Guild Wars 2

The metagame is going into the direction of pure direct damage since condis are easily countered by aoe cleanse spam and the stupid amount of damage that can kill people before your conditions even tick a few times.

I fully support coordination and bursts even tho stealth oneshots can be kinda sad when you die faster than the human reaction time and only random evades can save you if you dont have access to stealth.

The classes viability is highly determined by its sigil synergie and incase you can always play air/fire sigil on zerker. Support can´t keep up with the stupid amounts of damage dealt by it which has nothing to do with coordinated burst.

What equivalent of condition sigil would it take to keep up with this?
http://fs1.directupload.net/images/150505/nn6xmhax.jpg
http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150505/x2x7ezmd.jpg

A meta game with no place for condition damage or bunkers that requires thieves for invisibility because there is no way to actually deal with this damage except hiding is not healthy for this game. I can´t imagine anyone can be happy with this lack of diversity in competitive play.

On another note there is not just sigil synergie, but also rune synergie that has to be adressed . Too many runes require active heals while some classes only have viable passive heals. A special case here is vampirism rune, I remember Svanir rune once got nerfed because people easily avoided punishment for mistakes, if you look at vampirism rune now , it took this problem to a whole new level.

ah lets see…. nightmare runes that require 0 action~

No matter what they do to change stuff ppl will always run most optimal setups,if there is no air sigil it will be something else !

If you want to kill cele-sustain builds like shoutbow / dd-ele / cele-engi as a zerker, you probably need air/fire for the dps.
Celes > Condi-Builds, cuz too much cleanses and regen.
So whats the real problem? ^^
btw vampirism are really kitten.

Seeing as all that ever happens is buff, buff, buff…

The condition problem is just a current situation. When there isn’t enough cleanse, everyone runs condi builds that are low risk/high reward. When there is enough cleanse, conditions are useless and everyone runs power.

Same thing with sigils/zerk. Right now, sigils and trait procs are allowing incredibly high burst, so even dedicated bunkers can’t keep up. When damage isn’t high enough, we get stuck in a bunker meta.

And now traits are looking to buff every class up to high heaven again! The arms race continues, which serves to increase the pace of combat, and ironically removes a large portion of skill, as auto-procs can carry most specs. Further, this polarizes the meta and reduces the number of viable specs. By increasing condi-procs to keep up effectively with the current rate of cleanse, you are effectively pushing builds that don’t have a wide spread completely out of viability.

The best form of combat is when big effects have big tells…meaning counterplay. It’s no coincidence that all the sigil and trait procs lack all counterplay. GW2 combat nowadays is dominated by instants, procs, invulns/blocks, and stealth/ports – all things that remove as much counterplay from a situation as possible. I wouldn’t expect this to change too much unless they exercise some restraint and rebalance quite a few things.

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

BlackTruth.6813:

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

not really, sigil proc is 50% on crit, crit is usually over 50% in those builds, that’s 25%+ on hit… and those builds also tend to use some very fast attacks like ele scepter air autoattack or ranger rapid fire etc… so it’s usually more than 1 attack per second… so the average time to proc can be something around 2 sec max? usually less… it doesn’t seems too RNG, it’s guaranteed hit after 0-2 sec

but I agree, two sigils with the same type are a bit OP, this air+fire combo is so strong…

MaXi.3642:

BlackTruth.6813:

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

not really, sigil proc is 50% on crit, crit is usually over 50% in those builds, that’s 25%+ on hit… and those builds also tend to use some very fast attacks like ele scepter air autoattack or ranger rapid fire etc… so it’s usually more than 1 attack per second… so the average time to proc can be something around 2 sec max? usually less… it doesn’t seems too RNG, it’s guaranteed hit after 0-2 sec

but I agree, two sigils with the same type are a bit OP, this air+fire combo is so strong…

I guess I did base the RNG problem opinion on a 1v1 setting on certain match ups. This shouldn’t be a real problem in team fights. But point is “power damage” definitely took skill during the Quickness meta. GW2 became a lot less skill based is what I’m also trying to say be it in “landing damage” or having “too many screw up buttons.”

