Guild Wars 2

I really dislike this map, it is mainly because classes who have a lot of mobility just dominate in it. This is mostly eles. The speed that they can cap the orb is quite amazing.

Here is how I would improve it.

You can use no skills except heals. No blocks, invurnabilitys, etc. Allies can apply boons to you, such as stability, etc.

You can pass the orb or throw it a very small distance. I think this can greatly improve teamwork.

I think that’s called kegbrawl

Deified.7520:

I really dislike this map, it is mainly because classes who have a lot of mobility just dominate in it. This is mostly eles. The speed that they can cap the orb is quite amazing.

Here is how I would improve it.

You can use no skills except heals. No blocks, invurnabilitys, etc. Allies can apply boons to you, such as stability, etc.

You can pass the orb or throw it a very small distance. I think this can greatly improve teamwork.

really though I don’t know why we got this stupid map instead of a real ctf map

luxen.8376:

I think that’s called kegbrawl

Keg Brawl is the best mode.

Or just simply increase the Cap time to 5 seconds..so you can actually ensure he doesnt block cap the orb.
This way you force teamfights.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Glad to hear about the invulnerability change, and even the RTL. But do you have any plans to nerf things such as Ranger GS-3, or Sword 2 as well or just RTL?

Sword jumps are already reduced while carrying the orb.

Finaly…a nerf!!!!
ppl can stop QQ now? ^^

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Looks like I have to make a gem store purchase now.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Why does this have to wait until the end of the month?

I understand that not everything can be fixed quickly, but since you already have a fix what’s the hold up? This kind of imbalance is very annoying, especially for more casual players without teams, and having to wait two weeks for a simple fix like this is disheartening.

good man….good man… Thanks for the info Tyler much appreciated

Eurantien.4632:

Sword jumps are already reduced while carrying the orb.

they still leap far to far. Considering the orb is more rewarding then svanir/chief. It should take a lot longer to run it imo.

Tyler, thanks a lot. This is the kind of comunication we always expected from you guys.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Awesome to hear, thank you.

Eldan.8627:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Why does this have to wait until the end of the month?

I understand that not everything can be fixed quickly, but since you already have a fix what’s the hold up? This kind of imbalance is very annoying, especially for more casual players without teams, and having to wait two weeks for a simple fix like this is disheartening.

The technology just isn’t there yet

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Eldan.8627:

Why does this have to wait until the end of the month?

I understand that not everything can be fixed quickly, but since you already have a fix what’s the hold up? This kind of imbalance is very annoying, especially for more casual players without teams, and having to wait two weeks for a simple fix like this is disheartening.

Whenever we put out a new patch to the live game, it’s a big process that most of the staff is affected by. So an issue generally has to be really critical for us to justify putting out a hot fix outside of our normal build schedule.

I figured that would be the case. The problem with that is that you lose the ability to iterate.

As players we have to wait for a balance change that we hope is the right one. If it’s not we have to wait a long time for a subsequent change. This is especially important in SPvP where these balance changes directly affect the essence of the game. I’m sure you iterate and test them in house, but having the players involved can give more reliable results (if used correctly) and absolutely raises the moral of players because we are able to see direct progress being made. It means players don’t have to suffer through the poorly balanced, but not broken, aspects of the game for an entire month.

I was working on a list of suggestions for GW2, and though I’m not sure I’ll ever finish it (polish wise, not because there are too many things) incorporating a faster update cycle is the number one thing on it for that reason.

Thanks a lot for the change, Tyler and all

The fact they fixed this for next patch makes me hopeful they also fixed rtl when crippled or chilled to reduce its range. This bug really needs fixing as it effects every game on every map.

Tyler, can you work more on releasing sPvP specif patch notes earlier than patch day? At least the. We have something to rage in the forums about

Eldan.8627:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Eldan.8627:

Why does this have to wait until the end of the month?

