Guild Wars 2

Hey all, while we’re on the discussion of high-power builds and toughness feeling relatively pointless, it seems as though Toughness has an innate flaw with the way damage is calculated, in that due to diminishing returns, it becomes significantly weaker point-over-point when compared to power, which against a steady armor foe will gain a linear boost to potency.

Obviously, this isn’t an issue when the number’s are similar, as any number divided by itself is 1, so 2300 power versus 2300 armor will be the same as 2000 power versus 2000 armor.

However, each point gained in power is not affected by diminishing returns against a steady armor foe, where as increased armor loses value at a significant rate per point over a foes power stat. This issue is amplified by precision and ferocity, as these gains can be increased, where toughness is a stand-alone stat.

Is there a way to fix this without making toughness too potent, but making is a viable stat choice that isn’t subjected to such harsh diminishing returns?

Napkin math:
Based on a standard “1000” weapon damage (WD x Power / armor)
Assume 1.0 attack Coefficient (for ease of math)

OP = Over Previous
TOB = Total Over Base
AOB = Added Over Base (per step)

1. = Numerical difference per variable change.

2300 Power OP TOB AOB # Reduction added
1150 – 2000a
958 – 2400a -16% -16% 16% gain. 192 damage reduction.
821 – 2800a -14% -29% 13% gain. 137 damage reduction.
719 – 3200a -12% -37% 8% gain. 102 damage reduction.
639 – 3600a -11% -44% 7% gain. 80 damage reduction.

2300 armor.

869 – 2000 OP TOB AOB # Boost added
1043 – 2400p 20% 20% 20% gain. 174 damage gained.
1217 – 2800p 17% 40% 20% gain. 174 damage gained.
1391 – 3200p 14% 60% 20% gain. 174 damage gained. (3200 power isn’t really feasible, just shown for pattern recognition)

As customers, I’d say we have a right to be frustrated. We bought the game, some of us still pay for things, because we enjoy the game and like to support them, but they have proven to be pretty negligent at times… For instance, since release Moa, simply because it is a “transform” kills all minion pets. Or minions COMPLETELY stop attacking and stand around. Then on the other hand, they take a (broken) spec such as turrets, and with AMPLE warning, completely destroy it, rather than allocating proper resources to improve its design instead. Balance patches went from every few months to every 6 months (granted now they’re focusing primarily on HoT).

Then, after a lot of legitimate reasons to be frustrated, having employees say that their problem is that you write things in a “negative light” and act snarky. You’re kitten right I put something in a negative light when you refuse to do your jobs for very obvious and game breaking issues…

Point being, frustration is natural and frankly, pretty well earned. The game is nearly 3 years old. At this point they shouldn’t have basic skills that are literally completely broken and unresponsive.

I was nice for the first 2 years, I’ve done more than a fair share of write ups and tried reaching out. Anymore, its just annoying to try to get them to recognize that there’s a legit issue without them literally laughing about real problems that have existed in the game for ages.

Atherakhia.4086:

Make it do the same damage as poison and put revealed on the target for the duration of the burn.

lmfao oh my lord the tears of the thieves, +1, all of my +1s XD

Dee Jay.2460:

Downed-State is the safety net for bad players and gives the bigger numbers and even greater upper hand.

It’s broken and unfair in ways that have been expanded on before extensively and it is by far the worst feature in GW2, of that I am sure.

In fact playing without downed-state is what I look forward to most in coming MMOs.

Hell, I even think PVE would be more fun if it wasn’t built around 1 shotting everyone and expecting people to rez one another… Downed state is pretty much cancer to the game. :/

Thieves make sense with it (in some areas maybe too much bit overall, it’s in the right place).

Mesmer’s should NOT have blinds, really at all… Their whole game is confusing the enemies and dropping target and making clones, adding blind on top of that is both silly and doesn’t really fit the class.

Guardians deal with flashing lights, makes sense to have a few blinds. Could be toned down since they’re also the blockiest of blockies.

Elementalist really shouldn’t have many blinds. Blinding Ashes should hhave been a 10 sec ICD per target and add a little more offensive flavor to it.

That’s my feels on this whole situation. Thanks for listening friends.

Engineer: “Thanks, Grouch.”

There’s nothing inately wrong with celestial. It’s not too tanky and not too damaging.

The problem is, and people seem to ignore this, some classes have hybrid abilities that scale too well with both OR they are too good at self-stacking might. Notice how Celestial Necro, ranger, mesmer, guardian and thief aren’t really “issues”. However grenades tend to work as both power and condition weapons because of the bleed and burning procs from crits as well as condition based grenades. Cele ele is all about a might stacking rotation and constant boons from Arcana, and warrior simply because warriors shouts provides good support (and are arguably the least offensive of the trio). Beyond that, it’s just a medium alternative and is rarely worth using over other extremes (ie Berseker) for the other majority of the classes.

Fix the real issues, please, and stop blaming celestial. There’s nothing at all wrong with a balanced fighter. There are problems however with how well certain builds scale as a balanced fighter.

I wish they’d do most of those in the images above. There are a lot of armor skins is never touch simply because they look awful when not mirrored that could easily be favorites if they were just normal…

If we’re joking around here, I have a little joke in progress.

Want to know how I know that Necromancer will be the first revealed?

Because they are trying to make the other elite specializations interesting!

Something like that, I need to work on the wirding a bit.

So… You need more inventory space for a net? A hot net?

Sure, i’ll take more inventory space.

