Guild Wars 2

I really like the feature to be honest. It helps you to decide where you can be the most use without the need for some kind of com system (voice or otherwise). Backcaps should be fine since it only shows your icon to the enemy if one of them can see you. Which would hurt your backcap anyway right?

It’s similar to a fog of war type thing, it’s a really smart addition. More of these please. Cool change is cool.

I don’t personally think Settler’s is worth it for only 1 condition. Perhaps if you can work it into the coming Supreme Justice change it ‘might’ be alright, but it’s a lot of points for not very much.
You’re trying to emulate the ridiculously over the top condition bunker builds, but Guardian doesn’t have access to the conditions that make those builds really work (strong poison/bleeding, on top of the immobilise and blind).

Signet of Judgement by itself though is actually awesome. Thanks to mostly necros and warriors, Shelter really isn’t as defacto-standard as it used to be, so the synergy with the signet mastery is cool.

While I personally wouldn’t want to build that into a primary bunker, you could make a solid team-fight character with it. Something like 0/10/30/25/5, Hammer/Staff, AH, Sig of Judgement.
Soldier Runes, 2 shouts zerker/barbarian amulet. Between Sig of Resolve, Purity, and the 2 shouts, you should have enough Condi removal. Any condi BS build that would push this over would do the same to 3 shouts and PoV anyway. I guess CoP is an option but then you’d have to drop Strength in Numbers/ Retributive Armour.

Edit:
Meh, a build I guess would speak for itself! So something like this. Can replace the Barbarian ami with zerker if you want, but the extra HP is much more useful than the damage loss imo.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgKCXFSLEfIFRuArCEEnBGz41DHmQGC-ToAA2CnIySllLLTWyssZNAZ9B

I’ll say it again: Stealth is the cancer of all PvP games.

It’s just a terrible mechanic that ruins the flow of combat and it’s so inherently strong that any class that has it, needs to be arbitrarily weakened just for balance. One of the key reasons Thief is weak in many ways is to balance against by far the strongest disengage combat mechanic in game. It’s stupid…

I’ve thought a lot about the concept of stealth over the years and I’ve only found one way the technique can be even remotely interesting on a skill-based level by itself:

When you engage stealth, the biggest benefit is that eventually your opponent(s) lose track of where you are, and/or break target, while you still retain this information…

To level the playing field, and increase the skill-cap of the feature, the person who engages stealth should also loses track of enemies.

You’re probably thinking “what the hell? What’s the point in that? Were you dropped on your head more than once as an infant?” etc.. Once you get past the initial ‘discomfort’, you realise it opens up something so simple and elegant, it’s actually quite brilliant…

It essentially becomes a game of Hide and Seek, in the context of combat.

Think on that a second… You have to guess where your opponent will position themselves and put yourself in a more advantageous position, based on nothing more than your deductive skill and understanding of the present combat moment.

You may think, well what’s the point of having stealth then if both user and target both benefit and suffer from the stealth? Well that’s the thing, the person who begins the game of hide and seek gets to choose when it happens. which is absolutely huge in itself.

It’s a risk/reward situation where you need to skilfully choose when it’s most advantageous for you to use stealth. Use it when you’re close to dying to recover cool downs/HP? Use it as a ‘break stun’ to nullify someone’s attack sequence? Use it to simply waste time in an encounter you don’t think you’ll win if you fight right this second, or simply to wait for allies?

Sure much of this occurs with typical degenerate cheesy stealth, but the difference is with this it’s a lot easier to mess up the usage because of unskilled timing/deductive prediction… You could easily pop stealth when the opponent just made a mistake and was gonna’ take it in the face, big time. Now they get time to recover from the misstep because of your stealth. All of a sudden it isn’t simply god-mode any more, just ‘potentially’ so…

It would essentially make stealth a far more interesting chess-game like mechanic where most of the power was still held by the user, with the distinct difference being that they could potentially mess it up quite royally.

This would then enable classes that receive stealth (across all games even) to not have to be stupidly weak in other areas just because….

I still think stealth is a poor choice of what players could be spending their time enjoying in combat, but at least it wouldn’t be so lame!

Well my point was games can be very fluid… If they push a 3/2 split early to de-bunk far, with the rear point bunker pushing up to support the roamer harassing mid, your main team-fight all of sudden is happening at your home.

There are several out-comes to a fight like that. Some of which may end-up with your team rotating your team-fight bunker around. This is especially viable with much of the meta build variants using staff.

All I’m saying is that focus areas can change and a Guardian bunker is usually better at a team-fight, which is where many of the match points come from. Also isn’t a key feature of a good roamer it’s mobility? An immobile team just sounds to me like one that will be struggling against a 2 cap more often that it would like.

Bunkers don’t have to be completely stationary imo. Not at all. The guardian bunker for example offers heavy support. Most of the time you’re better off being at whatever ‘big fight’ is going on than sitting at a point doing nothing. This should translate to a solid about of points.

I guess the trick, outside of voice-com TPvP, is knowing when to rotate points.

JonPeters.5630:

The change to sword damage from 5% to 10%. I’ve seen a lot of talk that maybe it is not really needed. The fact was this was a lackluster trait and this is a lackluster change to it. I would love to do the right thing here and have a change that MH sword wants rather than just 5% more damage.

Thoughts?

Jon

Hi. The reason most people think ’it’s not really needed’ is because the raw damage on Guardian has never been the issue, it’s the amount of sustain/utility you have to lose as a DPS guardian (which is what I assume you’re trying to fix). Even still:

Powerful Blades:
5% damage increase when using a Sword or Spear. Critical hits gives one condition and it’s remaining duration back to struck targets (20 second cool down).

This would help with some of the sustain Guardians lose when trying to spec as DPS in PvP. Also has synergy with Radiant Power.

