Guild Wars 2

It creates the very stale meta we have right now that has changed very little since release.

It means only one viable and wanted to build for some professions in PvP like the bunker Guardian. Most teams are built around the bunker Guardian, it’s a very boring spec to play and watch.

It creates OP defensive builds like the bunker Ele, BM Bunker Ranger, bunker Guardian (that has taken several nerfs since release), but these wouldn’t have been so necessary if the Amulets weren’t so defensive to start.

Proposal:

Removing the majority of healing power from PvP Amulets.

Clerics becomes ~ 798 Power, 569 Toughness, 569 Precision.

Shamans becomes ~ 798 Condition Damage, 569 Toughness, 569 Power.

Valkyrie stays the same.

Celestial (lol) stays the same.

The game needs to move more towards hyrbid builds instead of max bunker specs.

DPS/Support/Control. Support should be in the form of well timed boon application and condition removal, not spamming heals.

On that note, some powerful healing abilities might need a cooldown increase too, like the Ranger’s Healing Spring – 30s is far too quick for a 5k heal + 15s Water Field that constantly applies Regeneration and cures a condition on allies every 3s
(6 conditions total). It should be more like 40s.

On the flip side nearly every over the top burst build is due to berserker’s amulet existence. Changing it from its current set up to something like 798 precision,15% crit, 569 vitality, 284 power would make it more balanced against knight and soldiers.

Then you would have:

• berserker’s: crits often, crits hard, but hits low when not scoring crits

• Knight’s: crits moderately but not hard while still maintaining base damage.

• Soldiers: hits hard, soaks damage, but crits infrequently

The limited gearing in general does a lot more to pigeonhole builds than the traits, considering all the stat combos available in PvE aren’t even available in PvP. I’m hoping someday the developers realize that.

Idk how your logic works.
But the only thing that limits game diversity and choices is the game mode and maps, not the amulet…

Imagine that if we have a game mode of con-questing other people’s base (like in Halloween mini game), or even hide and seek, or the present looting game, burst build and CC build suddenly becomes much more viable.

Your arguments not consider both sides. You talk about the bunker-meta but not even considering glass canons. Not really solid argumentation there.
Additionally the meta offers plenty of things to solo a bunker (S/D thief, nearlv every engi-build, offensive BM’s, off-guards . . .), so I don’t think it is a problem. In terms of BM-Rangers it is something different. I don’t think a bunker should hit for 4-5k, that’s a bit broken though.

I have to agree with the stale meta, but that’s more about the whole PvP-Setup, that creates this. Conquest for eg, or downstate rezzing, lack of dedicated healers. Imagine a teamfight without a guard. It’s just aoe all over the place and the team wins who runs out of rezzes or get a stomp. No chance to hard-rezz without a guard tbh. And I can’t imagine this could be interesting at all.

Bunkers are far from unkillable. Look at what a coordinated team can do to a full bunker guardian in tournaments, heck even a Necro + burst class can at the very least force a bunker to blow their defensive CDs or be downed.

Everything in the game pigeonholes specs.
Numerous bad traits/utility and ill setup weapons just kills build diversitiy in and of itself…
The bunker/spike deal is more an issue of spike dps imo, bunkers can easily be fixed with a map change (LOL that the game could survive without it)…

Screwing with berserker amulet by making all amulets more balanced in general would help allot (like you end up getting 4-6 stats divided however, from each amulet)
It’d create allot more of the gameplay the game seems to strive for (not set up insta gimps, but longer strategic play).

You can nerf bunkers when thief and mesmer burst go DIAF. You want to know why everybody runs bunkers? Because otherwise comes a thief or mesmer and proceeds to 3-shot them.

At least s/d ele has high cd’s on his burst sequences, but thief and mesmer can burst so ridiculously often and negate any offensive on themselves several times over with all the teleports and target drops and invulnerabilities/stealth/blind.

You can add warrior to the list if they could have uptime on someone — these 3 classes will break anyone not stacking toughness and healing power pretty fast.

The HGH engineers is also bordering on ridiculous.

Too many classes can frontload too much damage for balanced builds to ever be viable.

