Guild Wars 2

Part 2

I however have to say that this patch did also bring a lot of pleasant changes, the amount of players in pvp has been a great joy to witness, I have not seen this many players in the mists since release, the merging of the mists has made it easier for pvp players to interact. It also means that people who enjoyed pvp but where on under populated servers don’t have to deal with a barren mists.

The bridge between PVE and PVP has been a joy to experience and see, I honestly can’t even express how great of a change this is, not only has it generated increased interest in pvp, but I feel like I am actually making money and getting gear for my alts, while I enjoy my favourite aspect of the game. The chests however can be a little overwhelming on my inventory.

What really caused me a lot of distress since returning, is this toxic attitude most pvp players have towards people coming over from pve. Its not only distasteful but borderline abominable, everyone has payed an equivalent sum of money to be able to enjoy this game; no one person has the right to dictate where and how the other person plays.
From my experience as a gamer, its a lot easier to judge others then it is to judge yourself; why must people harass others on the choices they make in a game. If your a better player try and improve yourself, look at it as a challenge constantly think of the better choices you could have made during the game, because if you do you will realise that 100% of the time raging on map chat is the worst possible solution.

I have found it more effective to whisper people in my game, then to publicly ridicule them on map chat, as its puts them instantly on the defensive, I don’t think there are many people who respond well to being called a bad player.
Therefore next time your in a game, and you see someone doing something wrong, don’t try and point out their mistakes in a public manner but just whisper them for help. “Hey, I could use your help decapping close, there are too many people at far.”
I have found most people respond to this better then “noob engi always pushing far and dying” plastered across map chat.

All I want to say is, be kinder to people who may not be as good as you are at the game, because A. you could make a new friend, B. they could become better players, that are either a good challenge or a good ally in the future, C. they make your que’s pop faster so why would you want to get rid of them!.
In any case you will find that it is a win, win situation.

People have varying circumstances in their life, and a lot of times we fail to see that, you never know who you are playing with, it could be a kid with a disability who just enjoys the game and wants to have fun. A father who has 3 jobs and this is his only down time to relax and have some fun.
Hey maybe someone spilled coffee on their self and that’s why they are late backing you up at far.
Most of the time, its better not say anything if you’ve got nothing good to say.

Brothers of the mists, just try and have a good time and be more tolerant of others, that’s all I am trying to say. That and discuss what you think this patch could’ve done better to improve the game. Thanks!

Part 1
Before I start this discussion let me address the elephant in the room; I know that I had written a long winded thread about leaving the game, so why am I posting here again ?
Well after receiving several messages, and talking with a few people that were still playing the game, I was told that the next patch was going to make a lot of needed changes to the game, there was almost assurance that the outcome of the patch would be overwhelmingly positive.
After contemplating this for awhile, I decided to succumb to temptation and give Guildwars 2 another chance; having already abandoned my illusions of grandeur, there was no real harm in just playing for fun this time around.
This is what I found.

The patch did indeed address some issues in the game, it did attempt to tackle the problems with passive play, necro condi’s where given a nice slap on the wrist, thief saw some necessary changes.
All in all I was pleased with how they want around nerfing what was seen as over powered in the previous patch, albeit at times I felt that they could have been more heavy handed with some of the nerfs, at least the game was trying to veer it’s self in the right direction.
But, all that was rendered obsolete after seeing the changes to runes and sigils, the fact that you could now have fire and air on the same weapon, both being on a different cooldown. Swap sigils could be stacked. Balthazaar, Nightmare and Strength runes had been boosted into a completely different stratosphere.
This was coupled with a nerf to vigor traits meaning that people in general had less dodges to cope with the obscene damage some classes could dish out.

This game never really needed more damage, many could argue what we really needed to see was a nerf to damage, along with a nerf to passive sustain and vigor. The issues of the previous patch had been the damage some classes could put out and the strength of passive play vs active play.
I feel that this patch failed to achieve, what it needed to, I find absolutely no joy in being able to one shot someone because I have 25 stacks of might and happened to proc my fire and air sigils at the same time.
There are so many issues with damage in this patch its hard not to go on a 50 page rant, and as I am short on time, I will try to keep it brief.

