Guild Wars 2

Like the title says—my main criticism of the Revenant, is that it is fundamentally designed on every level, to limit the ways a player can customize their character:

Utilities completely depend on legends, of which there will only be 5, and even choosing the fifth one forces you into an elite spec. From the five, you can choose two. I wrote about this in another thread, but this gives you a total of 5C2 = 10 possible combinations for utility skills. Other professions have at least 4 healing skills, 20 utilities to choose 3 from, and 3 possible elite skills—so 4 * 20C3 * 3 = 54,720 different combinations for the 6-0 half of the bar.

Most of the 55k choices in the base classes lead to interesting modifications in play styles and customization to make your profession fit what you want to do with it. Every utility/healing skill has a situation where it shines, a proper way to use it, and a set of traits to support it. Legends take that systemic depth and toss it out the windows without offering a suitable replacement

Revenants can’t switch weapons. Of all the design choices, this one makes the least sense to me. Clearly, each weapon is built to favor a certain legend—which is constraining in it’s own right but we’ll ignore that in favor of more quantifiable issues—yet you only get one weapon with two legends. For comaprison, here are other profession loadout options:

• Warrior: 4 (TH) + 3(MH) * 5 (OH) = 19 sets, from which you can pick 2 so 19*18 loadouts = 342
• Elementalist: (1 + 2*2)[possible equipped sets] * (5C0 + 5C1+5C2+5C3) [possible utility conjures] * 2[possible elite conjure] = 252 without even counting attunements
• Guardian: 3+3*3 = 12, 12*11 = 132
• Ranger: 3+2*4 = 11, 11*10 = 110
• Mesmer: 2+2*4 = 10, 10*9 = 90
• Necro: 1+3 * 3 = 10, 10 * 9 = 90
• Engie: 3 * (4C0 + 4C1 + 4C2 + 4C3) [utility kits] * 2 [elite kit] = 90
• Thief: 1 + 3 * 2 = 7, 7*6 = 42
• Revenant: 2 + 2 * 2 = 6

Note that I’m not even counting the extra option elite specializations will add to everyone, and giving ANet the benefit of the doubt and assuming Shiro will add another main-hand/off-hand option to the revenant. Even with these biases in favor of the revenant, ever single other class has an order of magnitude more tool sets they can bring to a fight. Heck, even if revenant could switch weapons they would still have the fewest loadout options, at 30.

The entire skill bar bar requires energy. As a revenant, you can either spam AA or you can forget about using your utilities. No other class has to give up half their skill bar to use the other half, so I can’t quantify this problem as well as the others, but it’s bad.

This one, at least, could potentially be helped by a re-balance of how fast energy is accumulated and how much skills cost in energy. However, I think I’ve already demonstrated how little freedom revenant offers players—the current consequence of the energy mechanic is to offer even less freedom in play-styles.

In short, the Revenant is broken, and it’s not an issue of balance or “it’s only partially finished.” Revenant is broken because unless there are some massive changes coming to the class that haven’t been announced, when ANet is finished with it, every single revenant will play the same. When revenant was still an idea on a whiteboard, ANet made a terrible mistake in designing it so that once you choose two legends and a weapon, your entire build is pigeonholed. Even if all the bugs were fixed, all the promised features were added, and all the weapons properly balanced for activation time and damage coefficients, this class would still be fundamentally broken.

I really like the concept and the style of the revenant. I want it to work and be fun. However, the class has deep issues that are not “Beta test” issues, which make it less fun and which frankly defies the core principles GW2 was built on when it first came out, eschewing the Holy Trinity because of the way Trinity games constrain players into specific builds.

I don’t like being so negative, but revenant really needs a lot of help. I’m hoping better defining the problem will be constructive.

all underwater stuff is amazing.

Like mechanical wise, compare DS autoatack. Even if u remove the overpowered condition transfer and scale damage according to fire rate, its totaly superior for faster might stacking and less blind shutdown.

Oh and all the pbAOEs

Kaon.7192:

I’m glad this post is gaining traction, because my own post (made in April 2013) raising almost the exact same concerns died in a whimper.

