Guild Wars 2

Besides destroying people’s ability to actually play the game (fps issues, blue-screen, file archive issues) the QA and Dev team has decided to nerf one of the most useless Guardian abilities: Spirit weapons.

Spirit weapons – utilities with decent cast times (esp if you use 3) and which utilize the worst Guardian traitline – Zeal – are now attackable!

It was one in a million to see these used anywhere besides fractals (the shield, specifically)

Now I’ve seen it all!

P.S. They can be killed with about 3 autoattacks

so if your not using them why do you care?

there’s a global problem with ALL combat pets, they just need to buckle down and introduce some strong much needed changes and accept the history on this problem. Other games have had to give all pets a global damage reduction from AOE attacks of 90% and improve the health and UI of pets dramatically, and make the pets use the Aggro table of the player and stay within a closer zone running back to the player when they go too far out. These things have had to happen in other AAA titles and they worked well because these other games including the elephant in the room had the same issue with pets dying constantly so these skills were basically useless to even bother summoning them.

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

One of the only set of Guardian utilities that actually played like utilities…The bow is pretty much a cast-use, the shield may still be viable against ranged if it can even stay up long enough…Wow, i just don’t get what direction they’re taking with this game. Why did they need to do this? The combat in this game is so braindead casual. No roles, spec doesn’t really matter to teamplay, homogeneous buffing and combo system. It’s just really weak. A step backwards from GW1 combat, why arenanet, WHY?

Eh trust me with the patch that just came out thats not even a big deal what really worries me is that they really didnt change anything. I mean Zeal is still lackluster with traits like Zealous Blade (Greatsword attacks heal for 25 hp) there is not point to put in any points past 10 unless you want to get the power from it then by all means. Also some of our other traits arnt working as intended I say a spirit weapon nerf isnt anything to be bothered with since they were bad anyway.

I was honestly expecting Spirit Weapons to get a buff whenever the next class changes hit.
This… I don’t know what this is.

what where they kittening thinking i’m a sprite weapon burn build and it work great this has destroyed the entire build NICE WORK!

Now they’re about as worthless as my Ranger’s spirits, I guess.

lothefallen.7081:

One of the only set of Guardian utilities that actually played like utilities…The bow is pretty much a cast-use, the shield may still be viable against ranged if it can even stay up long enough…Wow, i just don’t get what direction they’re taking with this game. Why did they need to do this? The combat in this game is so braindead casual. No roles, spec doesn’t really matter to teamplay, homogeneous buffing and combo system. It’s just really weak. A step backwards from GW1 combat, why arenanet, WHY?

Its never going to be like GW1 sadly this game is something new they just need to actually look at the problems this game has and read the forums for once to see whats going on and stop add new content for 2 seconds and fix issues the correct way. I think they are afraid of fixing things due to thier fear of breaking more stuff but hopefully im wrong because if they have that mentality then this game wont make it. Not saying its heading that way since the game is still pretty new and the first year of a mmo is usually pretty rough. But they need to really sit down and look at what they have and ways to fix things from classes to content that are already in the game.

Sadly as of right now this is the only game when patch notes come out I dont get excited more so worried.

I’m slowly losing faith in this game as well. I seriously held on for awhile, trying to trust anet to actually listen to feedback but yeah.. why nerf the spirit weapons? were they really that OP. Not to mention the amount of bugs they have introduced into this game with this patch. Constant DC and mini roll backs!!

grayskull.2367:

what where they kittening thinking i’m a sprite weapon burn build and it work great this has destroyed the entire build NICE WORK!

Welcome to the pain engineers have been feeling for 5 months now. I find it aggrivating that the very thing I was promised wouldn’t happen is happening in this title.

(the “balance” pvp aspects without separating the behaviors and math between the pve and pvp code sets and properly testing them before launch thing) 6 years of having to completely respec regear my character in another title, no thanks.

This was probably meant to be a nerf for how OP the shield spirit weapon is in pve. unfortunately it makes the others useless as a result.