I understand that not everything can be fixed quickly, but since you already have a fix what’s the hold up? This kind of imbalance is very annoying, especially for more casual players without teams, and having to wait two weeks for a simple fix like this is disheartening.

Whenever we put out a new patch to the live game, it’s a big process that most of the staff is affected by. So an issue generally has to be really critical for us to justify putting out a hot fix outside of our normal build schedule.

I figured that would be the case. The problem with that is that you lose the ability to iterate.

As players we have to wait for a balance change that we hope is the right one. If it’s not we have to wait a long time for a subsequent change. This is especially important in SPvP where these balance changes directly affect the essence of the game. I’m sure you iterate and test them in house, but having the players involved can give more reliable results (if used correctly) and absolutely raises the moral of players because we are able to see direct progress being made. It means players don’t have to suffer through the poorly balanced, but not broken, aspects of the game for an entire month.

I was working on a list of suggestions for GW2, and though I’m not sure I’ll ever finish it (polish wise, not because there are too many things) incorporating a faster update cycle is the number one thing on it for that reason.

haha!!! I would imagine it’s a resource issue – maybe you should buy some more copies of the game so they can hire more pvp guys??

If RTL is affected by orb, can it also be affected by slows now?

Aside from orb balance, will there be other class balance in the april patch? Don’t need specifics but a little light at the end of the tunnel would really help pvp players at this point. It’s felt like
some professions could really use some more viable builds and some builds need tweaking for awhile now.

Thank you for giving attention to this issue. Spirit Watch is a fun map, but when you get degenerate teams built around nothing but mobility and area denial (faced a 3 mesmer, 2 ele team last night several times) it falls apart.

Would you also consider changing the mechanics for taking the orb from its pedestal so that it is not interrupted by ticks of damage from persistent area effects? This is another degenerate strategy that is too easy to implement. After many games last night my team felt that we shouldn’t be playing our main characters—but instead making level 1 alts and building a team that would dominate Spirit Watch through class design not by clever play—to stand an even chance of winning.

This to me is a sign that the map or certain mechanics involving the orb need further change.

Not sure if its in this thread, but I was in heart of the mist and someone was saying a certain ranger (not going to include name) was using speed hack. Then I get into a tournament game and I see said ranger on other team.

All I gotta say is that ranger capped it 10 times super fast, I know why that 1 guy told me he don’t mind eles, he hates the rangers more. It wasn’t a speed hack it was something that gives her 25% more speed and all I saw was her jumping all the way to raven. Its faster than ele because rtl has a bigger timer now and that’s all we got.

If I recall correctly, rtl got nerfed because of this map, now its getting the correct nerf, which reduces the length traveled with the orb.

When people say that jumping length got nerfed, I’m pretty sure that was the thief only.

I’ll be looking forward to this change, will improve a bit the balance in this map.
i was thinking that maybe there must be a change in the place where the orb appears.. i switched to staff ele in this map to fill with area skills the orb’s spot, for no one can take it… To avoid this, or to try to not let this happend so easily, maybe rotate the orb spawn point? or something like that?
I love Spirit Watch design, but i still feel that the map can improve a lot more!
By the way, this change with invulnerability and RTL will be amazing!

If Ride the Lightning is Nerfed I also encourage you guys to look at the other strategies that other classes use to move the orb faster and to get the orb off the pedestal.

I am sure that a couple of leap skills are not affected by having the orb at all.
There are many rangers who are able to run the orb a lot faster than the elementalists.
Engineers also have a couple of skills which allow them to cap the points extremely fast.

Another thing I have noticed which no one has mentioned is the fact that there are skills which allow people to pick up the orb while being under fire.

The Mesmer can use distortion shatter to pick up the orb while still being hit.
The Guardian has a skill which blocks attacks which ensures that they are the ones who get them. That skill with the bunkering skills of a guardian makes it quite game changing.

