Guild Wars 2

1- New game modes (conquest is not compelling enough for esports, for one of many major issues, it doesn’t not have a progression that builds up excitement, matches are a steady progression to victory with little room for major comebacks)
2- Much better spectator tools and analytics for serious professional gamers to work with.
3- Severely reduce RNG throughout the game.
4- Severely improve visibility and readability during matches (which would require seriously toning down the reliance on condis).
5- A much, much larger population of pvp players and much, much better marketing (which won’t work without improvements to the game).

In other words, it’s not going to happen. The game would have to be more or less redesigned from scratch.

There have been countless posts about asura issues in pvp with hundreds of replies since the beta. Not one thing has ever been said or done about it. One of the reasons why I stopped expecting pvp in this game to ever be even half decent.

Rickster.8752:

Really it is.

And why? Simple. One game mode. Every poll ever done suggested more game modes as the key.

Anet have given up adding maps too. In fact we haven’t had a new “team arena” map in 18 months. So for 18 months there is no “freshness” into pvp.

New game mode seems like it is never coming because “league of legends only has one game mode!”. This sort of analogy is just so flawed.

Solo arena is a total joke. Firstly it has skyhammer. Secondly everybody has totally given up try harding and it now just a total kitten around by both teams.

Team arena is equally dull. What is there, about 4 “teams” who play a viable comp? Everyone else is just playing very casually. So that clearly shows the joke that is team arena. When compostion and “rotations” (also known as running to empty point with bunkers and dying slowly to win 500-100) are more important than actual fighting then you know you created epic fail pvp.

There is nothing to do with 2/3 friends. Do arena-net really not understand social scenarios? It is way way harder to sustain a 5 man group than it is to sustain a 2/3 man group. People have their own commitments. In a 5 man groups these clash often so playing as a “team” simply doesn’t work. People have personalities. In a 5 man group these clash so playing as a “team” simply doesn’t work. People want to play something fun. When (to win) you need 3 (minimum) bunkers (for the “pro” rotations) then you need to find 3 people who are so desperate to win that they want to run some sort of do-nothing build which thrives by just auto attacking for 100 (no offense to bunkers – someone has to do it).

So playing as a 5 man team is just not really practical. And playing conquest OVER AND OVER AND OVER again (and you dont even add new maps lolz) is BORING. This isn’t league of legends. Really…

And they refuse to address any of these issues. 15 points for a kill would help to make pvp less of a total bunker-fest of lameness. You have all seen epically skilled players on engi/warrior/ele in different peroids of gw2 and how they all just do so much for their team by rushing far and bunkering it till more bunkers can arrive. How about 15 points if they die. Actually make the risk reward of the game more sensible.

Or you can just leave things as they are. Eu is meant to be the “active” part (NA not active) and you have about 8 teams (including casual teams). So that is 40 people. Well played. 4 million to 40 players. That is horrendous. Truly horrendous.

Nobody will read this from anet and nothing will ever improve. Is there even anyone left? They all leave because they know this game is going nowhere from a pvp perspective.

Yes to everything you said. Terrible game mode, very boring, does not center around players killing each other but holding points, which leads to dumb cheesing. The game also can’t be balanced, mathematically speaking the gap in dmg and defense depending on how you stack it is too massive for healthy game play. The amount of condition damage and the lack of a defensive stat to lower that damage is terrible, terrible design. Vitality is under budget in comparison to other stats.

How to rescue this mess? Give players a flat attribute increase to all stats while in pvp, lower the amount of stats amulets given proportionately (the goal being to reduce the extreme stat stacking). In pvp the vitality stat should also reduce incoming condition damage, by a lesser amount than toughness does for direct damage, but enough to make vitality stacking an effective counter to condi stacking. Create a new game mode that suits the game better. Add BASIC pvp features like better data on how each player did durign the match (incoming/outgoing damage, breakdown damage by type, etc.) add a proper ladder in game, add a non ranked q where you can q by yourself or with however many friends.

They’re not as OP as they are just really poorly designed.

They are essentially a bunch of true damage (can’t be mitigated) dots that can be spammed so quickly the only response is to either kill the source before you get eaten away or spam condi removal yourself. It’s really bad game design is all.

If they wanted there to be no mitigating stat they should have made them a lot more rare, not a primary source of damage for mulitiple builds. If they wanted them to be all over the place (which makes for bad/boring pvp which should be able big hits and the counter play to those big hits, not just a bunch of dots creeping up your health non stop) then they should have at least put in a mitigating stat (reduces damage dealt by condis by %) so if players start relying on them too much people start building a counter stat. As it is it’s spam spam spam thoughtlessly with the other side spamming condi removal on CD. Most FPS games have less mindless spamming.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I am quite tired of them – up to the point where I went ahead and created a thread on the forums despite my general dislike of QQ-ing about a class/mechanic…

Decap engineers, I get why you run it, I really do, but you (they) ruin my fun much more than any class will ever do… They are getting more and more popularity each and every day, and now it has came to the point where I see an engineer, I simply wanna forfeit the match… My insentive to play, gone in less than a second… And yes, again I get why you play it…

So instead of whining about it some more, desperately asking for more nerfs than you deserve I ask you, people of the PvP forums and more specifically decaps themselves: What is the answer to a decap engineer?