So i just tested them with a group of mobs and they are now unless any aoe damage there dead any thing target them there dead so some one in pvp kittenes that the where op so you nuffed them into the ground making them useless nice work anet nice work!

George Steel.1804:

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

I think we can’t dismiss player ignorance as well … unless you are a Dev, you don’t know the motivation for the change and it might be completely inline with a future plan for the class. I certainly don’t think it’s been changed because devs are ignorant. I’m going to assume that most GW2 players have some past MMO experience will agree that lots changes are not transparent or well understood by players. It’s the nature of these things.

Obtena.7952:

George Steel.1804:

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

I think we can’t dismiss player ignorance as well … unless you are a Dev, you don’t know the motivation for the change and it might be completely inline with a future plan for the class. I certainly don’t think it’s been changed because devs are ignorant. I’m going to assume that most GW2 players have some past MMO experience will agree that lots changes are not transparent or well understood by players. It’s the nature of these things.

If it was changed because of something thats going to happen in the future, then it shouldn’t have been changed until said “future”.

Making a set of utilities useless for any period of time because they have something planned for them later is bad.

This can’t be the same development team GW1 players came to respect, who ever makes the changes are idiots.

Electro.4173:

Obtena.7952:

George Steel.1804:

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

I think we can’t dismiss player ignorance as well … unless you are a Dev, you don’t know the motivation for the change and it might be completely inline with a future plan for the class. I certainly don’t think it’s been changed because devs are ignorant. I’m going to assume that most GW2 players have some past MMO experience will agree that lots changes are not transparent or well understood by players. It’s the nature of these things.

If it was changed because of something thats going to happen in the future, then it shouldn’t have been changed until said “future”.

Making a set of utilities useless for any period of time because they have something planned for them later is bad.

Whether it’s bad the change happened now or later is a matter of opinion really. If it’s related to some future plan, it could be necessary to implement the nerf now in case it needs to be well tested so the possibly better thing gets implemented without issue. I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here because I think the change appears misplaced, but I certainly don’t think it was done to screw people or give the impression they don’t have a clue to balancing the classes. People have a tendency to forget that whether they disagree with a change more often than not is really not cause for it to be a bad change … the devs decide the direction of the classes and these things dictate the changes.

Frankly, I think this is much ado about nothing. SW’s sucked. Now they suck more. I don’t see a place for something that sucked to begin with.

Obtena.7952:

Electro.4173:

Obtena.7952:

George Steel.1804:

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

I think we can’t dismiss player ignorance as well … unless you are a Dev, you don’t know the motivation for the change and it might be completely inline with a future plan for the class. I certainly don’t think it’s been changed because devs are ignorant. I’m going to assume that most GW2 players have some past MMO experience will agree that lots changes are not transparent or well understood by players. It’s the nature of these things.

If it was changed because of something thats going to happen in the future, then it shouldn’t have been changed until said “future”.

Making a set of utilities useless for any period of time because they have something planned for them later is bad.

Whether it’s bad the change happened now or later is a matter of opinion really. If it’s related to some future plan, it could be necessary to implement the nerf now in case it needs to be well tested so the possibly better thing gets implemented without issue. I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here because I think the change appears misplaced, but I certainly don’t think it was done to screw people or give the impression they don’t have a clue to balancing the classes. People have a tendency to forget that whether they disagree with a change more often than not is really not cause for it to be a bad change … the devs decide the direction of the classes and these things dictate the changes.

Frankly, I think this is much ado about nothing. SW’s sucked. Now they suck more. I don’t see a place for something that sucked to begin with.

But there is no sense to make a nerf for a mechanic that is not still ready. Make changes only when all is ready (the old anet motto)

Like I said, you don’t see the sense in it because you don’t know the plans for the class. It doesn’t need to make sense to a player that has no insight to how the game will evolve. Maybe if we had a roadmap, we could make some more intelligent discussion about the change but we don’t. Somethings need to be broken down before you can make them into something better. That’s not irrelevant where testing and code are concerned.

