Guild Wars 2

I don’t get why people think Bear’s idea for healing signet is anywhere near plausible. All it sounds like is “it deserves to be gutted, not reworked.”

I mean people HATE passive play so why don’t we nerf this component all together when “reworking” the signet and promote its active?

Its pretty simple knowledge that the passive should get halved. But why can’t we just buff the active of it so healing signet becomes actually punishable while not completely gutting it? Key word is PUNISHABLE but make it REWARDING for when you do get the heal off. Much like defiant stance vs. back stab.

Lets say the active healed for double the current amount which is.. probably around 6.5k health? So if you actually get the active off with the signet trait, that’s 6.5k health every 16 seconds not even counting the casting time which is extremely punishable.

We don’t need to incompetently GUT heals much like the ele signet. We could rework the heals instead to something a little more reasonable.

Qaelyn.7612:

This thread, in which proposals are being made that top PvP players say would be good for the high-end competitive matches but that more casual players say would be disastrous at lower levels.

Nobody will agree with all of the balance changes. I sure don’t – I think a lot of the suggested changes are clunky and counter productive. But I can tell you that that it matters a LOT more if the person has actual perspective as to what’s overpowered and in need of tweaking at different skill levels than if the person is ‘casual’ or ‘high-end’. I also think the ‘casual’ player on the first pages lamenting about how Warrior is perfectly balanced right now lacks perspective – because Warrior mechanics such as Healing Signet and Berserker Stance are even more unbalanced at the casual level. It’s super hard for casual players to overcome those barrier skills.

Chaith.8256:

You keep going on about the ‘needs’ of the top 100 players and how they’re to blame for the negative experience of casual players, because the top players’ needs are being prioritized over the others.

Qaelyn.7612:

Didn’t say that.

“Specifically, making game balance decisions in a casual game that tick off 10,000+ players because of game balance issues that affect 100 players is bad management. Many of the proposed changes in this thread fall into that category.”

^You’re saying exactly that. You’re saying that these kinds of changes that you perceive to be only catering to the needs of ‘top players’ would be directly to blame for the negative experience of casuals (ticking off 10,000+ players, as you put it).

I think you’re mostly referring to the Thief and Mesmer changes proposed by Bear. Don’t confuse terrible design choices for casuals and top players alike as being something all Top players want for Tournament balance. You have to be able to differentiate. Phucking around with Mesmer GS and Thief Initiative is not going to make high end PvP a better place, and yes, will undoubtedly tick off everyone in the game.

Qaelyn.7612:

I already did (as did others). To reiterate, off the top of my head, the proposed changes to GS for mesmer would be a disaster, as would the massive nerf to thief initiative regen without restoring the traits that were already nerfed before the base rate was increased.

Like I just mentioned above.. these are not changes that the ‘high end’ PvP community is calling for. The OP is merely trying to improve the Risk / Reward of certain abilities at all costs. A noble cause, but not aimed at the right things. In high and especially low level PvP where Mesmers haven’t skill capped Phase Retreat or Blink, running a Mesmer is EXTREMELY risky enough – the Greatsword changes to incentivize more risky behaviour is not needed.

For thieves, after the big nerfs to Sword 2, Thieves can’t constantly reset when swapped to. D/P & Shortbow builds are extremely risky, and require a great player to be worth it in high end tPvP. Even the best thieves often get caught occasionally. At a casual skill level, running Thief is absurdly risky and difficult when encountering the huge amount of Hambow Warriors, Spirit Rangers, and MM Necros. Casual skill level thieves nor top level thieves need a toning down of initiative.

Top level thieves are always going to be present for a combination of their mobility (decapping power), ganking power & boonripping, and intimidation power (causes squishies like DPS Guard, Power Necro, Power Engi, Ele, Mesmer to live in fear, if ever present). Thieves in top level tPvP provide massive map pressure from a combination of these factors. Nerfing thief initiative across the board is clearly not the right call if a nerf to high end tPvP thieves is desired.

Qaelyn.7612:

I don’t oppose them because a “known PVPer” is suggesting them. I oppose them because I think they are bad ideas. In response, I am being told these things are needed at the high levels of competition, which is why I believe there’s a difference.

So, I guess we agree that these proposed changes would be bad, but you’re still not looking at it the right way. I say this because you have been told that these (Thief and Mesmer) things are needed at high levels of competition, and you just accepted this. It’s not at all true.

I understand that you’re sticking up for the casual majority, which is obviously a great thing. Unfortunately, you need to be able to recognize a harmful change in general, and not assume high end PvPers endorse all of these changes blindly, and that there is a real conflict of interest.

And I will never understand why people think buffing the active and nerfing the passive will solve anything. If you buff the active to make it good, people will just use the active and the passive becomes useless. Congratulations, you have just created another simple heal.

If you buff the active and it’s not worth casting, you have basically nerfed the passive for no reason, because the active will only ever be used to heal in any near death escape scenario.

Heals like the signet can not have both passive and active solely heal, because the usage of either is mutually exclusive.

If for whatever reason you wanted to “nerf” the passive of the healing signet, which I repeat is absolutely fine and balanced, you need to incentivize using the active by adding a different effect to it that is not just a different way of healing.

Good posts, Chaithe and Mrbig.

I think ultimately the only way to improve the situation is to create greater division between how things work in PvE/WvW and how they work in PvP. But I think Arenanet is, if anything, going in the other direction.

