Showing Posts For Blizzmaster.9163:
Mostly excited for the buffs to “Receive the Light” and “Feel my Wrath” (SPVP), as I played a Core Shout/Support guard last season. I think the 8s Quickness from FMW might convince me to try running it over Renewed Focus, as that should be pretty powerful in teamfights. RTL remains my favourite heal for the Guardian and the reduced CD will definitely help keep me alive.
I think I have to vote yes here. As it is now, I know for a fact I am only really experienced enough with Guardian to play ranked comfortably. I don’t have the hours or practice on any other class to do anywhere close to as well as I can on Guard.
If the matchmaker can take into account I’m weaker on some classes and stronger on others and match me appropriately, I wouldn’t have nearly as many reservations queuing on my warrior or ranger, for example. It would also make the class-specific achievements for the legendary backpiece more accessible, IMO, as I would be able to work on them without sacrificing rating on my Guard.
I would like to see a limit on class stacking per team though, if this comes into play. 2 of each class maximum per team, perhaps?
I definitely enjoyed this season playing mainly Guardian. I think balance is actually in a pretty good state, but more work needs to be done to encourage build diversity.
That said, I found my success this season playing Core Guardian, believe it or not. Shout support focusing on condi removal and group damage mitigation/healing, using Scepter/Sword/Mace + Shield Offhand. It felt really good to play after the Core buffs at the start of the season. Definitely a step in the right direction for Core Guardian and I think in a way that further differentiates betweeen DH/Guard (Self focus vs. Group Focus).
General thoughts: 1h weapons all feel pretty good, but 2h weapons except LB are sorely in need of a look.
Hammer is fun, but just too slow and it’s associated trait being in virtues makes no sense. Very tough to justify speccing into virtues for Hammer, IMO.
Staff seems to lack impact. It sees almost no play in any build and really doesn’t offer much.
GS is alright, but can be inconsistent in dealing damage. All abilities are highly telegraphed and fairly easy to play around.
Some of our traits and utilities also need a major tune up. I’m specifically disappointed by all the “Interval: 10” stuff, like Signet of Courage, Signet of Resolve, and Strength of the Fallen. 10s interval healing/condi removal just isn’t good enough currently, given how fast classes can apply condition pressure/damage. Signet of Courage especially is so difficult to justify taking. Its passive radius is pathetically bad, given that you need your allies to just happen to be within 300 of you at the exact moment the passive procs. It’s cooldown is still insane, given how difficult it is to get the active cast off.
Or we could reduce the amount of conditions being thrown around.
This is, in my mind, the only real answer. WAY too many conditions being tossed around.
Honestly, Revenant should never have been made and the time spent on it should have been used for making an additional elite spec per class. Revenant basically stole things that other classes did.
They needed to sell HoT, adding a new class was the cherry.
Maybe guardians can still share aegis (?) which should be something better considering that with the AoE spam 1 stack of aegis is pretty much worthless.
Aegis on it’s own isn’t very good, but the guardian has a lot of ways to give it and there are several traits that either proc aegis in certain situations or make it do other things (heal/dmg). Running a Menders’ amulet can get “Pure of Heart” to make aegis procs heal for 1170hp.
I think with the Core Virtues buffs guards got at the start of the season, Core Guard offers a lot of team support. I gave up on DH early in the season because it just wasn’t working for me, and now run a build like this in PvP:
This lets me offer superior condition removal/boon share/damage mitigation for my team, and surprisingly good healing. I wouldn’t say it’s healing on par with a Druid or Ele, maybe, but Aegis/Protection in the build also do a fair bit of damage mitigation. I will say though that this build sucks hard at 1v1 situations, so you have to try and be in as many teamfights as possible to maximize your potential.
I feel like damaging conditions have more or less lost their meaning in the current game. It’s near impossible for me to make a decision based on what conditions are currently afflicting me because there are just too many that kill too quickly. Each condition on it’s own is probably fine, but it’s the fact that condi builds have access to so many conditions that make them a problem. It’s just… unfun to try and fight these types of builds.
Some examples:
Torment? I should try to move less to take less damage from this.
Bleeding? Does slow damage over time, maybe I can save my cleanses for more threatening conditions.
Confusion? Spamming fast skills will hurt me, lets try to use fewer, more impactful skills.