I can adapt, I play a variety of classes in PvE and am usually the one trying different things in PvP despite the established meta – so what can I do/play to counter a decap engineer despite running one myself? Or getting a teammate in that respect…

If anyone has an answer, please tell me… I want to enjoy PvP, and I usually do, but I also like my hair and do not want to get bald just because I encounter a decap engineer…

Specs I tried myself, with little succes, are:

- Burst ele with fresh air, S/D
- Axe warrior
- Power Necromancer, only works if you got Lich Form (stability and a lack of it)
- Condi Necromancer, though this will not do you much good at 25% health
- Bunker Guard, to decap back… don’t ask me why
- Thief, but I will already admit that I kind of suck with them

Delete conquest as a game mode, specially conquest as poorly designed as GW2. Add something better (most pvp modes I can think of). Then that sort of stupid build is no longer a factor.

Not to make this awkward, but you do know they’ve given up on GW2 pvp right? So yes, simple common sense improvements may seem obvious to you, but if you’ve given up… that’s a lot of work.

……..The MAIN reason defensive builds are played more by better player is because the game is tuned to benefit them. Defensive condi builds are too efficient because there is no defense against condi (as in, no stat that reduces condi dmg) the only way to deal with them is to outheal/remove them and that takes time. Furthermore, since the goal is to stand on points, defensive builds and their ability to hold out a point on their own for a while, even against multiple attackers, is favored. Glass cannons are unable to hold points and are inefficient in their damage since by stacking toughness any good tank can neutralize their burst and force them into a sustain fight which they will likely loose. Tanks should pay for being tanky by doing less burst, but kills matter too little in this game if you’re holding the point. And tanks are better at holding points.

In good pvp games, if a glass cannon dies in a fight but does a lot of damage in the process and gets even one kill, it’s worth it, because healing is slow/high cost and long rez timers and other penalties to death/benefits to kills make deaths really matter. In this game, if a glass cannon goes in and takes 4 people to half health and dies so his team can “clean up”, they will be topped off again on health within seconds, so even if the team gets there 5 seconds later there is nothing to clean up, everyone is full health. Damage without kills means almost nothing, just like kills without holding points means almost nothing. This game is very one dimensional, it’s all about standing on nodes grabbing your kitten, little else matters much. And tanks do that better, with condi tanks doing it even better because they can wear down other players with their “ignore all defense” damage while sitting on point tanking.

To quote my friends shortly before we gave up on this game, “they should rename it Condi Bunkers Wars” or “Who Can Sit on Nodes Longer Holding Their kitten Wars”.

New game mode. I like many of the changes to professions you’re making, I think it’s great rewards now are being worked on and will continue to be working on. I really like the combat in this game and it’s getting better as skill trees are refined. But I’m still not going to pay any serious attention to pvp in this game until there are new game modes and asuras get fixed. Sorry.

Conquest is just terrible. Too much emphasis on standing on points, even if there is nothing happening on it is just booooring. Kills and deaths don’t matter enough and because of that they tend to not feel epic at all. With points slowly ticking one way or another the game lacks big moments, it’s a slow boring climb and 90% of the time I know what team is going to win the match within the first minute. That’s a HUGE SIGN of a bad pvp mode. Epic comebacks are extremely rare.

Asuras… vision is KEY to enjoyable gaming. I want it to be a test of my skill not of how good I am at “where’s wally?”. It’s already a problem this game opted to have so many minions. On top of that spell effects are often overboard. But then on top of that you ALSO have a tiny race that gets lost in the middle of everything. I played another day and turned it off after one match because there is a fight on a point where we’re up against a minion necro, a mesmer and a spirit ranger. All asura. I could not see or target kitten. I pvp competitively on a couple of other well known games and in none of them is visibility so bad.

I look forward to you fixing those two things so I can come back (if you ever do).

JonathanSharp.7094:

@ Not having RPG elements in our game when compared to most MOBAS: Keep this in mind. It’s what gives the mobas their flow/pace. We need to build mechanics that change the pacing/feel of the map in a similar way, without hampering the fun players have. I think you get the same thing out of an RTS, but in a different way. Both sides start off with few resources and weak units. Over time they build up in both areas, and the middle/late game are very different than the early game.

I think the MOBA style would be a great fit for guild wars 2 because the game has in fact a superior way to “level up” throughout a match than any existing MOBAs because rather than relying on equipment, the leveling up system can rely largely on how many ability and trait options there are within the existing leveling up system in PVE, just an accelerated/streamlined version of it. It would require some new coding/interfaces but the mechanics would largely be built upon existing making it much easier and easily fit within the existing games’ structure, here is how I think it should work:

- Once the match starts all equipment (with sigil and runes) and would be locked as to what the player has set in the mist. But not heals, utilities or traits.

- All players start at level 5 and continue to level in intervals of 5 levels, so when a players “levels” in this mode he will jump to level 10, then 15 and so forth until 80.

- The stat values on equipment are scaled proportionately to current level, so while the equipment can’t be changed mid game, the chosen stats will keep growing.

- A new interface will need to be designed for trait level up to make this selection easier as the player levels so it can be done quickly on the go and rather than individual points in would be based on selecting minor and major traits. So at the start of the match on the wait area the interface would pop up and allow the players to pick one of the five minor traits. At first level up (lv 10) he could pick either one of the 4 other minor traits or the major trait on the line he selected the minor trait at. If he picks the major trait next level up (lv 15) he can choose one of the 4 first minor traits or the second minor trait in the line he went into and thus forth until he hits level 80.

- Players start with only the first skill of their current weapon of choice and have to unlock the others by killing minions. At first level up he unlocks weapon swap and will again only have the first skill unlocked on his secondary level until he unlocks the rest. He also only starts with one heal and one utility skill, unlocking additional slots for selection as he levels as it would happen in regular pve (though in this mode of course 5 levels are granted at once and it’s much, much faster). So upon gaining the first “level” the player would get a second utility slot and so forth until getting their elite at 30. The key difference here is that while the player can select from any heal/utility/or elite available in game as he unlocks slots he can only do so once. Once each slot is selected from all options it is locked for the rest of the match, this is were the “build” variations to counter the enemy you get in MOBA’s from equipment would come into play as players will get to choose their heal/utility/elite build as they go.