I’m guessing after a whole year, the consequences of the lack of agility when it comes to balancing has finally started to sink in…

Kaon.7192:

snip

Kaon.7192:

Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…

We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.

This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.

Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.

Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.

I’m glad that I’m not alone in thinking that the current stance of putting everything into Feature patches is a bad trend. I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t seen your post up until now. In terms of what pushed me to make this thread, it was really the meta “freeze” up until the point of the PAX tourney post Dhuumfire patch and then desultory changes that did not, in any way, affect the placement of apex predator builds that coalesced my concerns. I suppose that it was probably a matter of timing for you, Kaon, as April 2013 was still during a time of (relatively) frequent changes and indeed, the April changes were impactful and did bring about changes in people’s builds.

I know that for me personally, it made me stop using invulnerability skills for Elementalist and Engineer and in particular it made me switch from Dagger mainhand over to Scepter due to the RTL nerf making it significantly riskier for me to stay in the fight due to the Block/Aegis bug. Which still exists today, and it’s a little sad that we’re coming up on a year since the change and things like this are still a thing.

Carighan.6758:

I really feel like they should push balance changes – even if it’s only 1-3 of them every time – with the weeks between LS patches.

Yes, this will create imbalance, because not all classes get changed at a time. However, the rapid cycle of deployment -> feedback -> improvement would benefit the balance effort overall.

To be honest, it wouldn’t even matter what Arenanet changed as long as they changed something about the professions to make them better every patch. Every single profession has problems right now – some since launch – that is affecting build diversity. Bugs and tooltips, especially. Fixing bugs in content that not every single player may run into – and this is especially egregious with Living Story whilst leaving the ways players interact with the content – their professions – buggy is baffling to me. I’m hoping that the feature patch does indeed, have “too many bugs fixed to be listed” as they boasted on their Ready Up Livestream because player expectations after such a lengthy period of stultification can only rise. I know I’ll be logging in to test if things really have been bugfixed for the better.

But yes, rapidly pushing out small fixes with every single patch is pretty much the way to go.

Theses aren’t a problem in PvE.
But I don’t get players nowadays. Direct damage is too strong. Conditions are too strong.

Everyone should hit like a wet noodle and wear wear full cleric with 10/0/30/30/0 traits.
Hyperbole this. Hyperbole that.

Anyways, this can only be an issue in PvP environments where you might get focused down. In that case, stacking duration is working like it should.
Immobilize doesn’t happen enough when you have players carrying a variety of weapons and utilities. When you start seeing the same/similar builds using specific traits/weapons/utilities (i.e. Hammer Guards/Warriors or Chillmancers) consistently, yeah there’s an issue with that.
But as with having variety in a game such as this you can deal with them, though condition cleanse, traits and utilities. They don’t need to be nerfed as there are already substantial counters to them.

Phenn.5167:

All of the above…AND:

The idea “the Ranger sans pet is no Ranger at all” betrays the attitude I mentioned several pages back. Clinging ardently to a pre-beta vision for the class will destroy any hope of actually fixing the class.

Pets don’t work. Period. You can buff their move speed. You can jack up their HP. You can replace them with Chuck Norris. But in the present state of the game and the present state of the Ranger, it’ll be like replacing a single two-by when you’ve got termites. As above—they need a complete over-haul.

If anything, the single point I’d be ecstatic if the Dev teams walked away from this CDI with is simple:

Be willing to change your vision for the class.

You don’t have to get rid of the whole vision. Just be flexible enough to recognize what portions of the vision cannot work in the game y’all’ve created.

So very well said. My thoughts exactly.

Some flexibility is in order if this is going to work, and rangers are going to improve. I’m sure Allie is regretting her choice of analogy at this point…no need to beat that into the ground any more…but hopefully the devs are thinking seriously about what’s being said. We all really want this to work.

Phenn.5167:

Pets don’t work. Period. You can buff their move speed. You can jack up their HP. You can replace them with Chuck Norris.

If not not even Chuck Norris can fix the rangers, than man, shi.et must be bad.