Blackjack.5621:

What equivalent of condition sigil would it take to keep up with this?
http://fs1.directupload.net/images/150505/nn6xmhax.jpg
http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150505/x2x7ezmd.jpg

That’s one thing that has actually annoyed me a bit for the longest time: There aren’t many really strong on-crit-procs for conditions. I kinda like the torment one they’ve implemented, but i still think it’s too weak compared to the power-based on-crit effects on sigils.

I can’t say that I feel that air and fire sigil are such a big problem for me. I really like to play S/F-Ele and I feel that the +7% crit is better than the fire-sigil. But that of course depends on how many on-crit effects the build already has because of traits and how much ferocity the build has and if you value the added AoE of the fire-sigil highly enough.

BlackTruth.6813:

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

The quickness meta, as you refer to it, was not that great either. While yes, it promoted skill in a way, it also made all encounters ridiculously one-dimensional. It was always: you hit ability x and y on enemy or you die. There’s a plethora of skills for a reason, both defensive and offensive in nature, and reducing that to mere 1-shot combos undermines this whole concept.

Buff force sigil, tone down fire and air.
At least with force there is actual counterplay involved with individual skills, not random massive damage from auto attacks that can’t really be predicted and dodged.

Blackjack.5621:

The metagame is going into the direction of pure direct damage since condis are easily countered by aoe cleanse spam and the stupid amount of damage that can kill people before your conditions even tick a few times.

I fully support coordination and bursts even tho stealth oneshots can be kinda sad when you die faster than the human reaction time and only random evades can save you if you dont have access to stealth.

The classes viability is highly determined by its sigil synergie and incase you can always play air/fire sigil on zerker. Support can´t keep up with the stupid amounts of damage dealt by it which has nothing to do with coordinated burst.

What equivalent of condition sigil would it take to keep up with this?
http://fs1.directupload.net/images/150505/nn6xmhax.jpg
http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150505/x2x7ezmd.jpg

A meta game with no place for condition damage or bunkers that requires thieves for invisibility because there is no way to actually deal with this damage except hiding is not healthy for this game. I can´t imagine anyone can be happy with this lack of diversity in competitive play.

On another note there is not just sigil synergie, but also rune synergie that has to be adressed . Too many runes require active heals while some classes only have viable passive heals. A special case here is vampirism rune, I remember Svanir rune once got nerfed because people easily avoided punishment for mistakes, if you look at vampirism rune now , it took this problem to a whole new level.

I agree 100%. In fact 1000%. You summed up exactly the frustrating aspects of the game. You need a thief. There is no counter play to stealth spikes. Even if they mess up the stealth they can easily blast some more (its aoe perma stealth). And the damage is way too high. There is no bunkering. No ressing. No conditions. Just direct damage spikes aided by fire/air sigils. Fire/air needs big nerfs and d/p thief’s ability to stealth needs to be nerfed too.

Wont happen though, so gg, everyone can enjoy their kitten game

Agreed, and amused seeing people challenge this.

Edit: And if it isn’t air/fire, it will be some other bullkitten causing 3-4 condis to be applied on random hits through sigils/procs (pretty much all with NO animation until after the damage has been done). There is just so much sloppy design layered upon sloppy design in this game. It is a shame because it is still the best mmorpg out there (in my opinion) and still has so much potential to be an e-sport game.

Yep, air/fire is basically the equivalent of Dhuumfire for berserker builds… except they can’t be cleansed :P

They’ve really screwed up people’s perception of balance as well, since all classes now have a way of deal large amounts of passive damage, it creates the illusion that the game is better balanced. In reality, the meta has moved more and more toward zero counter play mechanics and “burst builds” which really rely on RNG sigil procs for their damage.

BlackTruth.6813:

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

You only have two builds in the game using the RNG component of air/fire for their burst: SD thief and meditation guardian. On d/p thief, mesmer and scepter ele, you use these sigils on your initial burst (I have been killed in 1/4s on my mesmer by a Steal+BS and both sigils procs), but you still have well defined burst combos you have to watch for. On mesmer, after the opening, air and fire sigils are just a way to deal with the unreal weakness of the GS auto-attack.