More importantly though, I think DPS guardians would benefit from better Hammers and Mace weapons. The last hit of the Auto hit on each takes slightly too long at the moment. Shave that down and these weapons become better DPS options, which are worse damage than sword, but better sustain/soft CC.

So idea:

Mace:
Faithful Strike: 1 second cast —> 1/2 second cast (like sword)

Hammer:
Symbol of Protection: 1 1/4 seconds cast —> 3/4 second cast.

Glacial Heart:
5% damage when using a hammer. Critical hits with hammer chill enemies (100% chance. 10-20 seconds cool down).

This is what I think is more required for Guardians than extra damage on Sword. The damage isn’t the issue.

The sustain on any x/x/30/5/5 build isn’t really that great anyway compared to other classes these days, thanks to various buffs. Used to be sufficient but now I’d definitely class them as ‘low sustain’.

Also the fundamental issue with Focused Mind is the duration and thus timing of the Fury. To purposely make use of it, you have to burn probably JI or Smite Condition. It isn’t really reliable imo. Smite is fine but then with that use you can’t then use it to compound a burst during a channel (since you burnt it for the fury). JI is a teleport and one of your break stuns, which in warrior/necro land are pretty precious. Just don’t think Focused Mind is worth it. Inner Fire is way better anyway.

I see what you’re doing with that build and it’s interesting but outside of using Greatsword, which I’m not really fond of at all, it doesn’t really offer anything over straight up 30 Radiance. With the symbol and root vulnerability, it’s really a hammer/scepter line imo, yet most of the key symbol traits are in honour. While Radiance 15 isn’t massively useful in SPvP, Rad 20 gives you access to 20% burning duration/Inner Fire/Blind Exposure combinations. At a stretch there’s also Powerful Blades and the signet traits. Next update also Searing Flames (doubt it’ll get much use tbh. If it mechanically functions like it does now). I’d almost go as far as saying the proposed buffs make Radiance even better and will ensure it’s still far more useful than Zeal. Oh the irony!

Also rad 25 10% damage is superior to Fiery Wrath because it works on all conditions, and naturally they don’t even have to be yours.

I see what you’re saying but your example is essentially in a vacuum. These builds (0/30/30/5/5 meditations) have little sustain and are literally all attack.

The damage is high for sure (crazy, if you land a full burst sequence), but the guards low HP means if they aren’t running full-glass, most classes will survive the burst and eventually melt you with some BS like condi spam, warrior hulk-smash-my-HP-always-goes-up, stealth/evade spam and more besides.

If you go full glass your burst is epic but if they mitigate any of it and survive, you’ll still eventually drop unless it’s a non-Engi bunker.

Basic auto pressure on it’s own, no matter how much of it you land (thanks to chilled) isn’t enough to kill most targets before they can kill you because as soon as you stray too far away from heavy investment in Valour/Honour and stop reserving focus for defence on 1 hander specs, sustain drops off the face of the earth. Also if VoJ’s proc turns into a ‘root’ you actually lose the extra pressure you would have gotten from the burning.

From an SPvP stand-point Med’s 1-hander Burst guard is insanely fun to play, but it’s just not that useful. As a roamer it’s too slow. As a team-fight character, it’s weaker than other class options, and even other Guard builds! Like say the 0/5/30/30/5 hammer/staff shout build or a symbol variant is like 5 times more useful. Even then you’d still probably prefer a Necro there as that class is ridiculous.

Guardian burst is so obvious that without hard CC it could never be a Hambow 2.0…

Evan Lesh.3295:

Red.3572:

Evan Lesh.3295:

We can’t make any headway on this unless you get a chance to post more information. If you are actively lagging, type ‘/ip’ into chat to get your current server’s IP address, and use the tracert command to gather more information. If you do post again, please include the server IP, the time of day you’re lagging, and the map that you’re on.

Here is how to use a trace route:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162326

Here is a program that will actively do a trace route for you, graph it, and show packet loss:
http://www.pingplotter.com/

I can’t stress enough that just saying “I’m lagging” will not get us any closer to finding a solution. I wish there was more we could do, but we need more data.

Ok lagging here also…

Server address is 206.127.146.49:0

Installed the program you specified. I live in the UK. I’m apparently experiencing a consistent 10-20% Packet loss between London and Frankfurt. I occasionally lose an additional 10-20% just before the PlayNC server hop.

Not sure what else I can provide info-wise that you’d be interested in.

This kind of stuff is great! How does your ping relate to lag and packet loss? The info I’ve seen shows ping being relatively fine, but packet loss corresponds to in-game lag.

Telling us which map you’re in helps too, and whats happening in the map. For instance, are you in the middle of a scarlet invasion? Or are you in a fractal?

I was in a match on Foefire, then Kyhlo SPvP. testing to see if I could play. It was periodically fine, but had intermittent spikes throughout. Couldn’t tell you about ping during those moments since I was in PvP.

There doesn’t seem to be a Scarlet Invasion going on at the moment. I just did a ping while writing this and I’m experiencing seemingly consistent packet loss on the 12th hop at Frankfurt. Between 14-25% (this little app is great!).

Not sure what I’m allowed to post here but the IP of the hop is: 4.69.148.186
DNS name is ae-21-21.ebr2.Frankfurt1.level3.net
Average Response Time 67
Cur (or most recent response time) 71

Hope that helps

Evan Lesh.3295:

We can’t make any headway on this unless you get a chance to post more information. If you are actively lagging, type ‘/ip’ into chat to get your current server’s IP address, and use the tracert command to gather more information. If you do post again, please include the server IP, the time of day you’re lagging, and the map that you’re on.

Here is how to use a trace route:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162326

Here is a program that will actively do a trace route for you, graph it, and show packet loss:
http://www.pingplotter.com/

I can’t stress enough that just saying “I’m lagging” will not get us any closer to finding a solution. I wish there was more we could do, but we need more data.

