Guild Wars 2

Well the no-LoS is on a basic level ofc fine. I’d change the Berserker, Warden and Defender (being the AE / PBAE Phantasms) to spawn with a ground target marker (but attacking the current target!), and requiring LoS to the GTAE-marker, not to the target.

So in theory in some situations they can be sent around corners, but this’d take the damaging Berserker at least 2 moves (giving players 6+ seconds to kill it in all situations), while for the Defender and Warden it’s still be a non-issue, but both would be easier to utilize.

Winds.3087:

It’s all about e-sports and e-sportsmen. :P

Well then I guess we should be adding a new balance mode, Players vs eSporters, let’s call it PvE. All balance shall now be based on PvE.

I can for example understand Illusion of Life having a high CD, fair enough.
But Portal is only real fun if you can actually use it as a “standin” for the lacking movement speed bonus. Yes I’m slower, but I portal people around. Fair enough.

The problem is, while you are correct, the class should be “complete” without traits. This ofc goes for all classes, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: No other class has as screwed up traits as we do. Underpowered, overpowered, nonfunctional, detrimental, nonsensical, and that’s just before we get to the lines having little theme or cohesion.

Warkupo.1025:

I guess I’ll just rephrase my counter to this argument again by stating: Summoning a Phantasm has the effect of creating a thing which then hurts the enemy. It is an attack by my definition of “A thing you do that hurts other things.” I’ve not seen a compelling argument to the contrary. The only Phantasm that doesn’t really do any significant amount of damage is the Warden, which I’ve already expressed an opinion on.

Hello!
Are you aware there are two utility-phantasms, the Phantasmal Defender (providing an Area of Effect Damage Reduction field!) and the Phantasmal Disenchanter (for handling conditions)?

RhysSebastian.7651:

Do you have a competent strategy for dealing with someone who simply LOS phantasmed at the henge for multiple minutes at a time?

Same way you deal with any Necro or Hunter or any condition-focused build which does that?

produde.8092:

I dont even know why Mesmers are complaining about Mesmer dmg and whatnot. Mesmer dmg is stronger than ever in tournaments. Phantasmspecc was bad in tournaments before the recent changes. The portal change was a hard nerf but probably necessary, you just have to adapt with side spot defense. Though I have to say I would love to see more different Mesmer speccs, condis and scepter needs love.

And once more, the tiny sPvP causes broad problems in the far larger rest of the game. Great!

Mere Image.8376:

Yeah, they have been very hush hush every since the beta. They used to release videos and COMMUNICATE. Now they rarely respond with short paragraphs that basically say nothing except “thank you for understanding that you now suck a little bit more.”

To be fair, they’re probably way surprised (and reeling from) their own success.
I doubt they ever thought this game would impact as well as it did.

Mere Image.8376:

Why don’t they just limit the amount of people able to port? The longer CD doesn’t fix WvW, which means more complainers = more nerfs. Now I can’t be as awesome of a helper to people that suck at jumping puzzles

Yes exactly.
This change was so obvious (given their stance on 5-targets-per-AE/multi-spell), everyone was completely expecting it. :s

Nope, because it was the most undone and it was unsure it would even make it to the final game.

That’s also why it was changed around entirely twice during beta. And what caused the mess in our current traits.
Mind you, I love the general idea, art, playstyle and style. What I dislike is everything which has to do with consistency, there just doesn’t seem to be much attention to it.

RhysSebastian.7651:

I mean im sure you didnt appreciate necromancers throwing 25 stacks of bleed on you, through a mountain or wall which you could not view em cus they utilized targetting functions.

No the LoS stuff is perfectly fine. The Blocking/Blinding of utility/defensive skills isn’t.
If my Clones and Phantasms were nothing but attacks, I would be happy with it. The way it is, my interrupting, my defence, part of my condition removal, this all relies on them.
Fine, but in turn I want to be crushingly powerful if it actually works, then. Nope, no deal. Well, outside of sPvP, which is why I hold the stance that it would be best for the game if sPvP dies in a fire. Then at least balance can focus on actually important areas of the game (and mind you, I like to play sPvP, I just think it should be low priority, it always feels like a tacked-on minigame, good for a laugh or wasting some time, never the focus).

RhysSebastian.7651:

Actually the obstructed bug your referring too happens to most ranged classes. It also allows the new Karka monsters that roll, and the flesh golem to trigger their charge damage on a single character several times. I do hope they solve the clipping issues involved with that, but back to my initial question.

