be removed.

Manuhell.2759:

Julius.1094:

Reduce hard counters
1- Increase duration of Berseker stance to 12 sec base and make the engineer’s Automated Response trigger at 33% health BUT make them reduce condi duration on you by 50%, not 100%. It should be a defense against condi not completely neutralize certain builds entire offensive ability with their current fairly high uptime. Specially if other anti condi measures previously listed were implemented.

And it would make Automated Response completely useless.
Why should you even risk staying at less than 33% hp – making you extremely susceptible to burst damage – if you’re getting the same damage from conditions, just with a shorter duration?
You still don’t get the point of that trait – exposing yourself to bursts in exchange for that condition shutdown. Something me and other people explained and argumented in a lot of threads before this one, anyway, and i won’t spend any more time on the matter.
Especially since there aren’t armies of engineers using that trait even with a condition meta – where it should shine.

You shouldn’t risk being at low health when you can help it. I’m not sure you get the point of the trait: it’s meant to make you harder to kill if you get low by lowering condition damage and slows/imobs, which direct dmg classes often rely on to land a lot of attacks. It’s a “oh kitten” proc, not a “I’m low but I’m not gonna use my heal so i can stay immune to entire builds indefinitely,” that’s bad design.

Cutting condi damage and movement impairment duration in half whenever bellow 1/3 health is not “useless” by any stretch. It’s a passive proc with potentially pretty high uptime and no ICD.

Julius.1094:

You shouldn’t risk being at low health when you can help it.

Except that build-defining trait has that exact use – it does nothing above that threshold and works only under that threshold, while doing nothing to remove conditions applied above said treshhold. So yes, it is based exactly on putting yourself at risk in exchange for that effect.

I’m not sure you get the point of the trait: it’s meant to make you harder to kill if you get low by lowering condition damage and slows/imobs, which direct dmg classes often rely on to land a lot of attacks.

First, it has no effect on previous existing conditions; so, unless cleansed, you’re still bursting the engineer down. Second, even with your 50% reduction, it is the total damage that is halved…on an enemy that is at less than a third of his health anyway. In most cases the reduction would be useless – the damage dealt in the first few seconds, along with the direct one, would be enough to kill anyway, and the remaining duration would be wasted in any case. But most of all, this isn’t anymore a build-defining trait, cause unlike the one we have now, you cannot build for it and use it reliably – your cleansing abilities are limited, after all.

It’s a “oh kitten” proc, not a “I’m low but I’m not gonna use my heal so i can stay immune to entire builds indefinitely,” that’s bad design.

An highly specialized build that counters a specific highly specialized build by putting the user at risk. If anything, it is a gamble. Especially considering you fight in teams, not alone, and the game isn’t balanced toward 1vs1 anyway.

Julius.1094:

Cutting condi damage and movement impairment duration in half whenever bellow 1/3 health is not “useless” by any stretch. It’s a passive proc with potentially pretty high uptime and no ICD.

Daze, stuns and other CC effect still work even with the current one. But beside that, the comments i’ve made above are still valid. It is useless, and even more useless in a condition meta – where you get literally spammed with conditions and a reduction like that would be made useless by sheer numbers.
You have no reason to stay below that threshold voluntarily, cause you risk getting bursted by both conditions and direct damage – there isn’t even a decent tradeoff. Building for it is useless – even getting high vitality won’t help, as the class lacks passive condition removals and there is just a single full one (and we have already to share our slots with kits/weapons).
It wouldn’t be a build defining trait anymore. Just one that is useless for the class it is applied on.

But those are all arguments we’ve already discussed, as i said above.

This thread deserves a red post. I don’t agree with everything but on the most parts you are right, the engi kit is a great example.
Start the fight with your normal weapons, go into the kit in the hope of giving some good damage and swap back to your normal weapons.

I zupport.

@Julius:
I like the idea behind putting GK 1 on a cooldown so that it’s no longer a spammable autoattack replacement, but the fact of the matter is that Engineer Main-hand weapons are pretty bad at sustained damage .

• Pistol 1 could have been a candidate – if it didn’t have aftercast turning it to 0.8 seconds per cast and Power scaling of 0.4 and base of 114.
• Rifle is a CC/burst weapon – Hip Shot although relatively strong is simply not something you can spam out when your things are on CD.
• I like the principle behind it, but Engineer main hands would have to be much stronger in sustained damage and less bursty (Condi burst for Pistol, Power burst for Rifle) and that would basically be a complete redesign of Engineer weapons.

