Guild Wars 2

Different questions that are closely related:

• How frequent will balancing patches be?
• Should shaving/ meta adjusting patches by decoupled from patches that offer bigger and less frequent changes (skill buffs/ reworks/ additions)?

It’s a party support trait for players who wish to specialize in water healing. Great for staff eles who like that kind of stuff.

I have suggested a trait almost exactly like that several months ago.

Those are the two biggest issues I have with this game’s pvp, outside of the current state of balance. But, I wonder, is Anet willing to fix this? Do they have the budged, the manpower or the will for this? Improving several poorly-telegraphed animations, perhaps, but how to fix the spammy nature of pvp?

I can think of several solutions to fix it, but they would require changes to the core systems of the game.

Problem One
The passive buffs in this game almost completely revolve around adding: a) passive stat boosts; b) boons, conditions or cleansing. In addition to that, there are two main sources of passive boosts in this game: traits and equipment upgrades. When it comes to traits, each character has access to fourteen traits. That’s a big number of passive effects. When all things considered, this overloads the game with boons, with conditions and with cleansing.

Solutions
1) Overhaul the character customisation system. There’s an saying that’s key for design: less is more. My suggestion is to fuse the skill system with the trait system. Have the traits give access to 7 skill slots and 7 passive slots, instead of 14 passive slots. These numbers are also arbitrary and can be changed. Elite skills could lose their own slot, the number of utility slots could increase to 4, and an elite skill would in fact be a grandmaster trait skill that would be used in an utility slot. Or alternatively, it would just unlock skills, but you would still have to equip them.

EXAMPLE
Elementalist’s Fire Magic Traitline
5 points: Unlocks Fire Signet and Conjure Flame.
15 points: Unlocks Cleansing Fire.
25 points: Unlocks Conjure Fiery Greatsword.

This system would work better with more utility skills available, which we know Anet is planning to add in the future.

With less passive traits, it means less passive conditions/ boons overload.

2) Overhaul the resource system and add an Energy bar. Energy bar is probably the easiest means to control the combat’s pace. If you are to accept traits at their current state, a system to slow down the application of the skills will help. Too many boons or too many conditions won’t become a problem if you can’t spam all of them in a matter of seconds, or if doing so would come at a huge cost. An Energy System can also help balancing, because devs can always just up or down the energy of the skills to adjust the combat pace, instead of overhauling cast times, animation times, etc. It can contribute to more skill/ trait diversity (energy denial and energy management). This change will also make the game more friendly to a stream’s audience.

3) Rethink the philosophy behind trait design. Don’t rely too much on boons and conditions. A suggestion I can give, is to increase the number of traits that support specific roles.

EXAMPLE
Elementalist’s Water Trait:
Your healing skills have a slightly higher radius and heal other allies 25% more.

Did anyone notice that, no matter how much the meta evolves or gets nerfed, the combat in GW2 always revolves around some sort of spam?

Condition spamming, AI spamming and CC spamming are more “recent”. They were, exceptions aside, underwhelming before, and the moment they became good, they became spammable.

But before them, we already had clone spamming, stealth spamming, boon spamming, aoe spamming, auto-attack spamming, etc.

No matter how hard Anet tries to balance their game, the meta always revolves around spamming what is strongest while (obviously) ignoring what is weaker.

This is no longer a problem with the balancing team, I think. It’s not a problem about “Anet not knowing how to balance this game”, because to be fair, they did make some mistakes, but they also made several steps into the right direction, yet we are nowhere at a better place.

The real problem with this game’s balance, is the lack of a solid, universal mechanism that can ease the game’s balancing and control the pace of combat. I’m talking about the classic and proven Energy System + Cooldown System combo, folks. If GW2 had an energy system like, say, GW1, “spamming” would be a high-risk/ high-reward strategy, and toning down the pace of skills usage would be a valid strategy instead of suicide.

Anet took way some of the funniest systems found in GW1 (like cross-classing) because they were a balancing nightmare, yet they’ve designed an alternative system that is insufficient at keeping the game balanced and at an ideal pace. In the end, no one gets satisfied by this.

The harder a profession is to play, the more mistakes will be made and the harder will those mistakes punish the player. And if the difficulty gap between two professions is too big, the player using the harder profession will need to play like a machine to beat the player using the easier profession. But players are humans, they are not machines.

In this thread, some players are defending what they see from a pve perspective. “You should have evaded this AI attack. You should have killed that AI pet. You should have stayed at range from the other AI pet”. This would be a fine challenge if this was pve. You could simple say to the topic creator: “Learn with your mistakes. Try to do some things differently next time. Etc. Etc.”

But this is pvp. And in pvp, we must judge both sides of the coin. We must take a look at both players. And if some people can claim that the elementalist play was poor, then I wonder, what can be said about the extreme basic-level of play by the ranger? A ranger that used three skills. A ranger that was cc’d the whole time. A ranger that turned the back to the fight half-way to come back to the point. What did the ranger do to win the fight? More so, what did the ranger do to win the fight so easily?

The effort put by the ranger player was minimal, while the elementalist player had to go through hell to deal damage or to survive. This is especially worse within the context of GW2’s combat pace, that is way too fast to the point that it’s almost impossible to read and react strategically to every single boon icon/ pet/ skill used in a slight second within a cluttered screen of flashy effects, especially for an elementalist that must react as fast as possible to not die. The ratio between combat’s pacing and information output in GW2 is poorly-balanced, because it overloads the screen with information while it demands the players to act as fast as possible. Only the professions that have some breathing room, like the stealth or pet classes, and maybe some tank-ish ranged builds as well, can have more time to analyze the situation from safety, as they’ll be harder to target and don’t have the massive amounts of AI pressuring them as often.

