Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played WvW (or GW2) for quite a while
With the imminent arrival of the new feature pack I decided to give it a look, I’m sure I won’t be the only one returning.

But if you want any hope of keeping these players though, you’re going to have to do something about balance.

The games so full of condi, its just, uh, yuk.
I can’t quite believe how much condi I’m seeing.
It’s incredibly dull to play against.

It doesn’t matter how good the new rewards are, if the combat isn’t fun its all for naught.

Please just balance WvW separately so you can tone conditions down to manageable levels, give the game mode a chance to succeed.

There are many ways to combat the condi/shout meta. Get creative too many guilds follow the meta cheese and fight against the meta. When they fight against a non meta guild they are easy to combat and generally lose because they popped all their shouts and downed one.. time to wait out cd’s and get bombed the hell out of, not to mention their lack of skills and positioning. With that being said it still needs to cap in WvW at 10 -15 – 20 stacks.

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

BOOM +1

People keep counter arguing but if 1 player runs condi/defense with stun breaks.

If you want to compete you have to run stunbreak, stability, condi removal builds.

With the way classes can simply reapply condi after a bursts, it really destroys build diversity. This goes for WvW and PvP, Anet can make all the changes they want to PvP and WvW. It wont change anything because simply the game is not to play.

If im running a condi ranger (vanilla) build with 3 traps and entangle. If i hit you with the short bow 5 (stun) entangle you and hit you with all the traps. You should either have gotten caught or you used your utility skills like i did to counter them.

With HOT specs, thief only has to dodge or use a signet. DH just hit F2, warriors with longbow hit F1 or beserker stance etc etc etc.

I have a guild mate who has zerker and maruder ascended for his thief. For PvE/raids, he made a condi set of armor recently because its just easier to kill people in WvW.

+1, I personally don’t find condi fun to play with or against.
Power based damage is more enjoyable in my opinion.

It is a good point, these changes coming are great for wvw. The remaining issue with class balance and an out of control condi meta still exists at the end of the day. I really wish they would comment if they have any plans to tackle this challenge.

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

Idk I have fun racking up bags on condi shout groups when they miss all of their aoe attacks and laughing at their pathetic mindless and skill-less meta. I didn’t really miss the point as it has counterplay and I agree that something should be done about the condi, more so a stack cap.

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

It blows my mind that people defend this condition meta. The majority know there’s a problem but some people (likely the ones who spent tons of gold on their gear) defend it with fervor.

Celsith nailed it really. It’s just not fun, regardless if you’re hardcore enough to be an in a tight-knit guild with theory crafted builds. Furthermore, these elite guilds will only recruit about 5-10% of the players on their respected server. So what of the pugs? GL HF? There must be a better way.

Oh yeah, I’ve also recently went to WvW after a long time and my highlights would be exactly that just touching the burn area (quite likely as a melee) will get you stacks upon stacks of condis. I am an anti-condi DH and still suffered a condi death a few times.

To quote Dessa here: “Now that’s just excessive.”

As an upside, I’ve made a few condi thieves run in frustration. And that’s something, I guess.

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 14-20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Aeolus.3615:

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

I was on a tanky reaper, so I didn’t die instantly.
And it was 52 stacks.

that would kill a bunker guardian in 1 second XD due their low HP base, if the guardian didnt cleanse the condi ofc, still isnt there a sigil to transfer condi??

WvW gameplay atm is very ulgy, basicly aoe and condis with revs shooting invinsible CoR since CoR animation gets invisible to other players when theres alot of skills being spammed.

HitmanHaydon.1053:

I haven’t played WvW (or GW2) for quite a while
With the imminent arrival of the new feature pack I decided to give it a look, I’m sure I won’t be the only one returning.

But if you want any hope of keeping these players though, you’re going to have to do something about balance.

The games so full of condi, its just, uh, yuk.

This has been a complaint for months now and they make condis even stronger. this is part of the reason why the rewards are the least of what WvW needs.

HitmanHaydon.1053:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Aeolus.3615:

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

I was on a tanky reaper, so I didn’t die instantly.
And it was 52 stacks.

Did you get enough time to send them to an enemy, though?

Svarty.8019:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Aeolus.3615:

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

I was on a tanky reaper, so I didn’t die instantly.
And it was 52 stacks.

