Guild Wars 2

Of all the classes I face as an engineer (new main) and ranger (used to be main), mesmers give me fits. Playing around with one in spvp didn’t give me the “aha” moment that most other classes did.

Every class needs a class that gives it fits.

So what gives mesmers fits? What beats a Mesmer?

What should I look for in terms of your cooldowns, timing, mechanics to take you down better?

Look, I’ve tried and do ok but boy you all confuse me (pun intended).

Eles real problem is that they can do weird things in mist. Otherwise, blind them. Go stealth. There are classes that can easily stomp them.

Thieves are the same. There are classes that can easily stomp them.

The imbalance I see is in the relative ease to get yourself up or protect yourself. Some classes are just way better. Now that is ok if they have glaring weaknesses otherwise. So, for example, a ranger is really good in downed state at healing themselves. Fine, they stink at condition removal and have very little stability.

I would say the engineer’s downstate is considered end state for a lot of reasons!
Ranger on the other hand, just on down state, is a bit too good and underwater is outright silly.

As for taking the time to balance, it is much easier to deal with down state imbalance versus active imbalance. Of course, first you need to get rid of wonkiness like some things that can happen with mist in WvW or ranger pets in underwater.

Artaz.3819:

Bombsaway.7198:

Do this exercise fairly below, then lets talk about balance.

Do the same for the class(es) you play.

Come back and realize you are still biased even if play all 8 classes like I do. /Aha moment.

Absolutely I’m bias. Every gamer who has a main is. That is the reason I would far rather put the model out and judge that which I love versus that which I am worried is a bit unbalanced. That should be first done by the warrior community.

Overall, and correct me if this is a perception, I would say that the warrior has some areas it is clearly top 2 in. At the beginning of the game, it had some areas it was rather poor in (condition removal) but it was so bad that it was fatal. Made sense to buff it. However, what are the current areas that the warrior is worst in class?

When you say no minions, you miss the point. Minions serve what broader purpose (ranged dps, damage mitigation by having another target, melee power, melee condition etc)?

Keep it broad. You have a handful of key factors for offense, defense and utility.

For the warrior, I get people wanting to get in the weeds ability by ability but I think the broad theme is you have great offense and great defense. Typically, it is either or.
You weakness in ranged is less of a weakness given other defensive abilities you have (ability to engage is top 2 or maybe 3) and ability to avoid cc is high as well.

I thank the posters who mentioned how warriors had some very good weaknesses to counter their very good strengths but they were so detrimental that the class became underplayed. Ok, they needed fixed. But now, you need to either tone down a few of the top tier abilities or move the weaknesses that DID have to be adjusted back to being the “Achilles’ Heel” again. I would like to think that conditions would be the bane of a warrior. That seemed to be the original design. It just went too far.

Any class is killable, but what class in particular gives warriors fits? For an engineer, you hate to see a necromancer.

Where is the counterbalance? If you have a little bit of everything, then everything should be midrange.

I play an engineer (imagine given my name). I would say engineers are pretty good at most things. We probably are bottom 2 at CC avoidance (which includes stability) and condition removal (self v group) and probably top 2 in condition based damage (given how many conditions we can drop) and ranged damage. So fairly even. Ranger (my second) faces not doing enough damage before melee engages while having some of the lowest defensive abilities (from condition removal to cc management especially stability/escapes). Very few AE options but likely on the low end of mid range v the bottom. One area where it would be top is ability to evade actively (of course most rangers who wanted range would say but that is just so odd for this class). Ranged damage is mediocre really if you consider that spells that have similar range often do more.

The engineer would probably net +1 (one more key metric we are top 2 v bottom 2). We likely need a second weakness.

Ranger I scored at -3. We probably need help on defense (condition removal and stability) to be mid-range and need to be made top tier on ranged dps (single target).

Played ranger too since start. Now a good ranger can be effective and a bad engineer is not at all slightly overpowered. On whole though. . . in relative terms. . . .

It is a tradeoff and I do see the point.

I do concur that engineers often feel they need an “extra” kit for secondary healing and cleansing.
I guess, having played a ranger, that was like needing a signal for speed boost in your utility bar.

My issue is what weapon really wouldn’t look silly on an engineer the way they are set up currently as “tinkerers”? Sword and Greatsword would be odd. Bows. . .even worse.

That leaves hammer, axe and mace. Mace just looks wrong in my opinion for an engineer. I always think of their weapons being more like work tools.

A one handed hammer would be perfect but I doubt there will be new weapons. I guess that leaves the 2 handed hammer and the axe. I could live with those.

Perhaps Morrolan, but the case studies so far and corresponding client data seems to suggest that gamers find the best available option versus leaving the genre. So long as GW2 is “best available” holding back doesn’t result in lost interest.

