Guild Wars 2

Anet gets back from holidays jan 21st I think.. So no sooner than that.

The next Living World update is on January 21st. That will begin the last Chapter of the Scarlet arc which will expand over the next 4 Living World updates.

It’s unclear if any of these Living World updates will contain any balance changes.

You must know ANet by now. A balance update more than once every 4 months is clearly too much to ask.

This is especially worrisome because they promised a big feature update at the end of this Living World chapter, which conveniently coincides with the launch of TESO.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if we were stuck without balance changes until this “feature update” in April.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/When-is-the-next-Ready-Up

check the 6th post

There is going to be a “Ready Up” on the 17th

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/When-is-the-next-Ready-Up/first#post3465249

nicknamenick.2437:

Last update has been a month ago, still zero info about upcomming updates or any balancing..

Any news?

Coming from wow myself where we see balance patches like once every 5-6 months. Is it normal that games get like monthly balancepatches or something? I mean where do people get expectations like this?

Dont get me wrong. Id really like pvp specific updates. But more stuff like new gamemodes, fixes to existing maps, improved laddersystems/seasons, etc

I hope for an adjust meta patch soon. I do not want a complete new meta. But they could look at the changes for some classes and judge them. I mean 5% less here and 5% more somewhere else would help a lot.

None of the balance patches actually do anything. Small tweaks should be in mature games. This game has literally hundreds of grossly terrible things which are out of place or just horribly bad including:

Traits – many traits are brokenly bad and make specs unviable – espicially minor specs. They also often have traits wildly out of position.

Utilities and elites – many of these are just worthlessly bad and nobody would ever take them. Probably 70% are worthless.

Weapon skills – many weapon skills are inherently bad compared to others which are brokenly op

Runes – People use about 3/4 rune sets out of 30-40 or whatever? lol

Sigils – pretty much sigil of energy is what people use because why wouldnt you. What a joke. Again they do nothing about this.

This game is a mature game.

However I know what it is like working for somewhere with limited resources. The employees at anet will have a list of things they know they WANT to do that is as long as their arm. However, they simply cannot deliver these things sadly because things take time and resources. Things get pushed sideways and under the carpet. They need new blood in their balance team just to break through what seems like a lethargic attitude. Then the current team will get reinvigorated and fall back in love with their balancing of the game. A patch which just overhauls 40-50 traits (moving them around, buffing and redesigning) is needed. They should of been working on this 12 months ago really.

There is so much to do because the release product was unfinished from a build diversity perspective. Many classes have 1/2 traits which just are way too good and then 15/20 traits which are just horrible. This kills build diversity. Especially when these traits are minor traits.

Do they have the skills at anet to do such a huge re-balancing? I gave up hope and that is why I quit.

tl;dr; they focus too much on balance now than on replayability. They should throw balance out of the window and just make the game have many different options to give it more variety. Then once all the stuff (runes, skills, traits, sigils) is at least partially useful then they should balance the game

Example: They nerf bleeds on necro weapons. This does help balance because it nerfs the condi necro build. But it doesnt help build diversity and variety (aka FUN) because it makes necro more and more dependent on terror and dhuumfire. This is all they do – they balance for today when there is no point in this because there is no competitive scene. They should just add variety and then balance when the game actually has variety.

They said we could expect a patch preview early January. Since the ready-up thread mentions they’re going to discuss balance changes in it, I would hope the patch note reveal would be before that.

I also agree with the above poster that there’s simply so much wrong with this game that another year of tackling the ‘low hanging fruit’ instead of having substantive changes is not going to fly.

Actual competition is coming out this year. They’re going to have to take things a little more seriously.

I don’t have a problem with Anet being slow, as long as each patch puts the gameplay at a better situation than the patch before. And in a way, that has indeed been the case for most of the balancing patches.

The problem here was the June patch. It suddenly screwed the balancing Anet worked for beforehand, put the meta at a worse state than at launch, and is now taking forever for that situation to be reverted.

But ultimately, it wasn’t a balancing problem, because let’s be fair, even if a few buffs made a profession or two OP, that could have been simply fixed. The problem is that the core gameplay of GW2 lacks a system to prevent spam and mindless playing, and so every single little buff can be the difference between unviable or spammy, with no middle ground inbetween. This makes GW2 very hard to balance for, because it greatly restricts what the balancers can or not without leading the gameplay to all sorts of spam.

It’s interesting how a GW1-esque energy system could potentially tone down almost every issue with GW2’s combat. The pace of combat, the cost/ reward ratio for skills, the spam, while even being an additional tool for balancing. It wouldn’t only fix the overload of passive and AI effects.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I don’t have a problem with Anet being slow, as long as each patch puts the gameplay at a better situation than the patch before. And in a way, that has indeed been the case for most of the balancing patches.