Obtena.7952:

Like I said, you don’t see the sense in it because you don’t know the plans for the class. It doesn’t need to make sense to a player that has no insight to how the game will evolve. Maybe if we had a roadmap, we could make some more intelligent discussion about the change but we don’t. Somethings need to be broken down before you can make them into something better. That’s not irrelevant where testing and code are concerned.

I can see where you are coming from and i agree with you we don’t know how things will change or how the class is going to end up down the line but the only thing we have to go off of is the devs description of the class. So far the description isn’t anywhere near where our class is now. Since the first patch we have been seeing questionable changes and almost the entire time we have had that mentality “trust the dev team they know best” and even though like this most of the changes weren’t game breaking for us even if some made us angry we stuck by that motto. Now is different they are fixing and changing things that dont even need to be changed and neglecting the things that do thats whats worrying most of us. We cant trust something if there is nothing really there to place trust into.

Obtena.7952:

Like I said, you don’t see the sense in it because you don’t know the plans for the class. It doesn’t need to make sense to a player that has no insight to how the game will evolve. Maybe if we had a roadmap, we could make some more intelligent discussion about the change but we don’t. Somethings need to be broken down before you can make them into something better. That’s not irrelevant where testing and code are concerned.

What plans? Anet does not communicate anything. when was the last Dev post on our forum? I am left to believe there are no plans. People carry on like these people are intelligent or godlike in their understanding of the game TBH they seem pretty out of touch and driven by pretty strange motivations.

SW were seldom used and now will never be used. We have gone from having 4 builds: AH, MF, Virtues, SW to having only 3. That is a 25% nerf to my fun and the class in general. In fact, I found SW to be quite fun in SPVP, so I guess I won’t be doing that any more.

If the weapons had more health this might not be such an issue. But since they die in 3 autoattacks, they are useless. OK Anet, boost up the health of all Spirit Weapons. I was under the impression they had done some work on Ranger SW but apparently not.

I am not seeing why this change had to be brought in for the Arcane Shield or the Bow at all. The whole nature of them being defence. In fact, it seems a pretty poorly thought out change to the shield… a shield that absorbs damage for you and dies from damage (what? makes no sense).

If they were changing them to something radically different and unlike anything else in the game, then I could see them maybe having a larger plan in mind and needing to test it before going forward.

But this change is exactly the opposite of that. They’re taking something thats already somewhat unique, and making the Spirit Weapons the same as every other minion in the game. That hardly seems like something that would require prolonged testing.

Even if they ARE going to radically change them, this particular change that we got today is nothing noteworthy. So the thing that would require testing would be the actual unique mechanics / radical changes, not “Well lets see if they die if we make them vulnerable to attacks”.

Relentliss.2170:

What plans? Anet does not communicate anything. when was the last Dev post on our forum? I am left to believe there are no plans.

So your conclusion is that since you don’t see plans, they don’t exist? Well, I can’t argue against that with a logical approach since it appears you didn’t use logic to get yourself into that position to begin with.

Bottom line: I don’t think they roll dice and decide they are nerfing some random thing. There is a reason, even if you don’t know, understand or agree with what it is.

Obtena and Relentliss both have point, it is kind of silly to imagine that A’net nerfed this without any directions what so ever.

However, without any comment on the future patch or anything on that matter, and just simply nerfing it is also silly and make us suspicious about A’net direction with Guardians, thus people just complain or new people might even think it’s bugged when your SW dies in 3 hits.

Simple fix for this is one of Dev or whoever from A’net should comment on this matter with what’s going on with SW and Guardian in general.

Obtena.7952:

So your conclusion is that since you don’t see plans, they don’t exist?

That makes a LOT more sense than concluding that since you don’t see plans, they must exist. That position is to logic as kryptonite is to superman.

Spirit weapons got a nerf and a buff at the same time. They take damage now but it looks like they are considered a normal pet now that can get any boost that would be applied to a friendly. Boons and virtue’s for example. You do much more burn damage now with spirit weapons you just have to keep them alive lol. Because they are now considered a ally AH will also trigger off of them.

I think the change is great they just need to fix the def and hps of the weapons .

