Guild Wars 2

Alga.6498:

Can someone explain this to me… ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Comparatively low.

But if you want reasons for that, content drought + nothing interesting the AH + Q3 slump which is inherent to these cyclic games. Also lack of developer effort as a whole leading to a rather stagnant mood among players.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

This is not the best way to fix it. It kills diversity. I realize that some traits look lack luster but in a game with 3 main modes and a bunch of further niches within each node, only being able to pick 3 trait lines with no further diversity would be dull to say the least.

I’d actually see it as a strength in regards to WvW/sPvP.

Much like WoW recently started using a separate PvP talent tree, I’d say they can exchange or even add/remove trait (lines) as desired for WvW and sPvP specific purposes. Maybe Inspiration just isn’t a pick in WvW, instead there’s a line called “Glamour” which also gives 2 new skills and a few other things, focusing you on a WvW specific role.

The absence of 15000 minuscule individual options allows for the remaining few dozen combinations to be big in effect, in turn allowing a proper per-mode alignment of the class while being entirely self-explanatory to first-timers, as they’re used to picking trait lines, and there could just be PvE / sPvP / WvW markers on the traitlines for mode-specific ones.

Yeah it’s a big rework, but I really feel that the plethora of choices we have is causing issues all over the line. Now ofc this amounts to much more than just traits, but traits are an easy and effective thing to modify, especially if all they need to do is sort of “force” traits with the selected line, meaning the underlying implementation can stay, just the UI changes and the individual traits do.

savacli.8172:

I’m gonna have to write this off as a troll post as this goes entirely against the spirit of the game in an entirely exaggerated manner.

Intentionally so. The current system for buffs/debuffs is really not working well, or is it?

As plenty other games have solved this problem before, what’s so bad about taking inspiration from them? And: We already have the working setup of trading active abilities for more passive skills with Signets, so that’d have precedence, too. Oh and it solves the needs-2-Mesmers raid issue, and can easily be adapted to solve plenty other raid buff/debuff balance worried.

Electro.4173:

However, I don’t think Ineptitude vs Malicious Sorcery is a good example of such a choice. Because Malicious Sorcery is basically mandatory when using Scepter and useless otherwise.

Oh, agree. Sorry, I worded my post badly. I like the part where for a scepter user, you’d essentially want both.

This “I want both, cannot have, pick one” is the design goal, but it’s not consistently applied, as you said, it’s not even stable in that choice because one is a scepter only talent.

Though while walking to the metro this morning I figured the best way to fix these trait choices – IMO – is to flat out remove them. We have genuinely too many character loadout/setup choices right now, and trait picks are an easy target for something which could be used for class balance if they didn’t exist and power condensed into picking 3 out of 6 possible traitlines. Or just called “traits” then.

So you can sort of pick the 3 focus areas of your character, but what each entails is set up by the devs, allowing more complex balancing changes than the rigid “3 minor + 3 picks of 3 each” setups we have now.

I still don’t see the problem with just making you evade inside and then giving the targets a per-player CD so it cannot be chained on the same target.

That’s hardly a new or novel concept for MMOs either and it works™.

I also completely don’t get the point. What about it was so problematic that they needed to limit it to 1 Ele at a time being able to apply the procs? Eh? Is it proccing an instant kill nowadays?

Lexander.4579:

making 5 people invulnerable, stable, refilling their endurance and granting them broken pre-nerf alacrity on a joke cooldown?

Man someone is salty…

Anyhow, evasion != invulnerability, stability is self-only last I checked and a mechanical necessity of AE skills which are stunbreakers, you don’t “refill their endurance”, unless they recently increased the amount by ~230% and oh no, those extra 0,6s off the CDs must have completely floored you in PvP I bet.

Really, the issues were in PvE cheesing with the evasion. But the way it is now, the skill just feels pointless. Aegis isn’t a strong effect at all, and the skill has a fairly long CD for how little it does now.

Yes, yes, there’s even more useless skills in the game. I know. Doesn’t mean this one isn’t in need of a change, or that the previous one needed the evasion part removed (instead of being ignored by special boss effects).

This could work if and only if we only had one weaponset, maybe. Say Mace/Ace, which even becomes ranged with some legends or so.

