Guild Wars 2

Just a short blurb here for anyone who wants to read it; I’m not going to explain myself a lot because A) I don’t feel like A-net is really listening and the internet is full of trolls and flamers who just want to look smart.

All I will say is the balance decisions we’ve seen so far have been miniscule, seemingly random, without explanation, and at best “whack-a-mole” style. We’ve seen the really ridiculous stuff get slowly whittled away like perma-retaliation Guardians and Heartseeker/PW Thieves, but nothing that feels like it really matters in a positive way for balance’s sake.

I’m coming into the PVP scene here from League of Legends, which is arguably one of the most diverse yet balanced games out there for competitive play. (Notice I said “arguably,” I’m not here to argue this point). This leaves me with the desire for more calculated and intelligent changes; when RIOT see something isn’t working, they’ll sometimes completely overhaul it, even if it’s an entire champion.

For example, I’m glad A-net is taking out stupid 100-0 in 2 seconds “instagib” builds. They’re damaging to the game, imo. You nerf Heartseeker and PW, cool. But where’re the changes to Flanking Strike, Body Shot, etc.? Why are we only seeing tiny “Oh, that’s WAY too powerful” -type changes when we should be seeing “FINALLY they fixed X!” -type changes?

I dunno. But I’m getting bored with this game. I feel like A-net doesn’t have a good idea of what they want the Thief or the Elementalist to actually play like, and it’s preventing them from assuring US, the players, that we aren’t wasting our time.

I think nobody can explain it better than you. I’ve say the same about League of Legends is one of the most balanced games between characters, but the people was troll me :/

Im waiting more than you a great change in ALL clases to get this game balanced and see how WoW Die by GW2

Your post is a little dramatic but you have a point. Things are not completely out of balance though nearly every class is viable in some sense. Usually when you refer to the top 1% of teams there will mostly be a few things that always work better than anything else in any game. Even if you destroy everything people complain about right this second like thieves, mesmers, bunker guardians, a new “best class” and style will emerge to fill that top 1% and that will be the new “thing” to complain about.

Ok all of that being said Anet does seem to be a little unsure about what to do. I think it’s a good thing that they aren’t rushing to make changes if they aren’t sure but it would be nice if they got serious about balance and played the game hardcore themselves to flesh out imbalance instead of just “listening” to all of us. If you just listened to all of us nothing would make any sense. For example in the thief threads you have 1 or 2 guys like wolf posting enough to make anyone second guess themselves yet that’s a vocal minority and the majority feel differently.

What Anet is doing is anything but “whack a mole.” I’ve seen that style in other games where you have crazy yo yo balance. If anything they’re suffering from inaction but that’s probably better than doing the wrong things and hopefully they will figure things out very soon.

Well anet may not seem like they are listening because they said that they wouldn’t listen. They said that they would not be influenced by people like you who come on the forums and whine for YOUR version of balance. They said that they would use their own statistics to judge what was up/op and they said that they would make very minor adjustments in an attempt to reach balance rather than to do what many other games do (league of legends) which is to buff a class into opness or nurf it into uselessness when they attempt to “balance” it.

They seem to be doing what they said they would.

BTW, if you think league of legends is a balanced game you are just plain dumb. There are 10-15 champions that are obviously overpowered and ALWAYS used in tourneys. The rest are just crap. Does riot care? No they don’t care they would rather release more op champions than try and balance the 99 under powered champions that are never used in any kind of serious match…. got to keep your eye on the $ I guess.
The lack of balance in lol is one of the reasons I stopped playing it.

Dabu.1258:

I think nobody can explain it better than you. I’ve say the same about League of Legends is one of the most balanced games between characters, but the people was troll me :/

Im waiting more than you a great change in ALL clases to get this game balanced and see how WoW Die by GW2

Maybe because its a dumb thing to say. Any lol player who knows what they are talking about knows that there are a few serious champs and the rest you only use for giggles.

Gotta agree with the OP. Whack-a-Mole balancing leads me to fearing that thief will be nerfed into obilivion like EAWare did with SW:TOR’s Scoundrel/Operative class. Today most play a healer spec to feel any sense of viability in PvP in TOR.

Personally, I care less about thief nerfs or buffs, all I want is to fix stealth. I have FRAPS’d a lot of footage from sPvP and WvWvW where thief gets to hit once before his stealth fully removed. Normally I wouldnt mind that either but in this game 1 sec can cost you life since burst is quite high.

Balancing SHOULD be done slowly and in small incremental steps. Make a small change, measure the results, and repeat if necessary. The way that ANet is performing balancing is correct. High numbers of large changes makes the results of their changes almost impossible to measure, and leads to a VERY unstable game balance.