Poison? Healing won’t work as well, I should try to clear that before healing myself.
Burning? Does high damage quickly, now might be a good time to use condition removal.
Each of these on their own? Fine. There’s a meaningful decision that can be made to combat each of these. The problem is when a class can apply multiple stacks of all of these (and more) with a few button presses. Suddenly, the gameplay goes out the window and it becomes “Gotta clear all these red squares off my UI quick before I die in a couple seconds.” And even then, you clear out those conditions and they’re usually back on you again in almost no time.
I would honestly like to see classes’ access to some conditions reduced, and then you could probably even bump the damage up on them somewhat. Not a straight nerf to conditions, but a change so that there’s time for players on both sides of the fight to make meaningful decisions regarding what conditions to apply, and how to defend against them.
I keep playing because straight up, this game has the best, most fun PvP I’ve ever played. You’re going to get AFKers, disinterested people, and the like in any game, and it’s not worth stressing about, it’s the nature of playing a game on the internet. Everyone is going to have those kind of people on their team at some point.
I try not to play more than 5-10 games on a given day because it can get frustrating sometimes, but it’s also much less of a time commitment per game than a lot of other games. A bad player on your team, or a D/C or an AFK only costs you about 8-10 minutes, and then you can get a fresh start and jump into another game. If you get a player like that in a game like LoL, it can cost you upwards of an hour of your time for one single game. That’s why I’m sticking to GW2 PvP currently.
PvP is currently the most rewarding game mode for me, so I keep going. I’ve found a build this season I really like (Core Shout/Support Guard) and it’s got me playing around where I thought my skill level should be (Gold), so I’m happy.
I think a lot of this discussion isn’t taking into account the fact that DH/Guard has the lowest base health pool in the game. I’m not going to deny DH is powerful right now, and they probably need a couple things looked at, but DH falls really, really fast once you break their defenses. Low base HP also severely limits the choice a DH has for amulets as you’re pretty much forced to take vitality somewhere, meaning you can’t have as many other stats as some classes. There ARE drawbacks to playing DH.
That being said, I’d say traps could maybe use an increase in cast time to start, so it’s not as easy to nuke players with them offensively. I think their power is fine, but they’re a bit too easy to spam currently. I also agree class-stacking is a problem and needs to be addressed, it’s not fun playing a match with 7 DH between 2 teams.
Silver division, first tier at 1133 rating. Currently playing Burn DH about 90% of the time. Here’s some general things I’d like to see looked at or changed:
I’d really like to see conditions reworked on almost every class in PvP. It just seems like everyone has too much access to conditions and they are applied far too quickly, making them overwhelming. I’d like to see conditions be harder to apply or access but keep their power or even increase it. I’d like to be able to make more meaningful decisions when applying or removing conditions, and be able to think “Hey, I’m burning, I should cleanse that” a lot more than “Oh hey, there’s 12 red squares on my bar again”.
High mobility classes are seeming to dominate most games I’m in right now. The usual problems I see are Mesmers with portals to jump back and forth between points, or Thieves stealthing/teleporting across the map to decap the point you just left 5 seconds ago. Because the only game mode we have is a point capture/defense mode, mobility is supreme.
As far as individual classes go, I’m not seeing too many discrepancies as to what’s too powerful or underpowered. I’m finding ways to compete with almost any class, but there might be a couple things that could be looked at:
Warrior: Condition resistance lasts a really long time. I probably notice this because of the class/build I play, but it just seems a bit disproportionate to other classes’ defense against conditions. Maybe drop the duration 1 or 2 seconds?
Engineer: They have access to so many reflects that fighting them at range almost isn’t an option, but fighting hammer scrappers in melee is just as bad. I think the Engineer is generally pretty balanced, but maybe a couple more windows to fight them at range would be nice in exchange for them getting a bit of love elsewhere.
Ele: They’re just a bit too durable. Fighting an Ele 1v1 is near impossible for me, and even while outnumbering them, it still takes too long to drop them. I don’t really know what I’d do to change them though… maybe remove the 40% protection trait and give them something else?
Guards: Most of the traps need cast times or lengthened cast times. Maybe ToF, PoB, and DM should all get a 3/4 or 1s cast, and keep FoF and LJ 1/2 or 0.
I probably don’t know enough about the other classes to really speak about their balance.