You can indeed contribute!

For example, you can step aside to let an Elementalist take your place -> Best contribution!

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Unfortunately, those two features are the exact reasons why rev/mes combo is OP in WvW guilds. If only ANet is wise enough to split 3 very different gamemodes……

Actually, they don’t even need to do that. They just need to embrace raid roles and buffs/debuffs, like every MMO has at some point managed to.

For example, we want perma quickness, right? So well, let’s make that a raid buff.

Time Warp – Mesmer skill, 30s CD, elite
Places an area of warped time. For 10 seconds, enemies in the area are slowed. The area persists, granting quickness to up to 10 players inside. This persistent effect lasts for 5 minutes or until moved by re-using the skill.

Facet of Haste – Revenant Glint skill, no CD, elite, 2 energy cost
Apply the facet of haste to up to 10 allies, granting them quickness for 3 seconds every 3 seconds. Can activate this skill again to use Blurring Speed, briefly granting allies evasion and also applying Superspeed while cleansing movement impairing effects. This effect has a 30 seconds CD and will disable Facet of Haste.

And maybe give it to a third person. The point being, it’s just a raid buff. Bring one of the 2-3 classes who can give it, done. ANet shouldn’t make such a big deal with interweaving many skills and signet procs and whatnot (I’m a mesmer :P ) for something which other MMOs solved 10 years ago.

Plus it’d be easy to make bosses not be cheese-able with it. Not like you cannot simply have a cooldown on a per-player basis, getting affected by Well of Precognition leaves a 20s debuff on you which makes you unable to be affected by the ticks of it again (the endurance gain still works, as does Alacrity if traited).

Tuhdaaah, raid cheese disabled, but you can use it to dodge massive AEs if they’re not specifically said to be undodgeable (many are).

I don’t get where having 4 instead of 3 mediocre~rubbish utility skills would be a big improvement.

I’d rather have 3 decent ones first.

I think it’d be ok if they make Calamity deal more damage (tick damage → same tick damage as the other wells, end damage increased by ~40%), and then swap the CDs of Precognition and Calamity.

One buff which I’d love is that as long as one of your legends is Ventari, the tablet will not disappear when you swap to your other legend.

You can no longer move it or cast the healing/cleansing from it, but it’ll do its usual pulsing and you don’t have to replace it when you go back to Ventari.

Dragonfeu.4356:

Honestly, I don’t get why people are whining. In my eyes, Revs are OP.

Yeah they might be strong in PvP, but what about the other 99,95% of us? It’s nice that all 15 sPvP players still out there enjoy the balance, but…

The biggest problem here is how the Devs seem to lack the willingness to have races functionally be different, hence they try to intentionally undertune the skills.

That races are already funtionally better or worse due to their size and shape seems to escape them, sorry to state it so bluntly devs.

So why not… utilize that?

What if Asura had slower-casting racials which were useful in niche situations but easy to see coming, whereas Norn and Charr ones are much more difficult to counteract? This’d make up for asuran inherently superior size-related elements, like tiny animations and ofc, our superior intellect which let’s face it, none of you Bookahs can make up for no matter what you try.

Yeah my point exactly. It could be a well-done, but it isn’t.

Of course, then GW2’s unnecessary plethora of half-built and -finished systems comes into play, because we also pick and 3 out of 6 trait lines, have a selection of skills we pick from, and a ton of stat combinations, runes and sigils.

Combined, millions of possible choices.

But realistically, I’d love for at least traits to be actually finished and provide a meaningful choice at each stop. Even if it’d mean, say, having only one choice of 3 in each traitline, focusing on 3 important aspects per concept and making you pick between them. Anything, really.

Electro.4173:

My main gripe about Ineptitude is that I can’t use it while also using Scepter. At least not without losing my scepter trait.

Scepter is the condition damage weapon and comes with a low-cooldown block which leaves you a bit vulnerable post-block. The fact that I can’t use scepter along with the trait which adds a damage condition to my blocks while also giving me a bit of extra defense after the block is sad. They seem meant for each other.

But, if they could do this consistently, this would be the smart way of designing trait choices. Actual choices. You’d love to have all 3, but you got to pick 1.

