Guild Wars 2

Xenesis.6389:

You said it yourself, players were asking for “buffs” for their classes like the tempest that showed itself to be weak. Asking to be overpower would be a class that is already on top of the food chain and asking for more buffs, in which case it’s up to Anet to refuse and explain if they want, why those changes are not needed.

Now what you and Roy are saying is it’s the players fault for the elite specs being overpowered because of their requests, and really it’s just the players role to provide feedback however insane it might be. Anet has the final judgement in balancing, a spec is overpowered because Anet chose to implement it that way. You can throw 20 different crazy requests at them, and if they decide to implement all 20 without concern over balancing that’s Anet’s fault, not the player.

Anet are the ones that are suppose to have a vision for the class and how it should perform, they can take request from players for improvements, as is done with every single game out there, but it’s up to them to filter and implement the appropriate fixes if needed. Of the 20 crazy requests if maybe 2 sound reasonable for balance, then maybe they can implement it and see how it goes.

If the players were misguided in their requests then so was Anet for listening and implementing changes that made those specs overpowered, but ultimately it’s the developers fault for making changes to new traits, new specs, new overall combat changes, and then not even giving a kitten for over a year on how they have affected the game.

Players will always ask for buffs or changes to a class whether it under or over performing, performance which is seen differently to every player playing or not playing that class. Roy said the community asked for overpowered specs, I say they asked for fixes.

Developers are the ones that are suppose to judge if a class is under or over performing and then implement appropriate changes. Anet stated they would try to keep the elite specs in line with old specs, they failed to do so and probably for the simple reason to keep selling the expansion.

Bottom line is the overpowered elite specs is the fault of Anet, not the community, they asked for balance fixes which to this day they are still asking for.

Thanks for the spot-check on the patch date.

On the topic of WvW and what OP said, I still believe my response is relevant and sound.

Now on to this knot you’ve tangled yourself in: You ought to skim over the forum posts from the beta tests to realize where I’m coming from when I say the community asked for these over powered spec’s. What we’re having here is a difference of opinion: You believe Anet is more or less fully responsible for the current state and I believe players influence game development.

Understand that the end goal of my original post argued that it’s not the players that are ruining roaming, but the lack of variety in choice of builds that doesn’t allow. You have your opinion, acknowledged. I have mine. Let’s get this thread back on topic.

The July 2015 specialization change patch and the community asking for more over powered elite specs’ brought WvW roaming to where it is now. The OP of this thread mentions grouping up and hiding near objective portals as the culprit of the progression of the culture of the WvW game mode, however I disagree. Naturally, if you cannot beat the other guy, in a game where there are guilds of people, you call on a group to help. The issue shows itself when those more people come, as you quickly realize that builds that you once ran are now obsolete or counter a significantly less amount of compositions that exist in the game mode. These over powered elite spec’s pigeonhole the bulk of players into basing their builds off these spec’s, while the July 2015 patch introduced a less selective and personalized way of choosing traits, which resulted in just that: A less selective and personalized way of choosing traits.

We are stuck waiting on Anet to release the second expansion pack in the hopes that the new elite specs add build variety and viability of classes in WvW. I do not believe that even a tremendous amount of balancing and developer attention towards the game mode would do the community any good -that isn’t to say that there are not skill balance issues out there, because there are and they’ve been mentioned on this forum; however, with all the tweaks Anet could make now, they would only serve as a ‘bandaid’ until we get new content.

So, with the hopes of the next expansion in mind, I hope Anet will allow skill, skill here meaning the ability of a player to do something well, to perform over the current power creep that comes with having little variety, and that they take my opinion over that of the OP’s, because I believe roaming in WvW, despite the tower huggers and gank-squads, is fixable.

My top five priorities would be:

1. Balance the game mode -roaming is only viable on a few classes and specs due to the amount of stability or stuns a class can dish out. Most of us roamers in T1 just form dueling spots around SMC because we know certain classes can /faceroll their keyboard and never worry about being beaten in a 1vX situation (looking at you, druid). Likewise, condition dmg in the WvW game mode is superior to power damage.

