I don’t think it is a good idea to implement too many changes at once, you just end up overshooting in a way or another and get huge swings in balance. Just look what happened when Anet wanted to get rid of zerk meta, we are now in a complete opposite end of things.
Ppl demand big changes immediately but it is verry hard for Anet to strike balance at the first try. In PvP everything is connected to everything, if you change too much and nerf one class that pushed other off meta and buff the other one, the other one rises to the top and pushes someone else off meta.
Actually the problem is not shifting meta, the problem is waiting 5 months between patches.
Do self rooting melee skills make cense any more?
They never made much cense to me, specially on a game centered around fluid moving combat, more so being them melee.
The big bad boogieman used to argue for keeping self rooting skills was blurred frenzy, now we have Unrelenting assault and its meh, and this one has a blink effect associated to it.
100 blades, blurred frenzy, zealots defense and so on should be revised.
I find hilarious that the one weapon that is all about movement, has THE self rooting skill.
Do self rooting melee skills make cense?.
They never made much cense to me, specially on a game centered around fluid moving combat, more so being them melee.
The big bad boogieman used to argue for keeping self rooting skills was blurred frenzy, now we have Unrelenting assault and its meh, and this one has a blink effect associated to it.
100 blades, blurred frenzy, zealots defense and so on should be revised.
still no move speed trait and a metric ton of useless or wrongly placed ones.
Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.
I would be interested in hearing thoughts (with the high-level goals from the blog in-mind) on adding/removing various sigils/amulets/runes. In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.
I know we’ve had this conversation a few times before, but it’s always important to have this discussion with the correct context in mind.
It would be nice to be able to customize our amulets instead of being stuck with static amulets. This would open more possibilities for players to make more unique builds. Allow for the amulets to be either 3 stat or 4 stat combos.
More variety in stat combos can definitely be a thing – but I don’t think manual stat allocation is in the cards currently.
Why you wont let us mix stats like in pve/wvw? Anyway for stat combo i would like to see power/precision/ferocity/toughness. I also would like to see dire amulet to be added in so that you guys over there finally rebalance condition damage to require more than one stat to deal incredible damage.
I actually suspect that a big part of the balancing issue they seem to constantly have is exactly that.
There is no way you can have 2 sets of stats for 2 game modes and 1 single set of skills and one mode not suffer because of it.
Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.
I would be interested in hearing thoughts (with the high-level goals from the blog in-mind) on adding/removing various sigils/amulets/runes. In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.
I know we’ve had this conversation a few times before, but it’s always important to have this discussion with the correct context in mind.
I think one of the problems with the lack of lethality is because the game has too many active defenses that come at no meaningful cost or that are too easily available.
I think a cool direction to take the game to is to make active defenses easier to counterplay or simply give them more cooldowns, while burring high-rish/ high-reward skill combos in the meantime (which aren’t always appropriately strong and, even when they are, there’s too many one-key wonders to nullify them).
I’ll give an example. During HoT’s beta test, anet added evasion to revenant’s mist skills. This made the profession really strong at something that it wasn’t probably intended to be what and, as a consequence, damage had to be nerfed (sword #3 and staff #5). Did sword #3 really needed an evasion when they have off-hand sets dedicated to blocking? Did staff #5 really needed evasion when it already has a good, low-cooldown block and when the skill in question already had a very itneresting niche (heavy cc+damage to enemies in line)?
All those “free” active defenses come at no strategical cost (you’re not exactly sacrificing your damage output in order to evade while using sword #3) and blur the main purpose of those skills.
For this specific case, I recommend two solutions: make us be able to cancel sword #3 (the main reason for why it received an evade) and switch pure evasion with a softer defensive mechanic (like, say, half damage reduction + plus cc immunity). You can then even have a trait that improves that soft defense mechanic, for those builds that need more defense. And then, just add back all the damage that was taken from some of those skills.
This is just one example, but I believe it applies to many other professions. Active defenses should be more precious and more strategical, not simply be handed freely to already-powerful skills.
No no no, we have already had the blow you up meta and it sucked just as much as the tank you meta. What we need is a more LINEAR meta, less sustain AND less spike and more dps.
