Guild Wars 2

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/

September state of the game.
If you have any questions that you think should be asked in state of the game than feel free to throw it here!

I will read all the questions and pick the most important once, Of course I would like to pick all of them but that won’t be possible

Ask anet what do they think about the elementalist current state

Teach me how to play engineer xD

in topic: ask them if they think that the skill ceiling of the game decreased with the last patch.

How does the balance team go about balance in general. For example:
Do you believe that a character running a Power based build should be on equal footing (have tools and skills available) to be able to hold its own against a condition class, or does the condition class get preference for the advantage (see boons that prevent raw damage and don’t effect conditions).

Are there any plans to make extra weapons available for PvP (EDIT make current weapons more viable). For example, Staff and Focus for the elementalist. Currently the focus has seen some more use but dagger is still the desired weapon. This is due to the /d having much more available in its skill set then the /f does, offering damage, movement, defence, sustain and control. Whereas the focus lacks movement, sustain and damage, only gaining a few (though good) situational tools.

What’s the plan with ele conjure weapons?

Are there plans of adding a buff icon that shows when a player is capable of a burning proc or any condi proc for that matter?

Will passive effects and abilities be toned down or reworked into allowing for more active gameplay?

Are there plans in the works to allow for more difficult to play builds that yield high reward when utilized at max potential?

When can we expect to see instant cast abilities such as the eles arcane spells/ necro fear reworked to allow for suitable reaction?

What is the plan with AOE vs single target damage?

What are your thoughts on the rabid amulet in pvp? It seems to contradict the original idea of burst being the counter to condi especially considering rabid goes well with burn on crit procs allowing for “burst” condis. Why go carrion when you can go rabid?

When can we expect the new traits and utilities?

Are you looking at the sigil of paralyzation and how it effects skull crack?

When will the elementalist actually get team oriented utilities and elites?

How soon will sync qing be addressed?

Do you think vigor is too strong?

• Matchmaking – Are there any plans to ensure matchmaking properly segregate new players from seasoned players

• Leaderboards – Can we please get the game requirement bumped to 50

• Skyhammer – Please remove this from the rotation

• PvP balance split – Isn’t it time that PvP DEVs begin to actually control the most important aspect of THEIR game mode? I love Karl and all, but he’s balancing for PvE and PvP: that’s like building the perfect pizza for a vegetarian and a meat lover, both are going to throw up.

• Point system – Please remove glory gains from Solo Q. Only make it win points and loss points. If they don’t weight the performance of players in the game for MMR and only count wins and losses, then why should glory count for things that don’t necessarily contribute to winning?

• What are they actively doing to remove or tweak builds with low skill floors that are still insanely effective?

• Ladder system: Can we get a system in place where you work through different ladders and only play people in your ladder. You could even stick with rabbit, dolyak, wolf, etc. naming convention

• Cast Bars – Can Anet comment on why this isn’t a great fix for animation issues? PvP should have cast bars since it’s so fast pace, chaotic, and some animations are either identical to others, or unable to be seen

• Quick chat/voice control for solo q – Can we get something similar to LoL where you can hit a hotkey and it say things like “Need help Mid” or “Far point is empty, push it” or “Watch for buff soon”

• Passive traits and vigor – What are DEVs doing to remove the RNG factor, the insane amount of passive traits, and the insane amount of dodges this game has. A missed dodged should mean life and death, instead it means….another dodge.

• Leaver Penalty – Are they planning stricter leaver penalties, or even better a system where if ALL 5 people don’t hit “READY TO JOIN MATCH”, the match doesn’t starts and it looks for a replacement for all that didn’t choose “READY TO JOIN MATCH”

• Quick Salvage – Can we get an option to salvage all items that you already have 1 deposited in the PvP locker? Just one button, and it uses all available Salvage kits IN your PvP locker. Even getting salvage kits out of the PvP locker is a pain. It takes all 200 out…why?

• Can we have a skill added that if cast in the exact area that a stealth player is in, it destealths them? Also, can a freaking hit that gets blocked remove a player from stealth?

I have Questions about necromancer.

How they want to balance that class?
In some aspect he is now realy strong (condi burst+ terror), but in others aspects he is realy weak (surviving focus fire, disengage/escape). His cc doesnt quite compensate it, because in most situation your target will be able to get away.

Why did A-net boosted things no one complained about and left the real problems unsolved?

Lachanche.6859:

in topic: ask them if they think that the skill ceiling of the game decreased with the last patch.

What he said.