I’m sure there are many other skills which are like this and I do not know if they are like this by design or as an oversight but I would like to see a response to these strategies and A-net’s stance on them.

OhhGasm.9604:

…

OhhGasm.9604 is absolutely right. There are a number of builds that are equal or even stronger than elementalists running the orb.

Engineers: there are some builds which keep vigor up 100% of the time combined with a constant spam of CC abilities. By far the strongest orb carrier build although not the fastest.

Guards: Using block abilities to get an easy and unstoppable cap on the orb and continuing to block about 50% of the time while running up to the point and if he does get low health they heal themselves up to full multiple times.

Elementalists: As said before using mist form and following it up with ride the lightning is very potent combined with strong healing.

Rangers which use their sword skills to constantly jump combined with normal evading. Not the strongest compared to the ones above but if you don’t lock them down at the start you simply cannot keep up with them.

All this combined with the fact that I have extreme difficulties picking up the orb after the bunker has dropped it. I even feel that if a team manages to kill an orb carrier they should be the only ones who can pick it up for lets say 10 seconds. Dropping an orb should be punished somehow.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

That will do one thing and one thing only – Eles will no longer carry orbs, rangers and guardians will. And rangers evades and leaps will be the same OP thing, like eles RTL..

I’m sorry but I really think that the orb should give the same skills to any player. It would be more balanced. If it’s to complicate to manage 5 new abilities, go play hello kitty online.

Dejw.5164:

…That will do one thing and one thing only – Eles will no longer carry orbs, rangers and guardians will. And rangers evades and leaps will be the same OP thing, like eles RTL..

Best solution: All movement skills make you drop the orb. You had the foresight to make stealth, Death Shroud #2 on Necro and teleports drop the orb but allow other classes to use movement skills freely? Silly.

Also, while holding orb “Immune to vigor” would be a good change. Then classes with little to no vigor access would actually have a balanced chance.

The map is a good one if you can remove the current profession imbalances (RtL is a start, but not just that) that it poses. Certain professions are just far superior to others on this map to the point of being uncompetetive.

My problem with the orb is that it favors certain classes because they have better movement/hp/damage mitigation.

The biggest imbalance is that certain classes like guardians can pick it up and negate tons of damage while using it. Warriors have great movement abilities to cap. Ele’s have RTL and mist form.

Thieves are terrible orb holder because they can’t stealth it and have such low hp and nothing else to negate damage.

My suggestion would to make it harder for people to continually cap this. Keep the hindered effect of running the orb. Still allow movement skills to work, like warriors leap attacks and bladetrail. Thief heart seeker, etc.

Remove the ability to use any kind of ability that give you any kind of immunity. RTL, Mist form, any invuln.

In exchange give the orb holder a boost of HP/toughness.

Basically the “idea” is to make the orb holder a slow punching bag that can’t move very well and can’t mitigate damage. This would require having your team help you cap it IMO.

Don’t remove the skills from the bars just display a “Immune” message like when a thief tries to stealth with the orb or use swiftness.

There needs to be less movement and less damage mitigation through skills while holding the orb. Just increase toughness/hp when doing so that they can take more hits while the team defends the orb runner.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

Can you also change the spawn location and make the map a little larger please, right now I love the idea of the map, but the map it self is the worse one. In my experince ( out side of tourny’s )

• Match starts
• One team camps spawn location of opposing team
• Free for all in the middle.
• Team that camps wins

Also while your at it can you just make all the maps a little larger, or make the Hotjoins 5v5 instead of 8v8. Cause right now with 8v8 and the small size of the maps it is 90% of the time, Zerg to point and stay in zerg = win. Zerging is fine in very large scale battles like Wv3 as the battle map is large. Although in the PvP maps they are small and a zerg just stomps the opposition. When you have zerg wars in PvP you really take out a lot of the skill that I feel was intended to be used. just my two cents, I am sure that many people will disagree with me, but I would just like to see PvP go back to how it was at the beging before everyone ( err most player groups) started to zerg zerg zerg. I also know that Tourny’s don’t have these issues, and I do a lot of tourny’s but I don’t do them 24/7 and sometimes I do Hot joins.

swinsk.6410:

My problem with the orb is that it favors certain classes because they have better movement/hp/damage mitigation.