Slim.3024:

And I will never understand why people think buffing the active and nerfing the passive will solve anything. If you buff the active to make it good, people will just use the active and the passive becomes useless. Congratulations, you have just created another simple heal.

If you buff the active and it’s not worth casting, you have basically nerfed the passive for no reason, because the active will only ever be used to heal in any near death escape scenario.

Heals like the signet can not have both passive and active solely heal, because the usage of either is mutually exclusive.

If for whatever reason you wanted to “nerf” the passive of the healing signet, which I repeat is absolutely fine and balanced, you need to incentivize using the active by adding a different effect to it that is not just a different way of healing.

They’re not mutually exclusive. Close, if you use the Active on cooldown, before every fight, maybe. Let’s say that the Active was the most healing over time to use – you can usually milk 10+ seconds out of the passive healing before having to use it at the start of the fight. If you were busy ganking someone when your Healing Signet recharged, you can milk the passive healing until you are ready to cast it.

I’ve discussed my preferences for Healing Signet in the past.

The design goes something kind of like this:

Healing Signet Passive: 225 healing every second, with the same 0.05 scaling.
Healing Signet Active: Heals for 625 every second for 10 seconds. 0.10 scaling.

Don’t nit pick my numbers, focus more on the design. Heh. Warrior has to keybind his heal, or lose out, and gets comparable sustain to the old design when traited for Signet Use, and successfully spamming Healing Signet on 16s cooldown.

The result is that the Warrior gets some stable healing from the passive until he needs to activate his active. This active can be interrupted, and that means the heal goes on cooldown for 4s, where the Warrior gets nothing. When it recharges, the Warrior will get some passive healing until he can successfully activate it again!

I don’t think that Healing Signet should be gutted, but I think if we can introduce penalties for being interrupted, and actually having to keybind the heal / use it properly, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction that’s not so drastic.

Slim.3024:

And I will never understand why people think buffing the active and nerfing the passive will solve anything. If you buff the active to make it good, people will just use the active and the passive becomes useless. Congratulations, you have just created another simple heal.

If you buff the active and it’s not worth casting, you have basically nerfed the passive for no reason, because the active will only ever be used to heal in any near death escape scenario.

Heals like the signet can not have both passive and active solely heal, because the usage of either is mutually exclusive.

If for whatever reason you wanted to “nerf” the passive of the healing signet, which I repeat is absolutely fine and balanced, you need to incentivize using the active by adding a different effect to it that is not just a different way of healing.

You have a point to be honest. It would be too bland and non-innovative to simply double the active and half the passive. That is the easiest fix however because would ANET actually listen if they made it active in a sense that healing signet allows you to life steal? I don’t think so.

I simply looked at realistic fixes. I could come up with many ideas but chances are, “double active half passive is the most realistic solution” that they can actually program or implement WITHOUT completely gutting the heal.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Restoration

This is an example of a defeated heal. Lol.

168 healing per cast in PvP with 0.08 scaling. Oye. Needs to be reverted ASAP, lol. 202 healing per cast with 0.10 scaling is hardly Healing Signet, eh.

@Chaith
I’d probably just stick to glyph heal so I can just have permanent regen when I cast it at water attunement and have a decent up-time on diamond skin. But that is what you would call gutting, RIP signet of restoration.

You do not gut when you nerf, you actually rework to see if counter-play comes out of it.

Chaith.8256:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Restoration

This is an example of a defeated heal. Lol.

168 healing per cast in PvP with 0.08 scaling. Oye. Needs to be reverted ASAP, lol. 202 healing per cast with 0.10 scaling is hardly Healing Signet, eh.

That was a moronic change to ele as it nerfed so many builds beyond the max sustain cheesemode that was meta at the time.

Much like a nerf to HS could be. Luckily I don’t care.

Acandis.3250:

cymerdown.4103:

Actually, I had another idea for Lyssa runes. Rather than putting an ICD, which is kinda awkward (I hate having to keep track of hidden cooldowns, especially for such an impactful ability), let’s just nerf the ability a little bit. How about: “You lose 3 conditions and gain 3 random boons (not including Stability) for 5 seconds when you use an elite skill.” If that would be too heavy of a nerf, you could buff the 4-set ability slightly by having it also remove 1 condition when you heal.

I don’t think adding more RNG would benefit anyone. But I like your line of thinking, you’re almost there. I think if instead the (6) bonus was: convert all conditions into boons(max 5s duration) and the (4) bonus was convert a condition into a boon, that would be much more balanced.

Sure, that sounds good. And you could never get Stability that way, I like it.

Chaith.8256:

They’re not mutually exclusive. Close, if you use the Active on cooldown, before every fight, maybe. Let’s say that the Active was the most healing over time to use – you can usually milk 10+ seconds out of the passive healing before having to use it at the start of the fight. If you were busy ganking someone when your Healing Signet recharged, you can milk the passive healing until you are ready to cast it.

I’ve discussed my preferences for Healing Signet in the past.

The design goes something kind of like this:

Healing Signet Passive: 225 healing every second, with the same 0.05 scaling.
Healing Signet Active: Heals for 625 every second for 10 seconds. 0.10 scaling.

Don’t nit pick my numbers, focus more on the design. Heh. Warrior has to keybind his heal, or lose out, and gets comparable sustain to the old design when traited for Signet Use, and successfully spamming Healing Signet on 16s cooldown.

The result is that the Warrior gets some stable healing from the passive until he needs to activate his active. This active can be interrupted, and that means the heal goes on cooldown for 4s, where the Warrior gets nothing. When it recharges, the Warrior will get some passive healing until he can successfully activate it again!