The sigils, Fire, Air, Battle, Energy, Doom and Geomancy along with the Armour runes Balthazaar Nightmare and Strength need to also see a nerf in some regard or another, I haven’t toyed around enough with them, to give a well formulated opinion.

End of Part 1

Firstly I would like to apologise to anyone who has offended or hurt by my previous posts, it was never my intention, I had no idea that my post would project such negativity; the chaos that ensued was not calculated nor intended.

I made those posts as a general outlook at some of the problems that exist in Guildwars 2, most of which were apparent and old news for most of the Guildwars PvP community; my intention was that some form of positive debate would follow, where ideas would be bounced around and people could reflect onto ArenaNet how they would like to see these problems solved.
Although I do understand those problems are common knowledge, I also understand that these forums exist as a medium between the community and developers; as I am aware that the developers do understand the problems with their game and probably have far more comprehensive knowledge about their game than myself, but this is the only thing in my power as a player trying to assist a game I once loved. I doubt that anyone who actively participates in these forums wishes to see this game fail, but people just express themselves in different ways thats the beauty of being human.

However I now understand that I made a mistake, I had not realised how far the PvP community had degraded, I couldn’t possibly fathom such a reaction.
I am by nature hopelessly positive, and it does at times cloud my judgement, anyone who has ever watched us stream can vouch for this, I see hope when we are down 400 points and 3 capped.

Regardless, I would like to extended my sincerest apology to the developer’s and the rest of the community.
I wish to see this game succeed, I love this game as much as anyone else; just because I have decided to depart doesn’t mean I harbour any ill-intent.
I also have the deepest respect for both Jonthan Sharp and Jon Peters, I have had the pleasure of speaking to both, and I can assure you guys they love this game, and they love the community, sadly their hands are tied and I am sure if they were given the resources, there would be no better e-sport out there.

I understand how a lot of you feel, but Chaos and flaming will not solve anything, there are better ways to go around communicating; I say this because trust me I have been in the same situation as you guys for the past year, and I know exactly how you feel, but lets not try and destroy what little we have.
Two wrongs will never make things right.

Thank you.

Mr Mod please spare my thread.

Off to chase cars and broken dreams.

The current state of the meta has never been worse than it is now, I have been having a very big problem getting a grasp on what Arena Net was thinking when this patch went live. I have been a very big advocate of Arena Net, but I can’t hold my tongue any longer when I see balancing taken into such a direction.
I however do understand the thought process behind what Arena Net is trying to do, I just believe they are taking things into a very bad direction.

Let us discuss what this game has come to.

Firstly I would like to talk about Necro, I do understand that this subject has been discussed a lot on the forums, but it still blows my mind that after stating many many times before that Arena Net doesn’t wish to do knee jerk balancing they decide to make Necros into a moving nuclear reactor of conditions.
There has been a lot of feedback on the forums regarding how Necro should be balanced and what they were missing, and that was survival and ability to disengage; a lot of necro players felt that this is what they needed, but instead of taking that approach Arena Net just threw more damage at them, effectively giving them every condition in the game and in abundance although they already had their own unique condition “Terror”.
The problem doesn’t only stop their but coupled with the improvements made to “Weakness” and “Blind”, this elevated Necro into being an unstoppable force.
Had Arena Net buffed blind, given Necro more ways to gain death shroud or a disengage it would have been perfectly fine, I think that most Necros would agree to that.
Instead Necro was given, Burn on crit, Torment on a new death shroud ability that also immobilizes the target as an aoe and with the new “Weakness” and “Blind”, it just made no sense, in fact if anything it just blew my mind, how a balancing team thought that this would be in anyway balanced.

If you thought that not giving them a disengage and increased survival, but piling on more damage would solve the problem, then your sorely mistaken, but because that sort of approach to balancing has made this game close to unplayable.