I’ll go clearer anyway

1. Are there any plan to reduce proc effects , especially when they give you the strongest condition in game ( sun spirit, dhuumfire, incendiary powder) ?

Is there any plan to AT LEAST give us some sort of counterplay, just like Incendiary Ammo buff ( so i know i have to dodge next attacks, otherwise big burning to me) ?

2. Is there any plan to tone down necros so they are not a moving, super tanky, nuclear reactor of conditions ?
Is there any plan to tone down burning across the board ( tied to point 1) without affecting class efficiency ( like the silly Elixir R nerf on engis) ?

3. Is there any SERIOUS plan about toning down AoE ( and not the usual " we want to tone down AoE, in the next future" which has never come, at least until now, and they’ve been talking about it for months) ?

4. Is there a plan to reduce passive play being rewarded?
and i’m also talking about S/D thieves, which is my main, altough they may have a good skill cap, the skill floor is ridicolously low.

Passive benefits + spamming ( spirit ranger, condi spam, procs spam, evade spam) already dumbed down this game too much, it’s time to NERF BAT HARD.

ah, I FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES, silly me.

5. ASURAS + ANIMATIONS

Make asura human sized in tournaments, ban them, do something, IT’S RIDICOLOUS.

And do something about insta cast ( 4 secs stun skull crack, ele burst and all the crap) , it’s fine if you have 1 or 2 istant skills , but if you can chain them togheter ( ele burst) or get killed because an instant skill gives you no cue it’s going to stun you for 4 secs ( warrior) it’s ATROCIOUS.

6. REWARDS

JUST ASK THEM TO DO SOMETHING, i think all PvP players are already kitten ed enough.

-YES definitely ask them about burning procs. like, what are we supposed to do against it? Theres just no counter play to it, you’re gonna get that burning no matter what, and it should be dodgeable. For example, when you crit, your next attack inflicts burning. There, everything is the same, except now we can dodge that burning charge.

-Where are the reward revamps they talked about 3/4 months ago?

-Plans for new game modes?

Why is the elementalist severly punished for things other classes have?
do they plan on ever bringing the staff up to speed similar to other classes? Aka do you plan on fixing the elementalist skills to similar to other staff skills form other classes?
Why is the elementalist stuck in the previous game iteration why other classes (animation wise) are not?
Do you ever plan on fixing the elementalist? Or should I just give up and go do something else?

I’d like to add Diminish Return in order to decrease CC chainlocking (like pileing up stuns that add up on top of each other and Fear) allowing for well-timed skill-play.

Also a Resurrection Sickness upon those players who have been recently rallied from downstate using a utility/elite skill in order to allow timed resses by the teammates and not through uninterruptable skills because of their almost instant cast that noone is possible to interrupt or react to in time in a teamfight.

Right so we all know that you didn’t want to balance before PAX.

Why is it that we’ve gone 2 months without ANY pvp content?
Where are the quality of life updates?

-PvE gets new quality of life updates every 2 weeks. – PvP gets nothing
-PvP rewards are a joke
-Weekly/Monthly Automated Tournaments – That reward something of value to PvE/WvW players.

The list goes on

Warriors are in a much better spot then they were since the last SoTG. Does Anet feel they are getting close to where they want the warrior and are there any future plans for the warrior. Thanks in advance!

Benji.9203:

What’s the plan with ele conjure weapons?

I would love to know that too

Also can Engineers can have the Elementalist trait <<Stop Drop and Roll>> that removes burn and chill when u dodge (10 sec cd) ?
I feel its kinda unfair we can do loads physical and condition dps , but we cant equally remove conditions too :PPP

Edit: Are u gonna unbanned Helseth someday ?

Why can’t we deposit an offhand weapon of the same type as a main hand such as daggers in the pvp locker?

Not my first choice for a question but, most of the things have already been brought up already.

Why didn’t they make it possible to turn off node capping in custom arenas, and is there any plan to make it possible in the future?

When I play with a group of players and we lose a game, it almost impossible to identify why we lost. We start asking questions “Were you there? Why didn’t you come? Why was that point capped? What happened over there?” There is no transparency or communication of information about what happened after a game is over. The scores on the scoreboard communicate NOTHING to the players at the end about whether or not they were actually effective and responsible for that outcome. If I can’t identify what went wrong, how can I possibly fix it on the individual level and on the group level?

Now, it takes many games of practice and feedback from other players to learn these skills, so it is very tough for this type of information to come firsthand from Arenanet about how to play conquest. But, what Arenanet CAN do is the following.

