Yeah, that’s what happens when you build a class around the traditional “wizard” archetype of a low health, low armor magic user, but then give them a weapon set with melee range, give them no effective way to maintain distance due to the large number of gap closers available to everyone, build the PvP game around holding and fighting on very small points, give them no exceptional burst and no additional survivability in terms of skill utility in comparison to what the classes with high hp and armor have.
Typically, games that attempt create a magic user around this type of archetype give them superior damage or superior, but short lived forms of mitigation. It creates a risk vs reward scenario.
But the low hp and toughness of the elementalist really kitten all when it comes to balance as none of the changes to how elementalist work or how other classes work take this into account.
It’s just an arbitrary, unfair penalty against the class for no real compensating value and just something we have to deal with.
If there was any kind of compensation for that low hp and armor ever, it was the celestial amulet, since the jack of all trades skill style of the elementalist meant we could effectively use every stat and get value from it.
This. Ele was balanced around celestial. Add in the horrible elite spec that tempest turned out to be and Ele is finished for me as well.
This the first and only game I’ve ever seen, where people would see a bunch of AoE coming their way and yell “AoE’s are coming! Quick! Everyone stack together!”
The “don’t rez the dead” rule exits to encourage players to not be lazy, and to obey fight mechanics by actually dodging/not standing in red circles, etc. It’s the GW2 equivalent of the “don’t heal people who stand in fire”policy in games like WoW.
Skirmish idea is very clumsy. A far better solution would be to dynamically calculate and adjust score per tick based on a moving average of the number of active players per server over the past hour as a proportion of the active population of all 3 servers per tick.
eg:
server A has 2K active players, B has 1.5K, C has 1.8K. PPT.
server A is currently ticking at 300 PPT, B 100, C 200.
actual awarded score is scaled as follows:
# A = 300ppt * (5300/2000) / 3 = 265ppt
# B = 100ppt * (5300/1500) / 3 = 117ppt
# C = 200ppt * (5300/1800) / 3 = 196ppt
This is using a basic linear scaling whereas actual performance vs population size probably scales geometrically/logarithmically but you get the idea.
I prefer sub-based games for the simple fact that the content and updates are much better.
The biggest flaw in the B2P model is that once they get your money, they have no incentive to keep you playing, they just need to keep the cash shop turning over. Whereas a sub-based game has to earn your loyalty every month.
I don’t know anyone who uses conjures, and I am yet to meet a good player who uses conjures.
the OBVIOUS fix for conjured weapons being crappy is make them work with attunements. That is, activating frost bow replaces your water skills and you can switch to fire, use fire skills, and then switch back to water and the frost bow is still there.
There is no other way to make conjures viable short of making them deliberately overpowered just to get people using them.
conjures are in the same bucket of design fail as dragon’s tooth, the skill that is designed to miss its target most of the time.
Just give us a new scoring system based on population and give us a score DECAY. The longer you hold something the less points you get.
I think you mean the other way around: The longer you hold something the more points per tick you get.
The other positive changes they could make are:
1) dilute the rewards for taking objectives by the number of players who participated (discourage zerging).
2) make every kill count towards the score (re-balance scoring & ticks) to promote player clashes over karma training.
The one addition to WVW I’d most like to see is a PVP/PVE dungeon along the lines of Darkness Falls in DAOC, which changes ownership based on which server controls the most X and essentially functions as:
a reward for the leading server, and
a balancing mechanic that removes some of the dominant server’s players from the battlefield.
Elemental Atunement … probably should be baseline.
Yes this is the only thing that makes sense, EA is a class-defining trait.
Their goal was to decrease the dependence of Eles on water and arcane but all they’re doing to making 20+ water 20+ arcane the bare minimum instead of 15+ water 20+arcane, the exact opposite of their intended goal. It’s kittening kittened.
i particularly like the idea of GoLE producing an aura, some nice potential synergies there.
the only thing i would add is that glyphs feel like they need another trait. perhaps drop the new damage-on-interrupt trait to master level and add a GM glyph trait?
warr has just been spoilt with 100% adr all the time without needing to spend a single utility or trait slot. now you need to devote some part of your build to adr generation.
this is still a far better position than e.g. Eles, who need to devote 4 trait points to both water and arcane plus 1-3 utility slots just to make use of their class mechanic and survive.
