Guild Wars 2

Relentliss.2170:

Really I think the OP is overreacting.

Been thinking about this patch for a while and the list of improvements, while a little underwhelming, they are all buffs and should add a little to each person’s play. Traited tomes and Meditations definitely got a nice boost.

Definitely beats nerfs.

I’d really love them to look at 3 things next patch. A signet for speed, virtue cd or maybe a total revamp of virtues to make them more interesting, and spirit weapon longevity. I really think those 3 things could lift this class quite a bit.

Well I won’t disagree that it’s better than receiving nerfs, but the majority of it is pretty insubstantial. The renewed focus change is great, but it’s not what we needed by any means. Spirit weapons, like plenty of people have said already, will still be nearly worthless because of the significant trait investment and the large amount of downtime they have. Stability on tome trait is cool, but tomes will still only really see use in WvW zergs because, like spirit weapons, they have far too much downtime to be useful anywhere else. And glacial heart is alright, but it’s still limited to our slowest weapon we have, which is still too easily avoidable.

Meanwhile shield is still worthless, we’re still far too susceptible to kiting, our signets are still among the worst utility skills in the game, we’re still pigeonholed into 2 roles, and we still have issues like having the mace 3 counter proc from a ranged attack despite every other weapon block in the game only countering from melee range.

It’s not that I’m not grateful for getting buffs instead of nerfs this time around. It’s just that these buffs didn’t really solve any of the core problems of the class.

Bhawb.7408:

Black Box.9312:

Then why can’t they just take the next step, and get rid of the AI part altogether? If they’d just make the spirit weapon active abilities the skill itself. A ground targeted CC blast finisher for the hammer, or a healing rain that cleanses conditions for the bow, or a projectile blocking dome for the shield. Just adjust the parameters of the skills accordingly, and not have to worry about how faulty the AI programming is.

I’d much, much rather see that than any sort of buff to the current skills.

Because some of us enjoy (gasp) having to micro manage the summoned allies. In Guardian’s case some of the strength of having them out is their sustained presence, which you can’t replicate. Hammer gives some decent CC while you keep it out, bow gives condi removal, sword has damage, shield does… something. You couldn’t just remove the AI without completely changing how the skill worked.

But that’s the problem with this game’s AI: You don’t micromanage them. The only thing you can do with any player controlled AI is tell them when to use a single ability, without even really telling them which target to use it on. With a ranger’s pet you can at least select the target, but I’d expect much more from an entire class mechanic.

That’s why people are opposed to player-controlled AI in this game. Because the player doesn’t actually have to be controlling them for them to work.

Ehecatl.9172:

Lifestealer.4910:

a full signet warrior doesn’t exist in pvp though, this is what all AI build needs to be at, not viable for pvp. Unless they can find a way to remove its passive power either giving player more direct control and have it do less things by itself then there is no reason these build should exist.

That is exactly what this buff to spirit weapons did. It decreased the rather steep penalty of using spirit weapon active abilities as well as improved those active abilities to encourage more active play from the player. No heavy AI build except perhaps turret engineers just send their AI in and then stop playing. They still have to utilize their weapon skills and time their AI’s active abilities properly to get the most out of the build, no different than any other active style of play.

Then why can’t they just take the next step, and get rid of the AI part altogether? If they’d just make the spirit weapon active abilities the skill itself. A ground targeted CC blast finisher for the hammer, or a healing rain that cleanses conditions for the bow, or a projectile blocking dome for the shield. Just adjust the parameters of the skills accordingly, and not have to worry about how faulty the AI programming is.

I’d much, much rather see that than any sort of buff to the current skills.

WhiteRose.6934:

I don’t pretend to know anything about how gaurdians work since it’s the one class I don’t have an alt for, but I have one thing to bring up and if someone has more to say on it then by all means explain…

Isn’t Gaurdian’s meditations on relatively large cooldowns? I thought that a lot of their burst came from their utilities, and those had high cooldowns. That makes me think they they won’t really be that overbearing considering they need to time when they engage I suppose.

I don’t know, like I said I don’t know much about it.

Smite condition has a 20 (16) sec cooldown which is pretty good, but the rest are pretty steep.

Ralkuth.1456:

Full Zerk (for medi guard go zerk or go home. Your pressure is your sustain.)

