Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure when anet designed WvW they really thought players would be using cons all the time as a purchased advantage, or that the advantage would be significant. It has however now reached the point where entire guild / zerg groups will use omnomberry pie (or ghost), 6/4 stones or oil, and skale venoms. Entire groups will even use mage potions to either help disguise their profession and weapon set in combat, or just annoy people.

The cost of cons isn’t that much, around 6s / hour for omnomberry ghost, 5/3 oils, and skale venom if you craft…even less if your group uses trays to charge up. It does however force everyone to use them, or else you are playing at a disadvantage. For instance, spinning like an idiot with daggerstorm through a mob of players I may get 4k+ in life stealing from an omnomberry ghost. In 1v1 or small group combat, 4-5 life steals is around a 3k health advantage, they lose 1.5k, I gain 1.5k.

The skale venom in particular is the one that alarms me because of the weakness that can tip the scale in combat, the exploit with doors, and that it works with some weapons while not with others, so there isn’t even a facade of fairness if “everybody” uses it.

Anyway, this isn’t a QQ thread, I am just wondering if this is this is really a fun plus for the format, since you are free to use any cons you do or do not want to use, or something that is having a negative impact.

I agree with this somewhat. If stacking crit(with knights or even berserkers) on my guardian instead of healing power heals me more with omnoms in wvw, there is something wrong here. I stopped using healing power gear on all my characters unless the rare times I roll staff ele, because using omnoms heals me more than having 500 more healing power.

everyone can use them them so they’re fair

Food + Oil + Mages are fine. Food & Oil provide additional customization which is something that GW 2 should work hard to keep – you can change your playstyle around quite a bit depending on what food you are using. Don’t disable things, keep them so people can customize their characters further.

The rest are filler and a bit silly, but they are easy and cheap to get. It’s honestly not a big issue.

I personally love the ghosts…..Not because of any combat advantage but because running around with a gank group of half-ghosties is hilariously fun!

Seriously, eat something that makes yourself transparent and you feel like a 12 year old until it wears off xD

On a serious not I don’t feel like there is a major issue here, but I can understand the imbalance the lifesteal and precision boons can grant.

I guess areanet has forgotten to nerf omnomberry pies/ghosts. They put a cooldown on sigils with lifeleech because it was far too powerful but they forgot that the food does exactly the same.
Around 330 health leeched with 66% of all crits. Some builds have 90+% critchance which makes them heal as much as heal rating builds as long as they have many targets to hit or high speed attacks.
Actually many builds are built around that food. It’s stupid and I was thinking about making a thread about it too. I use them all the time when I run a crit build and it makes a HUGE difference which it should not.
Putting a 5 sec CD like on the sigil (from what I have tested it is not 2 sec it’s 5 sec) would be a nice move and make berserker builds less good survivability wise.
I am wondering if it actually was something overseen or if they actually want these insanely powerful buff-foods.

The life steal is a life saver if you’re defending on top of walls, as an engineer I don’t even have to move out of glass cannon meteor storms, I just happily chuck grenades and get 1-2k life steal every toss, 7k lifesteal with a well placed grenade barrage, no need to even touch my #6. Honestly, its the only thing that makes wall defense bearible to me… try eating a ghost while in a golem suit :)

Consumables are fine, they just need to buff some of them so that there is a larger variety of useful ones.

It is kind of stupid though, that crit builds give you more survivability, than an actual defense build that costs you some damage to attain.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

The life steal is a life saver if you’re defending on top of walls, as an engineer I don’t even have to move out of glass cannon meteor storms, I just happily chuck grenades and get 1-2k life steal every toss, 7k lifesteal with a well placed grenade barrage, no need to even touch my #6. Honestly, its the only thing that makes wall defense bearible to me… try eating a ghost while in a golem suit

Please forward this to the developers, apparently glass cannon Meteor Shower is killing WvW ;P

It’s a pain for WvW because this place is already a gigantic money sink, and “mandatory” consumables just adds to the cost.

