Guild Wars 2

Cynz.9437:

What would improve build variety is removing elite specs from pvp.

I’m pretty sure removing elites would remove diversity.

without DH burn guard becomes the only viable guardian build.
without reaper, power necro loses viability and all necros have to go condi.
All engis go back to P/P
Thieves are going to be running d/p as always.
Condi warrior ceases to exist.
Revenant loses any claim to viability without Herald.

Cynz.9437:

What are you implying? I would be careful here, because it is just your assumptions and are not based on any real statistics.

I’m implying that various personas and personality types are attracted to certain archtypes in RPGs, and that the thief/assassin/rogue archtype tends to get all the “I’m important enough for youtube!” types.

Cynz.9437:

Yeah easy. You get in top 100 with like 1700 rating (on EU, on NA it is even lower) due to less active players. Grab fresh account, win couple matches, you would be already in top 100. Staying there is of course different story.

You do realize that the leaderboard is lower because we don’t have people decay/volatility exploiting, and we don’t have placement sniping either.

Feanor.2358:

Crinn.7864:

With the exception of thief, the mechanical complexity of tempest is hardly any different than any of the other classes that are competitive with tempest.

Really? Other classes have to rely on abusing mechanics like double-hitting Wildfire and maximizing Phoenix hits? Condi rangers aren’t simple, huh? No targeting quirks, you don’t lose 10% damage every time something hits you or you stop moving. And why would a thief get downed more with the same base hp and higher armor values?

You just have engis dealing with streamlined kits, Necros dealing with both field priority and having to clip whirl finishers into the hitbox lest they lose chilling bolts hits. Condi ranger I won’t speak of since I don’t play it.

And yes thieves do die more than eles, because raid thieves are pure melee with no self recovery mechanics. Besides there are no mechanics that will down a ele but not down a thief.

Also really when was the last time anyone ever asked for a thief in their raid slot? The only time thieves get taken is if the group can’t get a ele.

I want stuffs for full 5 mans. Duo/Solo randomness is really offputting.

Astralporing.1957:

Crinn.7864:

Astralporing.1957:

Devata.6589:

However that did not really worked out as planned and it turned in to full DPS. What they fixed in raids.

If anything, raids enshrined the “max dps” approach, not weakened it. Yes, you use roles that aren’t dps based, but there’s not only no incentive to go beyond that required minimum – quite the opposite, you are strongly penalized for doing that. Something that simply wasn’t true in group instanced encounters until raids appeared.

That isn’t something that can be fixed. Maximizing DPS is the optimal way to do any content where your objective has a numerical health pool. It’s why even in games like Battlefield you still see people talking about DPS.

The fact of the matter is that the optimal way to do every piece of content in every single game ever is to take the minimum required amount of sustain and put everything else into DPS.

No. Maximizing DPS being the “optimal way” was how it worked for dungeons and fractals. In the case of raids however, going non-optimal does not mean that the fight will get longer. It means that it gets progressively harder (and in some cases just plain impossible).
Thus, raids not only not fixed the “max dps” approach, but enforced it with actual mechanics.

You seem to misunderstand. There are two reasons why maximizing dps is the sole optimal in all content that ever existed.

1) Time is a commodity is that is universally valued by all players. Nobody wants to spend any more time on a fight than is necessary. This is why zerker gear is the goto for open world players and not just raiders.
Now many players do start out valuing their tankiness over their deeps, but you’ll find that most players regardless of casual open worlder or hardcore raider will tend towards methods that decrease their time investment as they become more experienced in the game.

2) Math. Any fight where damage is being dealt to you, you will take less (and have less chance of dying) the faster the source of damage is removed. Now you could just make defensives mechanics overscale to where they are better, but then we get back to rule 1 about Time being valuable.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, you use roles that aren’t dps based, but there’s not only no incentive to go beyond that required minimum – quite the opposite, you are strongly penalized for doing that. Something that simply wasn’t true in group instanced encounters until raids appeared.

Also as per rule 2 all fights get harder the longer they go on. That’s not specific to raids. It’s also why mmorpgs as a whole are trending towards shorter encounter times, since developers have realized that fatigue is a real thing.

Feanor.2358:

The problem is, you can be just as viable, if not more, by putting considerably less effort with another class like condi ranger or thief. No, it’s not fair. Not by a long shot.