I don’t think that Healing Signet should be gutted, but I think if we can introduce penalties for being interrupted, and actually having to keybind the heal / use it properly, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction that’s not so drastic.

Look at it this way:

The moment you need to activate your active in combat, you will never be able to go back and take advantage of the passive again for the remainder of the fight.

Basically, once you use your active, you are then condemned to using its active on CD, because there’d be no way you can stay in a fight and take so little damage in even only 16 seconds (traited signet CD), that the passive could catch up and surpass the active in terms of HP/s (unless using the active wasn’t worth it in the first place, which means you’d never use it at all).

There’s no point in designing a heal with a passive and an active portion, if the very second you are using the active portion, you are practically commited to using it and completely forgoing the passive.

Since I haven’t yet chimed in to all of the suggestions, I’ll go ahead and do so now.

With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets – the aim is to slowly decrease the power and effectiveness of AoE skills to a point of balance relative to single target skills and abilities and a hedge against AI clutter

I agree with this only if AoE is toned down significantly.

Introduction of skill/charge shots – increase the depth of game play for some skills and classes, allows for deeper sense of counter play and more inter-combat options

Normally this would be an interesting mechanic, but seeing as the game wasn’t designed with it, a major overhaul would have to be implemented for this to go in place, so I’m against this. We need to be thinking small but effective changes that will positively change the meta. This would add an unnecessary level of depth that the developers are not ready to handle.

Blocking priority system that has aegis as the last block to be used up and with multiple blocks up, only one used per attack – so that some traits and abilities become worthy options

I’m for this. It isn’t just a buff to guardians, but to 6 other classes as well. Every class (except thief and necro) has at least 1 block mechanic built into 1 of their weapon sets.

Repair both conditions and boons to be first in, last out – this is to replace the condition and boon block-style priority system currently implemented, allows for increased depth of combat by being able to cover boons and condis

The current condition system is really wonky and it seems that the people that designed it originally forgot to tell everyone else at ANet because a large majority of them operate under the assumption that condition cleanses work LIFO which isn’t the case, though it should be that way.
As for boons, I agree with what Chaith said, though it would be really nice if the boonrip tables were made available to us.

Immobilization Stacking eliminated

z-axis and ai/players getting stuck

Yes please.

Portal no longer transports repair kit

I think this can be left as it currently works, it’s not too hard to bait out a mesmer’s portal.

Putrid Mark – transfers 3 conditions from the caster to foes on trigger. Additionally, transfers 1 condition from allies (cap of 5) to enemies within 900 range.

I don’t think this mark should transfer any of the necros conditions if he’s not standing in the mark. It has no tell, and it’s too easily triggered. If it were to receive a unique animation (like every mark should) then that’d be a different matter, until then I don’t agree with letting putrid mark cleanse the player without having to be inside the AoE.

Grasping Dead – reduced physical damage by 12%

Disagree, I think you should reduce the scale with Power, not the base damage.

Feast of Corruption – reduced damage per condition to 5%

Agree.

Signet of Spite – reduced condition durations by 50%

50% is a lot, and it would make this signet pretty garbo if you just flat out nerfed it like that. It does need to be toned down, but not just like that. If you reduced durations by 50% and reduced the CD by 15s then it would be fine.

Lich Form – Deathly Claws – 10% decrease in base damage

Agree.

Siphoned Power – health threshold to 65% for trigger

Disagree, necros have a sufficiently large health pool to be able to utilize this trait.

Training of the Master – decreased damage increase to 25%

Agree.

Withering Precision – moved to master tier, recharge increased to 25 seconds

Terror – moved to grandmaster tier

I’m against the existence of all these sorts of traits and I think they should be reworked. But in the interest of nerfing Terror, I agree.

Gluttony – reduced to 5%

No. I think we should be looking at the amout of Life Force certain skills give, rather than nerfing this.

Guardian – base health increased by 1.5k at level 80 to increase build diversity

Nope. Guardian is one of those classes that can very easily get away with a low health pool with all the access to blocks and blinds it has.

Banish – is now a chargeable skill – holding the skill for longer will increase both the distance launched and damage of the hit; can also be executed instantly for a diminished effect – max charge: launch 750 range, base damage 450; instant charge 300 range, base damage of 375; max charge time, 1 second

Again, no.

Scepter – auto attack orb travel speed increased by 12.5% and damage is decreased 5%

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

Chaith.8256:

They’re not mutually exclusive. Close, if you use the Active on cooldown, before every fight, maybe. Let’s say that the Active was the most healing over time to use – you can usually milk 10+ seconds out of the passive healing before having to use it at the start of the fight. If you were busy ganking someone when your Healing Signet recharged, you can milk the passive healing until you are ready to cast it.

I’ve discussed my preferences for Healing Signet in the past.

The design goes something kind of like this:

Healing Signet Passive: 225 healing every second, with the same 0.05 scaling.
Healing Signet Active: Heals for 625 every second for 10 seconds. 0.10 scaling.

Don’t nit pick my numbers, focus more on the design. Heh. Warrior has to keybind his heal, or lose out, and gets comparable sustain to the old design when traited for Signet Use, and successfully spamming Healing Signet on 16s cooldown.

The result is that the Warrior gets some stable healing from the passive until he needs to activate his active. This active can be interrupted, and that means the heal goes on cooldown for 4s, where the Warrior gets nothing. When it recharges, the Warrior will get some passive healing until he can successfully activate it again!