That’s a terrible idea. Go 6 in radiance and get RHS so that you can run valk gear instead, and actually have a decent amount of survivability.

I run a 2/6/6/0/0 myself, but those two in zeal can go anywhere you see fit really. 0/6/6/1/1 and 0/6/6/0/2 are both good as well. Sword/focus is a necessity as your primary weapon set, while your secondary can be either GS, hammer, or scepter/torch. Both shelter and signet are good for heals; you can use VoC to give yourself aegis while healing with signet so it’s really just a matter of whether you want the lower cooldown or the larger heal. I run air and energy sigils on both my weapon sets, however fire, doom, hydromancy, and ice are all good choices as well. As for runes, unfortunately the movement speed boost from traveler’s runes is almost a necessity if you want to be able to keep up with anyone, as your mobility is quite limited. If you find that you can manage okay without it though, strength, hoelbrak, pack, or privateer are also excellent choices.

For playing it, it’s pretty straightforward. Stick to your enemy the best you can and try to unload your damage as quickly as possible. Open up with JI to give yourself fury and surprise the enemy, and use smite condition whenever you have a condition on and you’re in melee range.

Yeah, it definitely needs to be instant cast. Their excuse for not doing so originally was because they ‘want counterplay’ so that it can be interrupted.

But then there’s healing signet, so I don’t really get that argument.

Obtena.7952:

For me it’s simple … we need ways to keep people in melee range. Mobility isn’t the only way to do that.

…

Did you even read what I said earlier?

Trice.4598:

Mace… skill 3 keep blocking when receiving projectile (like every other class, warrior offhand sword, main hand mace, ranger greatsword)

Thank you for bringing this up. It still baffles me that we have the only weapon block in the game with a melee range counter that procs from a ranged attack. It also does not have a sub ability that can be used in place of the block like every other weapon block in the game, meaning that if you don’t block immediately you’re forced to either wait 4 seconds for the protection or cancel it, putting it on full cooldown and gaining no effect at all.

I still can’t believe that this hasn’t even been acknowledged, let alone reworked.

Obtena.7952:

Right …. devs have no clue. I forgot about that standard response. That’s what happens when I let my subscription to “Clueless MMO Player Monthly” run out.

When a developer is livestreaming dungeon content running a scepter confusion build on mesmer or a p/p thief that uses his heal while he’s at full health, I don’t really have much reason to have faith in their knowledge of their own game.

Zackie.8923:

glacial heart is still kitten

make it 10icd, 100%chance,chill 2-3seconds,aoe,unblockable

Or better yet, just make it not require the slowest weapon we have so that we could actually make USE of it.

Obtena.7952:

Black Box.9312:

Obtena.7952:

Julie Yann.5379:

Obtena.7952:

Please identify what Guardians really needed that they didn’t get ..?

uhhhmmm…. mobility? That’s the only thing I would really want.

What you want isn’t what is needed.

… No, it’s definitely needed. Maybe not so much the mobility itself as the ability to stick to a target without them being able to get away so easily.

That’s definitely needed.

That’s a matter of opinion. What is needed is determined by the devs and the class concept. There are other ways more inline with the concept to achieve what is lacking.

Maybe if the devs played the same game as us then they’d understand, but right now I get the strong impression that they have no clue about what is needed.

Sykper.6583:

As you said, Guardians are without peer the best at condition removal and being tanky innately across all their builds.

They’re not tanky or good at allied condi removal innately across all builds. You have to trait defensively for that.

No. Neither condition damage nor spirit weapons are viable in PvE.

Guardian changes are worthless. No idea why you put them on top.

Obtena.7952:

Julie Yann.5379:

Obtena.7952:

Please identify what Guardians really needed that they didn’t get ..?

uhhhmmm…. mobility? That’s the only thing I would really want.

What you want isn’t what is needed.

… No, it’s definitely needed. Maybe not so much the mobility itself as the ability to stick to a target without them being able to get away so easily.

That’s definitely needed.

Renewed Focus change is good. Everything else is useless and won’t change anything. I’m really disappointed by these patch notes, but to be honest I’d expect nothing more from this game’s balance team.

Huge buffs for medi guards?

Really?

