Guild Wars 2

I just hope they do it right, and bring other weapons and skills to compensate. And that goes for all classes we need more variety in my opinion. I think this game as a whole should have builds that are able to be made up, that are challenging to play but also very rewarding if played right.

Because at this time there are 1 or 2 dominate builds out there per class give or take. And when u try some other things out there is such a big drop from meta build A, that build b just isn’t worth running, this is the case for all or most classes anyhow. In the end what I’m trying to say is, and I think most people who love to play this game would like to see more variety and styles of how to play your character that would make a person/ character class unique and rewarding. Hope this makes sense just how I feel personally .

I agree with you, but I also believe that there are a lot of meta-quality builds that are already waiting to be discovered. I use three engineer builds that I know no other player on the NA servers uses. Sensotix over on EU uses a sword/torch shatter mesmer and I know he’s got some interesting trait allocations. Stunningstyles, Google, Five Gauge, CMC, Eurantien, and others all use builds that to my knowledge, no other player uses.

I agree that it’s way to easy to just roll hambow and not have to think about actually theorycrafting a creative build; however, it’s also something of a cop-out to say that nothing else can compete with that. I’ll be glad when the adjustments come and I think warrior players will get a more satisfying playstyle, too.

I’m just saying there are top-tier builds waiting to be discovered, and it’s not really fair to point to FOTM builds and say that there’s nothing else that can compete.

There are lots of builds out there, but one will always be considered “optimal” for any given class. For warrior alone I could name like 5 or 6 builds. It is inevitable that they will be tested, compared, and that one will achieve dominance over the others.

If they keep buffing every time they nerf they will never stop the power creep that is currently very problematic with this game.

In the first ~8 months of the game it was mostly nerfs and bugfixes going out. That was fine. In the last ~6 months they seemed to change their philosophy (based on misguided advice from the playerbase, unfortunately) and started buffing things that were less used. Many of these buffs have turned into something from the Little Shop of Horrors. Spirit changes, necro changes, warrior changes – these buffs all were disastrous. For reasons I do not understand, instead of reverting or toning down the buffs, they have continued on the path of nerfing things unrelated to the buff in an attempt to bring things back into line (spirits OP? lets nerf healing spring. dhumfire OP? lets nerf terror and bleed stacks. Signet OP? lets nerf stun duration on all classes).

The devs need to know when to suck it up and roll back or tone down changes they made instead of spiraling further down into the abyss. They are currently playing the very game of Whack-a-mole they have stated so many times they want to avoid in State of the Game webcasts earlier this year.

Kavia.8249:

There are lots of builds out there, but one will always be considered “optimal” for any given class. For warrior alone I could name like 5 or 6 builds. It is inevitable that they will be tested, compared, and that one will achieve dominance over the others.

If they keep buffing every time they nerf they will never stop the power creep that is currently very problematic with this game.

In the first ~8 months of the game it was mostly nerfs and bugfixes going out. That was fine. In the last ~6 months they seemed to change their philosophy (based on misguided advice from the playerbase, unfortunately) and started buffing things that were less used. Many of these buffs have turned into something from the Little Shop of Horrors. Spirit changes, necro changes, warrior changes – these buffs all were disastrous. For reasons I do not understand, instead of reverting or toning down the buffs, they have continued on the path of nerfing things unrelated to the buff in an attempt to bring things back into line (spirits OP? lets nerf healing spring. dhumfire OP? lets nerf terror and bleed stacks. Signet OP? lets nerf stun duration on all classes).

The devs need to know when to suck it up and roll back or tone down changes they made instead of spiraling further down into the abyss. They are currently playing the very game of Whack-a-mole they have stated so many times they want to avoid in State of the Game webcasts earlier this year.

It is NOT bad advice to make less used weapon sets and skills more powerful. That adds to a more dynamic game. The issue is that if ANET over buffs or under nerfs items, they do not fix the mistake. Itself they add a whole series of other counters that results in a game that is never balanced.

degoking.1482:

I just hope they do it right

Agreed, the game is in such weird state in the sense that a lot of stuff is overpowered in it’s own way. Which kind of equates to balance in it’s own way, but the balance only exists among the top tier builds. So the moment you deviate from the meta you just get absolutely wrecked.

It’s going to be difficult to adjust what they broke and I worry they’re going to botch it on the first patch, meaning they’ll just remove some things overpowered from the meta while leaving the others to dominate even harder.

Kavia.8249:

There are lots of builds out there, but one will always be considered “optimal” for any given class. For warrior alone I could name like 5 or 6 builds. It is inevitable that they will be tested, compared, and that one will achieve dominance over the others.

