Guild Wars 2

Anastasis.7258:

Let’s look at ele, the water attunement scales super well with Healing Power stats. Plus they have 4 blast finisher and 1 leap finisher (That’s how they get so many might stacking). Plus they have perma. Vigors, 80% up time protections, 90% up time regeneration, pretty much every boons in this game that they can access by themselves. They have blink and fire greatsword and RtL to compete their mobility with thief. A skill call Ring of Earth that blocks projectile without showing any blocking animation.

Elementalists have had those things for a long time. Why is it that they were never a problem before that “one” patch that introduced Cele amulet, redone runes, and buffs for Ele?

Even with all those things going for them, Ele wasn’t considered good at all before that patch.

I like your analysis Zoose.

On swap sigils being so heavily used and the professions that can trigger them the most efficiently being heavily used probably isn’t coincidence.

Instead of implementing global changes to on swap sigils overall mechanics though, wouldn’t it simply be more efficient to target the strongest sigils and apply a straight nerf.

Regarding might stacking, perhaps it would be better to have a PvP version of Might that applies 25 stats instead of 35, this would close the gap between professions utilizing heavy might stacking and professions that hardly use might at all.

If you have 25 might stacks the difference between 25 and 35 per stack is:
25: 625 total to power/condi
35: 875 total to power/condi

This would impact Ele and Warrior more than the engineer, as the change would be 62.5 burning damage per second at max might, and engi only tops out at 9 might.

The strength of engineer is it’s rifle and tool kit skills having high damage coefficients.

It’d be an intelligence sigil nerf or nerfs to those coefficients and IP that’d most easily bring engi in line.

Shockwave.1230:

I like your analysis Zoose.

On swap sigils being so heavily used and the professions that can trigger them the most efficiently being heavily used probably isn’t coincidence.

Instead of implementing global changes to on swap sigils overall mechanics though, wouldn’t it simply be more efficient to target the strongest sigils and apply a straight nerf.

Regarding might stacking, perhaps it would be better to have a PvP version of Might that applies 25 stats instead of 35, this would close the gap between professions utilizing heavy might stacking and professions that hardly use might at all.

If you have 25 might stacks the difference between 25 and 35 per stack is:
25: 625 total to power/condi
35: 875 total to power/condi

This would impact Ele and Warrior more than the engineer, as the change would be 62.5 burning damage per second at max might, and engi only tops out at 9 might.

The strength of engineer is it’s rifle and tool kit skills having high damage coefficients.

It’d be an intelligence sigil nerf or nerfs to those coefficients and IP that’d most easily bring engi in line.

Doesn’t make sense to touch Rifle power coefficients. That’s because it’s the only power focused weapon Engineer has. Nades, Bombs, Toolkit, Pistol, E-Gun, Flamethrower, none of them are going to scale properly by building Power/Precision/Ferocity.

Static Discharge and the Firearms traitlines are not up to par. If anything, Engineer needs more viable power options that don’t involve mandatory conditions in the scaling.

Tone down celestial a tad, sure. That’ll help. So will reducing the might stacking ability of the battle sigil. But, for an ele at least, you need to buff it in other areas. Cele is basically the only viable amulet for ele. Berserker with S/F is okay, but it’s not really that great.

Make the fire trait line useful and then, instead of always putting 12 into water/arcana, you’ll have people actually using the fire trait line and there will be more variety in the builds and the meta.
That is, after all, the point of nerfing cele, isn’kitten To get more variety in the meta?

Cele does need some changes but don’t nerf it so that it’s useless.

on the might issue i think there’s a pretty simply solution, and this is to limit the amount you can stack on yourself, like the limit on how much stealth you can stack.

keep the overall 25 max, but make it so that you can only stack 10 might on your own, and to get past this limit you have to recieve might from allies via fire fields + blast finishers, shouts, aoe boon gives like thrill of the crime etc.

this would nerf the ridiculousness of being able to maintain unhealthy amounts of might on your own, but would make it so that it continues to reward and places even more emphasis on teamwork.