Zenith.7301:

You can nerf bunkers when thief and mesmer burst go DIAF. You want to know why everybody runs bunkers? Because otherwise comes a thief or mesmer and proceeds to 3-shot them.

At least s/d ele has high cd’s on his burst sequences, but thief and mesmer can burst so ridiculously often and negate any offensive on themselves several times over with all the teleports and target drops and invulnerabilities/stealth/blind.

You can add warrior to the list if they could have uptime on someone — these 3 classes will break anyone not stacking toughness and healing power pretty fast.

The HGH engineers is also bordering on ridiculous.

Too many classes can frontload too much damage for balanced builds to ever be viable.

This whole post is 100% correct.

On one hand, we got some saying that defensive amulets are the problem. Others say the offensive amulets are as much as a problem.

Which is why ANet HAS to try a week or two the “no amulet for everyone” mode No more OP bunker build, no more insane burst, everything is decided by the traits and trait lines you take

It could work. Really.

stof.9341:

On one hand, we got some saying that defensive amulets are the problem. Others say the offensive amulets are as much as a problem.

Which is why ANet HAS to try a week or two the “no amulet for everyone” mode No more OP bunker build, no more insane burst, everything is decided by the traits and trait lines you take

It could work. Really.

why not remove the traits and skills as well and create just one class only being able to use autoattack?

Scryar.2954:

why not remove the traits and skills as well and create just one class only being able to use autoattack?

Two words : Slippery Slope.

One change at a time please.

If you want to create build diversity than limiting the options is the wrong approach. I would rather have more bunker killer specs, if the devs feel like bunkers are too strong, than nerfing bunkers directly. This would promote build diversity way better.

Erwin.5603:

If you want to create build diversity than limiting the options is the wrong approach.

if there are, for instance, 10 specs for a class, but 2 are way better, then there are actually only 2 real builds. if we remove those 2, then we have 8 potential builds available. the “build diversity” in gw2 is through the roof, but the “viable build diversity” is minimal. if the idea is to remove amulets, that would normalize the best builds to be more in line with the unviable ones. possibly making an increase in playable build diversity. /theoretically

Erwin.5603:

If you want to create build diversity than limiting the options is the wrong approach. I would rather have more bunker killer specs, if the devs feel like bunkers are too strong, than nerfing bunkers directly. This would promote build diversity way better.

The way I see it, the amulets are not much customisability. They are rather limited. And since they go to such extremes, don’t they actually limit the choices by making some combos that are too synergetic plain better?

Trait lines on the other hand are very fine grained choices we can make. And they got a lower cap on the total stats you can get. And they present an interesting choice in the traits themselves.

As I said, I won’t pretend it’s a miracle solution but it might work.

all a bunker guardian has is a bubble…. once that is down you can wreak havoc. I guess you wasted all your skills and utilities before that right?

I’ll talk about Rangers, and this probably holds true to Ele’s as well since they’re kind of in the same boat.

You see BM Bunker Rangers in SPvP because other then Trap Build, there is nothing else..

We can’t go full glass cannon and do very well like Mesmer/Thief can… Hell even balanced build wise (Knights) we’re pretty awful in comparison.

So you build as defensive as possible or you go for Traps..Its probably the same reason you don’t see Glass Cannon Ele’s in TPvP, because the class doesn’t support it.

I’m sorry you died to these classes 1v1 and you hate bunkers, but bring a friend, they built defensive so you shouldn’t expect to easily mow over then 1v1 very quickly.

milo.6942:

Erwin.5603:

If you want to create build diversity than limiting the options is the wrong approach.

if there are, for instance, 10 specs for a class, but 2 are way better, then there are actually only 2 real builds. if we remove those 2, then we have 8 potential builds available. the “build diversity” in gw2 is through the roof, but the “viable build diversity” is minimal. if the idea is to remove amulets, that would normalize the best builds to be more in line with the unviable ones. possibly making an increase in playable build diversity. /theoretically

Taking your example and applying my idea of balancing:
10 specs, 2 are “First Tier”, 8 are “Second Tier”, so you have 2 viable specs.
If you remove 2 First Tier specs, you have 8 viable specs.