Let’s look at another example, thieves, previously thieves main issue was being able to sustain themselves in a fight, and remaining effective through out of the fight; instead of being one shot wonders that fell off after their combo was down.
Take a look at thieves in the current meta, s/d thieves have access to an astounding amount of evades and teleports, that the class its self has become mindless there is no repercussions for diving and little regard to coordination because they can port back at any time, if the thief is very well played it is extremely difficult to punish it.
It just doesn’t promote good play, when you know that you always have an out at the click of a button, and that it takes your opponent ten times more effort to take you down, then it did you just recklessly doing what you want.
Stealth, is another issue in this game and plays right into the same category, it’s just so difficult to punish, and there is no real other counter for stealth than another stealth, there is no intelligent play behind; it’s just a free “do what I want” card.
If there was a reveal mechanic or a way to counter it, then you would see a lot more intelligent play and thought process put behind stealthing, but at the current state of the game there just isn’t.

The current meta is for lack of better words complete and utter crap, the game has never been more un-enjoyable to play then it has been in the past 3 weeks .
Supporting team mates and actual intelligent play has been completely thrown out the window, and things have been degraded down to a condi spam meta, that doesn’t promote any sort of skill or team play.
Damage is so out of control currently, that by supporting a team mate you kitten yourself because regardless of your support, damage is so high he is going to go down anyway.
I miss the days when there was a thought process behind what you had to do, instead now it is a stealth insta gib condition infested meta, that is both un-enjoyable to play as it is to watch.
I hope that Arena Net listens to its players and looks at the current thread and remedies the current problems, because if it keeps going like this, I doubt there will be anyone left playing this game after Pax, because honestly I find no reason to continue playing a game that is meant to be a five vs five game, that promotes no kind of team play or team support.

I understand that a lot of people might disagree with what I have said here, but this is strictly how I view the problems in the game, I have personally discussed this with a lot of players and they feel the same way, I just hope that we can get some input regarding this matter from Arena Net, because this game has been on the decline.

Thank you.

Hey, firstly I would like to say that I have a lot of respect for the developers of this game and what it is they are trying to achieve.

Sadly from my prospective I found that this patch lacked in a lot of fields, it failed to shake up the meta in the slightest, infact if it has done anything its enforced this stagnent meta and shoved it down our throats.

What is it that a pvp patch is meant to achieve ?

Well if we leave out all the fluff that is CA and Leaderboards, then in essence the pvp patch should at least shake up the meta and bringing previously unviable builds into the limelight, in turn giving the players a fresh new meta to experiment with.

What did this patch achieve ?

Let’s actually take a simplified look at what this patch has done. It’s effectively killed off several builds for the engineer pigeon holing them into a single build, its killed the only viable build for warriors and buffed mesmer and elementalist. (even though those buffs were never needed in the first place.)

We can safely deduce that this patch has done nothing that it was meant to, that a basic pvp patch is meant to achieve, from my prospective I am not bothered about having CA or Leaderboards I am not in any sort of rush for Anet to release those, my main concern is balance because thats paramount, it will ensure that when those features are out that the gameplay is enjoyable.

What should’ve been done ?

Lets take for example the quickness nerf, this probably didn’t effect certain classes as much as others; I am sure that Anet understood this and they knew that warriors have been centering their builds on this exact skill for awhile now, and thats because warriors have no real staying power in a fight, they need to do their damage as fast as possible and get out (normally catching their target by surprise).
This nerf should normally not come without complimentary buffs, to ensure that even if a frenzy centered build isn’t viable anymore, that its possible to try something different.
For example:

Restorative Burst
Whatever a warrior lands a burst skill he is healed for 2.3k (non scaling, we don’t want more bunkering classes) and removes a single condition.
Pinnacle of hate
Whenever a warrior reaches max Adrenaline charges, he gains might and retaliation for 7s (20s Internal Cooldown).

These are two traits that compliment each other, and also open possibilities for warriors to pick up different utilities, had something like this accompanied the warrior nerf, then it at least would’ve given warriors something to play around with or test out; instead of a flat nerf to the heart of their only viable build.