Personally, I just think the idea of 3 direct dps stats is silly. The interaction between them causes a compounding effect that really can’t be matched on defensive or condition set ups.

Here’s a good concept for nautical themed legs.

Yeah, I can’t say I’m particularly interested in furry happy fun-time 24/7 365 sexy mixed with 4 year old Elin sex-appeal.

I have to deal with happy fun-time 25/7 365 sexy sex-appeal with myself, I have enough. GW2 is fine. It’s okay to button your shirt sometimes.

Knighthonor.4061:

Flesh golem dies so fast now. Maybe the stupid AI wasnt so stupid after all..

Before patch:
“I’m not touching that kitten!” (World leading AI, thinks for itself.)

Post patch:
“Duhhh, d’okay, I go hit that thingy, no problem boss!” (Simple AI, easy to kill.)

We’ve been NERFED! :P

Gabriell.4856:

ronpierce.2760:

I love how all those silly people were all “Eles are fine, it’s just a l2p issue” and as a result of not tuning them down, 4 and 5 ele teams have won tournaments, had rules shaped around them, some of the biggest lash backs that I’ve seen in a long time, and unlike Turrets, they plague the late game and have perfectly acceptable mobility.

Blows my mind people can be so selfish. And shame on ANet with this one. Dhuumfire was nerfed in like two days and wasn’t half the balance problem Elementalists are causing.

Ele’s are fine but it’s not a l2p issue. Don’t blame the class when an amulet gives 700/920 more stats than other amulets. To this day, I don’t understand why each amulet doesn’t have the total amount of stats. Seems like a clear balancing choice to me.

Again with the silly amulet argument. You’re wrong. Go play Celestial on a thief or whatever if you think it’s the amulet. It’s class mechanics that makes ele so powerful, not the amulet. It has bonus stats because you have to when you stretch stats so thin. Little do people realize before the class power creep, Celestial was never used and had to get buffed 10%, and still wasn’t used frequently until Ele and Warrior was buffed to be able to take advantage of the mix of stats, but it still had to do with the class. Notice how Shoutbow isn’t a thing anymore after nerfing the base heal?

It’s not an amulet problem or everyone would use it. It’s the class.

So I’ve watched quite a bit of streaming today in regards to the Reaper, and it essentially confirmed a pretty big fear of mine. Death’s Charge is wonky as hell for combat general use, and unlike skills such as burning speed which work relatively similar, it doesn’t include an evade (and if I’m not mistaken, according to the wiki and testing, Burning speed doesn’t travel the full 600 range, leaving it a bit easier to land).

Simple request: Please, for the love of everything unholy, make it a target-based leap, while retaining the animation, similar to a warrior’s sword. I watched grouch and other decent players just flopping all over the place with it, and I’m not sure I was it successfully land once, and it drastically reduces its ability to be used as a defense on point.

Second topic, ideally, and because it is a mobility skill locked by death shroud (and by extension, life force, so not always readily available out of combat), the spell if given the above functionality would do wonders for the class posing as a heavy melee combatant if it was 900 range. And for this, possibly it could go from a 6 to an 8 second cooldown, but as it stands, Necromancer alone is fairly outclassed as a ranged fighter, Reaper being only worse in those regards, a Reaper must be able to close gaps, at least in their shrouded state.

That’s all. If not the second part, the first part is almost dire, the skill is far too wonky as it stands, and since it has no added benefits while flying through the air, such as evading, it really needs to be more reliable and be able to short-stop at its destined target.

Thanks for reading!

Suddenflame.2601:

ronpierce.2760:

chemiclord.3978:

RNG and grind are two of those necessary evils in MMO games… they’re an easy way to make content repeatable, and content in an MMO pretty much has to be repeatable because there is no way a company can make content as fast as players can consume it.

I think players know that and understand that; the issue tends to be the degree and scale of RNG and grind.

I love farming and grinding. But you have to be able to OBTAIN these items, not farm gold to buy them because RNG is soooooo bad that there’s no other way… If I could go out and say have a 50% chance to get 1 (ONE) of the 250 (TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY) of a single PART of… ugh, you get the idea… If I could realistically farm these fragments, sure… But kitten buying them all… zzzz.

If you love farming and grinding I am going to wonder about you for a bit. Repeating the same process over and over is repetitive and boring no matter the rewards involved. If that is your fun is repeating the process just to obtain a reward I just got to wonder.

I am wondering so much I don’t know what to say but that is some carrot chasing. The only time I repeat the process is when I am trying to increase my skill at that task, such as jumping puzzles.

If I remember correctly there was a psychological test done on animals for this.

Farming can be relaxing but ONLY if it feels rewarding. How in the world are you going to “wonder about me” feeling okay with SOME level of grinding/farming, when you’re the one defending the grind in GW2, the same grind that I (someone who even CAN get behind grinding) feels is too much. Sounds like you need to be worrying about yourself… This ascended armor very much is a carrot chase. Once Legendary armor comes out, you’ll have another long run for the carrot. And guess what, it’ll be just as if not more grindy than this one. The problem isn’t that there Is a grind, its that it’s so much based on gold grinding and not farming the actual materials you need. They can’t up the drop rates because it would hurt the economy, thus yes. This game IS economy driven, and it is a very-very bad thing.

Supreme.3164:

Saiyan.1704:

Supreme.3164:

…Haaa..the old law of MMOs

Dear Devs do pls nerf rock, paper is fine and needs no change, it’s balanced

Regards

Scissor

To be quite fair, Cele is half of all three with no specific weaknesses.