I hope not, this allows me to hit NPCs or players for upwards of 30k with my Spear charge. After they removed everything else remotely usable in WvW to attack someone, and also made Portal unusable for anything but clipping-exploitation (because apparently the 5 players playing sPvP are more important or whatever), there’s something left where players have to think twice about attacking me, my underwater skills.

I need more nerfs! Just earlier I managed to kill an afk Necromancer!

Moddo.7105:

The CD increase on portal was not due to WvW at all. It is all about sPvP. But unlike other classes mesmer nerfs where across the board in aspects of game. Portal was being used in sPvP to have means to quickly bring 5 man team to 1 spot if a node was threatened by other team. And I also belive that new sPvP map is made with alot of jumping to different lvls.

I can’t say I like sPvP any less as a result of this, but only because I can’t believe how much they let it’s balance impact the rest of the game.

I’d take some actually fun to use abilities before that eSports balance, please. 90s CD on such an ability is horrendous.

I mean, Portal was – and still is – a huge problem in WvW, and they make a nonsensical non-nerf as a result of such a thing. Ugh.

RhysSebastian.7651:

A hundred times this. Welcome to mortality Mesmers, you now know what it feels to play by the rules.

Easy for an unhittable Rogue to say, I suppose.
I wonder how you’d feel when your defensive ability is being blocked.

The problem really is that their Portal-nerf did nothing to stop the actual issue, which it was and still is causing in WvW, forcibly making attacking Zergs invulnerable by porting them into the middle of the enemy team.

And you rarely even tried that more often than every 2-3 minutes, in any case. Zergs don’t clash that often since these port-into fights are always fatal for one side.

What the nerf did is seriously reduce the functionality of Portal in all harmless situations, Jumping Puzzles (remember we don’t have any +runspeed, and here I thought Portal was supposed to be what we have in return for that, a checkpoint for puzzles), general movement ,dodging boss AEs, such stuff.

What should have been done is limit the Portal to 5-10 players, 5 for consistency with other skills maybe, and then reduce the CD to ~30 seconds.

Yes I know.
The whole late-beta reworks to Clones, Phantasms, Traits and the general setup should – in hindsight – probably all be rolled back. They weren’t horrible, but thinking about it now they also didn’t help, so go back to where thinks made at least some sense, and start over from there again. :S

I’m using an Ebon Hawke greatsword, and it’s fairly big. Slightly sticks into the ground.
And it has been this way for other Greatswords, too.
How big do you want it to be? It’s already clipping

Eh, MF is a conscious choice. Makes stuff more difficult -> more loot.

Sure, abusive players and jerks could equip it, not say anything about it or ask you whether it’s ok, and gain from it while you wonder why it’s so difficult.
That’s why you generally never PUG if you can avoid it, in any MMO.

Most sensible players will use 5 Pirate + 1 Traveller rune, but other than that minimal loss of power (Pirate is actually really strong if you give you Might) they use normal gear.

(edit)
Point is, I’d argue that except the runes MF is ~useless right now. It only affects kill-drops, so outside of farming Orr it’s of really little value.

Aaaah, sorry. Misunderstood.
And yes makes sense, if a class turns non-viable (I think we’re far far faaaar from that, but we face lots of issues because our broken stuff isn’t fixed because it’d buff up quite a lot), then bunker builds survive the longest hence they’re used the most.

Yes, this has been this way since the game launched, and unlike other types of light the torch only illuminates on your client, locally.

Hrm, I’d do it the opposite way around Plasma, remove the damage from Phantasms and have them purely as utility/finisher sources.

I wonder why it’s only 2 designers. O.o

I mean, is the US market just so screwed you can’t find game designers any more?
I can’t believe a company like ArenaNet has issues hiring on money or renown level, so hrm… no clue.

You’d think balance is being done by a team of 4-5 at least. Actually that sounds about right, more and you become too slow, again.

Xom.9264:

LOL you know other classes need to deal with these issues.

No they don’t, that is exactly the point. Other classes’ AE / utility / defensive skills work even if the target is blocking / dodging, since well, they’re not attacks.
Our utility/AE skills are now counted as single target attacks, making it possible to block an AE ability outright (the ability is never placed nor processed).

And this is not how it works for other classes.

Hrm, the idea to only have the actual target be able to hit the Illusions emerges.

Oh now they’re too girly…

And please don’t copy WoW models. WoW has ridiculously looking armours and weapons, I’m happy to be away from that. :S
I’d rather take all legendaries being silly legendaries than the 4,5m long Ashkandis and the 2-trolls-wide orc shoulderpads. Anything but that horrible design again. It fits into their world, but that’s exactly it, only there.