But what’s truly bad is how the consequences of the match were completely opposite to the level of skill play. The elementalist player had to work hard and was constantly under pressure, but because some mistakes were made, it died very easily. The ranger player pratically didn’t play at all, was mostly disabled, and had an easy victory.

As you can see, this is not a subtle difference. It’s a complete reversal of an ideal skill/ reward ratio. And for that reason, this problem won’t be fixed with subtle changes. Anet needs to seriously consider how to tone down the pace of combat and information overload, which it seems like they’re already aware of, but they must also seriously revamp how AI works in PvP environments. The AI wouldn’t be such a big problem if most of its effectiveness was under active skill input.

But this comes from a larger problem with the entire game. Anet focused too much on quantity over quality, and was left without time to make sure every single thing was as polished as possible. In this specific case, Anet tried to make profession’s mechanics as distinct from each other as possible, and it left many of them with serious design issues. This doesn’t only applies to ranger’s pets, but to thieves’ stealth and initiative, mesmer’s shattering, etc. If all the professions had a build-up mechanic like the warrior, or if all professions had a stance-dancing mechanic like the elementalist, or if all the profession had thieves’ initiative system + cooldowns, etc, etc, the game as a whole would be far more balanced and far easier to balance, especially considering how tight Anet’s schedules and resources are. And no, it wouldn’t make classes any less unique: just look at any other games. Anet has focused on too much quantity without having the human resources to do it smoothly. They were too ambitious, and are now taking the consequences out of it. Not only for this specific situation, but for the game as whole.

• What is the plan to give higher base survival to the elementalist class?

The profession was initially designed to survive through active defenses, and that’s how Anet has always justified its low health base value. However, many of their active defenses rely on defensive stats (auras require them to get hit, healing skills and boons favor defensive stats too), while Mesmers were given most of the stat-independent defenses (as much or even more CC, blurs, more access to blocks, clones) and a higher base health value. To us elementalists, it feels like Mesmers have gotten, in addition to their better health and and in addittion to their clone mechanic, the kind of defenses that we deserved to receive. Interestingly enough, mesmers have massive base survival in berserker/ rampager gear, and elementalists can’t exist without defensive traits and some defensive stats. It feels like one profession is over-compensating for another.

But it’s too late to change that now. Regardless, something must be done to the elementalist, and it seems that no matter what the solution is, Anet must make a compromise. They didn’t want us to have thief’s mobility, they don’t want us to have higher health value, and they probably don’t want to overload us with mesmer-like defenses, or necromancer-like condition defenses. And realistically, I’m not expecting Anet to create an entire new mechanic, like stealth or clones, just for us.

And THAT’s what makes this an interesting question.

• What is Anet willing to do?

Another issue with elementalists are the poor sustain damage from auto-attacks. Some skills like flamestrike contribute almost nothing for their weapon skillset. Now, I also think (as many of other players) that auto-attacks across the game should be nerfed. I would like to know what Anet thinks about this issue too, both from an elementalist view, and a more global one.

Elementalists don’t need drastic changes, but they clearly need something.

1. Bug fixes.
This will help some key skills/ traits that are widely used.

2. Stronger traits.
This should put the elementalists more on par with other professions late-game.

3. More meaningful auto-attacks.
This should make elementalists less stressful to play against normal enemies. Why must we treat every single wolf as the most decisive battle of our lives, while other professions can get off by simply auto-attacking and using a few other skills every once and then?

Dawdler.8521:

Guilds are ancient history, now its all about fast paced solo PvE farming with new stuff to farm for every 2 weeks.

Remember when MMORPGs were about interacting, playing and coordinating with other players? Challenging content that demands and rewards team playing, community-driven events, strong guild support, strong competitive (pvp) infrastructure, etc.

GW2’s definition of a massive online multiplayer game is doing repetitive single-player tasks while having the bonus visual effect of watching other players running around. It’s like a B-tier single player RPG, except that it requires an internet connection and is filled with money sinks and decisions to protect its economy. The extra, is that you can say hello to people in the chat, and get a reply.

Make the first adept tier trait (trait number I) for each trait line unlocked by default

I really like this idea, so I’ll expand on it a bit.

• Allows players to have at least one option to try out in each trait line by default;
• Functions as a tutorial – Anet’s skill & balance design team can then swap traits to determine which trait fits the number I the best. (For example: Elementalist’s fire trait 1, Lava Tomb, is a very niche trait. It would have its roman numeral swapped by the more general/ universal Ember’s Might, making it so that, every time a new player gains access to fire magic, the first trait they get to experience is one that increases burning’s duration.)
• Makes it easier to unlock adept traits, which, in my opinion, should be an easier and more streamlined task than unlocking master and grandmaster traits;

Make adept (and some master) traits much easier to get – through broader or more universal content

• Have most of them be unlocked by story instances – each instance ALWAYS unlocking a new adept trait (and the last five instances unlocking a master trait for each line);
• This will streamline the new trait system, making it more natural, and less annoying and grindy;

Some adept traits, most master trait and all grandmaster traits should still require going through specific content around the world, as they currently do.

Shindar the Reaver.2518:

If you’re going to put in stat advantage grinds, go all the way and make the grind feel rewarding as other successful games have. This kitten long grind for minor upgrades stuff is terrible.

That’s the irony.

Ascended gear is vertical progression gated by a huge grind, yet when you finally get it, the upgrades are so minor and subtle, that it’s pretty unsatisfying.

