Guild Wars 2

Contrary to what most people would like to believe, it doesn’t make sense to think that the devs are purposely trying force each class to only have one viable build (or no viable builds if they get overshadowed by something else). This means there is almost no uncertainty in what somebody is running, just look at their class and you can predict every aspect of their build since it is so rare for people to try any other builds. They also added a lot more utility to the elite specs so they feel more powerful right away. However, this also make them easier to play. Therefore, I simply want to know why the devs chose this route. They could have just as easily made the elite specs have the same power level as the core specs and market the elite specs and another cool option rather than an entry ticket to PvP. Now of course that meant more people bought the expansion, but it also made a lot of the PvP community very unhappy with what the game turned into. This also seems very problematic for the next set of elite specs as those too are going to have to be a bit stronger than the HoT ones, otherwise the PvP players wont buy the next expansion.

This plan of power creep and build limiting just seems so backwards for a game that once tried to be an esport game. I would just like to know if there are any reasons that the devs have for this decision as it has drastically reduced my enjoyment of PvP.

Money…. they wanted HoT to sell and to entice players that pvp to buy into the more powerful specs.

And by them limiting Viable builds allows them to focus balance on the most widely used Meta builds

That not how any of this works.

Elite specs are dominant because they where all designed to fix fundamental flaws in the core class. (much of the core traits date back to pre-launch development)

The gulf between metabattle and well-crafted non-metabattle builds is minor to non-existant. The entire meta-or-bust idea comes from the fact that people like talk in absolutes.

Dr Patrik.3642:

Contrary to what most people would like to believe, it doesn’t make sense to think that the devs are purposely trying force each class to only have one viable build (or no viable builds if they get overshadowed by something else). This means there is almost no uncertainty in what somebody is running, just look at their class and you can predict every aspect of their build since it is so rare for people to try any other builds. They also added a lot more utility to the elite specs so they feel more powerful right away. However, this also make them easier to play. Therefore, I simply want to know why the devs chose this route. They could have just as easily made the elite specs have the same power level as the core specs and market the elite specs and another cool option rather than an entry ticket to PvP. Now of course that meant more people bought the expansion, but it also made a lot of the PvP community very unhappy with what the game turned into. This also seems very problematic for the next set of elite specs as those too are going to have to be a bit stronger than the HoT ones, otherwise the PvP players wont buy the next expansion.

This plan of power creep and build limiting just seems so backwards for a game that once tried to be an esport game. I would just like to know if there are any reasons that the devs have for this decision as it has drastically reduced my enjoyment of PvP.

in first term : they are “elite” not another build line, if the only word not says it suficient to you
second: this is a mater of release time, as every mmo gamescompany they pretend to have a game whith a high lifespam and, if they dont change plans, launching new elites every xpac they throw to marked, the build limitation is only a “temporaly” hindrance, but is “temporaly” for 2 or more years long
third: new elite not must to be stronger than HoT ones, must be only diferent. promoting a truly diferent game style for the class, making build diversity real and using one or another depending only of player game style and/or the current meta

First, just because it is called an “elite” spec doesn’t mean it has to make every class have one build that is so strong it it almost brain dead to play. I for one would much prefer a game with multiple viable builds for each class and no power-creep than have everyone play the exact same thing for each class. Also, I don’t care what it is called, I only care about how it affects the gameplay. Therefore, I do not want to give up build diversity all together because of a name, that’s ridiculous.

Second, I think it is a terrible idea to have 2 years of each class having at most one viable build. Then another 2 years of each class having at most 2 viable builds, and so on. That’s not fun, it is marketing destroying some of the fun aspects PvP once had.

It’s not that they want to. It is just that with extra skills and almost no downsides there is an inherent advantage to hot builds. On top of that Hot tried to fill in gaps of classes which gives the build most likely something unique and necessairy as wel.

Its just a matter of the designers not actually being that good at making something that is different without being stronger. There are a few pieces that add to it:

1. Most elite specs add capabilities to the class, but take nothing away. Only for Reaper and Dragonhunter does the new elite spec merely change the profession mechanic, meaning for the other 7 classes taking an elite is more, free skills. With reaper and DH, they didn’t even exercise good design because they made reaper skills and DH virtues FAR superior to deathshroud/base virtues.

2. Utility skills: Not only are the new skills in general stronger (they were developed with better understanding of what makes something good/bad), they were also given more work revising them and making them usable. Most base utility and weapon skills for classes have received little to no attention despite being wholly worthless throughout the game, while HoT skills have been adjusted multiple times, including through betas, to see wide use throughout the game (with very few still being useless).