I don’t think that Healing Signet should be gutted, but I think if we can introduce penalties for being interrupted, and actually having to keybind the heal / use it properly, it’ll be a huge step in the right direction that’s not so drastic.

I think the active should stay as a burst heal. This way, when you start getting low on health, you have to decide if you are going to need the burst heal from the active in order to stay alive, or if you should leave the passive and continue getting the best HP/s. Right now, the burst healing of the active is so low that it’s very likely that you’ll be wrong to activate it, thus the active is only rarely used. But if you lower the passive a bit and raise the active, it becomes much more likely that activating the heal is the correct decision at low health. I think that’s all that is necessary to do here.

Chaith.8256:

I’ve discussed my preferences for Healing Signet in the past.

The design goes something kind of like this:

Healing Signet Passive: 225 healing every second, with the same 0.05 scaling.
Healing Signet Active: Heals for 625 every second for 10 seconds. 0.10 scaling.

This active can be interrupted, and that means the heal goes on cooldown for 4s, where the Warrior gets nothing.

I can see a change of that nature being workable and I’ll ignore the numbers for a moment.

More importantly, if a heal is interrupted it goes on cool down for 3 to 4 seconds and, herein, I propose that interrupting shelter should not make the skill go on the full 30 second recharge. Inb4 “lolzzzzzzzzzz huge buff cancel/cast”

That active scaling and base is way too high – it’s basically a troll unguent that never turns off, every 16 seconds in your proposal.

There needs to be a real incentive to interrupt healing skills aside from “kewl I bought 4 seconds.” But I digress.

You’re example ends up looking like this Chaith:
Recharge when traited – 16 seconds
Passive – 205 base, scale 0.09
Active: 500hps/10 seconds, scale of o.1

The active is going to be balanced around the recharge time of the signet, a higher base for the active portion will still leave this skill as one of the highest HP heals per minute in the game.

I’m sure there is a sweet spot there.

EDITED: Agreed with Kensuda.

Signet of Mercy – cast time decreased to 2.5 seconds, recharge at 120 seconds

I think this is a model for how res utilities should work in this game. Single target and long CD. I do think the cast time needs to be decreased, but not to 2.5s, 3s would be fine.

Renewed Focus – increased duration to 3 seconds

I think RF is fine as it is. I think what needs a buff is Elite Focus (Virtues VII).

Tomes: recharge reduced to 150 seconds

Tome of Wrath: Judgment – cast time decreased to 4 seconds
Conflagrate – base damage increased to 500 damage

Tomes need to be reworked entirely. Both of them suck major donkeydix. The only reason they work in low elo and WvW is because people aren’t too bright.

Kindled Zeal – moved to master tier

Zealous Blade – moved to GM tier, increase damage of GS attacks by 10%

Nah, both of these traits (along with half the traits in the Guardian tree need to be reworked. These 2 changes won’t do jack).

Valorous Defense – cooldown reduced to 60 seconds

I like Kensuda’s suggestion of this trait giving protection instead of Aegis. Of course, I still think the ICD needs to be reduced to 60s, since 90s is just absurd, especially for how weak a random Aegis can be.

Glacial Heart – chance on critical hit increased to 100%

Meh, this is another one of those traits that just needs to be reworked. And I’ll mention again, this type of passive play trait needs to go away.

Warrior-tentative reduce base health at level 80 by 1k

Not necessary. I don’t think we should be messing with the stats of any class.

Healing Signet – Passive tick reduced to 200hps with healing power scaling coefficient of 0.175

I’ve already talked about this in Page 4 of this thread. I think it needs to be rebalanced. Much less passive healing and the active needs to be reworked.

Berserker Stance – reduces condition duration by 95% for the duration of the stance

This stance would be fine if we reduced the duration to 4s base (5s traited) and reduced the CD to kitten .

Combustive Shot – radius at 3 levels of adrenaline reduced to 300, 220 at 2, and 140 at 1

This skill is annoying, but I think it’s fine as it is. Burning in condition builds is what needs to be looked at, but that’s a separate matter entirely.

Traits
Adrenal Health – moved to minor master trait in strength line

Building Momentum – moved to minor master trait in defense line

Nopeeeeeee. I think Adrenal Health needs to be a 25 minor in defense line and have a healing power scale of 7.5% down from 15%.

Last Stand – stability and swiftness provided are reduced to 8 seconds

Defy Pain – increased to a 90 seconds recharge

Yes

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

Acandis.3250:

Since I haven’t yet chimed in to all of the suggestions, I’ll go ahead and do so now.

With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets – the aim is to slowly decrease the power and effectiveness of AoE skills to a point of balance relative to single target skills and abilities and a hedge against AI clutter

I agree with this only if AoE is toned down significantly.

So, AI builds – MM, phantasm, spirit ranger, et cetera – create artificial survivability for every opponent when a player uses an aoe skill. Hitting the cap of 5, despite priorities, means every other AI and player has statistically increased sustain and survivability. Raising the cap to 8 means that, by and large, the widespread sustain issues will be decreased as you will hit both the AI and player more often than with a cap of 5.

