Guild Wars 2

Hoochieman.3107:

Justine.6351:

I don’t want an amulet telling me I need 500 vita when I only need 250.

WvW is an open world pvp format, gear disparity is implied and offers personal goals of ~ +5% stats.

If you want “unfair” gear stat combinations culled ask instead for gear stats as a whole to be trimmed in effectiveness so there are less extremes in chosen played roles. Pretty crazy to think balancing is realistic when players can add over 50% to their HP while losing ~10% dmg.

So you’re suggesting “trimming” Vitality/Toughness/Healing Power on current gear and trinkets in WvW? Or simply removing Minstrel, Nomad, Dire, etc altogether from WvW?

I actually mean trimming all gear stats by a %.

so the current 1381/961/961 ascended gear would be cut down to an effective 690/480/480 if under a 50% cut.

I suppose going the route of cutting only vita/toughness would be fine too but imo a lot of the problems people see in unbalanced has more to do with extreme builds. Nobody cries about a rev doing 7k cor or a guardian with 300 burn tics or an ele with 16k hp/2.5k armor/400 healing. Its when revs do 10k cor, guards with 500 burn tics and ele with 18k hp/3k armor/1k healing that people starting crying the game is not fun.

Vita itself is a pretty wild stat considering some classes can nearly double their hp by gear stat choice. Most sane people realize you don’t need more than 300-500 vita in wvw for most play simply because its so strong in effective % increase to their overall health pool.

Justine.6351:

Hoochieman.3107:

Justine.6351:

I don’t want an amulet telling me I need 500 vita when I only need 250.

WvW is an open world pvp format, gear disparity is implied and offers personal goals of ~ +5% stats.

If you want “unfair” gear stat combinations culled ask instead for gear stats as a whole to be trimmed in effectiveness so there are less extremes in chosen played roles. Pretty crazy to think balancing is realistic when players can add over 50% to their HP while losing ~10% dmg.

So you’re suggesting “trimming” Vitality/Toughness/Healing Power on current gear and trinkets in WvW? Or simply removing Minstrel, Nomad, Dire, etc altogether from WvW?

I actually mean trimming all gear stats by a %.

so the current 1381/961/961 ascended gear would be cut down to an effective 690/480/480 if under a 50% cut.

I suppose going the route of cutting only vita/toughness would be fine too but imo a lot of the problems people see in unbalanced has more to do with extreme builds. Nobody cries about a rev doing 7k cor or a guardian with 300 burn tics or an ele with 16k hp/2.5k armor/400 healing. Its when revs do 10k cor, guards with 500 burn tics and ele with 18k hp/3k armor/1k healing that people starting crying the game is not fun.

Vita itself is a pretty wild stat considering some classes can nearly double their hp by gear stat choice. Most sane people realize you don’t need more than 300-500 vita in wvw for most play simply because its so strong in effective % increase to their overall health pool.

By trimming all stats across the board uniformly you’re not really succeeding in anything proportionally speaking. Hard hitting classes should appropriately be glass cannons to compensate. Builds should not be able to build full bunker and still put out huge numbers.

Jeknar.6184:

Justine.6351:

I could get behind an idea where,

you get 3000 attribute points and can put a maximum of 1000 in each of 3 categories,

Offensive,
-power
-precision
-condition damage

Auxiliary,
-ferocity
-expertise
-concentration

Defensive,
-vitality
-toughness
-healing power

I would probably increase the conversion of precision to 25 = 1% among other balance changes of course.

That one would kinda screw power builds builds since you need 2 stats which are in the same slot. I’d say Precision is more Utility than directly offensive. But then again, it will conflicit with Ferocity instead.
Also, I used 3600 because that’s the stats of the full ascended pve armor we can currently get on WvW… sPvP amulet give 3000 for 3-stats and 3160 for 4-stats, which are significantly lower than their PvE counterpart.

ya its why I would increase the coversion ratio on precision. I did think of combining precision/ferocity into ONE stat but I’m not sure how that would play out overall.

I do think gear stats overall should be trimmed, its a pretty big source of volatility.

Take vita for example,
put 300 vita on a warrior and its +3000 health
put 300 vita on a guardian and its +3000 health

warrior gets a 15.6% increase to their health
guardian gets a 25.8% increase to their health

I mean its no secret that vita is THEE defensive stat for guardian/thief/ele. And its not really anyone’s fault except anet for deciding to balance the classes around base health pools that have over the past 4 years become relatively arbitrary. You cannot legitimately play these 3 classes without a minimum of +300 vita in your gear stat.

so yeah there are many problems surrounding both gear stat and just stats themselves in general with the biggest ones being precision/ferocity and vitality imo.

Hoochieman.3107:

Justine.6351:

Hoochieman.3107:

Justine.6351:

I don’t want an amulet telling me I need 500 vita when I only need 250.

WvW is an open world pvp format, gear disparity is implied and offers personal goals of ~ +5% stats.

If you want “unfair” gear stat combinations culled ask instead for gear stats as a whole to be trimmed in effectiveness so there are less extremes in chosen played roles. Pretty crazy to think balancing is realistic when players can add over 50% to their HP while losing ~10% dmg.

So you’re suggesting “trimming” Vitality/Toughness/Healing Power on current gear and trinkets in WvW? Or simply removing Minstrel, Nomad, Dire, etc altogether from WvW?

I actually mean trimming all gear stats by a %.

so the current 1381/961/961 ascended gear would be cut down to an effective 690/480/480 if under a 50% cut.

I suppose going the route of cutting only vita/toughness would be fine too but imo a lot of the problems people see in unbalanced has more to do with extreme builds. Nobody cries about a rev doing 7k cor or a guardian with 300 burn tics or an ele with 16k hp/2.5k armor/400 healing. Its when revs do 10k cor, guards with 500 burn tics and ele with 18k hp/3k armor/1k healing that people starting crying the game is not fun.

Vita itself is a pretty wild stat considering some classes can nearly double their hp by gear stat choice. Most sane people realize you don’t need more than 300-500 vita in wvw for most play simply because its so strong in effective % increase to their overall health pool.