I actually don’t agree with regards to the global nerf to Endurance Regeneration. For one, it basically makes Vigor mandatory – either that, or traits like Adrenal Implant will simply be taken more.
I think instead that Vigor should be nerfed to 50% bonus Endurance Regeneration – 1 dodge per 7.5 is still strong.
Traits increasing Endurance Regen could then be reduced as well to 25% bonus instead.

I also think you’re conflating dodge “spamming” with the sheer overbearance of AoE, instant casts, and multi-condi procs on a single skill. Players need to dodge this often because otherwise they’d simply fall over.

• An overall nerf pass across all AOE skills, multi-condi procs will reduce the need to have to dodge “at random” and will make the game more tactical regardless.
• Nerfing AOE will also increase the Time-to-kill, allowing more measured play.

As it is, a blanket 50% nerf to endurance regeneration will hasten TTK, not reduce it. You can bet that certain builds that previously weren’t that strong will emerge and be called OP in this instance.

@Manuhell:
I actually agree with Julius’s proposal regarding Automated Response, if only because it removes a hard counter. Soft counters should be the way forward – otherwise the game devolves even further into “Build Wars 2” which is:

• unfun if you’re on the losing end of a matchup, and
• the fact that it creates a matchup in the first place will make balance even more complicated.

That being said, it would be the nail in the coffin for Automated Response for it to only reduce condi duration by 50% at 33% HP. It’s already underutilised especially compared to HGH.
I think what would be better instead would be for Automated Response to proc Elixir C at 33% HP along with reducing new condition duration by 50%. It might then see use – but still be counterable with Corrupt Boon or a Bleed spike.

There are considerations to be made in regards to some of your suggestions, such as the change to endurance regen rate. Certain trait effects which proc on dodges would have to be improved to compensate for the less accessible dodges. Otherwise I agree with the majority, especially on a buff to vitality, as it is indeed inferior in its current state. I would welcome a change to the pace of the game (burstiness?) by buffing vitality.

Edit: Monmalthias brings up a great point in regards to lower TTK if a global endurance regen cut is introduced. Perhaps a cut to vigor in particular would be better. I’d also like to add that this would hit certain classes more than others, which should also be taken into consideration. With the abundance of death shroud atm, necros are hardly the most squishy of targets, despite their lack of vigor accessibility. Mesmers and eles, however, greatly depend on dodges to stay alive, and would die extremely fast to both direct dmg burst and condi pressure. They kinda do already.

@Gunlaugr:
I think that the cut to Vigor should go hand in hand with the buff in effectiveness of Vitality. In this way, even classes running Berzerker’s Ammy and Jewel would notice an increase in survivability – even if they aren’t dodging as often.

The problem remains, however, that some classes have excessive access to Evade frames on Weapon skills. You can bet that a cut to Vigor will bring those classes and builds up – if only indirectly.

One way to counter this counterbuilding is to introduce a buff to Immobilise:

Using Evade weapon skills while Immobilised will not grant Evade frames

I think any patch that majorly revises a condition and boon – such as the Dhuumfire (Aetherblade) patch – needs to be fully previewed however.

If not on a PTR, then on a Patch Preview. to explain the rationale. Otherwise you can expect the same explosion of QQ in the forums the day after.

@MonMalthias
Having played quite a bit of engineer I must disagree on hip shot, if you’re a power build (you should be if you’re playing rifle) it’s one of the strongest auto attacks in the game and what you should be spamming until the right situation to use your CDs comes up. I think the bigger problem is pistol, the auto attack is very weak single target, but that’s partially because it’s an AOE. It should be buffed but following the model I mentioned for melee auto attack cleave, buff pistol #1 damage to the first target it hits (dmg by 50% and another bleed stack) but keep it as is for any subsequent targets it happens to hit.

Also, if 33% is considered too weak/not worth it for Auto Response, i think 50% duration reduction bellow 50% health would be the direction to go, a elixir C proc would be too strong. This would have the lovely benefit of making it viable for glass power engi since in it’s current iteration glassy builds don’t take it because by the time they hit 25% health they’re either kiting off the fight or dead making the proc of little usefulness.

Vigor is already mandatory to classes that have it, as is the adrenal implant trait. But since they are based on percentage of base endurance regeneration, they too get nerfed in half effectiveness indirectly.