Did you get enough time to send them to an enemy, though?

No, I only had time to lose 2 health bar and die.

I wasn’t even using plague singet, so it’s not like I was drawing all the condi on to me

This looks like a time for me. To dawn my Trailblazer light armor gear with Perplexity Runes. Cause it feels so empty without me!

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

Ding Ding we have a winner.

Nicely put.
Class and combat balance don’t only need to be balanced in terms of the numbers and the math,but also be perceived by the players as balanced and also be fun to play.
And in the case of combat balance in a MMO game,I would say perception is even more important than reality.

The weird thing is they nerfed things like stupid high dodges on thief in PvP because it was silly but left it in for WvW yet other classes and trait get unilaterally buffed/nerfed to stupid levels like deathly chill and the recent warrior nerfs.

Skill splitting was good but they forgot that things that are stupidly strong in PvP are quite often just as or stronger in WvW.

Ah well, it’s supposed to be a balance patch at the same time, who knows, maybe it will fix a lot of stuff but I won’t hold my breath as many people return, play then leave after all the rubbish.

kdaddy.5431:

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

BOOM +1

People keep counter arguing but if 1 player runs condi/defense with stun breaks.

If you want to compete you have to run stunbreak, stability, condi removal builds.

With the way classes can simply reapply condi after a bursts, it really destroys build diversity. This goes for WvW and PvP, Anet can make all the changes they want to PvP and WvW. It wont change anything because simply the game is not to play.

If im running a condi ranger (vanilla) build with 3 traps and entangle. If i hit you with the short bow 5 (stun) entangle you and hit you with all the traps. You should either have gotten caught or you used your utility skills like i did to counter them.

With HOT specs, thief only has to dodge or use a signet. DH just hit F2, warriors with longbow hit F1 or beserker stance etc etc etc.

I have a guild mate who has zerker and maruder ascended for his thief. For PvE/raids, he made a condi set of armor recently because its just easier to kill people in WvW.

Fun fights are entirely subjective. Personally, I quit GW2 for quite a while because I got so sick and tired of nothing but power based builds and how badly DOT play style performed.

And you are extremely wrong about people not having to run stunbreaks, stab, cleanses, PVT, hammers. Remember the 1st big longterm WVW meta ? It was GWEN or GTFO in WVW same as it was zerker or GTFO in PVE. This lasted for a LONG time about what, first 3 years of the game ? Also note that the 1st and biggest exodus of players happened right after the 1st tourney, long before any condi changes and still within the active GWEN days.

I was an officer / co-leader of a large guild back then, it was not uncommon for us to have 120+ people on TS and que up 2+maps. A few times we hit as many as 300+ active players. Then as things wound down, we went down to 30ish, 40ish.

I can tell you that in my guild, the vast majority of those people that have left (roughly about 90%) did so for 2 evenly split reasons:

1. We climbed up the tiers out of T8 and hit a population / nightcapping wall that we were completely unable to do anything against. People can take this sort of thing for only so long before they leave.

2. They couldn’t play their classes and had no effective builds for their playstyle, this is where condi came in. That is a LOT of people.

I also talked with guildleaders, officers, commanders from the servers we went up against, and they were in pretty much exact same boat back then. Granted that was only 4 servers or so, but am willing to bet there were way more like this, I just haven’t had an opportunity to get together with them on voice chat.

So while you may argue condi is making people leave, I will argue that the lack of will as well and has already been proven to do so.

Whats keeping me alive in the game at the moment is the new stuff, condi builds, new sustain builds, new metas, new content altogether, even the upcoming new rewards.

That all said, it does need some balance like non condi builds shouldn’t be spamming cover condis, and there really is no reason to have 25+ stacks of anything on a player, it just lags the servers, they will still die just the same. I would also like to see a general toning down of the powercreep and passives all around. But I most certainly do not want to regress to the days past with such limited play options.

Tongku.5326:

kdaddy.5431:

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

BOOM +1

People keep counter arguing but if 1 player runs condi/defense with stun breaks.

If you want to compete you have to run stunbreak, stability, condi removal builds.

With the way classes can simply reapply condi after a bursts, it really destroys build diversity. This goes for WvW and PvP, Anet can make all the changes they want to PvP and WvW. It wont change anything because simply the game is not to play.