And well, go for Twilight? Bolt? The Howler? Rodgort?
My GF is going for Twilight or Frostfang, not decided yet. Rangers only limiting themselves to bows are … boring, IMO. Yes I know, Ranger and all that, but here’s a game where Rangers are as versatile as Warriors in weapon choice, and everyone takes a bow. :P

Iruwen.3164:

Considering the patchnotes, ANet thinks they are. They’re probably smoking pot all day since Obama won or something.

Well I know they think so, and given how some are doing a lot of single target damage, I can see where they come from.

The easiest way to permanently fix this is to – IMO – remove all damage from Clones/Phantasms, then rebalance our other attacks/moves accordingly to give us similar total damage.

Clones then become pure shatter-fodder and distraction-defence.
Phantasms become utility. Some already do this, others would apply mass-debuffs (Berserker would become a line-AE cripple only, probably make the cripple last 0,5s-1,0s longer), some others would just exist to spam combo finishers (Duelist would need it’s chance buffed back up to 100% in return for not doing damage, I would make Warlock cause Blast Finishers, and so on).

Then, the whole argument can be buried. They’d no longer be attacks, they’d be utility-summons.

I would really really really love it if other professions also get a random ~15% of their AE / Defensive / Utility abilities affected by Block/Invul/Dodge next patch, to you know, have some parity.

See how other people think about this patch, with them constantly commenting how much of a L2P issue this is, I guess they’d have no problem adapting, right?

koopatroopa.5360:

We have other illusion creating abilites. You still have access to all the secondary benefits from illusions.

Use them.

I do, I just stopped traiting (half of them are bugged and replace each other ,anyhow) Phantasms to be less dependent on them.
Further, Defender and (rarely) Disenchanter are off the hotbar. Since I’d never use them as an attack, having them blockable like an attack is just rubbing it in. Gone with them.

Winds.3087:

Carighan.6758:

Even for PvP it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t block a Well or a Trap Placement, either.

Well, it does make sense, remember that wells and traps are aoe, while phantasm summoning is targeted.

Yes, the summon is targetted.
That’s the problem, because plenty of them are AE or defensive or utility.

In other words what we need now is Phantasms being actual summons, not targetted, so these mechanics-nerfs stop nerfing abilities which have nothing to do with what is being nerfed.

Or in short: Our 50% damage reduction defensive ability can be blocked.
I would love to see that happen to other professions, wonder how long they’d take it. :P

Ruufio.1496:

You have to hit with a spell for it to do anything. It’s as simple as that. This is a L2P issue. If I hit the enemy with spectral grasp and they are invulnerable will it do anything? No, because they are immune.

Try waiting until they’re not invincible…

Depends, if you place a well under someone blocking, does the entire well not appear?

Parthis.2091:

Single target attacks.

So that means Berserker, Warden, Defender should all not be blockable/dodgeable, right?

What’s a Theif?

Parthis.2091:

Do other class’ attacks ignore LoS? No.
Do other class’ attacks ignore Aegis? No.
Do other class’ attacks ignore Blind? No.
Do other class’ attacks pass through evades? No.

Actually, many do.
That’s exactly the point everyone is raising, why is out utility/AE being singled out to be blockable / dodgeable, when everyone else’s isn’t, either?

Even for PvP it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t block a Well or a Trap Placement, either.

I would like a recap, yes, but at the end only please.

It’s not impossible to solo, but the whole fast-respawn-mass-aggro is intended.

I just never go there solo. It’s quite atmospheric to have this “army” of undead actually make you group up. They’re dangeorus, don’t try this alone.

Though I like many of these ideas, I hope we’re all aware that 58 new abilities per class would be very likely unbalancable. And considering we’re already minding the imbalance, we would not be helping it.

Hrm, not the floating (I like going mental with two swords, tbh), but what I mind is how Asuran Mesmers don’t float the GS, leading to some very painful looking wrist modelling.

The only way I found to defeat a stealth-focused Thief is to simply not fight him on even ground. You can’t win that unless you’re a Guardian IMO.

Bring 2-3 friends, root him, overpower him.

TL’DR:
Lower Portals CD by a lot, but limit it to only teleport X players, 1 every Y seconds.

Problem
The nerf to Portal (CD from 60s to 90s), while very harsh, did in fact not fix the actual issue with Portal.
Portal’s main problem was the WvW / Mass power. It exaggerates the invisible-zerg issue because many Mesmers use it to teleport entire zergs of 40+ people into enemy zergs (after running up with external Swiftness + Invis), or to teleport Zergs inside Keeps where they hid in.
This was usually what people had issues with when they complained about Portal.