I thought that for a few seconds, until I realized that spirit weapons take up the utility slots that we’d be using to buff them for AH. So while that might be the devs’ intent, the moment you actually try to USE them that way…. oops!

Manticore Five.9867:

I thought that for a few seconds, until I realized that spirit weapons take up the utility slots that we’d be using to buff them for AH. So while that might be the devs’ intent, the moment you actually try to USE them that way…. oops!

you have empower/symbols/virtue’s/traits that give boons all of which will trigger AH without using a single utility slot.

lenexkabol.9438:

I think the change is great they just need to fix the def and hps of the weapons .

AND make the Spirit of the Avenger function like Sanctuary so It couldn’t be damaged by attack, which was the whole point of a Spirit Weapon. it’s just there, doing its thing for a set period of time and then it is destroyed and waiting a zillion years for the cooldown to expire, yes they take that long and they exist for such a short time.

And now a.net makes it attackable with make-up excuses like it can now have boons and kitten.

Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

alcopaul.2156:

lenexkabol.9438:

I think the change is great they just need to fix the def and hps of the weapons .

AND make the Spirit of the Avenger function like Sanctuary so It couldn’t be damaged by attack, which was the whole point of a Spirit Weapon. it’s just there, doing its thing for a set period of time and then it is destroyed and waiting a zillion years for the cooldown to expire, yes they take that long and they exist for such a short time.

And now a.net makes it attackable with make-up excuses like it can now have boons and kitten.

I agree the bow and shield weapons should have a lower cool down and none targeted like before.

A fully spec’d spirit shield was OP… common now guys.

1) It lasts FOREVER
2) You can enable it to bring it to your target for pushes + give weakness and a decent dmg hit.
3) Super low cooldown

3) Combined w/ Wall of Reflection & Stability… lol we were a ‘1 man’ brigade.

a simple 20/0/0/20/20 build with Knights & Sapphire jewelry was amazing for support/pushes w/ good dps.

You get 2-3 guardians w/ shields and you were blocking pretty much anything but GtAoE

Not surprised with this nerf really, they did say not too long ago that some class had 2 good builds, and some had 5, and they wanted all class to have 5-6 good playable builds. After this nerf it’s clear to me that what they intend to do is nerf the actual good builds so we’re all left with 5-6 equal bad ones. I’m expecting much more nerfs in the near future.

Oh well…

Sentry.6187:

Not surprised with this nerf really, they did say not too long ago that some class had 2 good builds, and some had 5, and they wanted all class to have 5-6 good playable builds. After this nerf it’s clear to me that what they intend to do is nerf the actual good builds so we’re all left with 5-6 equal bad ones. I’m expecting much more nerfs in the near future.

Oh well…

Reminds me of Guild Wars 1. Nerfing the good builds so we are left with 1 generic build called balanced.

Also happened to D3 very recently, wich is one of the main reason a ton of people quit playing. It’s always easier to nerf a few good things then buff many bad things, this game is no exception.

Amins.3710:

A fully spec’d spirit shield was OP… common now guys.

1) It lasts FOREVER
2) You can enable it to bring it to your target for pushes + give weakness and a decent dmg hit.
3) Super low cooldown

3) Combined w/ Wall of Reflection & Stability… lol we were a ‘1 man’ brigade.

a simple 20/0/0/20/20 build with Knights & Sapphire jewelry was amazing for support/pushes w/ good dps.

You get 2-3 guardians w/ shields and you were blocking pretty much anything but GtAoE

If the zerg in the 7 versus 30 video had shield of avenger guardians then A.NET would not think that non GT AoE is not OP.

Shields are part of the tactic. Nobody is barred from using it so the other team could get 2-3 guardians with shield too and be in equal playing field and it is up to the melee to penetrate your team.

George Steel.1804:

Because it shows the complete ignorance of whoever decided that this would be a good change. If our worst utilities get nerfed, what else is on the horizon?

Slowly but surely Guardians are being pushed into hammer builds.

Lets be honest here. The only spirit weapon that was ever worth using, even fully traited, was the shield.

