This is not a manifesto nor do I ignore the global perspective.
Ken,
I’m going to open my notebook shortly and respond to your post.
Cheese mode is indicative of power creep – heads up.
Balancing in a singular direction – i.e. overall nerfs, rather than buffs and nerfs – can, and will, reduce the frequency with which power creep rears its encroachment and reduce the frequency with which large swaths of relative power ebb and flow.
One of the first things listed was eliminating immobilize stacking. This was one of the functions added to the game in recent patches that not only eliminated an element of team work, but made some classes relatively stronger as a result – power creep.
Additionally, to get you back on track – this post and thread was for specific suggestions on balance, not necessarily global perspectives. If you have anything specific to mention, I’d be more than likely to engage in that conversation.
Oh, and while we’re at it – balancing a game around the needs of the top 0.1% of the playerbase is an incredibly stupid way to run a business.
I disagree. A pvp game should be balanced around the highest levels of competitive play.
Why?
I have very little patience for people who propose actual balance changes in this game, since so many people (and I would suspect you too) have no conceptual understanding on dynamic equilibriums – the law of unintended consequences seems to escape so many people. It’s the very reason why I don’t post such things. For most people who do choose to post such threads, I give little attention.
I am familiar with the equilibrium(s); the issue you run into is with power creep being so prevalent.
Before I even consider an equilibrium (because of power creep your best decision could be null from the start of an encounter), I consider manifest and latent functions of a decision – which is why my suggestions are 1) specific, 2) marginal, and/or 3) do not matter because some of the suggestions may change things that still won’t ever be considered in a decision making process.
So, the manifest function is clearly an attempt to bring into line those specific entities that are mathematically superior to nearly every option for respective cost(s) and, therein, reduce the extent of power creep, open up build diversity and viability, and, hopefully, potential balance.
The latent function requires looking past the manifest functions, in some regards, because while the initial change may have an intended effect, the unintended effect (after mass player base exploration) could further unbalance the game and create power creep in a different scope.
To limit the potentialities of latent functions, an overwhelming majority of the suggestions are negative rebalances. The decreasing the relative power of entities, only, in a patch – rather than decreasing some and increasing others – the limits the possibilities and potentialities of latent functions and additional power creep or power creep swaps (which we have also seen happen).
To summarize what you attempted to say – decisions should be meaningful and impactful. Making an incorrect or ill-advised decision should have consequences. Unfortunately, due to the extent and nature of power creep in this game, some players are afforded an unusually large number of incorrect decisions before a negative effect is seen. This should not happen.
I prefer my condi guardian, surprises everyone (well, in hot join and solo q anyway). That’s hardcore baby!
Yea, you kill people with that one DoT condition you have access to.
p.s. Don’t forget to cover it with blind/immob/vulnerability.
Hybrid guardian is best guardian.
Discuss.
Assuming we’re comparing with Banner of Defense, what I meant is:
If you go banner, you go discipline or strength depending on the team comp.
Acandis, just like they told me in kindergarten – MATH IS POWER!!!!!
Actually, yes. At the moment, however, a warrior has access to more stability (not necessarily group wide) and more condition removal for the GROUP per minute than a guardian – not to mention banner regeneration is far stronger than Virtue of Resolve.
Oh, pssh, banner regen. I prefer to compare banner to Empower… not so great now, is it?
ROFLMAO
Dude, that’s like saying: compare Aura of Restoration to Healing Signet… not so great now, is it?
Imo this kind of build should be nerfed to be in pair with the other classes as well, don’t you think?
Actually, yes. At the moment, however, a warrior has access to more stability (not necessarily group wide) and more condition removal for the GROUP per minute than a guardian – not to mention banner regeneration is far stronger than Virtue of Resolve.
That is not what this thread is. Anyone can post suggestions for tpvp, the issue is that the more general solutions are glossed over and the specific ones are picked apart.
Your feedback is noted.
Looking at shortbow number 3, you now have almost infinite dodges/evades.
Because tournaments are being dominated by thieves spamming SB 3, gotcha.
Dont forget my unlimited stability as a thief so i cant get stopped spamming evade skills by guardian lines circles and other impassable skills o wait…..
I do not think you quite grasp the relative power of having a class specific resource tied to skill usage within a realm of skills that have zero cool down. As an addition, SB#3 spam is not even the most grievous offender of the rebalanced initiative regeneration.
(edited by DoYourBestBear.6810)
about your Mesmer changes:
Do you think, “turning around” the damage of Greatsword is a good idea?