In my opinion, trying to implement diminishing returns for on swap sigils in this manner is a silly idea and would prefer a straight nerf to the duration of the effects. Yes this will make the sigils less appealing for the non targeted classes but this isn’t a problem. This is because there are dozens of other sigils that they can choose from which will probably have better synergy with them.

Synergy between builds and gear is something that will always happen and is a good thing. There is obvious synergy between on swap sigils and classes that swap weapons a lot. That synergy is lacking in other classes therefore it simply doesn’t make sense for them to be the go to sigils for those classes. The fact that battle, doom, etc. are used on so many builds regardless of this synergy is a clear indicator that they are simply overpowered.

This goes with my personal belief on how balance should be performed, if a build is only overpowered with specific gear choices, nerf the gear, not the class. If the build is overpowered with many different gear choices, then nerf the profession. People don’t feel attached to gear however they do feel attached to classes. If you nerf an amulet no one cares, if you nerf a skill people feel victimized.

Might be a bit off-current-discussion:

Buuut can we make the gameplay more active?
Make it so that we have a little ‘skillbar’ for rune and sigil procs which you can use manually. If you decide to reimplement a global cooldown, it’ll be visible and you’ll be able to chose which one to use first. This game could use a higher (mechanical) skill ceiling.

Less RNG, less passives. —--> more counterplay, more options.

Edit: game —> gameplay

Maybe there would be more good Mesmer players if it was worth playing?
And effective damage is important. It’s like d/p vs. s/d. D/p does less damage overall but can still do comparable pressure to s/d in a fight because of burst.
I’m also not suggesting Mes should be buffed.

Supcutie.2538:

Maybe there would be more good Mesmer players if it was worth playing?

I’m also not suggesting Mes should be buffed.

Wouldn’t a normal and sane person think that Mesmer should be buffed based on the way you worded that first sentence?

Balance is relative and has a lot of variables. Some of those variables include adjusting other classes which can put Mesmer in a better place. This is normal balance?

Anastasis.7258:

I have different opinion on this video than others. (not because I’m warrior)

I believed that the reason why the meta happening now isn’t might stacking but classes mechanics. If you look at engineer, they can’t really do might stacking but they are pretty much killing everything super fast. The reason why is because all their weapon skills on rifle, belt skills, and pry bar scales well with power stats, and also all other skills scale well with condition damage stats. Also, healing turret scales well with Healing Power Stats. Also, zero animation of big cc skill (overcharged shot) that knock back people for almost 6 seconds.

Let’s look at ele, the water attunement scales super well with Healing Power stats. Plus they have 4 blast finisher and 1 leap finisher (That’s how they get so many might stacking). Plus they have perma. Vigors, 80% up time protections, 90% up time regeneration, pretty much every boons in this game that they can access by themselves. They have blink and fire greatsword and RtL to compete their mobility with thief. A skill call Ring of Earth that blocks projectile without showing any blocking animation. The lighting whip abuse that makes Ele Healing Signet 2x Healing. That’s what makes this class op.

For warrior, (the class nerfed the most in 2014 because of me), I believed that the shoutbow warriors is created to counter the current condition meta. As I play shoutbow probably the longest, I know the counter of shoutbow is Dps burst. Shoutbow doesn’t have protection, immune to direction damage, conditions.

The sustain is not even comparable with dd Ele and probably only a bit higher than celestial engi. The reason why people think it’s op now is because they are playing meta builds that gets counter by shoutbow warrior. DD ele can’t kill shoutbow warrior because their burning gets cleanse. Celestial engi can still kill shoutbow because they have a lot of direct damage + condition damage at the same time.

The only thing makes shoutbow warrior op isn’t sigil of intellgence nor sigil of battle. It’s the combination of sigil of doom and geomancy. And that’s the only benefit that warrior can get from swap sigils because of the trait “Fast Hand”

If you are asking “well warriors can get 25 stacks of might easy” I will answer you in this way. We trade one utility slot for might stacking “For Great Justice”, comparing to dd ele they don’t have to sacrifice anything to get 25 stacks easier than warrior. We can’t keep 25 stacks of might because we have 0 might duration.

