Guild Wars 2

I feel this was more a pve/wvw balance patch that they called a pvp balance patch to keep ppl on this side of the forum quiet.

Just my opinion tho, I’m rather disappointed with this patch because it looks like all they did was add tooltips and fix things more then bring about balance change – things they should have done a long time ago.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.

Lordrosicky.5813:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for keeping things constructive!

The idea right now is to see how the current changes impact the meta, and then do another set of balance in an upcoming patch.

The trait facts were a lot of work, but the clarity they give you guys is VERY good for you. So we wanted to see if that would shake up trait builds at all in order to see how you guys adjusted. Once THAT settles, we want to make balance changes based off the meta at that time. We didn’t want to change all the trait facts and also add in a lot of balance changes on top of it.

We still did a lot of balance stuff, but we were careful not to go overboard with this patch. Just like we learned w/ the Warrior a few updates back, sometimes the meta can undergo drastic changes even if we do VERY little to impact the balance.

We’re planning on doing another round of updates to traits for every class (either changing #‘s, shifting tiers around to make more builds viable, or doing trait reworks), and we also have our eye on a few “apex” builds. But, again we don’t want to shave those too much.

Thanks again for the thoughts and feedback!

Chap + the balance tam

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against.

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they always shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

yeah agree with u. certain things are terrible and anet still refuses to nerf it. u nerfed glamour build to kitten. u didnt shave it or were careful, no u went and al out an nerfed it in 3 ways and destroyed it and made it non viable. but with warriors u just shaved a little bit of stunlock while buffing the stupid healing of the warriors even more.
shows me how much u hate mesmers. u couldnt even give us the 70% more health for cones/ phantasms in wvw. no its pve only.
feels like u are trying to keep the mesmers weak in wvw on purpose, because u must hat the class.
a mantra? i mean really? we get destroyed in zergs, have no aoe due to clones dying, but no u buff warriors shouts and give us a stupid mantra with such a tiny range that it hurts. seriously. play wvw anet!!!
Do u think its fun to get a 13k backstab followed by a 9k heartseeker eventough u have decent toughness on your mesmer? do u think its fun to be perma interrupted, chain immobilized by warrior trains and u cant even use a block to defend your self?
the warrior meta is way way way worse than glamour meta ever was, but u destroyed that one and are too proud to give us at least a little bit back of it as we desperately need something in wvw.

go see the stupid meta for yourself. do honestly think its fun to be a kitte veilbot and a up support build? well its not. i play wvw only and fight zergs all the time and the fun is gone due to your horrible class balance and masteries and all the nerfs u did to my class. i dont care about your spvp at all and never ever will. its not m gamemode at all. i dont care that mesmers do well in spvp. i play wvw and there is no balance there at all.
seriously its so frustrating. it really feels like u are trying o keep the mesmer on the bottom on purpose so your favourite class can dominate everything.
stop pretending to try to balance, because u are not at all. u buff warriors and show how much hate my class by keeping us as weak as possible in wvw.

Well, gw2 is an item mall game. There are lot more warriors than mesmer players, especially in WvW. Most rookie players are also irritated by mesmer. Thus it’s logical to keep the warrior player base pleased and nerf mesmers.

Sweetbread.2679:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.

The trait tips are good. Got to be fair. Should of been in at launch and is a great thing to finally add.

Your analogy on the shaving is perfect sums things up perfectly. No other game I have ever seen makes these changes. There are so many lame skills now shackling the game that I really don’t think there is any hope. The frightening thing is that they actually added most of these things recently. People will put up with suckiness if the direction is positive. The direction of GW2 meta is not positive

The devs are good guys. They communicate better than almost any dev team I have ever seen. So they have my respect. But the direction they are taking the game and their refusal to just blitz the stuff which isnt fun to play against (or with actually) is just depressing.

I used to love playing necro. I played it and was never carried when I did. Then they blasted necro through the roof in a patch which started all this nonesense. Literally all they had to do was nerf hgh engi and some condi cleansing and give necro survivability.

