Guild Wars 2

Since the launch of HoT there have been many complaints about the state of balance in WvW. Based on what we know so far, most of these will be largely unaffected by the balance patch. A lot of this revolves around the excessive amount of CC and damage in the game, and how it seriously hampers frontlines, strongly enforcing a playstyle which no one really enjoys.
For all its complexity, the tactics used in WvW can be roughly broken down to just two approaches – melee focused and range focused (also termed “pirate ship”). When I label a skill *problematic" it’s because it strongly enforces the latter.

The following is an unexhaustive list of some of the skills and traits currently ruining fights in WvW and some proposed tweaks.
I’ve based this on large scale fights (15+). Many of the things listed below become worse the larger the fight gets.

• Coalescence of ruin: The damage is way too high. We all know this. There’s no reason to put a lengthly explanation here. I have 3 alternative suggestions for this one.
  (1) reduce the damage. Simple, yet effective. Drop the damage modifiers down to 1.25/1.50/1.75 for the three hits. Those are entirely reasonable numbers (maybe not by HoT standards, but Lightning Surge is 1.3 for comparison).
  (2) Make it reflectable. A big part of the issue is that this skill offers very little counterplay. If it could be reflected, you would no longer be rewarded optimally for spamming it, and we’d have a reliable defense against it.
  (3) Invert the damage so that the first hit is the strongest.
  Any one of those would be great.

• Cruel Repercussion: This trait deserves its own bullet point because it’s so completely out of proportion. 50% damage increase is ridiculous – especially considering how easy it is to proc this when you need it in WvW. This trait needs to die. I have no other solution.

• Herald in general: Due to their previously unheard of ability to passively buff allies (and themselves), herald has singlehandedly been responsible for a large portion of the absurd damage increase that we’ve seen in the game.
  A possible solution for the boons stacking (something I’ve suggested before) is to make the active facet itself shared with allies instead of the boons. I.e. if I’m in a party with a revenant with Facet of Strength active, the facet is applied to me and pulses strength. This prevents people from simply stacking multiple revenants in a party for permanent 25 might because the facets would just override eachother.
  This would retain their ability to stack permanent might (fewer stacks), fury, regen, swiftness, and to be honest, I still think that’s too much – the passive buffing is just not a good thing for the game.

• Gravity well: Firstly, it’s an issue that it’s a pulsing hard CC. Anyone caught in it without stab or invulns is practically guaranteed to die. But there’s an even bigger issue. It ticks immediately when cast, making the first tick essentially unavoidable. Two possible easy fixes would be:
  (1) first tick is delayed 1 second. This would allow players to react to the animation on the ground or
  (2) the first tick is a daze instead of a knockdown. Wouldn’t solve its impact on stability management, but it would allow people without stability to react after being dazed.

• Hunter’s Ward: The concept of uncrossable barriers is fine when it comes in the form of lines. You can easily walk around them on the ground, but if you don’t see them they only take 1 stack of stab. The wards created by this skill will easily rip 5 (or more) stacks of stability off an entire frontline. That’s completely unreasonable. Ideally, I’d want the whole uncrossable barrier ring removed (from Dragon’s Maw as well) but I’d settle for an internal cooldown that prevents the barriers from taking more than 1 stack of stability from a player.

• Eye for an Eye: A big part of WvW play is trying to CC people before you push (to put them in combat and maybe catch a few in the CC). Commonly, this is done with static field. Using static on a group with revs in it is currently an absolute nightmare for eles. You will proc so many taunts that you’re often forced to either mist form or blink out because you can’t just stun break all of them. On top of that, taunt is an extremely strong condition in WvW compared to the other automatic CC reflecting traits (from mesmer and necro).
  My solution? Remove the trait. Remove all the silly passive life savers. They have no place in a competitive game. However, since that’s probably unlikely, reduce the taunt duration to 1 second and give it a longer cooldown. At least this way you will be able to wait out 1 or 2 procs without having to blow your utilities and the other group would have to make a conscious decision to push you since they wouldn’t be able to just autoattack you down from 1500 range in that timeframe.