Simple idea; place above the life force bar some very small boxes that represent the 5 ds skills. If they are on CD they should be dark, and when off CD they should give a little flash and then be bright. Maybe we could have similar small boxes above the 5 weapon skills to show when the alt weapon set skills are off CD.

Phenn.5167:

This thread needs to stay at the top of the first page until it gets significant red posts.

So it needs to stay here until the end of the world? Well, good luck :P

If the Ranger class it supposed to be a sustained damage class without burst nor area of effect, then its single target damage should be reliable. Ranger damage is very unreliable:

Pet damage output is unreliable. Pets need to path and miss their attacks often.

Ranger long-range damage output is unreliable. All Ranger ranged weapons are projectile-based (Mesmer Greatsword isn’t for example). Meaning, they are countered by a lot of things: projectile reflect and projectile block, this on top of the usual things, like aegis that also prevent non-projectile damage.

Longbow has a long arc and can easily miss its target. It also does less damage at short range, so neither in short nor long range is the longbow reliable in dealing damage.

So no, Ranger does not have sustain unless its attack can hit their targets reliably. Pets and ranged weapons can’t. Ranger also has no on-demand condition removal, so their melee damage is also unreliable, since they can’t remove immobilize/chill/cripple, etc.

Ranger is horribly unreliable in dealing damage on a single target. So it can’t be considered a sustained-damage dealing class.

Give the longbow a 100% chance to hit at any range and allow pets to hit on the move 100% of the time. Then you’ll have a sustained damage class. Then you won’t have to add burst, then you wont have to add AoE.

Holland.9351:

If the Ranger class it supposed to be a sustained damage class without burst nor area of effect, then its single target damage should be reliable. Ranger damage is very unreliable:

Pet damage output is unreliable. Pets need to path and miss their attacks often.

Ranger long-range damage output is unreliable. All Ranger ranged weapons are projectile-based (Mesmer Greatsword isn’t for example). Meaning, they are countered by a lot of things: projectile reflect and projectile block, this on top of the usual things, like aegis that also prevent non-projectile damage.

Longbow has a long arc and can easily miss its target. It also does less damage at short range, so neither in short nor long range is the longbow reliable in dealing damage.

So no, Ranger does not have sustain unless its attack can hit their targets reliably. Pets and ranged weapons can’t. Ranger also has no on-demand condition removal, so their melee damage is also unreliable, since they can’t remove immobilize/chill/cripple, etc.

Ranger is horribly unreliable in dealing damage on a single target. So it can’t be considered a sustained-damage dealing class.

THIS is an amazingly cogent observation.

I think what I really want to know is; is this description of a sustain-based skirmishing survivor meant to be what we’re bringing to the table in a group play situation, or is that just a self enclosed description of how the combat plays out on a tactical button-pressing level apart from the impact its having on our teammates?

I think the sustainable survivor model is very successful….when used as a means to accomplish other goals and playing into a larger niche in combat, and not as the ends itself.

For example, I never minded sustain damage on my FPS Assault or my MOBA Tank, because I was never using for it’s own sake. I was exerting a bit of damage to get somebody off my point or to get them to retreat down the lane. It was always playing into a larger scare tactic of my very human opponent by using damage as pressure to control their movement. It was Slow and Steady, because it was supposed to be a Threat; and what good is a threat if people don’t have time to react to it?

I never played a sustainable survivor, that existed solely for the sake of sustaining and surviving. That sort of monotony just isn’t interesting all by itself.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Nuzt.7894:

I can see your concern here but, the option to have the pet as such an integral part of the class is one of the largest faults of the class. Could it not be optional to have the pet as an option, basically if you spec wilderness survival your pet becomes a larger part of the class, if you choose to spec in something different to be more valuable to your group then either you don’t have the pet or it has minimal impact on the class.

That is completely valid feedback that I will relay to the designers. Thanks for taking the time to share it!

This CANNOT be news to the designers. Scaling back Ranger reliance on Pets has been put forward in the Ranger forums so many times that it likely averages out to once every other day since the game launched.