3. Weapons: Power levels were chosen with more difficult PvE content in-mind (HoT areas are more challenging than even Orr, and Raids are more challenging still), so weapons were created that have more hard-mitigation, more CC, more damage, more mobility, etc. Everything has insanely low CD’s for what you get and compared to pre-HoT weapons on most classes.

4. General design incompetence. For many of the elite specs, the elites fixed problems of the base class without introducing new weaknesses. If I take chronomancer line, I immediately have perma near-swiftness, the ability to double-cast, and lots of alacrity for lower CD’s, but you aren’t all of a sudden worse at doing damage or more susceptible to CC. In fact, taking the elite line improves just about every build through free clone-factories. You get new roles, but no new holes.

What they could have done:
1. Locked off some utilities/trait-lines for elite specs. Making the base-profession trait-line a core “elite” would have forced some new “holes” on HoT specs and reduce total max-power.

2. Balance the power of the traits and abilities to some standard. When EVERY SINGLE HoT spec was immediately stronger than pre-HoT D/D ele (the standard for strongest build), you know there is no baseline they are working to. HoT skills should have longer CD’s, be fewer aoes, have less stability, and way less hard-mitigation.

3. (too late now) Make the elite specs truly different for every class. The worst offender here is probably ele, whose tempest spec is just “the same as you have always done (heals, cleanse, protection), just implemented slightly different”

Dr Patrik.3642:

Contrary to what most people would like to believe, it doesn’t make sense to think that the devs are purposely trying force each class to only have one viable build (or no viable builds if they get overshadowed by something else). This means there is almost no uncertainty in what somebody is running, just look at their class and you can predict every aspect of their build since it is so rare for people to try any other builds. They also added a lot more utility to the elite specs so they feel more powerful right away. However, this also make them easier to play. Therefore, I simply want to know why the devs chose this route. They could have just as easily made the elite specs have the same power level as the core specs and market the elite specs and another cool option rather than an entry ticket to PvP. Now of course that meant more people bought the expansion, but it also made a lot of the PvP community very unhappy with what the game turned into. This also seems very problematic for the next set of elite specs as those too are going to have to be a bit stronger than the HoT ones, otherwise the PvP players wont buy the next expansion.

This plan of power creep and build limiting just seems so backwards for a game that once tried to be an esport game. I would just like to know if there are any reasons that the devs have for this decision as it has drastically reduced my enjoyment of PvP.

Buy to Play model need to forced players to Buy the box.

If the elite spec would had been “side-grade”, some people thought they would not sell boxes to spvp players.

But… since they trivialized the build nature of the MMORPG battle arena… many players stop having fun with it and stop playing (and buying gems). Many of them will not buy the next expac, too.

:(

megilandil.7506:

new elite not must to be stronger than HoT ones, must be only diferent. promoting a truly diferent game style for the class, making build diversity real and using one or another depending only of player game style and/or the current meta

This is exactly what anet told us about how HoT elite specs will be and they either lied or failed miserably and haven’t done anything to change it. There is no reason to assume, they will make it better with the next expansion.

I think it is mainly because they designed the HoT specs/classes around pve. I thought the original idea for spvp was to enhance the horizontal progression system by giving players more choices for builds/abilities/etc.

However, they seem to have dumped that idea and focused on a vertical progression system that probably makes a lot of sense for pve, but is pretty lame from a pvp perspective.

Sales on first places, duhhh. Now that they collected money from majority of players who would be willing to pay for xpac they actually slowly tone down specs. The problem is pve. Raids are designed around specs so they will never be brought down to core levels.

They want elite specs to be really attractive.

TBH, players on this forum contribute a lot to make the new profession and elite spec to be very overpowered in the first place.

Do you guys still remember the first couple of revenant testing weekends? The profession was so weak back then. But afterwards, players started to give the devs a lot of suggestions to make the profession strong and lots of those ideas are taken. Players who give suggestions love the profession they are giving ideas on. So they simply want the profession to be strong and have new shiny stuff. When you combine all those ideas onto one profession, the profession ends up being overpowered.

Similar story for other new elite specs, players on forum give ideas to make every weapon skill, utility skill and traits strong and powerful. The elite spec is bound to be very strong being developed that way.

Exciton.8942:

They want elite specs to be really attractive.

TBH, players on this forum contribute a lot to make the new profession and elite spec to be very overpowered in the first place.

Do you guys still remember the first couple of revenant testing weekends? The profession was so weak back then. But afterwards, players started to give the devs a lot of suggestions to make the profession strong and lots of those ideas are taken. Players who give suggestions love the profession they are giving ideas on. So they simply want the profession to be strong and have new shiny stuff. When you combine all those ideas onto one profession, the profession ends up being overpowered.

Similar story for other new elite specs, players on forum give ideas to make every weapon skill, utility skill and traits strong and powerful. The elite spec is bound to be very strong being developed that way.