• Dragonhunter traps: Not only do these deal way too much damage, the fact that you can simply stack a ridiculous amount of them on top of each other and instantly kill anyone that triggers them is beyond silly. Traps need to either
  (1) have a visual tell similar to necro marks (this would be my prefered solution) or
  (2) despawn when the caster is more than x range away from them and after a fairly short time period (50 – 70% of their recharge seems fair).

• Spear of justice: Pulls have always been a bit of a dirty tactic in WvW, but it’s been reasonably kept in check because the two main sources (mesmer focus and engi tool kit) don’t contribute much else to the fight, so they aren’t seen too much. With pulling skills on guardian (which there are a lot of in WvW) you’re just further enforcing boring, no-skill tactics.
  Additionally, the visual tell is not clear enough.
  Proposed solution: Remove the pull effect from the skill. If not that, remove the “link” after the target dodges once. This way, you’ll have a way to avoid it if you notice the effect after you’ve been hit. Also, it should at least be limited to 1 target.

• (pre-emptively) Basilisk Venom: We’ll see how this pans out but I can imagine a resurgence of venom share is coming. Considering how reliant guardians are on blocks right now that’s probably not going to end well.

On top of what’s listed, I’d also like to see a significant buff to stability. Even with nerfs to the biggest offending CC skills, the sheer amount of effects that rip 1 stack off you makes stab extremely weak in the meta we have now.
For example, a limit to how often you can lose a stack would be a great addition to the game. If you could only lose 2 stack of stability to CC every second (random numbers), not only would it require more coordination to use CC to its full effect, it would give frontlines time to actually react when their stab gets stripped.

And finally, an honorable mention that does not fit the skill/trait criteria:

• Banners: Let’s be real, they’re extremely poorly thought out. One of the biggest complaints of WvW players over the years has been open-field siege, and now you give us movable siege weapons? Not a good idea. Since I doubt Anet will remove them, I’ll suggest this:
  Connect them to objectives. They can only be used inside the objective in which they’re spawned and will disappear if you move them outside.

On top of these specifics, I’m of the opinion that the overall damage output in WvW since HoT (actually since the specialization update in June, but HoT made it so much worse) is way too high, but we’ll save that discussion for another day.

Thoughts?

Excellent post. I fully agree. Sadly Arenanet hasn’t so far made any WvWvW specific balance changes to professions. Instead of really trying to balance the mess called spvp, they are even thinking to delete lots of amulets to make the meta “less bunkerish”, instead of actually fixing the root cause of the problem (= power creep, mainly because of HoT).

I rarely nowadays meet other players in WvWvW roaming who are not using HoT elite specializations or the revenant. The elite specs are simply so much better than the core professions. This further reduces build variety. The pirate ship WvWvW meta has become boring. The suggested balance changes do very little change the pirate ship meta. CoR nerf is step towards right direction, but way too little. It still hits too hard, especially with Cruel Repercussion trait (which is more or less guaranteed to trigger in a large scale fight).

Good luck with that, I doubt anet still cares about a dead gamemode, even more so when their eSports has just started receiving a couple more viewers.

Agreed on almost every point.

lol trapped lord room like 3-4 minutes spamming traps, was the first time using them, thenwent afk a few seconds (1minute) on keep and noticed i was taking some damage (retaliation), when i asked on map chat the 2 guys were dead, i dont even know for how long a trap lasts!

true story.
X)

A very well thought suggestion. I agree with most of em, especially the eye for an eye trait. It definitely needs a duration nerf.

About stability, I think we cant really have a good solution for it, until anet decides to separate pvp and wvw skills. The current stability system revolve around 5v5 match, thus you don’t see skills that give tons stacks of stability.

great points op. i agree. i think the main problem that leads into all these issues is also, that anet decided to balance spvp and wvw the same way which causes way more imbalance.
when they buffed warrior for spvp reasons (which they did need), wvw turned into the heavy meta that almost made me quit cause i liked playing mesmer.
also wvw used to have a ton of pve items that were usable, like peg leg and spike fruit…well anet should have known that the banners will be op for the same reason.
they really dont know how to balance things i think we need spvp and wvw split and all the fancy guild addons need to be rebalanced or taken out. we really dont need stealth and airstrikes and even banners. the old buffs were actually fine as they werent overpowered.