It is murky science to be sure, but that is the working theory many companies are under right now.

Xenesis, true if you are looking at a consumer that easily tries a month or two of a subscription service. The trouble is the model of consumer/gamer expectation is moving away from subscription models so it is easier to keep people from that initial sign up with “all at once” content patches when you are free 2 play and the other is not. Again, the assumption is that the bar of expectation on a subscription model has greatly increased forcing buzz and initial perception to have to be that much higher to covert a customer.

Again, murky science at best, but that is the current thinking of many companies.

Anthony.7219:

Love the thread topic. I haven’t played all the classes so some of this is a guess.

Melee physical damage
Melee condition damage
Ranged physical damage
Ranged condition damage
Boons
Healing/Condition Removal
Control

Hrm… Necromancer (N), Ranger®, Warrior (W), Guardian (G), Thief (T), Elementalist (E), Mesmer (M), Guardian (G), Engineer (P)

Best to worst

MPD – W, T, G, M, R, E, N, P
MCD – T, W, P, M, R, N, E, G
RPD – E, R, N, P, M, W, T, G
RCD – N, P, M, E, T, R, W, G
B – G, P, W, E, M, R, N, T
H – P, G, E, N, R, W, T, M
P +2
G -1
E 0
N -1
R +1
W +1
T -1
M -1

I would add Damage Mitigation (Melee), Damage Mitigation (Condition), Cleansing as my defensive skills with healing. And debuffs with boons for my utility.

W would be near the top of each of the defensive skills. Ranger really is at the bottom of the defensive skills.

In short, the issue of balance these days is far more about defense. Rangers have too little defense for the relative amount of damage they put out. Warriors excel both in damage and defense. That is the source of imbalance imho.

/shrug

As an economist, I just have to disagree with how you look at the situation John. Not personal. Not argumentative. Just a good natured disagreement. But I won’t hesitate to say I think you have lost the heart of the matter of an online economy in being too focused on spreadsheets. That gets to my other hat of advising clients on consumer science.

I’m reminded of what my pappy said before I became a lawyer. “You don’t need to go to law school to know 95% of the time when you are doing something that will or should get you in trouble”. Same with economics.

I have this conversation quite a bit with economists at digital clients. It is a common theme.

It is a bad mistake to not take into account the sentiment or perception of the economy especially an online economy whose consumers have quite the ability to switch. In fact, that is the only thing that at the end of the day matters. As such, I tell all digital media companies that perception is typically a darn good leading indicator of a good economic model. Fragmentation, in sentiment, across micro clusters of your customer segments, and with varying degrees of intensity is a nightmare to avoid.

Too often we allow internal “data dorking” which creates a sterile macro model replace consumer sentiment which is intensely micro both in numbers and sentiment intensity.

Be a consumer scientist first and an economist somewhere much later.

A Pure Economic Model Never Works in an MMO. There is no inherent demand need nor any real limitation on supply. Desire is coming 100% from internal versus external factors (in layman’s terms the desire comes from the game not from outside the game). There is no comparable. Supply despite any models (no matter what model you chose) is arbitrary. Likewise, the ability to change supply is limitless. And volatility is defined exclusively by the publisher.

An example helps. What is the “natural” or “efficient” supply for ascended gear or iron ore? The question points to economics gone mad. The only real question is how much gear and at what price pleases the consumer given it can be anything with no restraint and I can immediately provide a disgruntled consumer with a different digital challenge or shiny. In a consumer sentiment model, the spreadsheet “facts” are far less relevant than the perception.

Thus, you might please quite a majority of people in a “free market” economy to increase the supply of ascended gear to meet the pent up demand. Ok, how much>? What value? What currency? And while you make changes, you naturally have two micro-clusters assigning their value differently. You have one who wants greater access, often larger in population but less intense in feeling. Then you have the other micro-cluster who “got it the hard way” smaller in numbers but with far more passionate feelings.

Economics in an online game economy is great public relations but mathematical gibberish. There is a lack of limitations on the design of the economy. Now that is quite different than the online store where real currency that is base lined against other things it could purchase is used for your in game items/currency/etc. We are talking purely about the in game economy of digital goods and items.

The only thing that really makes sense to consider for the online economy is consumer perception. That is why the OP and others are more right than the spreadsheets.

Too often being trained in economics makes us a bit desensitized to the heart of the matter being the matter of the heart. There is no macro spreadsheet that disproves micro sentiment. . .thank God.

Some people hate crafting and I am one of them.
I would gladly pay to avoid having to craft anything other than the end game weapons and armors (that seem to be more about making me do enough of certain content to get materials).