@various others
The change to endurance rate is the broadest suggested change with the potential for the most side effects, which has been accurately pointed out. However, keep in mind there is a self balancing effect to a global change. In the example mentioned where mesmers and eles would have a harder time staying alive, while true, the nerf would also apply to their opponent and i also suggested a nerf to on ability use evade durations. So on a match up against a thief for example, the ele may have a harder time staying alive from a defensive standpoint but it will also have a easier time hitting the thief/killing it, and killing your opponent is a very effective form of defense. Certain weapons will also become stronger like staff and scepter, since avoid the AOEs (which are done right on ele with proper animations and delays) will be harder to avoid when people don’t pretty much always have a dodge up. Additionally, many of the changes I suggested (increased healing scaling and buff to vit) off set the decrease to survivability.

On dodge trait procs would have to be buffed, for the most parts their effects can be simply doubled (double duration for prot proc for ranger, double healing for guardian proc, etc.) which is not particularly complex or hard to sort out.

There are other ways of making dodge more scarce as to avoid the current spam fest that it is. The problem with nerfing vigor is that unlike what I explained above, it would straight up buff non vigor classes like necros, with no offset. Also simply moving out of hard hitting long range AOE, assuming it has proper tells/delays as I explain in the original post, reduces the need to dodge somewhat. Players would save dodges for when they get caught off guard but unless they’re slowed/not paying attention, and specially if they have movement speed boost, people can simply move out of the area before it goes off and avoid damage without dodging sort of like you ca do with the ele’s Dragon’s Tooth and engi’s Big Bomb abilities now if you react quickly enough.

MonMalthias.4763:

Using Evade weapon skills while Immobilised will not grant Evade frames

I think any patch that majorly revises a condition and boon – such as the Dhuumfire (Aetherblade) patch – needs to be fully previewed however.

If not on a PTR, then on a Patch Preview. to explain the rationale. Otherwise you can expect the same explosion of QQ in the forums the day after.

I’m not sure about evade weapon skills on imob needing to be removed, personally I think it takes skill to do it right and that’s it’s more about making the duration shorter so timing becomes more critical. Yes the need for a large PTR and patch notes ahead of time is a must have brainer that’s been mentioned sooo many times… they just don’t seem to care for it.

“…A necro that jumps in and spams marks on fresh targets would have most of them avoided and not have them again for a long time. That is how it should be…”
- So basically a necro that jumps into the fray now is useless.

“….Normalize asura models to be 50% larger and char/norn to be 50% smaller. Only appears to player when toggled. This can’t be that hard. Just get it done…”
- It is actually a lot harder than your giving it credit for. Every aspect of modeling would need to reworked from armours to weapons, animations and shadowing.

“…Guardian and ranger passive condi removal needs to be removed….”
-Their passive clear doesn’t allow selection. It may remove the burning that was about to expire in .025 seconds anyway. It may remove blind when you want the 15 seconds of poison removed. It may remove poison when you want the 13 seconds of cripple removed when chasing down a kiter. It may remove vulnerability when you want torment removed. It provides no selective clearing. It is RnG at worst, mildly helpful at best. All condition stacking professions do not lack for ability to stack. Those that can only stack very few such as bleed still have a 10 second window from the time the condition is applied and these passives have a natural internal cooldown. Passive removal is a kin to boxing a slow moving avalanche..you may make a few holes in it, but it is always going to smother you in the end if that is all your relying upon for removal.

You’ve made some ok points, but also some very indulgent ones. It feels like you’ve cherry picked the aspects you don’t care for with little consideration to how this will affect others enjoyment of play styles. However contributing thoughtfully without outright hating is what these forums need more of. Awesome you took the time.

Yeah, decent discussion points, but a lot of these have very drastic side effects. I’d be pretty scared if I saw these in a patch.

Some excellent points which would promote a higher skill ceiling, the changes you suggest would make combat more strategic which is something the game currently lacks as it’s merely a spam-fest in its current state. I really hope the devs take a look at this post and seriously consider making most of those changes.

Vigor in its current state is mindless, its often the case where it’s more efficient to spam evades than to use them strategically due to simply how fast you simply regain endurance.

@Kimoe:
The problem remains that damage in PvP remains too high for players to not be dodging every 5 seconds.

Any nerf to dodge mechanics – as they are the singular most efficient damage mitigation in the entire game – will need to accompany global nerfs to AOE damage and condition application across all classes.

Otherwise you can bet that the game will become even more mindless and spammy.

The TTK would become so low that it essentially turns into a Mexican Standoff – whoever pulls the trigger (spams skills) first, wins.

There’ll be no Observe, Orient, Decision, Action loop governing smart use of skills once the pace of the game exceeds a certain level.