I know, that some people complain about the damage Mesmers can do on a range of 1200 with GS.
However, du to the fact that sPvP is a lot about fighting on points, the high damage of long range GS shots wont appear that often, as when a Mesmer is fighting on a point, he will be close to the enemy.In addtion, the fact that the GS damage increases with range, gives everybody a way of decreasing the damage by getting close to the mesmer.
If the damage, Mesmer now deals on 1200 range be the damage, he deals with GS in “melee”, I think more people would complain, as this would probably increase the average damage output of a Mesmer. (Without changing playstyle or anything).
I do think reversing the functionality of the Mesmer GS autoattack is the right move here. The game needs to increase the correlation between risk and reward – higher risk, more reward. Right now, the Mesmer GS is one of those tools that is very low risk for a sizable reward. Also, the zerker phantasm has great AoE potential – both in team fights and solo encounters.
Another thing you will see is higher tier Mesmer cancel/casting the GS auto – this pretty much eliminates down time in the after cast portion of the skill as it was intended.
So, not only should the risk match the reward, but cancel casting to eliminate aftercast while still dealing massive damage should also be addressed.
A lot of this has been off-topic and, to reiterate, it would be nice for more suggestions that are specific rather than generalized.
Fair enough.
I can’t speak for most classes on your list in depth other than ranger (not that I only play ranger, but that as my main when I first started the game, I know more in depth about it than other classes), so I’m curious where you think your changes would shift the meta too.
For instance, you only tone down a specific ranger build. I agree with your changes on that front, but what build would you believe replaces it in the new meta that your changes create? Do you believe your changes hit the power creep issues hard enough that builds like, say, the trap build, would be a warranted choice in the new meta, or are the changes meant to shift the “tiering” out of the ranger’s favor entirely because both the engi and necro can bring the same utility to a team, but can potentially build for options outside of how specialized a rangers trap build is.
Basically, I like that your changes address issues within the current metagame, but I don’t see how they open up many options for classes to build around to create more build diversity, which should also be considered as part of the balancing process.
The goal is not to make the spirit ranger build(s) obsolete, but to tone down their relative power so that making a clear and distinct choice between the builds spirit, traps, and BM can be considered within the overall team build to create a further sense of synergy rather than just “spirits are the best at the moment, on account of the team wide support and added damage to the battlefield, as well as incidental sustain on account of an aoe cap of 5 targets.”
Additionally, as things are incrementally toned down (as power creep is pretty evident, toning things down rather than buffing is the move here), things like power ranger and hybrid builds will still to appear with more regularity.
Moreover, the Wilderness Survival trait tree provides unparalleled sustain and is one of the best lines in the entire game – adding active play to this trait line will go along way towards extending the skill ceiling required for competitive play.
A lot of this has been off-topic and, to reiterate, it would be nice for more suggestions that are specific rather than generalized.
Honestly, the best way to increase the pvp population is to have a separate pvp only purchasable copy for like…10 dollars…then throw it on steam and sell the rest as a 20 dollar upgrade/dlc.
You know, over half those Guardian reworks do not matter because they still aren’t going to be used in tpvp anyway.
That change would be, tentatively, specific to tpvp.
LOLMROFLA
Tool tip says 15, but it definitely restores 50 – come on, seriously.
Tool Tip in game says 15 endurance – I’ll test to verify.
The endurance gain is only 15 and, iirc, it takes 50 endurance for a dodge and you have a pool of 100 endurance – so it is not an infinite amount of dodges.
Building Momentum was suggested to swap with Adrenal health – not moved to the 25 point position. Someone else was suggesting to move Adrenal Health to the 25 point mark of the defense line.
There are different forms of sustain – the goal should be to make sustain in a fight a more active component of the fight, rather than a passive regen tick. This was my thought process for swapping the two – Building Momentum is providing an active sustain because you need to execute a dodge after obtaining endurance.
Decrease the scale with power, not the base damage.
99% of damage skills in GW2 have no base damage, it’s all based on scaling and stat contribution.
As Acandis said, everything that deals damage in this game has a base damage point. Everything else is a modifier.
Since I haven’t yet chimed in to all of the suggestions, I’ll go ahead and do so now.
With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets – the aim is to slowly decrease the power and effectiveness of AoE skills to a point of balance relative to single target skills and abilities and a hedge against AI clutter
I agree with this only if AoE is toned down significantly.