2. Give us back the Alpine Borderland maps while the DBL maps are being fixed -the borderlands are not fun to play on due to how the objectives are so widely spaced.

3. Give the WvW a meaningful play experience by adding rewards. So far us WvW’ers have been inventing and coming up with our own motivations to stay in the game mode. As a roamer, I know most faces on my tier. Bring new life to this game mode and new persons by giving it the reward system it deserves. From hearing that this overhaul has been going on for about a year now, I can only expect great things.

4. Have dedicated staff members play the game. Have them tasked to hang out with a community, whether it be a havoc or a zerg or a few roamers, and get to know why it is those groups do what they do over and over again. Join a guild! Or, better yet, find some of those groups in WvW and ask for their “two cents” on a topic of interest. These forum posts are a great and efficient way of collecting data, however, to have one spend the time to truly get to know, live, and experience the issues is a long term value that should not be underestimated. They say effort is the best indicator of interest, you know?

5. Population imbalance does hinder fun game play. Now, I find it totally fine when another server’s zerg outnumbers mine. Totally fine. However, deadzones, where a server does not even have 15 players to defend or ward off two blobs of 40 or so players is quite the trouble. I personally do not know how this can be fixed under the current system, however, I must say that if servers are somehow disbanded because of population balance changes I will be quite sad to see the communities I’ve come to enjoy go.

The warhorn skill “Cyclone” only affects an opposing player once when the skill fact lists it as having 9 impacts.
Guild mates and I tested in our PvP server. We tested to see if the skill would strip more than one stack of stab off an opposing elementalist’s Armor of Earth (10stab). Only 1 stack of stab was ever removed, even when following the cyclone animation.
We also tested if the skill could “pull” a single foe multiple times. The opposing player took a direct hit of Cyclone, taking the effect of pull, then stunbroke. The opposing player then ran into the cyclone after stunbreaking but never was affected after the initial pull.
I expect Cyclone should work similarly to Revenant’s “Surge of the Mists” where a single target potentially may be hit by most of the impacts of that skill.

If any others could run tests of their own and comment or vouch, it’d be greatly appreciated.

Off the top of my head:
•I was confused to not see major changes to ele scepter because those changes were hyped before the launch of the patch | changes to focus were a nice surprise and made an already good weapon better | warhorn was not touched, those skills have needed work since the launch of HoT (bring back boon strip on fire 5, take another look at air 5 and rework it being my personal wants) | change to fresh air cool and to lightning rod appreciated
•Thief autoattacks are hilariously OP, hate being on the receiving end but dishing out the attacks makes thief’s learning curve significantly less due to the ability to spam autos. Still fun though
•So mesmer is not top dog in PvP and WvW roaming. Finally feel I can play mes again without being accused of playing an OP class. I will admit, the chrono cutbacks in alacrity ruin the trait line, seems like there was a disconnect in how the changes would affect alacrity tied to the skills (not enough alacrity given in general it seems)
•Gliding in central Tyria hype matches the patch, everything and more, cool stuff

Hope this helps :x

Coming from a roaming/dueling guild, the permanent application of PPK and no in-combat ressing of defeated toons are very promising and seemingly positive changes to WvW small group/solo initiatives. With blobs as the reigning champions of PPT land, roamers, solo and group comps, to havoc guilds to fight guilds have been few and far between; however, the above offers some interesting incentives.

When solo roaming, many guildies and I would appreciate the added bonus of a PPK reward while we make our way around SMC, capping camp, sentry, rinse and repeat. Albeit, the reward reaches only as far as our pride for our server goes, which for some is nice I guess, however, I’ll keep my trap zipped about needing more self-centric reward in WvW until you unveil the master plan.

For a fight guild, these changes just sound terrific. Giving more tools to help out the coordinated, skilled and preemptive players to have at the blob meta just makes sense. I could also see these changes enticing a few roamers out of the snowballing dueling funk (since there really is no place for roamers in the current meta as it stands). However, especially for those who are skilled at 1vx combat or small scale GvG, this is assuming you continue to execute a multitude of positive changes that cater to these subgroups.