In a way the Condition meta is a sign of things to come because Condition AOE negated dodge spam . You had to run out of Endurance eventually. When you did, Condition application ticks over time would get you even where your Endurance eventually came back up through Energy Sigils, or abusing Weapon skill evades.

The problem here is that by nerfing the profligacy of dodging the AOE Condi meta is prolonged.

I think that a nerf to Endurance Regen could work ; it just requires a global nerf to crit-proc conditions.

I do think that moving away from crit-procs could also open the way to more active play – however, for Condition builds specifically, something has to exist to force Condition specs to diversify their stat distribution.

There is ALOT of good ideas here i hope the devs print this entire thread off and refer to it often when balancing the game

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

“…A necro that jumps in and spams marks on fresh targets would have most of them avoided and not have them again for a long time. That is how it should be…”
- So basically a necro that jumps into the fray now is useless.

“….Normalize asura models to be 50% larger and char/norn to be 50% smaller. Only appears to player when toggled. This can’t be that hard. Just get it done…”
- It is actually a lot harder than your giving it credit for. Every aspect of modeling would need to reworked from armours to weapons, animations and shadowing.

“…Guardian and ranger passive condi removal needs to be removed….”
-Their passive clear doesn’t allow selection. It may remove the burning that was about to expire in .025 seconds anyway. It may remove blind when you want the 15 seconds of poison removed. It may remove poison when you want the 13 seconds of cripple removed when chasing down a kiter. It may remove vulnerability when you want torment removed. It provides no selective clearing. It is RnG at worst, mildly helpful at best. All condition stacking professions do not lack for ability to stack. Those that can only stack very few such as bleed still have a 10 second window from the time the condition is applied and these passives have a natural internal cooldown. Passive removal is a kin to boxing a slow moving avalanche..you may make a few holes in it, but it is always going to smother you in the end if that is all your relying upon for removal.

You’ve made some ok points, but also some very indulgent ones. It feels like you’ve cherry picked the aspects you don’t care for with little consideration to how this will affect others enjoyment of play styles. However contributing thoughtfully without outright hating is what these forums need more of. Awesome you took the time.

I’m having a hard time deciphering your replies, between gross oversimplification, stating things without explaining and a general lack of cohesiveness it’s tough, but i’ll attempt to reply.

The changes I suggest have nothing to do with wether or not a necro “jumps into the fray” it gives them more single target damage options and proportionately increases the DMG on their AOE so CDs can be raised substantially as to avoid mindless spamming of AOE. Instead necros would focus more on focusing single target dmg with strategic AOE use as opposed to just spamming it on point. I would say based on feedback the majority of the community things AOE spam is out of control so if someone likes the AOE spam that’s fine, but I think they’re the minority.

Make a ranger asura and trait into signet of beast mastery, then pop signet of the wild. Look at your screen.

I can’t tell whether you’re in favor or against removing those passives? But as far as what you seem to be saying about it’s effectiveness being driven by RNG, yes, sometimes they’re too strong sometimes too weak depending on randomness which is awful and why I want it removed and replaced with active condition removal.

Of course I “cherry picked” i couldn’t possibly address every single thing in one post. But my selection was based on what I and other players I know thing are the most pressing issues. Every single substantial change has a side effect, I tried to consider it as much as possible and certainly did not “dismiss it” but I’m one person who wrote that on my free time with the full understanding that some of the suggestions would need more in depth analysis and adjustment by developers to work. But I think getting the ideas across, even if i don’t on my own fix every issue and every side effect, is constructive.

MonMalthias.4763:

@Kimoe:
The problem remains that damage in PvP remains too high for players to not be dodging every 5 seconds.

Any nerf to dodge mechanics – as they are the singular most efficient damage mitigation in the entire game – will need to accompany global nerfs to AOE damage and condition application across all classes.

Otherwise you can bet that the game will become even more mindless and spammy.

The TTK would become so low that it essentially turns into a Mexican Standoff – whoever pulls the trigger (spams skills) first, wins.

There’ll be no Observe, Orient, Decision, Action loop governing smart use of skills once the pace of the game exceeds a certain level.

In a way the Condition meta is a sign of things to come because Condition AOE negated dodge spam . You had to run out of Endurance eventually. When you did, Condition application ticks over time would get you even where your Endurance eventually came back up through Energy Sigils, or abusing Weapon skill evades.

The problem here is that by nerfing the profligacy of dodging the AOE Condi meta is prolonged.