Anyway, can you think about a “buy your way out of crafting” item? I (and many I would imagine) could tolerate forging a weapon if we didn’t have to do all the silly crafting to get to the point of forging it.

While you are at it, is there any reason we can’t buy ascended weapons considering they have been out for long enough that anyone who really wanted to craft one could have?

I get having a time delay between new armor/weapons and introduction of multiple ways to acquire them, but ascended weapons need more ways to get them that don’t require crafting!

We all instinctively know that the ranger is underpowered.
What I was getting at was explaining why and how.

In other words, we are bottom tier in the following key performance areas of the game (defined as last 2 classes):

A, B, C, D

We are top tier in the following key performance areas of the game
1, 2,

As a result, we are -X in terms of balance.

Try that

Big Picture (Improve):

1. Ranged Damage increase (too many classes can get into melee too fast)
2. Pet F2 Timer reductions (especially if some of the animation issues can’t be fixed)
3. Pet and Ranger Stat improvements (especially if rangers don’t get full benefit from stats because of pets).
4. More Defense (especially condition removals and retaliation)
5. Secondary healing improvements
6. Greater access to fields and finishers. Ranger is especially short on finishers.

Reduce:
1. Ranger has too many sources of immobilize
2. Ranger has too many active evades even after vigor nerf.
3. Ranger can be too passive play style (Spirits/Shortbow)

Interesting idea.

But it has a glaring problem and that would be the impact on combinations.

If you look at the value of leap finisher effects, many of them are not directed really at a target. I may want to leap to create stealth or any of the 3 armors that can be created. And the benefits of these effects goes beyond impacting a single character.

Your concern about the ability to escape combat has to be taken in light of the ability of so many classes to get into melee range easily without taking much ranged damage in the process.

A warrior hardly comes into a battle with a ranger at under half health by the time they engage in melee.

What is the definition of balance you use?
Too often that definition is tied to effectiveness versus having areas you are strong in and corresponding areas you are weak in.

I would probably add a couple Anthony.

Evade/Escape
Engage (e.g. if melee can’t get to you, their damage doesn’t matter)
Armor/Toughness
Debuffs

Chuck that is exactly the wrong way to review it.

So I might say.

Rangers are top in ability to evade.
Rangers are bottom in ability to cleanse.
Rangers are at bottom in AE.

Big difference when you look at the pieces of the game that matter versus the modes of the game on whole.

You don’t just want power creep or the need to readjust all PvE which is why nerfing is important.

Ok, perhaps it is a difficult read.

There are several areas you mentioned where warriors are (and should be) top tier.

Where is the “counterbalance” areas where warriors are weak? (The areas where warriors are at the bottom 2 of classes)

On whole, do you have more areas where you are top tier versus where you are bottom tier?

In most games, the warrior would not have the heaviest armor. The highest DPS would be from medium armor characters. Likewise, high healing characters tend to do poor damage.

You don’t have to follow that stereotype, but the concept behind it is necessary. You have to be strong in some areas and weak in others.

So to simplify:

1. What areas matter in the game?
2. Where is the Warrior in the Top 2 of Classes?
3. Where is the Warrior in the Bottom 2 of Classes?
4. What is the net balance?

Make sense. My goal is not to tell you are overpowered. It is to help show you that if you accept the idea of counterbalance and run this little exercise you will have a very hard time saying that the warrior nets out right. You will have a hard time saying that for each major area where you are Top 2, there is an equal area of importance where you are bottom 2.

Try it.

Hypothesis: In an MMO, you want to find key performance areas (e.g. cleanse, evade, condition damage, single target melee, AE, range, heal, toughness, etc) and split between classes who is most effective.

Drill Down:
In a game of 8 classes, each performance area should have

2 classes at the top
4 in the middle
2 classes at the bottom (this is the Achilles’ Heel of the class).

(Debated looking at it 3 2 3 or even 1 6 1 but in a game with 8 classes this seemed most logical so amuse me for a minute).

Balance would be when the net of where a class is at the top versus where they are at the bottom is zero. In other words, every time you are at the top tier in one area, you are at the bottom tier in another.

This is called counterbalance which is essential in an MMO.

You CAN have a class that is completely middle of the road in everything. That may well be what defines say an engineer. That is just fine and you would be net zero assuming you don’t have some outlier where you are top or bottom.

It isn’t access to a specific condition, trick or trait that matters. The key performance areas should be broad and for the entire game (all modes need healing, melee damage etc). We will move into modes of play in a subsequent thread at a later date.

REQUEST: (For Your Class Please Would be Most Helpful)

1. What is your list of key performance areas in the game (ex. single melee damage, AE, crowd control, cleanse, evade, ability to engage, healing, toughness, etc)? These should be across all areas of the game versus focusing on one. Melee damage works in WvW, PvP and PvE as does healing. (Will get to modes of play later after this thread finishes).