Excellent post.

Funny, I just made a topic myself about stability just before I read this. Was just fed up after tonight’s reset.

The power creep has been happening before HoT. It started with guard stacks. HoT brings it over the top, becuase the damage co-efficient is so much higher on the elite skills over older skills. So many people complain about CoR, and rightly so, but the auto attack is very high, too. It’s on par with some of the other classes auto-attack (not all, it’s among the highest), but the revenant has the benefit of heavy armor and amazing defenses.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elite

just think of Elites as the “Heroes” on a Real Time Strategy Game, and the Normal Class as the “Units” and there problem solved

and as for Elite vs Normal Class…..

Power Herald vs Condi Revenant (that should give you an idea about balance…….)

If any of you plays MOBA, you should know how to counter every opponent just by item build and timing….

but then this is MMO nobody wants to think and counter somebody

“If you cant beat them, nerf them!” thats the sad mentality of MMO players……

Norbe.7630:

snip

So your “logical” standpoint is that everything in the game is perfectly designed and perfectly balanced, with perfectly balanced counter-plays and optimum fun, and that no one ever complains in MOBAs about hero X being too weak or too strong, or that people don’t use bans against obnoxiously OP heros, or that moba devs never make balance changes because X was too strong, etc, okay… can I have some of what you are drinking?

BlueBoy.1236:

A very well thought suggestion. I agree with most of em, especially the eye for an eye trait. It definitely needs a duration nerf.

About stability, I think we cant really have a good solution for it, until anet decides to separate pvp and wvw skills. The current stability system revolve around 5v5 match, thus you don’t see skills that give tons stacks of stability.

My suggestion was an attempt at finding a middle ground between the old and the new stab. It would cause 5 stacks to guarantee CC immunity for at least 3 seconds. So essentially, you get rewarded for avoiding CC, but you don’t get insta-downed as soon as you’re hit with the CC bombs that are so common these days.

I don’t agree with the people suggesting a complete reversion of stability’s functionality. I think there should be some punishment for getting hit but currently it’s just way too much.
Of course, the ideal solution would be to nerf all the CC, but I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that Anet would even consider that. And to be honest, stab was a bit too weak even before HoT..

Spurnshadow.3678:

Excellent post.

Funny, I just made a topic myself about stability just before I read this. Was just fed up after tonight’s reset.

The power creep has been happening before HoT. It started with guard stacks. HoT brings it over the top, becuase the damage co-efficient is so much higher on the elite skills over older skills. So many people complain about CoR, and rightly so, but the auto attack is very high, too. It’s on par with some of the other classes auto-attack (not all, it’s among the highest), but the revenant has the benefit of heavy armor and amazing defenses.

I do think Hammer Bolt has a bit too much going for it. At the very least, the damage modifier should be slightly reduced. And the projectile speed should be reduced a bit. It currently reaches almost 1600 range and it’s far too reliable at the extreme end of that.
But the biggest issue is still the revenant (Herald) itself. If they didn’t have so many damage modifiers and so much boon stacking potential, they wouldn’t be hitting people for 5k+ autos.

CoR is broke all to hell. Nobody should be landing long range AoE damage over 12k on a crit add in that it is ridiculously spammable. Even the Hammer Bolt auto-attack can land for 5k on a crit.

Sustain also needs an adjustment. I am looking forward to the first balance patch that will address some of this.

Straegen.2938:

CoR is broke all to hell. Nobody should be landing long range AoE damage over 12k on a crit add in that it is ridiculously spammable. Even the Hammer Bolt auto-attack can land for 5k on a crit.

Sustain also needs an adjustment. I am looking forward to the first balance patch that will address some of this.

