Guild Wars 2

The thing that strikes me most is not understanding how the developers work
Since 6 or more months we have been having a heavy Warrior/Ranger – (bunker engi) meta with classes like elementalist, mesmer, any other engi spec apart from bunker as well as necromancer being unviable or close to being unviable or even worse just in a completely wrong spot
Let’s face it…since last summer nothing has changed about that fact – nothing
It’s not fun to play against the current meta builds and not fun to play them either so a huge change would be required

PvP changes in general happen pretty much every 3 months which kind of are like “please dont leave the game yet” – changes that are trying to hold players in (sometimes successfully – I am still here)

You guys got a lot of feedback from the whole community
I remember working on a document with guys like Frealina, Polyphi, Azron, Empa, Ventari from well known teams taking hours of our freetime making such a thing but neither of us got a response or feedback nor did we see any ideas implemented in the game at all (even tho grouch asked us for the document before the balance discussion meeting)

Especially things like diamond skin coming into the game or skyhammer still being in the solo q rotation make me wonder how much the developers care about our feedback –
When it comes to diamond skin…you guys even asked us for our opinion on the upcoming december patch but apparently it didn’t matter

Can I please get an official response and/or answers of other players to see if they are seeing things the same way i see them

Cheers

Sensotix

thanks for posting american!

I’m trying to figure out what level of trolling this is. The first post has the signature of the second poster’s name. Makes me wonder if this is Sensotix posting under two accounts.

Pyriall.5027:

I’m trying to figure out what level of trolling this is. The first post has the signature of the second poster’s name. Makes me wonder if this is Sensotix posting under two accounts.

no he posted it for me since i wasnt able to at this time – no trolling intended

I gave up on this game when they put diamond skin in. They asked us and we ALL said dont put this in the game. I made a thread on it with about 200 replies and alot from top players (even top eles) saying dont put this in but instead make changes which are skill based and useful and not lame/unbeatable by certain specs.

They ignored it and that confirmed to me they had no clue.

Quit this game about 3 months ago now (except about twice I have played) and would only come back now to mess around in new game modes. Even then I wont be playing seriously (not that I ever did really). And if I get matched up against full teams/try hards then the community is obviously too small and I wont stay for long.

Skyhammer is a joke but meh. Game modes are a joke. Balance is horrendus not because of balance but because there is just so much broken stuff – like entire trait lines of terribleness like necro death magic minor traits 5 and 15 which kill all build diversity. Or the fact ranger has to take 30 points in a line to get emphatic bond because it is almost their only condi removal- just terrible design. Hotjoin is a shambles, custom arenas are a joke. The shoutcasted tournaments are poorly done in general although props to those who give up their time to do it.

And leaderboard were a joke. In fact solo q was a joke, with all the syncing that happened and then all the bs no decay stuff.

There is honestly no point playing this game. They are good developers I am sure. But they just made alot of mistakes I dont think the game can ever recover from. Like game modes, shoutcaster program, skyhammer, hotjoin….

i think warrior debacle is indication of systemic failure in dev institution. it is an indication that such things are to be expected regularly. things like quality control, customer communication, fast (save fast, any) response are apparently not in place.

i could sit out mistake, but this experience undermines my trust in brand and company. im still playing this over wow, but i’ve reactivated my wow sub and bit by bit drifting away. I usually come back after wows slow battle, but warrior invasion quickly draws me away. eyeing wildstar and elder scrolls online.

renegade.4851:

When it comes to diamond skin…you guys even asked us for our opinion on the upcoming december patch but apparently it didn’t matter

They even failed at taking help, or maybe just realizing they actually need it.
It’s sad.

Like what can anyone do about that?
Drive up to Anet HQ and just smack employes until someone comes to reason?
I seriously can’t think of anything else, this community did so much to try to keep this game going and Anet just doesn’t seem to respond.
They just keep chucking out their half baked patches and calling it good enough.

I mean the devs have passion, but the cogs of the Anet machine are broken.

I agree. they left healing signet alone for 9 months despite a daily thread about it. I have quit this game too, mainly due to playing cheese mode meta for 9 full months! At first i thought the devs understood their game and balance would come. Now i just think its incompetence.
Given that there is no sub, im sure ill be back for updates but i have 0 confidence in the devs making any good new modes and the lack of community wont help.
/sigh

@OP

You said necro is underpowered? I stopped reading your post at that point. Necro is right up there with warrior right now, especially MM.

renegade.4851:

The thing that strikes me most is not understanding how the developers work
Since 6 or more months we have been having a heavy Warrior/Ranger – (bunker engi) meta

Lemme stop you right there. This isn’t actually wrong, but I’d just like to elaborate that when we mention Rangers, we are specifically talking about Spirit Rangers. Every other Ranger build is absolutely horrid right now.

with classes like elementalist, mesmer, any other engi spec apart from bunker as well as necromancer being unviable or close to being unviable or even worse just in a completely wrong spot

Elementalist is undoubtedly in a bad spot. However, Mesmer, Engineer, and Necromancer certainly aren’t unviable. Many players have shown that Mesmer continues to be very much playable, and truth be told, it is yet to be proven that Thief (the class most commonly cited as the rival to Mesmer) has any sort of theoretical edge over Mesmer. In fact, if anything, the computations and strategic analysis seems to favor Mesmer (though only slightly) over thief. Certainly, though, they are no worse than thieves, or only very, very slightly worse than thieves, if at all.