2. What is your class?

3. Which of the key performance areas you listed is your class in the Top 2?

3. Which of the key performance areas you listed is your class in the Bottom 2?

4. What is the net score?

(It will be bloody obvious if you are stacking the deck. Would be hard to argue a warrior doesn’t do good melee damage and a thief can’t escape and evade well).

Balance is not equality. Balance is about having an equal number of strengths and weaknesses.

“Please Work”. That was funny

I think we instinctively know the answer but here is the concept I asked warriors to do.

Hypothesis:
Balance is about finding key performance areas of a game then splitting those across classes. Key performance areas are general themes like: melee damage, condition damage, cleanse, crowd control, healing, toughness, ability to evade, ability to engage, AE, etc)

In a game with 8 classes,
2 should be top in each performance area
4 should be in the middle
2 should be at the bottom (their Achilles’ heel)

Hypothesis on Rangers: We are too often at the bottom of key performance indicators while having few performance areas where we are at the top.

Request:

1. List your set of BROAD key performance areas.

2. Which of these areas are rangers in the top 2.

3. Which of these areas are rangers in the bottom 2.

4. What is the net difference? In other words if +2 you have 2 more areas where you are in the top 2 versus areas where you are in the bottom two. True balance would be zero.

The issue of balance with warriors is less about individual skills. It is more about the “whole”. It is easy to see multiple areas where warriors are in the top 2 or 3 classes in terms of effectiveness (damage for example) but there is no real counterbalance where the warrior is in the bottom 2 or 3.

If classes are to be effective at everything (and useful at everything), then all classes need to be more or less equally mediocre at everything.

The warrior really has too many areas where it is top of the pile without any major weaknesses. By major weaknesses, I am not talking about access to a specific condition or skill versus key areas of play (damage, conditions, cleanses, ability to engage, ability to evade, range, healing, toughness, armor etc).

Warrior is certainly not the best at every factor of the game but where you are, there is no corresponding area where you are the pits. That is what is missing in balance. It isn’t healing signet it is that generally the class that does the most dps in melee is vulnerable to damage (lower armor/toughness without much ability to heal). It doesn’t have to be this way, but there does need to be a corresponding area where warriors are bottom 2 for each area where they are top 2. That is balance.

I am not a warrior though I do understand them having played them in pvp. That is fair warning. Likewise, this could explode which is not the intention but rather to put out a hypothesis and get intelligent feedback.

Hypothesis on How Balance Should Work: In any game the key for balance is creating counterbalance. Key performance features (say melee damage, condition damage, healing, armor, toughness, ability to evade, ability to engage, range, crowd control etc) should be spread across the classes in terms of best performance.

A. 2 classes should be at top.
B. 4 classes should be middle of the pack
C. 2 classes should be at the bottom (their Achilles’ heel).

You can always have a class that is basically completely middle of the class. However, for every ability where you are in the top 2, there should be a corresponding weakness (how opponents should exploit you).

Hypothesis on How Warriors Actually Work: Warriors face a lack of key performance areas where they are at the bottom but have far too many where they are at the top. It certainly is not balanced. Warriors have some of the highest offense and defense abilities without equally compelling areas where they are weak.

Do this exercise fairly below, then lets talk about balance.

1) What are the key performance factors of the game? Armor, Conditions, Cleaning Conditions etc. Remember to make these broad (of the game is the key).

2) Which of your list is the warrior in the top two or three?

3) Which of your list is the warrior in the bottom two or three?

4) Is it roughly balanced between areas where the warrior is at the top of the list in key performance areas and the bottom? (If not, then yes, there needs to be a nerf).

Wanting this to be more aha versus in your face, I will post my list towards the end of the conversation.

Rarely will they in sPvP hot join versus say WvW. PVP is viewed by many as a more casual activity when you have some downtime.

As a result, people don’t pay too much attention to chat. Likewise, you get a lot of snarky people on chat in PvP complaining about everyone’s build, why they are not winning, how they are holding up the team (and then complaining when no one wants to be on their team). In short, it creates a situation where you just ignore chat.

Plus, chat in fast fights stinks. Voice would be better but it would have to be in game for a hotjoin.

1. Do not make crafting necessary for best gear (allow glory, karma and/or badges to work).
2. Provide more group oriented objectives in WvW (e.g. more value on each rune taken) as alternative to zerging.
3. Make PvP results impact WvW.

Crafting needs a nerf seriously.
Access to gear should not require crafting.
Access to gear should certainly not require everyone crafts their own.
Gear drops from events should be the best in the game, not crafted.