This is a great example of how, when a company wants to appeal to as many types of players as possible, it ends up not appealing anyone. Ascended gear is unsatisfying for those who enjoy long-term vertical progression, and undesirable for those who don’t.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION

Skin Locket

• Make skins “unlockable” (and account-bound) and not consumable. More on that bellow;
• Make some skins not tradeable to incentivate players to explore the world;
• Expand the crafting system, so whenever we craft a new item, we can choose a skin for it based on what the list of skins we have unlocked. This doesn’t needs to come for free. It would cost either a transmutation item, materials, or a combination of both.
• This system would make crafting a lot funnier, and greatly improve horizontal skin progression. So please, don’t lock it to players who don’t have in-game transmutation stones. A solution to that is that players with transmutation stones could craft items with skins of their choice without a time-gate, or with less materials involved, or with more crafting experience gained, so that there’s some sort of benefit to still having transmutation stones around, without locking this exciting new feature from other players.
• Make it so that each new item crafted with a new skin counts as a “discovery”. This way, players have more options to level their crafting other than creating unneeded stuff, furthening making crafting funnier.
• This system can make world exploration funnier and more rewarding (unlocking, collecting, hunting for skins).
• This system works well with the online shop system. Not only because skins can already be purchased with gems, but because if more players want to fill in their skin locket, more players will want to purchase gems to get more skins. Keep in mind that, in my suggestion, skins should be a one-time-only account unlockables, but not freely duplicated. They would still require crafting or transmutation stones to be used.
• Several acchievements can be tied to this system, which is another plus.
• Dungeon tokens can be removed, and have dungeons unlock skins after being completed several times, to simplicy the number of currencies in this game.
• If popular enough as a long-term goal (horizontal progression/ collecting), as a material/ money sink, and as a reliable way to make cash through gems, it’ll create more incentives for Anet to work on more skins, which is what the playerbase wants.

Story-driven and World-driven horizontal progression

• Personal Story Instance: Make it customizable and as a long-term goal. Unlock more shops for convenience or for unique items, influence which NPCs go or stay there and their respective dialogue, have the NPCs offer “personal quests”, allow us to invest on buildings, etc. Acchievements tied to that. Unique rewards tied to that.
• Datalog UI: Allow us to collect (unlock) books and unlock piece of information from exploring the world, fighting unique bosses and talking to key NPCs. All this information tell us more about the world of Tyria, and is all gathered in the Hero menu page. This adds even more incentives for world exploration, improves world immersion, and again, it’s yet another amazing opportunity to expand the acchievement system and tie unique rewards to that.

TL;DR: A world of Tyria where you can gather and collect LORE and SKIN PIECES, working for long-term ACCHIEVEMENTS tied that, influence your PERSONAL HOME INSTANCE and customize your own BUILDS, makes for a better world of Tyria.

Jackums.3496:

They’re not going to nerf every other profession down to the Ele’s level, so yes, at this point, the problem is that the Ele is too weak. It needs a lot of its previous nerfs reverted, as power creep has made most other professions substantially more powerful.

If buffing is the only solution, power creep will only get worse.

Hiya, Allie Murdock. I hope we haven’t scared you off yet!

I personally think that the pvp forum has been a gold mine of constructive feedback in the last few weeks. The current state of the meta emphasized the biggest flaws in this game’s combat, and people have been deeply discussing every single one of those issues now that they’re clearer to see.

To sum it up, out of memory, the flaws and the discussion in this board have been revolving around: the lack of consequences for spamming skills; the lack of consequences for spamming dodges; the passive AI and the easy-to-master builds; the dominance of aoe spamming (already acknowledged by devs); the lack of counters to some mechanics, like stealth; and the many sources of passive buffs that overload each build with conditions, boons, cleansing and random specs. This excluding out-of-combat issues, like rewards, game modes, infrastructure, etc.

Because the game’s devs are probably too busy not only checking this forum, but playing this game, designing and implementing changes and testing those changes, I wonder if many of those threads have been read and considered. There’s plenty of constructive feedback around here, Allie, and asking for it in this specific thread is like asking for us to repeat what we have written three or four times already.

For that reason, let me forward you to several of my posts where I’ve discussed many of those issues in detail. There’s certainly plenty of valuable feedback from many other posters, but it’s too much for me to go and search for them all.

About the excess of passive effects, and the spamming nature of combat:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Helseth-Rant-Of-The-Week-Topic-Spam/first
Suggestions for dodging:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Should-Sigils-of-Energy-be-removed/first#post2649924
General suggestions:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/When-is-the-next-Major-Balance-patch/first#post2674516

Quality > quantity.

I’d rather have one rare and useful item every once and then, say, 2-3 per day or week, and feel extremely satisfied with it, than getting spammed with clickable junk that spams more clickable junk that overloads my intentory with valueless runes, valueless skins and valueless materials. You can’t even sell them when they are sellable, because of how common they are.

When you have items like Mawdrey II, that consume massive amounts of “precious” materials for even more junk, and players are satisfied to transform overly common non-tradeable junk for tradeable junk, then you know the reward system in this game is not doing something right.

a t s e.9614:

Thieves are supposed to counter glass builds , that’s why they exist. The role of the thief is to get rid of opposite team’s glass cannon. You counter a thief with more sustain builds and conditions.

A profession whose purpose is to counter build diversity in a game that desires to promote build diversity is so obviously contradictory (=bad) design, that I highly doubt that was anet’s intention, and I can’t see how people can defend this idea.

“But it was designed for this!” does not means it’s automatically a good thing. Likewise, just because stealth was designed with vague, unreliable, lucky-driven counterplay in mind, it does not means it’ a good thing either.

No one wanted the death of zerker gear. People wanted/ want stat diversity.

If players find condition gameplay boring or not is a completely different matter.

Before going into the half-naked direction, can we first get non-revealing armor for light/ medium armor that is actually sexy, please? :P

1. You won’t be able to play with the revenant if you have all your character slots filled, unless you delete characters, pay $10 more or farm.
2. You won’t get a “free” core account if you’re not a new player (even though you’re probably paying for it).
3. If you bought a core account recently, and want to buy the expansion now, you’re basically churning more money than you should.