A place where the Blob, the fight guild, the havocs and the roamers all still have a place: The “sneak peek” changes are promising and I am actually intrigued to see what you have in store, Anet.

Overview:
I played tempest d/wh and d/focus solo and group roaming in WvW. For d/wh I tested a cele build with Hoelbrak runes and a power variant with Strength runes. Trait line combos for each varied from a Fire (blinding ashes)/Water (cantrip build)/Tempest; an Air (Lightning Rod)/Water (cantrip build)/Tempest; and an Air (Lightning Rod)/Earth (Diamond Skin)/Tempest (Aura Heal;; synched with shouts).

For d/f I tested only a power build with Strength runes. I played only Fresh Air with either Earth (Diamond Skin)/Tempest or Water (cantrip build)/Tempest because overloading Air Overload every seven seconds was just too fun.

Feedback:
-Dagger/Warhorn: In my experience, with the above builds, roaming d/wh is a bit tricky and proved sub par when put toe to toe with the other roaming metas. With wh’s skills being mostly limited to the space in immediate proximity to the player, it lacks a gap closer to hit those pesky ranged dps’ers. And as such, I struggled against those classes which run dps range specs (i.e. d/p thieves, lb rangers, condi *warrs with sb, etc); however, I will say the builds excelled at bringing down toons that relied on melee specs as a compliment to their range attacks or those toons that ran all melee specs (i.e. trapper rangers and thieves, medi guards with gs, revenants running shiro s/s, reaper GS, etc.). This is, and has been pointed out numerous times, due to the lack of a gap closer/long range cc that offhand dagger and focus respectively supply an elementalist. So, I shall move on to what I believe are some of the biggest flaws in regards to roaming.
1. Warhorn skills cast too slow and disrupt standard ele gameplay. Give some warhorn abilities lingering effects, such as pulse-applied conditions if they are to remain slow. Warhorn skills are slow and a melee ele does not cope with slow fire skills well at all.
2. D/wh needs to be able to take out a target at range. With no gap closer, coupled with that impossible-to-fire-off shorting out lightbulb skill in air attunement as the only ranged option (fyi, I have lost many fights due to that skill not firing off… I despise Lightning Orb), there is no far reaching skill that allows d/wh to reach those foes.

I have read many posts on possible changes for this spec, however at this time I am at a loss to contribute. Warhorn has such potential with it’s close range cc’s, however, there must be a couple skills that aid an ele. I will truly keep thinking on this.

-Fresh Air Dagger/Focus: Oh my! Overloading an attunement every 6-7 seconds was one of the most fun experiences I have had in this game while roaming. The cc’s of focus and defensive skills made it the perfect combo with trapping your foes in that lightning field, all the while being able to take a beating yourself. The learning curve was a bit heavy and I had to always keep an eye on off attunement cd’s (water, fire, earth skills and attunement swap cd’s as well), but man, once I learned how to avoid cleave while channeling the overload I was able to cleave foes left and right.

All said, the build tended to suffer dearly at times against burst/shatter mesmer and condi mesmers, where, if the mes would interrupt the channel for Overload Air, you had to play that all too familiar game of erase the mesmer clones to get the real one while avoiding three daze mantras and stealth uptime… sigh… (sorry for whining heh, moving on:) I found myself not missing the Arcane trait line. For what I experienced this beta weekend, the tempest traits have a batting chance against the Fire or Air/cantrip Water/Arcane meta. However, for the sake of condi cleansing, cantrip Water was a must, as Earth Diamond Skin was too much of a bet on situational circumstances where there rarely wasn’t a 1vX situation that did not have a, say, one running a condi spec and another running a pwr spec.

Tempest has great potential. I expect by the time I finish my Howler (which’ll be a while since all I do is duel and roam) that Tempest and warhorn will be in a good place.

I hope sharing my experience aids in furthering the Tempest discussion, all the best guys

~Bati

Wish ya luck Anet. Can’t contact my guildies to leave the squad, but I’ll find something else to do and keep checking in (I had the commander tag, if that helps any).