I realize that compared to a CDI, our efforts in that forum have been largely wasting our digital breath, but this hurts. I really feel like in regards to Rangers the Balance Team has built up considerable credibility gap. We have been told time and again that things will get better, that experiments are being conducted, that change is on the way. And yet core failings have plagued this class since day one, unchanged and seemingly impervious to any tangible improvement.

I hope that if the Devs come out of this thread with anything, it’s a sense of urgency. More than 90% of the responding players listed Rangers as troubled. More than 50% listed them as the single most troubled profession in the game. The elephant in the room in now squarely in the spotlight.

Validate the faith and the patience we’ve put in you. Please.

I’m actually kind of surprised that the necromancer sub forum wasn’t removed. That place has tumbleweeds passing through it, that’s how often devs visit it. Of course it is entirely possible that not even the forum maintenance crew are aware that the forum exists. Maybe we are secretly invisible, wouldn’t that be neat?

(whispers)
But in case a dev reads this, the forum is over here: —> Follow the arrows --> HERE

I am currently running 20/20/0/0/30

4am, Prob didn’t make my story very clear.
It’s not a GW1 necro I want. It’s just a re-envisioned version.

I’d be so very happy, if we didn’t lay down the damage. But if we added soo much damage/not get damaged to others, that we were wanted/hugely beneficial to a group.

If were suppose to have no escape, and now have our ability to face tank taken away. We should have the group want to protect us & peel off us.

I guess, what would be very cool in a GW2 way… Would to be, to have lot more life force manipulation. Where DS was more powerful like Litch/Plague. But have it either give us more DS, or allow us to spend it on helping allies. Master of life force, taking it from others giving it to those we chose. That sort of thing.

I currently see a few problems with our class:

• We have dozens of useless traits that are simply underpowered or have rubbish effects
• We have no role in PVE (or the role they picked for us, does not combine with the PVE game they’ve designed, for this PVE must change)
• We lack proper defense
• We lack offense to be as good at DPS as other classes (a problem with the PVE game itself, and with our actual damage output)
• We need more viable builds (not just Dhuumfire).

To fix the necromancer, I would personally get rid of the idea of focusing on an attrition class. There’s no point in having an attrition class, if PVE discourages it. So either change PVE to make attrition on-par with direct DPS, or change the focus of our class. Also, change Defiant/Unshakeable. Control is kind of our thing, so make it work against all champions.

The biggest elephant in the room currently is simply the lack of depth in the combat. There’s a lot of noise and fancy lights, but not a well thought structure that keeps it all together. It feels like they tossed a lot of things at the wall, just to see what would stick… and with the necro they didn’t throw very far. We have a lot of game elements, such as toughness, vitality and healing. But the defensive attributes aren’t as important as the offensive ones. This has made the game extremely in favor of DPS. In an unbalanced game with lots of insta-kills and defense that scales poorly, the best defense becomes killing things as quickly as possible. And that is not what attrition is about (quite the opposite). They’ve created a situation in which our class mechanic has no place.

The worst part of it all, is that they keep balancing the necro for pvp, and ruining our effectiveness in wvw and PVE in the process. That kills us. You can’t keep trying to keep these radically different parts of the game in line. This was already obvious in GW1 with the splitting of skills. Why did we not learn that lesson?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I don’t spend a lot of time looking at the stats UI, so I always look for individual items as well on there. I wouldn’t go attacking the devs over that.

That was just a single scenario of them doing something questionable. It has happened quite a bit. These are people who supposedly work on this stuff and tamper with these things, they should know where things are. There’s a difference in a player who makes a build and plays a lot and doesn’t look at stats and someone who should be looking at this stuff a lot, while developing abilities, especially healing ones…. If anyone should be deeply knowledgeable about stats its people creating new abilities. Just saying.

Phenn.5167:

Perhaps one of the best ways to move forward with this (given the state of the game and the resources available) would be to begin implementing additional steps to already-present DEs. Imagine the surprise when the Shadow Behemoth’s death spawns an onslaught from “the other side” that then has to be stopped before rendering all the waypoints in the south of Queensdale contested.