Not like now where you first decide what type of character you want to play, and then just look up the traits because there’s basically only one sensible choice at each stop anyhow.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, a fun rework if they ever properly revisit the underlying Mesmer class design would be to align us a bit with this tickery-aspect again.

Ideally, we’d have virtually no defense and would be frail as hell, but virtually impossible to find or pin down. The ultimate nuisance on a PvP level, and in PvE someone who can wade into the firestorm and come out unharmed – or rather, was never there to begin with.

Back then I thought of the inverse of what you said, a channeled elite “House of Glass” which rapidly spawns clones using a plethora of rather believably animation sets including dodging and leaving AEs, but not only of us rather also of other friendly players, meaning it gets hellishly chaotic and difficult to tell who is who.

Yeah it seems the only consistent communication is Glint’s absolutely terrible groaning VO. It sounds like… I dunno, a frustrated voice actress?

OriOri.8724:

The dire condi chrono build when played by a competent player is indeed kittenous build, and the game would not be worse off if it was nerfed. Its almost unkillable when played by a competent player, while at the same time it provides constant and heavy pressure of the two most dangerous condis in a PvP environment, while also allowing for heavy condi bursts fairly often, while it also have the ability to disengage almost at will if the fight is going poorly for it. There is absolutely no downside to playing it, none, and yet it is also one of the more dangerous builds in WvW roaming.

I never said I consider it “ok”, I just dislike the terms people used to describe it.

So far you have told me that the build is:

• Overpowered.
• Extremely effective.

In other words, people ought to run it in the context where it makes sense, yes? Because not doing so is willingly jeopardizing victory chance.

I find it fascinating that “the strongest” build is called everything from cheese on the tame end to cancer+ on the more gross one, but in PvE for example using “the raid build” is commonly accepted as the way to go. What’s the difference, why not use the best tools available to you?

Does the spec need a nerf? Maybe, but we players can’t really do that ourselves, that’s upon the devs to fix.

Other than that, a player would be stupid not to use the spec in a situation where it could give an advantage. So actually, maybe the best term to describe this spec would be “effective”? :P

OriOri.8724:

This is such a toxic mentality.

“I better run kitten build in case I run into someone else running kitten build”

All it does is vastly increase the amount of cancer builds out there

And this, in turn, is such a toxic mentality.

Waa waa, your build is totally cheese / toxic / cancer / whatever-is-the-kitten-word-of-this-generation.

No true scotsman would use such a build! Duh!

(edit)
Because really, there is no “cheese”. It might be exploiting, in which case it requires GM action. Otherwise ,it’s a designed and implemented piece of game logic, and not using it in a situation where it would provide an advantage for your given context would be, sorry, kitten stupid.

So if the person you quoted wants to avoid getting ganked, and can do so most effectively with a stealth build, then… what? You want them to let people gank them more often or what? Why not just do something about the main problem, as in, use a build which is difficult to gank?

It’s like not using a DPS build as a DPSer in a raid because “Man that’s such kitten build, is like everyone has it!”. Ever hear that from raid leaders? Complaining about those cancer DPS-only builds on their Eles?

F*** I hate the term “cancer”…

For roleplaying purposes I genuinely like the idea of the clone from the trait being a downed one, assuming it also uses the downed attack and all.

(I’m generally in favor of anything which makes clones appear more believable, no matter how tiny the individual change is, because I’d love a Mesmer which genuinely is about hiding between your clones.)

Oh, it does make sense, of sorts. Just never realized it, despite actively using it in raids (otherwise how could my SoI and the proc ever line up, granted).

Waaaait… the ICD of the passive proc-trait is affected by the CD-trait for the signet?

Really? Who programs this?!

OriOri.8724:

ts also not the easiest tactic to fight VG. If you are new to raids as a chronomancer (and it sounds like you are) you might have better success by not going with this tactikittenil you have the general mechanics of the fight down better

Yes, thank you word filter. Thank you for protecting our children from the phrase “tactic – until” [sic], because clearly the intent was malicious.

These word filters…

Mikkel.8427:

Does anyone else find it funny that anet has managed to nerf enough things to make Danger Time worthwhile?

TY!

