Lets get 1 straight, perfect balance is impossible, with that out of the way, i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
Every other game out there manages to get some right here and there, but i honestly cant recall a gw2 meta where 2 or 3 specs didnt absolutely crush the competition.
Lets get 1 straight, perfect balance is impossible, with that out of the way,i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
Every other game out there manages to get some right here and there, but i honestly cant recall a gw2 meta where 2 or 3 specs didnt absolutely crush the competition.
you never played wow huh ? this games pvp is golden compared to that lol.
btw seems like the devs are just lazy or don’t care they aren’t even communicating with us about the issues
they seem like turning into Blizzard 2.0 you know pvp balance patch every 1 year no content for another 1 year while ignoring the whole community…
(edited by Zoltreez.6435)
i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
kittening lold, you clearly haven’t really tried or bothered to check other online games. In comparison to most of them GW2 is top tier by far.
Lets get 1 straight, perfect balance is impossible, with that out of the way,i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
Every other game out there manages to get some right here and there, but i honestly cant recall a gw2 meta where 2 or 3 specs didnt absolutely crush the competition.you never played wow huh ? this games pvp is golden compared to that lol.
btw seems like the devs are just lazy or don’t care they aren’t even communicating with us about the issues
they seem like turning into Blizzard 2.0 you know pvp balance patch every 1 year no content for another 1 year while ignoring the whole community…
I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin. WSG in vanilla allowed for a ton of different specs to be very effective. There was no “perfect” group, you just needed to build to your groups strengths. BC PvP got dicey because of Arena and them trying to balance based on it. It was still way better than GW2 though.
There is just so much wrong with GW2 balance that I can’t even begin to know where to start. The whole system is poorly built from the ground up with with zero thought in balancing damage, healing, mitigation, and control. How can some classes be a viable dot class when others have more access to all the dots? How can some be an effective bunker when other classes have more access to protection and healing.
The game needed a serious balance team and what we got was a few people that were clueless. Remember when necromancers were told they just didn’t know how to play? How about them saying there isn’t a chance that pets will get better AI, yet there is a class whose dps is hugely tied to them? Those devs that thought they could balance the game failed horribly and what’s worse is that their decisions have made the game worse. Remember when necromancers had a bleed stack taken of their weapon skill because of dhumfire? Then dhumfire was drastically altered and that bleed stack remained gone?
I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin.
Rose-colored glasses. WoW PvP gets out of hand toward the end of an expansion due to gear scaling, and vanilla was no exception. Also, there was always an ideal composition (e.g. feral druid for running flags in WSG vanilla, arenas in later expansion had a selection of a few). However because your BG group in WoW was more what you could find (you couldn’t just swap classes because gear mattered a lot and progression was character-based), it seemed like it was more flexible.
I do agree that ANet needs to go back and take a serious look at core game balance and establish some ground rules which can loosely objectify the balance of an ability.
In addition, the PvP system has heavy flaws which need to be addressed.
I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin.
Rose-colored glasses. WoW PvP gets out of hand toward the end of an expansion due to gear scaling, and vanilla was no exception. Also, there was always an ideal composition (e.g. feral druid for running flags in WSG vanilla, arenas in later expansion had a selection of a few). However because your BG group in WoW was more what you could find (you couldn’t just swap classes because gear mattered a lot and progression was character-based), it seemed like it was more flexible.
I do agree that ANet needs to go back and take a serious look at core game balance and establish some ground rules which can loosely objectify the balance of an ability.
- Should condition damage work alone, or should it be a supplement to power like precision is? With condition damage being powerful by itself, you get on a slippery slope were you can stack too much defense while doing a lot of damage, especially if you have access to multiple condition types.
- Boons should be far more limited so that you can’t easily get 100% up-time on stronger boons, especially on a group, without sacrificing elsewhere for it.
- Stop the arms race. Don’t pile on more boon strip, condi clear, and unblockable everywhere because one build is causing trouble. Address the offending build instead.
- Fix bugs like abilities or movement getting locked during immobilize or leaps.
- There are clear winners for runes, usually because they provide heavy boon output.
In addition, the PvP system has heavy flaws which need to be addressed.
- Stat system is all-or-nothing and needs more granularity. 900 ferocity and 0 precision or 1200 toughness and 0 vitality makes no sense.
- Change how leagues are implemented. If league placement is meant as a way to rank players, you have to abandon rating for matchmaking and win determination. If you want to maintain rating, then league progression should be a facade only, mapped to rating, with extra progression if your league is much lower than your MMR.