Ok lagging here also…

Server address is 206.127.146.49:0

Installed the program you specified. I live in the UK. I’m apparently experiencing a consistent 10-20% Packet loss between London and Frankfurt. I occasionally lose an additional 10-20% just before the PlayNC server hop.

Not sure what else I can provide info-wise that you’d be interested in.

Zosk.5609:

I don’t think they are changing it because it’s overpowered in sPvP, therefore your request is kind of weird!

The point I was making is that they’re reducing the initial base duration to 4 seconds per pulse from 8 because Jon Peters believes 4 seconds per pulse that stacks (after giving you the initial 8 seconds) would be overpowered. That’s obviously why it was lowered to 4 with this proposed change.

4 seconds initial swiftness is ‘worse’ than 8 seconds initial swiftness by a long shot. In any PvP format. The only time it would be significantly better is if you were rotating points after a cap/de-cap and knew for a fact you’d be leaving point within 5-10 seconds due to zero resistance.

It has some great benefits at the start of a match 5 or so seconds before the match begins but it’s not really worth it in the grand scheme of things in my opinion

To be honest I don’t understand what Jon Peters is so worried about. Guardians won’t become speed demons with Staff by itself…

I don’t see what the harm would be if the initial pulse applied 8 seconds then the remaining applied 2-4 seconds after that. So what if it stacks with other sources of swiftness? In the grand scheme of things what difference does it really make?

The fact that Guardian has to use staff for any real source of swiftness in the first place is hugely limiting all by itself, especially in SPvP. Some builds are just weaker with staff, despite it being a solid weapon (Scepter/XXX is just stronger). Ironically most of these tend to be DPS/Roamer builds which ‘need’ the speed to compete with other roamers in the first place…

As an aside what’s mildly disconcerting is all the time being spent trying to breathe life into the graveyard that is Zeal, when conceptually all the useful secondary traits are are master level (Focus Mastery, Scepter Power, and at a stretch, Zealous Blade).

The reason I call them secondary is because without Valor/Honour/minimum minor Virtues/Radiance, Guardian sustain is trash. In this game damage is insanely high and basic TTK (time to kill) is so low that every build needs sustain to even be remotely viable, especially for a painfully slow class with almost no disengage.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we really appreciate you guys giving us a heads up with the potential changes so early on. Thanks a lot.

I’d like to comment on some of the Guardian changes if I may:

While mostly interesting (The Searing Flames and Supreme Justice changes are very encouraging. Even the Pure of Heart has promise), I feel that with the Powerful Blades, and Zealous Blades changes, you may be pushing damage Guardians even further towards sword and greatsword, and the other really cool, but much less popular weapons will see even less play.

Mace:
For damage it’s quirky but I like it. Probably not as strong as sword now but the difference is small enough. With the extra damage on sword it makes it an even weaker choice that it already is, so I’d like to see some Quality of Life changes for it to keep it interesting.

Faithful Strike: From 1 second —> 0.5 second casting time (like sword third hit).

Considering sword auto 3rd hit, this doesn’t seem special enough to warrant the painfully slow last hit, especially with the lack cleave. It’s hard enough staying on targets as it is with limited access to swiftness on the slow Guardian. Would really appreciate this change.

Symbol of Faith: 1.25 second cast to 0.75 second casting time (like Symbol of Swiftness)

Similarly this just feels painfully slow. Symbol of Swiftness on staff feels great speed-wise. The current speed just makes Guardian mace even less fun to use.

Hammer:
The break-stun on Launch change hurt hammer Banish pretty badly, especially with such obvious animation anticipation (which in itself is awesome. Really high skill cap to use. Thanks for that)… Also it’s always had issue with the last hit on the auto like mace. It’s just too sluggish. I like the idea of the seeming weight of the weapon but it’s just a bit too much. Especially considering how great Warrior hammer auto feels.

Symbol of Protection: Cast time 1.25 seconds —> 0.75 seconds. Also allow the trait Writ of Persistence behave the same as all the other symbols. It seems it doesn’t currently add 2 seconds of duration. Potentially a bug.

Banish: 25 seconds cool down —> 20 seconds (in sync with GS 4, and make it slightly more effective).

Ring of Warding: 40 seconds —> 30 seconds.

The area denial benefit of this skill has taken a bit of a beating thanks to the ever increasing number of Stability sources. This will also bring it in line with GS 5, Binding Blade.

Glacial Heart: Cool down 30 seconds —> 20 seconds. 5% damage increase with the Hammer. Triggers on landing Mighty Blow with 100% chance.

This trait probably has the coolest make in the game! It’s unfortunately a little underwhelming. Hammer really falls behind the other weapons in damage and while the animation and cool down changes above would really help, I feel it needs a 5% damage bonus trait to stay competitive. Also the random nature of the Chilled proc is too painful to use for PvP purposes at the moment. I think tying it to a skill would make it insanely cool and almost as cool as it’s name.

Thanks for reading my WoT!

Problem is a ‘full on’ launch is already a CC and kinda makes the chill redundant. It would be like adding a Daze on to a Stun. The new chill is actually AoE on up to 5 targets so you don’t have to worry about that restriction.

This is why I suggested Mighty Blow for hammer. Would help land the full auto chain and place the Symbol closer to where you want it, or even a Mighty Blow Chill after the Symbol to ensure you get as much damage from it as possible.

I’m not convinced it does ‘more’ DPS than the others but I imagine it’s pretty close. Also in most typical PvE scenarios, mob attacks are easy to quantify, so I imagine planning a Prot Strike is pretty easy.
The fact that it has almost zero channel if done precisely enough means it’s DPS could be pretty high. The DPS of every skill that has channelling time can be deceptive. Warrior 100 Blades is a good example. Sometimes it’s not even worth using a ‘burst’ skill as it can have lower DPS than basic auto attack. Guardian sword auto for example has better DPS than Zealot’s Defence if I recall correctly. Not 100% sure.