Yes, the players are so greedy. Praise Anet’s marketing team, for they are full of saints.

TRoopEr.5364:

Realy great idea.

let’s split 500 people playing into 3 quess.
Looks good.

Anet can always remove hotjoin completely. This way, half of the userbase won’t be split due to a mindless glory farming zerg system disguised as pvp.

The zephirite bazaar map had some of the funniest and most unique exploration-driven mechanics in the entire game, instead of being yet-another-repetitive vista/ heart/ wp grinding. It’s also the kind of map that you could use to convince a friend of yours to play this game or to convince them that this game has been getting better with time.

But it no longer exists because Living Story.

@Vayne,

You’re right that my examples were too narrow, but that was for clarity’s sake. I also like both story and exploration, and even more so with friends, but unlike you, I don’t find GW2 to be as satisfying at offering those things as it could.

There’s almost no reason to meet new people in the game, so unless I have friends I know in the real world that also play GW2, exploring the world is a lonely experience. I’ve 100% explored Tyria with my elementalist – completed it a few days ago, and I don’t recall any friendship I made. Besides, pve experience is so easy, that when i was playing with friends, combat got very trivial.

Some people blame the players for not interacting more with the in-game community, but it’s not the player’s fault, it’s the mechanics. If there are no mechanics that make people play together (guild-driven content, party-driven content, etc, etc), most players won’t play together. Surely, it’s still important to add support for those who like to play solo, but GW2 mostly only cared about those. There’s no healthy balance between community and solo experience in this game, it’s mostly one-sided to solo content, with the except of a few dungeons, which are only a small thing of what there is to experience in Tyria, and a few guild missions, which are gated.

But as you’ve said, there’s no game coming that offers a real alternative (well, maybe the new ff14, but it has a monthly paying model). We’re left waiting for for this game to get better, expecially and hopefully in an expansion, but it still doesn’t changes that this game was very unfocused when it was launched, it tried to appeal to every player with quantity of content, but then there was not enough time to focus on the quality of each type of content.

Maybe, the Living Story development is going to change that – it certainly seems very focused, with new content revolved around the same premise; but living story is still at an experimental phase, and the only thing we see anet focusing mostly at the moment, is on online shop and RNG content. I don’t mind that as long as that’s what is needed to keep supporting the game, so it can get massive updates later on; but should all future content in GW2 revolve around this RNG content model each month, with little else to bring to the table but a few unfocused, independent gated content, I’ll lose hope in this game.

(Veteran) Players have this idea that more options, in videogames, makes them intrinsically better. Well, that’s not exactly how it works. Games have proved once and once again that offering a massive amount of “customisation options” only leads to a graveyard/ pile of filler. It makes any game a lot less user-friendly, and it adds a lot of clutter, for no meaningful gain.

It’s not by chance that game design has been evolving out of this. It’s not because players are “stupid”. It’s because focusing on quality over quantity pays off.

A high customisation system that only allows for virtually 1-2 optimal builds gives the illusion of something that it is not, and ends up with a high barrier of entry for the sake of something that does not even happens (diversity).

A lesser customisation system that, in theory, can allow for as many virtually optimal builds, if not more thanks to easier balancing, only gets to gain by being naturally more elegant, user friendly and clearly focused.

Yes, if we were to strip all options from gaming, we would be left with interactive movies. But the opposing extreme does not leads to anywhere either. There must exist some sort of balance, between enough meaningful options to make players happy with customisation, while at the same time not overloading the game with those options so devs can have an easier time to maintain the quality of those options. It’s a win-win scenario if/ when done right.

And the new specialization system will still offer that balance. With 3 different traits per tier, and a selection of 3 tiers out of 6, players will still be able to adapt their characters to the style they most like. It won’t be a highly detailed level of customisation anymore, but the meaningful number of builds that will exist out of it will not be any less. Probably, we’ll get more optimal builds because trait stats are no longer an obstacle, trait replacement will no longer be so arbitrary, and the gap between better and worse traits will be a lot shortened.

On a final note, many of the examples the OP has given are flawed by themselves. One such example is the one given for the staff elementalist. The fact that the build itself is already based on “camping Fire attunement after the initial rotation” does not helps, but if we disregard that, the reason why a staff elementalist goes 6-2-2-2-2 is to collect as many damage modifiers as possible. There’s no diversity in here, just maximizing. With the new trait system, a staff elementalist will be able to, for example, get two damage modifiers from water magic spec alone.

HoT Standard Edition with partial access to Revenant: $50
HoT Standard Edition with garanteed access to Revenant: $60

The problem with Anet’s balance patches is that they are overly-reliant on number tweaking, and that method, by itself, has proven to be unpopular and insufficient for years. This last balance patch proves that they haven’t learned with their so-so-at-best balancing record, or probably that they do not have the budget nor the manpower to pull off larger mechanical changes. And that puts us, the playerbase, in a position where we just stop believing that things will ever get better.

If you compare Anet to Riot, for example, Riot is consistently updating old champion kits with new technology and healthier class design (more opportunites for high plays, more innate counterplay, higher clarity, well-defined strengths and weaknesses, etc).

As long as Anet’s balancing patches continue to be about “let’s buff this instant-cast skill’s damage by 10% in the hopes that an inefficient skillset is going to be viable”, we won’t go anywhere.

I think the biggest problem with the changes to elemental attunement, is that whatever remains in the master line is just not very interesting. Elemental Contigency is kind of a weird trait, that treats eles as if they had a high health pool. Why would an ele want to get hit to gain fury?

I’d rather have a nerfed version of elemental attunement on master tier, than having the two EA traits compete against each other. For example, Anet could simply reduce the protection duration from EA to 2 seconds, and it would probably be enough to justify it at master tier. Meanwhile, Elemental Contigency just needs a new
functionality.