Are we reading the same notes???

killahmayne.9518:

I’m actually surprised that meditation guardians got such a huge buff, meditation guardians could already beat many Warrior builds as it is.

We got one worthwhile buff to a skill that was already used anyway… Hardly huge at all IMO.

These changes are pathetic. The renewed focus change is awesome and I’ll take it, but admittedly it wasn’t something we really needed.

All of the other changes are pointless and there will still be nobody using spirit weapons, glacial heart, or the tomes.

And meanwhile we’re still among the worst in mobility, snares, and soft CC. Although to be fair, I guess I was expecting to be disappointed.

HA! HA HA HA! I’ll remember this post next time I’m chasing down somebody in WvW and am unable to keep up with them and laugh.

Or maybe cry.

I’ll probably cry.

Sagat.3285:

Conquest and wvw are fine,remember the game doesn’t support 1v1,have people on squad to cover your weaknesses and cover theirs, we just need more types in pvp the deatmatch is not enough.

If this game wasn’t meant to support 1v1, then we wouldn’t have classes like ranger which are balanced around single target combat. So somewhere down the line Anet is giving us mixed signals.

Bhawb.7408:

Black Box.9312:

They don’t need to bother with all that. The game is combat-based, so base balancing on the combat interactions themselves. Team deathmatch would really be the only thing required for balancing. Once you can balance how two teams fight against each other, everything else would fall into place.

The lack of an objective makes a massive difference, and the nature of the objective if you have one matters a lot as well. Objectives will always matter and influence the nature of combat, you cannot just separate them.

Also, ANet has said dozens of times that they are making a new mode, I’m not sure why people appear to be unable to comprehend that when its sitting on the forums with a bright red mark next to it.

The point isn’t that they need to remove objectives entirely from the combat. The point is that they need to prioritize the fights themselves for the balancing, and have the interactions with any secondary objectives be just that: secondary.

The common theme between all game modes is the combat. If you balance the combat first and foremost, from there you can fine tune the little things to suit each game mode. It might be a little more work, but the result will be a hell of a lot better than the kitten we have now.

Substance E.4852:

I’m pretty sure that, at this point, the only reason we don’t have any other pvp modes is because Anet simply doesn’t want to be bothered trying to balance for multiple modes.
None of the game balance up till now has been with any other mode in mind and things like CtF, KotH, and team deathmatch would need entirely different methods of consideration.

KotH would be especially absurd.. 5 bunkers vs 5 bunkers to see who can turtle for the win the hardest.

Never mind how stupid Capture the flag would be with thieves and Usain Bolt Warriors flying across the map at lightspeed.

They don’t need to bother with all that. The game is combat-based, so base balancing on the combat interactions themselves. Team deathmatch would really be the only thing required for balancing. Once you can balance how two teams fight against each other, everything else would fall into place.

BurrTheKing.8571:

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This please.

Wyrden.4713:

Muchacho.2390:

Wyrden.4713:

Lytalm.5673:

Can’t wait to see what you have for guardians!

they r in a perfectly fine spot.

Guardians still have many underused skills/traits. Those will probably get changes/buffs. Most likely spirit weapons and their traits.

y u no get the jk >.>

The sad thing is that I’m genuinely afraid that they might pull the ‘guardians are in a good place’ card on us yet again.

I wouldn’t say that all of the classes are balanced perfectly, but I do agree that point capture is a poor game mode to base class balance on.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Condition Duration very much affects your DPS

It’s quite clear to me now that you don’t understand the concept of damage per second, so I’ll just leave it at that.

You’ll see the mesmer point at you and a clone will appear nearby. I don’t see the problem with this change; you’ll just have to react a little more quickly.

Zenith.7301:

Black Box.9312:

Zenith.7301:

Black Box.9312:

Condition application on autoattack is still a terrible thing, and this is a terrible idea.

You can take it out when you nerf the condition cleanse of guardian stacking and ele water fields and warrior constant cleansing and immunities.

You should have tried playing a necro before they got dhuumfire and terror there was a reason nobody used them.

Pretty much also the reason condi ele hasn’t existed, because when condi application is cooldown based it can’t possibly keep up with the current state of cleanses and burst.

I play both a guardian and an ele. I know exactly how much heavily defensive traiting it takes to acquire that level of condition removal, and let me tell you that it takes far more investment than a simple autoattack with some condition damage gear.