In the context of SPvP and area denial, much of the traits the weapon has make it more interesting that it initially appears on paper.

Same reasons hammer is generally a better weapon than GS while looking a lot worse on paper. It’s has much better area/point denial. Let’s ignore the really inconsiderate launch/break stun change for a second, which basically destroyed Guardian hammer. Even though in the same patch they supposedly ‘nerfed’ warrior hammer/mace with a sigil change that barely mattered and ‘buffed’ it to compensate. I’m sure this has nothing to do with some of the Devs playing predominantly warrior (Cough Powerr Cough). Why didn’t the Banish CD get reduced? Why didn’t Ring of Warding get the used while moving change even though Guardian is much slower than warrior? yeah…

Coming back to Mace, finishing people off with it is it’s weakest feature, but then that’s more a problem with DPS Guardians in general. I mean think about the other weapons in this same regard versus good players…

It’s more or less the same deal because a player with an available dodge can negate all of them almost entirely because of the channels and no hard CC outside of root to help them land. It’s why DPS Guards aren’t really that viable in the first place, and why Guards are actually one of the most balanced classes in game. You get nothing for free. Compared to the other DPS/burst available in game, they are pretty terrible…

As has been alluded, Mace is like hammer but better and worse in some ways. While it’s harder to purpose place it’s burst, it comes with much better built in defence/sustain (blocks+healing > Protection considering ridiculous condition damage and other sources of Prot like Courage on spikes) and it’s symbol pressure can be placed where and when you want it, on demand (the location dependant hammer symbol can be more of an annoyance in SPvP tbh).

It has much better symbol trait synergy (Writ of Persistence, and also potentially Writ of Exaltation, are a must to even consider using Mace), and you don’t get the option of a Mace of Justice equivalent with hammer. That 5% damage increase is pretty huge and the 250 healing power is almost ridiculous considering 30 in honour gives you 300 which aids the sustain.
Every class has much better sustain these days so you need as much as you can get even on damage builds now. Buffs to sustain for other classes haven’t really considered guardians imposed weaknesses as an excuse for it’s built in sustain (Cough Warrior Cough).

Also Block > Blind for 101 reasons (Cough Zerker Stance Cough). Especially when you have a perma’ source on AoE blind with VoJ.

Essentially Mace isn’t the best damage weapon in the world no. It almost seems counter to it’s seeming purpose and in an environment like WvW it’s pretty terrible compared to sword. However in the context of SPvP where fighting on location and point control is everything, it’s a lot better than it initially appears after some time with it.

Edit: Wow, wall of text…

CMF.5461:

I’m kind of surprised people are still responding after a clear and definitive answer, including a information source link was provided by Aza (thanks Aza!)….. /boggled by others still posting opinions instead of reading what was already said.

Seriously? There’s no need to feel so embarrassed that you end up coming off like this ^. Anyway mace has already been recognised and utilised for a while now. For instance take a look at some of Silven’s burst builds from like more than 6 months ago…

Yeah, it’s always been like that. That’s why Mace is really strong on spike/symbol DPS builds.

sorrow.2364:

Immunity has always been a stupid mechanic in this game and stability is a part of it…

I agree with this entirely… Yet the game needs stability. Which just says that there are issues with the proliferation of CC’s more than anything else.

Basically there are too many in the game, or their risk/reward structures are badly balanced.

Problem with this trait is it’s completely random (it even needs two random conditions to be met which is just shockingly bad), you can’t plan anything around it and in spite of that it has a stupid cool down.

Really not a fan of passive CD trait effects but a way they could make it semi-decent is tying it to an active skill. Something like:

“Mighty Blow, Zealot’s Defence, Whirling Wrath, Protector’s Strike, Smite, and Orb of Light Chills enemies on hit” 4 seconds, 30 second CD.

This would see play for sure and would actually be worth it’s mid tier trait slot. Whirling Wrath might be a bit too strong though but w/e, players can still act to mitigate the damage. GS is bad anyway imo…

Also it should get a frost blue flame effect/trail on your weapon when it’s available and an icon like Shield Of Wrath/Virtues etc. The frost effect would allow for counter-play as the enemy could see it’s up and it would simply look awesome!

Personally, outside of fighting ranged targets without ‘pets’ I truly think Mace is superior to sword in TPvP. Especially for DPS/Burst builds Med builds. The extra sustain makes a big difference with all the crazy stuff flying around these days.

If you wanna’ try something quirky, here:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7BdZ;1NFF30I3wF-90;9;59TO4;15;006B56;2LJk6;2F-03F-038BO

The Monks change opens up Mace of Justice, and with Writ of Persistence, it can all but match Sword for damage and potentially has a stronger spike. Honor minor is open season (Symbol range trait can work but you rarely need it), and CoP can be subbed for SyS if you’re having trouble with warriors (which you shouldn’t be with this sustain, just time those dodge rolls, VoJ blinds, VoC’s, SoWrath, and Protector hits and you’ll be fine). If the war decides to bail you can’t chase but you shouldn’t lose either.

Hammer/Mace+shield, GS/Mace shouldn’t cause much hassle but LBow/Hammer, and a good Axe+Mace/Random can be a pain. watch those Eviscerate crits.

If you wanna’ go full glass, Ogres, zerker ami can work, and if Condi’s are being a pain then Lyssa’s but tbh the condi’ clear is all it has. Sceptre+X/Mace+X is still awesome imo but you want the mobility to roam and might stacks on Staff for group fights, despite otherwise being inferior to Sceptre+X imo.

I understand their point to be honest. They want to make the game as accessible as possible. An entirely fair position to take, however there’s a layered approach that is suited to exactly that.

Look at Joon’s Skull Crack example: The skill will always garner a CC effect if it lands in spite of defensive skills. Always… However the more debilitating effect requires more effort to produce.