The first two arcane magic tiers are very restricting. If you have no precision, and if you decide to not focus on arcane skills, there’s nothing for you to choose in the adept tier. The revive and fall damage traits are greatly restricting the trait line. And Arcane Energy and Renewing Stamina synergy very well with each other, so it’s a shame that they exist in the same tier.

I suggest the following to Anet: swap final shielding with arcane energy.

• Adept:

1. Final Shielding (<- good on every build)
2. Renewing Stamina

• Master

1. Arcane Energy (<- synergy with both traits above)
2. Nerfed version of EA or Elemental Contigency reworked to not be tank-exclusive

Xillllix.3485:

And Frost bow should just have been made an elite skill since all our elites are kitten.

Ironically,

That would have made elementalists stronger. They would gain access to Ice Bow without having to sacrifice an utility skill.

As a Revenant main, I think that the Renegade feels somewhat like an after-thought, or an half-finished spec. It clearly didn’t have as much effort put into it as some other specs. I believe the devs have said it was one of the last specs to be finalized/ thought-out? If so, that is quite clear here.

First things first: animations. I think the Shortbow animations (and the bombardment F skill) are -or could be – really good looking, but they lack something that would make them truly satisfying: duration. Especially Shortbow skill #2 and the bombardment F skill. Give them an extra second or so of animation, and they would be far more satisfying. The Ranger’s Rapid Fire and Barrage gives off a bigger impression exactly because of that: because they last long enough to fully appreciate them.

Orange arrows aside, if we look at Kalla’s utilities, then it’s a whole different thing. Their animations are bland. So our ENTIRE utility set is about spawning semi-transparent phantasm charrs? That’s it? I mean, it’s a cool idea when you do it once or twice (like mesmer’s phantasms), but when all our 5 utility skills are tied to it, it’s not. If we’re going to be stuck to non-customisable effects, then diversity is important. When we look at, say, Mallyx, with leaping dark fields, avatar transformations and cone-shapped utility skills, or at Jalis, with roads, chains, stone transformations and flying hammers, having the entire Kalla kit being “invoke phantasms” is a boring concept. And I do enjoy the charr spawns, individually. Just yawn at the idea that there’s nothing else to it.

From a gameplay point of view, I actually enjoy the simplicity and elegance of the design. As a former elementalist, I gave up on that profession because I got bored of playing keyboard piano. The complexity creep only went further with tempest and weaver, and I’m sad that my favourite archetype (offensive spellcaster) is always stuck to a mechanically-demanding profession system. Sadly, this is not something that can be fixed without overhauling the entire profession, so I had to give up on it.

Then HoT was announced, and the revenant promised a more tactical and a less button-mashing approach. Emphasis on energy management over skill mashing. Unfortunately, in PvE, the concept of energy management has been a failure, and the only time it worked as intended was with Glint/ Herald – and that one works differently and is balanced differently. Skill rotations outside of Herald are terribly boring, and the number 1 reason why I don’t log in and enjoy playing the game anymore. And it happens that the Renegade does not seems to fix it at all, at least based on what I saw. It follows the exact same formula of base revenant, which tells me that we’ll have yet another upkeep + AA-spam spec. And I don’t want that. No one wants that.

My suggestions to fix the revenant’s core issues are two (for PvE): either remove energy from weapon skills, so that we can do more interesting rotations, or have our starting energy be at 100 instead of 50, so that we are forced to use energy skills other than the upkeep one before the legend cooldown is over and we can reset it back to 100 again. If 100 was the base value, then our upkeep skills wouldn’t be enough to put it at 0 before legend swapping becomes available again, which means that using MORE skills would actually lead to a DPS boost, instead of a DPS nerf. If you are worried about PvP and WvW balance, then just make this a PvE only change.

The revenant is clearly a very unfinished spec. The energy mechanic has not been working as intended in PvE since ever, the underwater gameplay has been incomplete since ever, and many bugs have run rampant for too long. The renegade is yet another half-complete addition to an half-complete package, I feel.

If I was the game designer behind the Renegade, my thought on it would be this one: “I haven’t done enough”.

Not only is going into a menu and swapping weapons clunky and annoying (they’ve programmed a weapon swap system for a reason, after all), it surely does not leads to more interesting play/ watching. People don’t want to be watching menus between fights after all, right?

This is an excellent step into better build making. The most extreme builds will now have the drawbacks they deserve. Before, the extreme builds were running wild because you could adapt them to something else (ex. bunkers to roamers to bunkers again). Now you’ll need to play with your weaknesses, and think deeply about the strong points and drawbacks of your build choices.

The new change will incentivate more skillful play and less boring and simple “go to a menu and gain advantages that your build shouldn’t have” play. The most extreme builds will be unadaptable and lead to a snowball effect, which will make people go for more and interesting balanced builds.

Like several other people are saying, the problem isn’t how strong cc is or how easy it is to counter it, but how unfun it is when it’s so frequent.

CC takes the player away from the control of their character. It’s disruptive. When used at the right time, it can be great to increase tension in combat. When spammed by the basic AI, it’s annoying, frustrating and otherwise pointless.

The new Lightning Flash is strong.

Higher damage, shorter cooldown, and the instant teleporting by itself is enough to prevent bursts. Besides, arcane skills and any equipment’s/ scepter’s/ trait’s air skills are instant, which allow you to to burst your opponent while you are knocked down or the like.

Deleting a character costs nothing, and buying a slot with gold only costs gold. You don’t have to spend additional dollars unless that is the best option for you.

Sacrificing a character is a cost by itself. Farming for weeks and stopping whatever else you want to do is a cost by itself. All options require an additional cost.

But it IS fully available to all their customers. They can put it in ANY empty character slot that they have, however they got that empty slot.