That is half truth. We also left a lot of feedback from beta saying what is overtuned or not. It was ignored and devs just went with overtuned version.

Power creep happens in most expansions which is probably fine. Some classes just got a bit too much.

Anet probably knew Stronghold wouldn’t sell, so they made it free but they needed money so they decided to kitten their own game and just introduce ridiculous powercreep for money. Don’t expect a fix because they are already working on expansion 2 and we’re left to rot until they can get more money out of us.

“Best” case scenario: xpac 2 will have elite specs of the same level as we currently do but they nerf the kitten out of the current ones to make sure we buy it.

Worst case: next elite specs will introduce a level of powercreep that will kill what’s left of PvP.

There called “Elite” speculations, which means its supposed to be the best in slot spec. When new elite speculations are added into the game, you will be forced to pick only one of them and adapt to the changed play styles.

My assumption is, Anet created the elite specs to deal with the much more difficult content in PVE, before they focused on PVP. Thats why at first you didn’t see a lot of skills with a PVP only version. However, Grouch has confirmed there will be more separation of PVE and PVP via the skills. There was a post where he said in the past it wasn’t entirely possible to do this.

Grouch says:
“Developed some tech that makes skill-splitting more feasible than it was previously.”

“It’s important to understand that changes will still need to be global, but we’ll definitely have a bit more flexibility moving forward.”

I’d like to hope that when new elite specs are added into the game, it only gives players another way to play a class rather than add power creep. But, like I said before, the original power creep most likely came from the aftermath of harder PVE content.

Post source:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Insert-Dev-Bait-Here/first#post6227666

BlackBeard.2873:

Its just a matter of the designers not actually being that good at making something that is different without being stronger. There are a few pieces that add to it:

1. Most elite specs add capabilities to the class, but take nothing away. Only for Reaper and Dragonhunter does the new elite spec merely change the profession mechanic, meaning for the other 7 classes taking an elite is more, free skills. With reaper and DH, they didn’t even exercise good design because they made reaper skills and DH virtues FAR superior to deathshroud/base virtues.

2. Utility skills: Not only are the new skills in general stronger (they were developed with better understanding of what makes something good/bad), they were also given more work revising them and making them usable. Most base utility and weapon skills for classes have received little to no attention despite being wholly worthless throughout the game, while HoT skills have been adjusted multiple times, including through betas, to see wide use throughout the game (with very few still being useless).

3. Weapons: Power levels were chosen with more difficult PvE content in-mind (HoT areas are more challenging than even Orr, and Raids are more challenging still), so weapons were created that have more hard-mitigation, more CC, more damage, more mobility, etc. Everything has insanely low CD’s for what you get and compared to pre-HoT weapons on most classes.

4. General design incompetence. For many of the elite specs, the elites fixed problems of the base class without introducing new weaknesses. If I take chronomancer line, I immediately have perma near-swiftness, the ability to double-cast, and lots of alacrity for lower CD’s, but you aren’t all of a sudden worse at doing damage or more susceptible to CC. In fact, taking the elite line improves just about every build through free clone-factories. You get new roles, but no new holes.

What they could have done:
1. Locked off some utilities/trait-lines for elite specs. Making the base-profession trait-line a core “elite” would have forced some new “holes” on HoT specs and reduce total max-power.

2. Balance the power of the traits and abilities to some standard. When EVERY SINGLE HoT spec was immediately stronger than pre-HoT D/D ele (the standard for strongest build), you know there is no baseline they are working to. HoT skills should have longer CD’s, be fewer aoes, have less stability, and way less hard-mitigation.

3. (too late now) Make the elite specs truly different for every class. The worst offender here is probably ele, whose tempest spec is just “the same as you have always done (heals, cleanse, protection), just implemented slightly different”

This is a great post. I played recently for the first time in ages and was shocked how spammy the game was. I also didnt fully understand how bad the design of elite specs was. Did they not have experienced design teams working on these?

Imagine if an expansion came out for hearthstone and suddenly instead of getting a 3/2 for 2 you got a 4/3 for 2. That obsoletes everything that came before. These elite specs obsolete everything that came before.

Money!
But they going to wrong way. You can see LoL and Dota those successful game.
Today! Balance and Easy join = Number , Number = Money.
Gw2’s game mode and HoT PVP block block block 12345 + PVE Raid farm + Less update. make New player haven’t a well survival environment. So they have No Number = No Money.

And you can take this for reference.