Instead they made it lame and unfun. In solo q I have played around 450 games across my accounts on necro and won about 70% of my games, having only a week or so ago (before I basically quit this game) had all 3 accounts in the top 50.

So I am not moaning about my builds sucking. I can win in this meta with my necro even as a team fighter in a solo q set up. But whats the point? It just isnt fun to play necro anymore. It is a complete faceroll. And its not even in the top 3 classes anymore. There are 3 classes which are even more of a faceroll for the person playing it and a nightmare for anyone to play against.

Really I just wish they would remove all balance updates from july onwards.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Well, gw2 is an item mall game. There are lot more warriors than mesmer players, especially in WvW. Most rookie players are also irritated by mesmer. Thus it’s logical to keep the warrior player base pleased and nerf mesmers.

then just delete the class then if anet is listening to unskilled noobs. i really dont care if they nerf the spvp mesmer to the ground. maybe i can finally get a buff for my wvw mesmer then. go on anet take away all the stupid clones and stupid phantasms and give us aoe instead. we are a light armor class and light armor should have viable access to aoe. otherwise turn us into medium if u wanna keep the stupid duelist limitation up.

Balance Schmalance. Seriously you get these kinds of responses from A-net and yet you have people that insist on making excuses for them all day long. They don’t care what the community has to say when it comes to balance. They will make the changes they feel are fit and you will take it or leave it. They will post condescending bs tell us how to post feedback in a proper format even though they won’t use the feedback anyway. Its mind numbing really. Pointy head knows best. Not one real nerf to warriors or conditions. Adding a few hard counter abilities is not a nerf to conditions.

Yeah, basically:

- stop add lame things
- fix lame things we have
- fix old problems.

I agree, this game wasted a lot of time after july patch because they added a lot of lame things (FS/LS for thief, too much buff to necro and warrior) and now they need to correct their mistakes + fix the old lame things + solve other big problems like animations and evades.

Kwll.1468:

Balance Schmalance. Seriously you get these kinds of responses from A-net and yet you have people that insist on making excuses for them all day long. They don’t care what the community has to say when it comes to balance. They will make the changes they feel are fit and you will take it or leave it. They will post condescending bs tell us how to post feedback in a proper format even though they won’t use the feedback anyway. Its mind numbing really. Pointy head knows best. Not one real nerf to warriors or conditions. Adding a few hard counter abilities is not a nerf to conditions.

yeah honestly u guys went all out to nerf glamour builds in wvw to the ground, but u now u just shave which is not enough. do u honestly expect me to use a mantra now? its still bad and channeling is terrible in this spam meta. fix the necro condi spam, fix the 13 backstabs, firx the stupid regen on warriors and fix the stunlock and immobilize meta! nerf them as hard as u nerfed wvw mesmers making us veilbots instead of fighters in wvw. how about that? stop favoring warriors over everyone else.
its already the most played class. mesmer is the least played class so that should tell u something.
even if u have to completely rework the clkitten ai, less duelist(we are not a medium armor class, close combat skills dont make sense if u are light armor. look at gw1 mesmers and then u might know what u are doing wrong with this one), more aoe, more mesmer conditions, more mesmer skills., less support only kitten, less veilbots only.

Kwll.1468:

Balance Schmalance. Seriously you get these kinds of responses from A-net and yet you have people that insist on making excuses for them all day long. They don’t care what the community has to say when it comes to balance. They will make the changes they feel are fit and you will take it or leave it. They will post condescending bs tell us how to post feedback in a proper format even though they won’t use the feedback anyway. Its mind numbing really. Pointy head knows best. Not one real nerf to warriors or conditions. Adding a few hard counter abilities is not a nerf to conditions.

They buffed immobilize.
Allot.

That countered every ‘nerf’ they put in towards conditions, and then some.

Kwll.1468:

Balance Schmalance. Seriously you get these kinds of responses from A-net and yet you have people that insist on making excuses for them all day long. They don’t care what the community has to say when it comes to balance. They will make the changes they feel are fit and you will take it or leave it. They will post condescending bs tell us how to post feedback in a proper format even though they won’t use the feedback anyway. Its mind numbing really. Pointy head knows best. Not one real nerf to warriors or conditions. Adding a few hard counter abilities is not a nerf to conditions.