I think that a nerf to Endurance Regen could work ; it just requires a global nerf to crit-proc conditions.

I do think that moving away from crit-procs could also open the way to more active play – however, for Condition builds specifically, something has to exist to force Condition specs to diversify their stat distribution.

Damage does feel too high and the game can be too bursty, I think the scaling on vitality and healing power both underpowered stats and both defensive, are big culprits, along with conditions being too “sticky” and AOE too spammy.

The changes I suggest would also make AOE easier to avoid without having to rely on dodges to do it, following the staff ele/engi big bomb model where with a speed boost you can simply move out of the area if you aren’t CC’d and are paying attention and make AOE more scarce overall by increasing CDs. I would to see AOE condi abilities that put longer conditions on people but less often, so that when you skillfully remove a nasty conditions in a timely manner, it’s not right back on a second later. Overall I think the loss of dodges, which at their current excessive rate is spammy/RNG reliant/not fun to play against would be balanced out by those other changes that actually improve defense.

I don’t actually think damage in the game is too high right now outside of those specific issues I listed. We dont’ want fights to become too grindy either, and a direct dmg glass cannon should still be able to blow up a squishy target that doesn’t react quickly enough, specially if it’s two on one or three on one.

@Julius:
Another issue I’d like to bring up and in my opinion drives the incentive to find builds with extremely low TTK (Time to Kill) is the ticket system in Conquest.

Right now as long as you are holding a point, you are earning points towards victory – even if you have a minority of points.

• Conversely, if you hold a majority of points, you can easily snowball a teamfight into an overwhelming surfeit of points.
• This heightens the pace of the game; but also makes complete blowouts possible.
• This reduces the tension of runaway games because victory is almost certain once you reach a certain surplus. There is simply no easy way to claw yourself back.

You actually see some of this when watching the GuildWars2PvPTV Stream. Complete blowouts of games happen all the time – whether it’s due to an unluckily snowballed stomp – and even if the losing side concentrates on the secondary objective, it’s often not enough to claw back into the game.

The ticket system thus promotes 2 things:

• Extreme bunkering, because time you spend wasting an opponent’s time means points for you.
• Extreme damage builds, because the faster you can kill an opponent, the faster you can decap and stem the haemorrhaging.

In fact, I’d almost say that half the balance issues and the pace of play is as a result of the flawed ticket system.

So, how to fix this?

Simple.

• Make it so that points only tick up when you hold a majority of points, just like Company of Heroes, or UT2004’s Onslaught, or Mechwarrior Online, or whatever sort of competitive gametype that involves holding an area.

This pushes gameplay away from extreme builds that feature exclusive Bunkering or exclusive Big Damage, and turns the battle into more of a “push” rather than a “scattered series of 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3”.

• It’d also make the game far easier to spectate as fights are likely more concentrated around a contested point that is going to provide a majority

• The pace of the game is slowed down and more balanced builds that don’t require such a swift TTK or such hard Bunkering can emerge – greater build variety.

• Games are much less likely to be complete blowouts because the bleeding can be stopped as long as you only hold 1 point and you keep the third neutral.

• Secondary objectives actually matter, well, they matter more, because they can supply points when a battle is deadlocked.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

“….Normalize asura models to be 50% larger and char/norn to be 50% smaller. Only appears to player when toggled. This can’t be that hard. Just get it done…”
- It is actually a lot harder than your giving it credit for. Every aspect of modeling would need to reworked from armours to weapons, animations and shadowing.

It is trivial to scale models in any non-archaic 3D engine. Have you never used a Box of Fun in this game?

Using Evade weapon skills while Immobilised will not grant Evade frames

No, immob is already op.

1. I like invulnerable effect/skills for condis its funny. Normal dmg you can; evade, dodge, invul, move etc but condi dmg you can cleanse if you have it. I like the condi invul

Buffing vitality would BREAK alot of things like protection, necros DS, & countless more.

Your only chance would be making vitality have like a 2nd effect for every 100 vit subtract either 1 or maybe a .25% condi damage or atleast add condi dmg reduction to the trait lines is prolly your best option.

Anymore heal scaling and I quit lol jk.

AI clutter needs to be dealt with but just making pets smaller IDK about that :/

Phantasm dmg reduction would just make alot of people no longer worry about them and continue focusing the player.