With the exception of thief, the mechanical complexity of tempest is hardly any different than any of the other classes that are competitive with tempest.
Necromancer has to deal with field priority control (something a ele never thinks about) I shouldn’t need to touch on engi’s complexity, and ranger isn’t all that simpler.

Tempest was never the most viable dps. It was perceived as one because everyone assumed they can do reasonably close to what qT showed. Since dps meters went legal, we know how far from the truth this is. People would have shifted toward other damage dealers anyways.

perception is everything. The fact of the matter was that people preferred to take mediocre poorly geared elementalists while forsaking more qualified players on other classes.

Also you seem to assuming that Ele is the only class that loses dps on a boss. Necromancer loses more dps than any class by a mile. Engi’s are really mechanics sensitive. Thieves have no cleave and get downed more than eles.

And no the legalization of meters did not get rid of perception problems, LFG is just as absolutist as it ever was.

Pyriall.1683:

On a scale of 1-10, how does everyone rate their own personal skills in the game?

11

You have to realize that the matchmaker can only work with what is in queue. If you are on massive loss streaks it’s a indication that the matchmaker isn’t able to find player of sufficiently low skill for you to play against.

It’s the mirror problem to the issue of lege player fighting golds -it’s because there aren’t enough lege players to have lege only matches. Well at the opposite end of the spectrum you have the problem where some players are so low rank that there aren’t enough players of equivalent low rank for the matchmaker to make a good match, thus the loss streaks.

Also I’m pretty sure that your claim of 68 straight losses is total bull.

sophiewhite.3149:

its because its incredibly fun to watch a thief play. extremely active gameplay.and with the lack of cooldowns a thief can go from 1 fight immediately into another. where other classes might need to wait for cooldowns.

I’m pretty sure it has more to do with demographic that plays the class than anything to do with the class’s mechanics.

Like when I played SW:TOR, 80% of the pvp videos where concealment operatives and deception assassins.

OriOri.8724:

Mounts would be a huge selling point for the next expansion, and as such would almost be guaranteed to be expansion only. So no, they would not be given out to everyone, and it would directly introduce P2W mechanics if it was allowed in WvW. Its bad enough that elite specs outclass core specs by so much, you don’t need to give the people who buy an expansion any further advantages over F2P players.

They didn’t allow gliding in WvW (or sPvP) I doubt they would allow mounts

savacli.8172:

Other Power classes suffer from similar restrictions especially when it comes to up-time on the scholar bonus which is why condi is more favorable where the biggest issue there is making sure the boss doesn’t move out of condi fields.

Though there shoudn’t be much of an issue when fighting golem like bosses such as Gorsy and KC.

whether condi is favorable or not, depends on the bosses toughness, not scholar.

KC and Gors you’d have to be insane not to run power on.

I feel like that of all the youtube videos made for gw2 pvp, 80% of them are thieves and the other 20% are mesmers and rangers.

Astralporing.1957:

Devata.6589:

However that did not really worked out as planned and it turned in to full DPS. What they fixed in raids.

If anything, raids enshrined the “max dps” approach, not weakened it. Yes, you use roles that aren’t dps based, but there’s not only no incentive to go beyond that required minimum – quite the opposite, you are strongly penalized for doing that. Something that simply wasn’t true in group instanced encounters until raids appeared.

That isn’t something that can be fixed. Maximizing DPS is the optimal way to do any content where your objective has a numerical health pool. It’s why even in games like Battlefield you still see people talking about DPS.

The fact of the matter is that the optimal way to do every piece of content in every single game ever is to take the minimum required amount of sustain and put everything else into DPS.

Omatsuri.4250:

Or use the same group composition without any necros but some members use Sigil of Nullification

Except a necro gains dps from corrupting boons, while equipping nulli sigils is a dps loss.

It’s more easier to make some changes to necro than rework every single boss in this game just for making 1 class more viable.

You wouldn’t need to rework every boss, just a couple. We already have certain bosses that ridiculously favor certain classes.

Solstace.2514:

You’re generally required to have ascended gear for raids. Often multiple sets On multiple characters if you want to be useful to your team. I’ll let you figure out how leather plays a role in that.