As a full time WvW player I’ve already given up on doing fort and camp upgrades. After siege engines, food, oils and repairs, I simply never have any cash for anything else. (As it is I would love to buy about twice as many siege engines as I do, but there’s no money for it.)

if everyone can obtain it, it is perfectly legit

go get some….

jkctmc.8754:

Consumables are fine, they just need to buff some of them so that there is a larger variety of useful ones.

It is kind of stupid though, that crit builds give you more survivability, than an actual defense build that costs you some damage to attain.

Consumables are really nice ya except the omnomberry pies/ghost. They need a CD. They are very OP^^
Like Lord Aargadon wrote standing on a wall placing a barrage on a crowd lets you survive at least 2 AoE’s on you without any problem because you leech insane amounts of life.
The problem with this food is that you gain huge survivability by not sacrificing damage. If you see a video somewhere where someone does insane amounts of damage and heals himself up at the same time you can be pretty sure he uses this buff-food. Was the same with the warrior soloing lupicus.

Engineer stacking precision using a flamethrower… Profit…

^that only works for pve, getting up front and personal in WvW isn’t that great of an idea when people are spamming knockdown and cripples at a class lacking reliable stunbreakers, not to mention how badly the flamethrower is bugged with conal AoE missmissmiss…

Its really great(to me, I use lots of multi-hit, others probably hate it) but its pretty easy to counter, just start slapping light fields down and get area retaliation going, and poison still reduces the heal from it I believe, just learn to counter it. I throw down a well placed grenade barrage on someone who just laid down a area retal, I take 7k+ dmg from that alone, so why don’t you put a CD on retaliation?

so why don’t you put a CD on retaliation

THAT! This is a horrible buff.

Now I agree the the life steal food is the best for any class with decent crit chance. If you are not such class there are other foods that give nice stats. If there is internal CD on the food it will be useless.

This food only shines in big fights when you hit multiple people with AoE. Otherwise is meh.

yeah its ridiculous.. exploit it while anet is still trying to spell the word b a l a n c e. i mean look the sigil has 2 seconds cooldown, at least that makes sense.. but the buff food has no cooldown at all, you get like 2 times your best heal with a single axe skill off this stuff, or aoe 5 targets and get 1.5k hp a swing.. another thing where i thought anet is just far from having a clue when it comes to balance. and i mean like really far, we are not talking about tweaking numbers..

Skale venom should be removed from the game. It is simply overpowered, making the same named thief skill pretty irrelevant. Thieves should have this as their class specific special ability. Consumables giving life steal or critical hit chance etc. shouldn’t work for WvWvW, only pvp. They just add more imbalance to an already out of control, imbalanced game.

Currently omnomberry pie is better than Superior Sigil of Blood, which doesn’t make any sense.

I also use consumables. One of my characters has 400 in cooking and one has 400 in weaponsmith, so I can basically craft any highest level buffs myself. But still I think having them in a WvWvW is a bad idea.

Deniara

Really?
A food that everbody can get is exploit, please explain WHY?
Balance something that everybody can use?!
Why on earth are you comparing sigil and food?! They are completly different things.

Please tell me how you are gonna survive hitting 5 people with retalition on few times without life steal. I am really interested.

This food is the only real soft counter to the retalition buff. Even with food you will get yourself killed when hitting multiple people with retalition.

Please don`t exaggerated.

is someone really crying about the retaliation buff?

and the argument of ‘everyone can get it, thus its fair’ is a very slippery slope. just because its available, doesn’t mean its balanced.

Be glad they removed the Ash Legion Spy Kits (10sec invisibility) from working in WvW. Everything else is kinda eh really.

Balance against the other foods? There is no other food with lifesteal, thus you cannot compare it. Yes it is the best buff for life steal so what? Where did you see that WvW should be “balance” Anet is balancing on sPvP mostly. You cannot balance WvW. Please tell me how this OP food is going to help you in 20v30 fight or 30v40? It wont, the water fields are gonna help you. Wanna remove them as well?

Please go play a fast hitting class and then tell me that retalation is fine. It is the most OP buff atm.

retaliation- that thing hitting for 300 damage? very OP indeed.

