Guild Wars 2

In your opinion will the feature patch help the game? We might as well speculate on what is coming based on leaked information and prior experience.

We have already been told the balance changes (in ready up and on the balance forum). Prior experience shows us that these will be close to all the balance changes in the actual patch. So it is unlikely thief will be addressed. AH bunker guard (bunker), spirit ranger (support), warrior (transition class) and thief (roamer) will thus all likely still be the apex predators of the game for another 3-6 months. Necro gets hit really hard which is a good thing in isolation, is there still hope anet will do similar significant nerfs to other strong builds in your opinion?

Then there is the sigil and rune changes. And the addition of at least one amulet. Obviously these are both frightening and good. To outwiegh all my concerns, I am really impressed they are doing this sigil and rune rework. It has been needed for a long time and REALLY should freshen things up for at least 3 months. Really will be interesting to finally be able to buildcraft and have fun testing things out again as a team and individually.

However, this general happiness comes with some concerns. Obviously warriors are receiving one of the largest buffs possible as they will be able to equip 4 on-swap sigils and get 4 such buffs every 10 seconds. Thus, however the sigils are balanced – warriors will always be top of the tree. I suspect warrior will come out of these sigil changes really dominant again. Perhaps, though, an overdue lyssa rune nerf will give warriors something to think about. As warrior and thief are the two classes which abuse lyysa runes the most. My main concern with this is that arenanet will follow their usual “buff everything mindlessly” approach. So maybe they will make lyssa runes the power level which they will buff everything to.

New game modes are obviously what everyone has wanted for 2-3 years. During alpha it was leaked that gw2 designers went against strong feedback on conquest being the only game mode being bad. Finally they have relented and listened to the community. But how much have they listened is the question. Do you think this game mode (as has been rumoured) will be hotjoin only? If it is hotjoin only how frustrated will that make you? Personally, if it is hotjoin only I am 100% (instead of 95%) done with this game. I rarely play for 3 months now, and if the new game mode is hotjoin only then I will feel lied to again and will uninstall. Surely they wouldn’t make such a mistake? I hope the rumours are incorrect, although usually they are not.

So overall, I am hopeful about the feature patch helping the game. If I was a betting man I would bet on the following:
1, Balance becoming more cheesy with more power creep
2, Sigils changes making warrior unstoppable
3, The new game mode being hotjoin only

Number 3 on the list above is the big one of course. Time will tell. The fact anet haven’t come out and said whether the new game mode will be hotjoin only is just indicative of the poor communication we receive from them. Good developers share their vision of the game. We aren’t talking about time tables here or even specific features. We are talking about a high level vision that players can buy into. If they came out and said their vision is a new game mode that is only in hotjoin then we could all happily quit now.

Stumbled across this episode recently and I had to notice that it discribes ANet’s communication on upcoming releases perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inePC0E_atg
(Big Stuff!)
Don’t take it as offensive please, it’s just funny.

It could be very interesting. On my (axe) warrior I may run sigil of doom, which could well turn hambow warriors into putty. This could be a theme across condi builds too, having a big impact on the warrior meta. It’s too early to say if warrior will become god mode IMO.

If there’s an insurgence of on crit dps or on swap condi sigils, hard damage mitigation may become more popular (that means fewer face-tank builds). It could also push the bunker meta to a greater extreme however if this leads to simply too many attacks that require mitigation.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see, the main thing is things will change!

Well main problem of most people is lack of game modes I think. All comes down to condi/bunkering atm. If they don’t do anything in that direction, spvp is doomed.

For me maybe.

For most people no, because they are probably setting their expectations to unrealistic levels.

We know next to nothing about the upcoming features, so who knows…

But I don’t think that we’re not just dealing with a “feature patch”. I believe we’re in a situation where the next couple patches will be feature-oriented as the devs have never said that everything will be coming in one patch, nor is it possible.

