Guild Wars 2

Imagine a fiendly soccer match with 20 vs 20 on the field. The ball is going back and forth, people are trying to score and are having a good time. Eventually, everyone leave the field and the score is 10 vs 8. Lets continue the match tomorrow.

The next day, they run out on the field again for a rematch. The score is now 10 vs 288. 1 guy has been kicking the ball into an empty goal during the night.

While you are wondering how the kitten you are supposed to make up those points being matched against the full strength of the other team, the fan crowd just yells “dont kittening dis that guy, he is as much worth as you even if he can take 280 points and you 20 people cant even score more than 10.”

mind blown

Soon
Player – 2 weeks – 1 month
Anet. – before next year

Poor guy…. the main problem here is you want to be able to solo defend an objective from a 50 man zerg. That is an unrealistic expectation! We should not rebalance the entire game because your server imploded. It didn’t get harder because defense got weaker, it got harder because you lost population, and most importantly because all the people that use to fight on the bl’s now only fight on ebg, and are afraid to Leave e bg because they can’t get back in, so no one responds to attackers on bls.

Nozome.7853:

The real problem , is that some people here tried to encourage others that the patch won’t be as bad , or that we don’t know everything yet , so people were expecting some changes in a good direction for pve at least (everyone agreed that mesmer would die in pvp)

I think people were hoping for something like the pre HoT patch. At least I was. Todays patch just isn’t enough if this is supposed to be it for the next three months.

Downloading now… Can we even talk about this here? xD

Anyways. How does Mesmer feel since the alacrity & friends nerf guys? Is it really “mez ded” or more of a really inconvenient and ill-thought change that makes the class harder and less rewarding to play… But somehow still viable?

Well obviously feedback is still ground targeted underwater because we’re supposed to be with the bottom feeders anyways.

Working as intended

Xaylin.1860:

frifox.5283:

skcamow.3527:

RM, Mistrust, Scepter
Mesmer

• Feedback: This skill is now ground targeted and no longer requires a target.

FB is powerful. Ground targeted FB is godly.

<3

Anyone tried if still works underwater?

Errr ma geeerd.

They did it. They actually broke Feedback underwater. It is ground targeted. Meaning you can’t use it for anything besides hunting anemones at the bottom of the ocean. I’m speechless.

The alacrity nerf is so bad, this afternoon I started to take a second/third/tenth look at some of the other chronomancer traits and quickly determined that core mesmer may now be in the ballpark of coming close to chronomancer. Maybe this was the intent, to buff the core by severely nerfing the elite. Whatever the reason, in PvP well of recall is 100% necessary to maintain any stretch of remote viability of ANY chrono build, and that’s sad.

Well it looks like the last 6 months were extraordinary.

Now for the slow decline until the next Expansion/new overpowered Specialisation.

Kraljevo.2801:

WvW-related? Probably everything.

Right now, though, even if there were WvW-only things for sale, I wouldn’t spend a dime. They simply don’t deserve it, sorry.

Yes right now i dont put any single penny in this game. Already spended 50 bucks to get this crap, if they want some more, they better fix this mess they throwed at us.

But yeah if it wasn’t like this i probably would have bought an account wide siege bag or siege skins.

Yuffi.2430:

Perhaps one of the reasons that Anet has not seemed to take WvW as seriously as they could is that it probably does not generate much revenue for them.

Here we go again. What makes you think it doesn’t generate much revenue? From what I’ve seen WvW players buy skins and outfits just as much as PvE players; they also buy finishers — which PvE players don’t. Not only that, WvW players get much fewer rewards than PvE players, which probably means more WvW players buy gems with cash. I wouldn’t be too surprised if WvW players generated more revenue per player than PvE.

WvW-related? Probably everything.

Right now, though, even if there were WvW-only things for sale, I wouldn’t spend a dime. They simply don’t deserve it, sorry.