Where are HoT Power creep come from? -> RAID

example:
How to break a boss’s defiance Bar in 5 – 10 sec?
answer:
numerous CC skill ->
PVP… CC aoe , CC CD out of control

example:
How to make condi damage become MUST in raid?
answer:
condi can be stack and increase damage, make some condi hurting mode for boss->
PVP… condi kind , stack , time out of control -> cleaning become MUST -> cleaning CD , effect area out of control

example:
How to make long survival time and tank under raid boss’s crazy damage?
answer:
increase block , dodge , inv , movement , healing ->
PVP… less touch time , hard to kill people -> increase damage, boon stack out of control

example:
How to kill the raid boss/minions in a limit time and under raid’s crazy damage?
answer:
increase damage , def & off same time skill , AoE damage skill , AoE cc skill , AoE condi skill , boon stack , condi stack …… ->
PVP… Just put AoE in that smaaaaallll circle PLEASE!

Who know the best MMO of 2012 become this kitten in 2016?
Today, GW2 have this bad result.
I have to say :
Raid do their BEST Job. 5%ppls kill other 95%ppls
A Best Fail Model in Game History

From https://np.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3opycg/arenanet_unveil_the_future_of_competitive_guild/cvzfp12/

“Simple answer: the elite specs should be balanced so you don’t need to have them in PvP, but can choose to use them if you like. There are plenty of top tier PvP builds today a P4F player can walk in and instantly use, that will still be true when HoT ships.

This is night and day compared to other MMO’s where you need to get all your gear, levels, etc. before you can start PvP’ing (or some other genres of games where you need to level up to get all the abilities, or all the “top” tier heroes are behind pay walls).

Hope that helps a bit, I think it’s a fair criticism and I could have been more clear in the interview with that answer. " ~Former Game Director Colin Johanson

Any other way,
If you want to play PVP in HoT.

You except need to know skill rotation for your class and
You MUST need to know all other class their skill rotation.
If not, you just have two result:

1.You can’t make any damage for any enemy because of less touch time in that block block block 12345 rotation. even if you know that rotation. you also need to know How to Burst. If not, you still can’t make any kill or enough damage.

2.Dead in a Sec. The damage all are out of control because of less touch time. If you a New player that you don’t know how all other class skill rotation work and don’t make your def rotation. You sure Die.

If Anet think a new player can do above things that main they all are crazy. New player even can’t make a right time dodge. who want to play a game that die again again and again? how many ppls can keep to play it until they know all class skill? That why GW2 have this poor player base.

My theory is that all future elite specs will be balanced against the current one. So, you’re just gonna have 2 base lines and always pick a 3rd elite line. All the elites will be equal to eachother. That’s how they get ya to buy the expansions. If you want something different, but equal in terms of power, gotta buy more expansions. Forget about having 3 core lines, thats a thing of the past. There will always be 2 core lines + whatever new elite lines they roll out, I’m pretty sure that’s their angle. It makes sense from a business standpoint. I would do it if I were trying to sell an expansion.

Think about it this way. What incentive do pvp and wvw players have to buy the expansion if the new elite specs are the same power as core specs? None whatsoever. Just keep playing core for free and win if you’re good. Want to stay competitive? Have to buy the expansion. Pvers will buy it no question for all the new skins, dungeons, maps, etc. So that’s really the only way the can get pvpers and wvwers to buy the expansion since we dont care about any of that stuff. It’s what I would do. You know you’d do the same if you were in charge of their marketing. It logically makes sense.

If everything stayed the same would you still play the game? No. Some creep is needed to prevent stagnation.

Nikkinella.8254:

My theory is that all future elite specs will be balanced against the current one. So, you’re just gonna have 2 base lines and always pick a 3rd elite line. All the elites will be equal to eachother. That’s how they get ya to buy the expansions. If you want something different, but equal in terms of power, gotta buy more expansions. Forget about having 3 core lines, thats a thing of the past. There will always be 2 core lines + whatever new elite lines they roll out, I’m pretty sure that’s their angle. It makes sense from a business standpoint. I would do it if I were trying to sell an expansion.

Think about it this way. What incentive do pvp and wvw players have to buy the expansion if the new elite specs are the same power as core specs? None whatsoever. Just keep playing core for free and win if you’re good. Want to stay competitive? Have to buy the expansion. Pvers will buy it no question for all the new skins, dungeons, maps, etc. So that’s really the only way the can get pvpers and wvwers to buy the expansion since we dont care about any of that stuff. It’s what I would do. You know you’d do the same if you were in charge of their marketing. It logically makes sense.

Their marketing always is a funny man. Kill the chicken and get the egg.
Today, Number is everything. Other mean nothing.

What is a scourge of power creep?
Let’s see how the system works.
The answer is easy.
Power creep break the pillar of that pyramid : Balance and Fair
Then all thing are broken. You can see the number of viewer from WTS and ESL. This is really poor.

And you can see why number is everything.