I got all my ascended from raids (and ranked until Anet killed that)

My necro has full ascended and my tailor character is only 425.

Omatsuri.4250:

my point is if 2 mesmers couln’t handle with boons how could 1 necromancer do it? Currect PVE meta is all about max DPS: you should be a damage dealer or provide a vital buffs for the highest dps with maximum uptime.

The boss would have such a profundity of boons as to require 2 mesmers + a necro.

The raid will be taking 2 memsers period. If those two mesmers don’t have enough removal the you add necros until you do.

Also the raid meta necro is packing a large amount of corrupts even without taking CB. (Scepter auto, Enfeeble, Nightfall)

witcher.3197:

He didn’t mention condi duration sigils so idk what you’re talking about. Power builds rely a lot more on sigils for damage (air/blood) than condi builds do, by removing them Anet’ll tip the scale towards condi.

Except Anet removed every application sigil so condis got nerfed too.

vesica tempestas.1563:

power builds also benefit from crits, condy does not.

Nearly all condi traitlines include on-crit traits. Additionally condi builds are still doing 20-40% of their damage in power damage.

Redfeather.6401:

Skill use on cooldowns
I noticed in bdo that some skills can be used even when they are on cooldown. Their description says what penalties apply when using them on CD. It is pretty interesting and helps to make the combat in bdo feel like you always have plenty of options.

I say this as someone who also plays bdo.

BDO allows skill use on cd because it’s combat is built around ability chains and many of those chains would not work if all abilities had a hard cooldown. (example half the warrior combos use the kick)

GW2’s system is not designed like that, Our ability rotations are designed around the CDs not ignoring them.

Dadnir.5038:

You’re partly right and at the sae time one may say you’re wrong by saying that. Core shroud certainly need some tweeks but until the most recent change to deathly chill in PvE, core shroud was still used for some encounter in raids (that is when groups were taking necromancers ).

The core necromancer condi dps build never used shroud though. It was just scepter/scepter all the time. Core shroud is bad and has no redeeming factors.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Skills need longer cooldowns, not shorter ones. The short cooldowns are what makes the game feel spammy and skill-less.

Why?

How does spending all your time waiting for cds make the game “more skilled?”

When you opponent is always capable of hurting you, the game is much more intense.

The entire reason I quit SWTOR for this game was because I got tired of SWTOR’s “you can only kill someone every 22 seconds when your cell burst is up, and so help you if you don’t crit.” which was almost as bad as the “I see a enemy player setting up their burst, but I can’t do anything about it b/c 60sec cds”

There is a reason that fighter games (which are generally considered the quintessential high-skill genre) don’t even have cooldowns period.

Just look at the necromancer class. Very few high level players main it, and the reason is because it’s a class with minimal tools and long cds, and no high level player likes not having tools available when they need them.

kdaddy.5431:

1) CLeansing ire is a condi clear but only good on LB, if you miss you get nothing which is why you see alot of bronze/silver/gold heros complaining on “how to fix warrior”.

Cleansing Ire is good on all meta weaponsets because landing a Arc Divider or skull Grinder is trivial even in plat.

2) This warrior has potentially vs that many necros. I could easily apply 15 alone in 3 sec with a sigil and a signet on my necro.

If he is fighting so many necros as to have 30 stacks of bleed on him, then he should have disengaged ages ago instead of taking it to the face like a bronzy.

Also the only necro siggy that applies bleed is Spite which isn’t run outside of low tier because necromancer utility slots are too expensive for it.

Erza.4516:

I think something that usually gets forgotten is the general idea is that when an Elite Spec gets a two-handed weapon, they get an all-new profession mechanic (F1-F4). But if the Elite Spec gets a one-handed weapon, they keep the old profession mechanic and get an extra addition to it.

So if the leaks are true and we are getting a torch offhand, wouldn’t that mean we keep the default shroud and get an additional profession mechanic? That might Anet incentive to rework/buff base shroud a bit more to be in par with other Elite Specs?

That’s not a strict rule. Correlation does not equate to law.

kdaddy.5431:

Thats not condi clear though, warrior gets more resistance from signet heal. Weapon swap trait which i personally dont even run since S4 since the condi are straight instant.

You are forgetting Cleansing Ire which is far stronger condi clear than what you have mentioned.

