Guild Wars 2

Barnesy.5839:

People who lose on purpose are making a mistake. Anybody who says you should throw a game, hasn’t thought about it properly.

Losing is ALWAYS worse than winning.

Silverstone.4539:

*Pips - the +2 for braking a losing streak. though it’s a nice idea on paper. in practice there is a lot, i mean A LOT of collateral damage. People start AFKing or losing on purpose so they can lose 3 in the hope of getting a win on the 4th to get 2 pips back up again. this has compounding effect for other team members getting them stuck in a no win situation where they are stuck in the same tire for days if not weeks on end. In my mind, this should be removed. Give people an incentive to win, not to try and lose to win bigger later on.

This is simply not true. People who lose on purpose are making a mistake. Anybody who says you should throw a game, hasn’t thought about it properly.

Losing is ALWAYS worse than winning. It does not matter if you are about to get a losing streak or not. It does not even matter if you are in a “safe zone” and are unable to lose pips.

Proof:
Lets assume the BEST case scenario where the player is at a “safe zone” where losses don’t cause him to lose pips.

Additionally, Lets assume the player lost game 1 and game 2. Lets also assume that the player is going to win game 4.

The player could either try to win game 3 or lose game 3.

If the player loses game 3 and wins game 4, he will gain 2 pips, however he will only have a win streak of 1.
If the player wins game 3 and wins game 4 he will also have gained 2 pips, however he will have a win steak of 2 (which is better because he is closer to getting a win streak bonus).

If the player is NOT in a safe zone, losing is even worse.
3 losses + 1 win = losing 2 pips overall and only have a 1 win streak
2 losses + 2 wins = losing 0 pips overall and having a 2 win steak.

In EVERY circumstance, it is better to win your game than lose it.

P.S. You should delete this part from your list. Anet already has incentivized winning. Winning is always better.

This is a very common bug and has been a known issue for quite some time. It happens to lots of people (including myself) very frequently. Hopefully Anet will fix it.

When people talk about balance in gw2, they aren’t talking about “perfect balance”. Saying you can’t achieve “perfect balance” isn’t very productive, nor is it very profound.

When classes are balanced in a game like gw2, it means that they perform at similar effectiveness to each other. Currently there are very obvious differences between the effectiveness of some classes compared to others.

Fivedawgs, regarding what needs to be changed, there are many posts on these forums which say specific things that need to be changed. I don’t think I need to post another list of necessary changes.

Generally speaking however; skills/traits which are performing too strongly need to be toned down a little. And skills/traits which are under performing need to be brought in-line with the stronger options. Having multiple options that perform to similar levels will promote build diversity.

Hey Anet,
When you bring in a rule into the Pro League that limits class stacking, it seems as though you know that classes are imbalanced. It seems as though you realize that there are only a few viable builds and thus you are preventing teams from using those builds more than once.

Rather than making a game where there are lots of viable builds, you’ve just tried to force variety by limiting class stacking. This doesn’t actually accomplish variety in gameplay. Nearly every pro team in the finals used the 3 most overpowered combat classes (necro, revenant, engineer) plus a healbot elementalist.

Surely you can see that unless you make proper changes, season 2 is just going to be another stale meta.

If you realize that classes are so imbalanced, why are you just releasing a “Minor Balance Tweak” on February 23rd?

When Anet says ambiguous things about future balance patches, more often than not, the opposite is true.

Examples:
1. “This is just a preview of the upcoming patch, there’s lots more changes”
Truth: The preview is ~99% of the changes.

2. “Elementalist Scepter is getting buffed”
Truth: Scepter is not buffed

3. “We’re nerfing <insert skill/class here> just slightly”
Truth: class/skill gets nerfed hard

I suspect these “minor balance tweaks” will be not be “minor”. I think they will be quite significant.

