Guild Wars 2

1st 80, Engineer. Well, we can all see how Engineers turned out.
2nd 80, Guardian. Still a really good profession even after an early string of nerfs, but the game play gets fairly static and monotonous after a while.

So I started a D/D Ele. From 1-30 was really fun. Sure, I died while learning but I still had fun. Post-30 up to 76 (currently) was/is amazingly engaging and fun. I felt I had finally found a class I could really call my “main”. Then this comes out and I am not even sure I want to take my Ele to 80 and invest the time and effort into getting Exotics for him

Gaudrath.6725:

So do you stand in five meteor showers?

No, but you can walk out of the aoe and now 5 elementlists have meteor shower on cooldown :p

As a side note, I remember in beta meteor shower caused burning, so you get some damage even if you walk out of it. They removed that on release and it is honestly not very threatening unless it’s a glass cannon casting it. Enemies in the aoe would finish doing whatever they were doing, then move 200 range in one direction to get out of it (though this skill is powerful in pve).

Even in less extreme cases like elementalist I think the ’don’t use aoe single target’ mindset is bad when each weapon just has four cooldowns. Some moves are already situational(cc, gap closers etc), if you make aoe situational too combat is going to get a lot more boring as you auto attack and wait for your single dps cooldown to come up.

Their statements definitely made me raise an eyebrow, but their intention seemed to be that they don’t want players defaulting to using AoE abilities against single players when single target attacks are available.

In staff, we have 2 single target attacks: Earth 1 and Water 1. D/D builds have what, 3 single target attacks? This makes me think that Elementalists generally will not have single target attacks available and thus ArenaNet’s adjustments may not be applicable to most of our weapon setups.

I’m eager for ANET to clarify their statements and learn how the AoE adjustments will affect Engineers and Elementalists, but I’m otherwise going to maintain a wait and see attitude.

Gaudrath.6725:

So do you stand in five meteor showers?

Probably not for the full duration, but it would mostly depend on how much dps the eles using them have. I feel like I could at least finish casting about 2 skills or finish reviving someone and make it out ok though. 5 meteor showers still don’t all hit you at once. Getting hit by one meteor from 3 or 2 showers every second is something I can deal with for a little bit at least. Someone in the zerg has to stand his ground and make pushes. I’m certainly not going to go into full on retreat mode the instant I see 5 attacks from what are most likely bunker-ish players. You’re not gonna see me playing like a kitten in one of those “5 vs a zerg” videos.

tldr: Yes, and I would do it successfully

It’s not all doom and gloom, read Jonathan Sharp’s message in the AOE discussion thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread/page/4#post1237623

JonathanSharp.7094:

Mirta.5029:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to let you guys know that we’re reading this thread.

Your logic, reasons, anecdotes and ideas are being listened to. Also keep in mind, that as I said yesterday, a skill can be a balance problem in one area of the game, but underpowered in another. That’s the nature of using one set of #‘s to balance across all areas of the game. So we’re keeping that in mind as we look at this. We may need to do different tweaks in different areas of the game.

We’re also not going to make a knee jerk reaction to this. We’re still gathering data, watching player trends, and having meetings on all possible ramifications from possible changes.

thank you for the answer, it calmed me down. If you think there’s a problem with AoE in WvW, nerf it in WvW, but not PVE, because nerfing AoE in PVE when some classes already have problems would effectively kill off engineers and staff builds of mesmer, elementalist and necromancer.

No prob. Some classes have a ton of AOE, while others don’t have as much. So we’re not just going to do a blanket nerf to all AOE – that’s not fair to all classes. We’ll go on a class by class, weapon by weapon basis.

And as I’ve said, we may need to tone something down in one area of the game, but it may be totally fine in another area.

For some weapon sets, the AOE options may be too strong compared to the single target options, which is what we aim to address.

Kaleden.9386:

It’s not all doom and gloom, read Jonathan Sharp’s message in the AOE discussion thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread/page/4#post1237623

There are two types of people on these forums. Those who come to whine and those who come to learn.

Kaleden, your first mistake is assuming that people will read a post longer than three sentences. Your second mistake was assuming that they could actually understand what they were reading if they did read it (they won’t). Your third mistake was being the second type of person on these forums and attempting to communicate with the first type of person.

On topic:

I can see how the elementalist’s area damage is a little bit imbalanced. It allows for almost constant AoE spam. For other professions this isn’t much of a problem; the elementalist just has too many AoE skills with four attunements. AoE damage as a whole is not imbalanced at all though.