If im running a condi ranger (vanilla) build with 3 traps and entangle. If i hit you with the short bow 5 (stun) entangle you and hit you with all the traps. You should either have gotten caught or you used your utility skills like i did to counter them.

With HOT specs, thief only has to dodge or use a signet. DH just hit F2, warriors with longbow hit F1 or beserker stance etc etc etc.

I have a guild mate who has zerker and maruder ascended for his thief. For PvE/raids, he made a condi set of armor recently because its just easier to kill people in WvW.

Fun fights are entirely subjective. Personally, I quit GW2 for quite a while because I got so sick and tired of nothing but power based builds and how badly DOT play style performed.

And you are extremely wrong about people not having to run stunbreaks, stab, cleanses, PVT, hammers. Remember the 1st big longterm WVW meta ? It was GWEN or GTFO in WVW same as it was zerker or GTFO in PVE. This lasted for a LONG time about what, first 3 years of the game ? Also note that the 1st and biggest exodus of players happened right after the 1st tourney, long before any condi changes and still within the active GWEN days.

I was an officer / co-leader of a large guild back then, it was not uncommon for us to have 120+ people on TS and que up 2+maps. A few times we hit as many as 300+ active players. Then as things wound down, we went down to 30ish, 40ish.

I can tell you that in my guild, the vast majority of those people that have left (roughly about 90%) did so for 2 evenly split reasons:

1. We climbed up the tiers out of T8 and hit a population / nightcapping wall that we were completely unable to do anything against. People can take this sort of thing for only so long before they leave.

2. They couldn’t play their classes and had no effective builds for their playstyle, this is where condi came in. That is a LOT of people.

I also talked with guildleaders, officers, commanders from the servers we went up against, and they were in pretty much exact same boat back then. Granted that was only 4 servers or so, but am willing to bet there were way more like this, I just haven’t had an opportunity to get together with them on voice chat.

So while you may argue condi is making people leave, I will argue that the lack of will as well and has already been proven to do so.

Whats keeping me alive in the game at the moment is the new stuff, condi builds, new sustain builds, new metas, new content altogether, even the upcoming new rewards.

That all said, it does need some balance like non condi builds shouldn’t be spamming cover condis, and there really is no reason to have 25+ stacks of anything on a player, it just lags the servers, they will still die just the same. I would also like to see a general toning down of the powercreep and passives all around. But I most certainly do not want to regress to the days past with such limited play options.

I played on Tarnished Coast the entire first three years of the game and the main reason why we saw people leaving wasn’t because we had bad builds or nightcapping ;

1. ANET put PvE first.

2. ANET didn’t devise an incentive system great enough for people to actually achieve greatness in their server winning against another server.

WvW failed because they catered to the snowflake masses and people in top zerg busting guilds didn’t have an INCENTIVE to stay.

Maybe ANET should have noticed that players had INVENTED Guild Verse Guild battles and added it in the game. We’ve only been telling them since the game came out. ANET didn’t listen to the WvW community. So we left to go play other games that had more to offer. The WvW’ers wouldn’t have made the mass exodus if ANET had added to WvW instead of tossing EOTM into the mix. (Which was inevitably where most of the hardcore people went to anyway because there were more fights there.)

Tyrath.3407:

The WvW’ers wouldn’t have made the mass exodus if ANET had added to WvW instead of tossing EOTM into the mix. (Which was inevitably where most of the hardcore people went to anyway because there were more fights there.)

I’m sorry I found the part in the () pretty funny, I thought all the snowflakes and karma trainers went to eotm?

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

Something that people don’t seem to understand.

Combat is no longer fun or engaging. There’s literally no reason to be playing to begin with, rewards or not.

I’ve taken the liberty of quitting, as has everyone I ran with in-game. ANet just refuses to acknowledge their profession design is strictly terrible for the PvP formats at the moment.

apharma.3741:

The weird thing is they nerfed things like stupid high dodges on thief in PvP because it was silly but left it in for WvW yet other classes and trait get unilaterally buffed/nerfed to stupid levels like deathly chill and the recent warrior nerfs.

Skill splitting was good but they forgot that things that are stupidly strong in PvP are quite often just as or stronger in WvW.