Spooko.5436:

during these 32 matches, i had on my team in total: 60 thieves (38% chance of having another thief on my team)

This original post is really bad, and possibly intentionally misleading. Of those 60 thieves that spooko counted, he was also counting himself. You didnt have a 38% chance of having another thief on your team. 38% of your team (including you) were thieves! You are 20% of your team. So NOT counting you, 18% of your team were thieves.

There’s nine classes in GW2, so lets assume one ninth of the gw2 pvp population plays thief. (The exact proportion of people who play thief really doesn’t matter for this illustration, so don’t get hung up on this assumption).

In every game there is spooko + 9 other people. So on average per game, spooko should expect to see one other thief. 4 times out of 9, that thief will be on your team. That means on average your team will have more thieves roughly 44% of the time (4/9).

Spooko stated that 47% of the time his own team has more thieves. That is to be expected!

Everything that spooko has stated is more or less just expected values plus some deviation. There is nothing profound in his results.

The overload on earth is actually quite useful. The final immobilize is a very strong combo initiator. The final blast immobilizes for 4 seconds. You immediately follow that up with magnetic grasp and aftershock. That gives you 8 seconds of immobilize. You can then combo that into fire or air. The damage from them being stuck in the overloaded earth field + air or fire skills will kill.

Arcane is not good enough at providing protection. It has poor up time. A thief steal or necro boon corrupt will easily interrupt your overload earth, which causes you to lose your biggest source of protection. Once that happens you die very quickly.

Warlord.9074:

I like how ele complain so much warrior here.

While some people complain, others try to be productive. The original post suggested removing the on hit requirement for diamond skin. It is a good change to make.

Malchior.5732:

Barnesy.5839:

P.S. I so wish the protection on overloard earth was not nerfed. Then people would not be forced into earth specialization if they want to maintain prot on themselves.

Back in my day, Eles used Elemental Attunement to maintain Prot on themselves. Then again, we didn’t have all this high-powered stuff being thrown around like candy.

Elemental Attunement used to work fine, but now with all the boon removal/corruption, it is way too unreliable. Since ele’s no longer have toughnes+healing+vitality, the moment you lose protection your HP just disappears.

The reason diamond skin is still used is because the other two earth grandmaster choices are even worse for a tempest. It is not because diamond skin is good.

People use earth so that they can get elemental shielding and strength of stone. Even if diamond skin was removed from the game, you’d still be forced to take the earth specialization if you want to have any sort of survivability.

P.S. I so wish the protection on overloard earth was not nerfed. Then people would not be forced into earth specialization if they want to maintain prot on themselves.

I know this bug has been reported many times in the past, but I’m reposting this cos it is still happening all the time.

In pvp combat your character will just get stuck in place and not be able to move.

I know “/sit” fixes the problem, but it’s really annoying having to type /sit while in pvp combat just so you can move again.

I think the best thing is losing the “on hit” requirement, and just using remove 1 condi per second while above 75%. Being able to break diamond skin at 75% HP allows for counter play; The opponent has to burst the ele and the ele has to try prevent bursts.

In it’s current form, DS is very weak against condi builds. Every single pvp amulet that provides condition damage also provides bonuses to attack damage. This means that anyone with a condi build will also do decent attack damage. Thus it is quite easy for any condi build to break the 75% HP requirement.

And yes you are right screvisiae, the other option is to remove the over 75% hp condition. One of the conditions (the on hit trigger or over 75%hp) has to be removed.

I think the on hit trigger is the better one to get rid of. It means that with a high damage build you’ll still be able to break diamond skin and punish the elementalist when he drops below 75%.

For a grandmaster trait, it needs to be better than almost useless.

Currently Diamond Skin is kinda useless. The thing that ruins DS is the requirement of being hit. When you receive lots of conditions, in order for DS to remove those conditions, you have to let yourself get hit. However as you get hit, the damage from the attacks + the conditions drops your health below 75%.

