Guild Wars 2

AOE SPAM
1 - All ranged AOE abilities should have delays from when they’re cast to when they “land” and clear animation tells. Grenades are a good example due to the flight time and the visible projectiles coming towards you. Same for ele staff which has a tell ground effect before it goes off. You can’t land them on targets in motion unless they aren’t paying attention. Necromancer marks are an example of bad with instant cast and no discernible animation. There should be a 1/2 delay in which marks gradually go from ghostly to fully drawn and damage comes at the end and each mark type should have it’s own color so experienced players can easily tell what type it is. All long range AOE should be avoidable if the target is not slowed, CC’d and reacts quickly/has a dodge. This would go a long way to making players use AOE more strategically.

2 - There are too many AOE skills in the game and some should be converted to single target abilities to reduce the spammability of AOE while also not forcing players to use AOE so much for single target damage. Necro staff and ele staff are the main culprits on this issue (nade kit not so much since there is no CD on kit swap and most nades have a pretty short radius).

3 - Long range (900+) AOE should hit harder but also have a much longer CD. The idea behind long range AOE should be that they will really punish the enemy team if many eat it, but require prep and more of a “skill shot” that if misused without proper set up will punish you with a long CD. So as an example, the redesigned necro staff would have 2 sec bleed on auto attack and mark of blood would have half it’s current CD, same effect, but be a single target cast. The last 3 marks would all hit harder and be very punishing, but the CD would about 50% longer. This would change the weapon from “spam marks on target/point regardless of situation” to focus on wearing down single targets with your #1 and #2 and only use marks once they have burned their evades or are CC’d and you want to finish them off or in key moments during a team fight.

A necro who just jumps in and spams marks on fresh targets would have most of them evaded and not have them again for a long time, that’s how it should be. Grenades #1 should have a 8 sec CD, but hit a larger area and do more damage, all other nades would follow the same principle of having 50% greater CD and damage. Awesome when you land it, but punishing when you don’t, so spamming it and hoping it will hit something (the way it’s often played now) will not be viable as you’ll just end up putting the whole kit on CD and not having it when needed.

4 - Spammable close range AOE cleave (such as cleaving auto attacks most melee has) should hit the primary target for full damage but other targets for less (75% would probably work for this game) to tone down AOE. Guardian marks are an examples of AOE that’s fine as is because it’s not too big, requires very close range (risk) and generally won’t land in full without CC.

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

2- Projectile absorption/reflection abilities such as: reflection wall, shield of absorption and the like should instead just reduce projectile damage by half and reflect half the damage (if reflective). Reflection Wall can gain a secondary effect to compensate (like swiftness for allies that run through it) and ele Magnetic Aura could also reduce melee damage by 25% for the duration to compensate. A couple of players with abilities like that can completely neutralize projectile based builds, they should help against it, not cancel it out. Some of those abilities are too one dimensional also which is why they’re underused, so toning down one aspect but adding a secondary use would kill two birds with one stone.

3- Chain CC is too strong against certain classes. Remove sigil of paralyzation, not nerf it, remove it. Stuns are very strong as is and you should not be able to increase their duration with a sigil. Beyond that, cap stun duration to 2 sec for all abilities (skull crack is a big culprit, reduce max duration to 2 sec and increase dmg by 50% to compensate). Condi duration should not increase fear duration, get rid of it there is a trait and rune set that increases it, if they want long fears they should have to invest in them. This alone pretty much fixes what’s wrong with necros and warriors atm.

AI clutter/gameplay too easy
1- Polish tab targeting so it prioritizes players, tabbing through all players until targeting minions (would treat mesmer clones as players, but not phantasms).

2- Make spirits 50% smaller (except spirit of nature), necro minions 50% smaller, turrets and flesh golem 30% smaller. These simple changes would make them less obtrusive to vision with no impact on their function.

3- For both spirits and necro minions, make active abilities more powerful/relevant and reduce strength of passive bonuses and damage. Make it more about the actives, with passives being just a small bonus, so it’s less brainless.

4- Phantasms damage should go down for each subsequent attack and expire after the 4th attack (60% dmg, then 30% dmg, then 15% dmg). CD on cast could be reduced to compensate.
The idea is the big damage should be on active cast, that needs to be targeted, the problem with phantasms (mesmers are suffering with condis right now but this will be a problem again once it’s toned down) is that the phantasm mesmer can put a few down then and run off and LOS, on 1v1 killing each AI takes a long time thus leading to some really stupid on point pressure plays that involve little risk for the attacker.

Animations and Visibility
1- Long range abilities (not #1) should all have animation tells, make more use of glow on hands or the ground beneathh the caster if you don’t want to redo a lot of movement. No class should have more than one instant cast long range ability, those should be used in a pinch but sparse and not spammable as they don’t allow response. Close range abilities don’t require it quite as much (if you a warrior is running towards you with a mace in hand trying to get on top of you, that’s a tell) because they are hard to land as is but it could use a little help too.

2- Interface option toggle: Normalize Height. Makes asura appear 50% larger and char and norn appear 50% smaller. Only looks that way to the player with it toggled, changes nothing about look and feel of the game. This cannot be that hard, please just get it done.

I made a post a while ago about some of the key core issues with the game, today I’m going to add a list of specific suggestions for changes I believe would fix many core game issues. I’m not going to include new features that everyone knows are needed (new map types, build saves, rewards, ICD tracker, etc.) but rather focus on tweaks. Feedback and your own suggestions welcome!

Too much dodging
1- Reduce passive (unbuffed) endurance regeneration in half. Really that’s about it. It would change dodging from it’s current state of being able to dodge often, sometimes timing it, but mostly just spamming it and you’ll dodge something to, hold on to it for when you really need to dodge something. What it should have always been.