Conversely, I understand why people are concerned (I am too). ANet has gone so far as to nerf my favorite profession beyond reason (engineer). I don’t like it and it has made the profession unplayable for me. But that’s not because the nerf wasn’t justifiable – it’s because their supposed buff to the profession was pathetic, it is a buggy, unreliable profession that didn’t receive the development time it needed and needs a major overhaul. It was a mistake. They messed it up. They’re human (not Asuran) but hopefully they will fix engineers. Fortunately, elementalists are not in the same boat – not by a long shot.

Voicing concern/criticism in a reasonable manner is cool. I do it all the time. I actually agree that this could be very bad for the game balance. Forum diarrhea is annoying though. And most of these posts are just that. If one change to the elementalist is enough to make you uninstall, you should probably quit playing MMOs completely because it happens to us all.

Oh God, the Staff…
/cry
/sleep

Once upon a time in GW1 it was like ‘Meteor shower! GET OUT!’ .. not is like ’oh yeah..let me finish my casts and I may move out of the way. Sure now we can spam more AoE but it is quite weaker and only available for Staff eles… I do not see how damage nerf to it will balance anything .. you can evade it , block it and soak it up …

It is more than normal Eles to have more AoE capabilities than other classes. Time will tell. Game designers may have great ideas but at the end they do not make the final call.

If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs."

I do understand this concept, but they also have to take into consideration how often you’ll actually be hitting more than 1 target in spvp (let alone 5) , and more importantly the fact that we practically only have aoe skills. Seriously, here’s a list of all of our single target skills that deal damage.

Staff- stoning,
Scepter- skill 1, hurl
Dagger-impale
Focus- freezing gust (very little)
Trident-water missile
Utility- arcane blast, signet of fire, signet of earth (small amount)

ANET DEV: Hey, lets make a class where we give them almost no option to use a non-AE Ability.

6 months later…

ANET DEV: Hey, people are using AE abilities too much! We must nerf AE!

Do they even teach logic or critical thinking anymore?

Why creating a class if its to nerf it to oblivion with EACH patch.

Its reallly hard right now playing an ele when you know that all the hard work you put into mastering the class gonna be for nothing cause they just gonna nerf it till the best ele in the game can get owned by the noobiest of thief.

Really frustrating. Ele had nerfs each patch since start.

After that patch glass canon ele will become only glass without canon(witch it never really had) and bunker ele will have no chance in winning any fight since 90% of our skills are aoe.

Meanwhile the community ask for nerf on backstab thief build since beginning but Anet nerf other useless skills that thieves never use so thieves can say: see we got nerfed stop whinning.

Anyway if ele get nerfed more I think ill just stop playing the game. Not because I only play ele but because this game will never be close to being balanced since Anet clearly show favoritism toward some class ( huummm humm thieves).

doing direct nerfs to aoe damage would be one of the worst decisions they could make. It would ruin wvwvw making blobbing better. They thinking it purely from sPvP perspective, and tbh that is not what most people play this game for.

But they prolly talking about nerfing specific things, and in that case D/D definetly would be having nerfs, as pretty much every attack we would do in a 1v1 case we would do for AoE in same order. Well heck that goes to pretty much every class, they simply cannot distinguish between single target and aoe attacks that much when there isn’t 25 skills on every class’s bars. It would also ruin action feel of the combat. Where greatsword or hammer always hits multiple people like you might imagine in a fantasy setting.

Hate when they do decisions with their sPvP goggles on…

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?

Basically… I’ve always played Casters since I got burned out of Tanking/add Tanking. I’ve had not been playing long, but came to realize on the first day that the traditional days of standing and just blowing 1 spell over and over and then another for a hit is not what this game is about.

I started off with the Staff, because I thought that is what all casters use (naive at the time – didn’t know we could use other weaps), and also stayed in Fire because I always like being a fire Mage.

Long story short, I went with the D/D, because it has been one of the most fun casters I have ever played. Not only can I be a caster and put down some decent dmg single & AoE (and die like a glass if i don’t use my skills right), I can also bring allot of other cool things to Groups/NPC’s/Dynamic Events… I don’t PvP, or WvW… mostly here for end game content and just having fun with friends (casual player).

So from what I am reading here D/D is not going to be good to stay in? :-( I really don’t want to turn into a stand and cast spells again type of person… I really like the fighting style that casters have in this game, because it is exciting and at times frustrating (button clicker).