I was super-confused by people discussing this. “Why would anyone even remotely in their right mind ever take Danger Time?!”. Turns out, because the alternatives are even more rubbish… :’(

Yeah this is annoying, though to be fair I’d prefer the majority of the healing to come from the pulse and the AE skill, not from the move. Still ,should be fixed.

As someone playing Mesmer, Revenenant, Engineer and (recently) Elementalist, I dread to call what they do nerfs or buffs.

Because that implies agency and intent. I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing here.

Instead, there are 1-5 devs who 1-2 days a week get to panickly stomp at all the small fires in the room. Hoping that it’ll help.

No one ever works on actually fixing the underlying problems and causes, or we’d see more extensive reworks in the form of individual skill changes / additions / removals every 2 weeks (at most, if not faster).

Or at least they ought to add Concentration and Expertise to Celestial I suppose.

If anything we need less spammable <anything> in this game. CC, too. Boons, Conditions, even raw damage.

So I’d rather have kitten root on a 30s CD which due to high cooldowns on breakers/purges is nigh-uncounterable than some form of semi-passive cripple on the autoattack or anything like that.

Spammable XYZ is the bane of this combat system, tbh…

InsaneQR.7412:

Actually guard has safe yourself which hives them 20s swiftness on a 30s cd without trait, soo yeah guard has better swiftness uptime with this skill than mesmer with SoI.

It’s “Retreat”, and I was thinking of that, but when did they lower it to 30s CD from 40? Hell…

And yeah, Save Yourselves adds another 10s on a 50s CD, but to me that is sort of like equipping a focus on a mesmer, requiring two slots for it.

Curunen.8729:

I’d prefer everything be hybrid and allow the player to choose which damage type they want to focus on through gear stats.

I’d do it the opposite way.

“Conditions” or “direct damage” are just flavors of “I’m a damage dealer”.

I’d make Power, Precision and Ferocity scale DoTs, and then just erase the lines between the two types of damage that way and get rid of the separate condition damage stat.

The type is then used as a point of class-balance and class-flavor, some classes use DoTs more, others use direct damage more.

Hot Boy.7138:

They should just remove all cripple, chill, and (…)

Can you stop for a minute with the childish reactions and actually react to his input?

No I meant overall. Not mesmer-wide, game-wide.

Well right now 66% of classes have base access to permanent runspeed (Revenant, Guardian and Mesmer do not).

That’s a majority, but honestly if you prefer that number to be 100%, wouldn’t it be much more sensible to remove these run speed passives (only work with actives) and instead increase the base out of combat runspeed boost? I mean if it’s going to be for everyone, don’t make unnecessarily gameplay/UI elements for it, just bake it into the base game.

OriOri.8724:

GS needs a buff

Staff needs a buff

Torch needs a buff

Scepter needs a buff

Sw off hand may need a buff.

Pistol needs a buff

Please not. Plenty things right now need a nerf, but few things need a straight-up buff. There’s a lot of elements which could be ripped out entirely and replaced with something worth using in niche situations. Granted.

But buffs? The power creep from HoT was intense, if anything I’d curb that.

Going to throw something entirely radical out here:

What if Time Warp applied a unique, non-boon (to avoid to duration balance worries) effect which massively increases attack speed, not just 50%. Say, 100% at the very least.

Then make it so that outside of us Mesmers which bring it in a party-version, other classes only have self-only versions, depending on impact maybe even with unique downsides attached. We don’t, and it’s AE, but ofc ours is on a long CD and an elite.

That’d be a pretty good solution, no?

Oh…

Wait…

Yeah but… we have tons of powercreep. Honestly we could do with a lot of nerfs, but to overall power output and damage numbers. Not to specific comparatively small details like boon spreading.

To those saying “But this doesn’t address XYZ”, look how tiny this balance patch is. How few changes it actually makes.

There is no bigger changes or rebalancing coming ever. I don’t know why, I suspect they lack both talent and manpower. But fact is, you either enjoy the current (im)balance or you better look elsewhere, this late in the game they won’t do the massive reworks all classes need :S

But what is the point? I mean, we have a passive runspeed trait as a minor in Chrono, so we don’t need any extra runspeed.