I got one-shot by it today (19k hit). Yes, it’s ridiculous. I do, however, think that the CC issue is much worse.

More and more people are realizing that Hunter’s Ward will completely incapacitate an enemy frontline so you now have entire groups doing nothing but spamming the Ward, pulls (Spear of Justice) and Coalescence.
It’s a whole new level of pirate-ship’ing and it is quite literally making people leave the game in disgust.

Straegen.2938:

Even the Hammer Bolt auto-attack can land for 5k on a crit.

My Guardian has 2500 toughness (yes, for the lols). Hammer bolt can still do 2K damage on me, I had to check logs just to be sure. Of course he was probably full zerker, but regardless thats absolutely insane for an extreme range autoattack that go through walls.

Anet said they would never balance wvw. It was ok before last june balance patch. Since HoT it’s just ridiculous.
Did they try to fix CoR ? Nope. 4 sec cooldown isn’t a fix. They just don’t give a kitten about wvw balance. They will never fix it.
Actualy, class balance is for me the biggest problem of wvw. More than auto upgrades, or new BL maps.

At this point, I wish they would implement a similar system to pvp. And remove food. With amulet + jewels, we could still build nice specs and at least not die anymore to 20k CoR dmg.

Oh and fix cc. But it won’t happen. They aren’t even trying to fix it in their esport mode.

Norbe.7630:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elite

just think of Elites as the “Heroes” on a Real Time Strategy Game, and the Normal Class as the “Units” and there problem solved.

That is the worst argument I have ever read in this wvw section. Every area has its own terms. Anet explained what the word “ELITE” meant when they first introduced the idea; not stronger but just different type of build. In every job there are specific terms that are used for specific reasons. So your explanation from a dictionary-like place does mean nothing. In this games term Elite (that was how Anet, who builded the idea around that word explained/created the meaning in the first place) does not mean “Heroic” figure. If you want more information, you can use uncle google about figures of speech, literary devices, terms and meanings.

As for your comment about balance, you are both right and wrong. There is a “nerf hammer” reflex on MMO players, that is correct. But after careful testing, and experience, I can honestly concur that Herald, and Revenant needs to be nerfed. Actually it needs a role, without stealing any from warrior and thief. Or we should just assign new roles for warrior and thief (which would be an insult to players of these professions, who invested their time for that specific role). And if a class does everything better than another class, it is not fair. Everyone who played against Herald or some builds or Rev thinks that they need some adjustment. So in this situation " bad MMO player" mentality can not be mentioned. I advise you to play with every profession, with every build and see the balance for yourself. Long and tedious it is, but fruitful. And will keep your adrenaline/anger at high levels.

tl;dr: Even Rythlock rerolled.

alain.1659:

Norbe.7630:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elite

just think of Elites as the “Heroes” on a Real Time Strategy Game, and the Normal Class as the “Units” and there problem solved.

That is the worst argument I have ever read in this wvw section. Every area has its own terms. Anet explained what the word “ELITE” meant when they first introduced the idea; not stronger but just different type of build. In every job there are specific terms that are used for specific reasons. So your explanation from a dictionary-like place does mean nothing. In this games term Elite (that was how Anet, who builded the idea around that word explained/created the meaning in the first place) does not mean “Heroic” figure. If you want more information, you can use uncle google about figures of speech, literary devices, terms and meanings.

As for your comment about balance, you are both right and wrong. There is a “nerf hammer” reflex on MMO players, that is correct. But after careful testing, and experience, I can honestly concur that Herald, and Revenant needs to be nerfed. Actually it needs a role, without stealing any from warrior and thief. Or we should just assign new roles for warrior and thief (which would be an insult to players of these professions, who invested their time for that specific role). And if a class does everything better than another class, it is not fair. Everyone who played against Herald or some builds or Rev thinks that they need some adjustment. So in this situation " bad MMO player" mentality can not be mentioned. I advise you to play with every profession, with every build and see the balance for yourself. Long and tedious it is, but fruitful. And will keep your adrenaline/anger at high levels.

tl;dr: Even Rythlock rerolled.