+1
For me, the best state of gw2 pvp game was last year, before June patch and after dd ele nerf.
The only real annoying spec in that meta game was shoutbow warrior. But even that shoutbow seems so much more vulnerable compared to some of today’s bunker spec.
They can’t balance cause elite spec are only thing that is selling the expansion, everything else has failed miserably….
They kittened up to hard, they would have to scrap sooooo much to fix PvP in this game. All the passive evades/immunity, excessive AoE and CC, trait-lines pigeonholing you into Elite Spec, conditions being blatantly too strong, etc. There is no way this game is fixed by the end of the season,
This is an interesting issue.
I think another route cause to all this imbalance is they way they dumbed down all the pvp stats and trait lines.
There is simply no room for experimenting. Because there are only 3 traits per trait-line now, there is a much bigger chance of x being obvious pick over y, and z. rather than having 5(or was it 6) different options. Most classes are now tunnel visioned into 1-2 builds with little room to customise. This has massively contributed to how ‘meta’ forced this game is.
With less diversity in your playing style options, the less people are going to experiment and create their own builds/styles of play. Now, with Elite specs, that has turned your 6 optional trait specs into 5, because the Elites are pretty much a must. Again, just dumbs down everything and forces people to stay in certain meta builds due to lack of diversity in traits or stats.
what’s the point in 6 trait specs when only MAXIMUM 2 builds are viable from those 6 specs on any class.
Secondly, as was stated above in this post, pvp stats are also dumbed down.
Before, when you could mix and match runes, there was greater flexibility of what stats you wanted. I feel amulets are far too simplistic….forcing everyone to play, pure bunker, pure dps (condi or power).
Not only is there no ‘trinity’ in this game….it’s worse, there is now only 2 viable options. Unfortunately, because of how amulets and runes are balanced, the trade offs between survivability, damage and skill are too greatly favoured towards survivability.
If there are only 2 builds to choose from, bunker or pure dps, and the aim of GW2 PvP is conquest…shock, you get a constant bunker meta.
Every day i wish i could theory craft random, exciting builds for my classes, like the old days. Mix and match runes, stats depending on what traits…. but you cannot. There is no trait diversity now, and all the trait lines are too forced towards certain traits, especially with the elite spec now being imperative instead of optional.
Basically, it’s too easy to find the optimal meta build for any class now because of the lack of any real stat/trait customisations.
(edited by Liam McColgan.7689)
Remember for 1 month when everyone cried about the power creep, how mesmers and thieves could 1 shot. How power engi could 1 shot (not literally)?
Well they soon nerfed all that, and this is what you get. Mesmers forced into being bunkers because of all the conditions and sustain around, and thieves forced out.
What were ANET thinking!?
I’m sure their idea of this game was to not have *GUARD*ians as longbow dps spammers, yet mesmer and ele, the 2 traditional magical dps, forced into being guardians.
And to top it off….Thief and Warrior, the epitome, the bread and butter, of any MMO…don’t have any space or love in this game in terms of pvp. Sad.
Remember for 1 month when everyone cried about the power creep, how mesmers and thieves could 1 shot. How power engi could 1 shot (not literally)?
Well they soon nerfed all that, and this is what you get. Mesmers forced into being bunkers because of all the conditions and sustain around, and thieves forced out.
What were ANET thinking!?
I’m sure their idea of this game was to not have *GUARD*ians as longbow dps spammers, yet mesmer and ele, the 2 traditional magical dps, forced into being guardians.
And to top it off….Thief and Warrior, the epitome, the bread and butter, of any MMO…don’t have any space or love in this game in terms of pvp. Sad.
The problem is not that mesmer now tank and destroys you but before did it as dps and still destroy you.
The problem is that either way you have a spec that completely obliterates the competition.
You changed the flavor you did not address the problem. And that has been a thing in GW2 since day 1.
Remember for 1 month when everyone cried about the power creep, how mesmers and thieves could 1 shot. How power engi could 1 shot (not literally)?
Well they soon nerfed all that, and this is what you get. Mesmers forced into being bunkers because of all the conditions and sustain around, and thieves forced out.
What were ANET thinking!?
I’m sure their idea of this game was to not have *GUARD*ians as longbow dps spammers, yet mesmer and ele, the 2 traditional magical dps, forced into being guardians.
And to top it off….Thief and Warrior, the epitome, the bread and butter, of any MMO…don’t have any space or love in this game in terms of pvp. Sad.