Crafted gear is supposed to be about speed and ease not access and power. Exceptions typically are tied to consumables and things you want stacks of (which is more of a ease and speed issue anyway).

There needs to be a major nerf to crafting.

Ascended weapons are certainly more impactful than non ascended. It is about an 8% dps shift.

Ascended armor similarly is like having an extra trait (% power based on toughness etc.). Saying it doesn’t matter is somewhat silly. After all, look at how many people go after the expensive wvw abilities that give you ONLY 100 of one stat. Likewise, if 2% was just “game noise” there would have been no need for traits to increase their multipliers from 5% to 7% conversion.

For those who WvW, the difference is noticeable.

The issue should be framed as:
1) There is a perfectly acceptable and fair way to get ascended gear without crafting. This should have been the baseline.
A) In WvW with so many badges and/or
PvE each time you get the mega achievement from LS
2) Crafting should greatly accelerate speed to getting the gear versus being the ability to get the best gear.
A) A crafter should be able to make gear in weeks where it might take a couple months otherwise from the system proposed above.
A crafter should be able to sell gear to those who are too impatient to do multiple dungeon, LS or wait to accumulate badges in WvW.

The key difference is that all new gear should be created to be accessed as a baseline outside crafting. This is really the only major title that forces you to craft personally if you want access to the best gear.

In others, either
a) Crafting is the best gear but you can buy it or
b) Crafting speeds up the acquisition of what is otherwise doable but time consumptive
I. And doable never means, there is a theoretical chance of a random drop with just the right stats you want versus a reliable source which just is time consuming.

You know what other MMOs do with gear. This isn’t a new concept.
ANET went too far with crafting. Way too far. Crafting needs a nerf.

Heck NO! That would be a hideous mistake for the game.
Too many people hate crafting and there is no reliable way to get ascended without crafting.
One of the worst ideas this game has had was to create “must craft” items.

I PvE maybe 20% for fun (once and only once per encounter) and then 80% for loot to make me better in wvw. So, if the encounter lacks loot, what is the purpose?

Ideally, this should be a second way to get ascended gear as crafting is just a waste of time and effort. I want to fight not forge.

I think the solution is really quite simple.
Make it so that everything that procs on swap shares a timer. You can therefore only proc 2 skills every 9 seconds no matter how many weapon swaps you can make.

Now, what a warrior can do is get their 2 procs and then get into a weapon set which has passive abilities (stacks or +%).

Warrior needs a serious nerfing but not sure this is it. In general, you want a class to be in the top 3 for about 1/3rd of critical factors (armor, health, power, crit, crowd control, healing, condition revmoing, etc) and in the bottom 3 for about 1/3rd of all critical factors and middling for the rest.

What critical elements of combat or utility is the warrior at the bottom (in short where he has a counter)?
What elements of combat or utility is the warrior not in the top three?

Given the warrior is the offensive melee side, the real way to balance the class is to make it far easier to take one down (nerf a warrior’s defense hard).

Guardian is the defensive class. Warrior should be high offense but far easier to burn down.

ANET needs to do something big and fun in WvW. Typically, this means a map refresh as the runes and filling in the lakes just didn’t do it.

Create a whole new series of maps (same themes but just new dynamics, looks, areas, routes) right in time for ESO launch. That way, you renew interest and tear people who might convert. Do you want to play the game you know and invested in now that it has a whole new feel to WvW or take a chance on a game that could disappoint?

That is why I would expect BIG change to WvW (other MMO is really quite WvW based) and less real balance (save what you heard about going thru abilities etc). Boredom is the real problem that makes you convert to the new game more than frustration.

It is a “net new” challenge they will fact meeting with such a popular title coming online. Again, buzz or initial experience of that new title could change things but you prepare for good competition not assume it will be bad.

Hence, everything should come around late March/Early April or 2-3 weeks before your competitor launches. And if they dealy launch, you should delay your major updates too. Simply put, I want you to be so busy with the game you know that you don’t think about switching until all the bugs and problems of the new game are fully out there and people are getting frustrated.

Which happens to coincide nicely with when ESO is launching. You re-anchor the core and provide fresh new content for the casuals to try to keep the migration to a new AAA MMO limited. Set the bar higher for a conversion so that it isn’t just “I was bored and wanted to try something new”. MMOs tend to be addicting. You want the “siren’s call” to stay with your platform

Everything in an MMO is around launches because that is the greatest opportunity for a new game (poor launch and you typically die slowly) and the greatest threat for an existing one.

In my experience, when you are working on larger changes you tend not to telegraph them with a conversation because you really WANT to explain what you MIGHT be doing but you don’t want to set expectations until you are further along.

I very much think that WvW is something ANET is scrambling to improve. It was a very pleasant surprise for them and a key factor in player retention and desire for gem store purchases. Expected? Not really but you go where your customer goes.