You don’t understand.
You can nerf the cele amulet to the ground right now…in few hours people would come to the forum to complain about the builds.

I can beat people with a zerker amulet d/d, using same traits and you know what people will call me?…“celestial nab”

And this brings me to the 2nd law of MMOs

Everything that beats me..is OP

This happens so much. You can play a LB s/s Carrion warrior and still get called a cheese shoutbow celestial. Mostly because people don’t have a clue wen sadly don’t WANT to have a clue. They just want to blow off steam if they die.

I still find it ironic that people who play Zerkers think they’re in the right to make calls against an amulet that gets play with 3 builds when Zerker amulet is the go-to for basically every class otherwise and the core set up for other game modes. Don’t forget Zerker has more stats than it should compared to more standard amulets and is by far the most successful running amulet in pvp.

The way I honestly see it, sure, some builds could use a little less sustain, sure. But I’d rather fight a slightly more Tanky enemy that deals damage than one that deals even more damage and doesn’t need to rely on stats for defense because they have mechanics to avoid or block everything instead. I find evasion and teleport mechanics far far more cheesy than someone who just has a good amount of regen going for them. I’d also rather hit through a wall with a pick axe than try to hit a fly with one.

The PvP Blog is now up, here:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/

Gold and Experience in PvP
- In the December 10th update, you’ll be able to earn gold in PvP as a match reward. As an extension of that, you’ll also be able to spend glory and gold to purchase account-bound Tomes of Knowledge, which grant a level each and will allow you to level up any of your characters. The Tome of Knowledge will be found on a new glory vendor that has several items available for purchase with both glory and gold.

Gear
- In the months that follow, we will be working to eliminate the difference between PvP and PvE gear. Players will be able to earn gear in PvP that can be carried over to PvE and vice versa.

- This means that players who have carefully crafted their appearance in one area of the game will have a way to carry that look over to other areas of the game.

Achievements
- Another thing to look forward to in the December 10th update will be new daily achievements for wins in Solo and Team Arenas. These will give players the chance to earn up to four additional total achievement points per day. Along with this change we will be rebalancing the Slayer and Conqueror. The points will be spread out more and additional tiers will be added

Updated Reward System
- With gear unification we will also introduce a system that allows players to set goals for rewards in PvP and work towards them. We are not ready to discuss this system in detail yet, as it is still being developed, but more information will come as we get closer to being able to release this system.

- Once this new system is in place, glory will be retired as a currency, and gold will be the standard currency across the game. All existing glory vendors will be removed at this time. We will give advance warning when this is coming so you can spend all of your existing glory before that happens.

Discuss your feelings, thoughts and concerns here! I will update the first thread soon with key highlights!

For Initiative.

Right guys? Roll… For Initiative…?

YuiRS.8129:

The same way you counter Rapid Fire. You double dodge or use invulns/blocks. It’s also considerably weaker if there are any allies near you.

To be fair you can also interrupt or missile block/reflect Rapid Fire, which is pretty often the way you avoid it. Significant difference.

Assault is a rough skill to balance… Unlike blurred frenzy or Pistol whip you can’t just move, but because it travels, having it without an evade is also problematic.

Chances are the best balance route would be to make sure the dmg is higher than Auto-attack so it can be used rotationally and bump the CD.

Bug fix?
(Page was broken)
Edit: Between Ventari, Ele, Druid, it’s time to figure this out.

mistsim.2748:

grouch, you are a gw2 god, second in power level only to Colin. anyway, this is great to hear. I’m looking forward to reinstalling the game when the ele is brought in line. cheers.

No way, where I come from, we worship Gee-sus.

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

Snafoo.2869:

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

The necro inflict many conditions, and now that goal more confusion and torment, it would broken.

The necro inflicts less conditions than most other condition builds and no one is asking for more confusion, that isn’t at all what the thread is about and you seem to be the one pushing that idea.
Torment being his signature condition, like confusion being that of the mesmer, makes so much sense from both a thematic point of view as simple mechanics (wasn’t necro supposed to be the immobile death machine you couldn’t run away from?) that it’s mind-boggling they decided to give mesmers better access to it as well.

There’s been a lot of good suggestions in this thread already, my basic ideas:

1. Scrap dhuumfire as it is and replace it with decent torment application, they obviously don’t want necro to have decent fire pressure and tbh I don’t blame them, it doesn’t fit.
Alternative: Dread Visage ; Apply torment to everyone near (5 target cap of course) on a set interval when in death shroud. Short duration, but hitting them with your #1 increases duration.

2. Torment of the still ; Switches the effect of torment, so min damage is applied when the target is moving and max damage when it’s standing still.
This is mostly a possible fix to make torment more viable in PvE (where condi necro struggles the most imo), but offers some interesting options PvP (rooting someone in a torment burst for instance), which is why I’d probably add it as a master trait in curses, as an alternative to terror.

Beyond that I’d most like to see torment added to the #3 on scepter as was already suggested. It’s just such an awkward weapon set atm and really needs that extra little oomph to be a go-to condition weapon.

I’ll say again. If you want to play inflict torment, play with mesmer or revenant. I hope do not put more torment to necro, and hopefully not, no need.

Torment should have never been a Mesmer primary thing. In pretty sure they did it as a bandaid to the fact that confusion was bad in pve and generally too varying. Now that they changed confusion they need to remove a lot of the torment from Mesmer and give it back to Necromancer, who it makes sense with, and let Mesmers just focus on their silly confusion. THAT is the Mesmer condition.