I personally don’t like them. I think it ruins the viability of some builds, making healing power even more useless, since you get more healing from critting/doing damage than actually trying to heal. It further helps reduce the amount of useable builds, making the game shallower and less interesting. The fact that it would somehow be equal for all classes isn’t true either, since some classes or builds benefit way more from it, due to their high crit chance.
In the end though, Anet seems to be of the opinion that WvW is a place where people go to mash 1 and don’t care about stuff like this, unless it’s completely breaking the game.

Steelo.4597:

retaliation- that thing hitting for 300 damage? very OP indeed.

Exactly

5×300 = 1500 dmg EACH attack. Not chance to proc IF you get critical hit.

Now please tell me which is more OP A food that needs two lucky rows or a sure 1500 dmg back on each attack assuming hitting 5 people.

Love how people are claiming that one thing is bad without even considering what is kinda countering

Edit: By attack I mean hit, not skill usage some skills hit multiple times

you mean 300 damage back, not 1500, lol. clearly you are the only one who thinks retaliation is OP. happen to be a ranger or thief glass cannon?

I admit, I am also getting sick of the consumables. There should be food and oil, that is it. Nothing else should work.

Group retaliation is pretty OP in the right circumstance because you can literally melt anyone hitting you. Admittedly it only works against noobs, but it is still pretty hilarious.

@Steelo No offense but can you do simple multiply? Most aoe skills and melee attacks hit 5 people. If all have retaliation (not rare tbh) you get 1500 dmg back on each hit. There is no way to counter it except mass boon stripping and luck to strip the retaliation first.

@Covenn Sure in some cases you can see it, in most cases when charging into a group of 20 + errmm goodluck to avoid hitting people if they mass stack.

However you put it mass retaliation is OP. Life steal food only helps to stay alive and actually attack. It negates to some degree the retaliation.

I think they’re fine because everybody can get them. Food buffs are basically required (at endgame or open world’ish pvp) in almost every mmo so I’m used to it; and I think they’re a nice tool to help compensate some stat or effect losses you may have or otherwise complement your build.
The non-food consumables are fun the way they’re implemented, some might need another balance pass but I enjoy them and see them as a more fun equivalent to what other games have in the form of clickies on gear items.

Omnom pie added one viable build to the Jester of Versatilities scarce builds.
It’s either that, or troloBoBCat build. Since everybody can get pie, I say don’t touch it.
And on the topic of qq retarldiation or oh noes, my fast hitting class dies of it… just strip it off or wait. You keep on hitting your opponent when you’re confused?
WvW isn’t meant to be fair. ANet explicitly said that.
Also… why not remove all diversity all together and have only one class with only a fixed set of abilities in WvW so the odds are the same for everybody?
Oh… right.

All I can say is that Omnomberry pie is FAR better than 15 points into blood magic, which includes siphoning health when you hit, siphoning health when you crit, and siphoning health is 50% more effective. At best with those traits I can heal for 90 on a crit and 32 on a non crit. So if I crit 50% of the time after 10 attacks the pie will have healed for 975 vs my traits healing for 600. On top of it healing better you also get 70 precision so you crit more and proc the food more often.

I am all for having vampire builds in the game and upping the effectiveness of healing power for a lot of builds, but having food that is better than 3 traits combined is stupid.

Indeed,
I gotta say,
One of the main reasons I spend all my time in wvw instead of sPvP is because of food I can use.

Omnomberry Pies have changed my WvW playstyle and effectiveness by quite a bit. (The lifesteal also bypasses the camp supervisors who still have the buff after being flipped. Fun fact.)

I think there are probably things in WvW that weren’t intended to be used.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Skale Venom was removed, many other PvE Consumables like that don’t work in WvW and I suspect Skale Venom was just an oversight.

As far as craftable consumables go though, it’s an extra layer of customization and a way to be a little more unique in wvw, and I definitely support its continued use.

(Omnom Pie and Master Maintenance Oil are my consumables of choice)

Distaste.4801:

All I can say is that Omnomberry pie is FAR better than 15 points into blood magic, which includes siphoning health when you hit, siphoning health when you crit, and siphoning health is 50% more effective. At best with those traits I can heal for 90 on a crit and 32 on a non crit. So if I crit 50% of the time after 10 attacks the pie will have healed for 975 vs my traits healing for 600. On top of it healing better you also get 70 precision so you crit more and proc the food more often.