I only skimmed through but the rest seems ok

I dislike the dodge recuding system. It’s good as it is now. But nerfing it would make ‘first strike, first win’ pvp game. Now dodge are a barrier, that you must break true, before you can waste your best skills. Reducing dodge effectiveness, would make skills like skullcrack in my opinion overpowered. Same for fear, backstab and other high power modified skils. The suggestion sounds incredible great on paper (and hey congratz for typing it all out), but it would not make pvp better. If anything worse. So i really must strongly disagree with it.

I agree with stability being to strong. (in pvp). In wvw a nerf should be bad though, everyone would be stunned 100 times per minute. It would be ping pong. No thanks there. That’s why wvw/spvp splits seriously should be considered.

Wathever spvp balance you do, keep in mind wvw chars are 20-40% stronger due to food, other buffs, stronger gear, and other kinds of power creep. What may seem balanced in pvp, isn’t in wvw. I’m not asking for a perfect wvw (it will never be, but keep it within reason. Especially thiefs, with ascended power creep are getting a little to close to easy one shot kills).

And please don’t remov all passives from the game. You make it sounds like they are for noobs but they aren’t. You mentioned spirits. Best example ever that you are wrong. A spirit can die. A dead spirit is useless especially cause it causes a cooldown. That requires strategy from you to time it’s spawn and use of it. The passive bonus is more then warranted for this risk. Saying it’s brainless, is a bit of an empty argument. Secondly stuff like ‘signet of stamina’ are also not necessary win buttons. You get more dodging, but if you time them in wrong way, they are still useless. They don’t freely give you a victory.

some of the op’s suggestion could be implemented, but not in it’s full extend, maybe 30-70%. Cause op’s vision of the game is ‘action and response’. While that is nice in it’s own way it’s way more frustration and hardcore. It will be like gw2, except, with all the dodge/block nerfs he’s mentioning, we will be even more defenseless then in guild wars 1. It will be a bad attempt at remaking gw1, while destroying a core component of guild wars 2 that’s actually very fun, but lot’s of people don’t realize. That thing is dodging.

TL:DR The suggestion are good but to drastic. Don’t destroy core (existing) parts of the game to balance it. Dodging is cool imo and needs no drastic overhaul. Taking it away would make the game flat, and frustrating, and even a bit to hardcore (casuals left in the dark). Just polish stuff, don’t do big overhauls unless necessary.

Obviously this is generally Spvp focused but ya Ill add nerfing dodge would screw everything up as well. Youd have to rework SO MANY traits for it and just everything else that goes along with it. Game breaking Lol,

and alot of work for the devs which the only thingy they are working on right now is what Tyler Chapman said Map randomization for team arena. How are they going to do all this work if anything?

@OP. You lost me at too much dodging. No thanks.

style.6173:

@OP. You lost me at too much dodging. No thanks.

The game does have too much dodging. But the game also has equal amounts of spam attacks that have no diminishing returns. This game overall is just spam everything whenever you can.

How about a “Very Small” option to UI scale, or the ability to make each item a certain custom size. I still feel that some of the UI elements are too big for my liking.

I understand anet doesnt necessarily want people making custom UI arrangements, and i get that, but the option for size already exists. Small just isnt small enough on large monitors.

Agree that the OP is a good post.

Just 2 things which may be related.

Firstly designing with dodge/reaction-time-based-avoidance being of such a critical importance in gameplay is designing in an inherent risk which neither the player nor ANet have control over……and that is network latency……. especially for non-Euro/USA players where mandatory network connections alone add considerable latencies which CANNOT be overcome without local servers.

Secondly, the AOE issues raised and the proposed solutions seems more about personal experiences/inconvenience rather an overall view of the meta game framework. I feel the AOE issue and whewre it fits in the game meta is far more complex than the above suggested improvements. The suggestions would require a LOT of balancing and single target compensations which would require further balancing etc etc for the AOE centric builds to remain viable. Take for example the necro….it would almost mean a total redesign of their meta and implementation strategies to just keep them viable….not top of the tree…just viable…and that process will be expensive in terms of development time and resources. Although I like some of the suggestions I sincerely hope the devs DONT adopt them without seriously looking at the AOE centric classes meta and overall balance.

Aorin.9168:

How about a “Very Small” option to UI scale, or the ability to make each item a certain custom size. I still feel that some of the UI elements are too big for my liking.

I understand anet doesnt necessarily want people making custom UI arrangements, and i get that, but the option for size already exists. Small just isnt small enough on large monitors.

GW1 had a very good UI system, you could adjust everything on your screen.