Please release a proper post-game scoreboard that displays the following things:
A) How many seconds was each point held by Red, Blue, or neutral?
B) How many neutralizes or caps by each player
C) Total damage and received done by each player
D) Damage done to downstate players
E) Total healing done and received by each player
F) Conditions applied/removed/cleansed
G) Boons applied/removed
H) How many stomps, revives, and deaths by each player
I) Special map mechanics: Treb shots fired, orbs ran, npc kills, etc.
J) Whatever else you can think of or other players can

What’s the ETA on the tab targeting rework?

Also +1s to the asura issue and turning off nodes in custom arenas.

rfdarko.4639:

What’s the ETA on the tab targeting rework?

+1

What is your stance on NPCs in PvP. Did you intend for the PvP to be PvE without loot? Do you intend to tone down the number of actors in an area (1 necro vs 1 Mesmer can be up to 10 actors on a point) or is that a part of the current game design?

Population and E-sports:

What’s being done about the PvP population? Any effort being put into making GW2 PvP more inviting, accessible, and appealing to newcomers? Has it ever been considered to make the Heart of the Mists free-to-play and go the route of League of Legends (population of 1 million+ active accounts)? Making PvP free, open and accessible to all gamers around the world could be a huge step in progress towards e-sport viability.

are there any plans for a new pvp mode?
- like a 3on3 oder 2on2 deathmatch or something?

they said once, that the pvp we had was just the peak of what they planed to do. Where is the rest of that peak? is it allready there?

how do they think about the decreasing number of pvp players?

1) Can you change the host of SotG to someone else ?
2) Are plans on introducing daily and weekly in-game tournaments still on the map ?
3) Will there ever going to be any other game mode ? 2014 ? 2015 ?
4) How is build diversity improving ?
5) How is reward revamp going ?
6) Why there are so little options you can do in custom arenas customization ?
7) What happened with GW1 PvP devs and their ideas.
8) How is bug fixing and gameplay polish going ? You dropped the name tournament in favor of rated match, yet there are still many references to tournaments for example tournament tokens and various descriptions.
9) Will underwater combat balance ever get your attention ?
10) It has been couple months since you stated that you “work on toning down AoE across the board”. How is that going ?
11) Are you aware of imbalances such as skills having poor risk-reward ratio (risky ones being not rewarding, safe evade spam being not punished, also close range combat being not rewarding because of AoE spam and condi spam which favours ranged classes with lot of disengage abilities) and AoE being superior to single target spells ?
12) What are the ideas to increase the population of PvPers ?

1. Will they implement a rank booster?
2. Engineer: why is there just one utility which grants stability by a chance of luck?
3. Ele: why is ele the only class without any usefull elite skill?

Sorry for bad english, tried my best.

Any plans to make valks eles strong again without making celric’s OP?

0/15/0/25/30 or later on 0/20/0/20/30 were decent builds.. so perhaps keep the master traits in water nerfed and bring up something else?

1. Any plans for 2handed Axe for warriors/ guardians ?
2. duel area + duel stats ?
3. new runes / sigils ?
4. A way for pvpers to get gems?
5. better rating system pls?

Rewards? ZKeys? Zaishen Chest?

Better godkitten balance?!

Will PvP players ever get a chance to earn gems and more importantly gold?

I’m a PvP player and the guild I’m in moved to another server 2 weeks ago, I’m still grinding for gold in order to change it for gems and transfer to join them.

While you guys usually focus on sPvP, it would be nice, since this is the 1 year mark for the game, to ask them more general class related questions.

Ask them to identify what role they feel certain classes should be filling and if they feel they’re filling them 1 year later.

Ask them how they feel overall balance is and which classes are closest and furthest from where they want to be.

Specifically I’m curious where they feel the Ranger class is and where it should be/where they want it. The Ranger just feels completely ‘lost’ in this game. But it would be nice to hear what ANet feels about each class in general.

Once this is done you can of course focus on the upcoming balance changes in sPvP that you always do.

please ask them how they want to make mesmer viable again

Sensotix.4106:

please ask them how they want to make mesmer viable again

and elementalist

No just no. They cant make changes to “make elementalists and mesmers viable again”. We cant have situations like what happened to necro and ranger again. Mesmers and eles are fine, necros rangers s/d thieves are broken. Please dont touch eles (offensive ele) and mesmer. Please dont. Its partially our fault that this game is where it is, people kept crying that necros are up (when they really werent that up) and rangers were bad and look what anet did.

ahuba.6430:

No just no. They cant make changes to “make elementalists and mesmers viable again”. We cant have situations like what happened to necro and ranger again. Mesmers and eles are fine, necros rangers s/d thieves are broken. Please dont touch eles (offensive ele) and mesmer. Please dont. Its partially our fault that this game is where it is, people kept crying that necros are up (when they really werent that up) and rangers were bad and look what anet did.