AoE does need to be toned down significantly, but the numbers provided are slow and incremental and, as you pointed out, sometimes it may be a matter of scaling rather than base damage – but the specificity of the change is an on-going discussion.

glaphen.5230:

Hah look at these last 3 posts. These are the people that want to decide balance decisions. Adrenal Health is per 3 second regen so you only actually get 120 per second and every single class has better healing traits. Your rifle wont fire because you are not facing your enemy and if you stop moving it will auto aim for you in the direction of the enemy. If you are any good you could turn with your mouse and still fire at point blank range while moving.

lol if you played warrior rifle ever in your life you would know the bugs regarding rifle and a lot off other ranged weapons… If you are at point blank range and a person is smart and starts rotating in circular motion around you your skills will cancel so much. PS please do not talk about who should not or should be discussing balance when you are not even ranked cause that just makes you look like a fool.

Chaith.8256:

You didn’t have to explain it a second time.. I understand the idea of trading off your positioning and risk your health pool for more auto-attack damage. It’s not a hard concept. I’ll elaborate..

Cute GIF.

I don’t expect you to see it from a WvW/PvE perspective, seeing as you have expressed that you would rather slit your wrists (down the road, not across the street!) than load into PvE or WvW.

In WvW, as a glassy Mesmer, you are also staying dah fuq away from multiple painful objects. It’s not like you can just let the Hammer Train mow you over because you do increased damage up close. It’s just awkward as hell. It’s like just living with with a 40% damage decrease from your Auto-attacks. You can’t just close in, like you could in PvP.

Put it this way, when Karl sends you an email saying: “I just read your post, and I KNEW I put the Mesmer Greatsword on Backwards at launch!” Then I will acknowledge the idea of making the weapon awkward as hell for every PvE/WvW player at the expense of a slightly positive side-grade on PvP counterplay.

I’ve played a mesmer as main basically since beta (both EU & NA, EU as Select Start and in NA as Chilling Yo & Ninesevensix Evil), and i’m currently playing a 20-20-10-0-20, or sometimes a 20-20-15-0-15, both builds with staff/greatsword and sometimes switching from berserker ammy to valk’s with berserk jewel depending on enemy composition. In the past i’ve done some tournament games (around 1.2k) but right now since the meta really gutted me i just play team queue casually with my WvW crew…

Having said that we do try to take out 15-20 guild groups with our 5-6 group in WvW and i have to agree with Chaith here that keeping the range is a must, if you get caught in the 10 warriors stun hammers without a stun breaker you’re gone. Although i agree and like most of the suggestions the OP has made and since the main focus is to reduce the AoE damage spammage maybe we keep the increase damage on range but perhaps just reduce the overall damage output a bit ? Its simmilar to what Phantaram suggested a while ago pre-pax patch when mesmers were used quite a lot and before we had the condi madness meta.

Chaith.8256:

What makes you think that the BALANCE needs of casual players is different than the BALANCE needs of top players?

You keep going on about the ‘needs’ of the top 100 players and how they’re to blame for the negative experience of casual players, because the top players’ needs are being prioritized over the others.

What happens at the high end does not only affect a tiny percentage of players. All these assumptions you have about balance are more like you’re combining PvP modes, PvP rewards, PvP features AND PvP balance all together. Rewards, modes, and features CAN cater to ‘top players’ more than ‘casual players’ – so I see where you are drawing these conclusions from – but remember this is about skills & balance. They don’t cater to any crowd, unless Arenanet was ignoring the state of balance at various skill levels of PvP, which would be crazy to suggest. If you were paying attention, almost all of the builds that ‘top players’ are advocating be nerfed are the ones that are wreaking havoc on solo q & hotjoins. These builds are setups that turn a terrible player into a superhero. They probably create even more grief at a casual level – top players can almost always overcome the overpowered builds with enough tenacity. It’s the casual players that are encountering these mass produced OP builds and hitting a brick wall, and quitting the game.

So, I hope you see how in BALANCE, the needs and wants of top players and casual players are usually aligned pretty much perfectly.

This is a balance discussion .. Having a stable risk / reward ratio for as many builds as possible, and eliminating the threat of super safe, effective, and easy builds is in everyone’e best interest.

If you can actually provide a flaw in the suggestions where it would only balance the mechanic at a high skill level, but will leave it an unbalanced mess for casual players, then I’m sure the players in this thread will actually listen to you.

I hope you understand where I am coming from, and I hope you understand why you shouldn’t oppose good game balance at all skill levels just because a known PvPer is suggesting them.

Thank you. Finally a well put explanation whenever the argument comes “you should try keep the casuals! Don’t nerf my OP build”. THANK YOU!

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

As Acandis said, everything that deals damage in this game has a base damage point. Everything else is a modifier.

apt.9184:

glaphen.5230:

Hah look at these last 3 posts. These are the people that want to decide balance decisions. Adrenal Health is per 3 second regen so you only actually get 120 per second and every single class has better healing traits. Your rifle wont fire because you are not facing your enemy and if you stop moving it will auto aim for you in the direction of the enemy. If you are any good you could turn with your mouse and still fire at point blank range while moving.

lol if you played warrior rifle ever in your life you would know the bugs regarding rifle and a lot off other ranged weapons… If you are at point blank range and a person is smart and starts rotating in circular motion around you your skills will cancel so much. PS please do not talk about who should not or should be discussing balance when you are not even ranked cause that just makes you look like a fool.

Thank you for explaining the exact thing I just told you how to correct since it made you look like a moron. I do the same thing against bads using ranged weapons, but I do it with my own ranged weapons.

Acandis.3250:

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

Each damaging skill in GW2 has a unique coefficient a.k.a base damage.

Coefficient has nothing to do with base damage. Coefficient is based on stat contribution and returns, which makes the skill scale in a certain way, which is exactly what is being modified when a damage skill is “nerfed” in its damage.