If I were to speculate on anything, it would be that the march 18th patch is going to be somewhat small and that anything of real consequence will come in the patch after that.

Dahkeus.8243:

If I were to speculate on anything, it would be that the march 18th patch is going to be somewhat small and that anything of real consequence will come in the patch after that.

Not to be that guy, but everything you said is not speculation it is exactly what they told us was going to happen months ago.

The feature build needs to have the changes equal to that of an expansion in order to justify the time between updates.

silvermember.8941:

Dahkeus.8243:

If I were to speculate on anything, it would be that the march 18th patch is going to be somewhat small and that anything of real consequence will come in the patch after that.

Not to be that guy, but everything you said is not speculation it is exactly what they told us was going to happen months ago.

Well…then I prefer to think of it as exceptionally accurate speculation!

Since Anet doesnt use a PTR the changes will go live without community feedback. This will mean that it will be a patch filled with gambles.

So it could be really good or it could be really bad (or anything in between).

Not much will change really. Some OP stuff might get fixed, but other OP stuff will MOST DEFINITELY be created, and we’ll have to deal with after-effects for another year before they reduce those things by 8%. People will come back to try the new changes for a couple of weeks before they realize that things have either not changed enough, or have way over-corrected and the new brainlessly OP specs made are even less fun than hambow/decap/pistolwhip/MM. People might actually yearn for the days of “hambow everywhere,” sadly.

It’s impossible to achieve balance by only making changes every 3-4 months, especially without extensive testing from a LARGE group of people (the alpha testers they have are clearly letting them down if they are expected to help make things balanced).

Dahkeus.8243:

We know next to nothing about the upcoming features, so who knows…

But I don’t think that we’re not just dealing with a “feature patch”. I believe we’re in a situation where the next couple patches will be feature-oriented as the devs have never said that everything will be coming in one patch, nor is it possible.

If I were to speculate on anything, it would be that the march 18th patch is going to be somewhat small and that anything of real consequence will come in the patch after that.

The devs did say that everything would be in one big feature patch. Quoting Colin directly:

“We’ll go into more detail soon, just to re-iterate so it’s clear:
“The next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.”
A feature release is not an expansion, it’s a release focused on game features. Examples of game features we’ve done in the past would be: guild missions, account achievement system, spectator mode, new pvp maps, daily world boss chests, removing culling and giving visibility options, the WvW WxP system, etc”

So yes, it will all be in the feature patch.

#Evanlesh4Ceo&Prez

It really depends on when it comes out. If pvp is without rewards and communication for over a month, I expect the fallout will be high enough that most pvp players won’t bother coming back. If it comes out two weeks after reward removal, then it may do wonders for the remaining players. I’m skeptical of the release date and think the pvp corpse will be far too dead to be revitalized by the patch.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Yes fifteen times.

Is the feature build strictly a pvp build by the way?

jayvux.4128:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Yes fifteen times.

Is the feature build strictly a pvp build by the way?

No, it is a bunch of everything.

People will be to busy to care for gw2 updates when they have shiny new games to play with this and next month. It is to late for gw2 pvp scene.

iirc evan lesh is a god… so i guess this patch will be good if he says so

Hambow warriors are strong because they have:
– passive healing
– lots of CC
– huge AOE burn

And we know they are buffing elementalists.

So what do I predict?

Diamond Skin + near-perma-stability + poison + burst

That will ‘shake up the meta’ because they’ll create some horrible beast out of the elementalists that will make us cry for the days of hambow.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Hambow warriors are strong because they have:
– passive healing
– lots of CC
– huge AOE burn

And we know they are buffing elementalists.

So what do I predict?

Diamond Skin + near-perma-stability + poison + burst

That will ‘shake up the meta’ because they’ll create some horrible beast out of the elementalists that will make us cry for the days of hambow.

Ele was OP at one point. Hopefully ANET has learned.