By trimming all stats across the board uniformly you’re not really succeeding in anything proportionally speaking. Hard hitting classes should appropriately be glass cannons to compensate. Builds should not be able to build full bunker and still put out huge numbers.

I think gear stat is the biggest volatility to balancing issues atm. Trimming it hard would make balancing everything else easier because the window for balancing extremes would be reduced.

I would like to point out this ironically would create build diversity. Currently one of the biggest complaints with wvw is that everyone is running bunker meta (lol remember season one of PvP? It’s like that every where) there’s currently no down sides to running tank. With the prevalence of boons plus over the top stats combined with runes and food, might stacking and protection further compound this issue thus making burst glass cannon builds ineffective against any organized comp. With a reigned in stats amulet system this would be mitigated as now everyone runs a downside to a certain type of damage.

Also would like to say this could really help ease newer players into wvw, as they could now easily hop into ts ask tag or whoever hey what’s a good build? And kitten near instantly would be set up for success instead of having to grind a separate gear set solely for wvw.

Also guilds would have a way easier time to try new comps and could adjust on the fly to changes in the meta instead of having to wait for their guys to cycle through stats swapping or gear grabbing.

You pursue 2 goals here :
1- Reducing the number of possibilities to help balancing
2- Eliminate gear farm

You can’t do 1 without limiting the player creativity. If no possibility are removed from the player, the system isn’t more simple thus it’s at as easy to balanced and possibly harder. No design can escape this rule : more meaningful possibilities the system have, harder the balance will be reached.

Tbh i really don’t mind 2, having suboptimal gear (like exotics armor + weap and ascended trinkets which are given now) doesn’t matter. I can count on my hand the numbers of fight (i’m mostly solo roaming) where i told myself at the end “i should have won that with an ascended gear” when i was still on my suboptimal gear (some bursts build may disagree however but the full scholar zerk is often the first one a player get from pve) . The only thing i could think that is an argument in favour of that is that it’s easier to experiment since some stats (magumma lilly anyone ?) can bee costly.

The whole argument of making new players competitive isn’t valid for me :
1- The new player is more likely to ask for discovery and enjoyment before competion
2- Mostly on teamfight, it’s more tactics, strategy and group comp that choose the winning side than gear (assuming not that kittenty) or skill (assuming not that bad)
3- In the old times of WvW the guilds i known where experimenting as a team, covering the costs as a guild thus the cost per player was lower, I don’t frequent guilds now but I don’t think people have became selfishier in 3 years. A new player wanting to be competitive will join a guild that will help him getting him the next step at least in terms of giving premade (or even mandatory) build that will prevent him to experiment alone and waste a lot of gold in the process.

The thing is that anet removed most of defensives amulet because they doesn’t want a bunker wars. Bunker wars isn’t more imbalanced from what we have now, it’s just a design decision : they wanted things to die more quickly but not as quickly as in wvw (precision and ferocity nerf a while ago).

WvW is too diverse to do a such design decision. You got 1v1 (duel), 1vX (outnumbered), 5v5 (small scale), 15v15 (gvg), 15-20v30+ (zerg bursting), 40v40 , …
Every “mode” of WvW has its own meta, needs and constraints that will be affected by a such change. Imho it’s because we got so much possibilities the game is not so badly balanced (we may have very strong things but nothing OP) is that we have tools (skill & trait but also gear) to counter and innovate.

ich.7086:

Imho it’s because we got so much possibilities the game is not so badly balanced (we may have very strong things but nothing OP) is that we have tools (skill & trait but also gear) to counter and innovate.

I would disagree, but whatever. Dire condi bunker and full zerk with tons of damage multipliers are pretty unbalanced, at least for me. I think one thing that all people can agree on is that its not very fun to fight against these specs. Amulet system would kinda tone them down without making either unviable. The bunker meta for zergs would also be toned down, meaning fights take less time, meaning more fights.

I think its wrong to use the pvp style base armor for everyone in wvw. Each individual should be able to choose the armor stats they wish for. therefore the armor (and weapons) should be “farmed” in the same way as we do at the moment. This would allow some extra build variety, for example, allowing for nomad guardians and beserker guardians.

The “WvW” amulet should be there to replace the rings, trinkets, accessories and backpiece only. These are amulets for wvw and should be designed as such, not adaptations from pvp. I agree that runes, sigils and even wvw infusions should also be based upon the pvp system.

To those who are saying that “amulets reduce variety” i’d say that you are wrong. At the moment once you are in wvw and have farmed all your gear you have no way of changing without going back and re farming all the “new” things you want. You are stuck with 2 maybe 3 viable builds that you can run. With an amulet system you could change in a matter of seconds, allowing you alot more freedom and adaptability to different situations.

The percieved reaction of removal of variety is simply a kneejerk reaction to change based upon flawed arguments. Real build variety and adaptability can only be achieved by having a system where it takes seconds to change not by having the current system where it takes hours of farming pve to change. Even with an amulet system in place there would be still over 6,000,000,000 different variations to choose from (if players were allowed to choose both armor and weapon stats as they wished and mix as they wished as per the current system).

Having a wvw amulet may also have for benefit of helping with skill balance. At a minimum it would help the skill balance devs alot more.

As much as this would be to my advantage, I don’t think this is a good idea. Any MMO — even WoW-- needs to offer something to as many demographics as possible. There is definitely a large demographic that likes to “work” to out-gear the opposition. They can’t do that in sPvP. In PvE. it’s mostly irrelevant. In WvW, they can get a small advantage over those who didn’t. The value of that for the game’s appeal to diverse groups is definitely an issue.

Please no. Mixing gear and playing crazy scientist by trying out various setups are the only good things in WvW right now.

On the other hand(thanks to the leather prices) changing stats is expensive. I stopped bothering and play with my unoptimized gear for a while now. Food is also annoying.

Besides balance changes they should introduce stat-changable armor/trinkets and maybe infinite food. These ultimate gear parts could be part of a new reward system, where WvW players could slowly work towards.
You could still mix stats and change them on demand.