Engineers are in something of a state of limbo right now. On the one hand, their bunker/point assaulter builds are just absolutely ungodly in their power- it’s insane. On the other hand, however, all of the engi’s other builds are subpar or below par compared to similar builds of other classes. The build linked in my signature, for instance, is a powerful burst/control/DPS build, but is no better than your run-of-the-mill thief or mesmer build. I feel that a lot of the people who play engineer and don’t run bunker/assaulter builds are, quite simply, bad, which may be part of the reason why engineer is seen as being bad right now. I certainly haven’t seen a good non-bunker/assaulter engi in months, though I feel extremely comfortable playing one.

Necromancer is only really bad (if at all) because of how ridiculously overpowered warriors are, making condi necro difficult to play against the one of the (if not the) most-played classes in the game. MM, however, is not at all in a bad spot right now- as a matter of fact, I’m extremely tempted to say that it’s overpowered.

Let’s face it…since last summer nothing has changed about that fact – nothing

S/D thief has gotten worse.

It’s not fun to play against the current meta builds and not fun to play them either so a huge change would be required

If you still consider S/D to be meta (which, judging from what I’ve hear about you, I’m going to assume that you do), I find that build both fun to play against and fun to play with (though the fact that about 95% of sPvP thieves run 10 30 0 30 0 is just stupid- 0 30 0 30 10 and 10 0 0 30 30 and 10 30 0 0 30 are all at least as good as the standard). The most fun part, actually, is playing with that build against other S/D thieves. To the untrained outsider, it might seem like a boring fight with few sparks flying and a serious lack of blood-bathing (one person, much to my sadness, called it “fairy dancing” the other day). However, at this point of playing the build, I’ve come to realize that every fight with another S/D thief is really what I think sPvP should be like- it’s all about action and reaction, about very well-timed evades and attacks, and about important plays at just the right times.

PvP changes in general happen pretty much every 3 months which kind of are like “please dont leave the game yet” – changes that are trying to hold players in (sometimes successfully – I am still here)

You guys got a lot of feedback from the whole community…

Nothing disagreeable here (particularly since more facts are stated than opinions). It’s true that ANet has shown a distressing apathy towards the community.

Especially things like diamond skin coming into the game or skyhammer still being in the solo q rotation make me wonder how much the developers care about our feedback -

Diamond Skin in and of itself is an absolutely terrible trait, yet the idea behind it is even worse. If this is how ANet is going to balance in the future, then this game is going to go even further south than ever before.

As for Skyhammer… Yeah, never been sure what ANet’s problem with that map is. Thieves would be unplayable on the map, if not for the semi-complex terrain that makes mobility more valuable.

…Cheers

Sensotix

I don’t see everything the way you do, Sensotix, but I won’t deny that the vast majority of points you make are mostly or entirely true, so I have to say that I support the general message of this post.

I stopped reading after you said Ranger were viable and necromancer weren’t. You live in some sort of sheltered world none of the rest of us live in. If you look at the top 3 profession everyone universally have said need help, it has been;

Ranger PvE+PvP
Elementalist PvP
Necromancer PvE

Your view is currently running counter to what the rest of the community feels. I am not sure where/how you play but only spirit ranger works best and even then all three of the spirits are broken in favour of the ranger(Ranger forums shows the healing/burning over proc’ing) which is allowing them to remain in a ok spot as home defender. Once that gets fixed they’re back to being mediocre at best. Also it is not warrior meta, it is a hammer meta. There is 9 hammer warriors to any other type of warrior. To simply call it warrior is not labeling it right.

You seem to think that descisions aren’t made in stone with A-net. They are made in stone. The only reason they ask is so they can figure out how to pitch what is already gonna happen. When it becomes apparent there is no sales pitch, they just say nothing at all. This is the documented history. What makes it worse is that this sounds harsh, but it is in fact just truthful. They don’t answer any of the big questions that matter and useful feedback doesn’t get implemented. This is going to be the biggest disaster with the Asia launch. Gamers are the same world wide. We all know how to recognise things that shouldn’t be in game. Instead of listening to this before trying to open in a country of over a billion people, things have just remained the same and no doubt whatever gamers are attracted to gw2 in China will recognise the exact same issues as what EU/NA have already beaten to death over the last year.