That’s my suggestion for progression, obviously the actual map design is a whole other beast I’ll share my thoughts on it later.

Sensotix.4106:

I feel like the devs are really listening to what people on the forums say but the big problem with this is that there are 90% or people that know little or nothing about pvp, 6 % people that have a decent knowledge and then 4% that are top tier pvp players

The problem i want to adress is that most of the time you see suggestions from the 90% and the other 10% can’t really say something against it since the mass of players kinda rules how the game developes..
To my mind it would be important to listen to the 4% (or the 10%) because then we might see good changes that 90% of the people wont understand at first but those changes would be much better for the game than the changes the 90% suggest…

I really liked some of the changes in the last patches but we are still missing a lot of things that can be implemented really easily because they are not that big

I play with a lot of the 10 % players and then we end up talking about the game between the matches and i hear so many great ideas …

Cheers
Sensotix

PS: Therefore I will make a video in which I collect ideas from other players i think know enough about the game to bring things forward and also to say what I think

On the other hand, 2 % of the people know medium well, 6.5% know it pretty well, 11% know it but, only as eles, while another 45% don’t know it, but do under the right moon phase. Also, 99% of statics are true and only 1% are randomly made up.

vtersf sdtrsdvtsdf sdtr vsgdf

PVP in this game is a joke. That’s all that needs to be said.

No. Stop making threads asking for it. One of the few unique, fun, working pvp mechanics. No. Stop it.

So much stuff in the works that sounds great, just like the ladders sounded great! But then months go by before it’s ready and when it is, well, look at how great the ladders are now. GG.

These patch notes are pretty mild… if that’s all it is it will make little difference to the state of the game. It doesn’t address the structural problems with pvp. The change to boom stacking duration seems odd as with so many actual problems I don’t know what that’s supposed to fix… Condi stacking remains king since spvp’s biggest problem atm (lack of counter to condi spam) isn’t addressed whatsoever. Also stop buffing mantras, none of the mesmer players I know want to play it regardless of how good it is because it’s not fun.

Chopps.5047:

I doubt this effects might in the same way. Does it? That would be a massive change in some game modes.

“All duration stacking boons”

Good thread. I think there are two thoughts devs need to seriously consider when looking at spvp: less is more and editing is good.

No you didn’t give me “arguments”. "Your idea is mindless and stupid! "Is not an argument, unless you’re 5 years old. An argument is saying I disagree with your point A because… then explaining it coherently with specifics and leaving out pointless insults. I began treating you like a child because from your first post you acted like, one hiding behind just calling things stupid, sarcasm and insulting strangers while making very few actual cohesive points. If you don’t want to be talked down to, learn how to have a discussion like an adult. This is going to be it for the amount of time i’ll waste replying to you, you’re welcome to continue raging by yourself. Take care.

@CutePicsHunter.7430 Lol, why so mad bro? I’m srry about whatever kitten thing is going on in your personal life that you feel the need to go around being that hostile to people you don’t know on something as benign as a gaming forum.

I’ve received generally positive responses (including from a dev), and I fully respect and appreciate disagreements when they are presented cohesively and respectfully, two things you seem to be incapable of.

My goal is to make suggestions I don’t claim to have definitive responses to complicated and subjective issues like these. But then i’m a mature adult, for a bratty kid such as yourself this is all gonna be way over your head.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

1- Reduce passive (unbuffed) endurance regeneration in half.

Instant fail. Evades on weapons should be nerfed, not endurance-based. Vigor is too powerful too.

5- You had the right idea with the Incendiary Power but you should take it a step further and make it and the necro’s duhmfire last 6 seconds but have a 15 sec ICD, to make it less “sticky” if removed in a timely manner.

It was said in many posts – any passive chance based damage/conditions should be nerfed a lot or even deleted from game. Because you cant block it, it cant miss, and can not be evaded. You cant predict it too. 2-3k damage from trait like this is TOO much, something like 300-400 is fine for me.

2- Projectile absorption/reflection

Ranged beam attacks should be absorbed/reflected too. Thats what i think.
And also – projectile absorption and reflection are NOT hard counters.

2- Interface option toggle: Normalize Height. Makes asura appear 50% larger and char and norn appear 50% smaller.

Silly try to reinvent the wheel. We should be able to toggle normalized races, so all players will appear as a human males for example. That was said many times, and if you’re new here, then spend some of your time reading forums.

50% of your post was about conditions. I think that devs awared about how strong they are and are doing something, i also dont think that your suggestions about them are good since it seems you’re new here.

It seems you’re incapable of writing a sentence or expressing your opinion without being a rude dipkitten and overusing sarcasm. Good thing you didn’t start the thread since that’s the kind of post the dev reply refers to as being useless. With that out of the way let’s dig in:

1- “instant fail” how eloquent of a counter argument. I explained why I think that would be better, I would like to see it being a more “valuable” resource all around and I think just nerfing vigor and weapon dodges a lot will make classes that currently don’t rely on those things OP without a lot of adjustments. Necros for example hardly need what’s essentially a buff against most other classes. I did also clearly state weapon skill dodges need a nerf too (good job not reading properly!) and in a subsequent reply I also said nerfing vigor instead would also work just require counter balancing.

2- So your solution to the hard counter is to make it counter more things? “And also – projectile absorption and reflection are NOT hard counters.” They stop 100% of the damage from projectile weapon sets like bows, rifle and grenade at range, that’s the definition of a hard counter.