Nothing about master of deception screams tormenting their allies, but confusion. Dark ritualists? That screams torment…

Technically speaking with the Longbow, and traps, and so on. Realistically, Sentinel makes the most sense, if I’m honest. And sounds about 300x less corny than XxDragonSlayerLegolasxXLULHuntr
sen·ti·nel
?sent(?)n?l/
noun
1.
a soldier or guard whose job is to stand and keep watch.

Lol. If they balanced your way, they’d honestly look better just removing the skills from the game. Turrets are already useless in every other mode in the game (literally), conquest is the only place they had a chance. If they even remotely do what you said they’d be gone.

I’d rather them just move more into active and redesign some traits that buff the engineer’s effectiveness when playing (per turret used) rather than traits that directly buff the turrets, some inner synergy, but still a focus on the engineer.

Also, yeah, fix the floaty stuff.

I think you misunderstand why people tell others to get good. We realize better players beat weaker players. The new match making puts like skilled players on a team, and the major opponent decider is the Division.

The reason people say “get good” is because if you expect to dig your way out of a division you need to be better than the other people in the division. If you’re not, you will lose over and over until you happen to get enough pips (lower divisions) or enough of the better players work their way out of the division you’re on.

“Getting good” implies you’re improving yourself and taking charge of your growth. It’s kind of just a rude way of saying what players should be doing anyways, improving themselves to work on higher goals.

d(‘-’d)

People don’t believe in skill required to micro manage and deal with multiple moving parts. People think the only thing that requires skill is full glass dps and randomly evading.

Personally, I want a refund for this patch.

That’s what happens when you introduce a heavy power creep.
Despite some peoples’ belief, it is possible for all or most classes to be “overpowered”, because power isn’t just in relation to one another, but also base stats which have stayed the same while active defenses and burst potential has gotten stronger.

Unfortunately, no one is ‘right’ when it comes to a debate like this because balance against base stats and how much is too much (in terms of TTK, or active defenses versus stat defense balance) is fairly subjective.

/shrug

Ugh. I can’t see me only wanting to make "small" changes... But I’ll try... This might sound like a lot of nerfs, but to prevent power creep from continuing, I feel it’s necessary. Feel free to rage at me. <3

Ranger:
- Fix projectile distance to 1500 instead of floating to 1950.
- Ranpage as One only 1 stack of stability (to match other offensive elites).
- Rework sword auto attack to remove janky animations.

Engineer:
- Frost grenade is now blockable.
- IP changed (Not real sure a fair, active but also intuitive way.)
- Increase cool down of gear shield to 25 seconds.
- Magnet pull effect visible while stealthed.
- Healing Turret 1 second cast time.
- Add a minor, but relevant condition cleanse in some way for general use that doesn’t require breaking a build entirely to obtain.
- Turrets need heavier changes than I wish to list here to fix them without breaking them entirely:

Warrior:
- Increase time adrenaline lasts after combat, and degen slower.
- Charge increased to 18 seconds base (less harsh).
- Earth Shaker increased responsiveness. (Sometimes lags when pathing)
- Slight area reduction on combustive shot as adrenaline increases.
- Regain 50% adrenaline on an evaded/missed burst skill. (Not including combustive shot as it "always hits", abilities still have the cooldowns. Mostly in effort to help non cleansing ire builds, or at least take steps to try to reduce the dependency on it and burst mastery.)
- Move some Axe AA damage to Cyclone Axe and possibly throw Axe.

Elementalist:
- Don’t know enough to really say anything intelligent, even with bias.
- In general, reduce FA "instant" damage combos, but compensate more telegraphed attacks with stronger effects. (Not a fan of too much instant play in general. Just don’t kill the build when doing so.)

Necromancer:
- Don’t allow Touch of Death to function in down (state in tooltip). Scales too harshly with boon rip, executioner and downed damage modifiers. It’s fun, but too much.
- Reduce Life Blast damage by 20% (roughly*) but reduce cast time to 3/4. Reduce range penalty to 25% less damage beyond 600u. (Lots of reasons I want this.)
- Change Dhuumfire to 1 second of Burning per lifeblast. (Gives condi necros a reason to Life Blast, if it can be balanced right, may give alternative to CtD for more streamlined dps. Less ICDs. And opens possibilities for alternative runs sets to be used.)
- Reduce Life force on Staff 1 to 3%. Make marks gain 1% life force baseline.
- increase scepter LF gain.
- Start matches at 15% life force.
- Anything else is too much explaining or changing overall, not simple.

Thief:
- Make chill reduce initiative gain (not by 66%, maybe 33%. Shouldn’t be ignored entirely.)
- Find a way to make Powerlock affect them.
- find SOME way to make Steal slightly less insane in a single instant press. (No clue.)

Guardian:
- No real comments as of yet. I could see The Ring of Warding cool down increased.

Mesmer
- Again, no real answers. They don’t seem terrible, just countered by thieves.
- Make "The prestige" cause reveal in an AoE when used. :P

General:
- Streamline downed effects. All or no "knockbacks" should move a downed skill (Overcharged shot does, Warrior hammer 4 doesn’t. I don’t understand the inconsistency.)
- Being removed from shadows refuge removes the stealth. This should happen to downed players as well.

That’s a good start IMO... Love it or hate it, further adjustments may need to happen as well, but I think at least some of these should happen.

Edit: I understand there is technically a different between "launch" and "knockback". But I still see no reason why one should work and the other not, as both should theoretically move the body. Of course, it’s all just personal preference.