So, AI builds – MM, phantasm, spirit ranger, et cetera – create artificial survivability for every opponent when a player uses an aoe skill. Hitting the cap of 5, despite priorities, means every other AI and player has statistically increased sustain and survivability. Raising the cap to 8 means that, by and large, the widespread sustain issues will be decreased as you will hit both the AI and player more often than with a cap of 5.
AoE does need to be toned down significantly, but the numbers provided are slow and incremental and, as you pointed out, sometimes it may be a matter of scaling rather than base damage – but the specificity of the change is an on-going discussion.
I’ve discussed my preferences for Healing Signet in the past.
The design goes something kind of like this:
Healing Signet Passive: 225 healing every second, with the same 0.05 scaling.
Healing Signet Active: Heals for 625 every second for 10 seconds. 0.10 scaling.This active can be interrupted, and that means the heal goes on cooldown for 4s, where the Warrior gets nothing.
I can see a change of that nature being workable and I’ll ignore the numbers for a moment.
More importantly, if a heal is interrupted it goes on cool down for 3 to 4 seconds and, herein, I propose that interrupting shelter should not make the skill go on the full 30 second recharge. Inb4 “lolzzzzzzzzzz huge buff cancel/cast”
That active scaling and base is way too high – it’s basically a troll unguent that never turns off, every 16 seconds in your proposal.
There needs to be a real incentive to interrupt healing skills aside from “kewl I bought 4 seconds.” But I digress.
You’re example ends up looking like this Chaith:
Recharge when traited – 16 seconds
Passive – 205 base, scale 0.09
Active: 500hps/10 seconds, scale of o.1
The active is going to be balanced around the recharge time of the signet, a higher base for the active portion will still leave this skill as one of the highest HP heals per minute in the game.
I’m sure there is a sweet spot there.
EDITED: Agreed with Kensuda.
Current: 392+0.05HP per sec
Proposed: 200+0.175HP per sec
392+0.05HP=200+0.175HP
192=0.125HP
1536 HPThere’s the correct math. No need to be an kitten about a typo.
I’m going to need you to stop posting numbers in such a haphazard way, please.
Proposed
Healing Signet – Passive tick of 200 with a coefficient scale with healing power of 0.175
Passive tick = 200 + (0.175 x healing power)
Of course the active portion of the skill will need to be addressed to compensate, but the base active heal will be closer to 4000 with a healing power coefficient of 0.005
I’ll respond to Kensuda’s points at some point, but I would like to take this moment to address Olrun’s inability to set basic equations.
The Healing Signet rebalance makes the base passive tick 200hps with a healing power scaling coefficient of 0.175.
With 1000 healing power you get: 1000 × 0.175 = 175hps
Your total passive tick becomes 375hps
Figuring the passive tick is incredibly easy, please do not post inaccurate math. This stuff is actually pretty easy.
With 1200 healing power, you get: 1200 × 0.175 = 210hps; this brings the total passive tick to 410hps.
I have played alot of necro for a long time. Maybe more tournament games than almost anyone else. So I would guess I know more about it than you.
feline grace untouched. A minor trait with this effect is the best thing in the game – the ABSOLUTE best trait in the game – its that simple.
1) good thing it’s only a guess
2) the two best traits in the game atm, for their respective trait point investment, are protection injection on engineer and vigorous precision on guardian – both need to be addressed, for sure, as they are outliers in terms of relative power, but I’m still working on those
The issue so far in this game’s tpvp development has been the length of time between balance patches, the huge swings in power balance, and the progressive power creep. The easiest way to check two of those three things is to bring entities down in relative power and create opportunities for diversity among builds.
(edited by DoYourBestBear.6810)
You realize the introduction of Dhuumfire merged 2-3 necro builds, right?
Actually, Sol, I disagree wholeheartedly.
But I could be biased since I got an Arena Net Christmas card signed by a number of people, but also my personal hero Even Lesh <3
yea yea yea ad hominem this and that – I said that for the way you came off.
More appropriately, a support/bunker guardian is not a solo point bunker and other classes do solo point bunker better than guardian. Reasonably, this puts, or should put, the guardian in every team fight which makes negligible this base health increase on account of focus fire (which can also be achieved by taking cleric’s ammy/knights jewel).
Again, banish and renewed focus require cross-class comparisons.
Oh, Chaith, about the Signet of the Ether – bring the passive regeneration down to my numbers, will make it equivalent to my proposed healing signet change.
@Chaith (part 2)
lol @ power scepter. I was testing some stuff before I wrote that part and Feast of Corruption crit’d for 9k on a hybrid build.
The suggestion you had for Signet of Spite is definitely a reasonable start.