3- It was? The community has decided on that for sure then? Ok. Sounds more to me like that’s your opinion. I personally think they’re fine just need to be less spammy. Getting rid of them or nerfing it that much would require a complete rework of some classes/builds and i don’t see why when u can just tweak it.

4- Yes very “silly” to make a suggestion about how a feature that isn’t developed, or implemented yet should be. I’m not sure what wheel I was reinventing being the game doesn’t have a feature like this yet, but as far as your suggestion, I don’t see how making everyone look the same race when so many players love the look of other races is a very good solution. That seems silly to me when there are better alternatives, but what do I know, I’m new here (actively playing competitive spvp since launch day, but sure).

5- Seems to me while the devs are working on conditions, and they are a major issue, is the best time to make suggestions about possible fixes… that last point doesn’t even make any sense.

evilapprentice.6379:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

da kitten …

they rather remove water than balance ranger under water.

what madness is this?

Anet has made it painfully clear water combat was never going to be balanced for TPvP – Capricorn was either Never in the tourney map rotation, or removed very early (i can’t remember which specifically), but the message is clear – a map with water ijn it does not make for a fair TPvP experience. I’m glad to hear they’re changing it.

It’s also painfully clear ground combat isn’t balanced for TPvP either so there is that.

Evan Lesh.3295:

The updates exclusive to PvE and PvP are hard to compare. Almost all PvP features require very intensive programmer and server support like solo queue, matchmaking, custom arenas, spectator mode, etc. Living story updates leverage existing technology to advance the story and expand content with new mobs, crafting recipes, dungeons, etc. PvP has few areas expandable by content; the main feature being maps which we release regularly. Balance updates affect all parts of the game and don’t come out for one any faster for one than the other.

I get new features are programming intensive but… and I know you can’t say this BUT, development focused on spvp has been significantly slower than what’s happened for pve and wvw : / there are many pretty basic QOL spvp issues the community has been asking for basically since launch and they dont’ seem to even be on the horizon. I don’t know what you have to do internally to make it happen but, in all honesty, you guys really got to speed up spvp development. Like, really.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I dislike the dodge recuding system. It’s good as it is now. But nerfing it would make ‘first strike, first win’ pvp game. Now dodge are a barrier, that you must break true, before you can waste your best skills. Reducing dodge effectiveness, would make skills like skullcrack in my opinion overpowered. Same for fear, backstab and other high power modified skils. The suggestion sounds incredible great on paper (and hey congratz for typing it all out), but it would not make pvp better. If anything worse. So i really must strongly disagree with it.

I agree with stability being to strong. (in pvp). In wvw a nerf should be bad though, everyone would be stunned 100 times per minute. It would be ping pong. No thanks there. That’s why wvw/spvp splits seriously should be considered.

Wathever spvp balance you do, keep in mind wvw chars are 20-40% stronger due to food, other buffs, stronger gear, and other kinds of power creep. What may seem balanced in pvp, isn’t in wvw. I’m not asking for a perfect wvw (it will never be, but keep it within reason. Especially thiefs, with ascended power creep are getting a little to close to easy one shot kills).

And please don’t remov all passives from the game. You make it sounds like they are for noobs but they aren’t. You mentioned spirits. Best example ever that you are wrong. A spirit can die. A dead spirit is useless especially cause it causes a cooldown. That requires strategy from you to time it’s spawn and use of it. The passive bonus is more then warranted for this risk. Saying it’s brainless, is a bit of an empty argument. Secondly stuff like ‘signet of stamina’ are also not necessary win buttons. You get more dodging, but if you time them in wrong way, they are still useless. They don’t freely give you a victory.

some of the op’s suggestion could be implemented, but not in it’s full extend, maybe 30-70%. Cause op’s vision of the game is ‘action and response’. While that is nice in it’s own way it’s way more frustration and hardcore. It will be like gw2, except, with all the dodge/block nerfs he’s mentioning, we will be even more defenseless then in guild wars 1. It will be a bad attempt at remaking gw1, while destroying a core component of guild wars 2 that’s actually very fun, but lot’s of people don’t realize. That thing is dodging.

TL:DR The suggestion are good but to drastic. Don’t destroy core (existing) parts of the game to balance it. Dodging is cool imo and needs no drastic overhaul. Taking it away would make the game flat, and frustrating, and even a bit to hardcore (casuals left in the dark). Just polish stuff, don’t do big overhauls unless necessary.

Dodges aren’t a barrier, most coordinate focus combos involve hard CC openings. The issue with the amount of dodging available is that it regens fast enough to make random dodging worth it. So rather than players timing dodges while attackers time attacks, both sides spam it and see who gets lucky. The very idea of dodge being more scarce is that players should be saving for when a melee jumps on top of them for example (likely to land a high power attack) instead of randomly spamming it.

Stability is strong, but it can be stripped and doesn’t protect you from damage. I think if anything we just still need more buff removal, it’s still too niche.

My suggestions are strictly for SPVP in fact I’ll be the first one to say many of them would be terrible for wvw and pve such as the bonus vitality buff. But SPVP desperately needs it’s own adjustments because it plays very differently than the other modes.

Who said anything about removing all the passives from the game? >.> I said remove rangers and guardian’s to a lesser extent reliance on passive condi removal and replace it with more active forms. And I said make spirit/necro minions passives WEAKER (not the same as removing) while making their actives stronger so they have a bigger impact. A lot of passive effects in this game work really well, I just wish all internal CDs were tracked on your interface so you could work around them better.

style.6173:

@OP. You lost me at too much dodging. No thanks.

Ok, have fun with thieves and rangers keeping up 50%+ invulnerability through dodge spam during fights in unpredictable ways that force you to spam your kitten till you get a lucky hit. Sounds like really smart gameplay.