Just came back. I still want this and signers (passive) to work in shroud. That’s all. :}

Off-Hands
Axe: Axe feels pretty good, overall. Temporal Rift has some ground issues that need to be worked out to increase reliability, but design wise, I have no real issues.

Sword: Sword is fine. Pull issues exist still sometimes. Again, this isn’t a problem with the weapon. The flip cost of the block, “Shackling Wave” could possibly be reduced, as I feel the 20 (total) cost is a bit steep to utilize the block-counter.

Shield: I love shield. If anyone doesn’t like shield they’re wrong! No but really, it has good sustain, but while being strong, it has a big draw-back of a decent energy cost (as far as weapon skills go) and a self-root. The risk/reward seems nice, it’s strong and impactful, but with consideration. I enjoy it.

Jalis: I feel Jalis got hit pretty hard with the stability nerf, and still doesn’t quite do enough to justify its uses.

• Inspiring Reinforcement – Got hit too hard. At least the stability could last 2 seconds per pulse. I think that would help make it a bit more useful.

• Forced Engagement – Unfortunately, it isn’t safe to have a CC too spammable. That said, it’s still pretty easy to botch, meaning you really lose out. Too much risk for not enough reward would sum this skill up. “Unblockable” might give it a niche use, knowing it will land, and using it to fish out people in defensive modes.

• Vengeful Hammers – I’m still not real sure about. Cost might be kind of high to justify using too much, as it doesn’t feel quite there yet. If I’m not mistaken, hammers themselves still have issues. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

• Rite of the Great Dwarf – Super high cost, long cast for basically a glorified protection… I’d really, for the sake of the stun break and clutch plays, like to see this moved toward being near instant cast. I’d venture to say some people would even accept a nerf from 5 to 4 seconds if it were more useful on the fly. Again, feel free to discuss, because I’m just not sure it’s in a good spot, and long cast time stun breaks just feel awful to me.

Mallyx: Mallyx is in an okay spot. It suffers from a lack of stun break and energy wasted on interrupted skills.

• Pain Absorption – I personally feel like, as a defensive, non-target skill, this would be the prime area for a stun break, even with the cast time.

• Unyielding Anguish – It feels okay, it’s certainly better than it was in terms of being a practical skill. Though you gain some distance, I’m not sure I completely agree with losing all of the energy spent if interrupted, since the skill doesn’t go real far, the cost should honestly be incurred only if it lands and places a field. Losing 30 energy when getting interrupted just feels too harsh. (I’m sure it’s not the only skill that suffers from this, but it’s the most immediately noticeable.) Bug: This skill sometimes take a LONG time to even start leaping when under the effects of slow, to the point sometimes I wonder if it has even registered.

• Embrace the Darkness – The cost still seems high. Anything with negative pips signify huge opportunity costs, and overall, I feel like it ends up making Mallyx feel a bit clunky. I tend to avoid it when I can. The effect isn’t terrible. If it was instant cast (like all other toggles?), and maybe just one less Pip since it has a front-cost, maybe. Or keep the cost and add a pulsing 1 second cripple pulse so I can keep up on people with mace!

Ventari: I’m skipping Ventari. It’s not that I don’t love or care about Ventari, but I feel like any help I could give it would be pretend-developer thinking. Drastic changes are needed to make it more useful and less clunky to play with. There are a thousand ways this could go, and I’d rather wait and See what Roy has in consideration before going crazy in dream-land.

RNG and burst openings. Such skill, much risk v reward. This patch made people better players magically! Amazing! (S)

It’s gunna be great. “What are you doing on your necro, today, Sikari?”

“…. just chillin’…”

I like Roy, personally. He’s working on the Revenant. Thing is, he REALLY listens to feedback, takes it to heart and reacts pretty quickly. Plus, judging by many of the skills and traits, he’s relatively modest. That’s what the game needs. If more traits in the game were on the level of Revenant, rather than the Revenant needing to be buffed to high heaven to work, they game would be in a much better state, imo.

Robert Gee does alright in the ideas department and he did okay in some aspects of balance, but he let Mesmer get out of hand.

And, of course in my opinion, kind of lost some class definition in the process. Mesmers shouldn’t be about a million blinds. Why be illusionists and use magical deception when you can just blind people forever… Just doesn’t make a lot of thematic sense to me. Of course, I feel like a lot of classes are being watered down and being given a lot of things they shouldn’t have access to. It’s a shame.

It absolutely should, as should 1050 Power 1050 Healing power 560 Precision 560 ferocity.

They have all of these new heavy-healingpower trees that dont’ synergize well with anything right now because people push dps with passive or “sort of” active defenses like thief, guardian etc, but there’s no good way to play a DPS build that uses healing for it’s active defense because there are no good stat set ups to support it…

These are, imo, some of the most important stat combinations that should be added due to Revenant (ventari), new Blood magic, and so forth.

Personally, I always thought it was sort of cheesy that you could steal a very long CD elite just like that from them. I consider it justice. These long CD decent duration elities are meant to be afraid of and create a moment of undeniable pressure. Thats literally their design. I don’t really see an issue with it. If its too strong, perhaps look at the other parts of it like duration or something, but as far as I’m concerned, working as intended finally.