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Air-fire ain’t no boonz

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Boon stripping has been meta for as long as the celestial meta…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shattered_Concentration
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Path_of_Corruption

infantrydiv.1620:

Yep, air/fire is basically the equivalent of Dhuumfire for berserker builds… except they can’t be cleansed :P

They’ve really screwed up people’s perception of balance as well, since all classes now have a way of deal large amounts of passive damage, it creates the illusion that the game is better balanced. In reality, the meta has moved more and more toward zero counter play mechanics and “burst builds” which really rely on RNG sigil procs for their damage.

Agreed, well said. It is way worse than dhuumfire and IP though because at least you can cleanse them.

Fire/air bursts = no counter play at all and totally overpowered.

What is worse is when they do it out of stealth. It is totally ridiculous. They spike you out of stealth and then some guardian rings you. Great!!

I feel like even elementalist sucks. People can go on about celestial meta and all that kitten. And yeh celestial is too strong and really lame. But much much bigger problem is zerker classes with instant stealth spikes and air/fire passive procs giving 8k auto attacks.

The game is unplayable currently. Unless you want to abuse stealth spikes I guess (which take zero skill, it is like 3 buttons)

Mrbig.8019:

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Air-fire ain’t no boonz

You gotta strip those sigils bro!

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Air-fire ain’t no boonz

You gotta strip those sigils bro!

Fire / air is even easier to counter. Why do you think the Cele meta exists. Because of procs with high kitten s.

GrandHaven.1052:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Air-fire ain’t no boonz

You gotta strip those sigils bro!

Fire / air is even easier to counter. Why do you think the Cele meta exists. Because of procs with high kitten s.

There is no celestial meta, there is the stealth spike with fire and air sigil meta.

Get with the times bro. You are stuck in 2014

Lordrosicky.5813:

GrandHaven.1052:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Mrbig.8019:

GrandHaven.1052:

Mass counter the meta, and it won’t be meta very long.

Tip : Boon stipping.

Air-fire ain’t no boonz

You gotta strip those sigils bro!

Fire / air is even easier to counter. Why do you think the Cele meta exists. Because of procs with high kitten s.

There is no celestial meta, there is the stealth spike with fire and air sigil meta.

Get with the times bro. You are stuck in 2014

Really? Shoe I must be imagining things…

MaXi.3642:

BlackTruth.6813:

The thing about power builds right now is.. its just so much RNG now. At least the Quickness Meta required you to HIT your important things, but now its a matter of proc’ing fire/air. It’s literally hearthstone 2.0, specially on match ups much like Guardian vs. Guardian for example.

not really, sigil proc is 50% on crit, crit is usually over 50% in those builds, that’s 25%+ on hit… and those builds also tend to use some very fast attacks like ele scepter air autoattack or ranger rapid fire etc… so it’s usually more than 1 attack per second… so the average time to proc can be something around 2 sec max? usually less… it doesn’t seems too RNG, it’s guaranteed hit after 0-2 sec

but I agree, two sigils with the same type are a bit OP, this air+fire combo is so strong…

So a base 25% chance isn’t fairly random? It’s not a cut and dried 25% to proc chance that’s the average probability.

Considering the bursty nature of the game and the sigils, I guess it’s best to w8 for the specializations. I think the meta might change pretty heavily and it’s IMHO kinda hard to tell if the focus will shift onto more dps or more tankyness or even support because of the added stuff.

The whole AoE-Condi-clean, especially of shoutbow, is a whole other problem, since I don’t see pure Condi-builds being buffed at all or the AoE-cleanses nerfed.

It’s IMHO not unsurmountably huge, but the fact that we see almost no rabid/carrion or other pure condi-dps-amus in competetive play says a lot. Also, there’s no decision-making, timing or skill involved in just cleansing all the condis on the whole team.

-> Make some of the AoE (condi-cleanses) “on-ally-target”: This will lead to better teamplay, having to actually make decisions which conditions to cleanse from whom etc.

Really: ANet is digging themselves a huge hole because they’re too stubborn to implement skills you can target on an ally.

If targeting spells on allies is not possible, all teamsupport-skills are doomed to either be huge AoE’s or ground-targeted, which will make them AoE as well and often make them feel clunky (who doesn’t like to shout in Teamspeak: “don’t move duuude, I’m gonna splash you with my watertrident!” -.-)

It could be so simple to make the game more interesting and to have a much bigger control of how effective spells are in 1v1’s VS in teamfights: Make certain skills like shouts affect you and an ally you have targeted (if he’s in range of course).