Tenets for a fun/not boring to watch games:
- 1v1 should never last more than 3 minutes
- 1v2 should never last for more than 1 minute
- 1v3 should die as soon as invul/block wear off.
- burst should never kill another class in less than 5s.
To achieve that we need:
- Sustain damage needs to be buff
- Burst damage keeps the same, or shave a bit for high bursts
- Sustain defense needs a nerf
This should be your very basic design philosophy thou i would add that 1v1s should never last less than 45 seconds. If i wanted a game where everything would be decided on a single activation of my skills i would play League of Legends.
Dont like what i read about the revenant.
If you go power based, sword damage is the only reedeaming quality.
The class over all is very glassy and its sustain is clunky at best.
Every skill is telegraphed and has very long delays from the click to the effect because of casting times and animations.
Dealing with conditions is night impossible because while the concept of the class is to be focused through its legendary, the legendaries themselves do not bring comprehensive tools to the battle and you always end up lacking.
Dragon has no condition removal and situational healing.
Assassin has the most reliable healing but no way to fight conditions.
Dwarf has marginal healing, no condi removal, no movility.
Demon has some condi inmunity, movility and marginal healing.
Centaur has healing and condi removal, its incredibly awkward to use and should have the tablet flat out removed and you be the center of the skills.
To put it bluntly, damage in general is the only that makes the revenant worth it.
Also and again to put it bluntly, you simply can not balance every 3 months. That requires you to have a stable balanced game and only needing a few tweaks here and there.
This is something that regrettably does not match the state of the game nor you have demonstrated the capability of achieving balance through minor tweaks yet.
You should aim to monthly changes and weekly tweaks until you get things sorted out, then you can can plan on a more relaxed schedule.
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Is it possible to get oceanic servers just for PvP because as a player from Australia that really like playing PvP, I often feel like I could be at a disadvantage playing with between 200-250 ping constantly.
Playing from Latin America is the same deal.
League of Legends did put server here.
Who gives a hoot about leagues, where are the balance patches?
Remember for 1 month when everyone cried about the power creep, how mesmers and thieves could 1 shot. How power engi could 1 shot (not literally)?
Well they soon nerfed all that, and this is what you get. Mesmers forced into being bunkers because of all the conditions and sustain around, and thieves forced out.
What were ANET thinking!?
I’m sure their idea of this game was to not have *GUARD*ians as longbow dps spammers, yet mesmer and ele, the 2 traditional magical dps, forced into being guardians.
And to top it off….Thief and Warrior, the epitome, the bread and butter, of any MMO…don’t have any space or love in this game in terms of pvp. Sad.
The problem is not that mesmer now tank and destroys you but before did it as dps and still destroy you.
The problem is that either way you have a spec that completely obliterates the competition.
You changed the flavor you did not address the problem. And that has been a thing in GW2 since day 1.
Lets get 1 straight, perfect balance is impossible, with that out of the way, i have never seen a game with such a long stream of broken meta patches one after the other.
Every other game out there manages to get some right here and there, but i honestly cant recall a gw2 meta where 2 or 3 specs didnt absolutely crush the competition.
How does that help farming 600 tokens when you get about 5 from each 2h event.
Deep Wound is actually a condition that was cutting down HP’s of ennemies by 20% and reducing healing received by 20% aswell, which would probably not be a bad thing, could make warriors viable again, since they have no access to poison at all.
Warriors problem is not damage or the lack of it, its the lack of sustain.
Some of us don’t compare everything to “the days of WoW.” Nor, for that matter, let another game’s failings completely rule out the mere discussion of past conditions that had a good place in GW history.
No right, lets completely disregard past experiences, lets make square wheel, im sure it WILL work for US.
I would actually like to see Disease and Deep Wound make a return to Tyria.
I wouldnt, already saw it in wow, it was bring Deep Woulds or go home.
And to have more bruiser classes what is needed?
First we dont need bruiser “classes” we need bruisers builds.
Second, what stated above, builds that do enough damage in burst (reasonable bursts not 999 skills chained together like clockwork) to bring tanks down with out being able to sustain that burst and tough enough so that they have a reasonable shot against both tanks and glass but again not able to sustain such healing so that tanks and glass have a reasonable shot against them as well. Tanks needs to still hard counter Glass. Bruisers need to be able to take on each other(not in a split second like glass on glass). Tanks need to not be able to kill each other be it because lack of damage or out sustaining the damage they do. Glass and Support need to pretty decidedly tip the scales on fights tither through raw damage or support.