I follow the forums very religiously and I don’t see legitimate player feedback in this patch. It is very much a ‘suck it up’ sort of patch for everyone but Warrior. The meta, which includes petting zoos, CC spam and conditiom spam, is still awful and yet nothing is being done on Anet’s end.

Sweetbread.2679:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.

This. The delivery might be a bit on the harsh side, but in terms of substance you two are right on the money.

This patch did very little to address the prevalence of low-risk high-reward builds that rely on passives to autopilot themselves. Neither did it adjust the skill floor or ceiling of classes in any meaningful way. You can still pick a H/LB warrior, spirit ranger or necro, spend a few days (generous) learning the class, and proceed to wreck face. Even the perceived weakest class, Ele, has a broken-as-kitten cheese build in fresh air, which offers silly amounts of instant burst.

I agree with Lordrosicky that it’s time for nerfs across the board. In an ideal meta a balanced comp should prevail, given equal player skill. Currently we are about as far from that ideal as can be, and what’s more worrying, this game is fast moving in the direction of hard-countering. I personally wouldn’t be opposed to reverting everything to the state it was prior to the Dhuumfire patch. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it sure as kitten promoted skilled play more than the current meta.

JinDaVikk.7291:

s/d thief can evade 2 times then trait refills enough for a 3rd. Signet of agility = 3 more dodges. shortbow 3 or sword 3 = evades on spam.

I’ve bunked 1v3 for 20+ seconds without taking a single hit on point. Not hard to do with s/d….

Also don’t forget double s/d with energy sigils. even more dodge…

Incurafy man s/d thieves can evade spam all day.

Who even runs Jumper’s double S/D build any more? And I’m aware of the Signet, but nobody uses it unless they need to. You don’t dodge 3 times, use 4 FS/LS combos and then pop Agility just for the kitten of it, and once you’ve done all that you have to wait for it to recharge and wait for initiative to regenerate. Yes, you can evade a lot, but you have no burst (my main point) and evading isn’t doing any damage.

Aereniel.7356:

Sweetbread.2679:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.

This. The delivery might be a bit on the harsh side, but in terms of substance you two are right on the money.

This patch did very little to address the prevalence of low-risk high-reward builds that rely on passives to autopilot themselves. Neither did it adjust the skill floor or ceiling of classes in any meaningful way. You can still pick a H/LB warrior, spirit ranger or necro, spend a few days (generous) learning the class, and proceed to wreck face. Even the perceived weakest class, Ele, has a broken-as-kitten cheese build in fresh air, which offers silly amounts of instant burst.

I agree with Lordrosicky that it’s time for nerfs across the board. In an ideal meta a balanced comp should prevail, given equal player skill. Currently we are about as far from that ideal as can be, and what’s more worrying, this game is fast moving in the direction of hard-countering. I personally wouldn’t be opposed to reverting everything to the state it was prior to the Dhuumfire patch. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it sure as kitten promoted skilled play more than the current meta.

Ohhhh…a little thief whining about direct counters to its evade spamming…so cute!
I give you a doughnut and cup of hot milk, here here..good boy

Arheundel.6451:

Ohhhh…a little thief whining about direct counters to its evade spamming…so cute!
I give you a doughnut and cup of hot milk, here here..good boy

Ridiculous evade uptime is one of those things that needs to be blown to bits for this game to ever pull itself from its current embarrassing slump. S/D thief is a great example of a low-risk spec, which promotes mindless spamming and is still very hard to punish for overextending or bad positioning. Not a single tear would be shed if the spec was removed from the game today.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for keeping things constructive!

The idea right now is to see how the current changes impact the meta, and then do another set of balance in an upcoming patch.

The trait facts were a lot of work, but the clarity they give you guys is VERY good for you. So we wanted to see if that would shake up trait builds at all in order to see how you guys adjusted. Once THAT settles, we want to make balance changes based off the meta at that time. We didn’t want to change all the trait facts and also add in a lot of balance changes on top of it.