But yeah…as it looks right now, only raid players will be able to get something like that( if it ever releases), because you need so much stat-variety in pve…

As someone who has never run an optimised stat spread on any of my wvw characters, I can honestly say that my stats have never impacted my enjoyment of the game mode that much. So no I don’t believe that the “gear treadmill for new players” argument holds water, unless you count getting to level 80 and buying whatever exotics are cheapest on the tp a treadmill. More important for new people to learn is everything else about the game mode that a lot of more seasoned players probably take the knowledge of for granted.

I’ve been trying to organise and make sense of my feelings for this idea.
From a balance perspective I doubt it will achieve much of anything unless it’s hyper-restrictive and unfun. I’m all for trimming the extremes of some builds or whatever but I think that’s more about trait and boon interactions than stats.
This idea is great for the purposes of individual build experimentation, I love theorycrafting but rarely put the specialist builds into practice because of the cost, sometimes cost in gold but more often the cost in inventory space.
But, I don’t think I’d see this as an overall positive step I’m afraid, because it would just make the gear choices in gw2 even shallower and more berserker dominated than they already are. I just feel like it would take from the feel of gw2 as a whole, and I can’t figure out a better less abstract way of phrasing it than that.
However, if the change happened, I can’t say that it would stop me having fun. I’d probably have a great time experimenting at will with no cost attached. (The corollary to that being that decisions about stats would feel less meaningful, but I personally rarely am able to commit to those decisions anyway)

Personally, I’d like to vote no on the sPvP amulet/gear system being implemented into WvW. I like using my own ascended/legendary gear, and I like having control over how I mix and choose my stats.

Nightingale.8364:

To those who are saying that “amulets reduce variety” i’d say that you are wrong. At the moment once you are in wvw and have farmed all your gear you have no way of changing without going back and re farming all the “new” things you want. You are stuck with 2 maybe 3 viable builds that you can run. With an amulet system you could change in a matter of seconds, allowing you alot more freedom and adaptability to different situations.

Thats the beauty of Ascended…little/no grinding as you can change the stats. People can also buy exo if they needed and asc is not as difficult to make as some people may think. With an amulet system you can’t fully “mix and match”. If I want 2 soldiers, 2 valk and 2 zerker stats on my armor alone, and I can’t due to the ammy system, thats restricting my build,. thus reducing diversity of builds but not allowing mixing/matching stats, even tho its not min/maxing, as a thoerycrafter, sometime sits about min maxing but finding fun builds that can work. Thats what makes WvW better for a thoerycrafter as its the only place to really test a full potential of any build vs actual players (aside from guild arena ofc but playing vs the same ppl over and over gets boring)

The thing I hate the most about PVP is the amulet system. Its sucks big time so NO I do not want to see that system in WvW. Never..Ever…just No. Sorry

Stand The Wall.6987:

I would disagree, but whatever. Dire condi bunker and full zerk with tons of damage multipliers are pretty unbalanced, at least for me. I think one thing that all people can agree on is that its not very fun to fight against these specs. Amulet system would kinda tone them down without making either unviable. The bunker meta for zergs would also be toned down, meaning fights take less time, meaning more fights.

As a solo roamer perspective : I have fun playing against full zerk thief or mesmer or necro or whatever. I don’t mind seeing all condi mesmers or engie or warrior. As long the oponent is skilled enough to give a good fight, don’t ooc every 30 seconds and isn’t a full nomad staff guardian (that spec just triggers me) I have fun.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Nightingale.8364:

To those who are saying that “amulets reduce variety” i’d say that you are wrong. At the moment once you are in wvw and have farmed all your gear you have no way of changing without going back and re farming all the “new” things you want. You are stuck with 2 maybe 3 viable builds that you can run. With an amulet system you could change in a matter of seconds, allowing you alot more freedom and adaptability to different situations.

Thats the beauty of Ascended…little/no grinding as you can change the stats. People can also buy exo if they needed and asc is not as difficult to make as some people may think. With an amulet system you can’t fully “mix and match”. If I want 2 soldiers, 2 valk and 2 zerker stats on my armor alone, and I can’t due to the ammy system, thats restricting my build,. thus reducing diversity of builds but not allowing mixing/matching stats, even tho its not min/maxing, as a thoerycrafter, sometime sits about min maxing but finding fun builds that can work. Thats what makes WvW better for a thoerycrafter as its the only place to really test a full potential of any build vs actual players (aside from guild arena ofc but playing vs the same ppl over and over gets boring)

I don’t think you actually read what I wrote. If you read my whole post I do state I’m against having base armor like in pvp. In wvw players should have the choice over what armor piece stats they want aswell as weapons, exactly as we do at the moment. In my opinion the amulet should only cover the trinkets, rings, backpack and accessories. This would therefore leave you with over 6,000,000,000 stat choice variations (including runes and sigils).

It’s true that some “cheese” builds or overpowered builds simply won’t be viable anymore. WvW is a game mode that has suffered over the passed few years due to the powercreep and skill imbalance. Whilst not a perfect solution a wvw amulet would help ease some of those problems whilst at the same time allowing the variety of builds needed by allowing players to chose individual armor and weapon stats as is the case at the moment.

ich.7086:

Stand The Wall.6987:

I would disagree, but whatever. Dire condi bunker and full zerk with tons of damage multipliers are pretty unbalanced, at least for me. I think one thing that all people can agree on is that its not very fun to fight against these specs. Amulet system would kinda tone them down without making either unviable. The bunker meta for zergs would also be toned down, meaning fights take less time, meaning more fights.

As a solo roamer perspective : I have fun playing against full zerk thief or mesmer or necro or whatever. I don’t mind seeing all condi mesmers or engie or warrior. As long the oponent is skilled enough to give a good fight, don’t ooc every 30 seconds and isn’t a full nomad staff guardian (that spec just triggers me) I have fun.

staff nomad guardians melt…. to zerker thiefs >_>
Its their problem if they melt that way :\

I don’t mean I have an hard time against them but I just can’t enjoy a fight against that spec.

The one thing that makes me leery of going all in on an amulet system is the fact that a lot of the people who play WvW regularly are going to be pretty kittened when told that all the time and effort they took to make their build (often playing mode(s) that they would rather not have to play as much as they do) is going to become meaningless with a single change.