But that empty slot didn’t come for free, so you’re basically contradicting yourself.

If you truly accepted that HoT just wasn’t for you then you’d quietly go away and leave everyone else in peace.

So HoT isn’t for me because I want to play with the revenant? Your attempt to defend Anet’s marketing team decisions is getting desperate.

BrooksP.4318:

Daddar.5971:

$60 to make a Revenant without deleting a character? No thanks. Not with the very small amount of new content we’ve seen. Sorry, $60 is overpriced.

Would you have paid $90 for the original GW2 at release?

Under the assumption that you’re using the “but only 5 char slots at launch!” argument:

Five character slots is more than enough to try out your favourite professions, which, in the majority of the cases, is merely 1-3 per player.

Zero character slots makes it impossible to try out the revenant, especially if it has potential to end up being one of your favourites.

Mirta.5029:

AoE is not OP. If you really think so start an Ele, Necro or a mesmer and try using the staff. Then switch to something else, like scepter and dagger that mostly targets single enemies. Compare the damage.

I main an Elementalist with near 70% map explored and some pvp tournaments done with him. I’ve also played a little bit of WvW. Out of my experience, AoE is crazy against any group of stationary mobs. Points, events, zergs. The damage it deals is huge.

You’re fault is that you’re probably comparing aoe skills with single-target skills against single targets. In that situation, of course aoe is going to be weaker: it’s supposed to! But can you honestly tell me that staff’s fields are bad when you’re playing with a party,against a lot of enemies, or the combination of both? No, they are crazy. You basically generate a huge amount of party combo fields, keep entire mobs balled with crowd control, and destroy them with spammable fire fields + meteor shower.

Of course D/D is stronger against individual opponents. It’s more risky, it has a very restricted range, and the aoe radius is also (usually but not always) smaller.

That’s why any aoe nerf must be done carefully. In myopnion, aoe’s damage should scale down only if it hits more than 1 opponent and, depending on the skills, always deal full damage to the targetted enemy. This way, Dragon’s Tooth or Fire Grab would still spike the target, and only dealless damage against any other opponent. And skills like staff’s fire field would only deal less damage if more than one enemy was around – as long as the damage decrease isn’t too big, it should keep them balanced.

IMO, that’s the best way I can think of to nerf AoE without ruining the elementalist (and other classes?).

And related to “living world”, but not completely related to the current “living story 2-weekly updates”, is player-generated content. Guild missions should be expanded, and other systems be introduced so players can interact and modify the world of Tyria.

What about the possibility of guilds being able to own some of the current temples/ outposts/ villages in the game, and being able to invest resources into building new crafting houses for themselves, decrease their respective WP costs, of even build defensive mechanics to fight against extremely challenging dynamic event raids that attempt to overthrow guilds from their owning areas every week?

What about long-term dynamic events that take weeks to end, and build upon or destroy sections or objects of the world of Tyria depending on the player’s actions?

What if PvE had siege elements and areas that would simulate WvW, except being PvE instead of PvP? With large-scale, challenging dynamic events Tequatl-style that would force guilds to play really well to defend sections of the world? Where by failing, players would be locked out of unique merchants, functionalities, and even specific areas of Tyria? What if all WvW blueprints and upgrade levels also worked for PvE, especifically for this content?

This would make the world far more living, and it would also make the game more consistent between game modes.

TL;DR: Dynamic events are still the future of GW2’s Living World. Please, expand the way the Dynamic Event system works. It can be so much more than what it is now.

I’m against the idea of dumbing down Dragon’s Tooth. Instead, I suggest adding CC to underpowered skills to support it.

Shatterstone is the perfect candidate. Increase its cooldown to 6 or something, and have it add 1s of chill per second while it was building up, and you could get an interesting DT -> shatterstone or shatterstone -> DT combo. Alternatively, have it add any kind of CC upon its activation, like I stun once it blows up. This would be awesome with the grounded trait too.

Ice Shards can live with a damage boost. With air’s auto-attack being the best to generate critical-hit sigils and traits, and earth’s and fire’s auto being about condition damage, ice shards can simply be the damage/ critical auto-attack to go to for pure damage. Especially alongside my suggested change to shatterstone, which would make damage scepter eles switch between fire and water.

I agree that flamestrike is mechanically boring, but I’m not sure what to do about it. Maybe make it a channeling skill (that can be self-canceled easily) that adds 1s of burning the first second, and 2s more of burning in the next second. You know, something that gets stronger the longer it takes. For some reason, I dislike the casting animation for flamestrike too.

Rock Barrier is perfect as it is, and I would suggest that Hurl would be buffed with the addition of bleeding and not with a pure damage boost. Why? Because for elementalists who want to invest in condition damage can get more options for bleeding than spamming earth’s auto-attack until forever. However, I would make each stack of bleeding from Hurl last for a short duration. That would total to 5 stacks for, say, 5 seconds each. This would go hand-in-hand with the scepter’s bursty nature.

Finally, for Dust Devil, as mentioned, it is the second most natural candidate for an extra CC. Being a tornado, it can work perfectly with a knockback effect. Increase its casting time, take the damage out of it, maybe even make the animation slower, should the devs consider the aoe knockback too strong.

The first thing people usually suggest for buffing something, is to make the best skills even better. Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix do not need buffs, they need support from other skills. They are perfect as they are. Do they have drawbacks? Yes, but that’s the fun of it. Buffing them would make them mindless to play (think: thief’s heartseeker) and maybe even force the devs to nerf them damage-wise, taking away the fun out of the scepter’s burst damage nature. Meanwhile, adding skills that support them makes the scepter’s playstyle more complex and compelling.