I understand what the OP is saying because marks are unblockable and scepter auto can literally destroy your build. Endure the pain passive will proc and it wont help with the 30 stacks of bleed, chill, vulnerability etc etc. So when you die your a clean slate with some of the highest cd in the game.

A warrior should never at any point have 30 stacks of bleed (or even 20) on him. Condi necro can’t even sustain 20 in sPvP.

But no one is wrong here, warriors are a bit too strong but not because of passives. Its the last trait in beserker line that gives stability and a break stun. Also a passive trait from going beserk gives might, fury and quickness.

That’s not how that trait works. It’s not a break stun at all. It gives you might when you break a stun. It doesn’t actually break the stun. It’s other effect is that it gives stability while you are in berserk.

Wait is a warrior seriously complaining about a necro?

What is this December 2015?

Also for the record warrior has access to condi clear outside of resistance.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Personally would like to ditch the amulet system completely and go to open full gear builds. . . or maybe split the amulets into 2-4 amulet slots so that we can experiment with different stat combos instead of being locked in to a “sport” like arrangement as it is now.

Yes lets go to open gear like WvW, because WvW totally doesn’t have massive gameplay and balance issues caused by said open gearing.

OriOri.8724:

I think you missed the point I was trying to make, or I didn’t explain it fully. When I say wasted development time, I meant it. Sure, adding the bags to the game is easy stuff. But still JS would have to evaluate the recipes, and management would probably hold several meetings with different groups of developers to see how ti impacted the game. And overall it would eat up a lot of hours to not even start to solve the problem itself, which is why I find it hard to support this idea.

Talking about how they might have to have a meeting is splitting hairs really hard. Management spends most of their day in meetings anyways and both management and the designers are going to be salaried so there is no extra dollar cost.

But that doesn’t matter, because in reality neither you nor I have any idea of how much bureaucracy would have to be waded through in order to make such a change. We are both arguing from ignorance.

What kills me is that every single suggestion that ever goes up on this forum always gets shot down by the “but it would require Anet efforts!” argument. And it’s stupid because ArenaNet is the only people that know the correct answer to that, and the devs are presumably intelligent enough to make the cost/benefit analysis on their own without help from the forumites.

If you want to attack the idea because you think it would negatively effect the game itself then go for it, but this constant throwing around of development costs is myopic. I mean really, SAB was something that wasn’t originally planned, and required developer resources yet it happened.

gebrechen.5643:

It’s not apparent? It’s at the start of the video.

As far as I know they’ve never actioned anyone for revealing player names in youtube videos. Probably because it’s unrealistic to expect players to go through the effort required to sensor a video.

zealex.9410:

what salt? And yes makin git like PI could deff make power reaper more viable but it would kill the condi build at the spot

your suggestion of reintroducing the condi cap would kill condi necro on the spot.

And I know it’s WvW necro salt because WvW’ers are the only people suggest condi nerfs in this meta.

zealex.9410:

Vitali.5039:

thetwothousand.5049:

Slap a 10s ICD on the new Deathly Chill in sPVP so it doesn’t go bananas and things are looking pretty good for Reaper.

I hope they’ll don’t do it: even 2sec icd would destroy the means of the ice-whirl

ehh either that or rentroduce the condi cap but one of 2 things needs to happen

They where talking about turning DC into a PI type power attack nothing to do with condis.

Also this isn’t WvW. Please take your necro salt to the appropriate subforum.

Lets bring back minstrels amulet. Nothing bad could possibly happen with that.

OriOri.8724:

I agree that the absolute best thing Anet could do to improve PvP (and also the least likely to happen) is to just suck it up and nerf all the elite specs to be in line with core specs (and yes Anet, this means severely nerfing the mechanic of most elite specs as well).

Yes lets nerf DH virtues down to core virtue levels where you leave them on passive all the time because the active is such absolute trash. Whoo a 45sec cd skill that gives 1 aegis stack much wow

Let bring reaper’s shroud down to death shroud level. Where the shroud skills are so trash that staff (a utility weapon) does more dps than shroud. Where the only skills worth the time it takes to cast is DS3 and that’s only because DS3 has no cast time.

Lets go back to core warrior, where you spend all your time spamming autos waiting for that f1 to come because you’ve got nothing else to do.