A new player who has mastered the ability to activate the skill on a target will receive reward for doing so. Eventually, through experience or simple reading the skill, said player might notice that with this extra effort employed, this extra Risk, a stronger CC effect, and thus greater Reward, can be garnered.

The inexperienced player still gets a very similar experience, despite not being as skilled. Ranger Greatsword 5 already works like this, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that skill.

The point I’m trying to make is that depth can be layered into skills. There’s nothing that says a skill has to be useless until it’s mastered. At the same time, cheapening an ability by making its potential easy to realise is just as shallow.

I read an article recently that interviewed Nolan Bushnell, the father of Atari (40 years ago now).

He was asked: “How do Atari games compare with what they’ve spawned?”

Mr. Bushnell: “Since we were so limited with graphics then, we had to focus on the gameplay. We developed a philosophy that the games should be easy to learn, impossible to master. Some classic games are much better balanced between the risk and reward of play. In Pong, the hardest shot to return was also the hardest shot to make.”

While some of it is directly related to the Arcade games they made at the time (“Impossible to master”), everything else he wrote is entirely rock solid. Risk and reward balance. The last part about Pong is complete and utter gold…

Rieselle.5079:

I’d just like to mention that in terms of risk/reward, “oh no i wasted my skill and now it’s on cool down” is not really a very good way of implementing risk.

First of all its quite passive and hidden. Maybe the highest quality example is punishing someone for using their stun break. Most other examples of this type of risk isn’t very satisfying for the opponent, and isn’t very visible to spectators.

Contrast to fighting games, where you have moments of “oh, he just missed a big attack, nows my chance to open up a giant can of whup kitten!”

Sure, we also need the more subtle forms of attrition and punishment, but gw2 tends to lack those exciting moments. (in direct combat – it has big moments strategically like guild lord ganks etc)

What you write and the example you give of fighting games are exactly opposite… A Player missing a big attack in a fighting game is the same as a Warrior ‘missing’ a Skull Crack. The target is not stunned and they can counter-attack.

It isn’t ‘hidden’ if Skull Crack has obvious animation/effects as the target isn’t stunned or obviously dodge rolls away, and it isn’t ‘passive’ at all as the warrior ‘actively’ failed and just used it wrong.

You mention someone using a break-stun wrong is a better example risk/reward. This is somewhat false as you need a balance of both for a good fighting experience. They are equally important.

If you put all the burden of skill on reactive concerns like counter-measures and counter-play (stun-breaks, dodge roll etc.) you end up with an experience that favours using as many attacks as possible hoping one of them will defeat the skill of the defender which naturally leads to spam.

If there’s no ‘risk’ for the ‘reward’ of attack usage, and all the burden is on the defender to not get destroyed, you have no reason to hold back and you should be spamming as much as possible. Is any of this familiar in the context of the current game?

To use your fighting game analogy, imagine all the big attacks having no real risk. Defence (blocking, dodging, parrying, jumping, whatever…) becomes completely meaningless and the only way to play would be to have the best attacks. It’s just an arms race…

Edit:
Hah! Joon, you beat me to it with the ‘arms race’ thing. Just goes to show does it not?

The reason Immob was so good in the first place was because it could be a game-changer or it could simply do nothing depending on how it was used. If ‘plays’ were planned around a root, it could allow a damage spike to go through fully without a dodge roll negating any of it.

Sure, you could stack roots before, but the old version required high-level coordination and timing to do so. Even then a window of opportunity would present itself ‘between each application’ allowing the rooted player to save themselves from the death chain.

This meant timing the second root wasn’t always so obvious and needed thought, even theory craft. High risk/High Reward right there.

Now with Arena Net’s latest change, you don’t have to think any more. Just use as much Immobilise as you can fit into a player/team build, then dump as much damage on that location as possible. Dude isn’t going anywhere…

Sure you could band-aid fix this by making dodge work through Immob (making another pointless feature of the game), or some other indirect arbitrary crap like more Zerker Stance type skills, or Purging Flames style changes to pretend the game has any depth, degenerating the game experience even further into a skill-less void of nonsense… Or you could simply return the only ‘good’ condition in the game back to being exactly that. One of the ONLY High risk/High reward features.

Wonder what will happen… A return of the old Immobilise, or a pointless round of changes across 6 months that dance around a problem that didn’t need to exist in the first place…

Excellent work.

This is what I would like to see more of from the developers. Your Skull Crack example is perfect. I’d also add a bit more telegraph in the initial ability but your general direction is superb.

The reason focusing on skill-based, high risk/high reward gameplay ‘first’ as a priority over everything else is simple: This is what makes the combat moments themselves shine… This is Bull Strike, Diversion, or Reversal Of Fortune from GW 1. It makes playing the game reward in itself when you do well. No matter your personal ability.

This is more important than even balance for many a reason. Least of all because that is a battle that will almost never end anyway… Even when you approach it, to keep things fresh, the meta has to shift and you can easily end up losing it again. There’s no foul in that. Constant positive, lateral flux is healthy.

High risk/high reward, high-skill mechanics are almost black-box isolated forms of ‘win’. Have a potentially problematic skill in game? Adjust it’s active risk/reward relationship.

This can be applied to almost any skill in game, and while the change in itself won’t necessarily ‘fix’ the game, it can easily vastly improve the day to experience of playing the game.

Again, these are things you can fix a little at a time and almost always make the game better for it. I mean what’s the point in fixing balance if the game-experience is essentially shallow and without texture?

1. Actual SKILL BASED play…
2. Balance.
3. Meaningful PvP rewards/progression.

Seriously though, if you fail to establish the first point, you’re just wasting your time doing anything else. Passive play like condition-spam is bad. Low risk/high reward mechanics are bad. Evade spam however achieved resulting is stupid RNG is bad.

You can dress up a kitten all you want and it’ll still be a kitten .

I mean stuff like the Immobilise change as an example is absolutely mind-boggling… Literally the only good condition in game was turned to trash in an instant, with a change anyone who even hot-joins there way through the game could have told you was misguided.