Sollith.3502:

About the dodging section:

I too feel that some of the evades invincibility frames need to be shortened (even having an entire second of evade is too much most of the time). However, I feel that base stamina regeneration is fine in it’s current state.

Most of the rest of the post I agree with though; we might actually have a somewhat skill based game at that point lol.

Making the evades invisibility frames shorter could also work, though I like the feel of how it is now.

Krayiss.4926:

1. I like invulnerable effect/skills for condis its funny. Normal dmg you can; evade, dodge, invul, move etc but condi dmg you can cleanse if you have it. I like the condi invul

Buffing vitality would BREAK alot of things like protection, necros DS, & countless more.

Your only chance would be making vitality have like a 2nd effect for every 100 vit subtract either 1 or maybe a .25% condi damage or atleast add condi dmg reduction to the trait lines is prolly your best option.

Anymore heal scaling and I quit lol jk.

AI clutter needs to be dealt with but just making pets smaller IDK about that :/

Phantasm dmg reduction would just make alot of people no longer worry about them and continue focusing the player.

I only skimmed through but the rest seems ok

“Countless more” is pretty vague/exagerated. The buff suggested would just be to bonus vitality and is not that big, for a zerker wearing build without vitality runes it’d be less than 1k additional health. The scaling of DS to health can be adjusted to accommodate such a change, although it probably wouldn’t affect necros as most will still run toughness/crit/condi amulet as that stat combination is one of the strongest. If a necro goes carrion sure he’ll have a big health pool but very low armor, one autoattack by a thief/warrior and that extra health is gone. It’s a small buff that would help but was intentionally thought of as being mild.

I didn’t say all pets, I said turrets, nature spirits and necro minions (less so with flesh golem). Ranger pets shouldn’t be smaller and mesmer clones/phantasms obviously remain the same size. The reality is if you have a mesmer, a turret engi, a spirit ranger and a minion necro standing on a small node you can’t see/target kitten. I don’t think so many “minion” builds should have been introduced in the first place there is a reason most MMO’s keep it to a minimum, it ruins visibility, but since it’s too late for that making the ones that we can as “discreet” as possible is paramount.

Only time you would focus the phantasms is if the mesmer is LOS hiding while they’re up, there should be risk involved in pushing a point and that build prior to the condi meta was broken for pushign far point for that reason. In any other situation you would be focusing the mesmer unless you’re bad. The damage would be the same in the first attack and I suggested reducing their CD (prob cut it in half) to compensate for the subsequent dmg drop/expiration, this would actually be a buff to the build in team fights where phantasms often get destroyed by AOE after 1 attack making the phantasm mesmer useless until the CD is up again.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Good feedback here, I especially like the “AI Clutter/gameplay too easy” section. We want to do a lot of this stuff to improve the quality of life for our players.

This is a great example of how to document feedback for us to read. It is noteworthy to mention that feedback is also much more likely to be read when not filled with hyperbole and sarcasm.

I personally have used a few of these talking points when delivering feedback to the Skills and Balance Team, not all but a few. Just remember when writing lengthy topics to establish a TL;DR at the end. We have talked about doing a lot of this stuff you wrote about so that should at least be good to hear.
Nice write-up Julius. Threads like these +1.

-Powerr

Good to hear! I’m looking forward to pvp becoming more strategic/less spammy so I can dig my teeth into it again. I must say the current meta/play style got really stale for me, glad to hear serious adjustments are being considered. I love the basis of this game and really want it to succeed.

There are three major things that hold back build variety in pvp, far more so than in other game modes: speed/mobility, stun breaks, condi removal. The reality is playing anything without those 3 things sucks. Not just because you can get countered hard, but because it’s not fun getting countered hard. Anet sort of got/addressed this with stuns, but not enough and the other two are still an issue. In spvp those 3 elements (albeit in different flavors) need to be accessible in a wide range of skills/traits for all professions, otherwise the builds that include all 3 will dominate all other builds, every time.

Winds.3087:

But could you see that trail on, say, little asura hopping around?

No, but that’s a separate problem.

BlackBeard.2873:

No, you can strike from the shadows with a near-instant gib combo if they don’t suspect it/evade/have some defensive utility. Ele isn’t UP b/c it can be like a magic thief, just without the sustained damage/stealth/mobility.

lol… JUST without sustained damage, stealth and mobility.

MonMalthias.4763:

@Kimoe:
The problem remains that damage in PvP remains too high for players to not be dodging every 5 seconds.

Any nerf to dodge mechanics – as they are the singular most efficient damage mitigation in the entire game – will need to accompany global nerfs to AOE damage and condition application across all classes.

Otherwise you can bet that the game will become even more mindless and spammy.

The TTK would become so low that it essentially turns into a Mexican Standoff – whoever pulls the trigger (spams skills) first, wins.

There’ll be no Observe, Orient, Decision, Action loop governing smart use of skills once the pace of the game exceeds a certain level.

In a way the Condition meta is a sign of things to come because Condition AOE negated dodge spam . You had to run out of Endurance eventually. When you did, Condition application ticks over time would get you even where your Endurance eventually came back up through Energy Sigils, or abusing Weapon skill evades.

The problem here is that by nerfing the profligacy of dodging the AOE Condi meta is prolonged.

I think that a nerf to Endurance Regen could work ; it just requires a global nerf to crit-proc conditions.

I do think that moving away from crit-procs could also open the way to more active play – however, for Condition builds specifically, something has to exist to force Condition specs to diversify their stat distribution.

Damage does feel too high and the game can be too bursty, I think the scaling on vitality and healing power both underpowered stats and both defensive, are big culprits, along with conditions being too “sticky” and AOE too spammy.