Once you drop below 75% HP, diamond skin is obviously useless. If you manage to bring your HP above 75% again, you still have to wait until you get hit for DS to actually do something. As you get hit however, you once again drop below 75%.

As many people on these forums have requested, Anet please remove the requirement to being hit on diamond skin. Just make it: remove 1 condi every second while above 75%.

Hi Gaile,

I have made a forum post in the PVP forums. It’s Titled “How to Balance PVP”. I go into detail on the changes I think should be made to each class before ranked season 2 starts.

I’d love if you could give it a read:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/How-to-Balance-PVP-Please-Read/first#post5955921

There were many things that I liked about the season 2 patch and also many things that I did not like about the patch. Here are the changes that I think should be made before ranked season 2 starts.
This is a long post, but I think reading it in full is well worth it.

I would also love some response from ArenaNet. It will give me hope that good changes are coming in the future. If all these changes were made, I would be very happy

The Goals that I’m trying to achieve with these changes:
1. The pvp meta should be right in the middle between a “bunker” meta and a “1-hit KO” meta. The “bunker” meta of season 1 was bad. It promoted slow and static pvp. Likewise a “1-hit KO” meta is bad because fights are over too quickly.

2. Class, build and team variety. If one build is superior to everything else, that’s what most people will play. No one wants to see every pro team using 1 aura ele, 2 bunker mes, 2 brawler revs. That’s boring.

3. Good pvp interaction between classes. When two equally skilled people enter into a 1v1 fight, they both should have reasonable chances of winning the fight. Both players should have plenty of opportunity to put their skillful playing to good use. An example of bad pvp interaction is a season 1 bunker class versus a thief or warrior. No matter how skilled the thief or warrior was, the bunker would always beat them. Another example is a season 2 necromancer vs an elementalist. With a decent necro build and a skilled player, there is just not much that a skilled elementalist can do in a 1v1. The boon corruption is just too powerful.

Changes:

Items:
A new 5 stat amulet needs to be added.
A 3 stat amulet has 3000 total stats.
A 4 stat amulet has 3220 total stats.
A 7 stat amulet has 3920 total stats.
If you follow the pattern, the correct amount for a 5 stat amulet is 3480 total stats.

These are the stats that it needs:
900 power
900 condition damage
560 toughness
560 vitality
560 healing power
(3480 total stats)

This amulet is just like a Mercenary’s Amulet however it trades 150 power and 150 condition damage for 560 healing power. Healing power is often regarded as the weakest stat so the trade-off is relatively fair. This added healing power doesn’t need to create another bunker meta. For example: In season 2, Necromancers typically run 0 healing power because Mercenary’s and Paladin’s amulet are both very powerful. If this new 5 stat amulet gave necromancers too much damage+healing, then you can always slightly reduce the healing power coefficient of their heals. This won’t nerf Mercenary or Paladin necromancers, but it will make sure that this new amulet isn’t OP on necromancers. This amulet will be great for those who want to play a hybrid build and for those who are forced to play a hybrid build (i.e. elementalist).

Classes:
Necromancer:
Necromancer currently stomps any class that relies on boons. That causes bad pvp interaction.

1. Tone down the boon corruption; Reduce the amount of boon corruption, or reduce the duration of the conditions, or change the priority of corruption so that it corrupts stability, protection, block and regeneration last. Or do some combination of those suggestions.

2. The reaper shroud’s #2 and #4 ability seem to do a little bit too much damage. But if you nerf boon corruption, then maybe this won’t be a problem.

Thief:
When playing a revenant, each weapon feels like it has it’s role. The unique style of each revenant weapon feels right. Likewise with thief, the unique style of each thief weapon feels right. Each weapon provides a nice unique set of utility and play styles.

The problem with assassin has never been his DPS, but his survivability. While fighting on a capture point in a 1v1, the thief has 3 options:

1. Fight the opponent, use invisibility to stay alive and lose the capture point.
2. Fight the opponent, use mobility to stay alive (by running in and out of the fight) , and lose the capture point.
3. Fight the opponent, use minimal invisibility/mobility to contest the point, but will end up dying due to minimal defense and will lose the capture point.