2. Mechanics, class balance, and depth. ArenaNet went for a streamlined simplistic system for esports and balanced around fast action. The problem of course is that fast action doesn’t leave tons of room for strategic or skilled play. Their continued class balance is absolutely laughable and when PvP players see that a dev can’t handle the most obvious of class balance changes quickly, they leave. The game just lacks a lot of depth that provides for counter-play. The slower caster times and casting knockback in say WoW allowed for some good counter play. The tons of different skills and mechanics in LoL provide lots of depth and the casting times/animations for lots of skills provide enough time for decent counter play.
and this ^ — a general lack of any kind of cerebral depth to the combat, spamming abilities outperforms build-crafting and careful use of abilities, no real counterplay, very few real build alternatives.
What disappoints me most about this game is that GW1 had build and tactical options in spades and the combat & build system had a real cerebral depth and quality to it that this game just doesn’t.
Am in the same predicament and I also find HOT to be really really grindy. The entire appeal of GW2 is that it was very casual-friendly, but HOT seems to have left that model behind and locked the interesting stuff behind a grindwall.
So grindy in fact I expect the next thing to come out will be to buy hero points for real $$$.
The 600 range of traited traps is a major drawback of trying to run traps in WVW.
Compared to similar AOEs such as wells (900 range), necro marks (1200 range), ele staff earth #2, fire #3, water #4 (all 1200 range), guardian’s purging flames (900 range), the 600 range of traps seems fairly unreasonable.
A traited range of 900 or 750 seems more appropriate. It would also be nice to see trap traits in a more appropriate trait line, as condi utility traits don’t really make sense in a precision/ferocity trait line.
Actually I think the balance in GW2 is pretty poor as it’s clear they only balance for the top 25% and more-or-less disregard the bottom 75%, which I think is ultimately detrimental to the game. They did this in GW1 too, but at least there you had much more control over how you could build your character.
They could eg: decrease the damage of 100 blades by 15-25% but make it usable while moving, or decrease the upfront burst of backstab by 25% and add a bunch of stacks of bleeding with decreased CD — point being to soften the edges of some of the more obvious IWin-vs-noobs buttons while still keeping the overall power of the ability roughly the same.
I don’t think this game will ever be e-sports while it has such big watchability turnoffs like downed-state, excessive particle effects, and the conquest game type.
Anet’s apparent lack of interest in player issues like game balance & build variety definitely doesn’t help either.
The first thing would be deleting the damage component of Lightning Flash and making it a stun breaker again. That would be a buff to elementalists while also reducing the damage of that combo.
Agree, the lightning flash change was a net step backwards.
Let’s face it though, changes to cantrips are the least of Ele’s worries. Glyphs, signets, and conjures all need attention a lot more than cantrips. From the PVP/WVW perspective of course.
Moreover, I’d rather see the skill floor for Ele raised, even if it comes at the cost of lowering the ceiling. The std deviation of Ele performance is larger than any other class (IMO), which is always going to mean it is impossible to balance well.
Case in point – the series of sledgehammer nerfs that took Ele from “best” PVP class to “worst” PVP class in the space of a few months.
Eve online has a better “living story” than this game or any theme park game ever could, because the story derives almost entirely from player actions and events.
I’d much rather have Air #1 become a single target attack and #2 become chain lightning, and both actually hit hard.
Strongly agree that staff needs to gain some semblance of single target damage potential & yours is a good suggestion for sure. Staff air #2 surely does suck in terms of opportunity cost & effect.
The suckiness of staff air #1 vs a single target (it’s fine vs 2+) needs to be addressed as well.
I don’t think the changes listed will change much:
20+ arcane is still required for playability
15+ water is still required for survivability
glyphs still suck
conjures still suck
EA is still a fair bit better than any of the GM traits
staff still has 19/20 AOE skills
sceptre still laden with crappy skills: DT, SS, fire #1, water #1
I can see S/D and signets being a little better, but survivability will be an issue.
Re-distributing the stun breakers is good.
More than anything, I would’ve expected to see trait changes that reduced the dependence of Ele on attunement CD reduction from arcane and dependence on 15+ water for sustain and condition removal, eg: Earth 30 = reset fire and earth attunements on using a signet, Air 30 = reset air and water attunements on using a glyph.
Pretty disappointing IMO if those are the real changes. I really hope they aren’t.
Personally, I think it’s simply a case of the Living Story + Cash Shop being so financially successful for them they’re not really concerned with much else. They ask themselves, “why bother with X when Y is already working so well for us?” And because there isn’t a great answer to that question, most of their resources are allocated accordingly.