You can’t nerf a skill’s base damage, because there is none. If you had 0 Power, your skill would deal no damage, so making a distinction between nerfing the scaling instead of its base damage is superfluous, as you’d be asking for the same thing.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

As Acandis said, everything that deals damage in this game has a base damage point. Everything else is a modifier.

That is incorrect. Almost everything in this game, when it comes to damage skills, is based solely on modifiers. There is no base damage in the damage formula, unlike other games.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Power

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

Each damaging skill in GW2 has a unique coefficient a.k.a base damage.

You can’t nerf a skill’s base damage

You actually can. I’ll give you an example, the old pistol whip damage getting nerfed by 10%. You can also buff it such as Skull Crack getting a 50% damage buff a few months ago.

I don’t get how you can over think this one.

Wow, you guys…are you seriously arguing about something this obvious? Stop making me sad.

Acandis the genius wrote:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

How could you ever decrease the base damage of the scepter’s auto attack, good sir? There’s no base damage. You are only dealing whatever damage you are on your side based on how much power you have and your weapon damage.

The 10% nerf to PW, which was a 15% nerf by the way, was a direct nerf of the stat contribution for power in regards to damage of exactly 15%. Whatever coefficient (x points of power = y damage) was in place before the nerf, was nerfed by 15%).

Either way it doesn’t matter how you call it. Base damage, stat contribution say what you want it’ll make sense. Nothing to get worked up with.

The thing that people should get worked up with is ANET potentially gutting things instead of reworking them.

Building momentum getting moved to 25 points in defense was also a really fail suggestion. Lets hope ANET doesn’t listen and avoid gutting or breaking stuff. You want Warriors to spam dodges and kitten people off with its already inherent tankiness? Dodge is already abundant and brainless, borderline hard to count.

Building Momentum was suggested to swap with Adrenal health – not moved to the 25 point position. Someone else was suggesting to move Adrenal Health to the 25 point mark of the defense line.

There are different forms of sustain – the goal should be to make sustain in a fight a more active component of the fight, rather than a passive regen tick. This was my thought process for swapping the two – Building Momentum is providing an active sustain because you need to execute a dodge after obtaining endurance.

My god, people. The argument about “base damage” has turned into complete gibberish. However, I’ll try to explain…

The formula for damage in this game is Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor), from the GW2 wiki. So, first and foremost: no, there is not some kind of “base damage” (unless you’re talking about damage done with the level 80 amount of power, precision, etc, in which case, obviously, there is). So, as Slim has mentioned, if you have 0 power, then you will do 0 damage (0/[target’s Armor] = 0). If there was some sort of “base damage”, then the formula would look more like Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor) + C, where C (“constant”) is base damage. In this situation, then we see that you could still do, say, 100 damage even with 0 power. Looking at lower-leveled players, however, we observe that they don’t deal 100 damage with their attacks (or sometimes even 10 damage), and so we can conclude that such a constant is either very small or, more likely, doesn’t exist at all.

(Note: in theory crafting, a theorycrafter like me will say “relative to base” to reference the level 80 base stats of a player’s profession. This, however, is not quite the same as base damage, because of the variable C that I mentioned earlier that does not in fact appear to exist. Thus, C is a fairly irrelevant variable, which allows me to use “relative to base” as referring to a level 80 character differently than if I was referring to some kind of variable C.)

That being said, every weapon skill in the game has some sort of coefficient to it, as was mentioned in the formula earlier. This coefficient, in a sense, could be considered “base damage” since, at level 80, every profession has the same base offensive stats (precision, power, and critical damage), and thus damage is determined by skill coefficients and weapon coefficients (which another topic, though a much, much different one) more so than by stats.

It’s also not very accurate to say that the coefficient makes damage scale with power; it is in and of itself a variable that needs to be considered carefully and isn’t necessarily constant (particularly when comparing damage across professions). You could just as easily say that damage scales with coefficient. For example, a level 3 Eviscerate has a skill coefficient of 3, whereas a Backstab has a coefficient of 2.4. In other words, at equal stat levels, Eviscerate will deal 125% of Backstab’s damage. In order to make these equal, then, the thief has to increase his total power by 25% so that the damage for these two skills is, on average, the same. In this example, we can see that it’s not entirely accurate to say that coefficient scales damage with power, because we saw that when we held power constant, Eviscerate did an additional 25% of BS’s damage.

So, overall, from what I’m seeing, Slim seems to be more correct about this issue (though I wouldn’t necessarily say that damage is based solely on modifiers, unless skill coefficient is defined as being a modifier, which would then mean that we’re either comparing damage across professions or across different weapons, which… Well, it gets complicated). So when ANet says that Skull Crack is getting a 50% damage buff, it means that SC’s coefficient is being multiplied by 1.5, which would result in a 50% damage buff (dividing the damage formula by itself times 1.5 by the damage formula without that 1.5 multiplier results in a relative damage buff of 1.5).

Still, I’m confused because Acandis said that

Acandis.3250:

Slim.3024:

Acandis.3250:

Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.

99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.

Each damaging skill in GW2 has a unique coefficient a.k.a base damage.

Which isn’t exactly the same thing as base damage, but… Yeah. I think there’s just some kind of serious misunderstanding between you guys. /shrugs

Gaining a dodge bar every time you burst is still dumber than swapping it for adrenal health. You’re telling me that adrenal health is better than being able to mitigate or disengage 24/7? I’d rather deal with a warrior who has 3 stances but not enough dodges than infinite dodge and a kitten ton of “I messed up” buttons.