The Healing Signet change needs to occur, for sure, glad you agree. Healing Surge is nice as well, but, through testing, I’m confident that the Heal Stance will obtain some nice play.
Swapping Adrenal health and Building Momentum was something I spent some time on, to be fair. The issue is that, for a number of classes, going into the defense trait line is becoming a mainstay for competitive entry for tpvp and the warrior is no exception. There is a literal ton of sustain in that trait line. When you swap AH and BM you effectively make the warrior choose when and where to use that adrenaline – if you need additional endurance and a possible dodge, use your burst skill; if you need to remove some condi’s use your burst skill. It’s a more active play-style than just regenerating health and allows for the warrior to have some added counterplay to power builds. Additionally, the argument could be made that providing for two adrenal uses in the same trait line could be overkill for sustain because dodging an attack has the potential to be equivalent to more than a 1000hp/3seconds passive heal.
@Chaith – nice nice, actual feedback
I said in a previous reply that tpvp needs to be balanced outside of the scope of pve and wvw, so therein is the change to the aoe cap.
Having a blocking priority is a game-wide buff that affects any class that has any skills that block. Having a singular attack drop multiple blocks skills is unreasonable.
Conditions are both spammy and unreliable in stacking, same for boons. The discourse is whether we encourage a depth of gameplay by having people pay attention to the opponent and the opponent having counterplay options.
With regards to the repair kit, the math boils down travel time and time spent downing an enemy treb(as it usually will in a conquest game mode, specifically with Kyhlo having such a strong secondary map mechanic). Only two things in the game can down an enemy treb in seconds – flesh golem and an ele glitching out fiery greatsword. Stealthing the repair kit still allows for an element of counter play because it is 1) not an instant repair and 2) stealthing will not last long enough to get you unabated to the treb.
With regards to the base health increase for guardians – there are better solo bunkers than a guardian, just no one experiments and are stuck in the same mind-frame. Guardian is a support/team bunker, not a solo point bunker. You can build a solo bunker guardian, but they pale in comparison to a warrior or engi selfish bunker build.
The banish change to being chargeable only puts the instant in line with other zero cast time (but still with an activated animation you can dodge) knock outs across other classes. Either way, it’s a depth of combat issue – obvious animation either way and reduced effect if instant.
Scepter – is a melee weapon while an opponent is targeted. Even with an increase in orb travel speed, you can still A-D pivot and throw every orb off the target. At range, scepter is a skill shot weapon and attempting to hit a target at range without targeting the player should be possible. To compensate, the base damage is decreased by 5%.
No one in tpvp is going to use Signet of Mercy. Additionally, I do not think that pvp will ever be balanced separately from wow and pve. Also, no guardian build in tpvp will ever have room for Signet of Mercy.
Renewed Focus – the 1 second increase for invulnerability for THIS ELITE SKILL, and makes it marginally more useful when compared cross-class to elementalist, engineer, mesmer, and ranger NON-ELITE options for invulnerability.
Tomes – the buff to tome of wrath base AA damage is closer to 25% increase but don’t worry too much. Tomes still will not be a viable tpvp alternative to renewed focus on account 1)needing stability for longer cast time skills, 2) recharge time of the skill versus sustainability, and 3) half the skills in the tomes being useless/not worthwhile cast time for a 20 second long elite (same thing with lich form not having any other compelling skills aside from the AA and knockback).
As for the four “buffs” – no one is going to take glacial heart in tpvp, kindled zeal is a terrible trait for a class that has native access to only one damaging condition, valorous defense triggers as you’re dying once every 60 seconds (kewl, you can block one attack in a field of aoe spam once every 60 seconds, as opposed to 90 – either way it’s garbage).
The zealous blade change is actually a nerf to DPS guards because it moves an attractive trait further away from being possible in a standard DPS guard trait spread. To compensate for a lackluster move to a build that was power creeping, the damage modifier was increased to 10% from 5% which, mathematically, is reasonable for GM trait buried in one of the worst trait lines in the game. Switching Kindled and Zealous opens up the potential for a hybrid guard builds and nerfs the potentialities of the DPS guard’s power creep momentum.
Chaith, I’m starting to notice a pattern here. You main an engineer, and nothing you said about Guardians makes any sense. All of your points were either unfounded or not based in realm we currently reside in as the points you made were innocuous at best. Clearly you don’t see the inherent buff to engineer viability and variability that was proposed and instead chose to pick apart the Guardian changes.
While I may advocate for the game to separate tpvp from everything, it will never happen – keep that in mind.