Skins for commander tags, like guild emblem. I got excited for this possibility when the mentor tag was released.

And still no comment from them despite the entire forum and reddit being in agreement that this overhaul being delayed constantly is demoralising for the community especially when we don’t know if this will benefit the game mode or not.

Release smaller overhauls gradually, focus on things that work then trickle things in over time.

Fixed some complaints with the new map? Release them.
Have an idea that could help balance the playerbase? Try it.
Want to test changes you’ve made to the Alpine maps? Test them live for a week.
Have a reward system in mind? Get it finished and release it.

Seriously, you have a playerbase that has had stale content, imbalanced combat and silly matchups for years. Having kitten beta events with livestreamers isn’t cutting it, test it live for a week (like the golem week but actually helpful) and listen to the feedback you get from the playerbase from it.

Snow.9862:

This issue is going to be discussed to death in coming days as we’re all unhappy at the changes to Alacrity, but the reason I’m making this topic as someone who rarely frequents the forums it that I’m concerned that the Developers haven’t considered the cascade effect of the alacrity change.

If the goal was to nerf the effectiveness by 50% then that’s not what has happened here, the effect itself is weaker, fine, but now the Mesmer has longer cd’s on everything, also lowering our ability even generate Alacrity at all. This toning down will result in a larger than 50% loss because we can’t keep up our previous uptime and will impact other aspects of our gameplay more than I believe is intended. I’d suggest at this time making alacrity stronger on the casting mesmer but I realise that may not be possible or desirable.

During streaming karl said that:

1) one mesmer makes raid to do 66% more dmg

Reality: alacrity makes skill recharge faster of 66% aka 40% less cd.

So IF every class in raid would be able to always cast cd based skill without NEVER using autoattack AND IF the raid would have no rev (or thief in future) AND IF the chrono would be able to hold up 100% uptime alacrity on other people (that is actually impossible) and IF alacrity would apply on all 10 raid member instead of just five cause target cap THEN alacrity would bring to just a 40% dmg increase.

In the reality since none of this stuff is possible alacrity bring around 25% more dmg on raid and not 66% as you stated, dear karl.

After nerf, alacrity would bring less than one half of that 25% more dmg due to the cascade effect on the skill cd that bring alacrity.

Basically alacrity will mathly become worste than a frost spirit.

2) karl stated that, due to that 66% moar dmg, every party bring a chrono an this is not fair!

karl also said that if anet would just reduce alacrity duration instead alacrity effect then people would bring 2 mesmer in raid, and that’s way worste!!!!11!!!

Now i dont get why having 3/4 war and 2/3 ele isnt an issue (in fact karl buff them) while having a single chrono in raid is such a bad thing that deserve a buff.

But then since you are speaking at devs who say stuffs like these on a public stream without realizing by theirself what they’re doing, then i suggest you to just let anet doing his nerf as they want.

Let anet kill chrono for no reason as they want to do.

Then if the class they promoted for months as alacrity based class would become unplayable in hot promoted content, and it will, for a weirldy dumb unneccessary nerf at 1st patch after release…

Well.. If you’ve bough hot to play the class they promoted for months, and that class is not working due to unneccesary nerf, just ask refund as i will.

Xyonon.3987:

Levetty.1279:

Xyonon.3987:

There is no bunker meta anymore, now that the full def trinkets get removed. Just keep that in mind.

So they nerfed Bunker Chrono in every single way possible and Shatter has gone back to being theif food.

Why? Because of the unblockable elite? Blink / Dodge / Invuln still helps. It’s just unblockable, not unpreventable.

Thief damage being buffed, unblockable elite, energy sigils nerfed. Blink doesn’t help at all, thieves out-blink us easily. Dodge helps only if the thief is bad. Invuln helps…and is on a long cooldown. Additionally, shatter mesmer won’t only be thief food. They’ll also be food for necros and revenants still, since necro is getting buffed substantially. Additionally, shatter mesmer still won’t be able to fight a scrapper well, since scrappers are fairly tanky without the tank amulets (they use marauders) and have fairly high damage pressure.