Now it seems even the shield is completely useless. Have fun in your high level fractals people.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lets be honest here. The only spirit weapon that was ever worth using, even fully traited, was the shield.

Now it seems even the shield is completely useless. Have fun in your high level fractals people.

Actually, the Sword has always been very good for burning builds, and the Hammer has always been a good CC option for PvP. Not anymore of course.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lets be honest here. The only spirit weapon that was ever worth using, even fully traited, was the shield.

Now it seems even the shield is completely useless. Have fun in your high level fractals people.

You kidding. Had a guild SPVP nite. Was absolutely pwning people with my SW build. The hammer was awesome.

I don’t know what is Anet doing with the spirit weapon nerf. They die in a few hits as many has said in a heated battle, lasting 3-4 seconds max. Their HP is too low.

Spirit weapons should have the same HP as the guardian with the same def.
and/or lower the timer on spirit weapons by 25%.

I was actually starting to enjoy playing my guardian, guess I go back to my warrior.

Seabrook.6531:

I don’t know what is Anet doing with the spirit weapon nerf. They die in a few hits as many has said in a heated battle, lasting 3-4 seconds max. Their HP is too low.

Spirit weapons should have the same HP as the guardian with the same def.
and/or lower the timer on spirit weapons by 25%.

I was actually starting to enjoy playing my guardian, guess I go back to my warrior.

This “nerfing to oblivion” is familiar to GW1 players and obviously has the signature of the old GW1 skill balancer who loved nerfing things to oblivion coz it’s his way of balancing things.

At least, in GW1, the overplayed builds were nerfed..

A lot of the Guardian skills I haven’t even chosen to learn the skill even though I have the points, because so many of them seem worthless. Now they destroy what few I even liked/used.

Maybe the guy who nerfed them was getting beat by them in pvp player or something.

Seabrook.6531:

I don’t know what is Anet doing with the spirit weapon nerf. They die in a few hits as many has said in a heated battle, lasting 3-4 seconds max. Their HP is too low.

Spirit weapons should have the same HP as the guardian with the same def.
and/or lower the timer on spirit weapons by 25%.

I was actually starting to enjoy playing my guardian, guess I go back to my warrior.

A sword and hammer with 20k hps and 3k armor would be a bit much. considering you can heal /boon/virtue them.

10k hps 2k armor

Remove the duration timer of the weapon lifespan so that it stays till it dies or you destroy it.

Degen instead regen like necro pets so your forced to heal them.

Remove the knock down from the auto attack with the hammer.

Transcript of Dev Livestream 17th of Jan.

Philosophy for weapons/traits & class balance

• We want every single class to feel like they have multiple options to deal with every situations, this doesn’t mean every class will have the exact same options.

• We want every single class to deal situations in an unique manner – we keep “purity” in certain skills/traits i.e. only mesmers and thieves have stealth to deal with some situations. Not everyone have stealth but every class have a defensive mechanism they can use if they don’t stealth.

• We want to bring up all the weak weapons/traits on par with strong weapons/builds/traits in addition to reduce AoE effectiveness.

• A lot of classes have 1-2 good builds while some have 5-6 builds , we want to bring up all the classes to 5-6 good and viable builds

Link for the transcript!

And then they go and spoil it all by sayin’ somethin’ stupid like “Spirit weapons are aaatack-able…. aaatack-able” (couldn’t resist!).

I do understand that they want to take baby steps and see where the class stands as to what they feel is right to do as there are many options of buffing spirit weapons and don’t want to buff it unnecessarily. But maybe a little more health or just making them CC-able without making them attack-able would have been a much better route IMO.

Who knew they were OP?

It seems Mr Peters has too much time on his hands, despite the dominance of MESMERS and THIEVES…

At lower levels I’m finding the spirit weapons now tank surprisingly well.

I think there is problem with their HP curve, where they are not getting enough HP at higher levels.

Svarty.8019:

Who knew they were OP?

It seems Mr Peters has too much time on his hands, despite the dominance of MESMERS and THIEVES…

The class balancing in this regard is really leaving me perplexed and somewhat frustrated.