Also, while I like a zerg fight what is the ideal size of a zerg for fun?
When is it so big that it is silly or that many classes no longer scale?
For me 12-20 per side is about right.
Again, this is for a zerg versus a havoc party or gvg roam.

There should be incentives (objectives) promoting both a large force and several roaming small force groups on every map. Right now it seems that there is incentive to have a large group roll up a map and a few roamers for yak slapping and camp flipping but no real need for group v group (or even 2 group v 2 group).

Make that change and the zerg sizes will get smaller and diversity of play will go up.

We have kits which effectively act like weapons.
Most engineers will run at least one kit.
You have more effective skill combinations than you would if you had more weapon choices and no kits.

Now, if for some reason you don’t like kits. . . . .then this class is going to feel very restricted.

Several Tweaks:

My first thought is:

+ If you are buying expensive runes for additional conditions, why would you not take grenades?
-Especially, if you are not taking a shield, grenades ability to give an extra ae blind which replaces much of the need for the elixir.

Other thoughts:

+ Runes of perplexity might be better than runes of torment because you have 2 ways of adding a perplexity stack and it is a separate condition.
– I rune runes of perplexity and a sigil of torment and it is much harder to clean
– You can effectively “AE” a stack of confusion with the bounce from pistol.

+ Bombs are tough to play without the extra radius especially in the kiting and dodging style of play of p/p.
-That usually requires you drop shrapnel which gives you just a few stacks really.

+ I would place my points in explosives over firearms. The traits work better for you.
-Piercing pistol shots won’t really help.
– You have low cooldown blow torch, poison dart and static shot. Each more or less hits multiple targets. You really don’t want to autoattack with the pistol (as bombs and the egun are much better that way)

+ If that leads you to taking grenades, bombs, e-gun (which is pretty standard to the extent anything gets standard with an engineer), those saved points in firearms should go to grenadier.

+ Shrapnel works with grenades and grenadier because it is 15% on hit. You get 3 grenades that can hit up to 5 targets. Or you get 1 bomb that can hit up to 5 targets (and extremely unlikely to do so with short radius having not taking forceful explosions).
– In 1v1, you will have 45% chance per grenade strike to land shrapnel (3 grenades) with grenadier.
-Never found shrapnel to be worth it without a grenade. Even then, it is so tempting to have forceful explosions.

+ Precision you have is tied to getting off conditions but you don’t to go into firearms high except for traits. Much of what you do with conditions and traits is “on hit” or has a cooldown where even with 10-15% less crit chance you will land one.
-That is fundamentally why you see so many condition builds take things like backpack regenerator is because they don’t need 20 even in firearms.

+ Pistol or Shield is very situational. You will swap often and that is a good thing.
-Key for shield is often the blast finisher.
-You can easily blast off bombs and the e-gun for stealth, might and the egun for retaliation.
– If you take grenades, the ability to “multi-blast” poison is extremely useful for a bomb build as you can have long stacks of weakness which makes getting in their face with bombs much easier to manage.

+ Sitting duck is a hoot with your p/p and bomb build if you stay 20 in firearms.
– You immobilize on the following: glue shot, glue bomb.
– That is a great trait for someone not running a shield.

+ Otherwise, I would replace coated bullets with extra range if staying in firearms.

+ On heal proccing abilities work soooooooo much better with the med kit because you just swap into and out of the kit in about 1 second every 9 seconds Of course, the HT is much better otherwise.

I do believe that a 30/10/0/20/10 build is better for conditions.
You are giving up a 15 second passive condition remover and a good heal per second by not going 20 in alchemy.

Smoresanyone That would be my fire breathing devourer.

The issue is what is the definition of large versus too large?

I do think ANET is very supportive of WvW and generally the whole “many player” concept. But at some point the zerg sizes just were not planned for in terms of things like AE cap, skill scaling in large groups, skill scarcity, some skills with no limitations, etc.

Even the queues for the battlefields have proven to be strained on overly large servers.

Typically, I would say that you would stretch the maps and make them larger giving yourself more real estate for different and new objectives that you can’t just leave alone. The more things you need to manage simultaneously, the more you split groups into different missions. You also “somewhat” reduce technology strain.

Make maps 50% larger to start. Just stretch.
More value for holding runes other than just the buffs.
Add more points to manage (e.g. villages which you can pillage or protect etc).

Break up the zerg sizes by having more objectives and space.

VERY simple to fix.

You should be able to dismantle siege equipment your side has created which is not currently “in use” or being “built”. Create a timer of 2 minutes since last use to avoid another kind of grief.