It essentially turned a fun, highly skilful, high risk/high reward mechanic into something as degenerate as stealth.

The reason this is virtually meaningless is simple… Retention.

Winning is certainly everything but what happens when people no longer want to play? You have a ‘dead’ game. Not saying this game is dead, but I think you get the point.

If players don’t want to play, then eventually everyone loses, for you can’t win if there isn’t a game…

Still, bravo. You actually got me to post about a game I no longer play!

Seriously? You end with you’re going to make Stir-fry chicken for yourself? You need to be re-balanced! When you make that, you make it for everyone. AoE skill, 4 hour CD.

On a serious note, I understand what you’re saying for sure. You could implement what I suggest without changes to defence also. For example, fire and forget boons like Retaliate. This skill has so much potential for skilful play it’s unreal…

Imagine:

> Player X just got a immob on them

> Player Y thinks “Could be a fake out” But decides to drop a short duration (3 sec or so), costly, AoE Retal that’s can truly reflect 50% of all incoming damage and reduces damage by that same number.

Outcome A:
Player X gets spiked but is saved by epic retal skill ‘Stir Fry Chicken’ and the enemy team take some team-wide damage and fail a spike.

Outcome B:
It was a fake and the enemy team burns some sacrificial CD’s but have caused Player Y to burn his ‘Stir Fry Chicken’ and his team is now more susceptible to a weaker spike the from the enemy team.

Then you go “oh sh..” as you throw in variables like the enemy dropping a modified Chilblains on Player Y before the immob…

(Yeah you could totally merge Protection and Retaliate and achieve a much more interesting boon.)

Personally I just don’t see why conditions are about damage in the first place… There are some potentially powerful and interesting effects in there but instead the focus is on how many you have on you and how far they drop your hp. I mean honestly how redundant is that when you already have a power spec to begin with?

This is why I’m in favour of nuking the condition damage system for the most part and make conditions outside of potentially bleeding to be more about effect. A soft CC effect some classes have that augments their damage.

Chill for example is effectively a weak version of Diversion from GW 1 (one of the best designed skills in the game). Using a skill while this debuff was on you would take that skill out of play for a significantly encounter defining amount of time.

Imagine if Necro Staff 3 or Chilblains did semi-decent damage, was single target, well telegraphed, was costly to use (I guess in this game that’s simply animation time and cool down), but utterly discouraged skill spam out-side of auto attack? If conditions were played like that in an environment with controlled evades like Helseth and Jax have mentioned, you wouldn’t need so many of them on one build and they would be so much more rewarding to play…

Edit:

Wanted to add that immobilise already works like this. Guardian sceptre immobilise for example is a perfect example of how conditions should work. It’s insanely powerful , short duration, yet doesn’t do a single bit of damage…. It facilitates damage.

Completely agree…

The sad thing is the trait/gear system itself is inherently passive. It’s a very difficult situation to improve. The way I’d do it is to put more emphasis on the active skills, remove strong instant abilities and improve telegraphing to the point where almost every skill has it in spades and the frame timings are consistent.
Only issue is that then you’ll run the risk of being in a situation where the trait and gear system almost doesn’t matter…

@Jax:

The things you wrote are solid for sure. Some are more passive than I’d be comfortable with but mostly good nonetheless… Problem is I think these would just be a band-aid fix to the problem and we’d end up going in power-creep circles.

GSSBlunaspike is completely correct on this: It’s the condi builds with high offensive output and high investment into defence that’s causing all the issues. Buffing condi removal has the same effect as nerfing condi builds, but it just makes the game even more complicated…

In PvP they need to be forced to use more offensive stats to make the condition damage more effective, so yes a ‘nerf’ to those builds. Arena Net are skirting around the issue (which is fair since condition damage as an option needs time to work) but in all fairness, it’s dull play and they just need to nerf condi’ damage and be done with it. They’ve tried to make condition damage a choice but it failed imo. It should go back to being an augmentation of physical damage instead.

From a Tpvp point of view, the class is fine. Is everything perfect? Of course not, but it’s far from broken… The only thing it really lacks is easy access to swiftness outside of Staff, but then you don’t need massive amounts of run speed to rotate points.

The annoyance of having to become a condition bot because of all the condi spam? Hell yes but every class has to deal with that. It’s so bad that two class are all but gone from high-level meta because they just can’t deal with the pressure…

Zeal tree? Yeah, it’s mostly a joke, but that’s because it has zero utility, not because it’s damage traits are weak. Some people cite warrior as an example. Some of the strongest War builds at the moment either don’t spec highly into Strength (the Zeal counterpart) or don’t spec into it all. Utility is what keeps you up to wade through the bs of various meta’s, not 10% damage with this weapon or under this condition. This is why these type of trait-lines are generally garbage for PvP…

Last thing is class archetype: Some classes, while having varying ability to bend to different roles, will always point towards a specific direction. You won’t see a Thief bunker for example outside of some broken mechanic (perma evades making it a target you don’t want to play slot-machine on with your CD’s). Despite what Arena Net may or may not have have said/wrote, that’s the way it is.

I know WvW and PvE have their own unique problems, but from a Tpvp standpoint, the only thing wrong with Guardian is the environment it’s in, not the class itself. An environment that has already pushed out two other classes, while guardian still sees play…

Focused Mind was never worthless. Not at all… It allowed you to stack damage on a burst while channelling another skill. It gave you the ability to drop a heal on yourself and AoE damage even while stunned (in addition to VoR active heal), and it let you remove fear without using a break stun.

Making it passive is absolutely huge for meditation builds. The addition of Fury means you can even drop RHS if you want. This basically allows you to run a hammer on one of those weapons sets for the control, and a blast finisher for the purging flames fire field. Or you can stick with mace and run the Mace of Justice trait without losing anything.