It’s not that hard to implement a system either: there’s already clicking manually on the ally, there’s the healthbars on the top of the screen you can click and just make an option to tab through allies like there is one for tabbing through enemies.

This could really add a whole new dimension of teamplay to GW2 that I loved so much back in GW1, but thats completely and utterly missing in GW2 and I cannot find a single reason why.

I agree, Zapdos.

Power meta and its faults are being perpetuated by Anet’s sluggichness with balancing.

The problem is that there is no alternative whatsoever; I tried playing condi necro, spectral necro, even a cleric necro in the past week, and the only thing that gives me a marginal chance at doing something of value is the power spec.

I think that balance may improve after the expansion lands and Anet stops reworking things globally and starts tuning them more frequently. That’s the hope.

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

Your definition of meta doesn’t make sense. You don’t generally see 5 celestial teams either, does that mean celestial isn’t meta?

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

But what about theif, mesmer, sf ele, power necro, dps guard?

Ryan.9387:

But what about theif, mesmer, sf ele, power necro, dps guard?

The RNG nature of fire/air is only a problem for necro and guardian really. For thief, mesmer and sf ele, people are complaining about the massive bursts. Which you can dodge. Which you can blind. Which you can block. The sigils just add a bit of damage to said burst, but there is still a lot of counter play. Those three builds are considered the harder to master in pvp because you sacrifie a lot of survivability to get an insane burst.

I think mesmer AA on Gs should be buffed to deal comparable damage to the other 1200-range AA in the game, and to have something to deal with thieves. I think scepter elementalist in general needs a buff. Without this is done, these burst builds are still out of the meta, despite their sigils being supposedly OP. Learn to dodge.

Oh, and before you say it, no, power necro is not hard. There’s a different between being hard and straight up bad.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

Your definition of meta doesn’t make sense. You don’t generally see 5 celestial teams either, does that mean celestial isn’t meta?

Fire/Air sigils do not define the meta right now. They might be meta on zerk classes, but they do not define the meta.

Support, sustain, and mobility define the current meta.

Sube Dai.8496:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

Your definition of meta doesn’t make sense. You don’t generally see 5 celestial teams either, does that mean celestial isn’t meta?

Fire/Air sigils do not define the meta right now. They might be meta on zerk classes, but they do not define the meta.

Support, sustain, and mobility define the current meta.

You didn’t say anything about defining the meta, you simply said they weren’t meta – they are certainly meta on berserker classes but don’t necessarily define the overall meta.

From watching last esl weeklies I would say the meta is definitely starting to rule out sustain over the past few months. Now teams stealth up, insta down a target and then win the resulting outnumbered fight in their favor. The only thing that can save the target is the vampirism rune proc which almost everyone is running except the shoutbows and cele eles which do get instagibbed in such scenario despite their sustain.

Sigil of Doom needs to get nerfed, near perma upkeep of poison if you time your hits right. It turns bunkers into super bunkers. I don’t mind people killing, I do mind people killing and surviving everything.

I swear some Sigils feel like a rushed after thought.
Just look at Sigil of Torment:
“50% chance on critical hit: Apply AoE torment”

Er, don’t you mean, “50% Chance on Critical: Trigger a Torment Burst for area of effect damage.”

Even the wordings are bad.

I made a post on this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Make-Fun-Sigils/first#post4962273

_

The entire new combat system will be upon us soon with the changes to traits, which is fantastic as nearing three years is needs an update badly. What makes builds fun is having a lot of fun building blocks. As of right now some of those blocks are clearly more powerful and not well thought out as others.

It is actually both hilarious and depressing that the meta is balanced round these sigils so much

I mean, people speculated that without Air/Fire/Blood their damage would drop too low to kill a sustained build – but is it alright to rely on those sigils to take them down?
Same thing with Sigil of Doom… It is so incredibly potent, yet so easy to slap on your build and have minor succes with it, it is unbelievable – but is the reliance on doom to take fight the sustain a good thing?