Ele vs warrior : warrior wins
Ele vs engi: engi wins
Ele vs necro: necro wins
Ele vs ranger: ranger wins
Ele vs thief: thief wins

“Eles are fine”

Rerroll.9083:

ahuba.6430:

No just no. They cant make changes to “make elementalists and mesmers viable again”. We cant have situations like what happened to necro and ranger again. Mesmers and eles are fine, necros rangers s/d thieves are broken. Please dont touch eles (offensive ele) and mesmer. Please dont. Its partially our fault that this game is where it is, people kept crying that necros are up (when they really werent that up) and rangers were bad and look what anet did.

Ele vs warrior : warrior wins
Ele vs engi: engi wins
Ele vs necro: necro wins
Ele vs ranger: ranger wins
Ele vs thief: thief wins

“Eles are fine”

k so then lets buff ele then ele beats everything then we buff everything that eles beat then we buff eles some more. necromancers all over again. this is what is happening to this game. warriors were in a weak spot we buff them to faceroll status. necros were in an ok spot, we buff them to faceroll. kitten you dont even need to roll with your face. and not to mention that 3 out of your 5 examples are broken specs, and those are the problem, not that eles or mesmers are weak.

When Aoena Net correct nobrain conditions aoe spam?

• Conditions need a stat and a boon that reduces their damage, just like Power damage has Armor/Toughnees and Protection. (I suggest: vitality/toughness and fury why?, because that way bunkers are not going to tank conditions and it will be balanced like Power>Conditions>Bunkers>Power, if not we are going back to a bunker meta…)

• Condition damage need to be toned down and allow the damage to crit, so people cant just wear a shaman ammulet and go full tanky and still have very good condition damage, they will need to invest in their damage just like Power based character in order to do good damage, Power characters cant just go full tank with a cleric ammulet and still do tons of damage, because they need Power/Crit/Crit Damage, while Conditions need only Condition Damage.

• Thief blind spamm fest needs to go, or blind needs to go back to how it previously worked because thiefs are abusing this spam mechanics they have to perma blind a player. Also the Sword/dagger thief evasion spam fest.

• Targeting system needs an option called "Target nearest PLAYER enemy " that only targets players not pets or turrets and all kinds of stuff except players, its bad right now.

• Warriors are coming back but still needs some love, there are crazy people suggesting nerfs already on the warrior so i hope they dont listen to them and i would like to hear what they think about this QQ of players about warrior, which is miles away from beign OP.

felivear.1536:

• PvP balance split – Isn’t it time that PvP DEVs begin to actually control the most important aspect of THEIR game mode? I love Karl and all, but he’s balancing for PvE and PvP: that’s like building the perfect pizza for a vegetarian and a meat lover, both are going to throw up.

• Cast Bars – Can Anet comment on why this isn’t a great fix for animation issues? PvP should have cast bars since it’s so fast pace, chaotic, and some animations are either identical to others, or unable to be seen

• Quick chat/voice control for solo q – Can we get something similar to LoL where you can hit a hotkey and it say things like “Need help Mid” or “Far point is empty, push it” or “Watch for buff soon”

• Passive traits and vigor – What are DEVs doing to remove the RNG factor, the insane amount of passive traits, and the insane amount of dodges this game has. A missed dodged should mean life and death, instead it means….another dodge.

I don’t think they need to split the pvp and pve, but should just base the balance around the pvp (at least in this games case anyways). It shouldn’t actually be that hard to have a happy median if they thought through their pve content a little better…

Cast bars would just be lame; they just need to fix the stupid animations and provide more tells for certain abilities and cleaner animations for others. All the action combat based games I have ever played have really never ever had a problem with creating decent tells for their animation; Anets dev team should have no problem with it, but it seems like they either can’t figure it out or just can’t make up their minds on a more traditional mmo combat style or an actual action style…

There should definitely be some quick chat hotkeys that are customizable as they would be great for both pve and pvp.

As for both dodges/blocks and interrupts; they need to be active, but at the same time require skillful usage. At the moment they are not and, as quoted above, feels very much a random hope for the best sort of thing both on the defensive as well as the offensive side. Players should need to hold off on dodges/interrupts for bigger attacks that have a larger wind up animation (larger tells) that are bigger threats, but still have a bit of leeway in their use. On the offensive end of things, when one is able to bait an opponent into wasting a dodge/block/interrupt, it should provide enough of an opening to gain the initiative.