I’m not gonna give up on the class, so I just wanted to brace myself for a let down if it is coming. I’ll give a better response and thoughts when I’ve read up some more on what’s going on. Better to have a good opinion instead of a stupid one.

Thanks for help… see ya in the game!

Zonzai.2341:

Kaleden, your first mistake is …

Teehee. It’s true, but I there are a few people who read and watch what the developers have to say instead of getting swept up in the tidal waves of tears (which I may soon shed myself, but I’ll wait until the fixes actually come to weep for my current build).

SpiritofTrini.8374:

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?…

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?…So from what I am reading here D/D is not going to be good to stay in? :-( I really don’t want to turn into a stand and cast spells again type of person… I really like the fighting style that casters have in this game, because it is exciting and at times frustrating (button clicker).

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?…So from what I am reading here D/D is not going to be good to stay in? :-( I really don’t want to turn into a stand and cast spells again type of person… I really like the fighting style that casters have in this game, because it is exciting and at times frustrating (button clicker).I’m not gonna give up on the class, so I just wanted to brace myself for a let down if it is coming. I’ll give a better response and thoughts when I’ve read up some more on what’s going on. Better to have a good opinion instead of a stupid one.

Howdy.. newb to game, so please forgive the chiming in. Where can i find this info? is it in the patch notes or something?…So from what I am reading here D/D is not going to be good to stay in? :-( I really don’t want to turn into a stand and cast spells again type of person… I really like the fighting style that casters have in this game, because it is exciting and at times frustrating (button clicker).I’m not gonna give up on the class, so I just wanted to brace myself for a let down if it is coming. I’ll give a better response and thoughts when I’ve read up some more on what’s going on. Better to have a good opinion instead of a stupid one.Thanks for help… see ya in the game!

They had a Q&A stream session yesterday in twitch.tv where they said “we think the opportunity cost on single target attacks are too high versus aoe abilities. Often times in 1v2 situation after downing the other one, the soloer just aoes on the downed person instead of downing him”. Bullkitten reasoning if you ask me, what they said in the stream. There is no problem.

edit: wtf is the quote so fked up O.o

Ok… will go check it out… still didn’t answer me question…

Can i still look forward to wielding my blood dripping daggers with my mini skirt on, or do i have to go for a dress and stick granny style?

:-p

if your question was " can i still continue playing daggers? or do i have to go staff?" or anything like that.

Answer is noone knows, there is absolutely no information what they would change or even the direction what they would take. So speculating like that is useless.

Nah… i mean.. that after the nerf I’m going to keep playing D/D…. i just wanted to know if it will still be viable or i’ll feel like a truck rolled over me? :-p

While I am a little nervous there is no reason to freak out until we actually see what is going down. Preempted QQing only means you unnecessarily tired.

I think this is the final straw (anvil?) that broke the camel’s back. You can’t create a class with almost 100% AoE damage and then nerf AoE damage. They won’t be competitive.

ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing. If this goes through, it’s game over.

Threatening to quit a game w/o a sub, Good luck to you.

Just to add, people that usually pull stunt like these are 83% more likely to be a paying customer in the first place. So really nothing of value was lost.

This is what happens when people get kitten over taking damage when they try to absorb it instead of avoid it. The attacks are telegraphed so obviously for a reason. Half the reason people die is because they aren’t paying attention to what’s going on around them.

silvermember.8941:

While I am a little nervous there is no reason to freak out until we actually see what is going down. Preempted QQing only means you unnecessarily tired.

I think this is the final straw (anvil?) that broke the camel’s back. You can’t create a class with almost 100% AoE damage and then nerf AoE damage. They won’t be competitive.

ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing. If this goes through, it’s game over.

Threatening to quit a game w/o a sub, Good luck to you.

Just to add, people that usually pull stunt like these are 83% more likely to be a paying customer in the first place. So really nothing of value was lost.

Just to add, making up random statistics doesn’t help your argument.

The game’s long term monetization strategy is to sell gems, and eventually paid expansions. Guess how many gems and expansions people buy after they give up on a developer/publisher and blacklist their company forever. ANet/NCSoft is about to get lumped in with Blizzard and EA for me.

An MMO needs a stable population to stay alive. Outside of primetime, sPvP has a few hundred people playing out of over 2 million boxes sold . I haven’t been in overflow outside of LA in months. I haven’t waited in a WvW queue after the weekend rush since October.

“Nothing of value was lost” indeed. Who needs customers?

Caffynated.5713:

silvermember.8941:

While I am a little nervous there is no reason to freak out until we actually see what is going down. Preempted QQing only means you unnecessarily tired.