There are also other builds and weapons that could be looked at that could shake up the meta; take for example the mesmer scepter, I am sure there are many mesmers out there that hope they could run a condition build, but are unable to do so because the weapon support for such a build is so bad, that its never been an option for them.

Eles the root of evil (JK!), it becomes a problem when a single class can hold back a whole meta, ele’s at the moment are a little overtop the previous nerfs they received didn’t impact the class enough to stop it from being used in the manner that it has for the past 3 months. I can’t fathom why Anet refuses to do anything about this. I will not get in depth about what is wrong with ele; all I am going to say is how many times did you feel like you could be viable had an immortal ele not been chasing you around and bullying you off points, with little to no repercussions for making mistakes.

All in all, all I am trying to say is that I hope Arenanet takes this feedback and everyone else’s feedback to heart and hopefully gives us a better patch next month, we are not asking for knee jerk nerfing Anet, all we are asking is a shake up to the meta once in awhile.
I also want to thank the dev’s for all their hard work, I am sure there are a lot of things that you want to share with your community and that we are impatient a lot of the times, but I still have faith in this game.

I don’t even know where to begin with this steaming pile of kitten, I can’t even begin to fathom how you came to the conclusion that this is even remotely close to being a balance patch, are we even playing the same game Anet ?

Firstly you decide that nerfing bunker eles isn’t necessary, instead you end up nerfing balance/dps eles. Cantrips were untouched, I want to understand the logic behind this if there even is any logic at all, I don’t understand at what point you thought that cantrips was balanced, perma vigor regen is completely fine (along with any other effect the cantrip it self has); eles running around with 25 stacks of might and close to perma protection, constant healing and superior mobility, are perfectly balanced.

Mesmer utilities also untouched; not even so much as an atempt to reduce the effectivness of time warp, or possibly an increased cooldown on illusion of life.

Engineer nerfed, literally removing over 80% of the possible builds that can be run with that class (how does this even make sense)

This has to be the biggest joke of a balance patch I have ever seen; the thing is I have never complained about the lack of pvp utilities and have always been an advocate of this game; but honestly all I expect out of the developers is a good balance patch that can shift the meta and give us something to work with, but instead nothing is changed.

I know that you guys said that you wish to avoid knee jerk reactions towards balance, but if not even twitching your pinky is your idea of balancing the game, then I doubt your going to have anyone to balance this game for.

I have been playing this game with my team since release, we are the only team I know of that has stuck together since release and we have always been strong advocates of this game, but we have never been as disappointed with this game as we were today.

Hey, I know a lot of people have been opposed to the system Arena net mentioned on the latest Sotg, and I personally was one of them; but after sleeping on it and thinking it over, I personally don’t think that it is such a bad idea.
I understand I am going to get a lot of hate over this, but I sort of agree with Arena nets approach in this situation, the population of the game isn’t large enough to split the community into several que’s and we haven’t really had a chance to see this system in action. I am sure Arena net has access to a lot of hidden information and statistics that are not available to the general public, I also believe that they probably used this information to formulate the idea of merging the que’s but largely minimizing the chance of a solo que player to meet a team; because it will cater to the rather small but faithful pvp community, besides I am sure that Arena net want the game to succeed as much as we do.

I honestly believe that this system won’t be as bad as the community thinks its going to be, and that if the system fails then I’m sure that Arena net will make a swift intervention and set things straight.

All in all, I just want to implore the community to cut Arena net some slack, I am sure that the developers are doing everything in their power to get this game rolling and make the pvp experience more enjoyable for everyone.
I am just happy that we have developers who are willing to talk to the community on live events and even at times watch our streams and chat with us on twitch.

I have a lot of faith in Arena net and I will continue to do so, because at the end of the day I have a lot of fun playing this game, albeit I do sometimes get angry a frustrated with it, but I think the good out weighs the bad, therefore Arena net are surely doing something right.

In the end all I want to say is thank you to the developers for sharing all this information with us and I look forward to see how it unfolds.