If you are nerfing the meta by nerfing the swap sigils, you are pretty much nerfing the counter of the meta right now because swap sigil is only thing warrior has now. Other classes doesn’t scale that well with swap sigils. That’s pretty much the unique mechanic that warrior has.

Another thing I want to mention is that Celestial Amulet isn’t 100% beneficial for warrior because Healing Power is useless for warriors.

If you really want to balance this game, you should tone down the amulet, nerf the classes mechanics (Eles: Perma boons? Mobility close to a thief? 4 blast finishers? So much heals?) (Engi: almost instant cast aoe heals? 16 sec blocks? op direct damage with little power stats? 0 animation 6 sec CC?)

Nerfing sigils are also nerfing other classes such as Nerco, Ranger, and Guardian. Which I don’t think will balance this game, instead it will make the bad classes even worse.

And I believe, if Shoutbow hasn’t been discovered, warrior is still a low tier pvp class like people used to think on September, 2014.

Pretty much this, some of the skills scale too well, i never get how engis can crit for like 4-5kish with no higher then 9 might and celestial amulet on a single skill on top of having a good number of those direct damaging skills.

@Zoose.1640, Your idea’s don’t address the problem’s at hand. Massive Chunk of builds on every class are effected by how the CeleEle’s Trait’s work. The damage is high once you stack your might which isn’t hard to do at all, but your defensive side is where problem is.

You can say Cele War/Engi are a problem but that’s where your wrong, at first I was a hater towards both classes but after you play both classes and understand there weakness doesn’t become a problem anymore its more of a player skill problem rather then being carried by a build.

CeleEle, the defensive side leaves very little window’s for many builds across classes to apply there damage effectively. Only 2 classes that are able to hurt a CeleEle are Necro and Mesmer but they have major draw backs so the risk vs reward balance’s out.

Now say your any class and your attacking an CeleEle, you can change to Water, Air or Earth to counter incoming damage. Both Aura’s in Water and Air have no cast time and apply a 4 second Protection. Say your being burst and you change to water and hit #4 just by doing that you have removed condition’s good chance your regen proc’ed, I could go on for age’s with how many counters do spikes damage you have with next to no skill required. It’s mostly Passive play that’s keeping you alive letting you go on the offensive.

There just to much upkeep on Protection/Vigor. They need to look at Aura cast time’s so you can’t just swap Attune and cast an Aura it’s extremely fast and counter’s most incoming damage, Frost Aura being a major counter to burst. Now let’s not forget if your in a tight spot you can just pop your Cantrip’s as a final save me card. The mitigation of damage from CeleEle is insane most classes don’t even come close to being able to save themselves. Just take look at CeleEngi, he require’s Active game play from Kb’s and Immob’s to control the fight, there Toolkit being there only really way to mitigate damage.

Nerf’ing Sigil’s is far from real problem at hand, both CeleEngi and CeleWar have major counter’s unlike CeleEle which has limited counter and to counter CeleEle require fair amount of skill from the Mesmer or Necro.

Now the next problem is due to way CeleEle work’s it’s able to combo with CeleEngi and CeleWar extremely effectively, both offensive and defensive. Now if you Combo CeleEngi and CeleWar together they become less effective they are beatable, unlike CeleEle combo which has stupid amounts of sustain and support.

They need to look at Vigor/Protection upkeep on CeleEle first before buffing other classes, cause if they buff other classes and nerf the CeleEle we could see complete flip where CeleEle becomes easy to kill due to nerfs and buff’s when all that is really required is Nerf’s to one class rather then buffs to other classes. Also they need to fix bug’s.

How can I possibly be accused of being selfish and out for my own class when there is obviously a balance issue? Mes damage is super high, and in order to fix a lot of things I’m sure it would have to be toned down along with other classes. Power classes other than Thief are clearly struggling.