Arganthium.5638:

renegade.4851:

The thing that strikes me most is not understanding how the developers work
Since 6 or more months we have been having a heavy Warrior/Ranger – (bunker engi) meta

Lemme stop you right there. This isn’t actually wrong, but I’d just like to elaborate that when we mention Rangers, we are specifically talking about Spirit Rangers. Every other Ranger build is absolutely horrid right now.

Let me stop you even more… Spirit of Nature.

Now, Sensotix, I’m really happy for you and I’ma let you finish, but if the biggest issues you have are diamond skin and skyham, I don’t know what game you’ve been playing.

style.6173:

@OP

You said necro is underpowered? I stopped reading your post at that point. Necro is right up there with warrior right now, especially MM.

if you read carefully you would have seen that it is mentioned that necromancer is currently close to being out of the meta and that’s a fact

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I stopped reading after you said Ranger were viable and necromancer weren’t. You live in some sort of sheltered world none of the rest of us live in. If you look at the top 3 profession everyone universally have said need help, it has been;

Ranger PvE+PvP
Elementalist PvP
Necromancer PvE

Your view is currently running counter to what the rest of the community feels. I am not sure where/how you play but only spirit ranger works best and even then all three of the spirits are broken in favour of the ranger(Ranger forums shows the healing/burning over proc’ing) which is allowing them to remain in a ok spot as home defender. Once that gets fixed they’re back to being mediocre at best. Also it is not warrior meta, it is a hammer meta. There is 9 hammer warriors to any other type of warrior. To simply call it warrior is not labeling it right.

You seem to think that descisions aren’t made in stone with A-net. They are made in stone. The only reason they ask is so they can figure out how to pitch what is already gonna happen. When it becomes apparent there is no sales pitch, they just say nothing at all. This is the documented history. What makes it worse is that this sounds harsh, but it is in fact just truthful. They don’t answer any of the big questions that matter and useful feedback doesn’t get implemented. This is going to be the biggest disaster with the Asia launch. Gamers are the same world wide. We all know how to recognise things that shouldn’t be in game. Instead of listening to this before trying to open in a country of over a billion people, things have just remained the same and no doubt whatever gamers are attracted to gw2 in China will recognise the exact same issues as what EU/NA have already beaten to death over the last year.

ofc i mean spirit ranger but i thought that was quite obvious so i didn’t point it out
and no we don’t have a hammer meta…if we have a certain weapon meta then it’s longbow and in europe (that’s where i play) we have a lot of warriors running around with all different kinds of builds so either you are playing on na or you just said to me i have no idea what’s going on while in fact you are probably playing solo q only or in the lower tier of team q and that’s okay but don’t judge me then on my knowledge please

On the rest i can agree!

entropy.9613:

Now, Sensotix, I’m really happy for you and I’ma let you finish, but if the biggest issues you have are diamond skin and skyham, I don’t know what game you’ve been playing.

its not the biggest issue but as i pointed out in the thread it clearly shows best how much they care about the community’s opinion
I really ask myself if people can read on the forums sometimes

Arganthium.5638:

it is yet to be proven that Thief (the class most commonly cited as the rival to Mesmer) has any sort of theoretical edge over Mesmer. In fact, if anything, the computations and strategic analysis seems to favor Mesmer (though only slightly) over thief.

Can you please stop posting your clueless rubbish on these forums. You also posted in another thread:

“And mesmers? Yeah, they’re terrible, even though all evidence shows that they are at least equal with thieves (due to their base health in exchange for armor, and a variety of offensive and defensive pluses), if not better than thieves.”

So we’re judging classes viability on there base health and stats now? You are the reason the devs get persuaded by bad players opinions on the meta. In the hotjoin meta that you play in mesmers might still be viable but at the top level they get eaten by thieves and there is no reason to bring a mes on your team.

That’s why there was not a SINGLE mesmer in the whole KOTM2 tournament. 80 of the best players in the world you would think that there would be atleast 1 mesmer if their “better” than thieves. Yet nearly EVERY SINGLE team had a thief.

Helseth (best EU mesmer) has recently rerolled thief. Supcutie (best NA mesmer) has rerolled thief as seen in the dev game the other day. And sensotix has rerolled thief and has also played thief for his team in all his recent tournaments.

But obviously their all wrong because they didnt take into account mesmers base HP compared to a thief. How silly of them.

Supcutie said it best in the mes forums:

“The short of it skcamow, is that between Helseth and I, we have tried what we and many believe to be every possible variation that we thought could be viable.
PU Shatter, PU condi, regular shatter, confounding shatter, mantra shatter, phantasm, gs/staff gs/s-f gs/s-t, gs/staff, lockdown, clone death, signets, bunker/bruiser, others I can’t think of off the top of my head.
We basically tried them all in high end team play and we talked about it back and forth. I’ve compared numbers/ideas/theorycrafting between team mates and many players I trust and respect. Mesmers just simply aren’t a good choice, when you can be replaced by a Thief if you don’t have one (or play Warrior, Ranger, Guardian – the sPvP Holy Trinity.)”