There are other things Anet could try first to help with the balance without having to resort to pvp amulets. WvW-specific caps on things like Boon Duration, Condi Duration, and Crit multiplier, limited effectiveness of food (or even limiting food to the quality of that available in the mobile requisitioner or lower) Caps to the condi stacks that can be applied to players, upscaling player’s gear to 80 exotic quality, etc.

I’m honestly fairly happy with the system as it is. If there is anything off with the balance in WvW, it’s not from stats, but from traits and skills that are above budget.

Hoochieman.3107:

Purpose of Post: To discuss bringing the sPvP Amulet/Rune/Sigil system into WvW (with suggested tweaks).

Purpose of Suggestion: To remove the gear treadmill wall necessary to compete and experiment with builds in WvW, balance the overwhelming bunker/condi meta, and to introduce new players to the game mode that wouldn’t otherwise play for above reasons.

Proposal: To reduce the amount of balancing needed in WvW by promoting active gameplay and strategy over simply ‘powercreeped’ stats. With the removal of amulets in sPvP such as Celestial, Minstrel, Nomad, Dire, and Trailblazer builds are less bunker oriented and more damage or utility oriented.
- Amulets such as Cleric and/or Magi’s could be reintroduced to WvW to compensate for the ‘need’ for sustain classes in zergs or organized GvG/Roaming guilds.
- Food/Utility I will argue SHOULD remain in the WvW game mode.
- Players are leveled to 80 in this game mode only, just like in sPvP.
- ALL runes and sigils are available, although some could be ‘unlocked’ with gold or Heroic Notaries purchases as an example.

Results if Proposal is implemented: Fresh faces to WvW, stat balance, and the ability to swap builds/classes on the fly. First step in separating WvW balance from PvE and closer to sPvP thus allowing ANET to go absolutely nuts with it’s PvE balance.

Expected Arguments:
1. What’s the point of ascended gear if amulets are instated?
– ANET has a great thing going on with FashionWars2. People will always be able to chase after their cosmetic and farming dreams in PvE.

2. Will my Dire PU Mesmer build still be viable?
– Yes it will. Amulet choices such as Carrion, Rabid, Rampager, and maybe even Viper are all still available.

3. Won’t “Power Burst” Classes such as Thief and Mesmer become the new ‘OP’?
– Similarly to sPvP they are excellent at killing…but not so much at sustain or utility. The same applies to WvW.

4. Won’t this kill build diversity?
– This will allow you the freedom to experiment on the fly with different builds and classes and will bring a resurgence of long lost power classes that can’t currently compete with the bunker/condi meta. Can anyone say “hello rifle engineer!”?

5. What about classes like the DH trapper that seem to ‘plague’ sPvP?
– This is more of an opinionated question but consider that 80% of sPvP play takes place ON points…aka chokes where AoE classes shine. WvW is MUCH bigger so the ability to roam/kite are more prevalent.

6. Will this make the Pirate Ship meta a thing again?
– Probably, yes. Is that a bad thing though?

Final Thoughts: When you think the name GuildWars, don’t you immediately think of a game mode in which guilds can do battle on the fields of glory?! Let’s Make WvW Great Again!

No.

If you wanna go play a some sort of fantasy based MOBA then go do so, I play this because its a PVP element of an MMORPG and I want it to stay an MMORPG. The amulet system and lack of diversity it brings with it is exactly and precisely one of the main points which caused me to quit sPVP in its entirety.

Also, many, many of us have worked very hard for this and have been dedicated to WVW for a LONG time, years in fact in case you haven’t noticed, and there is no way I would trade all that for a stupid amulet.

Also, instead of bringing amulet system into WVW, to keep things balanced why don’t we bring ascended and foods into sPVP instead ? Would be much, much better and would seperate real players from kitten clowns who lack dedication.

Tongku.5326:

No.

If you wanna go play a some sort of fantasy based MOBA then go do so, I play this because its a PVP element of an MMORPG and I want it to stay an MMORPG. The amulet system and lack of diversity it brings with it is exactly and precisely one of the main points which caused me to quit sPVP in its entirety.

Also, many, many of us have worked very hard for this and have been dedicated to WVW for a LONG time, years in fact in case you haven’t noticed, and there is no way I would trade all that for a stupid amulet.

Also, instead of bringing amulet system into WVW, to keep things balanced why don’t we bring ascended and foods into sPVP instead ? Would be much, much better and would seperate real players from kitten clowns who lack dedication.

[/quote]

What? Lack of dedication? Dude get some air walk it off a bit. While I can appreciate the “work”(rofl) needed for building toons it’s not not good for the long term life of the game mode

Anyways balancing wvw mechanics and making it accessible to newer players would inject wvw with so much more. Balanced exciting content explodes games up. PvP is the best it’s ever been in part due to the new league system and every class is viable and matches don’t stall out (it’d extremely engaging and bursts) . Wvw on the other hand (in small scale fights 1-100 has turned into PvP season 1 boring kite bunker.

Rofl look at bdo that game is dying on the floor and the biggest complaint is there’s no skill for PvP it’s all a grind wall.

Whether you go with an amulet system or keep the current system, each build will have a Best in Slot choice. The grind you did to get the current BiS component will be replaced with another grind when the next BiS component is released in PvE. The amulet system just eliminates some of the PvE grind that veteran WvW players hate, unless you like the PvE grind or you really like to keep newer players weaker.

Because going to the amulet system will require coding changes to WvW, something that happens about as often as an xpac, I don’t really think that Anet is willing or able to devote precious developer resources away from the next xpac, the next Living Story or the next sPvP balance patch.

Linking/locking (population balance) and Skirmish scoring (nightcapping)
have been minor fixes to the system because that’s all that can be done for WvW. That’s all that will EVER be done for WvW, minor fixes.

ich.7086:

You can’t do 1 without limiting the player creativity.

Restrictions breed creativity because they force the player to problem solve. Unrestricted stats mean that players just grab the optimal, without having to do any problem solving.