I think this is the final straw (anvil?) that broke the camel’s back. You can’t create a class with almost 100% AoE damage and then nerf AoE damage. They won’t be competitive.

ANet doesn’t know what they’re doing. If this goes through, it’s game over.

Threatening to quit a game w/o a sub, Good luck to you.

Just to add, people that usually pull stunt like these are 83% more likely to be a paying customer in the first place. So really nothing of value was lost.

Just to add, making up random statistics doesn’t help your argument.

The game’s long term monetization strategy is to sell gems, and eventually paid expansions. Guess how many gems and expansions people buy after they give up on a developer/publisher and blacklist their company forever. ANet/NCSoft is about to get lumped in with Blizzard and EA for me.

An MMO needs a stable population to stay alive. Outside of primetime, sPvP has a few hundred people playing out of over 2 million boxes sold . I haven’t been in overflow outside of LA in months. I haven’t waited in a WvW queue after the weekend rush since October.

“Nothing of value was lost” indeed. Who needs customers?

I agree with your points, but that chart’s misleading. Apple’s stocks follow the same exact trend. This is likely to be because they’re spending more during this period than any other in order to expand and innovate.

It is as if this high budget team of amazing devs created this huge beautiful game, finished it, and then left 3 interns to monitor, balance and patch everything inbetween expansions.

It is when I see Anet stating thing like “In PvP and WvW we see people using AOEs on enemy players rezzing other etc” that I miss Blizzard.

Enough with the cheap bandaid fixes, typos and bugs in tooltips, atrocious imbalance. Hire some people to clean up and fix this mess, the shine is starting to wear off!

Although I am nervous about how this nerf is gonna go, especially when I just recently re-rolled into ele, I think we need not to forget that Anet stated that they wanted single target dps to be on pair with AoE and other builds to be more viable. Hopefully this will mean that staff will instead be strong (or stronger) in form of single target dps. Also I’m not sure that those small blasts AoE really gonna be affected by this (e.g Fireball, burning speed, etc).

I really don’t know how they intend to nerf it, but if it’s gonna be damage reduction or radius reduction, imagine what it would do to Engineers, removing 2 viable builds (bomber and grenadier, not to mention that grenadier was nerfed in the previous patch). I mean.. Some builds are made around AoE, if it bothers them so much, then why not just remove AoE’s completly. I’m just saying.. the changes can’t seriously be so devastating that those builds will become unplayable. Cause it makes no sense to rebuild classes so that they cannot even be played anymore at all, removing all viable options.

that is so disappointed.

Made a warrior but it was so boring. Made an ele and have almost got it to 80.. really hope I get to experience this class at 80 before it gets nerfed into the ground. It’s been fun so far, a pity all my fave class get nerfed. Wishing I’d just ran warrior from the get go… Boring but at least I’m doing something in dungeons.

hharry.1967:

Just wondering, how will this affect us?
Surely it will affect 100% of the staff builds around there.

But what about D/D or S/D ? As D/D most of our skills are AoE, even if we mostly use them for single target, would this actually nerf D/D builds? S/D also has some AoE used for single target dps, im a bit worried.

D/D has some AoEs too, S/D has half of them too however I think they will improve the other traits on staff? so it’s going to be better? or atleast balanced? They have too other way they will be pretty useless+ they need to improve other weapons

I think we’re jumping the gun. It looks like they’re just reworking the AoE mechanic, and they’re no where near done with it yet.

So a thief can do say 1000 damage to a target but my ele will only do 200 damage to the same target using aoe.

I guess we will have to wait and see how bad the nerf is. heh, this may be my first and last post. gl all

They don’t want ppl to just spam AOE fields. What do they want elementalists to do? Delete their character? This doesen’t make any sense.

Gaudrath.6725:

The ele community must really be traumatized, the amount of preemptive tears here is amazing.

I mean, nobody here doesn’t even know what they plan to do with AoE. “Reduced effectiveness” – how does that translate directly to reduced damage? It means only that they think (correctly, btw) that AoE in this game is too abundant and that it reduces gameplay to AoE spammage, which it does.

Since there are many classes which have AoE skills, this more than likely means that they will change those skills in such a way that:

a) some of the AoE skills will be now more geared towards single target damage with reduced AoE effects
b) AoE skills will have requirements making them unpractical to use in every encounter (which probably means longer setup times, or preconditions requirements and so on)

Just reducing AoE damage is the single worst way to do it, and they haven’t mentioned such a move anywhere. I doubt they are so dumb to blanket nerf AoE damage when they have classes which are practically all AoE and other classes which would hardly get touched by the nerf at all.