You also gut glass cannon Warriors who need building momentum. We don’t need to kill specs that are already in dire need of help either with some of the horrid suggestions such as moving building momentum into defense. It should stay in strength tree where it belongs.

The endurance gain is only 15 and, iirc, it takes 50 endurance for a dodge and you have a pool of 100 endurance – so it is not an infinite amount of dodges.

Qaelyn.7612:

GW1 is irrelevant. Someone said GW2 should be balanced around the top levels of competition, and I’m still waiting for some rationale why.

let’s say for example that the average player finds heartseeker spam thieves overpowered. i mean they just relentlessly assault you and their damage goes up as your health goes down and it has no cooldown! it must be overpowered. but that really isn’t the case at all so why should it get the axe? just because a lot of people whine because they don’t know how to counter it?

top tier players know what’s best for balance changes simply because they know more and are better. whatever is balanced at the highest levels of play simply has to be mastered at lower levels. it becomes a l2p issue. it doesn’t work the other way around.

of course you have to be careful of class bias when taking their opinions into consideration. someone said the op mains a guardian. funny how even though guardians have been in every top tier pvp team since gw2 released, the op’s list is full of nerfs to every class BUT guardians where he gives them a whole slew of buffs. naughty naughty

DoYourBestBear.6810:

The endurance gain is only 15 and, iirc, it takes 50 endurance for a dodge and you have a pool of 100 endurance – so it is not an infinite amount of dodges.

This proves you have never played Warrior or missed it on the wiki since it restores 50% per burst skill that used adrenaline.

Tool Tip in game says 15 endurance – I’ll test to verify.

LOLMROFLA

Tool tip says 15, but it definitely restores 50 – come on, seriously.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

LOLMROFLA
Tool tip says 15, but it definitely restores 50 – come on, seriously.

Very strong trait.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Acandis.3250:

Since I haven’t yet chimed in to all of the suggestions, I’ll go ahead and do so now.

With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets – the aim is to slowly decrease the power and effectiveness of AoE skills to a point of balance relative to single target skills and abilities and a hedge against AI clutter

I agree with this only if AoE is toned down significantly.

So, AI builds – MM, phantasm, spirit ranger, et cetera – create artificial survivability for every opponent when a player uses an aoe skill. Hitting the cap of 5, despite priorities, means every other AI and player has statistically increased sustain and survivability. Raising the cap to 8 means that, by and large, the widespread sustain issues will be decreased as you will hit both the AI and player more often than with a cap of 5.

AoE does need to be toned down significantly, but the numbers provided are slow and incremental and, as you pointed out, sometimes it may be a matter of scaling rather than base damage – but the specificity of the change is an on-going discussion.

Also from a WvW point of view.. for me it looks very interesting since one thing small groups always complained about was due the fact AoE hit only 5 people instead of all of them, making large numbers having a much easier time.

Strong trait that none of the builds complained about use. It requires a hit to get the endurance besides longbow so if you dodge they don’t.

pedrst.3127:

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Acandis.3250:

Since I haven’t yet chimed in to all of the suggestions, I’ll go ahead and do so now.

With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets – the aim is to slowly decrease the power and effectiveness of AoE skills to a point of balance relative to single target skills and abilities and a hedge against AI clutter

I agree with this only if AoE is toned down significantly.

So, AI builds – MM, phantasm, spirit ranger, et cetera – create artificial survivability for every opponent when a player uses an aoe skill. Hitting the cap of 5, despite priorities, means every other AI and player has statistically increased sustain and survivability. Raising the cap to 8 means that, by and large, the widespread sustain issues will be decreased as you will hit both the AI and player more often than with a cap of 5.

AoE does need to be toned down significantly, but the numbers provided are slow and incremental and, as you pointed out, sometimes it may be a matter of scaling rather than base damage – but the specificity of the change is an on-going discussion.

Also from a WvW point of view.. for me it looks very interesting since one thing small groups always complained about was due the fact AoE hit only 5 people instead of all of them, making large numbers having a much easier time.

Yes, I represent team Elephant, a prominent WvW guild, and i agree that AoE is Very Good i think the base damage and # of targets should be quintupled! See you all on the battle field GLHF!!

That change would be, tentatively, specific to tpvp.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

That change would be, tentatively, specific to tpvp.

Sad days

Since in WvW does not matter how good or coordinated you are, your AoE will hit 5 out of the 20 in the zerg, while all their AoE will hit your whole group → hence you need to spread out and which is why i’m with Chaith on the GS change. But again, if this change is only for tpvp then i wouldn’t matter that much but i think the whole point of the weapon is to be in range so perhaps just reduce the damage over abit over all ?

Also nice thread Bear, nice effort.

“THE COLBEAR REPORT”

I’ll see myself out.

Chaith.8256:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Restoration

This is an example of a defeated heal. Lol.

168 healing per cast in PvP with 0.08 scaling. Oye. Needs to be reverted ASAP, lol. 202 healing per cast with 0.10 scaling is hardly Healing Signet, eh.

The reason it was so good was because it procced twice on dodges with Evasive arcana(3x in earth). But with the healing coefficient nerf and the nerf to it no longer proccing on EA the skill was essentially gutted.

Mrbig.8019:

Qaelyn.7612:

Mrbig.8019:

If this game has no reputation as a good PvP game is due to those reasons i mentioned before ( slow balance handling, gamebreaking bug left untouched for months, no rewards, no way to estabilish serious competition), not because playerss want to play “cooperatively and not competitively”.