For instance when doing necro theorycraft in sPvP I have to consider whether my desired amulet has precision or not. If it doesn’t I need to find to traits to get it, or just not take crit dependent traits, or I change what amulet I want.
In WvW I never think about precision. I can just grab however much I feel is necessary and move on. I never concern myself with whether I have enough precision to be using on-crit traits because I always have enough precision. No thought, no problem solving.

Besides I don’t see how a system that requires a substantial gear grind/gold sink every time you want to change some stats is “promoting creativity”

Also gear grind totally affects WvW. I play more sPvP because every time I try to get into WvW I get exasperated with perpetually losing every 1v1 because kittening optimized ascended peeps that take half the damage I do while dealing twice the damage. Nothing is more of a turn off than dying to a guy who’s auto attack hits as hard as your primary burst skill.

Crinn.7864:

ich.7086:

You can’t do 1 without limiting the player creativity.

Restrictions breed creativity because they force the player to problem solve. Unrestricted stats mean that players just grab the optimal, without having to do any problem solving.

For instance when doing necro theorycraft in sPvP I have to consider whether my desired amulet has precision or not. If it doesn’t I need to find to traits to get it, or just not take crit dependent traits, or I change what amulet I want.
In WvW I never think about precision. I can just grab however much I feel is necessary and move on. I never concern myself with whether I have enough precision to be using on-crit traits because I always have enough precision. No thought, no problem solving.

Besides I don’t see how a system that requires a substantial gear grind/gold sink every time you want to change some stats is “promoting creativity”

Also gear grind totally affects WvW. I play more sPvP because every time I try to get into WvW I get exasperated with perpetually losing every 1v1 because kittening optimized ascended peeps that take half the damage I do while dealing twice the damage. Nothing is more of a turn off than dying to a guy who’s auto attack hits as hard as your primary burst skill.

So despite all the reward tracks for spvp you can’t be bothered to find a decent build and equipment for going into wvw, then go in under prepared and get stomped on, and that’s a turn off?

You lose every 1v1 because you didn’t prepare. And the difference between exotic and ascended isn’t that great- maybe it’s more you’re not used to players moving off a cap circle, or having a better build as they have thought about it rather than ‘grab an amulet and go’.

I can’t think of anything that would make more people quit wvw faster than bringing in the amulet system- apart from replacing all maps with Deserted BL.

Baldrick.8967:

So despite all the reward tracks for spvp you can’t be bothered to find a decent build and equipment for going into wvw, then go in under prepared and get stomped on, and that’s a turn off?

You lose every 1v1 because you didn’t prepare. And the difference between exotic and ascended isn’t that great- maybe it’s more you’re not used to players moving off a cap circle, or having a better build as they have thought about it rather than ‘grab an amulet and go’.

I can’t think of anything that would make more people quit wvw faster than bringing in the amulet system- apart from replacing all maps with Deserted BL.

People will quit over the amulet because of having all there time spent grind asc wasted. If WvW had always been on the sPvP system none of this would be a issue. You would also have way less balance issues, because you wouldn’t have stat sets designed around PvE screwing everything.

I have played this game long enough to tell the difference between a skilled player and a not so skilled. There are roamers that I have encountered that are exceptionally skilled. There are also players that I have encountered that are getting carried by 4k autos.

grind pvp is stupid. If I wanted that crap I’d go back to swtor.

Killing build diversity, through amulet restrictions, does nothing to improve wvw.

Amulets are the easier and cheaper way for anet to appear like they are working on balance, but amulets will never replace the need for actual profession development, balancing, skill improvements, additions of new skills… blah blah blah.

Anet is fully aware that a change like this would lead to a huge backlash of criticism and force them into a position of refunding or compensating players for gear purchases.

Crinn.7864:

Restrictions breed creativity because they force the player to problem solve. Unrestricted stats mean that players just grab the optimal, without having to do any problem solving.

Isn’t that what people do already? Go to meta-battle and take the build they find most effective and play it without thinking? There are even sPvP builds there, which means people don’t really do any thinking for sPvP either…

cant stand the idea…. as someone who only plays WvW/PvP the amount of investment ive put into my toons……. just to have everything ive worked for have a big “Well Screw your hard work man!” Would Quit game 8/8

If the amulet system was introduced to WvW I’d probably look for a new game as that is the gamemode I play for. The reasons for this has mostly been stated before but I will bring them up again, they are the following:

1. It would reduce build diversity by a lot for example there are 4(??) amulets in sPvP atm with condition damage on them and 6^13/14 different combinations in WvW (if you only count the ones with condition damage as a primary which already is ignoring a big chunk of them and assume that all the weapons got the same stats and ignore Infusions ), which means there are 326517304 times as many compositions for condition damage builds (ignoring stat combos that have condition damage as a minor stat, which is making this number a lot smaller already). Note this was only the comparison for condition damage I’d guess the number would be even higher for things like heavily boon based builds, healer builds, tank builds and especially mixed builds. This would in my opinion by itself make the game mode a lot staler.

2. This is related to 1, but it is min maxing, this is an area that is not of importance for some players but very crucial for some (I fall in the later category), how is one supposed to fine tune their build if all you get is one big clumsy know with huge steps instead of 13 small knows with many steps on each and 18 very tiny knows (Infusions)? For example I got a warrior where I precisely wanted a certain amount of boon duration to max the stat without wasting anything by overcapping it and some condi builds where I wanted to reach certain thresholds for the durations of conditions without wasting any stat points on expertise beyond that. The fun in figuring this out would be all but gone.

3. The meta would be as disgusting as the sPvP one (assuming we get the same amulets), which is truly one of the most boring ones I’ve seen where it is just burst burst burst, in WvW atm power bursting is still the current meta but at there are some tankier options for those of us who thinks that burst is truly a boring playtime.

4. The game is an mmoRPG, maximizing your characters power level in comparison to others is one of the main draws, WvW is the gamemode where that shows, it is supposed to be unfair to some degree (and really only in some ways, profession imbalance or p2w is not cool for example). It is assymetrical combat after all.