Here is what I suggest:
1. When a thief goes invisible on a capture point, for the first 1s (maybe 1.5s) of his invisibility, he should still be able to contest the point. This will allow thieves to contest the point more and will also allow them to stay alive more.

2. The auto attack DPS of daggers seems a little bit too high (especially in PVE) compared to other thief weapons. The auto attack DPS of thief weapons needs to be similar in order to promote build diversity. Dagger auto attack DPS might need a slight nerf, and the other weapons need to be buffed to do similar DPS as the “slightly nerfed” daggers.

3. With the new 5 stat amulet combined with a 1s point contest delay, thieves would be able to make hybrid builds which would have much higher point contest power. Traits like shadow’s rejuvenation, assassin’s reward and driven fortitude would allow the thief to stay around so much better. That high sustain could then be combined with hybrid damage build using bleeds and poisons.

Elementalist:
Elementalists have a tiny HP pool and thus need to rely on their boons and heals to survive. Necro boon corruption just ruins elementalists (and other boon reliant classes too).
1. Because of the elementalist’s small HP pool and heavy reliance on healing, the ele needs to have vitality, toughness and healing power on an amulet. Additionally because of the ele’s hybrid damage abilities, he needs to have both power and condition damage on an amulet.

2. The elementalist relies on protection, regeneration and vigor to survive. Boon corruption just ruins that. Changes to necro (see above) need to happen.

3. Diamond skin is now kinda useless. It should be Remove a condition every second while above 75% hp. (i.e. remove the requirement to being hit).

4. Scepter auto attacks need to be buffed. Specter #2 and #3 abilities feel strong and useful (except shatter stone). The problem is with the auto attacks. They are too weak and are too slow. Often you will cancel your auto attack so that you can cast your #2 – #5 abilities. Then once overlord is ready, you will cancel your auto attack to overload as soon as possible.

Scepter auto attack speed needs to be increased. This will increase their DPS and also allow you to finish casting the attack before you overlord or cast #2 – #5 abilites.

Mesmer:
With alacrity nerfed, chronomancer cooldowns are now 20% slower (1.33/1.66 = ~80%).

1. The default cooldown of key Mesmer abilities needs to be sped up by 10%.

This will accomplish a few things:
#1: season 2 chronomancer cooldown rates will be 10% slower than in season 1 (instead of 20% slower compared to season 1).
#2: Alacrity will remain as a 33% cooldown reduction team buff.
#3: Reducing cooldowns of mesmer abilities will buff non-chronomancer mesmers which will increase build diversity.

The new 5 stat amulet will also help with hybrid mesmer builds.

Revenant:
Revenant still seems pretty strong in season 2, I don’t think any massive changes need to be made. All the revenant weapons feel useful for various purposes.

The new 5 stat amulet will also help hybrid revs. If the new amulet provides too much damage + healing, then you can always slightly reduce healing coefficient values on skills.

Nerfs to necro boon corruption will also help rev a lot.

Engineer:
Engineer also seems pretty strong in season 2. I don’t think they need any nerfs.
I think other less used and weaker weapons/traits/utilities/kits need to be buffed. Engineers seem forced into 1 of 2 builds, which isn’t fun.

The nerfs to necro boon corruption will help scrappers and elixir engineers. And the new 5 stat amulet will help hybrid engineers.

Guardian:
With their low HP pool, guardians also rely on their heals and boons to keep them alive. Additionally, guardians tend to do hybrid DPS due to all the burning the apply. The new 5 stat amulet will help guardians a lot. Nerfs to necro boon corruption will also help guardians.

1. All the 1-hand guardian weapons feel weak. The attacks miss a lot. Scepter auto attack projectiles need to be sped up or given some homing ability. 1-hand sword and 1-mace auto attacks either need to have more range/cleave or do more damage.