You’d have a bunch of players going, “Wait, what? It’s not over?” The “newness” of the event would add to the surprise and the motivation to discover the other DEs that suddenly have more to them.

Whereas I’m not opposed to the introduction of more, independent DEs, I think the real strength of the DE system lies in prolonged encounters that evolve as they’re played out. At the moment, this doesn’t happen much (save for Orr invasions). So at the very least I believe this would be a good place to start.

I like this idea. Since exploration of the world and DEs seem(ed) to be the major focus of GW2 at ship, I’d love to see significant additions to that aspect of the game in future releases. Adding DEs in the way you described fits nicely in the success/fail conversation that we had earlier. Not only can we have chains initiated by failing events, but continuations of short chains or stand-alone events from success.

World bosses are a perfect example. Despite lead events like Jormag’s and FE’s, when they’re done, everyone scatters and says good job. But defeating something awesome enough to be dubbed a World Boss should have resultant effects as well. And since they’re never failed (Teq aside) having chains that follow them would be cool.

Especially if they’re random. What if 1 of a possible 3 different chains followed an event? That would be cool. Maybe dependent on the size of the zerg or time of day or completely random. Then, after we defeat the Shadow Behemoth, either 1) a swarm of shadowy monsters pour out of the portals, 2) 3 new portals appear at locations around the swamp that must be closed, or 3) the SB’s “corpse” leaves a shadowy residue that must be carried (and defended from random attacks) to a nearby outpost for study/cleansing/etc. The residue could have a toxic/slow effect forcing it to be dropped often or else death to the carrier so-to include more people and not make it a footrace.

minbariguy.7504:

You have GOT to be kidding me. How ridiculous.

I’ve been lead to believe the matter is being corrected. The central post has been restored (if somewhat the worse for rough handling). I am hopeful the related ones will likewise be repaired.

For now it’s best to let it go as we move forward.

Julie Yann.5379:

I agree that the warrior reign on PvP is supreme, but it’s PvP, having one class stronger than the other doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the gameplay experience.

“Fixed” to help my point: I’ve never understood why that argument apparently only applies to PvE but not to PvP. Objectively, the effects of an overpowered class are the same in PvE and PvP: that class will get more usage than other classes.

The effects on the game play experience are same: You have the choice whether you play your favourite class even at the risk of gimping your group or you adapt and play the current favour of the month class as well. In PvE/WvW the second option has a time gate for levelling/gearing that class attached to it, whereas in PvP you can switch freely.

The “PvE balance is unneeded” argument just boils down to “my gamemode is better” which is an opinion, not a fact.

That said, I really like to read arguments why balancing resolves only around PvP from devs.

How come we arn’t getting any answers or feedback on PVE/PVP skill+trait separation?

Several people mentioned it, and You Devs have posted after thier posts while just ignoring it. You could at least give us a general blanket term saying thanks but no thanks so we know where this is heading and not hoping a miracle would happen.

Lastly, why not follow the idea of your first guildwars with a HEAVY pvp centered game and a PVE side that did so well? Instead of just throwing everything into the same pot and calling it done…

Hammer, because Entropy.

Ronah.2869:

How about rewarding the players who do this brainstorming? Ok, suggestions may come free but brainstorming activities should be rewarded, right?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Ronah,

Your idea of rewarding CD participation is interesting and we will discuss it in the next phase after the topic threads are closed.

Chris

Oh… now that one’s EASY, and again an example is already present in-game:

The fractal mid-boss Siegemaster Dulfy.

I will tell you true: if one of my specific examples for a second chance were to be implemented, I actively invite the Devs to browse through my stable of characters, find the name/look for one that seems setting-appropriate, and add them to the world somewhere. Major bonus points for using that name/look for an NPC in one of those events.

Being added to the game’s canon is high on my list of ultimate cool. Being added in a way that draws a direct line to how I pitched in? mega-transcendent cool

((Stares into the eternal alchemy… goes a little batty))