Pawstruck.9708:

I’m coming into the PVP scene here from League of Legends

I really need to thank Riot for printing idiot labels some day, it makes it so easy to identify you guys the instant you say anything.

If we’re talking about 5v5 structured , then yes , there are some specific builds that need fixing. What i see in most of the posts are people raging about thiefs and nothing else. That brings me to think , they spend way 2much time of the forums , and not ingame ,building a stable gamestyle against them. True or not , the thief does alot ,even if in the hands of a mediocre player. That mediocre player on the other hand makes other mediocre players , playing more “complex” classes such as necros and engis cry . I’m not going to go around on a leave britney alone type rant about how the thief are fine , for the job they are supposed to be , because in competitive games more than 50% of the builds people play are thief-proof. Bunker Guardians , bunker engis ,glass/shatter mesmers and staff support eles are way more overpowered than thiefs , yet people stay ignorant of those facts. The fixed Anet are dashing out with haste are infact an eye opener for what is wrong with the game because they have the most information about the things that are happening atm. Just open your patchnotes and read

everything i’ve heard about LoL balance is that they release a new hero, it’s way overtuned, it becomes super popular (everyone buys it, riot wins), and then they smash it down out of popularity just in time for the next new OP hero to come out.

that… sounds like whack-a-mole balance. a-net’s approach is the opposite. i think maybe they should hurry up and remove some of the stuff that’s not fun to play against, and then worry about balance, but in terms of creating a balanced game they are going about it the right way: slow and steady.

they need to give people time to adjust their strategies before they nerf something that’s considered too powerful (things that are considered “unfun” regardless of power are a slightly different matter).

(no reply buttons)
for me, i don’t think anet is “suffering from inaction” as if they’re undecided. i think it shows remarkably maturity. just because a few people do a lot of complaining, doesn’t mean there’s anything actually “wrong”. i don’t find thieves more annoying than most other classes. 1v1 it might not be fun, but i am usually playing casters, so, you know. getting stabbed by rogue classes goes with the territory. no point crying too much about it.

that said, i think anet studied things, rather than jumps on things at the first sign of a possible wobble. accumulate some data and see if there really is a problem or if people are just being silly enough to position themselves for the stabby stabby to get their kitten on.

a lot of times, the things which bug us are situational, rather than because of class balance. i’m sure there’s a few thieves who hate standing on walls, for example, when i’m raining fire down on their heads. killed a few that way, too. i always wonder if they swear at me.

and when attacking, a thief fell to my flames and was never able to be resurrected because i kept dropping fire on his dead corpse to prevent him from getting resurrected. i wonder if he hates my class, now?

personally, i like that anet take their time with these changes. it means, hopefully, they’ll make the right changes, rather than changes which are a panic response to some loud and rather shrill screaming which only ends up giving people even more to scream about because it wasn’t done properly…

I’m not sure where to start. Sounds like you heard the term whack-a-mole and wanted to use it.

Anet is moving slowly, deliberately, and in a consistent direction with regards to balance. The changes they make are minor and iterative.

Honestly, I can not think of a single game that was balanced in LESS of a ‘whack-a-mole’ fashion.

Carry on though, its your internet, QQ how ya wanna.

Keep in mind that LoL is a game focused 100% on PvP, and that is the only aspect to it. When RIOT sees a problem, it’s their sole job to fix it. Guild Wars 2 has dozens of other aspects that have priority over PvP because the majority of players do PvE (when I say PvP I refer to sPvP).

Stop reading when you said League of Legends is one of the most diverse yet balanced games out there for competitive play.

Diverse? yeah if you like Tanky DPS and a Stale meta game

Balanced? yeah if by that you mean every time Riot releases a champion they are OP as hell then get nerf to the ground when enough people has bought the champion.

Maybe if you would have said Dota 2 maybe I would have taken your post seriously.

Create a new champion OP and then nerf at 2 weeks is a COMERCIAL ESTRATEGY

I really like the balancing policy of Anet. Nothing is horribly imbalanced and they are slowly getting closer to the goal of a really decent balance. The problem if they did too many changes at once would be, that a class that got too many nerfs could suddenly become… sucky and a class that got too many buffs could become pretty op.
So they are buffing/nerfing small aspects of classes each week and observe the new balance… if there still is need of nerfs/buffs they will continue next week etc.
Sure its a bit slower than ultra long pathnotes… but they patch often and frequent and I like that approach.

And if you’re referring to lol:
You can’t overhaul a class in GW2 like you can overhaul a character in lol. In lol every character has got 4 skills. In GW2 every character has over 1000 skills + masteries. That would require an awefull lot of time to redesign.