If they keep buffing every time they nerf they will never stop the power creep that is currently very problematic with this game.

In the first ~8 months of the game it was mostly nerfs and bugfixes going out. That was fine. In the last ~6 months they seemed to change their philosophy (based on misguided advice from the playerbase, unfortunately) and started buffing things that were less used. Many of these buffs have turned into something from the Little Shop of Horrors. Spirit changes, necro changes, warrior changes – these buffs all were disastrous. For reasons I do not understand, instead of reverting or toning down the buffs, they have continued on the path of nerfing things unrelated to the buff in an attempt to bring things back into line (spirits OP? lets nerf healing spring. dhumfire OP? lets nerf terror and bleed stacks. Signet OP? lets nerf stun duration on all classes).

The devs need to know when to suck it up and roll back or tone down changes they made instead of spiraling further down into the abyss. They are currently playing the very game of Whack-a-mole they have stated so many times they want to avoid in State of the Game webcasts earlier this year.

I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.

So I do agree that power creep is a problem, and that the forums saying “X needs a massive buff to be viable!” is a problem. I’m just not sure what they were supposed to do differently. The forums had been screaming for buffs to warriors, necros, and rangers for months. There were accusations of “intentionally keeping the meta stale” and just being too lazy to fix things. The slow, steady path they were on may have eventually worked out, but in some cases, it would have been years before certain professions would have been taken seriously.

On build variety, I do honestly believe that more than one build can be considered optimal. Is Five Gauge is the highest-ranked engineer on the NA servers, but almost no one else uses his build. I don’t think that’s because he’s using a sub-optimal build. Nor do I think all other engineers should re-roll to his build because it’s objectively the “best.” Actually, I don’t think more than 2 or 3 engineers in the top 500 team/solo use the same build at all, so there’s that.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.

So I do agree that power creep is a problem, and that the forums saying “X needs a massive buff to be viable!” is a problem. I’m just not sure what they were supposed to do differently. The forums had been screaming for buffs to warriors, necros, and rangers for months. There were accusations of “intentionally keeping the meta stale” and just being too lazy to fix things. The slow, steady path they were on may have eventually worked out, but in some cases, it would have been years before certain professions would have been taken seriously.

On build variety, I do honestly believe that more than one build can be considered optimal. Is Five Gauge is the highest-ranked engineer on the NA servers, but almost no one else uses his build. I don’t think that’s because he’s using a sub-optimal build. Nor do I think all other engineers should re-roll to his build because it’s objectively the “best.” Actually, I don’t think more than 2 or 3 engineers in the top 500 team/solo use the same build at all, so there’s that.

I agree its with the benefit of hindsight now that we are able to see the flaws in the “big buffs to what is not used” and then “lets not revert the big buffs but now tweak unrelated stuff” strategy. I just hope the PvP balance folks can learn from these mistakes.

Kavia.8249:

I agree its with the benefit of hindsight now that we are able to see the flaws in the “big buffs to what is not used” and then “lets not revert the big buffs but now tweak unrelated stuff” strategy. I just hope the PvP balance folks can learn from these mistakes.

Agreed. That’s going to be really hard, though. It means they have to not over-buff elementalists, which will be tough since the forums will ask for large buffs. And it’s very difficult to revert something you’ve already implemented. I’m also hopeful that they’ll just be willing to ease back some of the things they overshot (like healing signet—needed a buff, didn’t need to be doubled). But again, that’s difficult for a game company to do.

NevirSayDie.6235:

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I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.
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u should rewatch the update-history. warriors where used after certain key-changes nearly immediatly

hooma.9642:

NevirSayDie.6235:

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I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.
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u should rewatch the update-history. warriors where used after certain key-changes nearly immediatly

Oh I know, but they didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. Sorry for repeating myself.

NevirSayDie.6235:

hooma.9642:

NevirSayDie.6235:

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I agree, but that’s a bit easy to say now. Back in March, how many people really thought warriors shouldn’t be buffed? And even after being buffed to essentially their current state this summer, warriors didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. There was a period of about two months in which warriors were faceroll powerful but no one knew it because we were all too busy complaining about necros.
…

u should rewatch the update-history. warriors where used after certain key-changes nearly immediatly

Oh I know, but they didn’t become popular until a little over a month ago. Sorry for repeating myself.

They were strong for a while. It’s just recently after the last patch that people from other classes (like Ele) couldn’t stand it any more and re-roll a warrior. That’s why it looks like their population spiked.

When a class becomes OP, people don’t switch right away. They complain about it first. After a few months, they will get frustrate, lose faith, and switch, or quit.