I also did read your part about 50/50. You’re saying Mes does worse in the matchup, but also implying with the rest of your wording that this is due to Mesmers not taking the right skills, which we have already established is not realistic. So then how can this be okay?
For Reference

I don’t think you will see more than a 50/50 match up against s/d without doing portal – which is not realistic. Mesmer has a reliable window to land shatter on flanking strike however. It just takes patience to land burst but it’s a gauruntee with the right timing, and is enough to kill our force the thief to fully reset if you land the right abilities. For some reason people forget the busy potential of mirror images as well. Coming from a time where mesmers used to one shot everything I’m sure you can recall how mirror images adds to Mesmer burst potential.

I’m only trying to make the game better. You should give people some more benefit of the doubt and be more kind. I don’t appreciate the whole

Again, you didn’t even read what I wrote before you came in here all Gung Ho for your class.

Crazy new information time to drop portal and use sword/x for maximum deeps

China here i come!~

Ok, i think the problem now is really the point holders having too much mobility, every one has mobility, so they need no use of portal, on top of thief killing mesmer most of the times, it’s a struggle.
but mesmer itself is strong and good roamer good damage and stuff.

balmung.6217:

Crazy new information time to drop portal and use sword/x for maximum deeps

China here i come!~

Don’t forget to bring mimic!

mesmer dies to instagib trololol thieves.
mesmer dies to condis + fear for dayz.
mesmer dies to knockback, pull, immob roflstomp engis.
mesmer dies to ele burning 2gud
mesmer dies to “MOAR SUSTAIN PLOX” forum warriors.

See a pattern here?

good mesmer is like good thief. enters a 1v1 fight making it a 2v1 and big burst for the quick downed state then on to next fight. mesmer can do this from longer range than thief but is slower in movement, however then there is portal. mesmer just need more condi removal and a maybe an extra stun break without giving up all their important utilities.

Quick note for Might Stacking : Might is the only boon that has +45% increase.
If I’m not mistaken, all others have a max cap of +30% from runes.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

So a good change to might stacking without changing the sigils would be to make changes to might duration.
Ex.
Strength Runes +30% Might Duration
Hoelbrek Runes +10-20% Might Duration since it has a very defensive bonus of -20% condi reduction.

Narcarsis.5739:

Wording can be confusing when taken from two different contexts, despite similar language.

To say you can do well against an S/D thief if played well by no means translates into all mesmers do well against S/D thieves. To no means did I generalize that and the “if played properly” plays a large part of my point. I don’t think there are many, if any, good mesmers for one reason or another.

Putting the word “effective” before something doesn’t really do anything but glorify a point you’re trying to make. Damage is damage, and a mesmer does a lot more damage than most everything else, if not everything else in its entirety.

Also, statistics play to what people enjoy playing. Some people enjoy easy classes, some enjoy what certain classes over others. To say something isn’t good because it’s not easy and not many people play it isn’t an accurate statement.

I never said it was a 50/50 match up – I said it could approach that if you dropped portal. Again, you didn’t even read what I wrote before you came in here all Gung Ho for your class.

Lol? Wtf.
Trying to give grammar lessons when people are having a thoughtful discussion. Calm down, this post made absolutely no sense anyways “wording can be confusing when taken from two different contexts” lol wtf, clearly seems like the same context contradicting your opinion that thief does not counter mes.
Hence, instead of your “played properly” argument and “timing shatters at the end of a flanking strike” might wanna expand on that. We could all take notes if you know the secrets to beating thieves.

But yes, I dont believe mesmers need a buff, they are in such a good position with a team that can tend to their needs

I’m fine with these changes as long as they stay confined to spvp only. Anet never seems to understand that there needs to be separate balance changes for spvp and wvw. What’s OP in one mode is sometimes crappy in another mode and vice versa and they usually never take that into account when making changes. These changes would be decent in spvp but completely unnecessary and class crippling outside of spvp where builds that other classes have that aren’t viable in spvp but totally op in wvw already completely hard counter cele ele and engi.

nice video. Hope ANet is not vain to look at it.

Do not change cele amu, just add a disadvantage. Something like :
-No might duration increase possible.
or -30% might duration

First off, nice Vid Zoose.