5. Team diversity would suffer even worse than build diversity. If there is only 1/2 viable build for each profession (see sPvP for more info on this) instead of the current number (which is far greater) then how varied a team is will suffer, especially as there are far fewer amulets that are actually oriented fire anything beyond burst burst burst while in WvW you can make many creative builds that synergize (this is slightly possibly in WvW but not to nearly the same level).

6. Exotic armor (trinkets are easy with ls3 and getting just weapons is by no metric an unreasonable demand) already works “well enough” if you’re the kind of player that prefers amulets.

7. Power seep, the game already has a fairly low power level even in WvW (even more so in sPvP) no reason to lower it further.

8. Numbers > skill/preparedness would be even worse than rn as everyone would run the same few builds copied of metabattle.com

TL;DR: Idea sucks and would kill basically everything that makes WvW fun by killing build and team diversity.

Cevni.2049:

7. Power seep, the game already has a fairly low power level even in WvW (even more so in sPvP) no reason to lower it further.

8. Numbers > skill/preparedness would be even worse than rn as everyone would run the same few builds copied of metabattle.com

In a time where everyone complains about the Power Creep started by HoT, you come talk about Power Seep being bad? Give me a break…

Everyone pretty much runs metabattle builds already. It’s really hard to find someone who actually made their build. This would change nothing.

Cevni.2049:

Snip…

So, with all those possible combinations you calculated, which one is for a frontline thief?
How about a healing boonshare support Necro?

No matter what system you use there will always be only one that is max. When you say build diversity you’re really saying that there’s a lot of sub-optimal builds.

Are you saying that what makes WvW great is the fact that there’s all these sub-optimal builds running around? Really?

As I stated many times before, I absolutely hate the amulet system. It is lame in its entirety from just about every perspective and eliminates facets of the game that make it an MMORPG instead of a MOBA or FPS game. It is too far reaching and changes the games feel and genre.

I also disagree with a lot of people complaining about ascended. Nowadays you can get a ton of ascended from WVW via reward tracks, for example: run the winterberry track for multiple ascended backpacks to accomodate different stat combos. And thats just one example of a slot that used to be hardest to get in the game. In addition, at this low increase rate of 10% ish from exotic to ascended, many times skileld players in exotics take out unskilled players in full ascended even today. And that pretty much speaks for itself. A-Net screwed up a lot, but this they got precisely and exactly on the dot.

I do agree that there are not enough trade offs in the current builds and that there is a ton of HOT powercreep from all perspectives. Too many passives, still a bit too much CC, too many condi stacks, too much frontload damage on certain power builds, too many boons proccing from too many sources too often and staying up too long, etc. and all these need to be looked at.

But the amulet system is absolutely NOT the way to go about it.

1st change I would make is reduce all base stats across the board while slightly upping the coefficients you get from gear so there are more trade offs. This would provide more diversity and would reduce things such as full tanks doing a ton of DPS or full zerkers still being tanky as hell.

2. reduce passives, provide a bit more condi clears and stun breakers instead of less but move/attach them them to active skills. This would be a huge change and move the fault of not correctly cleansing almost entirely to the player and his/hers poor choices. Even though this fault is present now, it needs to be a bit more then it is currently and needs to be across the board of all classes not as divided as it is now due to cleanse access for some.

3. Nothing wrong with capping max number of stacks of a condi at 25 on a single player. It will kill them just as fast as 40 stacks, anything over 25 stacks on a single player just boggs down the servers and causes lag.

4. reduce boon generation sources, duration, especially passive procs, again, all across the board equally.

5. reduce certain condi durations on certain classes, make it somewhat themic and innate, not based on traits or skill use, this is the only passive I would support. for example, reduce duration of confusion on mesmers, chill on reapers, poison on rangers, burn on eles or guards, bleeds on warriors, etc. this would also make for more diverse team comps vs team comp.

6. eliminate duration fractions for boons and condis, durations such as 3 and a 1/4 seconds or 5 and a 1/2 seconds etc. are pointless, they need to be rounded up or down to the nearest second. I have a feeling this would overall simplify things and cause less server lag at the same time.

So these kinda changes would be welcome, but amulet system can and needs to G T F O of WvW and go back to sPVP and stay there where it belongs.

Jeknar.6184:

snip…

Well it all depends on what your gaming background is and what you think is a good powerlevel, I only started playing a few months before HoT and come from a game where one could easily do 1v10 if the people fighting you were vastly worse than you due to a much higher power level (bit of OT but background is always useful and it highlights why some people might want different power levels etc), I personally prefer a high power level over a low, different opinions, I listed it as one of my points since that is one of the reasons I’d hate it.

Note: Power creep is something is currently being thrown around a lot, I’d agree that there has been a power creep in automatic defenses which I do think is bad as that deters from player skill rather than enhance player skill, I’d say scrap the vast majority of passive defenses especially auto stunbreaks/stabs, auto invulns and auto stealths but this is not the topic of the thread.

About everyone running metabattle builds. I personally got a lot of fully ascended characters that I play in roaming situations with builds that are not on metabattle (and some that are on metabattle, mainly to learn the builds to learn how to fight them), I’d even wager that none of the builds that anyone in my team runs (we’re 6 people atm) is findable currently on metabattle (my main build has actually appeared but like over half a year after I started using it so meh)-

A lot of people we fight as a team or that I fight when roaming solo or duo do run builds I’ve never seen before and I’ve looked trough all the metabattle builds. Note: A lot of people do run metabattle builds, if I were to guess id say half or so.

Swamurabi.7890:

Snip…

Note: being rude just makes you rude, it doesn’t actually help prove any points. Some builds won’t work obviously due class mechanic (or rather a lack of some class mechanics (such as decent healing or boonshare for necro) and is not at all related to stats). None of the combinations I listed were for anything else than how many different combinations of stats one could go with for any specific base idea (like condition damage there are trailblazer, dire, carrion, rabid, viper and sinister that have condition damage as major, any mix of them would lead to a condi builds, how much of each you might want differs from build to build and team to team).