Ah well, it’s supposed to be a balance patch at the same time, who knows, maybe it will fix a lot of stuff but I won’t hold my breath as many people return, play then leave after all the rubbish.

This is why I’ve been opposed to skill splitting from the getgo. Most needed-splits are done because of underlying poor design, not due to numbers imbalances. ANet’s profession team is already not doing a good job with limited splitting, and did a poor job with no splitting prior to it. Why should we expect better results with increased complexity and nuance? I never could understand this logic.

If sPvP stats were upped to WvW/PvE and amulets broken down into parts for granular stat selection, then we could just see universal game balancing and wouldn’t have this awkward splits where misunderstood modes would only get further neglected.

ANet’s refusal to fix their poor design decisions (I.E. reworks and attentive reverts) has been the single biggest factor in what has made this game’s PvP scene crumble as a whole.

Condi brings diversity to the game. without that everything is about power meta.

I play conditions and power classes, conditions classes are complex and difficult to do. To get as many stacks of bleed, you have to stand literally waiting for a ranger to apply all the condies.

Condi must make a difference, I do not see any sense of have a mechanic in the game that in the end, do not be a game changer in the fight.

If Anet listened to all nerf requests, Guild Wars 2 would have turned into a mini-game with just the #1 button.

DeceiverX.8361:

apharma.3741:

The weird thing is they nerfed things like stupid high dodges on thief in PvP because it was silly but left it in for WvW yet other classes and trait get unilaterally buffed/nerfed to stupid levels like deathly chill and the recent warrior nerfs.

Skill splitting was good but they forgot that things that are stupidly strong in PvP are quite often just as or stronger in WvW.

Ah well, it’s supposed to be a balance patch at the same time, who knows, maybe it will fix a lot of stuff but I won’t hold my breath as many people return, play then leave after all the rubbish.

This is why I’ve been opposed to skill splitting from the getgo. Most needed-splits are done because of underlying poor design, not due to numbers imbalances. ANet’s profession team is already not doing a good job with limited splitting, and did a poor job with no splitting prior to it. Why should we expect better results with increased complexity and nuance? I never could understand this logic.

If sPvP stats were upped to WvW/PvE and amulets broken down into parts for granular stat selection, then we could just see universal game balancing and wouldn’t have this awkward splits where misunderstood modes would only get further neglected.

ANet’s refusal to fix their poor design decisions (I.E. reworks and attentive reverts) has been the single biggest factor in what has made this game’s PvP scene crumble as a whole.

Yeah a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be amazing but they have done good splits like the celestial avatar cool down being 15s in PvP/WvW but 10s in PvE. I think this is really the core issue, that they split between 3 game modes instead of splitting between PvE and PvP+WvW.

I don’t agree that making PvE and WvW granular stat choices would solve anything, yes the power of skills can be artificially regulated like in PvP now however gone is choice and freedom of builds for WvW. It would also cost a lot refunding all these stats people have crafted while tanking the GW2 economy.

The case against Condition builds is still overstated. My earliest time in WvW was being downed a few seconds after arriving by a power build and those referring to those “golden days” are just speaking to Nostalgia.

Builds wre not more diverse then. The vast majority were power. Indeed to this day of my 18 toons , the vast majority are power.

As to the fun factor , the game is what you make of it. For “fun” I will often bring on a power thief that only has Trickster traited to remove conditions. No EA. No shadowstep. No SE. No PR. I will put those up against heavy condition builds for fun to see how well I can do. It terrible in a Zerg fight , but does very well in low scale fights and is “fun”. It will certainly die when misplayed but makes more than its share of kills. It gets its shares of QQ for playing a “low skill spam build” after a kill made.

Is that build “fun” for that player that sends the QQ? If not how much of this “fun” is in fact “When I kill another it fun and when I get killed it not” ?

Back to my first time in WvW. I adapted my build and playstyle as PvE builds simply did not work. I found that learning process fun. I can still get downed if I play poorly and get caught off guard and am hardly an elite player but I still find the game fun. If you simply refuse to adapt and want to stay on the build that ’worked for me before HOT" and your only fun comes from killing en enemy , maybe this not the game for you.