Small recap:

• You can unlock story instances (episodes) by logging into the game during the two-week period or by spending gems;
• Unlocks are permanent and account-bound;
• Episodes will be replayable for season 2 first, and later down the road, for season 1 and personal story too;
• After completing an episode, you’ll unlock challenging acchievements for the more skilled players;

Not sure if I missed anything.

Seems very interesting, and it certainly appeals to my tastes. I wonder if those challenging acchievements are similar to the bonus content from GW1’s missions? I also wonder if those episodes/ instances are similar to what we’ve been getting so far (short-ish), or more similar to GW1’s missions (longer and more similar to dungeon-like content).

EDIT: It’s really nice to see some of the best concepts of GW1’s game design philosophy (finally) coming into GW2. Now, I only hope the maguma’s new maps are a bit more similar to their GW1 counterpart than everything else so far in modern Tyria too, and I’ll finally feel like I’m playing a sequel!

Not exactly expecting, but people are actually hoping it gets better because, you know, that might determine if they’ll keep playing this game or not.

Anet has revamped an entire zone out of an existing map, created new enemies with some new twists, etc. Yet, all there is to do, is to zerg-farm for acchievements. That’s it. The story instance is cool, but it’s a single instance, so it’s over quick. There’s not even any challenging optional content to keep players going. No, only more farming.

It was fun while it lasted, but for me it’s already mostly over, because there’s simply nothing there but tricks to make you want to farm more. That’s not more content. That’s repeating generic quests and stretching them.

The story does seems interesting, but yeah. A single instance.

Diamond Skin = forced 30 earth. :P
Persisting Flames = forced 30 fire. :P

We do have survival problems, and elemental attunement is pretty big at helping us fix those, but you can substitute it for other trait combos.

There’s plenty of interesting story bits in the last cutscene, and S3 definitely has a lot of potential.

I think my issues are more with story presentation. Both with scene direction (Lazarus entrance needed more screen time before he started talking, I think) and in the dialogues (“Im the white mantle but I suck at it” and “I’m the big bad guy who has been hyped up as this extremely dangerous villain for generations, but hey, don’t listen to this old clown, I have a virtous ambition for you all, bye”).

I think Anet handled the story fine, but failed to stylize it. The whole episode – and the entire raid subplot beforehand – were building up and teasing for something big regarding the white mantle, and what we’ve gotten was very anti-climatic. It almost felt kind of troll-ish.

I have nothing against Caudecus ignorance nor against Lazarus “pretty words”, but there was something there lacking that totally failed to estabilish how important Lazarus entrance should have been. It seems like not even the characters didn’t care about about the big bad guy neither. “Oh, wasn’t he supposed to hate us? Maybe people do change over time”. Yeah.

He needed a more fearsome/ respectful entrance (the current one feels more like “Surprise! I was here all along listening to you talking! But I’m left out of time and gotta go fast, so listen quickly”). His dialogue to Caudecus should also have been more humiliating. I mean, despite Lazarus clearly having more power to do whatever he wants, I still got the feeling that caudecus got to humiliate him back quite effectively. “I’m THE white mantle leader and I’m saying to the last mursaat, of all things, and right on his face, that he is irrelevant.” Shouldn’t the super-powerful being Lazarus have been a bit… nastier at replying to that? “Hey guys, just ignore him and follow me instead” was not a very compelling reply.

I think Anet didn’t manage this scene very well. Lazarus felt unitentionally at the same level as Caudecus, to the point that if Anet were to reveal him as a comical villain next episode, I wouldn’t be surprised. Even when it clearly shouldn’t have been so, considering his demonstrated powers and all the story and air of mystery built-up until that moment. It was very tension-breaking.

Although I agree that Tyria’s world feels very… inconsistent (I mean, someone who wants to role-play as a medieval knight should play a different game, because in GW2, they will get a slap in the face the moment they leave Kryta and enter Asura’s or Charr’s territory), this new mini-game’s “technology” is perfectly possible with the estabilished Asura’s lore.

It’s clear that GW2’s direction is going into a “westernized” anime-ish/ japanese rpg-ish technologically hybrid fantasy world, than a dry-and-brown or a Tolkienesque fantasy setting.

EDIT: A medieval setting does not automatically mean it’s fantasy, and a futuristic setting does not automatically mean it’s science fiction. This is pretty much “science fantasy”.

nightblood.7910:

I just think LB is going to be too slow and out of place for the class.

Specializations are meant to significantly change the base class (apparently, you don’t need to enjoy a ranger to be able to enjoy playing with a druid), so it’s hard to judge what is “out of place” and what isn’t, until we get real news on specs and how they work.

The negative consequence behind “fixing the AI”, is that it would promote even more passive playing in PvP.

For this reason, the pet system DOES needs a redesign.

Making most pet skills requiring manual input from the player to trigger could be the solution. It could also promote rewarding skill sequences between the pet and the ranger, moving the profession away from too much passive, and more into a skill-sequence-driven profession (like an engineer, elementalist, etc). That would be healthy to the competitive side of the game, but also very fun by itself.

AoE resistance (but lower health so that targetted effects can counter it), innate faster moving speed, and a way to flag the pet would also be awesome.

Pet flagging could be a ground-targetted sequence skill that would force the pet to go to choosen location until the skill is clicked on again.

I also want to add:

Elementalist’s Scepter regeneration trait doesn’t stacks with vigor. This leads to bad synergy with Phoenix.

Rollback is a no no, because this feature is already implemented, because it brings some good things, and because the playerbase (that came from GW1) actually asked for this, including myself.

What it needs to be done, is that they need to improve the new system. Improve.