Lets go back to core ranger which was so bad that it was never meta even once.

Lets go back to rifle engi, a weapon that has a perpetual identity crisis about whether it’s ranged or melee.

Lets go back to core Mesmer, where the shatter mechanikittenerally works against the class.

Elites are not OP because they are badly designed. Elites are OP because they where well designed. Because Elites where designed to be desirable, compared to core where class only have a couple good skills and the rest is junk that you only take because you’ve got nothing better to take.

Nerfing elites to core would be a total regression. It’s like buying a horse just to spite your car.

Vitali.5039:

thetwothousand.5049:

Slap a 10s ICD on the new Deathly Chill in sPVP so it doesn’t go bananas and things are looking pretty good for Reaper.

I hope they’ll don’t do it: even 2sec icd would destroy the means of the ice-whirl

Yeah the shroud finisher synergy was something that is clearly designed in

OriOri.8724:

I think my opinion has gotten lost in this thread.

I’m not explicitly against bigger bags. But it wouldn’t actually solve any of the problems that we face in regards to our inventories right now. Which means that the development effort that would go into make the recipes/cost of these bags would effectively be wasted, as the actual problem wouldn’t be addressed in the slightest.

I don’t think we need bigger bags.

But as a programmer with experience with game engines and object oriented programming in general, I take offense at the fact that people are talking about “development cost” of adding bigger bags.

The development cost is nothing.

The engine already has provisions for adding arbitrary game items, and the engine already has provisions for arbitrarily sized bag objects. Adding new bags of a larger size is trivial as far as development costs is concerned.

The question of bag size is purely a question of game design, not development cost.

Now there could be the question of the increased server memory required to store the larger inventories, but that’s not something anyone outside of Anet is going to be able to answer. Although I feel confident in saying that the current inventory sizes are way undershooting the server limits, since programmers typically tend to be conservative about such things.

OriOri.8724:

I think my opinion has gotten lost in this thread.

I’m not explicitly against bigger bags. But it wouldn’t actually solve any of the problems that we face in regards to our inventories right now. Which means that the development effort that would go into make the recipes/cost of these bags would effectively be wasted, as the actual problem wouldn’t be addressed in the slightest.

I don’t think we need bigger bags.

But as a programmer with experience with game engines and object oriented programming in general, I take offense at the fact that people are talking about “development cost” of adding bigger bags.

The development cost is nothing.

The engine already has provisions for adding arbitrary game items, and the engine already has provisions for arbitrarily sized bag objects. Adding new bags of a larger size is trivial as far as development costs is concerned.

The question of bag size is purely a question of game design, not development cost.

NuhDah.9812:

I’m not sure what are you talking about, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen few days ago on Sindrener’s live stream at least 2 consecutive matches lost on his side against teams without thieves. And he is sort of the best thief in this game’s sPvP mode. (also he was playing in plat on his alt) On the same note, he also dies from time to time, there’s no such thing as thief god mode.

I’m can’t say anything from my experience since I’m not in plat, but I’m pretty sure what you were saying it’s an exaggeration.

Well of course in reality it’s not a absolute, and my use of a absolute in the previous post was just rhetoric for impact.

You’re still heavily disadvantaged though by not having a thief vs a team with one.
This does depend on map though, thieves are godly when it comes to denying secondary objectives like Nifhel beasts, and temple buffs, but not all maps have massive impact secondary objectives.

You can counter a thief’s decap game by just permabunking home. However doing so means that your team has to be able to win teamfights while outnumbered, which is a big if and doesn’t work if the team’s are of equal skill.

It’s not that there aren’t solutions to dealing with thieves, it’s that those solutions all have large drawbacks such that’s it’s significantly better just to bring your own thief.

Daddicus.6128:

Oh, and lest people think I’m favoring near-infinite space: the cutoff comes when ANet is not earning enough revenue selling more slots (of all kinds) than it costs to make those extra slots.

Now, what it costs to make those calculations also factors into ANet’s costs. For example, someone has to do the math to figure out if 800 gems is making enough to pay for extra server space, development time, etc. That person’s time (the one who does those calculations) should also be included in the cost/benefit equation. The 800 gems must pay for that person’s time as well.