I recently started yet another thief for WvW simply because of the changes made to the DA line that allow som very viable SB and hybrid builds. As another stated , the fact that condition builds made more viable has IMHO added to my fun factor and maintained my interest. Trying new builds and testing them in WvW is a lot of “fun” for me whether I win or lose.

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Svarty.8019:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Aeolus.3615:

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

I was on a tanky reaper, so I didn’t die instantly.
And it was 52 stacks.

Did you get enough time to send them to an enemy, though?

No, I only had time to lose 2 health bar and die.

I wasn’t even using plague singet, so it’s not like I was drawing all the condi on to me

That’s my point.
The whole of competitive play in GW2 looks like it was supposed to be about dodging well telegraphed attacks, with lots of counter play and long fights.

Sadly the system has failed since day one because players learned to eliminate the counter-play aspect via spike/burst rotations. This includes Condition damage, which is now just another form of spike/burst damage.

Enemies can’t counter a thing when they’re dead. #SunTsu

Svarty.8019:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Svarty.8019:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Aeolus.3615:

Junkpile.7439:

HitmanHaydon.1053:

Yeah, I just got 52 stacks of bleed in half a second.

For the love of god Anet, give the game a chance, BALANCE IT SEPARATELY!!

Well you are returning player so you probably have some l2p issues. Weird thing is that i never get these kind of stacks. Do you just run straight in red circles or something or do that follow commander thing that is so 2014.

lol he would have died way before reach 50 stack XD, last time i got was arround 20 of several condis in a second…. used my shout that removed all condis to me… how clever of Anet make one shout being auto suicide button…. for the caster.

I was on a tanky reaper, so I didn’t die instantly.
And it was 52 stacks.

Did you get enough time to send them to an enemy, though?

No, I only had time to lose 2 health bar and die.

I wasn’t even using plague singet, so it’s not like I was drawing all the condi on to me

That’s my point.
The whole of competitive play in GW2 looks like it was supposed to be about dodging well telegraphed attacks, with lots of counter play and long fights.

Sadly the system has failed since day one because players learned to eliminate the counter-play aspect via spike/burst rotations. This includes Condition damage, which is now just another form of spike/burst damage.

Enemies can’t counter a thing when they’re dead. #SunTsu

The suggestion that one can no longer “counter” a specific build is off the mark. There is plenty of room to counter. I can bring in one of my thiefs and lose badly to a given build and come in with another of my thiefs against that same build and win. Were there no counters this would not be possible.

There is not nor should there be a single build that can do as well against any enemy build.

Tongku.5326:

kdaddy.5431:

Celsith.2753:

You missed his point completely. Regardless of win or lose, it’s not a fun fight.

BOOM +1

People keep counter arguing but if 1 player runs condi/defense with stun breaks.

If you want to compete you have to run stunbreak, stability, condi removal builds.

With the way classes can simply reapply condi after a bursts, it really destroys build diversity. This goes for WvW and PvP, Anet can make all the changes they want to PvP and WvW. It wont change anything because simply the game is not to play.

If im running a condi ranger (vanilla) build with 3 traps and entangle. If i hit you with the short bow 5 (stun) entangle you and hit you with all the traps. You should either have gotten caught or you used your utility skills like i did to counter them.

With HOT specs, thief only has to dodge or use a signet. DH just hit F2, warriors with longbow hit F1 or beserker stance etc etc etc.

I have a guild mate who has zerker and maruder ascended for his thief. For PvE/raids, he made a condi set of armor recently because its just easier to kill people in WvW.

Fun fights are entirely subjective. Personally, I quit GW2 for quite a while because I got so sick and tired of nothing but power based builds and how badly DOT play style performed.

And you are extremely wrong about people not having to run stunbreaks, stab, cleanses, PVT, hammers. Remember the 1st big longterm WVW meta ? It was GWEN or GTFO in WVW same as it was zerker or GTFO in PVE. This lasted for a LONG time about what, first 3 years of the game ? Also note that the 1st and biggest exodus of players happened right after the 1st tourney, long before any condi changes and still within the active GWEN days.

I was an officer / co-leader of a large guild back then, it was not uncommon for us to have 120+ people on TS and que up 2+maps. A few times we hit as many as 300+ active players. Then as things wound down, we went down to 30ish, 40ish.