Anet most certainly intended those things or at the very least gave those as viable options. If they didn’t want elementalists being viable bunkers they wouldn’t be given very strong defensive traits and utilities. Likewise they programmed in the longbow numbers and gave traps. Thief still has an excellent role as a roamer, decapper, +1, and dueler if specced right but the problem with thief is classes have lots of AoE CC tools that hardcounter it in big group fights whereas other classes can fill in daredevil’s niche. If we’re really going to talk developer intent then rogue classes are traditionally very strong in PvP but weak in PvE where mobs have a different set of advantages and disadvantages compared to players yet that clearly isn’t the case in this meta.
Being good involves the methodical and deliberate application of basic maneuvers and tactics and that applies even in this meta. Your mechanical rotations could consist of X skill, then Y skill, then switch legends or attunements, and generally reading the battle. Classes should also be balanced for skill, so we can see a bad rogue loses to a bad druid but a great druid loses to a great rogue kind of a deal. We also need play on top of counter play. Top players are top because they’ve mastered things lower ranked players didn’t. A ruby for example knows the same stuff as other rubies (well, should, league abuse says it isn’t always the case), how and when to rotate and what to expect from what classes, but the top players have some extra skills that are lacking in other levels. Tighter interrupt timings for sure, but there’s something deeper there as well.
Remember for 1 month when everyone cried about the power creep, how mesmers and thieves could 1 shot. How power engi could 1 shot (not literally)?
I remember those days and I can say that even this meta is preferable to the one-shot days. There is nothing fun or skilled about being downed in 2 seconds and having the thief repeatedly stealth away and reset the fight if he screws up.
Unless you are in a tournament I have seen no games time out before 500. People are exaggerating way too much. Revenants melt bunkers and they are hard to kill too.
This is an interesting issue.
I think another route cause to all this imbalance is they way they dumbed down all the pvp stats and trait lines.
There is simply no room for experimenting. Because there are only 3 traits per trait-line now, there is a much bigger chance of x being obvious pick over y, and z. rather than having 5(or was it 6) different options. Most classes are now tunnel visioned into 1-2 builds with little room to customise. This has massively contributed to how ‘meta’ forced this game is.
With less diversity in your playing style options, the less people are going to experiment and create their own builds/styles of play. Now, with Elite specs, that has turned your 6 optional trait specs into 5, because the Elites are pretty much a must. Again, just dumbs down everything and forces people to stay in certain meta builds due to lack of diversity in traits or stats.what’s the point in 6 trait specs when only MAXIMUM 2 builds are viable from those 6 specs on any class.
Secondly, as was stated above in this post, pvp stats are also dumbed down.
Before, when you could mix and match runes, there was greater flexibility of what stats you wanted. I feel amulets are far too simplistic….forcing everyone to play, pure bunker, pure dps (condi or power).
Not only is there no ‘trinity’ in this game….it’s worse, there is now only 2 viable options. Unfortunately, because of how amulets and runes are balanced, the trade offs between survivability, damage and skill are too greatly favoured towards survivability.
If there are only 2 builds to choose from, bunker or pure dps, and the aim of GW2 PvP is conquest…shock, you get a constant bunker meta.
Every day i wish i could theory craft random, exciting builds for my classes, like the old days. Mix and match runes, stats depending on what traits…. but you cannot. There is no trait diversity now, and all the trait lines are too forced towards certain traits, especially with the elite spec now being imperative instead of optional.
Basically, it’s too easy to find the optimal meta build for any class now because of the lack of any real stat/trait customisations.
+1 THIS
This is an interesting issue.
I think another route cause to all this imbalance is they way they dumbed down all the pvp stats and trait lines.
There is simply no room for experimenting. Because there are only 3 traits per trait-line now, there is a much bigger chance of x being obvious pick over y, and z. rather than having 5(or was it 6) different options. Most classes are now tunnel visioned into 1-2 builds with little room to customise. This has massively contributed to how ‘meta’ forced this game is.
With less diversity in your playing style options, the less people are going to experiment and create their own builds/styles of play. Now, with Elite specs, that has turned your 6 optional trait specs into 5, because the Elites are pretty much a must. Again, just dumbs down everything and forces people to stay in certain meta builds due to lack of diversity in traits or stats.what’s the point in 6 trait specs when only MAXIMUM 2 builds are viable from those 6 specs on any class.
Secondly, as was stated above in this post, pvp stats are also dumbed down.
Before, when you could mix and match runes, there was greater flexibility of what stats you wanted. I feel amulets are far too simplistic….forcing everyone to play, pure bunker, pure dps (condi or power).