We still did a lot of balance stuff, but we were careful not to go overboard with this patch. Just like we learned w/ the Warrior a few updates back, sometimes the meta can undergo drastic changes even if we do VERY little to impact the balance.

We’re planning on doing another round of updates to traits for every class (either changing #‘s, shifting tiers around to make more builds viable, or doing trait reworks), and we also have our eye on a few “apex” builds. But, again we don’t want to shave those too much.

Thanks again for the thoughts and feedback!

Chap + the balance tam

Why are you waiting to see what this does to the meta? In case you’ve missed the vast exodus of SPvPers, the current meta and all meta’s since launch have been terrible. Those meta’s sticking around for long causing players to quit is purely a testament to how slowly you guys make changes to major problems that most players can see day 1 of a patch.

With that said, STOP BALANCING FOR CURRENT META’s. It has not served you well to this date and it won’t serve you well in the future. Not only is it hurting SPvP but it’s completely ruining PvE and WvW. Currently you have very few viable builds per class and given the nature of this game there should/could be a whole lot more. What this game needs is massive changes to skills/abilities/stats/armor that create a lot more builds and variables, AKA Depth. Once you have a system with tons of new viable builds you can finally start fine tuning them, that’s where you guys went wrong. You started trying to fine tune builds on top of a broken system that remains broken to this very day.

Seriously think outside the box you have created and mix things up because what you have isn’t working. Things like making all classes starting health 15k, all classes can wear all armor types but the types have pros/cons. For instance Light armor could increase speed and endurance regen but obviously you take a lot more damage. Medium armor reduces significantly more damage and gives you resistance to conditions but reduces your damage. Heavy armor could reduce damage even further and give you longer boons but at the cost of self healing being a lot less effective; Or maybe armor has encumberance(SWG) so using heavy armor gives you 10k health, medium 15k, and light 20k, of course you’d need to rebalance the armor/toughness stats to scale equally with damage, remember there is a reason that conditions bypass armor! Making your stat allocations a separate system from traits, remove trait lines and just give traits an outright cost(IE grandmaster cost 20). If someone wants to run
3 grandmaster traits that’s fine but they give up 12 adept traits or 6 master traits.

Add more game modes, capture the flag, assault/defend, king of the hill, deathmatch, etc. This will then give all those new builds a place a shine and if they are in tournament rotation will definitely keep any one build/class/comp from being the best. Where bunkers/spikers could be good at conquest, mobility/evasion is better at CTF, and so on for every game mode and map.

I’m not suggesting that all of my ideas are correct or will fix everything, I am merely saying that the current state of the game/balance as well as the direction and pace of your changes is most definitely wrong. The outrage and unrest in what is left of the SPvP playerbase as well as the WvW/PvE playerbases is well warranted and it’s a shame that you still don’t see the problem. The game needs depth, not tooltip fixes.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for keeping things constructive!

The idea right now is to see how the current changes impact the meta, and then do another set of balance in an upcoming patch.

The trait facts were a lot of work, but the clarity they give you guys is VERY good for you. So we wanted to see if that would shake up trait builds at all in order to see how you guys adjusted. Once THAT settles, we want to make balance changes based off the meta at that time. We didn’t want to change all the trait facts and also add in a lot of balance changes on top of it.

We still did a lot of balance stuff, but we were careful not to go overboard with this patch. Just like we learned w/ the Warrior a few updates back, sometimes the meta can undergo drastic changes even if we do VERY little to impact the balance.

We’re planning on doing another round of updates to traits for every class (either changing #‘s, shifting tiers around to make more builds viable, or doing trait reworks), and we also have our eye on a few “apex” builds. But, again we don’t want to shave those too much.

Thanks again for the thoughts and feedback!

Chap + the balance tam

I only really have one point to make and its about thieves. The changes you guys made to LS hardly does anything. I am not saying there won’t be future changes, but 30 points into Acrobatics a thief can still spam dodge rolls, still have initiative for days, and still be able to poke and prod other classes like mesmers, eles etc while having endless amounts of disengage.