The changes I suggest would also make AOE easier to avoid without having to rely on dodges to do it, following the staff ele/engi big bomb model where with a speed boost you can simply move out of the area if you aren’t CC’d and are paying attention and make AOE more scarce overall by increasing CDs. I would to see AOE condi abilities that put longer conditions on people but less often, so that when you skillfully remove a nasty conditions in a timely manner, it’s not right back on a second later. Overall I think the loss of dodges, which at their current excessive rate is spammy/RNG reliant/not fun to play against would be balanced out by those other changes that actually improve defense.

I don’t actually think damage in the game is too high right now outside of those specific issues I listed. We dont’ want fights to become too grindy either, and a direct dmg glass cannon should still be able to blow up a squishy target that doesn’t react quickly enough, specially if it’s two on one or three on one.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

“…A necro that jumps in and spams marks on fresh targets would have most of them avoided and not have them again for a long time. That is how it should be…”
- So basically a necro that jumps into the fray now is useless.

“….Normalize asura models to be 50% larger and char/norn to be 50% smaller. Only appears to player when toggled. This can’t be that hard. Just get it done…”
- It is actually a lot harder than your giving it credit for. Every aspect of modeling would need to reworked from armours to weapons, animations and shadowing.

“…Guardian and ranger passive condi removal needs to be removed….”
-Their passive clear doesn’t allow selection. It may remove the burning that was about to expire in .025 seconds anyway. It may remove blind when you want the 15 seconds of poison removed. It may remove poison when you want the 13 seconds of cripple removed when chasing down a kiter. It may remove vulnerability when you want torment removed. It provides no selective clearing. It is RnG at worst, mildly helpful at best. All condition stacking professions do not lack for ability to stack. Those that can only stack very few such as bleed still have a 10 second window from the time the condition is applied and these passives have a natural internal cooldown. Passive removal is a kin to boxing a slow moving avalanche..you may make a few holes in it, but it is always going to smother you in the end if that is all your relying upon for removal.

You’ve made some ok points, but also some very indulgent ones. It feels like you’ve cherry picked the aspects you don’t care for with little consideration to how this will affect others enjoyment of play styles. However contributing thoughtfully without outright hating is what these forums need more of. Awesome you took the time.

I’m having a hard time deciphering your replies, between gross oversimplification, stating things without explaining and a general lack of cohesiveness it’s tough, but i’ll attempt to reply.

The changes I suggest have nothing to do with wether or not a necro “jumps into the fray” it gives them more single target damage options and proportionately increases the DMG on their AOE so CDs can be raised substantially as to avoid mindless spamming of AOE. Instead necros would focus more on focusing single target dmg with strategic AOE use as opposed to just spamming it on point. I would say based on feedback the majority of the community things AOE spam is out of control so if someone likes the AOE spam that’s fine, but I think they’re the minority.

Make a ranger asura and trait into signet of beast mastery, then pop signet of the wild. Look at your screen.

I can’t tell whether you’re in favor or against removing those passives? But as far as what you seem to be saying about it’s effectiveness being driven by RNG, yes, sometimes they’re too strong sometimes too weak depending on randomness which is awful and why I want it removed and replaced with active condition removal.

Of course I “cherry picked” i couldn’t possibly address every single thing in one post. But my selection was based on what I and other players I know thing are the most pressing issues. Every single substantial change has a side effect, I tried to consider it as much as possible and certainly did not “dismiss it” but I’m one person who wrote that on my free time with the full understanding that some of the suggestions would need more in depth analysis and adjustment by developers to work. But I think getting the ideas across, even if i don’t on my own fix every issue and every side effect, is constructive.

MonMalthias.4763:

Using Evade weapon skills while Immobilised will not grant Evade frames

I think any patch that majorly revises a condition and boon – such as the Dhuumfire (Aetherblade) patch – needs to be fully previewed however.

If not on a PTR, then on a Patch Preview. to explain the rationale. Otherwise you can expect the same explosion of QQ in the forums the day after.

I’m not sure about evade weapon skills on imob needing to be removed, personally I think it takes skill to do it right and that’s it’s more about making the duration shorter so timing becomes more critical. Yes the need for a large PTR and patch notes ahead of time is a must have brainer that’s been mentioned sooo many times… they just don’t seem to care for it.

@MonMalthias
Having played quite a bit of engineer I must disagree on hip shot, if you’re a power build (you should be if you’re playing rifle) it’s one of the strongest auto attacks in the game and what you should be spamming until the right situation to use your CDs comes up. I think the bigger problem is pistol, the auto attack is very weak single target, but that’s partially because it’s an AOE. It should be buffed but following the model I mentioned for melee auto attack cleave, buff pistol #1 damage to the first target it hits (dmg by 50% and another bleed stack) but keep it as is for any subsequent targets it happens to hit.

Also, if 33% is considered too weak/not worth it for Auto Response, i think 50% duration reduction bellow 50% health would be the direction to go, a elixir C proc would be too strong. This would have the lovely benefit of making it viable for glass power engi since in it’s current iteration glassy builds don’t take it because by the time they hit 25% health they’re either kiting off the fight or dead making the proc of little usefulness.

Vigor is already mandatory to classes that have it, as is the adrenal implant trait. But since they are based on percentage of base endurance regeneration, they too get nerfed in half effectiveness indirectly.