What we have now. No bruisers. Tanks Hard Counter Glass.
This is more complex than just “nerf tank sustain”.
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No it does not, it means reintroducing bruisers. You make builds that can take a considerable amount of punishment and dish out burst of damage enough to bring tanks down but cant sustain that lvl of damage. Much like shout hammer and GS was previous to the patch.
Err no, what the game needs is for bruisers to be made viable again. We need a middle point that can take on both tanks and glass and it self can be taken on by both.
Basic balance and something LoL understood long ago is that effectiveness should be like this.
Glass <<can take on>> Bruiser <<can take on>> Tank ||can take on>> Glass
And bruisers can take on them selves.
How it right now on GW2:
Bruiser <<can take on|| Glass << can take on|| Tank.
Thus net effect, everybody plays tank.
Glass and Tank are supposed to be specialists, not the norm, the average player should play bruisers but again for that to become a reality they need to be viable again.
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Sadly there is no fix for this, you have to realize this game pvp population is on life support. If you remove solo queues from premade queues games will take forever and a day to fire.
The fact you have to use the LFG tool just to play a map in HoT at any time, if you want to get on with anything other than story, it’s a failure in design.
You can complete the majority of the events in HoT unless there’s a champion. With DS, you do need a map of people but that is by intentional design.
Having to remember to go check a 3rd party site before I start playing to see if the TD meta will be anytime soon when I’m about to start playing is also bad design. All these timers should be in game. If we can set achievements to be tracked we should be able to set event or map meta start times too. If these web sites can do it, then the game should be able to do it also.
All maps are on set timers. If you look at the timer websites, you’ll see what those are.
Wow, I said that in my post. It is still bad design having to look out side of the game. L2r.
The point that I was trying to make was that the scheduled for the HoT meta event can easily be memorized. External websites are the easiest to look and do that but you can also go in game and onto the maps to do the same as well. You don’t have to consistently rely on a 3rd party site to know when meta events are up.
Sorry that I wasn’t more clearer in my post.
Oh you were, in case he wasnt he is stating that is bad design, which i happen to agree with.
In HoT
-You are dependent on other player to complete most of its relevant content.
-The game plays you, you have to play on ITS schedule, not the other way around. For a few key events that was acceptable, not for everything on Fing game.
This was a few months back with the traits patch.
At the time i stated that with the overall damage increase and the average TTK times being split seconds, the Meta pendulum would swing all the way in the other direction and become a Bunkers meta, thus changing fights from a sprint race into a marathon.
Lo an Behold the bunker meta is here.
What do we need to fix it?. We need bruisers not just less sustainability, we need builds that have a shot at beating both bunkers and glass cannons and them selves can be beaten by both.
Stated this before, hope they are paying more attention now.
I actually like this meta, we get actual fights, the blow you up in 0.5seconds meta sucked.
Dont give a crap about what the “pros” say, this game aint an esport, that ship sailed long ago.
By the way, i predicted long ago, that with the 0.5 blow up meta, the meta it self would swing all the way into bunker builds to compensate for the damage and the lack of viable bruisers. I only wish i could quote my own posts with a time stamp.
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No need, pve does not need balance, its a glorified cow clicker farming environment.
By their own admission, they lack testing environment, thus new mechanics should never be considered “balance fixing”.
Work in programming for a state financial entity, the things the games industry in general and Anet in particular, get away with delivering broken or flat out unfinished (aka underwater revenant just to name 1) is unbelievable to me.
I imagine this conversation, yeah, we processed your mortgage but the system bugged out so you will need to make 3 payments a month. Dont worry, we will get it fixed, eventually.
I dont know if this comes down the quality of US programming over all or out sourced Korean programming or what, but this would never fly in my line of work.
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Learn to taxi until megaservers are fixed.
Problem solved.
Move on to next easily player fixed problem we could wildly complain about.
Megaservers are never getting fixed. They are a tool to hide decreasing population. there is never a reason to merge populations unless they are not big enough on their own.