2. Spirit weapons need to be buffed. They are just so clunky to use and feel weak.

Warrior:
I like the healing buffs to warrior in this latest patch. I think the 5-stat amulet will help them even more. By using this amulet, warriors would lose their crit power, but they would gain tankyness. Combine this amulet with burst precision (100% crit chance on burst skills) or rune of the daredevil (100% crit after dodge roll) or sigil of intelligence (3 100% crits after weapon swap) and you can have warrior who can do high damage with his bursts, but also has the sustain so that he can do it again. This amulet would also work well with hybrid damage builds using burns and bleeds.

Note: if this new amulet provides warrior with too much damage + healing you can always once again just slightly reduce the healing power coefficients on his healing abilities.

Ranger:
Rangers/Druids still feel strong in season 2, however they once again get punished by necro boon corrupt. Nerfing necro will help druid a lot. The new 5 stat amulet will also help druid as he tends to do lots of hybrid damage and relies on lots of healing.

1. Shortbows feel inferior to staves and longbows for short ranged damage. Short bow should be buffed so that is it noticeably better than long bow/staff in close range. Maybe change it to have a 100% chance to bleed for 2s regardless of the target’s facing.

2. While the longbow/shortbow/staff auto attacks feel “crisp” and accurite, the axe main hand auto attack feels very cumbersome. The projectile speed of the axe auto attack should be increased.

3. Smoke scale and bristleback are by far the strongest pets. Their high burst damage abilities should get a slight nerf. Other pets need to be buffed to be roughly the same power as the “slightly nerfed” smoke scale and bristleback.

With less than a week to go before Jan 26, Anet could you please release the patch notes early?

Thanks.

P.S. Maybe if lots of people comment the devs will respond.

Despite the tool tip saying it is unblockable, it is blockable. An example of this is when using it against a revenant’s crystal hibernation.

Bug:
Sneak gyro can be used to make door breaker minions invulnerable.

Details:
An enemy engineer used sneak gyro to briefly cloak some door breaker minions as they were running down a lane. My team destroyed the sneak gyro and the door breakers reappeared a few seconds later after the stealth wore off. When the door breakers reappeared, they were frozen in place and were invulnerable to all damage. The minions remained frozen in the lane for about 15 seconds. After 15 seconds, the frozen minions instantly teleported to the lane’s gate/wall and started attacking the gate. This bug made it impossible to prevent the lane minions from reaching our gate.

Notes:
1. Everyone on my team saw the bug. Multiple members of my team stopped to try and attack the frozen/invulnerable minions.

2. There was no lag. While the minions were frozen, the players on both teams were still able to fight and deal damage one another normally.

3. The time the door breakers were frozen for (roughly 15 seconds) before teleporting to our gate appeared to be the same time that it would have taken the door breakers to walk to our gate. I.E. Instead of being frozen for 15 seconds, if the minions kept on walking for 15 seconds they would have reached our gate.

4. When the minions teleported to our gate and started attacking, our team could then kill them normally.

5. It was not just a graphical bug. There was a lot of AOE cleave damage being done in the area as my team killed the sneak gyro. Additionally, while waiting for the minions to reappear from stealth, my team was doing lots of AOE cleave while anticipating the movements of the minions. After the stealth gyro was destroyed, the minions soon reappeared and were at full hp (and were frozen in place/invulnerable). Additionally, when the minions teleported to our gate and started attacking, they were still at 100% hp.

6. I am not sure if this bug can be reproduced with other AOE stealth abilities or with the archer minions. I only saw it happen with the sneak gyro and door breakers.

Bug: While wildfire is producing combo field, casting pheonix into the field does not produce a blast finisher.

Additional notes:
Casting dragon’s tooth into wildfire does produce a blast finisher.
Casting pheonix into a different combo field does produce a blast finisher.