Basically, shatter mesmer will be as it is right now (not good), with added nerfs.

Xyonon.3987:

There is no bunker meta anymore, now that the full def trinkets get removed. Just keep that in mind.

So they nerfed Bunker Chrono in every single way possible and Shatter has gone back to being theif food.

Curunen.8729:

Can’t they put Confusion on crit back in so condi can actually have a choice of weapons to use instead of being forced to use scepter?

Nope, but we can buff scepter in a meaningless way some more!

Any nerf to alacrity won’t make mesmer less fun to play if done right.

There are 5 ways they can nerf/change alacrity just off the top of my head:
1) Change Shield uptime
2) Change well uptime
3) Change personal uptime on +50% trait or shatters
4) Actually change the rate of CD reduction
5) Wild card change like shifting the minor trait to major or something along those lines.

“Alacrity has improved the mesmer’s party support game-wide, but we’ll be bringing alacrity a bit more in line and making it easier to balance while keeping it a staple of the chronomancer elite specialization. "

I think they will reduce the effect to 40-50% instead of 66% but that won’t make it not viable or worth it. (“More in line” with other CD traits) The “game-wide” comment sounds like they are actually keeping in mind both PvP and Raid balance. How do you make something EASIER to balance in two different game modes (without splitting since Anet hates splitting)? Reduce total amount of skills that apply alacrity BUT make the application of it consistent (or just consistent for the game mode you are balancing for.) All’s well that ends well is a terrible trait that promotes spamming wells for the traits rather than the wells effects and I hope it goes away. If they make the shield phantasm the main source of group alacrity, then this will mean mesmers can bring utilities besides wells while still supporting their group just fine in raids. It’s a nerf to PvP in the sense that phantasms don’t survive nearly as long without that 95% dmg reduction or focus fire. If they remove ALL alacrity besides the shatter trait but make the shatter trait AOE alacrity (or make this a GM trait), I would also be happy with this. In fact, I would say this would be more fun to play than spamming wells since shatters are the “class mechanic.” It would also be easier to balance kittenters are worst sustain DPS but better team buffing while phantasms would be the focus on personal DPS. Or you could even go condi shatter and still provide alacrity. There are ways to make chrono more fun to play while balancing for both game modes.

“bringing alacrity a bit more in line” = “we’re gonna nerf the hell out if it because mesmer”.
It’s only gonna stay “a staple of the chronomancer elite specialization” because there’s gonna be nothing left to make it desirable. Chronos are only brought on raids because of the alacrity. Their dps is so terrible that they aren’t suited to other roles. I can’t even convince people to let me play condi team on my chrono. Unless they fix our dps issues, this is gonna suck.

It’s such a strange post. They point out the issue with chronos (“many a chronomancer survive a killing blow and seize victory”) in pvp, and their response is to nerf alacrity? GG anet, gg.

Buff to scepter could be really, really great. That is, if they weren’t nerfing alacrity again.

Edit: meanwhile, the top dps class (ele) gets another buff. woo.

Edit 2: “We’ve been enjoying watching all of the scrapper gyros buzzing around in the jungle” <— WTF? Scrapper is garbage in pve, what scrappers are they seeing buzz around the jungle???

They had like 2 beta tests for the new map. The very first night had a lot of legit wvw commanders and guilds around, not just streamers, but I only got to play about 2 hours of that test so I don’t know how the rest of it went.

For the second test, everyone from the first test could participate, only they weren’t notified of this. The only players who got emails were the newly invited testers, so the first day was basically a ghost town. Anet had to come to the forums and post a reminder that players from the first test could still participate, but that was too late. I think a lot of players had already wrote the map off from the first test.