Dismantling siege should give you a portion of the supply back (33% sounds right but you just have to play with that). You should only be able to dismantle up to the point that you can carry the supply (that helps with having one person just dismantle everything).

Problem solved.

The worst thing they could do to grief that model is tear down your siege which is just sitting around but that, in part, isn’t that bad. Siege should probably be far less build it and wait to use it.

Downed state is great for PvP. It also works pretty darn well in small WvW and SpvP.

But it is just oddly designed for larger scale WvW (which I think was never anticipated frankly to be so zergy large).

Roaming, I never mind a downed state. It adds some urgency to finish a fight and some “come back ability”. I find it very satisfying. Get bigger and you too often get odd things of a zerg acting like zombies coming in waves of refreshed players.

While fluffy in design, the skills are completely unequal. Certain styles of group fighting clearly favor one set of skills over another. What is more or less fair when 1v1 or fighting a mob falls apart in mass zerging.

I do think this is a much more difficult thing to balance at this point and expectations should be managed accordingly. Taking out downed state in WvW and just using the ability to res might be the short term solution. It is a GREAT concept that just doesn’t scale well in zerg fights.

WvW on SOS is doing great.

I think the key problem for WvW is when it gets too large you simply have a lot of classes that don’t scale, a lot of skills that get drowned in the zerg and too few ways to fight and defend.

Getting zergs to about 16ish a side would make things so much more dynamic. Need more zerg busting skills (you can have a LOT of 16 person groups so long as you don’t wind up with 30v40 type fights).

The biggest factor in WvW fun seems to be keeping the queues down and the zergs at manageable size.

When we rank wvw class usefulness the single biggest factor is “how big is your average zerg”.

On servers where the zerg sizes are 16 or under on average, many classes play well.

The trouble is that when you get to VERY large zerg warfare, some classes scale in terms of defense against so many sources of damage, buffs, healing being based on blasts vs the 20+ other heal skills, etc. Likewise, you have far less skill scarcity when 20+ are running together. Someone should always have what the commander calls for available (more or less). That hurts a lot of classes that are designed to be more “jack of all trades”.

That is why you find far more build and class diversity on smaller sized servers. The game doesn’t seem like it was balanced or created around such large WvW mechanics.

And that would be a good thing to focus on for the balance team. Tweak key skills for each class around a bit more zerg v zerg.

This game just plays better with smaller zergs. Anyone disagree? It just seems built for that.

Engie should be higher. Many classes depend on how big the zerg/group warfare is on your server. I seriously think that when designing classes, ANet thought WvW would be a whole lot less populated (and SPvP a whole lot more populated).

Here is what makes the Engie so useful especially in smaller groups and roaming. The issue with the engineer and most classes is that they were not designed to scale to zerg sized warfare.

1. Versatility. You can always send an engie to handle most any “I need someone to volunteer” jobs. They have tools for just about any small encounter. You will have skill scarcity even in 12-16 man zergs and that is where the engineer shines in bigger combat. In smaller combat, you are guaranteed to have skill scarcity and your small team never quite knows what combination of characters it will face. The engineer is phenomenal at being able to adapt and bring skills the team needs to face different small teams.
2. Fields. You will get a lot of fields out of a single toon and a lot of combos: from heal, might, weakness, and stealth. Greatly improves utility in small groups.
3. Perma weakness. Extremely good in small groups to weaken targets as you take them out 1 by 1.
4. Vulnerability. Ditto. Engie is the best (or one of the best) at laying down vulnerability on one or two targets.
5. TEAM condition cleansing. Done right, the engineer can cleanse conditions of backline much better as they can place turrets, have a nice AE fumigate on the e-gun etc. Not great at cleansing their OWN conditions but quite good for others. Scaling is an issue but it works great for small teams.
6. Solid Healing Help. The bigger the zerg the more blasting off water is how you heal, but in smaller settings the engineer can really keep a group up with elixir filled bombs, a mobile water field (short), healing turret and the e-gun field. A LOT of GROUP healing but it doesn’t scale as well when you zerg.
7. Pulling/Immobilizing. Engie is quite effective in small groups at “catching” runners, pulling people off walls and otherwise creating favorable situations for quickly killing a single player with toolkit.
8. 3x AE. People often forget that the engineer can hit 15 targets an attack with grenades specced with grenadier. In an outnumbered small zerg v larger zerg that is extremely useful especially for poison and chill. Engies are great at “clearing the trash” of AI oriented pets, minions etc so the other AE can hit players.
9. Blindness. In small groups, I can’t tell you how many times having so many ways to put blind on an opponent has made a slightly unbalanced fight winnable.
10) 1500 range grenades. Don’t underestimate the ability to launch grenades that hit 15. Again, it works very well up to about 16 people per side. If you can’t immediately cleanse my slowing you down, I can often split a team or catch one of the essential people in your team and send them running back from base.

