Guild Wars 2

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/04/pax-prime-2013-guild-wars-2s-jon-peters-on-the-state-of-pvp/

he wants to make some changes to condition-based team comps, as he thinks lethality right now is very high. “We really want to try to introduce soft counters, rather than builds and counter-builds.”

5 members of my guild are ranked in the Top 50 of tPvP another is ranked top 3 in solo Q 1 of the members said that Jon was talking in GW2sPvPtv chat on twitch and saying a few of the changes that would be coming soon. It sounded like there would be some changes (not just necro but he did say that Jon mentioned necro’s but other classes not specifically condi classes) but also some help for classes that have issues dealing with condis like Mesmer’s.

Will be interesting what they will come up with hope its good overall for the game.

Discuss? Maybe we get Jon to peek into the forums.

From what I have heard from the devs, and this is just their opinion I’m not debating how accurate it is, they feel that Necros mainly, but condition classes in general outpace the cleansing of many classes by too much. For example, even for a Terrormancer, bleeding does the majority of the damage. However with how we work, we apply bleed first (or close), then go on in a general rotation to also apply cripple, weakness, and chill (in a strictly bleed burst), and poison, torment, immobilize, and fear in bigger burst chains. Along with the common burning trait, this isn’t a problem of damage itself, so much as many cleanses only remove 1-3 conditions. Meaning that even in our bare bones bleed applications, you will often end up not removing the very condition stack that is going to kill you (bleeding) and instead get rid of the extraneous stuff we put on.

This is of course, compounded by our generally high ability to “force” you to eat bleeds with fears as well, which overall leads people to feeling helpless in some situations. Again, I realize we can argue how accurate that is, but this is where I think ANet is coming from; a lot of classes cannot effectively combat the large amount of condition application that is being thrown at them, and most end up with the most important condition to get rid of (bleeding usually, confusion for some builds) being left on as it was applied first.

So I think we will be seeing some overall nerfs to condition spam classes, but I am interested to know how they will handle the Necro case because of how reliant we are on conditions, and quite honestly how useless we are as a class without all those condis going out.

@Bhawb I am hoping they help the other classes out with condition management more so than actually nerf the necro overall. It is why I rolled a necro eventually was for its ability to manipulate conditions etc.. Something that I was unable to do well with mesmer and thief after spending lots gold trying out combinations. Necro is my newest class but I have enjoyed it alot so far because it is what I wanted to achieve with my mesmer and thief when it comes to a condition damage build.

I like being able to have conditions as the main form of damage and build around that actually going into the condition damage line and going in the condition duration line instead of like my other classes where you spec condition but you usually take 1 or the other lines and not both at the same time.

In sPvP and tPvP play I can see some changes can be made to the current meta overall. I hope not many of those changes boil over to PvE/WvW.

I feel like they might address condition application on other classes, as most other classes can re-apply the meaningful conditions often, but don’t have the sheer number that we do, and maybe a bit of removal buffing to help as well. I don’t see how they can actually nerf our application without bringing much worse nerfs to the class in general (which is far from OP, but has one really strong build).

If i say “again with the load of crap” people are going to jump me.
I recently got back into the country, and i decided to rest for 1 day after my journey… logged in the second day…

Did some solo Q… and i had 2 extra necromancers with me, and apparently they had 2-3 anti-condition builds on their 2 rangers 1 guardian…
Were were in spirit watch… the guardian took the orb, and me and the other 2 necromancers unleashed everything we had on the guardian. He almost instantly died if it weren’t for 2 rangers appearing… we continued to give it all on the guardian since the rangers weren’t doing much damage (2 spirit rangers), yet the guardian’s HP was going from 100% to 95% to 100% to 95% with the speed of light.
We placed every single fear every single CC… everything… and the guardian took all that and carried us from the orb location in the middle, all the way to the far point… we could not kill him, we couldn’t bring him under half HP even… we did kill the rangers about half way, since they were focusing on keeping the guardian alive and not so much on fighting us… so we i said “switch” and targeted 1 ranger, he wasn’t prepared.

Suffice to say that we were powerless against anti-condition builds… we still are…
There are classes with builds that you can never win with conditions, ever… simply put “all highly mobile anti-condition builds in the hands of a skilled player” guarantee a win for that player or a draw, never a defeat.

They remove everything you can possibly add for about 10 seconds, then they try to kill you while being chain CCed without access to stability… then they leave combat, there’s nothing you can do about it…
But hey… maybe you guys can teach me how to kill people with total condition immunity / damage immunity… how to survive 4 chain stun… and how to fly after classes that can do a triple dash.

Perhaps i am just a noob…

With that being said, i don’t think ArenaNet will bash conditions into the ground… they are moving the game in a very good direction, i don’t think they are stupid. Everything they say gets interpreted very… strongly… by the community.
I believe they will introduce what i call “the middleman” so if you meet a class with a certain build X, and you have build Y it’s not automatically a loss.

So if they mess with conditions across the board or even just for the necromancer, i believe they will give us something in return… so some opponents don’t get put into the ground by us, and we don’t always fight on the enemy’s terms… then run after the enemy like kittens when ever the enemy decides “ok… i’m not winning because i suck, time to go byebye”.