Understandably, not everyone will agree with me. It’s impossible for this to happen- you can’t please everyone, but if I were a lead developer from the beginning of GW2 this is what I would have pushed for. Some things may seem out of place, be sure to take the whole picture into consideration. As is, if parts of these were implemented and not others, clearly it would create some serious issues, so take this as a package of how I would have liked to see things. Some of the headlines can be a bit daunting, so I’ll try my best to explain my idea of implementation and how it would fit into the game, so you don’t think I’m crazy and just spouting out nonsense. Again, this is my opinion and how I’d have liked to see things so please respect my opinions, even if yours differ. Enjoy.

If I were a Game Designer in GW2’s alpha:
I would have focused on the GW2 trinity more.
Guild wars two lacks what would make it a great group competitive game (overall) due to its lack of trinity. Of course, this is all my opinion, but I feel like this has simply pushed us into a game where there is no diversity. Everyone is damage, with very powerful utilities (I will call these enfeebles), or are very tanky with quite a lot of buffs and healing (which I will refer to as support). While it’s fine to have created a game for people to play what they want and how they want, it clashes with the competitive and team-building goal they also set. Someone has to win, and currently, of course, solo-build how you want has pretty much taken precedence. However, this is only true, in a pinch, for PvP. In PvE all we’ve really accomplished is forced everyone to play DPS because it’s the only thing not wasting everyones’ time! Truth be told, you really have the same effect in PvP, though slightly more giving with allowing bunkers to exist, but the main goal is still to control and kill an enemy as fast as you can with as little time to think as possible. This reminds me less of an MMO, and more of a hack-and-slash, which I love, I love hack-and-slashes as much as the next guy, but that isn’t what a team-MMO is all about. So, they didn’t want the tank, dps and healer trinity. That’s understandable. Tanking is only usually usable in PvE and useless everywhere else. Healing is usually playing the UI and not the game, so what would I have suggested? Here’s my Trinity:

- Damage dealers: Damage dealer focus on stats such as Power, Precision and Ferocity to deal lethal damage, effectively taking out the competition. Damage dealing weapon-sets and utilities would lose many (not all) boons and conditions, and play very similarly to power players today, minus some condition support here and there. Damage dealers are also (now) the primary interrupters/controllers. For those who lose conditions while blowing up their enemies, they’d be given tools to try to control an enemy’s movements and ability to perform their roles to their maximum capacity.
- Healing Support: Healers focus on stats such as Healing Power, Will (Boon Duration), and Toughness, and focus on providing game-changing boons to allies and healing them to keep important fighters in the fight. This means boons like fury, high might stacks and protection would mostly come from team supporters or those who chose to hybrid-specialize. To add healers each class would get a new weapon specifically designed for healing. (Only 1, so healers would be forced to have an enfeebling or damaging off-set, and still need to focus on battle) Healing weapons would deal damage with their #1 ability, #2 would be a zero cooldown casted AoE/cone heal of SOME sort, small but constantly usable like a basic auto attack. This would never require the healer to target an ally, just watch heal bars (as players already need to do), and would heal the HEALER for 50% less than allies.
- Enfeeblers: Enfeeblers focus on stats such as Power, Pressure (Condition duration), and Toughness. These are our attrition set ups. Their focus is to apply crippling conditions that make it easier for other roles to perform. Enfeeblers also have medium amounts of damage supported by their power. Enfeeblers would be much like condition builds today, except without condition damage (discussed later), they’d focus on condition duration and power damage with the primary focus on supporting allies by applying crippling conditions such as poison, blind, and chill (etc).

Shiro: Shiro is strong and, generally, in a good place. Riposting Shadows and Phase Traversal needs consideration to reducing mobility. Surely, no one wants to hear that, but it definitely can get out of hand as it stands, and something has to give. I’m not sure how to handle it without going back to the previous version, which clearly wasn’t a better alternative (required range).

Glint: Glint seems to be in a great spot. It’s amazing at what it does. I’m not actually sure if it’s too good, or just perceived as too good due to the nature of Revenant as a whole, being new to players. So far, coupled with Jalis or Ventari it seems okay, Mallyx it seems strong but not too overly strong, but might be a bit too good with Shiro/Power builds. The heal is strong, but feels necessary at times to not get completely melted by conditions.

• Facet of Chaos – Leaving the rest alone, because I’m unsure, I feel Facet of Chaos (Chaotic Release) could be a bit better. It’s a bit slow for what it does, and the super speed doesn’t really seem necessary. The cooldown is long as well. The pips are high, so I rarely ever “sit” with it, the 3 seconds of protection are really not worth the 15 energy worth of opportunity costs. It is one of those, however, where it could easily be out of hand, so I think its fine. Chaotic Release could be better though. Bug: For some Chaotic Release causes huge lag spikes.

Note: Traits are starting to take shape. There are several that still feel too weak, especially several Grand Master traits.

Corruption: If anything could be done to make Demonic defiance more global in use, it would be amazing, and switched with Opportune Extraction. Resistance is everything about this line, but only Mallyx can enjoy it. Any way to make it more universal without shredding it would be great for the line and the class. If that isn’t possible without destroying it, though, just leave it alone.

• Venom Enhancement – Cooldown seems to be a bit much with such limited Poison access. 10 seconds would be fine. (Reduce base to 4 seconds.) This would make it a better anti-healing utility if a non-mallyx build takes this line (not real likely, since Demonic Defiance sort of has a monopoly, and the line is too focused on torment).

• Frigid Precision – Seems like a weaker version of the reaper’s Adept trait, which even that isn’t very powerful, of course without the prior chill requirement, but RNG instead. Perhaps just make it AOE so it’s on the same level as the Reaper adept, or add a decent spike damage to it, similar to Glacial Heart.