I would argue by the way that Condi Builds are not viable because of burst to be fair… I think it is a mix of the potency of Condis within the meta (there are plentiful cleanses), and the fact that even when running a condi-glass build, you cannot tip the burst potential of a power-glass build… On the other hand, there is a large portion of players who dislike the nature of conditions and would figure it unfair if they yield the same results
What I would like to see however is Sinister comming into PvP and see if things are subjected to change… I think some professions which already lean a lot to hybrid could max out the potential with it, maybe resulting in a nice balance between all

But aren’t the stealth-openers the bigger problem than the sigils? I mean, if spiked dps is the real problem…. Bc if you at least see the opponents, there are tons of things you can do to stop a spike:

- blind
- targeted CC like interrupts
- dodge the important stuff (no way of dodging at the right time if you don’t see the enemies animation)
- CD’s

With stealth, dodges are just random if you feel like they might jump you and CC is more or less reduced to AoE insta-stuff…

PowerBottom.5796:

But aren’t the stealth-openers the bigger problem than the sigils? I mean, if spiked dps is the real problem…. Bc if you at least see the opponents, there are tons of things you can do to stop a spike:

- blind
- targeted CC like interrupts
- dodge the important stuff (no way of dodging at the right time if you don’t see the enemies animation)
- CD’s

With stealth, dodges are just random if you feel like they might jump you and CC is more or less reduced to AoE insta-stuff…

Fire and air adds damage to the stealth opener, all those things you mentioned require you to know that the enemy is using an important attack, which you can’t tell with fire/air sigils since they proc randomly.

All skills and effects that are triggered "on hit," and cannot be dodged after offering a visible tell that a charge is active so the player can see it and knowingly dodge it, should be removed. At least with intelligence and doom you do get a small tell, but it can be activated mid-attack so perfect timing can have a charge land on the target within 100ms of it being activated.

Fire/Air sigils.
Nightmare runes.
Air runes.
Reaper’s Protection.
Chill of Death.
Panic Strike.
The guardian hammer trait that chills/will slow (I forget the name).
Etc.

Effects like apply X when you apply Y are ok, because you can see the skills that would apply Y.
Effects like apply X on hit are very bad.

In an ideal world, the only instant-cast skills would be support based - but not too many so as to remove all counter-play i.e. timed interruption/poison - and there would be no instant-cast damaging abilities, or if there were they’d be extremely weak. ANet took measures to address this for Mug - it no longer critical hits. But since then have not given the same treatment to any other instant cast skill, like lightning strike, smite condition, arcane wave, and - although not instant-cast -, arguably reckless dodge, despite some hitting much harder, not being profession skills, and being on much shorter cool downs.

Sube Dai.8496:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist…

Your definition of meta doesn’t make sense. You don’t generally see 5 celestial teams either, does that mean celestial isn’t meta?

Fire/Air sigils do not define the meta right now. They might be meta on zerk classes, but they do not define the meta.

Support, sustain, and mobility define the current meta.

You are just wrong. I would say the reason to run shoutbow is basically banner. Which you run to res someone after they have stealth spiked your player.

People have been running stealth openers (with mesmer thief originally and now with 3 classes usually) for the whole time of the game and it has been a defining feature.

The more they have buffed d/p thief and nerfed s/d thief = more stealth = more burst = more stealth openers. D/p is the best spec in game, its so OP. what it offers is so irreplaceable with massive spike and perma stealth for all allies.

Stealth spikes are terrible for the game. You will literally be running from A to B and then just get insta-gibbed out of stealth. No counter play. Nothing. And the opponent? He didnt have to wait out dodges, he just pressed 3 buttons.

Damage in the game in general is too high. You cant even run a bunker guardian anymore. Everything has been power creeped over and over but the main power creep and damage comes from sigil procs which should be nerfed as a result. And not 8% nerfs. It needs 100% nerfs tbh.

Lordrosicky.5813:

You are just wrong. I would say the reason to run shoutbow is basically banner. Which you run to res someone after they have stealth spiked your player.

People have been running stealth openers (with mesmer thief originally and now with 3 classes usually) for the whole time of the game and it has been a defining feature.

The more they have buffed d/p thief and nerfed s/d thief = more stealth = more burst = more stealth openers. D/p is the best spec in game, its so OP. what it offers is so irreplaceable with massive spike and perma stealth for all allies.