@various others
The change to endurance rate is the broadest suggested change with the potential for the most side effects, which has been accurately pointed out. However, keep in mind there is a self balancing effect to a global change. In the example mentioned where mesmers and eles would have a harder time staying alive, while true, the nerf would also apply to their opponent and i also suggested a nerf to on ability use evade durations. So on a match up against a thief for example, the ele may have a harder time staying alive from a defensive standpoint but it will also have a easier time hitting the thief/killing it, and killing your opponent is a very effective form of defense. Certain weapons will also become stronger like staff and scepter, since avoid the AOEs (which are done right on ele with proper animations and delays) will be harder to avoid when people don’t pretty much always have a dodge up. Additionally, many of the changes I suggested (increased healing scaling and buff to vit) off set the decrease to survivability.

On dodge trait procs would have to be buffed, for the most parts their effects can be simply doubled (double duration for prot proc for ranger, double healing for guardian proc, etc.) which is not particularly complex or hard to sort out.

There are other ways of making dodge more scarce as to avoid the current spam fest that it is. The problem with nerfing vigor is that unlike what I explained above, it would straight up buff non vigor classes like necros, with no offset. Also simply moving out of hard hitting long range AOE, assuming it has proper tells/delays as I explain in the original post, reduces the need to dodge somewhat. Players would save dodges for when they get caught off guard but unless they’re slowed/not paying attention, and specially if they have movement speed boost, people can simply move out of the area before it goes off and avoid damage without dodging sort of like you ca do with the ele’s Dragon’s Tooth and engi’s Big Bomb abilities now if you react quickly enough.

Manuhell.2759:

Julius.1094:

Reduce hard counters
1- Increase duration of Berseker stance to 12 sec base and make the engineer’s Automated Response trigger at 33% health BUT make them reduce condi duration on you by 50%, not 100%. It should be a defense against condi not completely neutralize certain builds entire offensive ability with their current fairly high uptime. Specially if other anti condi measures previously listed were implemented.

And it would make Automated Response completely useless.
Why should you even risk staying at less than 33% hp – making you extremely susceptible to burst damage – if you’re getting the same damage from conditions, just with a shorter duration?
You still don’t get the point of that trait – exposing yourself to bursts in exchange for that condition shutdown. Something me and other people explained and argumented in a lot of threads before this one, anyway, and i won’t spend any more time on the matter.
Especially since there aren’t armies of engineers using that trait even with a condition meta – where it should shine.

You shouldn’t risk being at low health when you can help it. I’m not sure you get the point of the trait: it’s meant to make you harder to kill if you get low by lowering condition damage and slows/imobs, which direct dmg classes often rely on to land a lot of attacks. It’s a “oh kitten” proc, not a “I’m low but I’m not gonna use my heal so i can stay immune to entire builds indefinitely,” that’s bad design.

Cutting condi damage and movement impairment duration in half whenever bellow 1/3 health is not “useless” by any stretch. It’s a passive proc with potentially pretty high uptime and no ICD.

Kwll.1468:

For you to just ignore dodge on weapon abilities as not a problem is ludicrous imo. Its one of the biggest problems with too many evades. Remove weapon evades, remove energy sigils, and remove vigor regeneration procs. Dodges should be limited and very important to manage correctly.

I suggested cutting base endurance regeneration in half (which is what I think should be done) that would also cut vigor effectiveness in half since it’s a percentage. Once you do that on weapon skill dodges become a much smaller problem, it’s the chain between those skills AND constant dodges that’s a problem. Weapon skill dodges are part of the game mechanic, getting rid of it would throw off balance badly, tackling vigor is a better way to lower the number of dodges in a balanced way because it affects everyone thus balancing itself. I did suggested sightly nerfing the duration of dodge on skill use as well. With lowered base endurance regen the current energy sigil would be OP so that would have to be cut in half to to regenerate just a quarter of endurance, i don’t think it needs to be removed.

stof.9341:

Julius.1094:

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

And technically, if a warrior is immune to conditions (new conditions mind), your attacks still deal direct damage no? So you are at a disadvantage but can still damage and kill him.

If there weren’t multiple builds that did almost all their damage from conditions that would be a good point. But since there are…

ColinJohanson.2394:

fugazi.5139:

may be it is GW2 PvP +WvW.
It has to be.

Extra fun fact: the population of WvW who plays any given week regularly is larger than the entire population of all of Gw1 the game any given week for a large chunk of the games lifespan. Just want to put things in perspective, Gw1 was amazing, but there is a reason we made Gw2.

Extra, extra fun fact: this is the spvp forum full of players that primarily want to pvp. GW2’s WvW population is utterly kittening irrelevant. As is the total population which is mostly PVE focused. The question is, why is it in a game so large, sPVP which should be a big part of guild wars, has the smallest population and is bleeding out skilled teams constantly out of frustration? The point is a lot of people are frustrated with SPVP development, don’t come in talk about how great WvW is…

Oxygen.5918:

I’ve always been a fan of the idea of “soft counters” like the berserker stance example. In this line, do you think that stability should reduce the duration of disables / distance of knockbacks by a percentage (50, 66%…) instead of fully? Should there be a boon (fury, perhaps) that reduces the efficiency of conditions on you?

I don’t, the main reason is that unlike direct damage and condition not being able to CC does not disable a someone’s ability to kill you. A hammer warrior is at a disadvantage against a target with stability for example, but if he stays on top of the target and keeps doing damage regardless he can still kill it. I think it’s fine as is.

I’m not sure about a boon, adding that effect to an existing boon could really throw off balance by suddenly making it a lore more desirable. In the suggestions I made I tried to either make changes that would affect everyone (like the vitality budget change and reduced stamina regen) or very specific to an OPness problem like condi duration to fears, because it’s easier to balance around. Changes to buffs, since each class has very different access and uptime on each buff, could throw things off quite a bit.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

I know you took much time to write this out. Now could you apply QoL to the post so it is easier to decipher wall of texts.