I am all for having vampire builds in the game and upping the effectiveness of healing power for a lot of builds, but having food that is better than 3 traits combined is stupid.

So you just saved 15 trait points?
On the topic of unbalanced trait points against game mechanics:
Welcome to the wonderful world of the Jester of Versatility, aka the Engineer.

EnRohbi.2187:

(The lifesteal also bypasses the camp supervisors who still have the buff after being flipped. Fun fact.)

Ok, I got no objections against fixing this.

Well for the devs here is a video that shows what we mean with omnomberries are too powerful and make it possible to make huge damage builds with insane healing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WOonDJfRDk

This guy shows the effect at 11:10. It is just OP. I’m pretty sure thats also a reason why many glasscannons survive whirling through a zerg.

When you got some dude spin to winning in your zerg, just cc him. I don’t see the problem tbh. If the pie user can’t hit anyone, he’s dead meat.

You could make the same exact argument with runes/sigils/jewelry.

Why not just remove them?

@Pannonica: That is true but still if you compare the buff-foods. Let’s take the one that adds healing power for example (100 healing power, 70 vitality) or the other for regeneration (70 vitality, 40 heal per sec). Those foods dedicated to healing and regeneration are like 10 times or more weaker than the omnomberry in many situations.
That one food is so much better than the other foods and that one food is stronger than even sigils and defensive traiting cannot be working as intended.
Like I said I use it too because it’s there but it’s insane actually.

Arpheus, I understand your point.
I just can’t let go of the fact that playing Engi with Pie for me feels like a viable thing to go for as Engi for the first time since a long time. I can feel, I can put pressure on people that see me as free kill. Before that, my opponents were just pulling off their rotation until I’m dead, now they have to actually think.
The downside is of course, other professions that are already powerful gain so much more from the Pie than the pathetic Engi, so it probably will get fixed and it is Bye-bye Pie and scratch that fun build for the Engi.
Although, if you think about it, its ridiculously easy to counter a Pie based character to be honest, and as long as this is the case, Pie is a feature like thieves stealth, only it is accessible to all professions, that they should leave in the game. See next paragraph.

But:
Yeah, the underlying problem is the bad +healing power effectiveness (can only speak for WvW). So the +healing power food is not very attractive, neither is +healing power armor, accessories, traits and weapons (although it exists), and they should fix that, in my opinion.

Edit: Also, it is not a 100% chance to gain health, if you go nuts on precision you have to sacrifice other stats and I don’t know how it is for other professions, but for the Engi it would totally kill the damage. And we already got enough troloBoBCat builds that can take crazy damage; thing is they don’t deal a lot, hence no bags, hence only the warm and fuzzy feeling in your heart, that you support and fill your role as Jester of Versatility but no real reward in the end.

I’d say the pie is just bugged or they forgot to add an ICD. Having an ICD on the sigil but not on the food doesn’t make sense.

As for the venom, it’s really easy to get in big quantities.

if everyone can use it, then it cant be overpowered.

be careful what you ask for, one the nerf bat starts swinging, it is hard to stop.

EDIT: maybe ‘overpowered’ inst the right word, i mean it cant be unbalanced if everyone can use it.

It’s not overpowered, but it’s cheesy.

If Anet add a one shotting weapon in game, and give it to everyone, it will be balanced for everyone that use it, but it won’t be a good thing ether.

The pie is way too strong if you compare to any other food, and is a way too big factor in a fight.

Take two engineer. One with pie, the other without it. Both using Flamethrower.

The pie user will finish with about full hp, and the other one will be dead.

A consumable shouldn’t be so strong. Like other said, you can just go glass cannon and use it, and be a better tank then a +heal specced tank with low damage.

I hope they put an ICD, like everything else. Even If I can easily abuse it right now with my engineer.

Kardiamond.6952:

It’s not overpowered, but it’s cheesy.