Gelrod, if you like that balance, i invite you to make a Holder Engineer and try to kill a Thief/Necro/Mesmer

I’m not sure where to start. Sounds like you heard the term whack-a-mole and wanted to use it.

Thats the first thing i thought when i saw that.

Dabu.1258:

Gelrod, if you like that balance, i invite you to make a Holder Engineer and try to kill a Thief/Necro/Mesmer

And so you complain of blance just because a specific build does not hold up to specific classes, gj.

Honestly, Thief balance is tough. Take a look at virtually any weapon set. They have AA, condition damage skill, power damage skill, then utility. D/D is the best example. AA, Death Blossom (only good with condition builds), Heartseeker (only good with power), Dancing Dagger, and Cloak and Dagger.

Dancing Dagger is more of a ranged chasing option given its cripple, and not really a damaging skill. DB only works well with condition, HS only works well with power, and C&D costs too much to spam despite it’s high damage potential. You nerf HS, what does a power D/D Thief have for damage? Nerf DB, same issue for D/D condition Thieves. ANet put themselves in a rock and a hard place with balance on Thieves. Likely the reason the skillsets are like this is because of initiative – the root of Thief problems.

This is likely the reason for the small, incremental nerfs to Thief skills. Nerf one too hard, and it’s a broken weapon set.

i dont understand the “whack-a-mole” analogy

Animosity.5231:

Dancing Dagger is more of a ranged chasing option given its cripple, and not really a damaging skill. DB only works well with condition, HS only works well with power, and C&D costs too much to spam despite it’s high damage potential. You nerf HS, what does a power D/D Thief have for damage? Nerf DB, same issue for D/D condition Thieves.

Bleh Dancing dagger crits for like 3k on people and bounces, how can you even think that it’s not a damaging skill? I’ve died to “dancing dagger” more than all other thief skills combined. Mindlessly spamming it 3 times back to back does more ranged damage burst than a normal ranged profession

Back to the topic though, I’m happy with the changes ANET has made but I want more. I don’t have a very positive view of balance in spvp these days and it’s only getting worse. I’m constantly just facepalming at how there is very little to no parity between skills/traits across professions. The fore mentioned dancing dagger is one, also cluster bombs from thief? Why are these skills hitting so kitten hard. It just makes it so nerfing backstab/pistol whip isn’t even tackling the problem of thief being really strong, you just end up punishing people who like those skills.

Cooldowns/amount of stun breaks are all over the place, you have some things like mist form on 75 sec cd, yet elixir S is 60, pretty much the exact same move? Thief shadow step two stun breaks+teleport+condition removal on a 50 sec cd, ele lightning flash, less range 45 sec cd, no condition removal, no secondary skill attached to it. Pretty much every profession would kill for shadow step since it is a better version of every other stun break in the game. I’m not saying everyone needs the same exact skills and utility, but at least make it comparable to what everyone else is working with.

Here is an exercise in thought, put shadow step and Hide in shadows on a ranger, wouldn’t take long for ranger to become one of the best classes overnight just from adding two thief utility skills most people don’t even mention because they can’t get past their death log saying C&D 4k, Steal, 5k, Backstab 12k.

Actually I worked myself into fits writing this, I am not happy with all the changes ANET made. They nerfed every phantasm on mesmer besides Berserkers. The only one that didn’t get nerfed is the #1 worst offender for lamest skill in the game, it needs no line of sight, works through walls all you need is a target lock to make a lame kitten ghost that does 4-5k damage and cripples? Imagined burden can eat kitten all that did was cement shatter builds (already were better before) as the #1 mesmer spec and it’s as bad as ever.

OP, I totally agree. So far, the attempts at balancing have been weak, nonsensical whack-a-mole. Things that should have been nerfed aren’t, things that didn’t bother anyone are, and almost nothing that’s broken ever gets fixed. And we’re rapidly approaching the 2-month mark since release.

Personally, I’m definitely in the “making me want to leave” boat. In fact, I pretty much decided to give them one more chance – until next patch. If I don’t see changes that make sense or can be explained, and more fixes than just nerfs, I’m going to take a nice long break from this game. Luckily with recent releases over the past 3 weeks there’s TONS of games to play, and more coming in the next month or so.

The game is very, very promising, but so far I feel they’ve handled things terribly. Almost no communication, senseless changes that don’t solve anything (like the recent Mesmer nerf that really didn’t accomplish much), etc. Just getting tiresome.

madatom.5218:

i dont understand the “whack-a-mole” analogy

The OP recently read it in a update Anet made where they stated they are not rushing with nerfs and buffs to avoid the "whack-a-mole " balancing. So now the OP made a thread using those words to imply that Anet does exactly this.

It is a troll thread.