Builds excel in different scenarios, some require support builds to really shine for example, some are support builds, this is something you can see in WvW, but almost never see in sPvP partly due to amulets. There are of course sub-optimal builds which is really good, otherwise there wouldnt be any optimal ones, allow me to make my own mistakes, don’t lock me in a padded room please.

I am saying that the fact that you can make creative builds and both succeed and fail is part of what makes WvW great, I’d rather not introduce more handholding and more restrictions on creativity.

Cevni.2049:

I am saying that the fact that you can make creative builds and both succeed and fail is part of what makes WvW great, I’d rather not introduce more handholding and more restrictions on creativity.

Right because putting arbitrary crafting/gold gates on changing gear is obviously conducive to creativity.

I keep wanting to play around with builds other than my zerk thief in WvW. But I can’t because I’d either have to waste gold and time on crafting, or waste gold on buying a set of gear, all for a build that I might not keep.

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

snip

Right because putting arbitrary crafting/gold gates on changing gear is obviously conducive to creativity.

As stated before being sarcastic and rude in all your replies is far from cunductive to a good debate.

Crinn.7864:

I keep wanting to play around with builds other than my zerk thief in WvW. But I can’t because I’d either have to waste gold and time on crafting, or waste gold on buying a set of gear, all for a build that I might not keep.

Changing gear atm is rather easy, earning enough gold to statchange shouldn’t be a challenge to anyone (especially with leather prices going more sane atm). Should it still be too expensive there is always exotic gear which I am sure works just fine for testing out a build, the 5% stat difference wont make or break if the concept of the build actually works and as such you can craft/statchange your ascended after testing the build out. Given that ascended trinkets (previously hardest slot and also where the majority of your stats come from) is now basically handed out for free to WvWers testing out builds shouldn’t be very hard, I know it isn’t for me.

Cevni.2049:

Changing gear atm is rather easy, earning enough gold to statchange shouldn’t be a challenge to anyone (especially with leather prices going more sane atm). Should it still be too expensive there is always exotic gear which I am sure works just fine for testing out a build, the 5% stat difference wont make or break if the concept of the build actually works and as such you can craft/statchange your ascended after testing the build out. Given that ascended trinkets (previously hardest slot and also where the majority of your stats come from) is now basically handed out for free to WvWers testing out builds shouldn’t be very hard, I know it isn’t for me.

I have never gotten ascended drops from WvW of any type. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but the drop rate is not high enough to be practical.

When I was doing build experimentation for my necro in sPvP, I went through literally every condi amulet in a day of experimenting, without even going into how often I play with different runeset.
I could never afford to do that in WvW, Full regearing with exotics costs me a 4th of my average value, and WvW already costs me with it’s food requirement.

The amount of effort and gold required to do experimentation in WvW is prohibitive to the extreme. Compared to sPvP where I can use whatever I want whenever I want.

Crinn.7864:

The amount of effort and gold required to do experimentation in WvW is prohibitive to the extreme. Compared to sPvP where I can use whatever I want whenever I want.

You cannot use “whatever you want” on sPvP because the game don’t offer everything in there…

Couldn’t they just implement a system of exchanging badges for stat changes like they do in PVE with unbound magic, but also make it applicable for ascended armor and weapons?

It’d also be cool if one could buy sigil and runes with badges and/or proof of heroics.

It’s all perspective, but for myself (98% of my time in WvW), changing ascended gear stats is not cheap, especially when the build turns out to be unviable, just not enjoyable, or you just want a temporary change for funzies. This problem can be compounded if you play multiple classes and game-modes (gvg, solo roaming, havoc, zerging) too. This is also has to be extremely discouraging for new/infrequent WvW players who enter fights with their PVE gear. No way are they going to invest in gear changes.

Sure I can buy exotic gear (have and do) with badges, but I know I will always be at a competitive disadvantage by not having ascended gear.

Ultimately, I’d love to see them implement invisible legendary-like armor with selectable stats that would be obtainable through WvW track or achievement(s). Seems like it’d take minimal effort on their side to implement.

Of course this doesn’t really solve the power creep issues or the problems with traits and elites that really ruins build diversity at the moment.

Hoochieman.3107:

Hey Yuffi, thanks for the reply.

I would 100% agree that WvW is kind of a sandbox or playground to test out builds. I can’t say that that would go away with an amulet system. Can you elaborate more on why it would stifle creativity? To me the creativity you’re describing only comes from the min/maxing of sustain stats.

amulets dont allow you to put 2 pieces of celestial into your soldier build or mix 2 assassin into your berserk for that extra crit chance. amulet system assumes full set of half half sets. an amulet system that allows you to use a different piece of gear in each slot is called the current system. the current system is why i have 145 bag slots and 3 sets of gear so i can switch to condi or zerker if i need to but run soldier as my baseline. I wouldnt lose much on my ZvZ builds but i run wonky kittening builds in roaming so that people dont chose meta counters they have practiced when they encounter me.

said it before, ill say it again.
working in values for amulets based on what gear you have could be done. so ascended gear will get you a slightly better amulet. its pretty simple, yet people will probably still cry “omg build diversity” when there isn’t any. you either go condi or power, and the builds surrounding those are already well thought out and obvious to anyone who has spent any time playing versus other players. I think the real reason behind people that cry about diversity is that they are more likely to be abusing broken gear stats + build setups. the next argument is “well you could just nerf some traits”. yeah, you could, but that wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. people will still abuse the same ol stats with a slightly modified build. just as likely they wont change a thing because the trait nerf wouldn’t be enough to overcome both the traits and the gear combined. as for people wanting a 100 more toughness there minus 80 power here, or 5% more crit chance, that could also be worked out. some previous posters have already given some great examples of how it could be done.
there you go, come at me.

Stand The Wall.6987:

said it before, ill say it again.
working in values for amulets based on what gear you have could be done. so ascended gear will get you a slightly better amulet. its pretty simple, yet people will probably still cry “omg build diversity” when there isn’t any. you either go condi or power, and the builds surrounding those are already well thought out and obvious to anyone who has spent any time playing versus other players. I think the real reason behind people that cry about diversity is that they are more likely to be abusing broken gear stats + build setups. the next argument is “well you could just nerf some traits”. yeah, you could, but that wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. people will still abuse the same ol stats with a slightly modified build. just as likely they wont change a thing because the trait nerf wouldn’t be enough to overcome both the traits and the gear combined. as for people wanting a 100 more toughness there minus 80 power here, or 5% more crit chance, that could also be worked out. some previous posters have already given some great examples of how it could be done.
there you go, come at me.