In any case the new map isn’t the only thing that has killed wvw, it’s one of many nails they hammered on crooked and now it’s bent and it’s a pain in the kitten to straighten, and you just want to rip that sucker back out and use screws instead, but they’ll end up just hammering the kitten thing until it’s down one way or another.

Bug 1 they have tried to fix one or 2 times i think, without success as you can see.
Bug 2 is created when anet “fixed” the old wp "bug. That opened 3sec inbtween repel events.
Bug 3 is not live yet, upgrades kick in based on a timer, dolyaks just take 5min off it but it will get changed to amount of dolyak reaching it
Bug 4 i dont know what you mean , when structures upgrade they go from “wood” to reinforced to fortify. Always has been like this.

Jana.6831:

lil devils x.6071:

I disagree. There is no way the new map can work at this point. Anything short of outright removing it and reinstating Alpine would have little to no effect on bringing back players they lost over it.

I doubt those who left will be coming back – but that aside:
You get the Alpine Borderlands back. WPs not working. Ok. Walls at 0% health after an upgrade. Ok. You step outside are hit by a spaceship zerg and rev hammer 2, dragon banners. Ok. You try to roam and are killed by elite specs – and anyway no one is solo roaming anymore anyway as the overall damage is too high. You try to build an AC to defend a tower, but you’re alone and need to run 3 times to get that thing up while the enemies just use their aoe spells to destroy it before you have a chance to get it up.

And yes, by the looks of it wvw is pretty much dead – doesn’t matter what they do, except giving control back to the players = getting all the OP kitten that’s favouring blobs, though was meant to beat them, out and let us play our game. But I don’t think a reroll to the Alpine Borderlands would solve anything. Not saying I’m opposing it, but people think that it’s the new maps that killed wvw and that’s not true.

Edit: Spelling

ETA (on general topic) : We’ve had guild groups of ~20 on our BL before HoT – it worked pretty well. But they had to combine forces from time to time against the enemy blob.
The new maps are designed to break blobs but at the same time: Enemies have only one spawn, so 3 groups of 20 come from the same direction. The map is that complicated that they basically jam and become a blob – and that can’t be solved that easily.

I agree with pretty much most if not all of what you say here. Alpine won’t save WvW, though it might help a tiny bit. Bronze NA was practically dead before HoT. And now the majority points that are scored are by so called “off hours” PVD against NPCs with little to zero. It’s pretty bad when at reset there’s no more than 30 players on a server across all maps, and within 2 hrs. of reset it’s down to maybe a party sized group or 2 at most.

I honestly think we (as WvWers) have lost so MANY experienced people or people in general that I don’t think it can be saved. I doubt Anet is really going to do some meaningful changes that we want. It would take a Festivus miracle to save it IMO. Yeah T1 is doing “ok”, but EB is the only place people fight. Yeah, there’s one server that likes to PVD in the empty BLs like PPT means anything, but that can’t be fun and I’m sure they’ll get sick of it soon and probably leave also. Things in regular WvW have gotten so bad that EOTM is more fun and there’s more fights. Now that’s just sad.

I tell you, if I was one of the Devs of WvW or a project manager, I’d feel sick and want to go in on off hours to fix it. But I’m the type of person who takes my job seriously and I would constantly work on it till it was perfect or tell the MASSIVE complaints stopped pouring in. I’d also be on here interacting with my customers constantly getting the feel of what I could do to make it better. I know you can’t make everyone happy, but you can tell by the population and the hourly threads online that people are beyond fed up. It’s not like there’s a new MMO out that is amazing where people are leaving to, it’s this game driving people away sadly. That would just bug me so much as a dev or manager. I don’t understand the almost total lack of communication and interaction from Anet for over a year, if not longer. I used to have PvP to fall back on, but that’s a mess also, though not as bad imo.

lil devils x.6071:

I disagree. There is no way the new map can work at this point. Anything short of outright removing it and reinstating Alpine would have little to no effect on bringing back players they lost over it.