Not only is there no ‘trinity’ in this game….it’s worse, there is now only 2 viable options. Unfortunately, because of how amulets and runes are balanced, the trade offs between survivability, damage and skill are too greatly favoured towards survivability.
If there are only 2 builds to choose from, bunker or pure dps, and the aim of GW2 PvP is conquest…shock, you get a constant bunker meta.
Every day i wish i could theory craft random, exciting builds for my classes, like the old days. Mix and match runes, stats depending on what traits…. but you cannot. There is no trait diversity now, and all the trait lines are too forced towards certain traits, especially with the elite spec now being imperative instead of optional.
Basically, it’s too easy to find the optimal meta build for any class now because of the lack of any real stat/trait customisations.
I’ve always thought the new trait system is what broke everything.
Personally I was running some very original builds nobody was running before the new trait system came in place and had amazing success with those builds. Now it’s all impossible, I’m stuck running the stupidly boring bunker meta because anything else is not viable.
The new trait system is the perfect example of why a company shouldn’t waste their resources fixing stuff that isn’t broken. It would have been better to invest in HoT content.
They kittened up to hard, they would have to scrap sooooo much to fix PvP in this game. All the passive evades/immunity, excessive AoE and CC, trait-lines pigeonholing you into Elite Spec, conditions being blatantly too strong, etc. There is no way this game is fixed by the end of the season,
Pretty much this. Who knows if it’ll even be fixed by the end of this year (it’s definitely a possibility, knowing ANet).
I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin. WSG in vanilla allowed for a ton of different specs to be very effective. There was no “perfect” group, you just needed to build to your groups strengths. BC PvP got dicey because of Arena and them trying to balance based on it. It was still way better than GW2 though.
Some rose colored glasses their sir.
Vanilla WoW:
I remember soloing warlocks 15 levels higher than me in open world PvP. Poor POOR warlocks.
Warriors with good equipment were crazy OP. Like soloing entire ZONES of people in open world.
Rogues didn’t need (literally) equipment to stunlock someone from 100-0.
Shamans, my goodness. With lucky crits could basically one shot a lot of lighter classes while being in medium armor and able to heal.
Paladins who could live against 2-3 people and slowly kill em all.
I don’t think the trait system is the big problem for a lack of balance. I think that the small amount of balance patches is what kills balance. Anet does a very small amount of balance patches but the balance patches are quite influential. This means that a lot of variables have changed and inbalance is more likely to occur. If the they started with smaller but more frequent patches they will slowly move closer to a balanced state or at least close to. It comes at big disadvantage though, reworks are less likely to occur and may result in conceptually flawed concepts to remain flawed forever.
Lets get 1 straight, perfect balance is impossible, with that out of the way,i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
Every other game out there manages to get some right here and there, but i honestly cant recall a gw2 meta where 2 or 3 specs didnt absolutely crush the competition.you never played wow huh ? this games pvp is golden compared to that lol.
btw seems like the devs are just lazy or don’t care they aren’t even communicating with us about the issues
they seem like turning into Blizzard 2.0 you know pvp balance patch every 1 year no content for another 1 year while ignoring the whole community…
I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin. WSG in vanilla allowed for a ton of different specs to be very effective. There was no “perfect” group, you just needed to build to your groups strengths. BC PvP got dicey because of Arena and them trying to balance based on it. It was still way better than GW2 though.
There is just so much wrong with GW2 balance that I can’t even begin to know where to start. The whole system is poorly built from the ground up with with zero thought in balancing damage, healing, mitigation, and control. How can some classes be a viable dot class when others have more access to all the dots? How can some be an effective bunker when other classes have more access to protection and healing.
The game needed a serious balance team and what we got was a few people that were clueless. Remember when necromancers were told they just didn’t know how to play? How about them saying there isn’t a chance that pets will get better AI, yet there is a class whose dps is hugely tied to them? Those devs that thought they could balance the game failed horribly and what’s worse is that their decisions have made the game worse. Remember when necromancers had a bleed stack taken of their weapon skill because of dhumfire? Then dhumfire was drastically altered and that bleed stack remained gone?
Maybe you should watch this video as a memory refresher :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-KMOc_y7xo
I don’t think i’ve ever seen a game where people complained more about balance than wow now that i think of it.
(edited by chibbi.3706)
Maybe you should watch this video as a memory refresher :
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=26540I don’t think i’ve ever seen a game where people complained more about balance than wow now that i think of it.
That brings back memories.
People complain about thief here…WoW rogues could literally kill you without giving you a chance to even move.