The Launch break stun was a massive nerf to hammer though, especially in Tpvp. Banish CD probably needs to come down to compensate. Also with all the new stability sources in game, Ring of Warding needs a touch to. I’d even say because of these, Banish should be on 20 seconds and Ring of Warding on 30, base.

Wish-list changes:
Improve Torch 5. Make it remove conditions from yourself as well as allies during the channel, and make it a blast finisher.

Improve Shield. Make Shield 5 reflect projectiles for it’s full duration, and make the detonate heal a blast finisher. Make Shield 4 also add 5-10 seconds of swiftness on top of the protection.

Add a minor trait under Zeal (I dunno’, nuke Shattered Aegis or Revenge of the Fallen) that grants 5-10 seconds of Swiftness when Virtue of Justice is activated.

Overall, there’s more work to be done but the balance direction is fairly solid.

So quick question: What’s with the ‘extra’ two weeks? Not to be a pain or anything but we were kinda’ hoping the patch was for October 1st.

With this date it’s more than another month away. The current meta is seriously hard to love.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Also, we want to be more transparent with balance, so we’re going to be posting a list of the things that we’re working on now, so that you guys can see balance changes earlier than usual.

I’ll post that in a bit, hopefully today.

That’s a really good approach. Thanks for taking the time and effort to include the player base more in these things.

This is essentially an alternative to having a test server. Test servers are absolutely amazing for fixing stuff like this, but it has several inherent problems and sometimes just isn’t logistically practical. It seems so easy to ask for something like that on a forum but seriously, a test server can create as many problems as it solves.

Amins.3710:

^^ It’s not about getting bent.

If the OP is going to start down the path of an “Interviewer”, he/she needs to be mindful of what they’re writing and what they’re trying to convey.

Because all those other guys you just mentioned (Teldo, Ostrich, Super), are now sub-par Guardians….. and how does one (an interviewer) follow up w/ the next story seing as how you’ve just done “the best”…

Careers over dude. Best Retire.

And I ~HIGHLY~ doubt that is the case.

Semantics, yes, however it’s an important lesson to take away.

What ‘Guardians’ did I mention? Haha… Pathetic.

Honestly this thread would be incredibly entertaining if it wasn’t so pathetically sad… If the player in question wasn’t one of the best ‘known’ guardians around, I might be able to understand the entirely immeasurable kitten, but just wow…

It’s incredibly disappointing seeing good players get so bent out of shape over some superficial nonsense…

Nice interview btw though. If you can get Teldo, Ostrich, or Super in there next, that’d be pretty cool.

I think we’re on the same page now. Thanks for the understanding.

Healing Signet is certainly teetering on the edge of what I feel is acceptable for the balance of the warrior class. It either needs a slight nerf tap or ideally, Berserker Stance needs a hit (in the region of 25-50% duration reduction instead of virtual immunity) to allow poison to do it’s job on the healing. A counter, warrior already has further ‘counter-play’ to in the form of Cleansing Ire.

It would be a sweet-spot balance situation and promote some great play opportunity, as long as poison application/durations were controlled more aggressively.

Still, this is about guardian…

Now we’ve cleared that up, I completely get what you mean about VoR outside of heal/support-centric builds. It seems it could warrant being stronger all round.

I’ve often mused that Inspired Virtue’s effects should be a standard, and that the trait should double the boon duration of those applied effects. This way the same 5 points in Virtues bolsters, in this case VoR in a way that improves the healing power of the skill overall, but doesn’t super-charge the active to the point it get’s dangerously close to becoming a second heal skill.

The only thing is, 10 seconds of protection might be pushing it though on Courage. Could almost be considered broken… The max duration on that would have to be something like 7-8 seconds before boon duration. Especially since it’s AoE and Renewed Focus can double that… Is there enough boon hate to make it fine? Not entirely sure…

As to more interesting forms of active healing, the idea of having it tied to other skills is a strong one and the class is well designed enough to already have some examples already.

Staff is fantastic in this regard. Orb spike as I call it, is great… While staff isn’t a primary DD weapon by any measure, this skill pierces, can do considerable critical damage ( especially powered by Empower), and has such a ridiculously short CD (traited), it’s hard to match it with efficient usage. On top of all that, it has a light heal attached and a fairly strong AoE detonated heal (with weak damage), balanced by increased CD. Shield 5 of course has something similar also.

If some of this skill duality was pushed onto the more offensive but weaker weapon skills, we’d be looking at some interesting options.

Sword 2 is incredibly weak damage but great utility. For extra CD cost it could detonate into a heal.

Hammer 5 (while not weak) could create a short duration water field.

Torch 5 could detonate into a burst heal scaled by the duration of the base channel, making it not the most useless skill in the game.

Things like that could work. Although if damage and skill-spam were toned down, none if this might be all that necessary…

Again the Heal Signet comparison is unfair in my opinion because Heal Signet is a ‘choice’…

A Warrior sacrifices a strong, active heal for an incredibly strong passive heal over time. (Possibly stronger than it should be, even if the active part is almost garbage).

A Guardian ‘always’ has VoR in addition to a strong active heal of their choice… On top of other traited stuff like MF/AH/Selfless etc.. If the active heal is used, VoR still does it’s job, with the active component still available.

It seems you want to look at comparisons of purely passive healing, but I don’t think it’s accurate to kitten balance like that. Passive and active forms of healing can’t really be considered separately if you’re trying to gauge class healing strength. Nevermind the other forms of damage mitigation, which could be considered an indirect form of ‘healing’ also.

It’s a very different situation for both classes. Also I’m under no illusions about warriors and their sustain, but it really isn’t comparable to that of a guardian. In this condi spam environment, most of that comes from Berserker Stance and Cleansing Ire.

As to your last points, I fully agree with you that it could be improved in certain ways without becoming too imbalanced. Boosting the passive however is a poor way to do it imo. Cool down (or CD scaling with virtues) adjustments and changes of that kind are more interesting and better for the game.