The problem here was the June patch. It suddenly screwed the balancing Anet worked for beforehand, put the meta at a worse state than at launch, and is now taking forever for that situation to be reverted.

But ultimately, it wasn’t a balancing problem, because let’s be fair, even if a few buffs made a profession or two OP, that could have been simply fixed. The problem is that the core gameplay of GW2 lacks a system to prevent spam and mindless playing, and so every single little buff can be the different between unviable or spammy, with no middleground inbetween.

It’s interesting how a GW1-esque energy system could potentially tone down almost every issue with GW2’s combat. The pace of combat, the cost/ reward ratio for skills, the spam, while even being an additional tool for balancing. It wouldn’t only fix the overload of passive and AI effects.

It cannot ever not be spammy actually. The game is balanced around pve and pvp combined. The pve system requires auto attacks to have no cooldowns and to be relatively strong.

Auto attacks are skills which are zero risk and high reward. No coolddown or resource management. In fact you dont even have to click 11111, it happens automatically.

You cant have a skilled game where the top builds are destined to be based around auto attacks.

Prime examples:

Mesmer greatsword, ranger shortbow, necro scepter.

But there are many others. These are made worse by passives which proc on attack or crit. Dhuumfire turns the necro auto attack from “ok” to “incredible”. Same with sun spirit FOR EVERYONE LOL.

They can never fix this auto attack problem. However they could nerf the passives which buff them to help the issue.

AI Pets belong to this game. Pets are in every game and that is ok. But what is not ok is that it takes longer to kill a pet as a player. And some classes have 3+ pets and a short recast timer.

Lordrosicky.5813:

It cannot ever not be spammy actually. The game is balanced around pve and pvp combined. The pve system requires auto attacks to have no cooldowns and to be relatively strong.

Auto attacks are skills which are zero risk and high reward. No coolddown or resource management. In fact you dont even have to click 11111, it happens automatically.

You cant have a skilled game where the top builds are destined to be based around auto attacks.

Prime examples:

Mesmer greatsword, ranger shortbow, necro scepter.

But there are many others. These are made worse by passives which proc on attack or crit. Dhuumfire turns the necro auto attack from “ok” to “incredible”. Same with sun spirit FOR EVERYONE LOL.

They can never fix this auto attack problem. However they could nerf the passives which buff them to help the issue.

PvE’s content would be a lot more exciting with weaker auto-attacks too.

Anet can simply change their design philosophy behind auto-attacks. AAs should be engines for the rest of build, and not the main damage source.

From an elementalist’s point of view, here’s what I consider to be good auto-attacks design-wise:
Lava Axe: mediocre damage, might-stacking.
Arc Lightning: mediocre/ decent damage, crit-proc engine, long casting time.
Vapor Blade: mediocre damage, vulnerability-stacking, easy to move away from.

And this is what I consider a really boring auto-attack:
Lightning Swing – Static Swing – Thunderclap: Very high cleave damage, spammable blast finishers, spammable blind.

PvE is awfully boring for an elementalist because most of what they do is to spam that AA on bosses.

Locuz.2651:

Coming from wow myself where we see balance patches like once every 5-6 months. Is it normal that games get like monthly balancepatches or something? I mean where do people get expectations like this?

Dont get me wrong. Id really like pvp specific updates. But more stuff like new gamemodes, fixes to existing maps, improved laddersystems/seasons, etc

The issue isn’t entirely the time-frame.
GW2 was released half finished, the game was running but the gameplay was half baked.
Since the developers didn’t get lucky, the game requires large and well done changes to have a shot at holding on to any sizeable population.

The issue is that Anet isn’t releasing large or well done changes…
People complain about timeframe because few are willing to wait the years it will take for issues to be worked out, in the current way of things.
One way to fix that is for the devs to just spew out changes faster.

But they aren’t.
More shockingly, they haven’t really done anything.
Sure the devs twiddle their thumbs and balance specs, but the gameplay has plateud out where it hasn’t gotten worse.
The main thing Anet has actually accomplished (company, not necessarily devs) is drowning any hope most anyone could ever have in this game.
People will always be skepticle about big name PvP MMOs now.

Lordrosicky.5813:

It cannot ever not be spammy actually. The game is balanced around pve and pvp combined. The pve system requires auto attacks to have no cooldowns and to be relatively strong.

No pve is never taken in account when balancing…
In the remote necessity it is, a split is made….but only if a pvp balance is totally gamebreaking (and even then……).

They “try” to balance pve adjusting mobs, events and dungeons…..(they said something like this).