Personally, I am looking at S/P being a replacement since it has the opportunity to put out just as much, if not more, pressure as S/D and has basically the same; disengage, mobility, initiative regeneration (not the same initiative management), and nearly the same amount of dodges.

Yes, thiefs can spam evade and stealth, but have they other possibilities to reduce dmg? No.

Devs, Ignore all these people typing gas into the forums.

I think you did very well with this, and I’m happy to see from some of the changes that you actually do take some of our suggestions and ideas and try to apply them as best as possible. Also some great ideas we didn’t think of, like new ways of ground targeting.

You’ve polished and cleaned things off a fair bit. I feel this is a good start/step in the right direction. The way I see it things can only get better.
Keep up the good work, don’t let us down! :P

P.s. Staggering Blow 4 lyf!

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

Distaste.4801:

With that said, STOP BALANCING FOR CURRENT META’s. It has not served you well to this date and it won’t serve you well in the future. Not only is it hurting SPvP but it’s completely ruining PvE and WvW. Currently you have very few viable builds per class and given the nature of this game there should/could be a whole lot more. What this game needs is massive changes to skills/abilities/stats/armor that create a lot more builds and variables, AKA Depth. Once you have a system with tons of new viable builds you can finally start fine tuning them, that’s where you guys went wrong. You started trying to fine tune builds on top of a broken system that remains broken to this very day.

I would have to agree with this sentiment.

1 viable pvp build for most classes does not a fun pvp game make. And some are barely viable…

Nor does a meta when true skill = spamming circles onto a point or spamming CC at a group of people.

Aereniel.7356:

Sweetbread.2679:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.

Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings

Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.

These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.

Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.

I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.

This. The delivery might be a bit on the harsh side, but in terms of substance you two are right on the money.

This patch did very little to address the prevalence of low-risk high-reward builds that rely on passives to autopilot themselves. Neither did it adjust the skill floor or ceiling of classes in any meaningful way. You can still pick a H/LB warrior, spirit ranger or necro, spend a few days (generous) learning the class, and proceed to wreck face. Even the perceived weakest class, Ele, has a broken-as-kitten cheese build in fresh air, which offers silly amounts of instant burst.

I agree with Lordrosicky that it’s time for nerfs across the board. In an ideal meta a balanced comp should prevail, given equal player skill. Currently we are about as far from that ideal as can be, and what’s more worrying, this game is fast moving in the direction of hard-countering. I personally wouldn’t be opposed to reverting everything to the state it was prior to the Dhuumfire patch. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it sure as kitten promoted skilled play more than the current meta.

Thats the problem. The problem isnt the massive problems with the game and the cheesey builds. It is the fact that they are intent on making more cheesy builds to hard counter the already cheesey builds. Which leads to an unfulfilled gameplay experience. If the direction of development was good then we could be happy. But there is no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact the tunnel is getting darker and darker because more and more stuff is likely to be added which will just ruin things.

Panda.1793:

Devs, Ignore all these people typing gas into the forums.

I think you did very well with this, and I’m happy to see from some of the changes that you actually do take some of our suggestions and ideas and try to apply them as best as possible. Also some great ideas we didn’t think of, like new ways of ground targeting.

You’ve polished and cleaned things off a fair bit. I feel this is a good start/step in the right direction. The way I see it things can only get better.
Keep up the good work, don’t let us down! :P

P.s. Staggering Blow 4 lyf!

new ways to ground target? Anyone not using instant ground targetting is playing well below the skill cap just because of that. They can still be good but if this game went seriously competitive nobody would use anything but the old fast cast instant way

Lordrosicky.5813:

new ways to ground target? Anyone not using instant ground targetting is playing well below the skill cap just because of that. They can still be good but if this game went seriously competitive nobody would use anything but the old fast cast instant way

Yea I understand whats gonna happen because of it, your right. Had to cut them some slack though. They are try hards.

This thread served its purpose anyway. People can see what Jon Sharp said. They don’t understand that they need to nerf stuff and not just keep buffing everyone. That is fine. There is no reason to waste more time on this game. I am pretty much done with it now.