I can tell you that in my guild, the vast majority of those people that have left (roughly about 90%) did so for 2 evenly split reasons:

1. We climbed up the tiers out of T8 and hit a population / nightcapping wall that we were completely unable to do anything against. People can take this sort of thing for only so long before they leave.

2. They couldn’t play their classes and had no effective builds for their playstyle, this is where condi came in. That is a LOT of people.

I also talked with guildleaders, officers, commanders from the servers we went up against, and they were in pretty much exact same boat back then. Granted that was only 4 servers or so, but am willing to bet there were way more like this, I just haven’t had an opportunity to get together with them on voice chat.

So while you may argue condi is making people leave, I will argue that the lack of will as well and has already been proven to do so.

Whats keeping me alive in the game at the moment is the new stuff, condi builds, new sustain builds, new metas, new content altogether, even the upcoming new rewards.

That all said, it does need some balance like non condi builds shouldn’t be spamming cover condis, and there really is no reason to have 25+ stacks of anything on a player, it just lags the servers, they will still die just the same. I would also like to see a general toning down of the powercreep and passives all around. But I most certainly do not want to regress to the days past with such limited play options.

The start of the game was bad, it only worked because it was new and fun. The quaggan, the orb, the fact people could die to cannons and arrow carts. All the exotic stuff played a part back then.

It was dying then Anet made the 6-6-6 and opened up condi. You could stack burning, stack poison but they still had base lines.

You realize that Anet upgraded “For Great justice” from 3 stacks of might to 6.

Right before HOT you still had to time your skills because they had 40-60 long CD and longer on elite. HOT skills all had less then 35 on release.

There is a happy medium of playing condi/dps. Anet is simply juumping threw loops between both never actually balancing the game.

People will play PvP/WvW but they will stay if its fun and makes sense. Power 5 years ago did not make sense and condi today is the same.

Lets talk changes that hurt WvW.

1- Mega Server
This one was huge, alot of us use to sit in LA hang out and play with the mini stuff like drums and horns and be good balls. Then every now and then someone would run into LA and say we need more for X. Jormag, Shatt etc. For alot of WvW players you run in and say we are gonna lose the keep in CD. (from crystal desert) WvW players ask if its upgraded because they knew it costed money. Bam we run in to defend and take back the bottom half and go back to chilling.

Mega Servers came in and destroyed it, there is no where to call for back ups. You literally have to Join a WvW Guild and then hope they are not there for K-trains.

2- HOT Changes for upgrades
Taking away the players abilities to interact with the WvW surroundings was icky for alot of people. A simply change suggested a million times was changing the gold to upgrade stuff for WvW currency.

Anet is literally adding PvE stuff into WvW and PvP and no one likes it.

3- New HOT WvW map
Lets be frank very few people liked it and i for one thought it was a joke. They literally put the new map on top of the old one when you hit “M”. I could of photo shopped it on better.

4- WvW rewards
Anet is also great at this which is they find a way to give what ever reward for WvW or PvP that they have. And make it as easy as possible so PvE players can have it too.

For me this is easily one of Anet biggest flaws which is playing right down the middle. Its like if you have 2 friends and 1 cheats on the other and the other beats the 1. Anet sits there and says come on guys lets just play uno. No someone has to say or do something.

There are WvW players who have maxed out 10,000 WvW ranks and they get nothing. Its a joke, in S5 of PvP. I made Plat 2 and finshed Plat 1. I just missed out on the rankings for top 250 by like 50 rank points. Yet right now im considered the same as someone who was silver 2. I have played almost 10,000 games and i have a dragon finisher, if you played 500 games you can have the same finisher.

Anet has a patch tomorrow and i will put money that if its hard they will make it easier and if its easy WvW players will feel crapped on. Its like being the husband in the marriage where you fix the cars, work 45 hrs a week. Collecting a little over time and then making the perfect backyard for your wife in your spare time. You finish all of it and your wife says she will make you a amazing dinner ont he new patio and BBQ area you made her.

You get home and you see your neighbor Ted sitting there. “UMMMM whats Ted doing here”? Your wife says " he could smell the delicious food i cooked and he came over". Thanks Anet wife.

5- This may be 5 but its the biggest issue BUILD DIVERSITY
Guess Anet sucks at balance. You make a game and tell people they can play there way. Yet like mention before the first 2-3 years of the game you play power. Then since the release of HOT you play condi.