Ask them why we’ve had lag/unresponsiveness on PvP servers since the last patch. Many people have been experiencing a latency issue between when they activate a skill/dodge, and when it goes off. It kills any skill the player might have, as I’m sure you can imagine, not having skills go off when you press them defeats the purpose of the game. It doesn’t matter if the game is perfectly balanced if my skills don’t activate when I press them.

What’s the point of PAX ?
The game is clearly not ready and really unfun to watch, why throw 10.000 to the esports hole plus time and money to arrange the tournament.

What are your plans to deal with the spam?
Right now the game is too fast, the cooldowns are too small in most skills and the conditions and condition cleanses and evades too spammable, so we just spam our rotation. We all dream with a game where we use a condi for it’s utility instead of the damage or to cover other condis so condi cleanse doesn’t cleanse the damage condi, where we use aoe skills because there is more than one player in the same point, where we use evade to evade some huge incoming damage, not to evade randomly.

What are your plans to deal with bad animations ?
Some animations are just the way they should be, even in asuras, like the 2 mesmer sword, you know what he is doing. Others are really bad, like necro’s marks, or too instant, so it doesn’t really matter. As a rule, the more powerfull the skill, the more characteristic the animation should be.
Since you probably can’t afford to change 50% of the animations, consider cast bars, i know u hate them, but sometimes in live the only way to not lose is to surrender.

I would like to ask em if they think that now with the soloq players should be able to carry a match more..

• How do you feel about ‘Putrid Mark’? Doesn’t the necro already have enough abilities protecting him against conditions like COnsume Conditions and Plague Signet leaving him as the sole ‘master of conditions’?

• The animations of the asura are very hard to read. Are you thinking about the option, to replace the race of the enemy team by a standardize race similar to the option to change the team coloring back to standard red/blue?

• There are currently some skills, which are very luck dependend how hard they can hit. Take f.e. the ‘Whirlwind Attack’ or the ‘Phoenix’. Both can hit multiple times and deal a ton of damage, or just hit you once. How do you feel about them?

How about Retaliation?

They said 2 SotGs before Retaliation will be looked at so will not punish alot Builds more than others
like Grenades in WvW will kill the engi himself

How do you guys value the “balance” in this game? Are 1v1s important, or do you guys think they are meaningless due to the nature of conquest?

Is it intentional that classes automatically have a single “role” they can fulfill, like how Guardian is almost always bunker, or Necro is always conditions?

Are the classes supposed to be able to fight each other evenly with multiple builds, or is it supposed to be like rock, paper, scissors, with some classes countering each other, or some builds countering other builds?

Is there any plan to adjust Asura size in tournament PvP? Currently, a significant amount of PvP’ers running as Asura. As spectator and player, I find it very difficult to identify the animations and determine what is happening. This problem is also compounded by a a high amount of particle effects.

P.S. Only see’ing Asura’s in competitive PvP is boring.

I would like to ask the devs, or specifically Jon Sharp these questions.

During development of Guild Wars 2, how did the devs envision high-level PvP would be played in both the micro(individual mechanical play) and macro (team strategy, rotations etc.) play?

Additionally, how close or far is the current iteration of the game from their ideal?

Finally, are they still pursuing their original idea for high-end PvP, or have they abandoned their original idea for how the game should be played, and if so, what is their new goal for how Guild Wars 2 PvP would be played?

Any chance to get seasons to SoloQ.
Reset the ladder every season and award the to 50-100 or so..(anything)

How will they eliminate some of the RNG and introduce more skill in the combat?

Like increasing telegraphs and making dodges and counterplay in the player’s control instead of just random/luck.

Some really nice questions, hopefully the devs read this as well!

There are some really nice ones indeed. Keep it coming guys. Watching this thread closely.

Cheers

How is the Sigil Revamp going is it actively being worked on or just on the table.
Outside of that I don’t necessarily have questions but topics I’d like to see brought up
~ State of Elementalist Conjure weapons
~ Elementalist focus, Fire attunement primarily. Any changes?
~ There intel on weapons not seeing play and what they want to do for them, carve a niche in current meta or bring them up irrespective of whats going on in the meta.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/You-want-constructive-feedback-right-Here/first#post2721742

Any of the points I listed there if they could be presented to the devs would be awesome. I do think I listed the core concerns of the community there in a clear way.