I doubt those who left will be coming back – but that aside:
You get the Alpine Borderlands back. WPs not working. Ok. Walls at 0% health after an upgrade. Ok. You step outside are hit by a spaceship zerg and rev hammer 2, dragon banners. Ok. You try to roam and are killed by elite specs – and anyway no one is solo roaming anymore anyway as the overall damage is too high. You try to build an AC to defend a tower, but you’re alone and need to run 3 times to get that thing up while the enemies just use their aoe spells to destroy it before you have a chance to get it up.

And yes, by the looks of it wvw is pretty much dead – doesn’t matter what they do, except giving control back to the players = getting all the OP kitten that’s favouring blobs, though was meant to beat them, out and let us play our game. But I don’t think a reroll to the Alpine Borderlands would solve anything. Not saying I’m opposing it, but people think that it’s the new maps that killed wvw and that’s not true.

Edit: Spelling

ETA (on general topic) : We’ve had guild groups of ~20 on our BL before HoT – it worked pretty well. But they had to combine forces from time to time against the enemy blob.
The new maps are designed to break blobs but at the same time: Enemies have only one spawn, so 3 groups of 20 come from the same direction. The map is that complicated that they basically jam and become a blob – and that can’t be solved that easily.

Adula.3698:

Both of the actual WvWers that were invited did complain. Both of them.

I was invited but didn’t know until the last few hours. It took quite a while to download the game client – so I hadn’t had a lot of time to look around. Also the map was pretty empty. I couldn’t actually test combat but what I wrote on the forums was: “Map too big, too much PvE” (tried to be constructive). What I told my friends: “Half of the zerg will be killed by the map before reaching their destination” and “Everybody will be on EB”. They didn’t believe me.

Anyway: I still think that the new map could work with some tweaks here and there. To me it’s lots of other stuff that needs work in wvw – the map itself is the least of the problems, in my opinion.

I was in several of the betas. We talked directly to Tyler B since he was on map with us. We mentioned various problems we had, and he tweaked some minor stuff. But we were there too late in the design phase for him to effect any major changes to the map itself.

Add in to this, the WvW betas were barren. There were zergs running around when the streamers were doing their thing. After that it became a ghost town.

How can you beta test a map designed for groups of all sizes to fight other groups when you have no groups of any size running around for 90% of the test?

Mesmers were as strong as other classes in PvP so it got nerfed.

This nerf was applied to the PvE skills as well.

One of the nerfs broke the stun on break Well of precog so now its worthless and when they fix it in 9 months the cast time will still make it hardly worth using.

PvP players think Teams made of nothing but Tempests and Revs are healthier then Chronomancers and Revs thus giving away it was never about the strength of the build but that fact it was a Mesmer. Granted this was obvious when teams before HoT consisted of 5 cele eles and the calls for nerfs were still directed at Mesmer.

Mesmer meta in PvP is now bringing inspirtation and Well of precog and trying to get on enemy teams so you can use distortion to stop the team from capping.

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

WvW might seem fine from the perpective of the top. I used to run on TC, and it looked fine from that vantage point.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

Silverkey.2078:

Menaka.5092:

Levetty.1279:

Delete PvP please.

I would rather have it but not have the whole game balanced around a 5v5 conquest mode.

You do realize that if the shield block was OP for PvP, it was also OP for PvE? From what I understood, chrono was considered one of the best tank for raids… now that does sound familiar to someone playing PvP…

Being the best tank for raids doesn’t necessarily mean being the most survivable build, just having enough survivability to get the job done without giving up too much.

Chrono doesn’t have high personal sustained DPS, but it’s a beast at boosting ally damage. Since this mechanics are not related to offensive/defensive stats, your best bet is to use it in the tank role (whihc is also well suited for) so there’s room for another full offensive build in the raid group.

For PvE, the change on block duration is a buff if anything. As long as the player can time the blocks properly, it means less valueable time sitting down waiting for the phantasm to pop.