I would like to play with small UI, however, I don’t like the mini map size on small UI, it is too small for my liking. GW1’s ‘u’ map was very good, very very basic version of carbonite mod for wow, but customizable size, though the GW1 minimap wasn’t as good as GW2’s (gw2 is a less sizeable version of GW1 minimap and GW1 ‘u’ map combined)

A number of good suggestions IMO but some comments:

Staff Ele is already annoying as hell to play because of all the long delays. Not to mention dragon’s tooth and shatterstone on sceptre. Bloody annoying. It’s also a bad model to follow as it widens the gap between PVE and PVP skill effectiveness.

Perhaps a better model to follow for AOE damage (IMO) is to apply a damage falloff to number of targets hit, eg: 1 target hit = 110% base dmg, 2 targets = 100% base, 3 targets = 90%, 4 targets = 80%, 5 targets = 70%. Alternatively, falloff based on distance from geometric centre of AOE as it was in DAOC.

About the dodging section:

I too feel that some of the evades invincibility frames need to be shortened (even having an entire second of evade is too much most of the time). However, I feel that base stamina regeneration is fine in it’s current state.

Most of the rest of the post I agree with though; we might actually have a somewhat skill based game at that point lol.

My two pence

• Could not agree more on the games evasion spam, this tactic is ridiculous and should have never been permitted, especially by classes who can most effectively build glass cannon. Or, there needs to be a clear and forced choice between evasion and spike damage, rather than the current system of ‘spike, perma-evade, spike again’.
• Condition removal basic functionality needs to be flat out changed, condition removals should remove a certain amount of stacks or seconds, not entire conditions. Half the classes in the game only have one to two damaging conditions to rely on, these classes will never have viable condition builds so long as any condition removal reduces their damage by 50-100%. And passive condition removal just needs to disappear from the face of the game.
• Shrinking the Flesh Golem and Thumper Turrets would be completely contrary to their purpose, they are meant to be tanks, and to get in the way.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Good feedback here, I especially like the “AI Clutter/gameplay too easy” section. We want to do a lot of this stuff to improve the quality of life for our players.

This is a great example of how to document feedback for us to read. It is noteworthy to mention that feedback is also much more likely to be read when not filled with hyperbole and sarcasm.

I personally have used a few of these talking points when delivering feedback to the Skills and Balance Team, not all but a few. Just remember when writing lengthy topics to establish a TL;DR at the end. We have talked about doing a lot of this stuff you wrote about so that should at least be good to hear.
Nice write-up Julius. Threads like these +1.

-Powerr

Good to hear! I’m looking forward to pvp becoming more strategic/less spammy so I can dig my teeth into it again. I must say the current meta/play style got really stale for me, glad to hear serious adjustments are being considered. I love the basis of this game and really want it to succeed.

Krayiss.4926:

1. I like invulnerable effect/skills for condis its funny. Normal dmg you can; evade, dodge, invul, move etc but condi dmg you can cleanse if you have it. I like the condi invul

Buffing vitality would BREAK alot of things like protection, necros DS, & countless more.

Your only chance would be making vitality have like a 2nd effect for every 100 vit subtract either 1 or maybe a .25% condi damage or atleast add condi dmg reduction to the trait lines is prolly your best option.

Anymore heal scaling and I quit lol jk.

AI clutter needs to be dealt with but just making pets smaller IDK about that :/

Phantasm dmg reduction would just make alot of people no longer worry about them and continue focusing the player.

I only skimmed through but the rest seems ok

“Countless more” is pretty vague/exagerated. The buff suggested would just be to bonus vitality and is not that big, for a zerker wearing build without vitality runes it’d be less than 1k additional health. The scaling of DS to health can be adjusted to accommodate such a change, although it probably wouldn’t affect necros as most will still run toughness/crit/condi amulet as that stat combination is one of the strongest. If a necro goes carrion sure he’ll have a big health pool but very low armor, one autoattack by a thief/warrior and that extra health is gone. It’s a small buff that would help but was intentionally thought of as being mild.

I didn’t say all pets, I said turrets, nature spirits and necro minions (less so with flesh golem). Ranger pets shouldn’t be smaller and mesmer clones/phantasms obviously remain the same size. The reality is if you have a mesmer, a turret engi, a spirit ranger and a minion necro standing on a small node you can’t see/target kitten. I don’t think so many “minion” builds should have been introduced in the first place there is a reason most MMO’s keep it to a minimum, it ruins visibility, but since it’s too late for that making the ones that we can as “discreet” as possible is paramount.