Aereniel.7356:

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

Lol I love the example with the chess and the transformer. He is right.

Lupanic.6502:

Aereniel.7356:

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

Lol I love the example with the chess and the transformer. He is right.

He is rude to the devs and personal. To be honest it is disgusting. He might be saying the same things others, including me, are saying in this thread. But there is a way about going about things and his way is not it to be honest. It is a moot point though. This view point, which I have posted on this forum about 20 times in the last 3-4 months, has clearly lost the argument. It is a shame because I am very sure that anet are going in completely the wrong direction. The word from the devs is beyond discouraging if you believe what I and others have said in this thread – or what helseth has said many times before. The only solution for people who dont enjoy the cheesey spam builds is the quit the game. Because the problem will get worse not better. That has now been confirmed by the devs.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Thats the problem. The problem isnt the massive problems with the game and the cheesey builds. It is the fact that they are intent on making more cheesy builds to hard counter the already cheesey builds. Which leads to an unfulfilled gameplay experience. If the direction of development was good then we could be happy. But there is no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact the tunnel is getting darker and darker because more and more stuff is likely to be added which will just ruin things.

Agreed. ANet needs to give up on their pipe dream of buffing everything to parity. It has gotten to the point where everything is kittenedly OP or cheesy. The nerf hammer needs to come down across the board. Hard.

Yeah, I really have to agree. This game is becoming a textbook example what happens when power creep goes unchecked – just a bunch of cheese on cheese, rock-paper-scissors combat.

Lordrosicky.5813:

He is rude to the devs and personal. To be honest it is disgusting. He might be saying the same things others, including me, are saying in this thread. But there is a way about going about things and his way is not it to be honest. It is a moot point though. This view point, which I have posted on this forum about 20 times in the last 3-4 months, has clearly lost the argument. It is a shame because I am very sure that anet are going in completely the wrong direction. The word from the devs is beyond discouraging if you believe what I and others have said in this thread – or what helseth has said many times before. The only solution for people who dont enjoy the cheesey spam builds is the quit the game. Because the problem will get worse not better. That has now been confirmed by the devs.

Agree with every bit of it.

I guess there were some balance changes. They buffed the key weapon in the best spec in the game by making the hammer 4 ability one of the best weapon skills in the game. lol

Lordrosicky.5813:

I guess there were some balance changes. They buffed the key weapon in the best spec in the game by making the hammer 4 ability one of the best weapon skills in the game. lol

Warriors sword 1 with traited Leg Specialist is competing for that title.

Well over the next 4 months they might “create some more viable builds” which means making stuff even better than s/d thief or warrior. Then in 4 months we might get a patch where the only relevant balance change involves making an insignificant change to s/d thief boon steal.

When will people learn that balance in this game is done randomly and most changes will be just cosmetic.

In the stream the two “balancing devs” did not know one single skills name properly or find trait allocations in reasonable time.
Changes were commented with things like “we thought this mitght be cool” and “we think this is pretty awesome”. No single comment on how a change would affect gamebalancing, PvP interactions and buildcounterin e.g.
Because things are not tested by players but by “theoretical physicists”. They might know the code but not the game itself. Nor the impact their changes have on the game.
Look at WvW laggfest. Atm you will be confused and interrupted to death, joined by a newly integrated perma-immobilize resulting from everybody spamming skills that now add in duration.
Noone here is a PvPer and GW2 WvW/tPvP is just some PvE players go for for a PvP-ish gamemode.

He sums it up properly:

Reevz.2617:

it feels like things are being balanced by a few devs that play the game casually and only think about what they think is cool.

This patch means an additional month warrior stunlock, necro fearlock or ranger pet olololol.

Zumy.6318:

Because things are not tested by players but by “theoretical physicists”.

I wish that was true, but sadly this game is not tested by physicists, is tested by philosophers lol.

Tooltip meta needs to settle and be analyzed before we can even think about balancing (shaving)!