If you add 1 spec that “counters” the 2 First Tier spec, but is rather at the bottom half of the Second Tier specs you will actually have 11 viable specs, as the First Tier specs drop in viability from having that special spec that is a bit better against them, but a bit worse against the Second Tier specs.
(Everything of course simplified, it is obviously a bit different in reality, but that helps to illustrate it).

Also by removing 2 specs just to make the other 8 better, you will only have 8 specs to work with in the future, if you want to balance further (if one of those 8 happens to be a tiny bit better than another one), so you have less and less possibilities in the future, because you have less builds to work with. If you add builds however, you have more builds to work with and balance each other out, that adds to the complexity of balancing of course when you overdo it, but generally I lean towards adding specs.

99% of Guardians in Tournaments run:

Clerics Amulet+Knights Jewel
Soldier Runes
NA – Hammer / Scepter Shield ~ Sword for Kyhlo.
EU – Staff / Sword Shield ~ Maybe Scepter Shield / Sword Focus for some.
Hold the Line / Sanctuary / Stand Your Ground.
0/0/10/30/30 V, II, V, XI, III, IX, X – Or very little variation in Honour, maybe IV instead of II for some.

And this is all teams want, a bunker Guardian.
Every team has one and each one is a carbon copy of the next.
This sort of attitude that is created by the very limited min/max options we have is limiting the game, creating a very stale meta and making matches pretty boring to watch. Standing in circles with bunkers will never become a popular e-sport.

@Chewablesleeptablet.3185 Sanctuary offers very little protection against being focused, it’s used mostly to control people by interrupting or aiding in rezzes.
I have no problems killing Guardians, I just hate the fact that I have to play one spec if I want to play a Guardian in tournaments, the same bunker spec everyone is playing.

@Xsorus.2507 BM Ranger kills every other Profession and spec 1v1 except itself.
That screams unbalanced.

As stof.9341 said, some of the current Amulets in fact hinder customisability rather than creating any.
Because the Amulets are so min/max like Berserker’s vs Cleric’s, they offer an absolute choice rather than a different option.

I would say that lack of a middle of the road solution for power builds is the problem. Right now, all offensive power builds are forced into glass cannon stats. If they could drop some offensive stats from the berserker’s amulet (or even the vitality) and pick up 300-400 toughness (10-20% damage reduction depending on base armor), they would be in a much better spot.

The strength of bunkers isn’t the stats; it’s the traits and abilities. Guardian traits give them lots of extra healing sources, cleansing and stability. This is similar for bunker elementalists and rangers. If necromancers were better, bunker guardians would have a lot of trouble.

IMO there are not enough amulet choices. Some bunker Guardians might rather have more precision with their Clerics amulet, because they get Vigor on crits. There are not enough 4 stat amulets. There are three 4-stat amulets, and six 3-stat amulets. Then you have Celestial amulet which is an abomination. I think having endurance regen % as a stat would be very nice as well. It would indirectly make Weakness more useful, which is currently a mediocre stat. I know that we can mix and match the jewels in amulets, but jewels don’t give enough of a stat boost. Bunkers are not un killable but fights can be drawn out. I think of anything, offensive stats are much stronger than defensive stats.

Exedore.6320:

I would say that lack of a middle of the road solution for power builds is the problem. Right now, all offensive power builds are forced into glass cannon stats. If they could drop some offensive stats from the berserker’s amulet (or even the vitality) and pick up 300-400 toughness (10-20% damage reduction depending on base armor), they would be in a much better spot.

I don’t entirely agree with this considering its more than possible to build solid power based builds with guardian, warrior, engineer, elementalist, and even necro without touching the berserker’s amulet. People just don’t make those or play them often because they; 1) in a team you don’t need the survivability if you’re just running in for the quick kill, 2) Focus fire means damage avoidance over raw armor mitigation, 3) People copy builds, and these builds are not common (even if they are effective).

I do think however the extremes in pvp (super high burst/overly defensive bunker) are a unified problem that edges out balanced builds in general because one pretty much necessitates the other.