Engie should rank higher for roaming and small zerg. Big zerg and well you have 4 classes that scale and the rest don’t.

Again, the engineer is exceptional in smaller group fights because it can react to so many different types of enemy makeup and provides a lot of utility in a single class. It does not scale as well to larger zergs (most classes really don’t and that is the fundamental design flaw leading to these rankings). BUT, in even 12-16 person zergs, a good engineer is going to be high on my list of things I want because they pack so many options in and you still have scarcity in those numbers.

No one cares to comment on the notion that the way in which players enjoy the game turned out to be quite different than ANET expected and they are simply catering to what is now the new core? In short, WvW and PVE draw more people than expected and are much easier to monetize. They draw a broader customer base too.

I love SPVP to be clear, but it is equally clear that despite their best intentions, SPVP never really took hold with the community while other aspects of the game did. In grocery, if the beef doesn’t sell, replace it with chicken.

The best thing for attention for SPVP is the introduction of the game in Asia. New players with new interests.
For the current markets, 1) Do you really think they are selling new boxes to people primarily interested in SPVP now (or is that base saturated)? 2) Do you think the average revenue per SPVP oriented player is at all similar to a PvE or WvW player? (Just look at what is available in the gem store and you can answer that one easily enough).

So, you don’t totally abandon PVP but you certainly focus where the customer is.

The other thing you could do to improve PVP is to clearly have it be part of getting power and gear or progression in the WvW or PvE realm. In other words, the best thing they SHOULD have done is make ascended gear come from SPVP. Of course, you really need to make PvP far more casual friendly to have that happen. But that would be the type of saving grace SPVP needs.

Just my opinions but well educated ones

OP is right on the money. ANet has a diverse population of players. Forcing any single method in game is not going to keep population or gem purchases high. Simple as that.

Let me put it to crafters this way. It would have been even more logical to demand that to get ascended, one MUST sPvP and that is the only way to get the gear. It would have matched the core mechanic and differentiator of the game. I can imagine screaming hordes of PvE oriented players saying “dear God no”.

Similarly, there is currently a screaming horde of players who hate crafting. You seriously want them to eventually find the power gap high enough that other games look more interesting?

This game has a bright future based on diversity. That diversity of playstyles almost demands a diversity in how you get rewarded for best gear.

Of all the crazy ideas, making the best gear craft only is the farthest thing from what I expected in this game. Frankly, I would have been far more “well what did you think with a Guild Wars game” if the best gear required active SPVP action.

So the question is what to do now? Easiest answer is to create equivalent payments in other currencies (laurels and badges or karma or glory).

The power differential has been slight enough so far that people haven’t revolted or quit, but it is getting close to the point where if you truly hate crafting you either do what you hate or quit. In both cases, loyalty is lost and that customer either is looking for a new game now or will find the next new game soon enough.

It is an odd move.

Good to know I am not the only one who was confused by the Livestream and what they meant in terms of timing!

Lots of problems with bunker engineers. Nothing serious but on whole they balance the concept.

1. The healing turret is quite killable. Once the turret is down, so to is a lot of your defense (esp condition removal).
2. You lack stability so on a point or in wvw you struggle more from being pushed around or stun locked.
3. Your condition removal is mediocre for yourself (great for a group with e-gun).

It is a solid bunker for certain but not really overwhelming especially when the supply crate no longer wacks you for so much immobilize.

I have questions not critiques but I’m missing something I guess.

I think of Tool Kit as a bit more power oriented and grenades as more condition oriented. Having both on the same build with 2200ish attack and 1500ish condition surprised me.

That being said, I do like the combination.

I also struggled to understand why you went 20 in inventions versus the standard get backpack regen and swift kits. That would also free up your adapt trait in firearms.
So you need swiftness (adapt trait in firearms) and power shoes (master in inventions) to essentially get what you would have just taking 10 in tool kit.

Is there something about the minor traits you really find useful in inventions?

Serious topic. We all know that even if fun the class is a bit underpowered and needs attention on issues like pets etc. But what really is it about the class that makes it fun for you.

For me:
1. 1500 range
2. Speed of my attacks at range
3. Spirits

There are quite a number of people who simply don’t enjoy crafting but would like a reliable way to get ascended weapons and armor.

Can we just buy them with say badges of honor or laurels or glory or anything that is more pvp oriented?

At the very least can you make ascended gear tradable so we don’t have to craft?

This is really the only game where crafting is essential on a per character basis.

YUCK (imho).

The more ways to get ascended the better!

Does the patch tomorrow have the balance changes we heard about?
If not, when are they coming?
If so, are there notes yet?