This. If the game is not eventuating the way you’d like it to, then don’t support it. Don’t spend any money on gems and discourage your friends from spending money as well.
Yep i think they went too far with condi vulnerability. it’s not much fun to play classes where you’re forced into a cookie cutter build because there’s basically no choice in condi removal.
If ArenaNet had just said “this is the revised offer: vets get free slot with pre-purchase”, and not added the misleading, disingenuous BS about “veteran loyalty” then I wouldn’t have made this thread.
Even without saying the words “veteran loyalty”, veteran loyalty is implied by your suggestion of them saying “this is the revised offer: vets get free slot with pre-purchase”.
A reward for vets is a reward for veterans who remain loyal to the game by prepurchasing.
I think you’re just caught up on the wording. They made this new offer in response to large outcry from veterans about not getting a reward for their loyalty.
By bringing up “veteran loyalty” in their community address they’re saying, hey yeah you’re right we’re gonna give you something for being loyal customers and sticking with the game for so long.
Just coming out and saying, “oh yeah, so we revised the offer and current accounts can get an extra slot” could just as easily come across as a quick shushing of the complainers. “Here take your character slot and move on, thanks.”
Any kind of statement they make could be interpreted a few different ways. Both good and bad.
It’s never been about getting something for being loyal, it about existing players getting a much worse deal than new players, for the same money.
Compared to GW1, the AI seems pretty appallingly bad in this game, my friend couldn’t get past level 10 saying it was faceroll boring. He’s right… why is the AI so bad in this game?
Yes, so the only actual improvement in GW2 is the persistent world, and even that is still somewhat instanced as you can only get from one zone to another through portals. (See WoW for how to do it right.) The only other advantage I can think of for GW2 is the AH – and that’s also not nearly as good as in many other MMOs. Everything else in GW2 is worse or at least no better than GW1. That’s just… sad.
Yes I really think they made a colossal mistake in leaving out the best parts of the original game: the skill depth & variety, the amount of build choice through secondary classes, skill capping, elite skills, mobs using player skills with decent AI.
As with any software product, the bits you replace have to be better than the bits you’re replacing, and in GW2, they aren’t.
they can’t not do anything after the near-100% negative reaction after BWE1, they would just look ridiculous. There are a number of things they could tweak to differentiate Tempest from being just another version of D/D… i’m semi-hopeful.
The real question is what on Earth gave them the idea that copying the close range support role of D/D combined with slow, easily interrupted overloads with crappy effects were ever a good idea?
Imagine how much work and $$$ could have been saved by releasing a video preview of the spec months ago to gather feedback?
mmmm sorry but I think gw2 is really a non grind game.
everything u grind for is something u dont really need to play the game.
Acended gear is the only grind factor I admit but what else?
um, kinda everything:
you need to grind dungeons to get dungeon armour/weapons
you need to grind events for karma
you need to grind WVW for WVW rank
you need to grind PVP for PVP rank
you need to grind the world for world completion
you need to grind for legendaries
etc
not saying GW2 is a grindy game, it’s not, it’s very casual-friendly, but it’s a themepark game at the end of the day, and themepark games are only ever about grind. you only need to play a good sandbox game (eg: Eve, Archeage, Darkfall etc) to see how grindy all themepark games truly are.
the entire trait system is in need of some serious revision
I agree with you there.
I also agree. The game would have been so much better with no trait tree and a pool of skills for each weapon from which players could choose.
Pooling all the 5/15/25 traits into 3 buckets from which you could choose would be a good first step towards giving players more meaningful build choices. Another obvious candidate for improvement would be allowing players to equip another utility in the elite slot as a lot of classes have really crappy elites and/or elites that don’t fit into builds at all.
Instead of being so conservative with changes at this point I’d say it would benefit the game a lot more if bolder changes and balance changes were made more regularly because let’s face it: the ultra slow approach is still producing huge metagame changes and tons of bugs/imbalances are slipping through.
Where is written in stone that everybody is looking for extra slots?!
The expac comes with a new class. It’s one of the few things we actually know for sure that will actually be in the (rather under-contented & overpriced) expansion.
It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that everything needed to enjoy the content of the expansion actually comes with the expansion, right? In the same way when you buy a new car, you expect to be able to drive it.
Therefore, everyone who buys the expac, should get a character slot included, no further questions or qualifications required.
In a game with already overdone spammy ground and particle effects, let’s add another ground effect that will have nearly 100% uptime so the player can’t see what field they’re standing on…..