• Diabolic Inferno – Could see maybe an increase in duration or one more stack. It’s basically a weak Ring of Fire proc at the moment, but overall the trait is pretty cool. If it was a bit stronger, and if EtD was instant, I could really see it get get some use. (Suggestions: 2 stacks for 5 seconds, or 3 stacks for 3 seconds).

Retribution: This line has needed some work but is coming together. The Grand Masters need some serious love though. I’ll skip hammers, since he’s already changing it, but really, the GMs need to be looked at quickly before launch. I’m going to get a bit “pretend designer” here and suggest some more drastic changes to make the overall feel of the line a bit better.

• Planar Protection – Take the Protection from Eye for an Eye, and move it here. Change the skill to: “When taking fall damage or you are inflicted with a CC effect, gain 3 seconds of protection and create a field of mist, pulsing weakness. 4 second duration field (down from 8 seconds). 10 second cooldown” Bam, suddenly you have a fall trait and a good anti-CC trait. (Note: Similar to the Engineer trait, but adds a field in place of twice the cooldown, just so you know where my numbers came from.)

• Eye for an Eye – Merge the effects of Improved Aggression to here. Reduce the duration increase to 50%, but allow it to work on players. Reduce the base taunt to 2 seconds, so that it remains 3 seconds, but works with Forced Engagement. Add a new Adept.

• Empowering Vengeance – Merge retaliatory Evasion into this trait. Create a new Major trait.

• Steadfast Rejuvenation – Everything about this is terrible for a GM. To put in perspective, Engineer often has perma swiftness and heals for more with the new Master trait. It is increased in the gap with Super Speed. Backpack Regenerator is even more useful. Level 2 “Adrenal Health”, a minor Master is barely weaker, but likely just as good due to the proc chance and the nature of ICDs never being right on time, and level 3 completely outshines it. Rough suggestion: Increase healing by 10%, remove the pointless proc chance (the trait should be based around simply being aggressive in combat), and add “Remove 1 condition.” End result would be something like 430 and 1 condition removed when hit, 4 sec icd. This would be about 2.2 conditions removed per 10 seconds, which is still much weaker than most condition removal traits (Empathetic Bond, Cleansing Ire, Cleansing Water) but still made up for with some healing (equating to about 100 hps), putting this trait closer in line with things like Rapid Regeneration in terms of usefulness.

Salvation: I’m opting out of this for similar reasons to Ventari. I need to see a bigger picture/goal to make proper feedback.

Devastation: I don’t have any major complains with Devastation. It seems to be a popular line, and has its uses. Some minor tuning issues could be picked on, but nothing too striking, overall.

Glint: The minors are great. There are some tuning issues and bugs to be worked out but the specialization is in a solid spot.

• Radiant Revival – Cooldown is too long and the effect is too short to be useful. Increasing it to 3 seconds on a 30 or 40 second cooldown and increasing revival speed by 10% would be a good way to make it more impactful.

• Bolster Fortifications – It just doesn’t seem very good. It seems quite clear it’s “balanced” around Ventari’s unique low-cooldown heal. I’m not sure how I feel about that. This may be a case where a cooldown is necessary to make it more useful all around.

• Soothing Bastion – This trait is super buggy right now. When this procs, using the shield 5 skill will still play its animation, root you, and go on cooldown, but does not block or heal, which is a HUGE problem. I’ve heard the boon duration extension also doesn’t work. I did not personally test this, though.

Thanks for reading, and I welcome all feedback! I’m sure not everyone read every last bit, but thanks for letting me get it all out, and hopefully there is something here as a base for discussion, and getting some creative juices flowing. Sorry it’s so long. :P

Edit: I tried to make it easier to read and keep place, it just took me a minute.

Erm. Nah I think 2xI duelists and a zerker instantly unloading at once after already having unloaded in addition to a shatter (like the daze shatter) lining up like 14k bursts on top of a shatter and previous phantasm attacks is just too much. If you’re honest with yourself this isn’t even a question….

Eye of the beholder stuff.

Some people really hunger for that more basic (less magical/flashy) martial arts combat theme. Others really don’t… Design wise, you might not enjoy it, but there are certainly some aspects of uniqueness to Daredevil, such as entirely reworking how you evade. It is cooler than people let on, which seemed to get a bad rep due to clunkiness. If the first impressions weren’t “clunky”, I have a feeling the general mood would have been much brighter overall.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Looks to me like GW1. The lack of the trinity is also the reason why deathmatch in this game will fail, due to no active healing/protting.

Personally when reading about GW2 it wasn’t the lack of trinity that excited me, it was their own trinity that they abandoned. My idea of Dps, healing/support and enfeebling is nothing more than expanding on their own idea of Dps, support and utility, which unfortunately evolved into an all DPS meta with utilities built in and self-support (1 guy does it all) sort of thing. It promotes playing how you want with whoever you want just fine, but it leaves the game very lacking and requires not fun mechanics to support (ie Bosses one shorting everyone.)

Personally, I dislike Tank, Healer, Dps trinities! Tanks are only useful in pve leaving pvp with a dual-type system which isn’t very exciting. Additionally, tanking never made sense. Its full of “taunts” and weird mechanics forcing brainless AI to attack the toughest dude in a crowd of people. Very lame, if you ask me. And healing is boring, nothing short of playing the UI.