The biggest imbalance is that certain classes like guardians can pick it up and negate tons of damage while using it. Warriors have great movement abilities to cap. Ele’s have RTL and mist form.

Thieves are terrible orb holder because they can’t stealth it and have such low hp and nothing else to negate damage.

My suggestion would to make it harder for people to continually cap this. Keep the hindered effect of running the orb. Still allow movement skills to work, like warriors leap attacks and bladetrail. Thief heart seeker, etc.

Remove the ability to use any kind of ability that give you any kind of immunity. RTL, Mist form, any invuln.

In exchange give the orb holder a boost of HP/toughness.

Basically the “idea” is to make the orb holder a slow punching bag that can’t move very well and can’t mitigate damage. This would require having your team help you cap it IMO.

Don’t remove the skills from the bars just display a “Immune” message like when a thief tries to stealth with the orb or use swiftness.

There needs to be less movement and less damage mitigation through skills while holding the orb. Just increase toughness/hp when doing so that they can take more hits while the team defends the orb runner.

RTL does not give any damage reduction.
This could be my own RTL obsession talking but I personally think that this map is fine. Every class needs to play to it’s strengths (though I agree some things are currently overpowered).

I do hope to see certain classes as better orb runner than other class because it does provide each person on a team with a certain role. You wouldn’t really expect a thief to bunker (though I’ve seen it).

I also believe that thieves need to have some kind of method to run the orb a bit better, currently whenever I see a thief running them, my elementalist smiles as I RTL over to them for a free orb!

There is also a pretty important issue in which if you kill someone holding the orb (or your ally who is holding the orb dies) it is very difficult to pick it up because “Finish Him!” or “Revive” keeps popping up on the screen instead. It really is frustrating when you DPS an orb carrier down inches away from the node and then his buddy picks it up and gets knocked down into the node!

I personally like Spirit Watch, it requires a different kind of gameplay and contains a very strong and potent secondary mechanic.

I run the orb all the time as a minion mancer, being able to defend myself without stopping the run and having so many minions to tear down lone orb killers. it is so cute to have an ele RTL to me only to get feared, stampeded, then slaughtered by my minions for being far too squishy to deal with all the interupts available if you time minion skills and your own properly.
Controller warriors are my bane but they are thankfully a rare occurence.

If I can make a suggestion: The cap time on the orb is incredibly low, like 2 seconds. This allows things like guardian to sanctuary cap etc. IN some cases making it nearly or even literally impossible to stop. Or someone can cap if they land a knockdown.

My request. Double the cap time. That would still make it quite quick.

Easiest fix:

Don’t pick UP the orb. BECOME the orb.

A big, fat, glowy bubble with high HP/Armor that moves slowly. You’d be very dependent on team support and everyone would be equal in terms of orb carrying.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

I’ve made some changes to orb running that’ll show up in the end of April build. Ride the Lightning distance will be reduced while carrying the the orb, and gaining invulnerability will drop it.

How come leap type abilities are permitted but teleport type abilities aren’t? Ride the lightning is infinitely stronger for carrying the orb than Infiltrator’s Arrow. Either don’t allow any of them, or allow all of them.

kodesh.2851:

Easiest fix:

Don’t pick UP the orb. BECOME the orb.

A big, fat, glowy bubble with high HP/Armor that moves slowly. You’d be very dependent on team support and everyone would be equal in terms of orb carrying.

I prefer this. Everyone should be equal in terms of carrying the orb. We shouldn’t need specific classes that are best at carrying orbs. Not to mention the obvious inconsistency with what is allowed and isn’t allowed.