And I disagree. Because when I have discussions with people outside the PvP community, I get a general negative response that has nothing to do with specifics of the PvP system.

Most people don’t like PvPing because it’s a much more difficult and aggressive form of gaming. And GW2 also has another option that vies for players who like inter-player combat in WvW, which is much more relaxed and has other benefits over PvP.

Again, you’re not getting my point.

This game already HAD, in the past, a good PvP community, without caring about WvWers and PvEers.

Gw2 players that don’t like PvP have no point in playing it, but if aNet had been able to keep old PvPers ( like 6months after release) and let the PvP community grow instead of letting it shrink, this game could have had the potentiality to attract lots of people interested in PvP OUTSIDE the Gw2 players crowd ( most likely from other games, or totally new customers).

Anet, with their decisions, cut this game’s PvP legs.

We don’t want PvErs and WvWers in PvP, they’re, with a good amount of certainty, the cancer which brought all those terrible balance decisions into the game.

I may sound elitist and most probably i am, but this is the truth.

Exactly! we do not care about those ingame rewards, and then they put a lot of them suddenly all competitive teams quit and those so called HARDCORE SPVP players you can see on the top100 using their condition hambow cheesy kitten build just to flash their name in the leaderboard remain.

Chapell.1346:

Mrbig.8019:

Qaelyn.7612:

Mrbig.8019:

If this game has no reputation as a good PvP game is due to those reasons i mentioned before ( slow balance handling, gamebreaking bug left untouched for months, no rewards, no way to estabilish serious competition), not because playerss want to play “cooperatively and not competitively”.

And I disagree. Because when I have discussions with people outside the PvP community, I get a general negative response that has nothing to do with specifics of the PvP system.

Most people don’t like PvPing because it’s a much more difficult and aggressive form of gaming. And GW2 also has another option that vies for players who like inter-player combat in WvW, which is much more relaxed and has other benefits over PvP.

Again, you’re not getting my point.

This game already HAD, in the past, a good PvP community, without caring about WvWers and PvEers.

Gw2 players that don’t like PvP have no point in playing it, but if aNet had been able to keep old PvPers ( like 6months after release) and let the PvP community grow instead of letting it shrink, this game could have had the potentiality to attract lots of people interested in PvP OUTSIDE the Gw2 players crowd ( most likely from other games, or totally new customers).

Anet, with their decisions, cut this game’s PvP legs.

We don’t want PvErs and WvWers in PvP, they’re, with a good amount of certainty, the cancer which brought all those terrible balance decisions into the game.

I may sound elitist and most probably i am, but this is the truth.

Exactly! we do not care about those ingame rewards, and then they put a lot of them suddenly all competitive teams quit and those so called HARDCORE SPVP players you can see on the top100 using their condition hambow cheesy kitten build just to flash their name in the leaderboard remain.

like someone said before, hordes of casual paying customers matters. the rest do not. time will tell.

there are still lots of PvE / WvW players.
future patches will draw more of them over into sPvP.

finally, sPvP will be made so casual friendly by then, the population will be stable and healthy, then they will finally make sPvP esports worthy. yay!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

finally, sPvP will be made so casual friendly by then, the population will be stable and healthy, then they will finally make sPvP esports worthy. yay!

This statement is inherently self-contradictory.

Arganthium.5638:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

finally, sPvP will be made so casual friendly by then, the population will be stable and healthy, then they will finally make sPvP esports worthy. yay!

This statement is inherently self-contradictory.

doesn’t matter. anyway, the 25 skill points for a new skill is the first sign that they do not want players playing 1 game mode (PvE / WvW / sPvP) only.

casual players who play PvE / WvW / sPvP will have no problem unlocking the new skills. only those “pure” 100% sPvP only players with 5 character slots, keeps on deleting and making new characters have complained about the 25 skill points for a new skill thing.

Lie! we need mathz

I hate to be disappointing in what I’m about to say but the truth is people don’t really want hardcore competition and twitch-based gameplay.

MMOs could tap into the fighting game mentality for pvp, where every move matters and your skill is the only way you’ll win, but that’s not what most people play MMOs for.

It’s too much of a risk to alienate the MM Necro, Spirit Ranger, Hambow, Banner Warrior, Phantasm Mesmer type of players who want to win and to not have to work hard for it.

They want the burden on the best players to overcome the easy builds with their higher tier group play, not a balanced game where everybody in mid and high tier has earned their place.

Fighting games are a good example of what Anet obviously doesn’t want, even though that’s what the best players want. Every tier level in fighting games has increasingly more impressive and skilled players. There are no Spirit Rangers or Hambow builds to carry new or average players and get into that level like in GW2. There are imba or OP characters, but someone brand new will still get demolished by even a mid tier fighting game player.

It still holds true that teams like Good Fights will completely destroy someone copying and pasting meta builds, because they’re just better. They communicate better, know their matchups, the maps, etc. but they will still have a measure of a challenge because the meta builds are, by their nature, strong.

If that’s acceptable to Anet, they’re gonna keep doing it. They want the best players to have to play even more perfectly because even an average team can run meta comps and rotate well enough to upset them if they’re not careful.

The TLDR version and the point is these changes would make GW2 PvP more skill2win than build2win, and approach fighting games’ mentality…

but

Anet would rather have the best players have to be challenged by randoms constantly with easy and strong builds than a game where you know you’re going to have to commit a lot of time to be even halfway decent at.