Knowing ANet’s track record regarding balancing in GW1, I’m actually almost a 100% certain they will do exactly what you do not expect them to do: Flat out nerf any AoE ability in the game. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they buffed certain single target abilities along with that (let’s say, Warrior single target abilities for example) just to further increase single target abilities’ effectiveness compared to AoEs.

I don’t know if you ever played GW1, but when you wanted to play competitive PvP in GW1, one skill was absolutely mandatory: Being able to read and comprehend patch notes. Because just by reading patch notes, you already knew what you where supposed to play for the following month. With each ‘balance’ update, they just deleted 1..n FOTM builds from the game, while buffing other skills by such absurd amounts everyone immediately knew what the next 1..n FOTM were gonna be, without even playtesting the new patch. Don’t expect ANY reasonable decisions from ANet’s balancing team. Ever.

Also keep in mind that none of the balance team plays an ele.

ATMAvatar.5749:

Also keep in mind that none of the balance team plays an ele.

Link? Or is this sarcasm. I find that hard to believe tbh.

Way back when we didn’t know of any dev’s playing an Ele, the second last stream regarding pvp two dev’s mentioned they’ve been playing the class again. Much good it has done, look at the position we’re facing.

Look, all this whining is worthless when your whining about something that has not yet happened. Its simple enough. If they nerf Ele AoE, stop playing the game and warn your friends away from GW2. Boycott the game itself. This will create a downward spiril that the game will be unlikely to rebound from and ultimately create its downfall as with so many other MMO’s before it.

Stop putting up with out of control Devs that feel they are not accountable to the player base. Take a stand and boycott. Heck, I think that even if you play another class or have alts that your only feeding the beast if you choose to play them instead of your Ele due to nerfs. Shame on you. You should know better than to do that because its only a matter of time before the nerf bat swings its way around to every class and by sticking with a company that already has such a scandalous history when it comes to overnerfs, your just part of the problem.

Alilinke.7690:

ATMAvatar.5749:

Also keep in mind that none of the balance team plays an ele.

Link? Or is this sarcasm. I find that hard to believe tbh.

Who knows if that is true now but yes months ago the listed the classes they played ele wasn’t one of them. Go back to the EA nerf for more info.

TheGuy.3568:

Alilinke.7690:

ATMAvatar.5749:

Also keep in mind that none of the balance team plays an ele.

Link? Or is this sarcasm. I find that hard to believe tbh.

Who knows if that is true now but yes months ago the listed the classes they played ele wasn’t one of them. Go back to the EA nerf for more info.

I don’t know much about the balance team, but one would assume they play all classes equally. >.>

Yes. Let’s nerf AOE. Meanwhile, thieves staying in uncounterable stealth permanently is perfectly fine.

Also, do not think they’d be afraid to put entire professions into a state where you cannot justify running that profession anymore. They’ve done all that in GW1 already. More than that. They’ve removed ENTIRE GAME MODES from the game in GW1.

I’m optimistic that they won’t break the class completely, maybe they’ll give us more damage to offset any survivability nerf.

I have been a AoE ‘mage’ in every game I have played except Diablo II because I just couldn’t stand the looks of the sorceress. If I can’t play that as a main, it will be up to my guild to keep me playing because it won’t be for the game itself.

Game designers always play all the different classes, as do the test teams. But you invariably miss things because that’s what maybe 5-10 people playing a specific class, against thousands of players.

The idea that game designers/dev’s don’t feel accountable, or don’t care, is absurd. Most of these people are hardcore gamers themselves, they take a lot of pride in the game they make and they absolutely do care. It’s just impossible to create a perfect balance in advance, a lot of game design is adjusting to things players find.

And unlike a player that just plays one class, they have to keep in mind every class with every change that’s made.

I’ve worked with a lot of top game designers and dev’s (most have worked on multiple games across multiple game companies). These are some of the smartest people you will ever meet.

Fortunately, they know that most players have no idea what goes into making a game and the kind of people behind it, so they dont’ get upset when they see ridiculous comments about them not caring, or not playing a class, or being stupid, or whatever.

snacktime.1082:

Game designers always play all the different classes, as do the test teams. But you invariably miss things because that’s what maybe 5-10 people playing a specific class, against thousands of players.