If Anet add a one shotting weapon in game, and give it to everyone, it will be balanced for everyone that use it, but it won’t be a good thing ether.

The pie is way too strong if you compare to any other food, and is a way too big factor in a fight.

Take two engineer. One with pie, the other without it. Both using Flamethrower.

The pie user will finish with about full hp, and the other one will be dead.

A consumable shouldn’t be so strong. Like other said, you can just go glass cannon and use it, and be a better tank then a +heal specced tank with low damage.

I hope they put an ICD, like everything else. Even If I can easily abuse it right now with my engineer.

Okay,
I can tell you from experience about using Omnom Pies (I pair it with Sup. Sigil of Blood too) with a Glass cannon fully traited for precision, that it is not nearly that bad.

Omnom Pies are great Food for GC Classes,
But most GC classes have no additional healing power, and Omnom Pies heal for like 400~ health per tick. It is very, very, very easy to outdamage that amount of healing. No class with any amount of burst will actually have trouble dealing with lifesteal.

People are getting all worked up over something that is not at all game breaking.

EnRohbi.2187:

Kardiamond.6952:

It’s not overpowered, but it’s cheesy.

If Anet add a one shotting weapon in game, and give it to everyone, it will be balanced for everyone that use it, but it won’t be a good thing ether.

The pie is way too strong if you compare to any other food, and is a way too big factor in a fight.

Take two engineer. One with pie, the other without it. Both using Flamethrower.

The pie user will finish with about full hp, and the other one will be dead.

A consumable shouldn’t be so strong. Like other said, you can just go glass cannon and use it, and be a better tank then a +heal specced tank with low damage.

I hope they put an ICD, like everything else. Even If I can easily abuse it right now with my engineer.

Okay,
I can tell you from experience about using Omnom Pies (I pair it with Sup. Sigil of Blood too) with a Glass cannon fully traited for precision, that it is not nearly that bad.

Omnom Pies are great Food for GC Classes,
But most GC classes have no additional healing power, and Omnom Pies heal for like 400~ health per tick. It is very, very, very easy to outdamage that amount of healing. No class with any amount of burst will actually have trouble dealing with lifesteal.

People are getting all worked up over something that is not at all game breaking.

You forgot something.

Most attack are AoE damage, I should make a video of me using my flamethrower.

Rapid fire + Aoe Cone attack = Massive healing.

Same thing with Grenade, I can stand on the wall, throw grenade all day, and heal myself up from average damage.

Some build have really fast attacking pace, and they can regen really fast with that buff.

Most can attack more then once a sec, and since most got more then 50% crit chance, like you said that’s at least 400 healing a sec. That’s a lot for a glass cannon.

Do you need that video? I don’t mind making it later tonight. The regen with Flamethrower is crazy.

Kardiamond.6952:

The pie is way too strong if you compare to any other food, and is a way too big factor in a fight.

Take two engineer. One with pie, the other without it. Both using Flamethrower.

The pie user will finish with about full hp, and the other one will be dead.

A consumable shouldn’t be so strong. Like other said, you can just go glass cannon and use it, and be a better tank then a +heal specced tank with low damage.

I hope they put an ICD, like everything else. Even If I can easily abuse it right now with my engineer.

In your posts are statements pro fixing the Pie but also pro fixing the Engineer and also pro buff healing power.
Also you can’t go glass cannon Pie against opponents with half a brain really. As I said, if you don’t do damage you don’t heal aka you die. Half brainers will understand this and bye bye Pie.
Using your example: Take two Engineers, one realizes he is fighting a Pie user, switches to CC -> glass cannon Pie user dead in a heartbeat, excuse my pun.

On a general note:
Every time something new or glitchy comes flying (I’m thinking PvE bundles in WvW), people start to totally freak out, instead of switching their brain on and counter properly, until ANet gives in to their Q.
Wow, are we so inflexible?

If anything, the Pie incident shows (again) that +healing is too weak. All +healing gear and all +healing traits are crap because of weak +healing.

Edit: Let me be clear here… glass cannon = no vitality and no toughness above the base numbers. If you run with proper toughness and vitality in WvW (and not some trollbuild) then you will not get OP results from the Pie… you rather get decent results from the Pie, because you will not have insane precision plus power and +crit damage on top.