But guild wars 2’s dps, heal support and enfeebled trinity would have provided VERY unique roles that could be played and utilized game-wide, wouldn’t be crutching on terrible logic (tanks), and everyone would have had their place. This would have also solved the issue of cc abilities against bosses without using cheesy mechanics like “oh he can shrug off being knocked down x amount of times”, and replaced with the idea that “he’s a tough dude and not easily controlled but when he’s going for a special kill his guard is down, so that is the best time to strike to send him off balance”. This game had the layout it needed to be epic, but in parts were lazy and in other parts they just aren’t true to their design.

nearlight.3064:

Hopefully people will stop complaining and falling into despair over necro. Robert Gee has already done amazing things for our class and I’m confident he’ll continue to address the necromancer’s faults!

I tend to agree with this. While often bitter, Necromancer had undoubtedly been more fun post-patch. Still lots of base-necro stuff that needs looked at, like baseline LB piercing and maybe a few other things as he seems to have already hinted on, but we’re going in a better direction at least.

I still really hope he considers the idea of merging Chilling Darkness to the Minor Master trait in Reaper.

Booms.3952:

surprised not everyone is saying how necessary grenadier is for engis

Or the Grenade kit in general. I’m sick of seeing them honestly lol…

Respect, it got respect by being picked cool enough for a re-use with flames! People aren’t kitten ed because it needs to be respected. They got their panties in a bunch because they spent gold on nonshiney versions and others could get their shinies, and it wasn’t fair to them. >_>:

My Toes.1596:

Witch/wizard hat plsssss!!!

These. How in the hell does this game have so many light armor hats and no wizardry hats… kitten .

Hey all, Sikari checking in on Revenant. I want to pre-face, obviously, I’m not an “expert” Revenant yet, as no one is, but I’ve done my fair bit of testing so far, tried many builds, and then did some basic comparisons, design dissecting and so on, and wanted to weigh in with a list of things I liked, disliked and things that were just broken all around.

General
Rigid Weapons
Weapons are not universal in the slightest, and not built for multi-focal gameplay. They should have a design more similar to Elementalist, Grenades, or Warrior Sword+LB, in the sense that they can be utilized differently based on stats. This may mean low base options with greatly increased scaling to ensure weapons are able to be used across the class adequately. Currently it’s very Weapon-to-Legend based, and it shows.

Very Slow
Ideally, all classes would be a bit closer to Revenant, but it’s not likely to be the case any time soon. As such, the Revenant is entirely too slow. This comes in many ways. Their mobility and “stickiness” is an issue itself, but worse of all, many cast times make the class unusable against certain classes with many fast control effects.

Easy Target
Currently, revenant feels fairly powerless against ranged attackers. Thier condition-based gap closer fails frequently, and beyond that they have little soft-CC and hard CC (that isn’t displacing the enemy further away from you). In melee, they simply don’t hold up to other heavier classes and lack the damage even when fully condition or power based (granted, lack of “dps weapon”, but this should not be the case with the class’s design, anyways). All of the above is further crippling with long response times and cast times that leaves you feeling sluggish and unable to defend yourself.

Energy
Energy is nice, but mostly for the utilities. For weapons, it just feels like a hindrance. Swapping to a new weapon and using a single skill, for example, instantly locks you out of Forced engagement which is frequently dodged, dazed (which consumes energy) and so on. It’s very easy to be Energy starved and there are no energy recovery mechanics to be found, including traits, interrupt protection (back end), and misses. Weapons using energy simply leave the class feeling clunky would be the short version of the message to convey.

Not Customizable
Weapons are tied to legends, Legends are tied to trait lines, legends have a very specific set of utilities. There just isn’t much real choice in the class, much worse than originally expected due to the rigidness of weapons and traits. Legends could really use 1-2 additional utilities to have some sort of choice, and as said, weapons must be multi-purpose for the class’s design to work.

Weapons
Staff
Staff is generally, pretty fun. As with all melee Revenant weapons, it lacks soft CC and lacks mutli-purpose, which is counter-design with the revenant. Skill 2 is an unnecessary two-part attack, easily leaving much to be desired, and even when it does work, the reward is minimal. Skill 3 feels useful and is fun to watch. Skill 4 should not self-root, and generally speaking, the cast is too long to be entirely useful. For not healing builds, the gain of health is also very low. Skill 5 is the staff’s bread and butter, lower the cooldown so we can have fun more often!

Mace+Axe
Maxe and axe. First off, the auto attack conditions just don’t really feel like they are impactful enough and the melee range, once again, is crippling for a class that simply doesn’t hold up well in face-to-face combat. Mace 2 is slow, but otherwise could be okay, I believe, if not for the insane cast time. Mace 3 feels like it wants to fill that multi-purpose role, but still doesn’t do enough to justify playing a power mace build, nor does the rest of the weapon. Could use some improvements, especially like adding a pretty strong cripple to it. Axe 4, as said before, misses often and you basically lost all of your mobility for 12 seconds. Axe 5, the pull is too small, and sometimes just doesn’t work at all.

continued…

Lexander.4579:

true guardian needs some shaving, they have that ridiculous beard on all their ability icons that feature their face

Yeah, buddy. “Save Yourselves”? More like “Shave Yourselves!” Amirite?!

While I’m on the side of keeping it, I agree with Stof here, they probably will; however. I actually think they should do it now in-game rather than later. People may have bought that skin and are working on leveling an off-race alt because if it who doesn’t know, so what I’m saying is, people might still be making decisions based on thinking they’ll continue to own the skin or not knowing it’s changing. A note to buyers sooner than later would actually be best.