As do I, and guess what my D/D ele kittens on any necro any day any time while roaming. Guess what gives my ele a hard time?

Hint, it’s not the condition specs, but rather the kittened thieves and hammer warriors.

And my guardian happens to make the same investment and can afford to run in the melee trains, tanking metric tons of damage while still swinging autoattacks for 3-4k crits and whirling wraths for 6k+.

Good luck in GvG’s with your kittenty condi specs though when you got 4-5 guardians, 3-4 warriors, and several ele water fields chain cleansing all your conditions.

lol if I ever dared to run a grenade engineer half my health is gone from guardian retal in 2 grenade nukes. My power spec ranger in a barrage loses over half his health to the stupid guardians farting protection and stability and might all over while pinballing you with circle of warding and banish and warrior earthshakers.

lol GvG.

Zenith.7301:

Black Box.9312:

Condition application on autoattack is still a terrible thing, and this is a terrible idea.

You can take it out when you nerf the condition cleanse of guardian stacking and ele water fields and warrior constant cleansing and immunities.

You should have tried playing a necro before they got dhuumfire and terror there was a reason nobody used them.

Pretty much also the reason condi ele hasn’t existed, because when condi application is cooldown based it can’t possibly keep up with the current state of cleanses and burst.

I play both a guardian and an ele. I know exactly how much heavily defensive traiting it takes to acquire that level of condition removal, and let me tell you that it takes far more investment than a simple autoattack with some condition damage gear.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Again, wrong on every point.

Duration matters. It matters a lot. +100% duration literally means +100% potential damage. More duration means higher stacks are possible. Precision matters to proc traits (Barbed Precision, Incindiary Powder, Sharper Images, etc.) and sigils (Sigil of Earth, Torment)

There are ways to increase your Condition Damage stat (same as Power), but no multipliers. Sigil of Bursting increases your Condition Damage stat by 6%. For every 1,000 condition damage you have without it, the sigil adds 3 damage/bleed tick, 6 damage/poison tick, and 15 damage/burning tick. Sigil of Force multiplies your total damage by 1.05. If you hit for 1k normally, you get 50 damage out of the sigil. 2k, an extra 100 damage.

Reducing the damage of a condition after it landed is called “cleansing,” something you can’t do with direct damage.

Conditions were, in fact, balanced to be the primary damage on some auto attacks. Those same attacks have horrid scaling with Power. For example, in sPvP, a Necro Scepter with no trait points, sigil, or runes, but wearing a Zerker Amulet still has about half of the damage on the auto attack come from the 0 condition damage bleeds.

Everything you’ve just said about the multipliers is completely irrelevant first of all, because those were simply meant as counterexamples and serve no purpose for my original point. Moving on though:

Duration does nothing for DPS. It does not help you kill faster. It’s nice to have if you can fit it into your build, but it does not increase your damage, just prolongs it. Precision helps with on crit condi procs, but you can still stack conditions without it and your conditions will deal the same damage with or without it. Your DPS with a condition build is increased by one stat: condition damage. Compare that with power builds where you need 3 stats, and it’s clear which one is more beneficial.

As for condition cleansing, that should be proof in and of itself of how poorly conditions are balanced. It creates a binary system where if you have too many conditions and too few ways to remove it, you will succumb to conditions no matter how skillfully you play; and if there’s too much removal and too few application methods, conditions become irrelevant in the first place because people can just shrug them off entirely. Right now we’re dealing with the former, and it just rewards easy builds like PU condi that can literally deal damage passively by spawning clones to apply conditions while sitting in stealth receiving very powerful defensive boons.

And finally, I said conditions are not balanced properly enough to work as a primary source of damage. Being balanced as primary damage and being meant as primary damage are two different things entirely. Your example with the necro scepter shows that it is meant to be a primarily condition based weapon, but it’s still not balanced properly for it; and until they add more ways to actually reduce the damage received from conditions as opposed to just removing them until you can’t remove any more, they never WILL be balanced. Knowing that Anet will never actually care enough to do that, I believe the right way to go would be to reduce the application output until it can match a good enough balance with the removal output so that it can be viable, without being too strong.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Two stats (condition damage and condition duration) with precision a tertiary stat. Conditions have no damage multipliers in either a positive or negative direction (all those traits, sigils, runes, and Vulnerability that give you X% more damage? None help conditions). In addition, they can have their damage reduced after the attack has already hit.