Stealth spikes are terrible for the game. You will literally be running from A to B and then just get insta-gibbed out of stealth. No counter play. Nothing. And the opponent? He didnt have to wait out dodges, he just pressed 3 buttons.

Damage in the game in general is too high. You cant even run a bunker guardian anymore. Everything has been power creeped over and over but the main power creep and damage comes from sigil procs which should be nerfed as a result. And not 8% nerfs. It needs 100% nerfs tbh.

It’s true that the DMG got buffed a ton, but the defenses didn’t get any better. Best example is, that I was easily able to run a fullbunker Ele and bunker against 2 ppl almost infinitely (I don’t say that was a good thing, but thats how it was) and there were several builds that could do that. When I go fullbunker now, even a bit more defensive, I maybe survive for as long as I have dodges and I’ll have to burn all my CD’s. ^^’

I’ve just returned to play a few months ago and there were basically two things that changed that made this enhancement of DPS possible:

- reworked traits, that added dps or heavy CC, like panic strike, sleight of hand, fresh air, read the wind
- Sigils being able to proc without shared CD’s

Add probably a ton of individual balance-changes, that all kinda leaned towards more dps and less tankyness and were in the current meta.

With the changes, it wasn’t necessary anymore to have really bunkery stuff, because you couldn’t survive against two dps anyways, so you’d just have to be able to win 1v1’s – thats how all those celestial builds came up I’d guess. The DPS was still so strong, that all the zerker-builds stayed viable, so now we have zerker+celestial meta. Add in stuff like shoutbow and condition-only builds completely fall away (they’re already worse against a meta that runs much more vitality and burst than thoughness and stustain than before.

But maybe with the new specializations, it’s worth it again to have a fulltank – if 2 dps can’t just spike sth. down within seconds… I’m especially curious about how earth/water/arcane Ele fulltank with clerics will do against spiked dps.

Also, interrupts get way better, stats get more evened out (so maybe less full-dps, don’t know how it’ll work exactly), rezz-traits get better, some pretty bursty classes like mesmer might even have more sustainy or more support-oriented builds and tons of other stuff that might mitigate the bursty nature of the current meta.

The Sigils should just add the dps less luck-based but mroe sustained. like a third of the dmg, cannot crit and triggers on every critical hit with 2s CD for Air and 3s for Fire.

Or you could make the fire sigil deal the DMG only on the stuff surrounding your main target, but not the target itself, but lower the internal CD a bit or add some DPS.

*Edit: I’m also for a rework to some boons; higher impact, shorter duration. Like protection would reduce physical dps by 50%, but have a 20% reduced duration. This could also be a viable reaction to spikes you could actually pull off against stealth-spikes.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Sube Dai.8496:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Sube Dai.8496:

Whilst I agree that fire/air procs are lame because of their random nature, they are not the massive problem op makes them out to be.

I also wouldn’t call them meta. This 5 thief, stealth burst, zerker meta team combo does not exist...

Your definition of meta doesn’t make sense. You don’t generally see 5 celestial teams either, does that mean celestial isn’t meta?

Fire/Air sigils do not define the meta right now. They might be meta on zerk classes, but they do not define the meta.

Support, sustain, and mobility define the current meta.

You are just wrong. I would say the reason to run shoutbow is basically banner. Which you run to res someone after they have stealth spiked your player.

People have been running stealth openers (with mesmer thief originally and now with 3 classes usually) for the whole time of the game and it has been a defining feature.

The more they have buffed d/p thief and nerfed s/d thief = more stealth = more burst = more stealth openers. D/p is the best spec in game, its so OP. what it offers is so irreplaceable with massive spike and perma stealth for all allies.

Stealth spikes are terrible for the game. You will literally be running from A to B and then just get insta-gibbed out of stealth. No counter play. Nothing. And the opponent? He didnt have to wait out dodges, he just pressed 3 buttons.

Damage in the game in general is too high. You cant even run a bunker guardian anymore. Everything has been power creeped over and over but the main power creep and damage comes from sigil procs which should be nerfed as a result. And not 8% nerfs. It needs 100% nerfs tbh.