Only time you would focus the phantasms is if the mesmer is LOS hiding while they’re up, there should be risk involved in pushing a point and that build prior to the condi meta was broken for pushign far point for that reason. In any other situation you would be focusing the mesmer unless you’re bad. The damage would be the same in the first attack and I suggested reducing their CD (prob cut it in half) to compensate for the subsequent dmg drop/expiration, this would actually be a buff to the build in team fights where phantasms often get destroyed by AOE after 1 attack making the phantasm mesmer useless until the CD is up again.

Sollith.3502:

About the dodging section:

I too feel that some of the evades invincibility frames need to be shortened (even having an entire second of evade is too much most of the time). However, I feel that base stamina regeneration is fine in it’s current state.

Most of the rest of the post I agree with though; we might actually have a somewhat skill based game at that point lol.

Making the evades invisibility frames shorter could also work, though I like the feel of how it is now.

style.6173:

@OP. You lost me at too much dodging. No thanks.

Ok, have fun with thieves and rangers keeping up 50%+ invulnerability through dodge spam during fights in unpredictable ways that force you to spam your kitten till you get a lucky hit. Sounds like really smart gameplay.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I dislike the dodge recuding system. It’s good as it is now. But nerfing it would make ‘first strike, first win’ pvp game. Now dodge are a barrier, that you must break true, before you can waste your best skills. Reducing dodge effectiveness, would make skills like skullcrack in my opinion overpowered. Same for fear, backstab and other high power modified skils. The suggestion sounds incredible great on paper (and hey congratz for typing it all out), but it would not make pvp better. If anything worse. So i really must strongly disagree with it.

I agree with stability being to strong. (in pvp). In wvw a nerf should be bad though, everyone would be stunned 100 times per minute. It would be ping pong. No thanks there. That’s why wvw/spvp splits seriously should be considered.

Wathever spvp balance you do, keep in mind wvw chars are 20-40% stronger due to food, other buffs, stronger gear, and other kinds of power creep. What may seem balanced in pvp, isn’t in wvw. I’m not asking for a perfect wvw (it will never be, but keep it within reason. Especially thiefs, with ascended power creep are getting a little to close to easy one shot kills).

And please don’t remov all passives from the game. You make it sounds like they are for noobs but they aren’t. You mentioned spirits. Best example ever that you are wrong. A spirit can die. A dead spirit is useless especially cause it causes a cooldown. That requires strategy from you to time it’s spawn and use of it. The passive bonus is more then warranted for this risk. Saying it’s brainless, is a bit of an empty argument. Secondly stuff like ‘signet of stamina’ are also not necessary win buttons. You get more dodging, but if you time them in wrong way, they are still useless. They don’t freely give you a victory.

some of the op’s suggestion could be implemented, but not in it’s full extend, maybe 30-70%. Cause op’s vision of the game is ‘action and response’. While that is nice in it’s own way it’s way more frustration and hardcore. It will be like gw2, except, with all the dodge/block nerfs he’s mentioning, we will be even more defenseless then in guild wars 1. It will be a bad attempt at remaking gw1, while destroying a core component of guild wars 2 that’s actually very fun, but lot’s of people don’t realize. That thing is dodging.

TL:DR The suggestion are good but to drastic. Don’t destroy core (existing) parts of the game to balance it. Dodging is cool imo and needs no drastic overhaul. Taking it away would make the game flat, and frustrating, and even a bit to hardcore (casuals left in the dark). Just polish stuff, don’t do big overhauls unless necessary.

Dodges aren’t a barrier, most coordinate focus combos involve hard CC openings. The issue with the amount of dodging available is that it regens fast enough to make random dodging worth it. So rather than players timing dodges while attackers time attacks, both sides spam it and see who gets lucky. The very idea of dodge being more scarce is that players should be saving for when a melee jumps on top of them for example (likely to land a high power attack) instead of randomly spamming it.

Stability is strong, but it can be stripped and doesn’t protect you from damage. I think if anything we just still need more buff removal, it’s still too niche.

My suggestions are strictly for SPVP in fact I’ll be the first one to say many of them would be terrible for wvw and pve such as the bonus vitality buff. But SPVP desperately needs it’s own adjustments because it plays very differently than the other modes.

Who said anything about removing all the passives from the game? >.> I said remove rangers and guardian’s to a lesser extent reliance on passive condi removal and replace it with more active forms. And I said make spirit/necro minions passives WEAKER (not the same as removing) while making their actives stronger so they have a bigger impact. A lot of passive effects in this game work really well, I just wish all internal CDs were tracked on your interface so you could work around them better.