The idea that game designers/dev’s don’t feel accountable, or don’t care, is absurd. Most of these people are hardcore gamers themselves, they take a lot of pride in the game they make and they absolutely do care. It’s just impossible to create a perfect balance in advance, a lot of game design is adjusting to things players find.

And unlike a player that just plays one class, they have to keep in mind every class with every change that’s made.

I’ve worked with a lot of top game designers and dev’s (most have worked on multiple games across multiple game companies). These are some of the smartest people you will ever meet.

Fortunately, they know that most players have no idea what goes into making a game and the kind of people behind it, so they dont’ get upset when they see ridiculous comments about them not caring, or not playing a class, or being stupid, or whatever.

Now give us one good reason we should believe you.

The only thing I could see happening is if they lower AOE damage, they would need to raise single target damage through the roof, otherwise why play a cloth caster versus a warrior? I’m hoping anet is considering some sort of counterbalance, especially with specializations such as staff. If you’re going to nerf aoe damage, then single target damage should exceed that of every class save for a mesmer, otherwise why play a class with the worst hp and defense? I’m better off rolling a warrior and gaining heavy armor and an autoattack that blows my single target damage out of the water.

I hope they see One Hundred Blades as an aoe, so much damage on an eight seconds cooldown

Fellow elementalists, like you I fear the massive wooden god known as “Nurfbhat”, I’ve sacrificed my two virgin daughters and have only one left!

However, despite the dire signs and portents announced by the priests and demigods I have a feeling that we are not the intended target of wrath, we shall suffer some splash damage, but only five of us shall be hurt.

Why do I speak this sacrilege in light of the history of our profession? Well the reason is simple and the reason is thus: opportunity cost!

By definition opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone (that is not chosen). It is the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone, or group, who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices.

Elementalists by class design have had all choice regarding AoE taken away from them. The effectiveness of our AoE spells have been countered by the long period of their cooldowns and furthermore as each of you know from experience the effectiveness of the majority of our single target attacks is laughable. So we will see a change to our skills but at this point it is purely conjecture as to what the result will be.

Let me further stimulate your critical thinking and ask you to look at the game from a broader perspective, look at things not as an elementalist but as player.

Many people are arguing that the recent posting of videos like “4v30” and “5v70” are the reason why the developers are reacting in such a drastic fashion. We as players know for a fact that the opponents in those two videos are total scrubs and not worth considering. Personally I take great offence at players posting things like that for the sake of their own ego’s.

Now contrast that to guild specific videos that have been posted recently. I’ll compile a list at the end of this post to make things easier for you but in summary the majority of the fights involve large numbers of heavy frontline players running into a group of opponents hitting melee autoattacks and AoE skills and due to the “cleave” nature of many of these skills the damage numbers popping up are staggering to say the least.

Combine that with the innate defenses of guardians and warriors and the short cooldown of most of their skills (not counting elites) then I’m seeing a distinct imbalance of opportunity cost vs effectiveness, as such I firmly believe that that is what Anet are planning to address.

VIDEOS TO CONTRAST

4v30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

7v50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvkKHR8zz34

Red Guard (Sorry Intigo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_PCgKbwXE

siN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hq3pssAFS4

VotF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjidD-RP7Nk

what I fail to understand is why in the world devs want to penalize those who mastered their class in favor of newcomers. This is what I would like to know from them, really.

snacktime.1082:

Fortunately, they know that most players have no idea what goes into making a game and the kind of people behind it, so they dont’ get upset when they see ridiculous comments about them not caring, or not playing a class, or being stupid, or whatever.

I’ll tell you that almost everything you wrote are completely wrong.

I don t know how you get to your conclusions…but coming from competitive fighting games i could tell you that most players could single handedly destroy any developer and had more experience of them in balancing and better ideas…..

To the point that often they rely on tournament winners to get feedback and balance their games…..

And i m not talking of some lesser VG company…i m talking of the most known ones….

Both in this forum than in theirs you can find details and DATA that shows a deep knowledge…..

I accept that in gw2 most players are not that aknowledged of game mechanics, yet it doens nt need rocket science to see they are doing a huge mistake when they say “aoe are too strong in dungeons”.

Unless the changes too the game are so deep to change the base game itself.
But i think nobody thinks it will happen.

Its an unneeded, unasked change and mostly based on an assumption so wrong that can be seen in any dungeon run…

I think they are reading their data in a wrong way…

Areann.1304:

I hope they see One Hundred Blades as an aoe, so much damage on an eight seconds cooldown

Are u serious? Because u dont even need to dodge HB.. Just one step back and he missed.