Evan Lesh.3295:

You know its a good update when after playing internally, you go home to play the ‘older’ game on live and wish you were back at the office.

Will it have every feature you guys want? No patch ever will. It’s still an awesome patch for the entire game.

This is good to hear. Looking forward to hearing more about it soon.

HYPETRAIN COMMENCE

#GW22014

Evan Lesh.3295:

You know its a good update when after playing internally, you go home to play the ‘older’ game on live and wish you were back at the office.

Will it have every feature you guys want? No patch ever will. It’s still an awesome patch for the entire game.

I am not saying the new patch won’t be good, but is part of the issue that people on your internal servers don’t play the unreasonably stupid cheese specs that ruin pvp in this game (decap engie, hambow, pistolwhip, minion master)? I wish I could play in a world where players didn’t play this stupidity.

#elepocalype
Let the elements guide you

Please don’t over-buff ele, like you did to warrior and necro. Just making one more thing faceroll easy just changes the problem, but doesn’t fix it.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

This build is so fun, it should certainly shake things up a bit.

Crazy changes are crazy:P

#elepocalype

Let the elements guide you

When can we expect the first preview for this? In two weeks?

i think the question is… how they gona kitten up now? or how they going to disapoint us?

Evan Lesh.3295:

You know its a good update when after playing internally, you go home to play the ‘older’ game on live and wish you were back at the office.

I’m available for hire as a playtester. Just sayin’…

The Lesh has spoken. You mortals can now go back to your daily lives and await the patch

any info on what we can expect on march 18th?,
also any idea about when the “feature build” will arrive?
we’re a little bit in the dark,
your comments in this post are great and all,
but we’ve not really had any balance changes or pvp content in months,
throw us a bone!

Liewec.2896:

any info on what we can expect on march 18th?,

You can’t get glory any more. Arena wins will not reward win chests. Rank points from victories will be increased. PvP vendors will stick around. You will get chests from pvp ranks; they will contain PvE stuff. (See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Opening-Chests-after-March-18th/ ).

Liewec.2896:

also any idea about when the “feature build” will arrive?
we’re a little bit in the dark,
your comments in this post are great and all,
but we’ve not really had any balance changes or pvp content in months,
throw us a bone!

I’d love to know when the feature patch is coming. It’s good that they’ve further elaborated on the specifics for glory removal; however, I really want to know how long pvp is going to be without rewards.

Honestly, Devs concept of “fun” really scare me

I don’t believe many of the"horror" stuff which affect balance will disappear (based on balance patch preview) but we ignore other mysterious features of the “wedontknowwhen” features patch.

We’ll see.

You know that guy you hated that went to Disney, when your parents were to cheap to spring for anything more than camping in the woods? And all he did was talk about how amazing the trip was and how awesome all the rides were.

Yeah…. I hated that guy

Evan Lesh.3295:

You know its a good update when after playing internally, you go home to play the ‘older’ game on live and wish you were back at the office.

Will it have every feature you guys want? No patch ever will. It’s still an awesome patch for the entire game.

shame that there are very few of us left to play it…

I don’t understand why they cant just tell us what is in the update. After all this, this next patch will really determine whether, or not I will keep playing. Anet your customers dont like being kept in the dark like this.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

This build is so fun, it should certainly shake things up a bit.

Crazy changes are crazy:P

#elepocalype

Let the elements guide you

As much as I’d love to see eles being given love <3~ Can this please not just be a trading warriors for eles situation. If we keep going in a round about flavor of the yearly quarter style then there is no real progress, just the status quo with a new face.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

#elepocalype

Yyyyyeeeaaaaaahhhhh

Hearing that is somewhat comfortable, as i hope you guys didn’t forget how eles were an unkillable death god machine back then.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Yes fifteen times.