Maybe you should watch this video as a memory refresher :
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=26540I don’t think i’ve ever seen a game where people complained more about balance than wow now that i think of it.
That brings back memories.
People complain about thief here…WoW rogues could literally kill you without giving you a chance to even move.
It was a high skillcap class though so you actually had to be good and situationally and tactically aware to pull any of that off. If a rogue shadowsteps into a flare I’m sure no one would say he’s overpowered and rogue is a single target specialist anyway who had no real use in high end PvE. The rogue on top of skill needed to rely on crit damage to actually kill someone, if they lived through the burst then it was bailing time, so vanish away! Oh, but cloak of shadows doesn’t wash bleed.
Likewise, you may think you’re getting into a 1v1, signs are there but all of a sudden armies are fighting on you now, it’s no longer a 1v1 but a big group fight so the dynamics radically changed. Some of my funnest moments in WoW had this happen.
Maybe you should watch this video as a memory refresher :
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=26540I don’t think i’ve ever seen a game where people complained more about balance than wow now that i think of it.
That brings back memories.
People complain about thief here…WoW rogues could literally kill you without giving you a chance to even move.
It was a high skillcap class though so you actually had to be good and situationally and tactically aware to pull any of that off. If a rogue shadowsteps into a flare I’m sure no one would say he’s overpowered and rogue is a single target specialist anyway who had no real use in high end PvE. The rogue on top of skill needed to rely on crit damage to actually kill someone, if they lived through the burst then it was bailing time, so vanish away! Oh, but cloak of shadows doesn’t wash bleed.
Likewise, you may think you’re getting into a 1v1, signs are there but all of a sudden armies are fighting on you now, it’s no longer a 1v1 but a big group fight so the dynamics radically changed. Some of my funnest moments in WoW had this happen.
We’re talking vanilla rogue here. There was no shadowstep, and it definitely was not a high skillcap class as any moron could perma cc you until you die.
It’s a shame part 1 was removed, because you see him kill every class with a worn dagger (0.9dps) and being naked.
It was a high skillcap class though so you actually had to be good and situationally and tactically aware to pull any of that off. If a rogue shadowsteps into a flare I’m sure no one would say he’s overpowered and rogue is a single target specialist anyway who had no real use in high end PvE. The rogue on top of skill needed to rely on crit damage to actually kill someone, if they lived through the burst then it was bailing time, so vanish away! Oh, but cloak of shadows doesn’t wash bleed.
Likewise, you may think you’re getting into a 1v1, signs are there but all of a sudden armies are fighting on you now, it’s no longer a 1v1 but a big group fight so the dynamics radically changed. Some of my funnest moments in WoW had this happen.
Oh come on. I mained rogue, it was not a high skill cap class. You walked into people stealthed, and pressed a few buttons. And there are actual videos of rogues fighting people naked, so no he didn’t rely on crits to kill.
Who cares about PvE? Not part of the discussion.
WoW had terrible balance even if you think rogue’s somehow where balanced.
this is the part chibbi is talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7JYsuRD0nY
(edited by Mightybird.6034)
And let’s not forget than beside the horrible balance, wow is the game where you could install a bunch of mods that litterally played for you.
WoW PvP has always been a kittenshow, it got away with it because it was their first MMO for most of the players, and the only other competitor was GW1, which despite having a way better PvP, was nowhere near as addictive.
It was a high skillcap class though so you actually had to be good and situationally and tactically aware to pull any of that off. If a rogue shadowsteps into a flare I’m sure no one would say he’s overpowered and rogue is a single target specialist anyway who had no real use in high end PvE. The rogue on top of skill needed to rely on crit damage to actually kill someone, if they lived through the burst then it was bailing time, so vanish away! Oh, but cloak of shadows doesn’t wash bleed.
Likewise, you may think you’re getting into a 1v1, signs are there but all of a sudden armies are fighting on you now, it’s no longer a 1v1 but a big group fight so the dynamics radically changed. Some of my funnest moments in WoW had this happen.
Oh come on. I mained rogue, it was not a high skill cap class. You walked into people stealthed, and pressed a few buttons. And there are actual videos of rogues fighting people naked, so no he didn’t rely on crits to kill.
Who cares about PvE? Not part of the discussion.
WoW had terrible balance even if you think rogue’s somehow where balanced.
this is the part chibbi is talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7JYsuRD0nY
I only played WoW during Cataclysm but from that video Vanilla rogue definitely needed fixing. I remember some 1v1’s against death knights and paladins that were very tough while hunters and especially warlocks were much easier. I did battlegrounds mostly.
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