So, again, what is so wrong with having conditions on auto attacks? For every point you can come up with to say that they’re o erpowered or broken, I can come up with one or two more that show that they’re balanced.

Duration is completely unnecessary with the frequency with which conditions can be applied, and it also does nothing to increase DPS (and the vast majority of WvW builds just run the +40% food anyway, which in itself is a staggering value). Precision is also not necessary because condition weapons don’t rely on critical hits to proc; thief pistol, necro scepter, engineer pistol, and now mesmer scepter will all apply the condition even if you have a 4% crit chance.

Also there are indeed damage modifiers for conditions. Sigil of bursting adds 6% to your condition damage value, which makes it even stronger than its counterpart, the sigil of force. One of the rune sets (undead I think? I don’t know for certain) converts a percentage of vitality to condition damage, making for another conversion stat. And finally there are traits like the GM minor trait in the mesmer’s chaos line, which converts 10% of toughness to condition damage. They’re there; it’s just not as plainly written as the ones for direct damage. As for reducing the actual damage of them while they’re applied? I honestly don’t know of anything in this game that does that, so if you’d be willing to enlighten me with an example that’d be wonderful.

Conditions were never balanced to be a standalone source of damage. Things like 100% proc on auto and dire gear are throwing conditions far off balance because of how little there is that can actually counter it.

Guardian says hi.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

How is condi-spamming autos any different from direct damage spamming autos? The damage is comprable between the two, all that’s different is which stat it scales off of and how long it takes for that damage to actually happen.

Condition damage scales from one stat and cannot be mitigated. You can protect yourself against direct damage with things like armor, protection, and weakness, but once you’re out of condi removal those 800 dmg/sec burn ticks will deal 800 dmg/sec no matter how defensively built you are.

This game needs to eliminate DPS conditions on autoattack having a 100% chance to proc. Condition damage is not balanced well enough to be so prevalent in PvP combat.

Condition application on autoattack is still a terrible thing, and this is a terrible idea.

cymerdown.4103:

Alright, fair enough, but you could also say that about a lot of other classes’ mechanics. Shatters are all fairly weak without speccing heavily into it except Distortion, same with thief Steal. In any case, it’s not really on topic since all I’m discussing is buffing the three GM traits. I don’t really think it’s debatable that Virtues is a bad tree in general because it isn’t, I just think the GM traits in the tree could be a little more attractive. As they are right now, they are all pretty useless.

I disagree. While the shatters I use depend on the build usually, I find myself using them quite a bit even when I’m not built specifically for them. Mind wrack is good burst damage on any power build, cry of frustration is great for shutting down players by punishing them for spamming skills, and diversion is great for interrupting key skills. And steal on thief is an amazing ability. One thing that I notice frequently with people who are new to the class is that they undervalue just how useful of a skill it is. Even untraited, it’s a 900 range instant gap closer that gives you an ability that is custom fit to counter the class that you are up against.

Virtues, in comparison, are pretty weak. One deals condition damage on a class that can’t really compete with condition output to other classes, one is a small passive regen that has an active with a laughably terrible HP/sec ratio, and one gives you a solid single use block, but with a ridiculously low uptime. Yeah, you can trait them to be better, but the base abilities themselves have little to no impact in a fight whatsoever.

Ghotistyx.6942:

In this format, they give us a chance to play with the traits and changes before we burn them at the stake, and can still make necessary fixes afterward.

Waiting an extra 6 months for them to fix issues that come up with the previous patch hasn’t really pleased me thus far, so I don’t think I’d like it much this time around either.

Xarog.3172:

The main problem with Guardian virtues is not the traits; it’s the base virtues themselves. I can’t speak for SPvP since I don’t play it, but every other class has unique mechanics that bring something unique to the table.

Guardian mechanics, on the other hand, provide vanilla buffs which can frankly be covered by any other calling. Especially VoJ’s burning damage. IF VoJ’s and VoR’s buffs were not your garden variety burning damage or regen, perhaps Guardian virtues wouldn’t feel like an afterthought.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant. Other classes can make good use of their class mechanic even if they don’t really trait for it. For guardian, you can trait heavily to make them useful, sure, but the base virtues themselves are almost negligible.