Your example is great to show that conditions can still be countered, however unfortunately for certain builds that just would never have happened, and I think that is where ANet wants to go.

Some classes, or more specifically builds, just can’t deal with condi classes. A mesmer, for example, wouldn’t have made it more than a few steps. What we will see is probably incremental buffs to condition cleansing so every class at least has possible tools to use.

If in doing so they give us a “counter” to insane mobility classes… i would be so happy about it. Finally it’s going to be a skill vs skill game… not a “i kill you so fast you can’t escape… oh… you just did, and now there’s nothing i can do about it.”

I want a system so balanced that every one of the 200 possible events has an equal and opposite counter… yeah that’s impossible haha, nah… i just want to be faced less with impossible odds.
I guess so do people that complain about the necromancer…

What i am saying though… this is why i even get into arguments. People complain they can’t kill necromancers anymore, that they get killed by the necromancers. The i come in and say… but man even if you can’t kill me you can always escape me and go be useful somewhere else, which i can never do. You can also focus fire me at any time… i can never focus fire you.
Then people say… yeah but we are forced to play like this… then i come and say… even so, your “forced way” is a lot more effective then our way. We actually have no way to be that effective… to survive focus fire and go be useful somewhere else, to always leave combat and go and help somewhere else.
It’s a very… ugly meta at the moment, and even if the necromancer looks OP on paper, in reality it’s not… even if we could 1v3 people in TPvP we would still lose because there is no counter to high mobility anti-conditions as a necromancer… in the end you always lose.
So… stop asking for necromancer nerf, start asking for real balance…

We all want more balance in the end.

@Bhawb yea that is what I am thinking also. I know ranger (spirit) got a nerf this last patch but they are suppose to be “shaved more in the next patch” (according to Chap). My guildie mentioned Warriors have some incoming nerfs also my guess it will be in regards to Skull Crack specifically not so much as the rest of the maces CC. Also a fix on sigil of paralyzation so that it actually applies the correct stun bonus.

If they want to get away from the meta being dominated by burst/focus fire variants; not only are they going to have to reign in top end damage but they are going to have to go after movement speed/swiftness.

Thought people screamed when Necros got condition burst? Wait till that happens.

Necro has always been good at condi but the patches have focused on power increases. i
It is no surprise that condi now appears OP but the reason, I think, is that Necromancer has been improved too much for direct damage. If Necro condi gets nerfed, what is left to make the profession semi-unique?

The direct damage buffs didn’t bring Necro over the top, it was the addition of Dhuumfire and Torment, which gave Necros two new tools that are not only very strong offensively, but provide cover conditions to hide bleeds even better. Along with that, it came in a patch that was, overall, a large buff to our Terror damage/duration as well with Spectral Wall and Doom increases.

There is no one in this game who I can’t kill. Can I lose 1 on 1’s? Sure. But, everyone is killable as a condi necro. I really don’t know what rotations you are doing nemesis because you are a smart guy, but you sound like you are getting beat up and helpless in these posts, bud. If you want to win, bring your signet of spite.

Zzod.5791:

There is no one in this game who I can’t kill. Can I lose 1 on 1’s? Sure. But, everyone is killable as a condi necro. I really don’t know what rotations you are doing nemesis because you are a smart guy, but you sound like you are getting beat up and helpless in these posts, bud. If you want to win, bring your signet of spite.

I think Nemesis is talking more about certain classes ability to escape a necro where as the Necro doesn’t have that ability. It is by design for necro to not be very mobile and lock you into combat when they are in range but certain classes can still disengage at will.

Bhawb.7408:

Your example is great to show that conditions can still be countered, however unfortunately for certain builds that just would never have happened, and I think that is where ANet wants to go.

Some classes, or more specifically builds, just can’t deal with condi classes. A mesmer, for example, wouldn’t have made it more than a few steps. What we will see is probably incremental buffs to condition cleansing so every class at least has possible tools to use.

Well the situation he described is the problem the devs were talking about: hard counters. Some builds can deal with conditions (but not do much else), some can’t.

Thing is, I don’t see how they can introduce soft counters without fundamentally altering not just skill balance but game design as a whole! If you take necromancers first, sure there’s the fire-and-chain-fear rotation by which you’ll actually down someone, but the majority of the damage before that burst will have been dealt, like you said, from bleeding applied by scepter 1. And scepter 1 attacks twice per second! If you dodge at the right time, you avoid 2 stacks of bleed, and you can only dodge twice per 10"! So you’re much better off saving your dodges for the big damage skills, like Reaper’s Mark, or Corrupt Boon (although it’s hard to dodge, instant cast time and an animation that doesn’t really distinguish it from other skills), and either cleansing or healing through the bleeds – and those count as hard counters, because you have to trait for cleansing or carry more utility skills that do it.

I know dodges aren’t the only example of “soft counter” but it’s the one most prominent thing that everyone has access to, along with using terrain and los to obstruct incoming attacks. The tl;dr is that having the majority of damage (in nearly all builds and professions!) being dealt through rapidly spammable autoattacks means that soft counters are devalued. They’d need to radically slow down the cast time of autoattacks across the board (with a corresponding damage increase) in order to make soft counters meaningful.