Cost is irrelevant. The limit of bags is just a integer, that can be changed easily by a single person in minutes.
The server cost is likewise irrelevant because that’s not how software design is done. ArenaNet is not going to upgrade servers over inventory, so inventory limits will be based on existing server limitations.

However in reality the bag limitations are a design decision not a cost decision. Hoarding is bad for the game economy so they will want to discourage such behavior.

Master Ketsu.4569:

I honestly wouldn’t care if these changes were scrapped. They just create more unneeded confusion between PvE and PvP, and reduce options overall. The fact that condi builds get indirectly buffed doesn’t help either.

Condi builds aren’t really buffed though. The only builds that would ever want a duration sigil over a application sigil are burn builds, and burn builds already have a duration sigil.

Outside of burn builds, condi Mesmer is the only class I can think of that might want the new duration sigils. All other condi builds will probably end up using the weapon swap sigils.

Bergamont.2497:

Also that is very clearly Naru and Nos decayed/not enough games yet. This screen and comment is deceptive to anyone who is not familiar with this season’s pvp

This whole forum is deceptive to people not familiar with this season’s pvp.

Carighan.6758:

Then it’s a year or more until the xpack comes out, because as Crimson said they had too much negative feedback over the polish.

When they announce is completely unrelated to the development process. Later announcements doesn’t mean that they have to do less polish.

They been much more conservative post-HoT with early announcements. (look at LS3 episodes being announced the week they drop) I would not be surprised if expac2 is announced much closer to it’s release than HoT was.

Also even if they are following the HoT announcement timetable, they are not yet behind if they are going for a Christmas season release.

Milan.9035:

the class runs berserks amulet in pvp, let that sink in. its meta.

i really need to play something else this game is killing me inside.

It wasn’t too many months ago that people where saying that the total lack of classes using berserker was proof that balance was bad.

Now we have a class using berserker, and people are point to it and saying that the use of berserker is proof that the balance is bad.

TheQuickFox.3826:

But what about Scepter/Dagger Cele-Ele? Most replies here have been about D/D and Tempest builds. I don’t think that S/D Celestial has been overpowered.

irrelevant. People will take the strongest weaponset.

It’s like saying that minstrel’s amulet will make support guard viable, while ignoring that it would make druid/tempest nearly invincible.

SeranusGaming.7362:

What happened to the rewards? I remember before leaving that you could only get enough points for a few ascended items and really couldn’t finish the set. It was pretty frustrating if you loved doing PvP.

Two changes:
1) the amount of ascended shard you get per box was reduced to a third of what it was.
2) Ascended rewards now require crafting tokens in addition to the shards. Crafting these tokens costs just as much as just straight crafting the gear.

Basically it now takes forever and it doesn’t save you any coin.

Abelisk.4527:

More build diversity but a lot less fun/interesting

There won’t be any more diversity. People forget that when builds come into meta, they typically push other builds out of the meta.

This fantasy that some people have about diversity is nothing but a myth grounded in a total misunderstanding about how the meta works.

thrag.9740:

and power war sucks even with elite spec.

odd definition of “sucks”

Moonyeti.3296:

PvP: This season is a disaster. The rewards are iffy at best, it seems pretty dead to me. I am not a dedicated PvPer though, so someone else can likely answer this one better.
.

PvP this season has the best implementation and the worst participation.

Basically the devs fixed all of the exploit and crap from previous seasons, but the hype is long dead so nobody cares. The fact that the rewards where nerfed into a joke removed any incentives.

I will be hyped when we have a release date

All of the removed amulets where problems in regular play, not just ESL.

choovanski.5462:

Loop.8106:

I’d seriously just nerf AD radius to 300, remove the blind on Skull Grinder and increase Defy Pain cd to 90 to be on par with the other professions safety nets.

only issues are arc divider radius and defy pain tbh. would leave the blind because grinder is so bloody easy to dodge, but eh. would be fine without i guess.

Grinder should not be applying 4 condis natively.

NuhDah.9812:

So isn’t the point of the thief squishyness exactly why it should be hard to lock down? I mean if they were easily locked down they would die instantly and be useless, in most fights… just saying…

Because at higher levels thieves never go down to non-thieves.

Right now not having a thief while the other team does is pretty much a auto-lose at least in platinum.