There is a happy medium and we could have it if Anet balanced the game.

If the game is not fun we will not play it which is whats happening. Whole servers are taking weeks off because its not fun.

6- Ascended updates
Lastly Anet has not updated anything for the huge amount of boons and ascended gear they have entered in. I have seen 5-8 man groups eat 2 cannons and 1 arrow cart hits on a 1/2 dead gate and lose very little health.

There are coordinated groups in thei game Anet who mostly play WvW. I know Mike wants them to PvE but they wont. These groups have found great combo/party comps and Anet has never really looked into it.

This is once again a balance thing but hey raids are the future and present.

The main reason why condi is an issue is because base sustain and tankiness is an issue. It’s become required to cut through insane amounts of healing and damage reduction that HoT brought. The side effect was, it made WvW “fights” boring as all hell. Just spam those condi skills and generate downs is the gist of it.

Healing and damage reduction needs to be heavily nerfed alongside condition damage. Power needs to be brought back to viability in zergs – they often require more coordination to pull off than condi as the high damage skills are on often high cooldowns (broken by HoT, such has True Shot and CoR).

Power creep yo

There are fights where conditions dont affect the outcome of the fight at all. The meta is to run 2 vanilla guards + 1 mallyx rev in party. The guards can pretty much cleanse everyone in their party with their f2 and mallyx rev will be able to midigate condition damage for 10 seconds every 20 seconds.

Your party guardians just need to learn how to instantly cleanse the party on when there’s over 4 conditions or so and dodge wells.

Now you get organised group going with this decent sustain and you will just faceroll thro condiplayers for first 20 seconds, and the condiplayers already lost the fight at that point. Thats why necros run Hybrid (mostly power damage + epi bombs on downs) and most of other classes full power (except occassional hybrid rev/condi guards).

Hard to imagine the condi being issue when you go through all of the things above. Maybe you just need to get better and adjust to meta or follow better commanders, as in general good commanders get better players to follow them.

Dont play ranger, engi or mesmer though, these classes get rekt completely by current meta. Vanilla ele, guardian, revenant and reaper are dominant in current meta. Warriors and thieves can somewhat manage to stay alive, even though thieves get way more useless as the group grows bigger.

apharma.3741:

DeceiverX.8361:

apharma.3741:

The weird thing is they nerfed things like stupid high dodges on thief in PvP because it was silly but left it in for WvW yet other classes and trait get unilaterally buffed/nerfed to stupid levels like deathly chill and the recent warrior nerfs.

Skill splitting was good but they forgot that things that are stupidly strong in PvP are quite often just as or stronger in WvW.

Ah well, it’s supposed to be a balance patch at the same time, who knows, maybe it will fix a lot of stuff but I won’t hold my breath as many people return, play then leave after all the rubbish.

This is why I’ve been opposed to skill splitting from the getgo. Most needed-splits are done because of underlying poor design, not due to numbers imbalances. ANet’s profession team is already not doing a good job with limited splitting, and did a poor job with no splitting prior to it. Why should we expect better results with increased complexity and nuance? I never could understand this logic.

If sPvP stats were upped to WvW/PvE and amulets broken down into parts for granular stat selection, then we could just see universal game balancing and wouldn’t have this awkward splits where misunderstood modes would only get further neglected.

ANet’s refusal to fix their poor design decisions (I.E. reworks and attentive reverts) has been the single biggest factor in what has made this game’s PvP scene crumble as a whole.

Yeah a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be amazing but they have done good splits like the celestial avatar cool down being 15s in PvP/WvW but 10s in PvE. I think this is really the core issue, that they split between 3 game modes instead of splitting between PvE and PvP+WvW.

I don’t agree that making PvE and WvW granular stat choices would solve anything, yes the power of skills can be artificially regulated like in PvP now however gone is choice and freedom of builds for WvW. It would also cost a lot refunding all these stats people have crafted while tanking the GW2 economy.

Just to clarify, I didn’t say any PvE/WvW content should change; the sPvP amulet system is what should see increased granularity and bumped stats so that all three modes are on the same level without affecting gear outside of sPvP.

The thing is, are those splits really a good idea at the end of the day, or do they just make do with poor underlying design?