Contrary to what you wrote about the passive vs, the active, I personally think VoR is (and should be) all about the active. It’s good for you as much as it’s good for your allies. Sure, you lose your passive but as we’ve already ascertained, it’s not a massive loss anyway, especially when traited to AoE clear conditions. Coupled with Renewed Focus, it’s pretty strong.

Again, I’m really not against improving things, but I’d just prefer if those improvements are considerate of the classes abilities as a whole, not just regeneration, and the less passive those are the better.

The work is good, but I take issue with you expecting a ‘passive’, class archetypal ability to be as strong as an actual healing skill, or some type of trait variant that requires an actual cost.

Comparisons to Heal Signet are unfair because they’re out of context. In practice a warrior running heal signet, especially in PvP, doesn’t have the sustain of a similarly geared guardian because of many additional factors.

The description of VoR on the official website essentially states it provides regeneration… Which is does. The wiki seems to attribute the guardians ability to sustain itself to VoR alone, which everyone knows isn’t the case at all. If anything needs to be changed, it’s the description, not VoR.

VoR obviously appears to be balanced around the class as a whole.

GW 1 build variety centred around a choice different ‘active’ skills. An exercise of hard balancing between utility and damage because you simply didn’t have the same skills when you changed your 8 slots. There was also cross pollination between classes with secondaries. For theses reasons different builds were incredibly distinct. Both in how they played and what the hell they looked like.

Build variety in GW2 centres around ambiguous stuff like passive effects and ‘gear’ choices, and then beefier stuff like weapon selection.

In my opinion, it’s not an inherently bad idea. It’s pretty cool for the most part. However putting most of your ‘variety’ in passive effects just appears to be the poorer of the two choices. The former is simply purer lacks unnecessary detail. GW2 is almost verbose…

Quantifying an opposing players passive effects verges on being obtuse. It’s far less immediate, and ultimately less rewarding than the hard divide of X player brought Y skill.

Trying to fake out a warriors Bulls Strike while running a flag, or baiting interrupts while trying to RoF (Reversal of Fortune) a spike, or top people up with LoD (Light of Deliverance), is just better than trying to work out if someone’s ‘passive’ ICD is up or not…

“When you walk through the garden, you better watch your back…” The Blind Boys from Alabama should have prepared you! I understand the pressures of a dev for sure, and for the record, you do exceedingly good work… However, I’m not at work now so I can ask for things from Santa all I want!

Spare a little thought for our old friend the Z Key! Just in case you missed it among the bigger things!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Idea-Return-Zaishen-Key-s-to-PvP/first#post2754209

I hope you’re on the panel for State of the Mists btw. Would be a very welcome addition imo.

The thing is, liked wrote on it’s own it would be a nice system, but it could also be a platform for adding other PvP reward items as well in an albeit RnG way. Would really like to read more rational responses to this.

Would also like some input from Jon Peters and/or Jonathan Sharp. Are these enough details for you guys? What do you think in general?

I hear what you’re saying…

I’d just like to see Jon Peters step in and say “this is an idea we can consider” or “we can’t do this for various reasons”.

A simple dialogue from which other such things could spring… No, I won’t be holding my breathe for it, of course but the lights haven’t gone out in the Mists yet.

Did you really just ask “…why would they even want to make pve people play pvp?…”

Anyway, whether Anet wants to or not is up to them. The thread is about what ‘we’ PvP’ers want.

Jon Peters asked us for specifics ‘details’. So here’s a suggestion with some…

What do ‘you’ want from PvP?

In GW 1 players could get Zaishen Keys from playing PvP. These keys were only available through PvP and could be freely traded amongst players.

They essentially opened a chest in the game that could grant you anything from dyes to weapons, with the more valuable stuff being much rarer (iirc, been a while since I opened one). I also remember there being some key items that couldn’t be acquired any other way than from the Zaishen Chests.

It essentially gave PvP’ers a currency to trade with PvE’ers, and also gave PvE’ers a reason to join PvP. Those who wanted to open the chests but didn’t want to PvP could just buy them from others.

I think bringing this system back for Team and Solo Arena would be great. As in after winning a certain amount of games or something (more so for Solo Arena obviously), players could be awarded keys to open the chest that I guess would live in the Mists. Top, really rare, item drops could be Exotics, High-end crafting mat bundles, Champion drop boxes, really rare mini’s and more…

However which way the awards system would work, it would boost the amount of bodies in PvP and give PvP’ers some progression in other parts of the game. The system could also be a platform for other unique PvP rewards like unique to PvP skins and accessories (which could also be used in PvE, like how the Zenith skins work but I guess a one time deal per drop).

I’m pretty sure it’s been brought up before but there’s no harm in going over it again. What do other’s think of it?

I think this is a great idea.

All the most prolific players have voiced their concerns many times, but on separate occasions. It would be a much more concise effort to put much of it together in one place (in this case, one recorded stream). If any developer truly cares about what the top tier players think about the game, they have a very easy to find source.

I’d only advise keeping it concise and try to not repeat the same things over and over again (it’s easy to do). At the same time though, make it as long as it needs to be. Do not cap it to a certain amount if time. Talk about every single class if you have to.

A pre-planned, pre-decided topic structure with some leeway set aside for topical drift, might be a good way to set things up.

Me and mine will definitely be tuning in for this. Please make it worth-while.

Thing is, VoR is more about the active than the passive. That’s kinda’ been the whole point. Active abilities will always be more desirable than passive in the interest of player skill. Although I guess this is more from a PvP stand-point.

Much of what’s wrong with the PvP game currently are all the passive stuff going on that’s out of active player control.

The Guardian, contrary to popular belief, is a fantastic design. Almost all it’s strongest abilities are active, distinct, and mostly well balanced. The Virtues are a good example of this.