Ay, fair point, not enough line breaks in there, I added a bunch : )

I have no idea what you just said.

Here is a video of the spvp developers at work and attempting to balance the game:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/You-want-constructive-feedback-right-Here/first#post2721742

Any of the points I listed there if they could be presented to the devs would be awesome. I do think I listed the core concerns of the community there in a clear way.

garethh.3518:

Julius.1094:

The whole notion of “SPVP doesn’t bring income” is such bullkitten.

MMO PvP is notoriously bad at being a main source of income.

MOBAs have a solid formula for success, if you make a tri-lane map with a few core concepts and create abilities in a general way… you will have good PvP.
MMO PvP isn’t quite that easy to make, at least atm… with most dev teams being trash and PvE players being so easy to entertain… well it ends with MMO PvP typically being a second rate feature…

Old school MMO’s had monthly fees, so they made money from both pvp and pve regardless. New generation free to play MMOs have only been around for a few years. That’s not even remotely enough time to claim it just “can’t work”, it’s also ridiculous. It just needs to be done smarter.

Old school MMOs struggled with pvp because of: gear treadmills and balance problems. The first is a turn off for mainly pvpers because most want skill to be the differentiating factor, not gear. It also made entering pvp (where not only are you still learning but most of your oponents outgear you) really kittenty. That’s just stupid design not some fundamental, unavoidable flaw. GW2 in fact, fixed it.

The second issue is that balancing PVE and PVP does not work, general abilities can be the same but the numbers and the tuning should be totally different, and some abilities should be PVE/PVP only, there should also be separate balance teams for each. This is where GW2 has not succeeded, a few steps were taken towards it but, not nearly enough. This again is a planning problem, not some other unavoidable flaw.

Lastly for free to play games like GW2, once you create a vibrant pvp community by building in a lot of great features that covers all the main basis (which GW2 has failed at), balancing well for pvp specifically and getting rid of gear threadmils you need a steady stream of cool but non-play to win things to buy, GW2 has had some of this, but not enough and even if it was enough the player base is too small due to all the other shortcomings. It’s not that “MMO pvp” can’t make developers money, it’s just that bad people are doing it wrong.

TGSlasher.1458:

Conquest and Rewards
We all know the game was built around the conquest game type. I mean, anyone seriously thinking of team death match should consider the lack of Healing classes in this game and the meta of, spike the targeted foe to win.

Deathmatch arenas place an aura buff on all players for the match duration that decreases all incoming damage (including condition damage) by 30% and increases all healing by 30%. Fixed. That’s pretty much all they’d have to do to make it work, specially with the fact people can rez each other.

That would be so much fun as it would open up a whole different style of play and different builds, plus the healing buff would bringing abilities that heal others a lot more valuable as they are atm undervalued (and for good reason really, conquest doesn’t need a bunch of team heal builds to drag out fights even more). I fail to see why both modes can’t be available, if/when this game ever gets templates switching builds between the two would be super easy too.

Aza.2105:

Harbinger.8637:

Lachanche.6859:

KrisHQ.4719:

If guardians had access to a teleport with an AoE Heal, would they trade it for a shout?
If the answer is yes and no, the new utility would work flawlessly.

OH, the irony. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Merciful_Intervention

Yet i haven’ t seen a single guardian using that in tpvp lol.

Because it’s garbage. It just randomly teleports you to the nearest ally. It would be like Judge’s Intervention teleporting to the nearest enemy instead of choosing your target. Also it’s regardless of health too. Yeah lets heal an ally that has full hp!

But Anet doesn’t want a “healer” class so they made it like that.

So why even add skills that heal allies for guardian? Its totally against their “no healer design”.

But then again, its no surprise, the entire game lacks consistency and polish.

1. Ridiculous damage

2. Traits that are useless

3. Useless trait system that only promotes passive play

4. Anti healer agenda but continues to push guardian to support and heal allies

5. Suppose to be observant to dodge, but with instant animations, 4th of july firework particles, tiny characters and stealth, makes it impossible

6. Promotes spamming every skill on cooldown, discourages intelligent gameplay

Believe me they aren’t going to fix any of this. Spvp, no pvp in general doesn’t bring income. So spvp is bottom tier priority. This can be seen in Anets approach to balancing pvp. Which has been so far very little compared to gw1.

The whole notion of “SPVP doesn’t bring income” is such bullkitten. DOTA 2 and LoL are nothing but spvp and they make a loooot of money, the format may be different but the principle and why people would want to play it is the same. Most of the money LoL makes is from selling skins, GW2 could be doing the same thing, if they had a very large and active spvp player population and regularly released cool looking armor and weapon skins on their shop they’d make a lot of money. They don’t because A) they don’t release enough good skins, and most importantly, there aren’t enough people pvping or who care enough to invest in it. People want to buy skins and the like for a game they feel they can play long term.

Dirame.8521:

Julius.1094:

8- You should get a set amount of glory based on whether you win or lose, that’s it. No glory for doing things in tournament, it leads to all kinds of awful glory farming behavior even in ranked matches… it’s just a bad and unnecessary system.
.

So you want to reward AFKers for doing nothing? Are you sure you thought this one through?

It’s unlikely your team will win a 4v5 if you’re afk for the match, the amount of glory on a loss would be very small (like 20) while on a win large (300) so you would want your team to win and thus not go afk. And if you did go afk, that’s what report features are for, this game has an issue of proper penalities for afk and leavers that’s unrelated to glory. The difference between that proposed system is it encourages people to actually play to win the conquest match instead of doing dumb kitten like 3 capping a non contested point just to get glory or run around in a mob zerging and ignoring nodes.