Banner is not exclusively for stealth-spike-downed allies. It’s for downed allies regardless of the reason they got downed. It is not the sole reason for running shoutbow. Shoutbow replaces guardian because:
- it offers healing and cleanse at a greater range
- it can provide vigor
- it has selfish passive healing and cleansing ire - i.e. it has separate self-support and team-support, while a guardian had mostly team-support which had to also sustain themselves
- ^ it is consequentially much, much easier to play
- it has a viable "mid-way" build i.e. celestial, allowing it to deal more offensive pressure than a guardian can, while still providing strong support
- it is more mobile than a guardian, easily cleansing movement impairment conditions, gaining/granting swiftness without having to stand inside a symbol, and a low cd leap that does not require a target
- it has a banner res

D/P is actually seen with less spike that it used to be, because most run panic strike over executioner. Still, panic strike is an un-dodgable counter to any squishy, and carries many otherwise ineffective thieves. Traits like this should be removed. Undodgeable on-hit effects should not enable otherwise weaker builds to become so much more effective.

You can run a bunker guardian. It’s just not optimal because of the above listed reasons, mostly that without the passive healing and additional self-cleanses, it is forced into clerics, and by design it cannot achieve condi-cleanse and healing through the same mechanic - shouts, like a warrior - so it must use weapons for this, forcing it into defensive weapons and a high healing power amulet, meaning it cannot offer offensive pressure while maintaining it’s effectiveness as a team support/bunker role. If anything, it’s the whole "warriors have access to everything with ease" concept, the existence of the celestial amulet and existence of useful celestial builds on other classes that saw the bunker guardian take its leave from meta.

Fire/Air sigils do not define the meta.

Isn’t the underlying issue a core gameplay mechanic issue to begin with? As in, isn’t the underlying issue the fact that a mechanic like precision even exists at all?

RNG damage effectively removes an aspect of a skill based fight from the game, and then addition effects upon RNG damage only compounds the issue.

Unfortunately, ANet made that design decision a long time ago to remove a factor of skill from the game by doing so (which from a competitive standpoint is terrible design, but from a game development standpoint, is necessary for a broad audience. For them it’s better to have a highly skilled player not be able to counter a mechanic that is purely in the hands of a build/algorithm then a lower skilled player feeling like there is nothing they could have done and be discouraged from playing simply because they aren’t good enough. One argument is that seeing the highly skilled player in action should entice the lower skilled player to keep playing in order to become as good, while the other argument is that the lower skill player is going to get discouraged and quit unless you have some mechanic that allows them to even the playing field in some way).

We’re too far in at this point to ever go back and change that design philosophy. However, I think that the best bandaid solution without lowering the damage that I’ve seen suggested is: make it so critical procs cannot occur on autoattacks, or skills without cooldowns/initiative use.

Certain crit proc traits would have to be altered because they would become incredibly weak with only being able to proc on a cooldown skill, but other than that, it would still keep the “gambling for damage” mechanic in place, but it would force people to at least have to use something than autoattack, which would then create a skill tier difference in itself between players blowing all their cooldowns trying to get procs versus more effective players that would use the sigils and potentially lucky damage bonuses, but wouldn’t have to rely on them as a crutch (by just spamming 1 and the procs taking care of the fight for them).

Besides that, as others mentioned, there is nothing you can really do because at its very core its just a design problem. You either end up making all crit procs so weak for the sake of balance that people figure out different options, or you keep killing off the new crit proc apex predator every patch in a never ending cycle.

jcbroe.4329:

make it so critical procs cannot occur on autoattacks, or skills without cooldowns/initiative use.

This would just make things like warrior and engineer overpowered because they rarely use their auto attacks. Ele too, because although they use auto attack, they have so many skills available to use, thus meaning effectively more critical hit chance.

It would destroy power necros, and break thieves since they are designed to use their auto attack as their primary source of damage, and their initiative-costing abilities in reaction; in fact, thief weapon skills are balanced around the fact that they are spammable, so that spamming them is not ideal, promoting the use of auto attack and initiative management.

jcbroe.4329:

make it so critical procs cannot occur on autoattacks, or skills without cooldowns/initiative use.

That would actually make them unsuable and the whole set of sigils on crit would never be picked anymore. I’m not sure that’s the direction the game should be heading. Nerfing things so no one plays them anymore instead of trying to find a balance (except turret engis).