“Not rely on Chrono” is a bit redundant as an argument, lest they remove the double-cast of Chrono. You won’t not spec it, it includes the pillars of our current gameplay.

tobascodagama.2961:

As I’ve been saying on Reddit, Mesmers don’t have much to complain about as far as losing group slots. It’s all the folks competing against Eles for the four DPS slots who should be kittened.

Actually I wish they had nerfed us enough to kick us out of the meta entirely. This has to become really ugly I think, and I’m thinking 2 Druids + 8 Eles ugly, before anyone on the dev team will even notice.

I don’t get the whole stack limit thing. Is it really that difficult to understand that at the point where your buff needs such a low stack limit, you got way bigger issues with your balance? :’(

Runes of the Chronomancer should be -5s well CD on the final bonus, IMO.

apharma.3741:

The problem is this games entire selling point and system is built (or supposed to be) on the idea that multiple classes can fill multiple roles. There’s nothing inherently bad about it, having might being provided by 3-4 classes easily wouldn’t be a bad thing unfortunately this isn’t the case.

Well ofc not, but think about it: Other MMOs did this first.

WoW’s classes have 1-3 (one has 4) roles, depending on spec. Yes some classes only have DPS specs, but others have tank, healing and DPS specs.

And that’s just WoW. A game which already shed the roles of CC, Debuffer and Buffer. Add those in, and apply them to speclines, and you could easily make a lot of things including secondary and offspecs.

Thing is, it needs commitment. Yes, someone is going to lose some way to spec which was garbage and niche-y as hell anyhow. And ofc they’ll flood the forum in tears. So yes, this should have been done long pre-release. Problem is, as someone who writes business software for a living, “because it’s too late now” is one of the stupidest arguments possible. You don’t gain anything but letting the wound continue to bleed.

I’d rather have them bite the sour apple now, 4 years in, and finally make a decent class setup and give the classes decent design. Even if it means I lose anywhere from 1-20 skills I enjoy using, nevermind traits or stat combinations or whatnot. As a whole, balance is impossible right now because the underlying class-system just doesn’t lend itself to being balanced.

No, this was purposely done. I think they even mentioned that they wanted to give these phantasms more use on their activity summon, as opposed to the trait.

phokus.8934:

What were people expecting with the changes to Mesmer? Because it seems like you wanted Mesmer to maintain its current course which we all knew was being nerfed.

Well… I would want them to commit to class roles. Because “Boon Controller” worked really great, IMO. It’s a fun role. Build the entire class around it and do something similar with other roles with the other classes and whatyaknow, after 5-6 years since release we could have had actual design which can be balanced.

But ofc, the “Everyone must be able to play however they want, so long as that is some form of DPS focus” won out again, and here we are, not moving towards much needed class roles. :s

To be fair, this would be a really good general thing but if they wanted to commit to WvW as their main PvP avenue (DAoC showed how viable this is) they’d need a fair few more reworks, not just a nerf to SoI. And some underlying combat changes so that the WvW class-roles work in PvE.

Mitch.4781:

Is W v W even still a thing?

Surprisingly enough, yes! It’s really fun, too.

Thing is though, the population is for all I can tell dwarfed by PvE to an absurd degree. Even if it isn’t as kittenPvP, it’s still tiny.

The question then is, why is PvE never taken into account during the design stages of balance changes? It’s not that difficult to build classes which can transfer their role to a similar one on changing game modes, other games did that plenty before. Hell GW1 did that!

Azukas.1426:

It amazes me how people fail to see glaring problems with this game and can only tunnel vision onto 1 class…..

Yeah but ANet never touches underlying problems anyhow, so there’s little point in trying to bring attention to them.

If they would, they would have gone back to the drawing board with their boon system in general, and the boons Protection, Resistance, Quickness and Stability in particular.

But they didn’t, they instead first nerf class skills. To be fair, not bad as a quick fix while you work on the actual issue. However, with their quarterly “balance patch” (I dread to call it that, with how few changes it actually had) being the quick fix, the only larger type of patch which could bring a reward would be a pre-expansion patch.

In other words, yes, game issues should always be fixed before class issues. But the dev team doesn’t do that, probably a result of manpower + outdated engine.

Uh, ANet devs? Still no story continuation for Halloween?

Reaaaaaaally? :<