Why is the nerf an issue?
The new Portal still allows zerg-teleportation.
All it did was increase the CD on doing it, but the problem is that in WvW, it is extremely rare a Mesmer would need to use Portal twice in anything less than 3-5 minutes.
However, Mesmers lacking any passive run speed, we could partially make up for it with Portal, allowing us some nifty tricks. E.g.: without run speed Jumping Puzzles are quite a bit more difficult, yet Portal allows a sort of “checkpoint” to be placed in case you fall off.
This function has been impacted a lot due to this nerf. While the original problematic use remains untouched.

Idea

• Change CD to 30s.
• Change duration to actual 20s, 24s with trait.
• Change Portal to have “charges”. It spawns with 1 charge , then generates 1 charge every 4 seconds. This means 5 charges total.
• Each teleport uses up a charge, meaning 5 players total can use it over it’s duration. With the trait, a sixth player can use it.
• Charges are used per-teleport, not per-player using it. One player swapping around thrice would use 3 charges, yes.

This would fix the teleporting-zerg Problem, at the same time lowering the CD and making it a much more “active” utility skill (many of ours suffer from needlessly long CDs, IMO).
And it’d not only keep, but actually boost the use as a mobility/movement utility skill, since we lack passive speed.

Also, our Phantasms aren’t normal attacks (as shown above in the video).
Why should they be subject to things affecting normal attacks?

plasmacutter.2709:

bunker builds are the last gasp of any class in any game when all other viable builds are destroyed.

You can’t do decent burst, so you just try to outlast (and against any competent player who is NOT playing a fundamentally broken class, you don’t outlast)

This doesn’t make sense to me.
This would be implying that high-damage builds are always inherently superior to other builds.

That’s as broken as Bunker Builds being the only viable one “left” (because it’d imply that if a burst damage build exists, it is the only viable one).

Now ofc, plenty players prefer going for the l33t DPS. We call them: bad.

I sincerely doubt that. There might be two dev team leads, of two separate dev teams. But a team on a budget like ANet, producing a game as big as GW2, they don’t do that with just two balance devs (which would extrapolate to ~6-10 devs not counting programmers and artists).

That’d be … odd. Also highly doubtful they could deliver the content they do from that in the time they do.

Oh I enjoy the game a ton, too.
Sure, I rant about the Ascended gear, because it’s not what I personally would have done.
And I am meh about the Mesmer nerfs, even though I expected them (though I would have limited Portal to 5 players instead of increasing CD).

But then, I’m not the only player.

And frankly, the game is a blast to play.

Oh please not.

First people cry for more gear tiers, and now we have this mess which is Ascended gear, which just serves to wash out the uniqueness of GW2 and with it it’s appeal.

Now you’re asking for even more sameness? Play WoW or one of it’s myriad of clones, plenty trinity there. What’s so bad about MMOs appealing to different target audiences? :S

Before you shred them to pieces, consider this:
Since release, there was been rampant feedback that the game needs “more stuff to get”. “More stuff to do”. “More things to aspire to”.

In other words, thousands and thousands of posts have asked for exactly this Ascended gear.

ANet didn’t lie to us. They listened to player feedback. And this just goes to show why as a developer you really shouldn’t listen to your players, because unlike developers they might think they know what’s good for the game, but they (or me) probably have exactly 0 actual clue.

alanis.6094:

Mesmer phantasms work like regular attacks. There is not really a logical reason for them to ignore dodging. The ‘double-standard’ examples are apples to oranges — for example, if an opponent dodges when you cast Chaos Storm, the field is still on the ground.

Yeah, makes no sense. Shouldn’t it be dodged then, and not spawn? Considering my AE Phantasms don’t spawn, either?

ShinraGuardian.8053:

We don’t want tidbits of information, we want to know why there are 2 people working on class balances and why Warriors and Engineers and nearly every other class got some significant changes while all we got was Harpoon damage increased by 50%.

Well yes, so be happy you’re not a Mesmer or an Elementalist, and enjoy your – if small – buffs.

Oh you know, as long as they go the full distance, make the summoning also do damage / debuffs, and make the Phantasm unable to be destroyed by AEs and such (in return for having a limited duration, I suppose), that’s all fine.

Then I’m very happy to have it called an attack, sure.

Right now, it’s a summon to me.
Oh, here, this is good:
Phantasmal Defender: Summon an illusion that redirects half of the damage you would take to itself instead.

So yeah, blockable summon!

Yeah you clearly abused that, Ishbaal! How dare you? :P

Flying Knee, you realize balance is never going to be perfect, so unless you enjoy rerolling the current FOTM overpowered you need to at some point sit down and accept you will be playing the underdog for a bit?