It kind of fits into the problem with guardian as a whole, that being that they’re “in a good place” because there’s one role that they fill very well if you trait and spec very heavily into it, but are really quite mediocre as a base class.

Virtues in general, other than Justice when traited in Radiance, are really underwhelming IMO. The passive regen feels almost negligible, even with heavy investment into healing power, a 1.5-3k heal on a 60 second cooldown is anything but valuable, and 90 seconds for a single aegis pop feels like a bit of overkill.

I get that since these are abilities that are on the guardian’s skillset 100% of the time and so they can’t really be TOO strong, but as it stands right now they just feel really lame for a class mechanic. Bugs aside, things like mesmer clones, necro death shroud, and ranger pets give a very unique feel to each of those classes. With guardian they were just like “here, have some skills that don’t really impact fights all that much” and called it good.

I run this trait on my zerker mesmer (granted I roam in WvW; not a fan of point capture) and I love it. Think it works great. One thing that I would change though would be the cripple it applies. Not much point in having a cripple applied when the enemy is already immobilized; switch it to something like 3 stacks of vulnerability instead and it’ll be golden.

Lucentfir.7430:

Sadly this won’t work for every profession. Melee based professions get the short end of the stick this match up.

Pretty much this. I don’t even try to fight these guys on my guardian anymore, because the condition application far outweighs any condi removal I can fit into my build.

If you nerf thief mobility, you will see many, many more shadow arts stealth thieves. Ask yourself: Is that what you really want?

coglin.1867:

Black Box.9312:

coglin.1867:

Black Box.9312:

Regardless of whether or not there is a casual side alongside the competitive scene, the point of the matter is that you cannot balance based on the casual crowd, because it either empowers the experienced players even further by allowing them to more easily master the game, or it removes the skill curve completely because everyone will perform the same regardless of player skill.

You seem to be confusing MMOs with MoBA’s. MOBA’s are games that are completely competative with no PvE. MMOs in general, particularly GW2 has a very large portion of the player base in PvE. So to suggest that you cannot balance based on casual players when they are probably 80%+ of the player base as well s income for this game, seems very irrational to me.

Black Box.9312:

Both of those are terrible for balancing because it provides no incentive to keep playing to improve. If Dota 2 based their balancing on casual pub games every hero would be simplified to the point that their abilities would be nearly indistinguishable from one another and there would be no depth to the game and no reason to invest time and effort into it.

Again your comparing a game like DoTA 2 that is a competitive only game, to an MMO, is apples to oranges.

I already explained why you can’t just dismiss it as ‘apples to oranges’. If you’re not willing to read into that then I have no desire to speak to you further.

I was more then willing to read what you said. I indeed did read it. I simply didn’t agree with it, and personally felt your logic was unreasonable. I disagree with your reasoning behind feeling they are comparable. If your not open to discussion, why are you posting on an open forums? Simply because you refuse to discuss anything that anyone says because you disagree does not lend any more value to what your saying.

Black Box.9312:

As for the MMO vs. the MOBA, you can’t really separate the argument between the two, because the fact is that GW2 sPvP was marketed as an eSport. An eSport, by definition, is meant to be highly competitive among the most elite players. You can’t have elite players if it doesn’t take time, hard work, and dedication to master the game and you have ample opportunity to beat a veteran player from Day 1. Casual gamers are not competitive; eSports gamers are. You can’t try to appeal to two polar opposite crowds, because all you’re left with is a mess, as you can see with GW2’s current sPvP.

There, I did it for you.

coglin.1867:

Black Box.9312:

Regardless of whether or not there is a casual side alongside the competitive scene, the point of the matter is that you cannot balance based on the casual crowd, because it either empowers the experienced players even further by allowing them to more easily master the game, or it removes the skill curve completely because everyone will perform the same regardless of player skill.

You seem to be confusing MMOs with MoBA’s. MOBA’s are games that are completely competative with no PvE. MMOs in general, particularly GW2 has a very large portion of the player base in PvE. So to suggest that you cannot balance based on casual players when they are probably 80%+ of the player base as well s income for this game, seems very irrational to me.