Aereniel.7356:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Thats the problem. The problem isnt the massive problems with the game and the cheesey builds. It is the fact that they are intent on making more cheesy builds to hard counter the already cheesey builds. Which leads to an unfulfilled gameplay experience. If the direction of development was good then we could be happy. But there is no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact the tunnel is getting darker and darker because more and more stuff is likely to be added which will just ruin things.

Agreed. ANet needs to give up on their pipe dream of buffing everything to parity. It has gotten to the point where everything is kittenedly OP or cheesy. The nerf hammer needs to come down across the board. Hard.

If they make CC more interupt based, if they push conditions more towards middle of the line debuffs (drop or make condition dmg less relevant), make it so crits add on dmg that doesn’t scale with power or auto attacks are the only thing that seriously scales with power… the game would take massive steps towards better gameplay.
———————
Right now CC locks are too easy/common.
They did CC well in GW1 (or so I hear), all they have to do is transfer those ideas over to this game and it’ll be leaps and bounds better.
————-
Condition dps…
Anet setup conditions on weapons/utils terribly so it ends up being mindless spam more often than not.
Make conditions themselves, in their effects, entirely situational and it’ll clear up allot of the issues.
—————
Spike dps is too benificial.
In conquest, roamers being burst dps is a few times better than being a more middle of the line deal.
Stat wise, power/crit/critdmg and %dmg buffs all scale off of each other… it means, if you go glass dps, you do multiplicative more dmg… while losing out on just toughness or a lil vitality.

If critdmg didn’t scale with power, it’d cut that glass dps setup in the bud. You could still build glass, and end up dealing more dmg and have a spot in the meta since glass dps is solid at roaming… BUT it won’t be the end-all be-all of the ‘non-bunker’ game… you could build middle of the line builds that roam, and they’d be viable.

The only other way of quickly solving that I can think of, is to make auto-attacks be the only thing that seriously scales with power. If you want to build glass you gain more easily accessible high dps, dps that doesn’t require burning your leaps/CC/exc. to use. If you want to build middle of the line, you end up with siutational dmg that does burns your survivability and control to use.
——————
Along the line they could then push combo fields to a more prominent role.
They could adjust it so combo fields are mainly only tagged on to utilities, and then they actually are extremely important to setting up or preventing spikes… that’d give teamfights a whole new direction one that invites massive amounts of depth and actual teamwork.

AANYWAYS.
No chance of good changes with the current thing going on (devs/company).

jcbroe.4329:

Every class being OP does not express balance.

It expresses power creep, which is usually created when, instead of fixing something that is problematic, something is changed in order to counter the problem, creating a new problem in the process.

By far the best description I can think of to describe this mess…. Anet overbuffed somethings and then overnerfed anything that may counter those things. Leaving mostly OP as Hell classes one class that’s right on the money and a few classes that are just a liability no matter how u cut it.

Can someone explain to me why Blinding Powder is now a Blast Finisher? Makes zero sense to me.

Black powder + blinding powder stealth stacking alternative to Shadow refuge and gives the skill more utility purpose (water fields) to stand against SR. That is my take on it.

jcbroe.4329:

Every class being OP does not express balance.

It expresses power creep, which is usually created when, instead of fixing something that is problematic, something is changed in order to counter the problem, creating a new problem in the process.

Best Answer of the Thread, besides the OP. A-Net needs to realize this . . .

Aereniel.7356:

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

New rant? whooooi

Hyxorcisten.5786:

Aereniel.7356:

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

New rant? whooooi

Well, it’s not so much a choreographed rant as it is a few improvised thoughts on the patch notes. Some comedy gold moments towards the end when the notes are actually published.

Seriously though, it’s still healing signet warriors and necros with the occasional spirit ranger thrown in for good measure. The shaving in this patch is so light that it’s invisible.

Aereniel.7356:

Oh looky, here’s a mini-rant on the new patch from the guy who quit competitive play and still won MLG without practicing: http://www.twitch.tv/helsethgw2/b/470417401

Watch from 18 minutes to 25 minutes to get the gist of it. Again, rude, but the substance is spot on.

Ahah omg at 23:50 he made me spit my lungs out from laughing. Not rude at all imo, that’s just being honest.