@Pannoncica

So your counter to pie is to CC people? That’s a counter to the glass cannon himself, not the pie.

For any glass cannon worth a penny, they won’t fall to CC. Any glass cannon build should have a CC breaker.

Do you really need that big of an advantage to kill someone?

The gear disparancy between a casual and an hardcore is already big enought (upleveled vs Exotic/ascended lvl 80?), if you add to this the consumable, you don’t even need skills anymore to win fights.

I’m all for consumable, but add an ICD. What’s the issue about having ICD? The nerf will be the same for everyone. (I can use that too :P)

Of course thats the counter. No damage being done from the Pie user= no healing for him, and as a true glass cannon he has nothing else to heal himself with (except the standard heal, granted). By the way, glass cannon for me is inconsistent without being all glass cannon. If you trait or equip anti CC you’re not glass cannon (in my opinion).

So the counter is being used no matter if Pie or not.. ok. Then there is no problem, is there?
It is just that the guys you fought aren’t very smart apparently. I ran Pie last night and it didn’t take long for the opponents to adjust to me (except for the random roaming nub who never encountered Pie and who didn’t get a second chance to fight me).

Just making the point that in a proper WvW build (i.e. not only running with base toughness and vitality), you will see decent but not insane results from the Pie.
I’m not talking about troll builds. Troll builds are in some way or another OP by definition.

I think it is safe to say you generally will kill upscaled players… Pie or not.

If it wasn’t a deal you wouldn’t defend it that much. You would simply take another buff-food and it wouldn’t be a deal.
BUT since it makes such a big difference people defend it.

No omnom berries means people have to specc more for toughnes/vita/healing to deal with certain encounters or duels. PvE and WvW will be more difficult and fair for those who can’t afford 5 silver per omnom pie.
I have 100 of them to show you I’m not one of the ones who can’t afford them and for that reason is QQing here. I’m for balance and that buff-food is bad for balance since it encourages ppl to not care about surviability but go full berserker because the lifeleech is godly.
You then have videos of people soloing arah/ascalon dungeon and whatever also thanks to this food. Without that food they would have to specc very defensive and then the damage is not enough to kill especially trash mobs fast enough.

Steelo.4597:

you mean 300 damage back, not 1500, lol. clearly you are the only one who thinks retaliation is OP. happen to be a ranger or thief glass cannon?

Go play an Engineer and use Grenades or worst, flamethrower. That 300dmg procs on every single hit. So i hit you for 1800dmg with my Flamethrower, but you return 3k to me just from retaliation. (10×300dmg). And thats ONE guy. Against a group its pure suicide to use that thing, while i barely tickle them.

Or try grenade 1#, thats 3 of em at once. And they have a small AoE, so against a group of enemies with Retaliation i easily take 4k dmg myself FROM DOING 1 SINGLE ATTACK. I barely hit each player for more then their retaliation hits me back for.

Retaliation is the single reason why flamethrower is so aweful in WvW zergs, and lifesteal is the only thing that relieves that problem.

I mostly agree with Pannonica, but at the same time, I won’t beat around the bush in saying this thread was inspired by how I see RG playing the game. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, in their guild will be using pie + oil + skale + even the stupid blessing buffs. Do I fault them for playing with maximum efficiency? No. Even if they did not abuse veil or use all the cons, they would still dump truck 95% of disorganized zergs in the field.

The point I’m getting at though is senseless power creep, i.e. if someone else is using cons, then you have to use cons too or be at a disadvantage. I realize this is not tPvP, and a balanced game will never come close to being reality, but there needs to be some sort of restraint. I would be all for a whole line of 400 level food that is cheap and WvW only with all sorts of stat combos so you could tweak your stats without new gear. I am not for the special effect food that is clearly too good, and all all the other kitten (like skale venom) that is totally ridiculous.

The less balanced PvP becomes the crappier it becomes (hence why it so often dies a death in MMORPGs).

Obviously WvW is never going to be in the same realm of balance as an sPvP match, but stuff like this just makes it all the more lame.