Black Box.9312:

Both of those are terrible for balancing because it provides no incentive to keep playing to improve. If Dota 2 based their balancing on casual pub games every hero would be simplified to the point that their abilities would be nearly indistinguishable from one another and there would be no depth to the game and no reason to invest time and effort into it.

Again your comparing a game like DoTA 2 that is a competitive only game, to an MMO, is apples to oranges.

I already explained why you can’t just dismiss it as ‘apples to oranges’. If you’re not willing to read into that then I have no desire to speak to you further.

Mayama.1854:

Black Box.9312:

As for the MMO vs. the MOBA, you can’t really separate the argument between the two, because the fact is that GW2 sPvP was marketed as an eSport. An eSport, by definition, is meant to be highly competitive among the most elite players. You can’t have elite players if it doesn’t take time, hard work, and dedication to master the game and you have ample opportunity to beat a veteran player from Day 1. Casual gamers are not competitive; eSports gamers are. You can’t try to appeal to two polar opposite crowds, because all you’re left with is a mess, as you can see with GW2’s current sPvP.

I think its healthy for mmo’s to have a more casual PvP mode. I know everyone crys about how Bliz handles WoW PvP but they did a pretty good job at giving people a casual orientated capture the flag or hold the point mode and a super serious 3v3 arena. Newbies usually cry how completly broken frost mages are in WoW and how they can win 1v3 in arena mode. Good players know that in a serious match frost mages get focused 24/7 and its actually a very frustraiting job to do and do well.

In the more casual modes newbies can learn how to actually counter specs like that and its not the end of the world if they die while trying. GW2 basically has no casual PvP mode because WvW doesnt count. I mean how can anybody, for example, learn how to counter warriors when they can stack CC reduction to a point where it doesnt affect them at all.

Regardless of whether or not there is a casual side alongside the competitive scene, the point of the matter is that you cannot balance based on the casual crowd, because it either empowers the experienced players even further by allowing them to more easily master the game, or it removes the skill curve completely because everyone will perform the same regardless of player skill.

Both of those are terrible for balancing because it provides no incentive to keep playing to improve. If Dota 2 based their balancing on casual pub games every hero would be simplified to the point that their abilities would be nearly indistinguishable from one another and there would be no depth to the game and no reason to invest time and effort into it.

Jekkt.6045:

they need to do something with this skill. if i play on my medi guard i usually don’t even try to damage the enemy with this skill. i deselect my target, press 5 and run around my allies to cleanse their conditions.

No guardian worth their salt uses it for the damage unless they need a ranged cleave, because it’s a DPS drop. They need to either up the damage, reduce the cast time, or give it better utility that can actually benefit an offensive-oriented build.

coglin.1867:

3 conditions removed from self + up to 40 condi removed off of friendlies (to be far that is only in the most ideal situation possible and extremely unlikely) is a lot.

20s isn’t even close to enough duration increase in my opinion. Maybe on a profession that needs solid access to condition removal. Given guardians very available access to condition removal, this would make guardians nearly as bad as necromancers from the perspective of other condition builds.

I think a bigger part of why you never see torch used, is that there is no MH weapon that really benefits from investment in condition damage as a stat, so there isn’t anything to really mesh well with the torch as an off hand.

I think it would be fair, considering how most reliable forms of condition removal require heavy defensive trait investment, which a DPS guardian cannot afford because they need to be able to deal large bursts of damage quickly. With my current burst medi build, I have 3 methods of condi removal. One is a single condition I can remove on demand with a low cooldown, one is a skill that has a chance of removing a condition if it bounces back to me, and one that removes all conditions on me with a large cooldown. For a build that has low vitality, that’s not nearly enough to keep up with the condition output that classes like thief and necromancer have. It just doesn’t make sense for a class that is supposed to be specialized in condition removal to be weak to conditions itself.

I think it’d be fair to have it remove a condition on the user with every third pulse, for a total of 3 conditions removed. Hell, I’d even be okay with them upping the cooldown to 20 seconds to compensate for that, but as OP said, right now it’s simply not a worthwhile skill because no support guardian is going to be using a torch, and the DPS is too subpar to use for damage alone.