PvE
Best: raids are cool.
Worst: HP pools and boated trash mobs.
Signed HoT mobs.
kitten no, Maguma is a pain in the kitten as it is already, i would love for them to scrap the maps all together but that is not going to happen either.
The game developers crossed the line from grinding intensive al the way to obsessive compulsive disorder with this game.
Have not been able to access it once.
Have not been able to enter once.
You need to keep trying (I assume you mean the Wintersday JP). It takes a few tries but if somebody leaves the instance then you will get in.
Ah, yet another fail on Anets events track record.
Every time i step through the portal i get back to tiria.
Lol glad to know im not the only one that hates that animation
Its either power shiro glint or condi demon glint. And lets be clear, glint healing is ok, and only in pvp. the other healing is extremely situation and luck luster.
It really depends on the profession. Generally melee has higher risk but lands greater, more reliable blows, while keeping your distance lowers risk but doesn’t yield higher damage. There’s examples now where this maxim doesn’t hold true but melee will always have its place in bringing pressure.
I would say that is pretty much the norm. hitting 15% does not merit having to stay melee or do 0 damage. Not when classes like Eles and Mesmers can pretty much 1 for 1 your gap closers and or flat out invi away.
Ranger i would say is the most balanced of the ranged classes, but it has no where near the mobility or durability of the other 2.
If you look on the forums you can see that everybody is complaining about the bunker meta. Personally i think damage and durability over all is ok. But there just are not melee classes that can justify bringing their damage, they just dont have enough of it.
I think that what the game needs is to have melee exclusive damage increased. Aoe ranged is for a good reason, the support/pressure build in every other game out there, but its the melee guy the one that deals the damage. We lack this in GW2 and it shows.
Well, melee is almost exclusively used in PVE by skilled players…so it has some purpose in GW2 in general. I get you are referring only to pvp though. I still see plenty of melee builds in unranked.
Oh i play melee pretty much exclusively in unranked, but i would never bring it to a serious game, no way im gimping my self like that.
Melee skills hit for a whole lot more than ranged skills. You really need to check the math on that.
Right thats why elementalist and mesmer are never seen on pvp, oh wait.
…If melee hits for more damage, but ranged strategies are still being played, wouldn’t that suggest the balance is pretty reasonable? (Unless ranged is the ONLY thing being played. I don’t PvP.)
No when it is used pretty much exclusively, it suggests melee does not hit hard enough to make it worth it.
Range is pretty much the only thing played.
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Melee skills hit for a whole lot more than ranged skills. You really need to check the math on that.
Right thats why elementalist and mesmer are never seen on pvp, oh wait.
And rifle and then turret engi before that.
I mean it from a internal class balance perspective and an external one.
Melee skills hit for virtually the same as ranged skills and ranged does not need to keep up with their opponent to do damage.
Not my experience, i find DH paper thin as extremely easy to bring down.
Step1: turn on your invulnerability.
Step2: walk right into the traps and trigger them all.
Step3: bring the 10k hp sucker down in a heartbeat.18k… we normally wear marauder amulet
Then their damage aint all that impressive, and they lack sustain.
Not my experience, i find DH paper thin as extremely easy to bring down.
Step1: turn on your invulnerability.
Step2: walk right into the traps and trigger them all.
Step3: bring the 10k hp sucker down in a heartbeat.
As if all this would matter at all in solo vs pre made.
if i spot a pre made, im AFKing.
Edit: I know this goes without saying but bring the class you are comfortable with. The ESL meta doesn’t necessarily apply in the first 3 divisions.
The ESL meta does not apply in solo Q period.
Not me, i love it, much better than the blow everything up in a split second meta.
Best boxing fights are the ones that make it to the last rounds, not the ones that end with 10 first punches.
If the option is between blowing everything up in a split second vs a bunker meta, i prefer the bunker meta.
But then again this is what you get for removing bruisers from the game.
Problem is Mallyx was initially designed to self-inflict and copy conditions, but was last minute changed to the kitten version we have now :-(
And that was for the best. The problem is that all legends must have a way to deal with conditions, otherwise, we end up having to marry one which defeats the porpoise of the class.
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