Stop being naive, Anet will not cater to f2p specs compare to elites you get from HOT expansion purchase. They might’ve said the right things, but c’mon, at the end o the day it’s all about business, why should f2p have equal advantage compared to paid customers. As much I dislike many things in HOT, I would never agree to this.

vana.5467:

Straegen.2938:

CoR is broke all to hell. Nobody should be landing long range AoE damage over 12k on a crit add in that it is ridiculously spammable. Even the Hammer Bolt auto-attack can land for 5k on a crit.

Sustain also needs an adjustment. I am looking forward to the first balance patch that will address some of this.

I got one-shot by it today (19k hit). Yes, it’s ridiculous. I do, however, think that the CC issue is much worse.

The only way you could receive that much damage from CoR is if you were either running naked, an up-level, or you received the infamous “double hit”. Anet has said that the patch release next week will remove the latter. As for the first two… it’s your choice to play that way.

I love when people think core players are f2p. I paid for this bloody game. It was neither cheap nor free when I got it, and it was only a year ago. Then they do this cheap HoT trick. And they do it without any good elite specs that we want(ed) ( at least most of the players I know of). And they say that to be powerful you should buy expansion.

Dude if I wanted a game like WoW, I would continue to play WoW.

Hexalot.8194:

vana.5467:

Straegen.2938:

CoR is broke all to hell. Nobody should be landing long range AoE damage over 12k on a crit add in that it is ridiculously spammable. Even the Hammer Bolt auto-attack can land for 5k on a crit.

Sustain also needs an adjustment. I am looking forward to the first balance patch that will address some of this.

I got one-shot by it today (19k hit). Yes, it’s ridiculous. I do, however, think that the CC issue is much worse.

The only way you could receive that much damage from CoR is if you were either running naked, an up-level, or you received the infamous “double hit”. Anet has said that the patch release next week will remove the latter. As for the first two… it’s your choice to play that way.

\sigh..

Ascended hammer damage: 1035-1166
CoR damage modifier: 2.25
Glass herald buffed power: ~3500
Crit damage: ~230%

Ferocious aggression: 7% (req: fury, always up)
Targeted destruction: 7% (req: vuln, 25% chance to proc on hit)
Swift termination: 20% (req: <50%)
Elder’s Force: 8-10% (req: boons)
Cruel Repercussion: 50%

Seaweed salad: 10%
Strength rune: 5%

Ele base armor: 1920

Combined maximum potential damage: 25564 – 28800*
On full health target: 21304 – 24000

I run 2020 armor, making it 20249 – 22812.
Remove Targeted destruction: 18924 – 21319.
Looks like I got lucky and the guy rolled a low hammer damage.

*using the hammer damage range

Hexalot.8194:

The only way you could receive that much damage from CoR is if you were either running naked, an up-level, or you received the infamous “double hit”. Anet has said that the patch release next week will remove the latter. As for the first two… it’s your choice to play that way.

It can hit that hard. Two of us got hit with 12.5k CoR a couple nights ago from a roamer on an initial hit we didn’t see. Not that we run a lot of toughness but we are at least medium armor. Had that player been buffed and us with some vuln stacks it would have hit a lot harder. He dropped me with a 5k hammer bolt next and my friend a few seconds later. We both checked the logs in disbelief.

If a thief had that ability, all hell would break loose on the forums from jump.

alain.1659:

I advise you to play with every profession, with every build and see the balance for yourself. Long and tedious it is, but fruitful. And will keep your adrenaline/anger at high levels.

tl;dr: Even Rythlock rerolled.

Tell you the truth, i play all classes and most of them i have done on different builds
All of them are Elites now, 9 of them…
and its not from hero points they became elite….. t’was from an agonizing WvW grind Proof of Heroics each of them…. all of them.