Carighan.6758:

Black Box.9312:

There is. Even veteran players make mistakes. But that’s the point; human error should be the only factor that can give an unskilled player a victory over a skilled one.

“Yes”.
That is to say, it depends on how tightly balanced your game is.

Put 5 veterans versus 5 newcomers in DotA2, even with tons of error on the side of the veterans they will never lose. This is because MOBA’s approach to escalating mistakes makes sure that the newcomers are always (constantly!) recovering from earlier mistakes they made, while the veterans have the “luxury” of being free to recover since the newcomers are busy doing the same (and will make less mistakes in the first place).

As in, DotA2 doesn’t support what Olba meant. Which is ok. MOBAs in general don’t try to be newbie-approachable, their broad appeal currently comes in spite of how difficult it is to pick them up. Not because of it.

And that’s where I then have to disagree with your assessment from a post earlier up, the encouragement to improve. Yes, it happens, but only if the newcomer does not give up frustrated first.

Now, compare situations.

In a MOBA:

• No other subgame to play. Actually not entirely true, but sec with co-op-vs-AI.
• Friends encourage you to play.
• Game forces you to climb the same hill as everyone else.
• Game is free.

In GW2 (or any MMO, really):

• Plenty other stuff to do than play sPvP.
• Friends encourage you to not frustrate yourself, because anger will annoy them.
• Game never forces you to play sPvP.
• Game cost you money, initially, monthly, whatever.

The tolerance for frustration is very low in MMOs, and understandably so. In a MOBA, you’re not even paying anything, and most people know F2Ps are an exercise in frustration when you start out. For the F2P-subtype it’s actually refreshing to know that it “just” needs you to improve, not to spend 500€.

But a MMO player will say “whatever!” and go play PvE or WvW instead. They won’t bother because they rarely see a light at the end of the tunnel. Olba’s point was that you need this light. Even not truly knowing how to exploit a veteran’s players mistake, you need to give a newcomer that odd lucky shot. That odd moment to feel awesome. That is what makes them stick to the game mode. And by sticking around they can improve.

P.S.:
Versus-AI exists in most MOBAs. Technically this only underlines the point, there’s a very large group of people who only plays co-op because they find PvP too stressful and not rewarding enough in DotA2.

I started Dota 2 back in early 2012 when they were still handing out ‘beta’ invites and the whole thing was still pretty new. I had friends that were DotA and LoL veterans that were already familiarized with the game and experienced with the genre. I had none of that experience whatsoever; in fact I was hardly much of a PC gamer at all before then.

When I first started playing Dota 2, I got my kitten handed to me an immeasurable number of times because I started playing before they had fully developed the matchmaking system that they use now. I was getting paired up against teams of veteran players that knew what they were doing, and I was punished for it. Did I throw my mouse and keyboard and cry in frustration? No. I kept at it, watched how top-tier players played, learned the heroes and items, and worked my way to the point that I’m at now. Am I amazing at it? No, but I know the game well enough to carry a team when needed, and I’ve won my fair share of matches.

The point I’m trying to make with this is that it’s not worth trying to make a competitive game appeal to gamers that will simply walk away at the first sign of trouble. The bottom line is that if there’s competition, someone is going to have to lose, and if your game is truly special the newcomers will learn from losing time and time again, and will work to improve themselves so that they can finally stop losing.

As for the MMO vs. the MOBA, you can’t really separate the argument between the two, because the fact is that GW2 sPvP was marketed as an eSport. An eSport, by definition, is meant to be highly competitive among the most elite players. You can’t have elite players if it doesn’t take time, hard work, and dedication to master the game and you have ample opportunity to beat a veteran player from Day 1. Casual gamers are not competitive; eSports gamers are. You can’t try to appeal to two polar opposite crowds, because all you’re left with is a mess, as you can see with GW2’s current sPvP.

I’ve been getting this a lot recently. So far it hasn’t completely barred access to any of my characters, but my connection to the game will suddenly drop, then I’ll receive this error code and get booted back to the character select screen. Very frustrating, especially when I’m in WvW.

And now as of today, my guild, party, and whisper chats keep malfunctioning. They’ll be fine for maybe about 10 seconds at a time before they stop working completely and I can neither read what others are saying nor send any messages myself. Not sure if it’s related to this error code, but I figured I’d mention it just in case.