2- Dodge on weapon abilities are fine but should be a bit shorter, Blur should be 2 sec from 2 ½, all ½ ability evades should be just 1/3 sec. It should be about a short defense at moment of cast, not a spam of chain dodging.

Anti condi stacking and healing
1- Vitality should be the anti condi stat, but it’s under budgeted in pvp items. The issue is that unlike all other stats vitality quickly loses it’s value in a fight as you take damage because a larger health pool with the same amount of healing means heal as a percentage of health becomes weaker, so you have no sustain, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful but it does mean you need more of it for it to match up point per point to most other stats. There is a reason Knights Amulet is so underused even on a condi meta when vitality should be the stat of choice to counter them.

Vitality item budgets should be about 25% higher to make it a worthy stat. So berserker amulet should have 355 vitality for example instead of 284, Knights Amulet should actually be 798 power, 712 vitality with new budget and 569 precision so it’s actually viable for damage dealers (current iteration is too low damage for roamers regardless of vitality value) while being a great condi counter. This should also apply to vitality runes (which no one uses other than soldiers and that’s for the 6th bonus). This would have the pleasant side effect of making the game a bit less bursty.

2- Healing scaling for primary heal is too low by default, the base should be 2, not 1, (other heal abilities heal scaling is fine as is, this is only in regards to primary heal slot) healing as a stat in spvp is very weak for anything that isn’t going pure tank, it should be more worthwhile to add some healing power to damage classes or create hybrid builds. This would also help slow down fights a bit and counter condi pressure.

3- The engineer trait that makes elixirs remove a condition is a great model for condi removal. All elixirs have a cast time and remove just one, so it makes you think about when to use them for their effects and when to use them to remove something particularly nasty. The thief’s shadow return is another great example removing a condition but forcing a resource expenditure from offense and forcing the thief to pop something they may not want to otherwise. There should be more traits and weapon abilities like that spread out among the classes and every class should have a weapon set with a remove one condi on use ability. I like the warrior condi removal on adrenaline skill for example, and the mesmer condi removal on shatter is also great but currently too far down the trait line.

Guardian and ranger passive trait condi removal needs to be removed and replaced by traits/weapon skills like those previously listed. Removing condis should require thinking, pressing a button at the right time, and sacrificing a CD for it. Or not having that CD if the ability is used for other purposes.

4- Add this set of runes to the game: PVP Runes of Superior Clarity 1-5th +15 to all base stats (minus crit dmg), 6th piece: your heal removes a condition on cast. To give players another option for a small condi removal/a multi stat rune.

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

Let’s analyse the builds in order or power, which require nerfs because they aren’t fun.

1, Spirit ranger – the king of the meta is the spirit ranger. That is evident from solo q. It has evades, the ability to win ANY 1 on 1 easily, and possibly the best team fight utility with passive buffs and actives. There is NO counter play at all. If you kill the spirits they activate. Which sucks. Then they instantly summon them back because the cooldown starts when they are summoned. When back the spirits can be activated again and killed again to activate yet again. More than this, the spirits confuse any team fight. Finding targets is difficult. And no it isnt because of the effects. But even without this the spirit ranger is just broken. It is like the most op ele was but with signet of undeath x3 rolled into 1 build. It needs a massive nerf.

2, S/d Thief – again there is no counterplay. How do you kill something which is perma evading? It is close to impossible at times. The amount of evades has to come down because at the moment it is just a frustrating experience. You cant focus the stupid things and yet they are dishing out crazy dps. It really does suck. They should either get crazy dps or evasion. Not both coupled with boon hate. Way too much.

3, Terror necro – Getting chain feared again isnt fun. I am bored of necro vs necro. There is no skill. It is luck (who can rando dodge something) and just lame. YOu shouldnt be able to fear cc someone to death on any class. Remove the buff to doom within 600 range for a start and then reduce the number of bleeds on a few of the skills and add increased lf gain from some main hand weapon skills. Necro dps needs to come down.

4, Stun lock warrior – not brokenly OP but still it sucks. Again, like fear, nobody should die whilst constantly under the effects of cc in a 1 on 1. Reduce the duration of the mace stun.

5, Elixr r – nobody should be able to res themselves. Stupid concept. Not fun that this class gets an extra 10k health for free. You feel cheated killing them and then they get back up and kill you. Please fix this.

And please don’t wait for after this pax tournament to fix these issues. Why alienate the 4 million people you sold this game to in order to not change things for the 10 people in this tournament. In fact I beat most of the guys in the pax tournament want this stuff nerfed because it sucks.

The meta at the moment is skill-less, but worse – it is just not fun. Sorry to say.

Please fix tab targetting so it prioritises players and not net turrets, flesh golems or sun spirits…..

Seriously…

Particularly with all the crap people have then some tiny asura in the middle of it.

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.

Since we still don’t have search in current leaderboards, I’ve made my own version of leaderboards which crawls data from official one page by page, and displays all of the 1000 people on one page so you can use CTRL + F to search for people fast

This is just “fast” version full of bugs, but “it works” and I hope someone will find it useful until Anet guys implement search in their version

http://www.gwshack.info

Features:
-FAST search
-it displays all 1000 players from sPvP Europe leaderboards (I will add America soon too -> done)
-displays achievements now too !
-I refreshes data every 30 mins
-daily graphs for rank, wins, loses, wins% and achievements!
-nice and fast sorting

Todo:
-EU/NA switch -> done
-Achievements -> done
-daily/weekly/monthly graphs -> partly done, need more data to plot weekly and monthly graphs
-sorting by wins,loses,WL -> done
-search -> done
-beautify site a bit ^^ -> done

Badly formatted blogpost, but give it a read and offer feedback, thanks.

http://symbolictp.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/analysis-of-cantrips-elementalists/