I agree with having a slight shave to the celestial stats to bring them down a bit but the main problem as you said is not in the stats themselves.

I know I am going to get hate for this but I myself have been a strong advocate of rebalancing sigils for a long time. The powercreep from the sigilchange was so huge that sigils in my opinion are in such an unhealthy state.

And I completely agree that sigils should have different values in spvp and pve.

First of all like you said Zoose, mightstacking from battle sigil is way over the top. The ability to have 105 extra power and condition damage right as you enter the fight, gaining 210 power+condi 10 seconds into the fight and 315 power+condi 20 seconds into the fight is a bit crazy. And you gain all that without actively trying to do anything. And since we all know how well burning scales with condition damage what you get is. IP on a cele engi goes from 2189 to 2714, full drakes breath goes from 5553 to 6498. And this extra bonus goes to all your physical attacks and bleeds poison and so on.
Now if you had the change from 3 stacks of might to 2. The damage gain from battle would be way less of a factor in the fight. And you would still becomes strong long into a fight if you spec into +might duration and trait into +boon duration.

Keep in mind that blasting your own firefields would still net you 3 stacks with however long of a duration based on your boon and might duration, promoting active play.

Now since our goal is not to nerf battle and cele to the ground but rather have a healthy meta with a mix of everything, you would have to take a look at all the other sigils aswell.

Ideally having sigils of the same type not stack again would be amazing, but I am unsure arenanet would revert back to that.

Now if you don’t do that, atleast just flat out rebalance the effects.

On crit sigils. air fire blood earth strength, just a simple 20-25% reduction in base damage. And again if you have a long drawn out fight where your team actively applies might to your allies and vulnerability to the enemies the effect of the sigils becomes impactful in the fight.
On hit sigils, fine as they are, not really a thing spend work hours on at this moment.
On swap sigils. Battle already talked about, Leeching hydro geo renewal a simple 20-25% reduction in damage/healing/bleed duration. Energy down to maybe 33%. Int and doom are honestly not in a bad state at the moment… in my opinion.
On kill sigils. Keep em as is… because 9 stacks of might from battle is already better than having a fully stacked power/condi stacking sigil on you anyhow.
Passive sigils. Keep em as is for now. Not really where the problem in the meta lies at the moment.

I know that simply shaving the cele amulet and toning down the sigils wont dethrone d/d ele from being the king of 1v1s since the problems with ele lie a bit deeper then that as the other posts in this thread already said.

And the real question is what happens to the meta in a world where celestial is slightly shaved and sigil effects have been reduced.
-Overall damage in the game has been reduced, maybe allowing bunker guardians to find their spot in some teamcomps.
-celestials will still be effective in teamfights as bruisers.
-celestials will have slightly less survivability and offensive capabilities, allowing some builds to contest them on nodes and making them more vulnerable to being overwhelmed and forced offpoint in outnumbered situations. Promoting faster and smarter rotations.

So the goal is not to kick out celestial amulet or battle sigil from the meta but to bring them down a notch. So you could promote having a mix of bunkers, celestial bruisers and berserkers in teams, diversifying viable team compositions.

What would happen in reality is something we would have to find out.
We could also talk about if +45% might +45% bleed and +45% burn runes are in a good spot or not or if removing the -20% weapon swap recharge from the rune of the warrior and rebalancing the icd of sigils from 9s to 10s could be an option but those are things for another time.

Awaiting the hate, peace.

Tone down energy sigils the world is going to have a LOT of dead necros but it’s ok since we have access to vigor through one skill, and our stab is also abundant so I wouldn’t think necros would become more ping pong ballish then they already can be.

Good video..

Small gradual change is better then clunky large changes anet usually does with 0 testing, 17% nerf to personal might stacking is a good start.

I agree on the sigil of battle changes. Sigil of doom should be changed to on hit gives 3s of poison with kitten cd. Sigil of intelligence is also a good change. Nerf the might duration bonuses by 10% on the runes that provide it. Celestial amulet is fine I think. Rifle knockback on engi should be reduced by 1sec. I’m not too familiar with warrior so wouldnt give a fair analysis. their passive regen seems a little too high when paired with their stances.