So you think the problem are the stats and not the broken traits/skills within the professions people cry as overpowered? Honestly, I’m pretty sure if the traits and skills that are too strong were toned down and the ones that are completely useless were toned up, none of this discussion over the stats would be happening because balance would be much more aparent.
“Fixing” stats won’t really change anything when more than half of the skills/traits in the game are inviable.

Jeknar.6184:

So you think the problem are the stats and not the broken traits/skills within the professions people cry as overpowered? Honestly, I’m pretty sure if the traits and skills that are too strong were toned down and the ones that are completely useless were toned up, none of this discussion over the stats would be happening because balance would be much more aparent.
“Fixing” stats won’t really change anything when more than half of the skills/traits in the game are inviable.

the same traits (for the most part) are available in pvp, and guess what, the balance there is way better. if you nerf gear, then guess what, traits that rely on them will get toned down as well. if you cannot understand this fundamental fact then I cant help you.

i would like they let us choose the stats insteand of having a pool of prefix which cannot be modified

because 90% of the prefix are not used…the attribute system and customization in this game is terrible, so yes to let me pick what attributes i want insteand of being bound to the gear, the gear could give you the points for be used and for still have the gap between ascended and exotic, lets say exotic would give 10 points, while ascended 12 and etc

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

snip…

I have never gotten ascended drops from WvW of any type. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but the drop rate is not high enough to be practical.

Note I talked only about ascended trinkets which are buyable with the currency from Bitterfrost Frontier, Ember Bay and Bloodstone Fen reward tracks. I too think we should get more ascended from WvW somehow as it is a game mode where one wants it.

Crinn.7864:

When I was doing build experimentation for my necro in sPvP, I went through literally every condi amulet in a day of experimenting, without even going into how often I play with different runeset.
I could never afford to do that in WvW, Full regearing with exotics costs me a 4th of my average value, and WvW already costs me with it’s food requirement.

The amount of effort and gold required to do experimentation in WvW is prohibitive to the extreme. Compared to sPvP where I can use whatever I want whenever I want.

If anything this sounds like a problem with resourcemanagement, personally I never have any problems scramming together the gold for a full statchange or crafting a full set of exotic armor (except trailblazer/minstrel, these 2 stat combos should be cheapened a bit) and I get most of my wealth from just playing WvW (unless I want a legendary or something else really expensive then I farm) and doing the odd PvE when someone manages to force me to help them with it, I can highly reccommend https://gw2efficiency.com/ to help you manage your resources.

Stand The Wall.6987:

the same traits (for the most part) are available in pvp, and guess what, the balance there is way better. if you nerf gear, then guess what, traits that rely on them will get toned down as well. if you cannot understand this fundamental fact then I cant help you.

I’d disagree with sPvP being balanced, for starters there is currently only 8 out of the classes currently competive, you almost see anyone going for anything beyond the metabattle meta builds (on some rare occassions you see someone picking a build from the great category) at least where I play. Most of the problematic traits are 3-5 second long invulnerabilities or similar, hardly gear dependant.

JemL.3501:

i would like they let us choose the stats insteand of having a pool of prefix which cannot be modified

because 90% of the prefix are not used…the attribute system and customization in this game is terrible, so yes to let me pick what attributes i want insteand of being bound to the gear, the gear could give you the points for be used and for still have the gap between ascended and exotic, lets say exotic would give 10 points, while ascended 12 and etc

Letting us freely make our own stat combinations would indeed be a step forward, not exactly sure how this would be implemented but that would indeed be good for build diversity.

I’m strongly in favour of this, for a couple reasons.
1. It’s easier to balance the available stat combinations without forcing people to re-gear.
2. The PvP stat totals are far more sensible than what you run into in WvW. Because you don’t have consumables and ascended stats, PvP doesn’t have the same problem with high-damage bunkers and one-hit kills.

Crinn.7864:

People will quit over the amulet because of having all there time spent grind asc wasted.

No. I have 7 full ascended sets so far and I’d much rather have the amulet as it means I don’t have to craft another set every time I want to change stats.

Cevni.2049:

pvp is a lot more balanced then wvw, in case my statement of that fact eluded you. it is mostly due to gear. there are only 2 traits like that, on warrior and engineer. they are annoying and should be removed, like all passive procs, but that is not a good enough argument against full dire/zerk/settler/nomad.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

pvp is a lot more balanced then wvw, in case my statement of that fact eluded you. it is mostly due to gear. there are only 2 traits like that, on warrior and engineer. they are annoying and should be removed, like all passive procs, but that is not a good enough argument against full dire/zerk/settler/nomad.

You personally find it more balanced, I do not. Full zerk is already a thing in sPvP it is used by GS/Ma+Sh warrior. Dire/Settler/Nomad not existing in sPvP is one of the reasons I find the game mode a bore, it is far too centered around burst for my taste, though tanky builds are problematic in a game mode that revolves around standing in a little circle.

Ben K.6238:

I’m strongly in favour of this, for a couple reasons.
1. It’s easier to balance the available stat combinations without forcing people to re-gear.
2. The PvP stat totals are far more sensible than what you run into in WvW. Because you don’t have consumables and ascended stats, PvP doesn’t have the same problem with high-damage bunkers and one-hit kills.

Crinn.7864:

People will quit over the amulet because of having all there time spent grind asc wasted.

No. I have 7 full ascended sets so far and I’d much rather have the amulet as it means I don’t have to craft another set every time I want to change stats.

I unlocked all elites specializations for all 9 classes. That was way too much of a PvE grind for me. I think I have one piece of crafted ascended armor. I’m not going to pay or grind for mats to make a complete set for one character, let alone nine. I don’t even have a set of four stat exotic armor. I’d rather spend my time in WvW.