Elite hunting was very fun in GW1, but it had some nuances that were not considered in this game:

• In GW1, you only hunt for elites – normal skills are brought in shops. This new system makes you hunt for every single trait, even the weakest ones. That’s a major difference right here.
• In GW1, elite hunting is very easy to understand and identify: you see a boss with the aura of your profession, then you bring the capture skill, kill him, and see what he has. It’s something that happens naturally, while you play through linear missions or while you vanquish areas, and only occasionally find those bosses optionally (when you decide to explore areas, which certainly makes exploration more rewarding).
• In comparison, trait hunting in GW2 can come from anything and anywhere – you never know what or when until you go to the trait’s page and read where you can get it. It feels random, scattered unnaturally, and for those players that are leveling their characters, it is highly restricting when it shouldn’t.

This system is awesome in theory, but it needs serious improvements.

Adept traits, and some master traits, should be significantly easier to get – thus why I have suggested that the first trait for each adept trait line should be unlocked by default, and why all story instances should unlock an adept trait and, later one, a few master traits. This will make the system a lot more natural and fluid, because what all players will need to do to unlock most of the easy stuff is to simply follow the story.

Then, they need a way for players to easily identify the places where they can unlock the remaining, high tier traits. Just like GW1 had with the boss auras, there needs to exist something, perhaps placed in the map the moment you get vision of the respective area, that there exists a trait to collect.

Very interesting QoL changes, but a bit light on content (except for shatterer revamp). I hope April’s seasonal update brings more content.

One question:

Now that gliding is available everywhere, will we be able to unlock it with experience obtained in Pact Tyria?

Leo G.4501:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Leo G.4501:

So now we’ve condensed your suggestion to “Make the enemies easier”?

Easier difficulty, or easier to enjoy the game? Because currently, the cc spamfest is a challenge to enjoyability, not to actual difficulty. :P

You offer no real solution, just what you think is unfun.

You can’t be CC locked so having mobs throwing multiple CC just means you need to avoid them. Apparently you don’t like to avoid attacks which is the mainstay of this game.

Perhaps you’d be more interested in another game instead? Or better yet, post a video showing just how common it is for mobs to control you.

We’re talking about how excessive they are, not about how easy or not they are to avoid. And yes, taking away control from the player is largely unfun for the majority of the playerbase for the simple fact that taking away control from the player contradicts the purpose of a video game (which is to give control to a player). It’s disruptive. At the right time and in the right quantities, it’s important and acceptable. But when two or three dredges or two or three orr spiders are kding or pulling you over and over, it’s quite annoying, regardless of whether you can dodge and stun break them, or not.

The solutions exist. There are several conditions that weaken or nullify the player’s options without taking away control from them. Blind, weakness, cripple, etc. There’s boons like aegis, retaliation, etc. All those make the game more strategical, because the player must improvize their playstyle. It’s much better than a cc spamfest that demands from the player to spam dodges and stun breakers against mobs that are otherwise easy, and prevent a situation that otherwise is always disrupting the game’s flow.

Not only is the “dodge” argument terrible, but so is the “go play another game” argument. People criticize this game because they care about it, and they want to see it improve. Constructive criticism is healthy. Meanwhile, asking people to leave is not.

Seera.5916:

I just don’t want the method chosen to be adding hard roles to the game.

Hard roles is a wonderful thing, if done right. They are usually thematically tight and easy to grasp, unlike soft roles, which, at first glance, all look “same-y”. There’s a reason for why a game like GW2 is criticized for being “all dps” or having “no build diversity”: because soft roles contribute to that perception.

To be honest, hard roles are, to me, one of the key pillars of the entire RPG genre, much like how loot or stats are. A RPG is all about, as the name of the genre implies, choosing a role (Role Playing Game), a theme, a specific style or attitude. When everything feels same-y, the fantasy appeal and the charm of playing with a role is lost. Of course, that’s my opinion. You may not value that as much as I do.

However, will all being said, I don’t mean that I wish to see the “holy trinity”. There’s plenty of different roles you can make beyond healer or tank. GW1, for example, did not have a tank role, but the heal role was divided into two (healing and protection), and there was crowd controler/ disrupter (mesmers in general), minion masters or spirit turrets (great to prevent enemies from getting close to the back line, or to provoke aggro), general support (paragons especially), and a distinction between aoe nukers and single target burst builds (so it wasn’t all “dps”).

If the new content is done right, anet can potentially add plenty of new, distinct, fun roles to the game. Ventari offers an unique and different healing playstyle. Chronomancer offers time-based support for bursting, defense and general cooldown utility. Revenant’s Mallyx will be able to turn the enemy’s conditions against themselves. Etc. And all those “hard roles” are more interesting that way. They wouldn’t be half as interesting if they were just “stack might, vulnerability and fury, dps, use the occasional block or reflect” that current builds seem to generally fall to.

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about each unique map in Tyria, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

If you think the wvw rewards are bad, don’t even touch pvp. :P It’s all about farming glory endlessly, or getting skins you already have and having to salvage them for random materials.

Swagger.1459:

We have pve designed professions

Do we, really? Most of profession skills and mechanics in this game are 4 years old, made at a time where the combat system was still new to the playerbase and Anet. Professions were designed around cool ideas and concepts, but not truly polished towards any specialized mode. That’s why some weapons offer everything any pve player would possibly want (AoE, DPS, mobility, some CC) while others are as useless and pointless there as they can be.

This game’s balance is very generalized. Nowadays, Anet basically takes some of the mechanics that work well in pve, some that work well in pvp, and put them together for new elite specs. And that’s probably the best they can do.

It’s clear that they not have the time or budget to balance even a single game mode, as they are probably devoting half of their time creating new elite specs and using all their art budget into them, so much less can they balance 3 game modes at once.

The most balanced pvp games are those that are entirely dedicated to pvp. League of Legends’ Riot, for example, has several teams working on new champions, 2 teams working on remaking existing champions from the ground up, 1 team working on polishing existing champions’ mechanics and 1 team balancing the meta with number tweaks. Anet has a single “skill & balance team”.