Worth watching at least for the math that shows how incredibly powerful Sigil of Battle is. I agree that Sigil of Battle on other sigils need nerfed. However, I disagree with the approach to nerfs:

First, I think reducing the duration on Sigil of Battle is a better choice than the number of stacks. A lot of its power comes from duration increases and the lower the base, the weaker the increase becomes compared to other choices in runes and sigils.

Second, celestial amulet having more stats than other amulets is by design and should remain that way. Tweak other broken mechanics first. The celestial combo has the same ratios in PvE/WvW as PvP, yet you don’t see anyone going full celestial there. Celestial only seems so powerful because the other amulet choices are too extreme; there’s no other middle ground choice.

Third, don’t just look at on-swap sigils. Air and Fire are incredibly powerful as well, even when not paired together.

I just want to post a comment I made in another topic can’t find it so ill just summarize. From my level of experience (or lack of) and from what I see when I play I actually like the celestial meta aside from the swaps that I feel play a role why cele amulet feels so op I actually think the game is getting closer to being completely balanced. Every class that i’ve played feels like it has a counter and only a few builds seem OP. Again I’m by no means a pro or have as much knowledge of the game as the higher tier players but just wanted to give my thoughts on the celestial meta in general.

Supcutie.2538:

Balance is relative and has a lot of variables. Some of those variables include adjusting other classes which can put Mesmer in a better place. This is normal balance?

Omg that was so eloquently put. Supcutie is so right, balance is totally relative and that is something people always seem to overlook.

I think the celestial amulet is alright where it is, I know, crazy right? But the main issue in my opinion is that, classes like the elementalist and the engineer have some high skill coefficients that scale with power so well. There’s no drawback in having lower power because they can utilize the sigil of battle with these skill coefficients, that’s what makes them so powerful right now.

Lets take the engineer for example. The most common celestial build for the engineer is running hoelbrak runes, sigil of battle and intelligence with the 60062 traits. Once they gain above 4-5 might stacks on their own, they’re past 2000 power (pretty much like a regular power build right?). With skill coefficients like Jump Shot (0.9 on launch, 1.8 on landing), Blunderbuss (1.0 to 1.6 depending on distance), and Shrapnel Grenades (0.550 × 3 = 1.65, if they all hit), their direct damage ends up being relatively high; lets not forget their condition damage too.

The combined direct and condition damage along with having strong self-sustain, leads to more benefits overall than having a build that’s focused on power or condition damage for these two classes, which creates these strong builds called “bruisers.” They would be fine if they couldn’t bring themselves up with so much power from might stacking. From my point of view, celestial stat users were supposed to be designed to do lower damage than focused power or condition builds, but gain sustain and the ability to damage directly and over time.

just took portal off my bar so i can better deal with getting focused

glad this new 2015 meta is starting early

Hi Zoose, this is a very good thread, however it will fall on deaf ears (in my opinion).

Hans and Caed are both spot on w/r/t Mesmer and sword. Way back in the day staff + sword/focus (unnerfed focus) had a favorable matchup against Thieves. Nowadays you have about fifty/fifty odds against D/P. However the issues with sword are that you lose either on-point pressure (especially mid) or mobility and it has been nerfed a lot to a shadow of what it once was. The matchups also assume you mean like “I’m standing at home and I see him coming towards me”, you are still very vulnerable to collision-ignoring teleports and being burned down in 2 v. 2s, etc. And there are sets like S/P that there’s very little you can really do anything about.

I think the issues with Mesmer are less that Mesmer is too weak and more to do with Thief but it’s almost impossible to change Thief without other classes and things like ledge-camping becoming overbearing so I dunno. GW2’s knot can’t be untangled I guess. Maybe it has to do with the lack of dedicated healers.

For people who enjoy what the game’s all about I think it wouldn’t take much to put it in a great spot. The style of conquest, rotations, etc. just isn’t my thing so I suppose I’d never be happy no matter what the team did. Other game modes would be nice though.