From a condi guard to a marauder DH;
from a power staff ele to a celestial or marauder tempest;
from a condi revenant to a power herald;
from a backline ranger to a frontliner druid;
from a range engi to a melee scrapper;
from a zerker warrior to a sinister berserker;
from a SB thief to a staff daredevil
from a GS/SS mesmer to a GS/SSh chrono
from a minion master necro to a headhunter reaper

i needed to get them to elites in order for me to hard counter most of the builds and classes. thats what i do on a competetive gameplay.
thats how i learn…..

so about the balance thingy….
power is countered by toughness
toughness is countered by condition
condition is countered by vitality
vitality is countered by etc etc etc
to make the story short…..
skill/experience is countered by imagination/creativity

CoR-dodge
CR-daze
Herald-boonstrip
GW-stun break
etc etc etc tldr……

Yes you are right. You need elites to counte elites. That is the wrong issue here. Also, everyone can agree that herald and revenant are “slightly” imbalanced, can perform vay better than a warrior in every field, maybe better than other professions too. So compared to other professions, revenant and herald are a little too “much” in every area.

Your argument was based on the “elite” understanding, and the possibility of countering every “op (claimed)” build. But please dear friend, use core professions to counter that builds. Can you? Well in some cases you have near to no chance. In some cases there is a possibility (only core signet necro remains powerful). So there should be a balance. Or you can play this game with fewer people, using all elite’s, complaining why the wvw is empty or why there are no zerg fights anymore. Because it is not about buying HoT requirement that angers most of us. It is the lack of diversity, and shift in our favourite roles/profession abilities. And also, the lack of “balance”.

Even with f2p accounts, Anet is losing players.

ps: I thank you for your kind, and straight answer by the way. Arguing properly is something very dear to me, and you provided your opinions properly.

alain.1659:

Even with f2p accounts, Anet is losing players.

see, that’s the misconception, assuming you are implying that Anet went f2p with core GW2 to get more players to play the game. You are half right, because I think Anet’s ultimate intention is expose more players to the game on f2p, but when they see all the other goodies such as gliding, elites, etc, those players will buy HOT. THat’s the ultimate goal, sell more copies of HOT. If hose players that tried the game as f2p and didnt stick around, those are not the customer that Anet wants to cater to.

hmmmm, core vs elite
i have tried dueling some guildy and other pips on pvp and guild arena
i used elites and they used cores
they won most of fights, i won sometimes when they lag lol…..
they have 2 years experience in fighting while me 4 months experience with all class (4 months divide 9 class and leveling time for each)

i guess that statement i cant prove to you cuz each individual is unique
the only way to do it is using a core and an elite on the same opponent(which is core) at your equal skill and experience
its like finding a doppelganger of yourself in this world

and about the state of balance in WvW,
the servers are paramount priority that MUST be balanced…….

for a f2p pov:
“oh let me try this game, a review said its the best MMO there is”
“hmmmm, what server would i choose then, theres a populated servers and full servers and low population servers, i guess i should try the middle one cuz the high populated servers must be OP and they have imba gears there i wont stand a chance in there”
“level up till your 60, ah, lets try the WvW then…………. one week after……. why cant we win on our enemy servers…?”
“should i just buy gems and and transfer to a upper tier server or do something about the current situation…?”

…. sigh its all about meta i guess, they have made pvp a fair and square gameplay…. why cant they make WvW same…….. PPT meta…….(cough)
their crowning glory is Population Point Tick

that is the definition of a State of Balance in WvW means IMO

Either they’ve missed their KPIs by such an enormous margin, they’ve gone for a throw, OR their KPIs are wrong.

I, for one, would have been sacked for such an error in judgement.

Rev’s are the new version of the “Hammer Train”.

Svarty.8019:

Either they’ve missed their KPIs by such an enormous margin, they’ve gone for a throw, OR their KPIs are wrong.

I, for one, would have been sacked for such an error in judgement.

that company must be super strict for that lol, for me i would have been redeployed to another position, im on an Oil and Gas company, and you know the current events Saudi-America etc.. sorry for the off topic

back to the real discussion, they should put an end to the cries of the players that cared and loved this game mode, continue to ignore their call…..
t’will be a GW2, “Gamewars too”
more of them will suggest to try this game or that game and etc…….