Feature patch will address the following:
Character Templates
Team Charters
New pvp rewards and currency
Sigil and rune updates
Will address aoe spam
Will address condition spam
Will address AI
Will address broken thief mechanics
Will address broken warrior mechanics
A new playable race
Will solve world hunger
Will both break warriors and fix warriors in the same patch
Will fix passive gameplay, passively
Will bring in new pvp players
Will bring back all the old pvp players who left
Will be the beginning of the end of the word soon
Is the only thing that Chuck Norris fears

Can we please get this patch like… yesterday, this game truly needs a game-changer besides living story.

Evan Lesh.3295:

It’s still an awesome patch for the entire game.

Like every time you guys do that, every time you say “hey playerbase, you have no idea what we are doing, but trust us, it is good kitten”, it ends up being a balance update that breaks more than it fixes or an alpha version feature or map…

If you guys want people to be stoked about your game again, you just might have to take a different approach to it all.

no one believe devs anymore,they are only hyping for NOTHING like always.

hey we have some crazy stuff :

ele perma immune to conditions,perma regen.

warrior perma immune to damage and conditions.

thief can damage while in perma stealth(no revealed debuff).

engi perma knockback/knockdown/pull foes.

guardian perma unkillable also in a 5vs1,20vs1 etc scenario.

necro,no matter what you do, it just spams all the conditions in the game with infinite duration(you can’t clean it).

ranger 1 1 1 1 1 1 like always.

mesmer no clones limit.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not really going to be like that. Everythings getting new crazy stuff, I am just personally overly hyped about the Ele changes. Honestly I see every class being in a pretty good spot. It’s hard to tell what is going to come out of the build. Hence why we’ve kept the balance changes to a minimum amount.

No offense but or this patch will be a complete revolution (No IA builds, no spam dodge thief or #3PW ftw, No God War, no_proc_conds_random_builds, ecc.) or your sentence “very class being in a pretty good spot” is based on a balance perpection that is vary far to be real and that caused the desert spvp status we have now.

Probably you missed a lot of builds/variables for the simple reason you can’t test alone everything (=this game needs a server test) and there will be always, for this patch too, “the OP build for 4 months min”

Want to bet?

MarkPhilips.5169:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not really going to be like that. Everythings getting new crazy stuff, I am just personally overly hyped about the Ele changes. Honestly I see every class being in a pretty good spot. It’s hard to tell what is going to come out of the build. Hence why we’ve kept the balance changes to a minimum amount.

No offense but or this patch will be a complete revolution (No IA builds, no spam dodge thief or #3PW ftw, No God War, noproccondrandombuilds, ecc.) or your sentence “very class being in a pretty good spot” is based on a balance perpection that is vary far to be real and that caused the desert spvp status we have now.

Probably you missed a lot of builds/variables for the simple reason you can’t test alone everything (=this game needs a server test) and there will be always, for this patch too, “the OP build for 4 months min”

Want to bet?

just see what they will do to the war and necro : only 8% nerf healing signet, 5% damage taken from minions,etc.
i don’t understand why people are continuing to trust them…
imo the balance patch will be after the END of the second WvW season,i bet 200golds that we will have this patch in june.

Ah,last thing,from what they are saying,the patch seems completed but they don’t want us to give them feedbacks about it lol,like always.

Oh look a bunch of useless PR answers. What a surprise.

Sweetbread.2679:

Oh look a bunch of useless PR answers. What a surprise.

as always i would add.

Evan Lesh.3295:

You know its a good update when after playing internally, you go home to play the ‘older’ game on live and wish you were back at the office.

Will it have every feature you guys want? No patch ever will. It’s still an awesome patch for the entire game.

Last time i heard something similar was before Skyhammer whent live. The test team was so hyped up/enthousiastic about that map. So im not sure if we guys can trust you…

This feature patch may or may not be awesome but that doesn’t matter if you continue this trend of months long pauses between balance updates. Balance in PVP is everything. You’ll never get true balance but you can try to balance it often with small adjustments. Waiting months and months for ANY balance changes is infuriating.