Lastly, if you have a skype I can send you the pages I have about travel times on kyhlo and why portal needs to not be able to take the repair kit through.
@faeral – I agree regarding empathetic bond. Bringing the pet swap cooldown to something between or at 10-12 seconds would increase pet survivability because you can swap them out more often during combat. With that reduction, the incoming pet would receive the conditions. The issue presently is that with EB being passive, you cannot control which pet receives the conditions unless you run a timer on the empathetic bond starting – which is difficult in a match, to say the least about attempting to run a timer on this trait.
@Chaith – I’m sorry you feel that way, but I did not do this by myself. I consulted with several other players I considered both knowledgeable, experienced, and that played the game with a working knowledge that rivaled or surpassed my own who were also playing at competitive levels.
@Karla – agreed on guardian changes. The issue is that there is only one tournament viable guardian build (bunker). Increasing the base health of any class allows for the most used amulet and build templates to be reconsidered while still inviting the creative thought to play a role in more varied build creation. When you look at the three classes with the lowest health pools, they have been pigeon-holed, competitively, into one position – guardian bunker, burst thief, and glass/dps ele. Thief has been stuck as burst/high dps sustain on account of base health and the scaling of the damage skills (low base damage, high volume damage modifiers); guardian has been stuck because of a large volume of support traits and skills in addition to low health (you need more armor and sustain to perform those same support functions without collapsing); elementalist has been stuck because of the reliance on both water and arcane trait lines to compensate for a lower health pool in providing sustain, so you go glass burst, much like the thief. It’s a rock and hard place to be sure.
Actually, I think you should – I hope you realize each assertion is accompanied by about a page long mathematical flow that includes cross-skill/trait and cross-class comparisons.
Additionally, no one asks any balance patch for the logical assertion for any changes and I’m presenting you with a unique opportunity.
you can’t brush off casual’s opinions
That’s just it. Something in need of balance is not based on an opinion. I started out saying that if you wanted the equations, algorithms, math, or rationale, to let me know. You do NOT balance based around “feelings.”
Scepter on power necro is incredibly strong.
The inherent difficulty is that people, by and large, will defend a primary class without considering the game in its totality.
the reason you want to reduce initiative cool down is to reduce spamming like HS. An elementalist has great complexity for example. And tbh I wish all classes were like elementalists when it came combat.
HS? Please. More like Head Shot and Disabling Shot.
YOU’RE ALL GETTING NERFED.
:D
Seems awfully silly, since the other part of this 30 point trait reduced Steal CD to 21.5s. A 1 second daze already isn’t much for a 30 point trait, especially on a 21.5s cooldown.
It seems awful silly that you don’t consider the totality of what happens during this time.
Boons are set in a block priority system for removal, despite trying to cover boons.
Bountiful Theft steals two boons – of which aegis and stability are always at the top.
This allows the steal to ALWAYS daze, which should not be the case.
So, you have a few options here, of which I suggest nearly all of them – first in/last out for boons and condis would be the easiest. Second would be an ICD on Sleight of Hand. Third, but what I intentionally leave out, is addressing bountiful theft, which I think is fine. Whether a dev listens or anything is used is up in the air. However, there are two solid suggestions – address block-style priority for boon removal and/or ICD Sleight of Hand.
Yea, Feast of Corruption was the one I meant. For Last Gasp, it requires looking at Spectral Armor and the amount of Life Force you gain from it (which is why it’s so strong). For that particular skill, I did not yet run the numbers. For Lich auto attack, the cleave also needs to be considered for it’s damage potential and how positioning can change those numbers.
I never said it wasn’t a fundamental class characteristic…lol….do you even lift…
I made that comment in the context of initiative. The last update weakened initiative regen traits in favor of an increase in base regen; you removed 80% of that increase and did nothing about the traits that were nerfed. A buff to one unrelated trait is, well, unrelated. Your suggestions overall would weaken what’s hardly an OP class right now.
Kewl, now we’re getting somewhere.
Now that you’re looking at initiative, keep in mind there are zero cooldowns on the thief weapon sets aside from after-cast timers. Being able to spam abilities because of a resource mechanic should be addressed. You can say this is whack-a-mole, but you’d be incorrect. Whack-a-mole is rebalancing the initiative traits, which was needed, and then overwhelmingly buffing native regen by such a huge margin.
Looking at shortbow number 3, you now have almost infinite dodges/evades.
Because tournaments are being dominated by thieves spamming SB 3, gotcha.
That’s not particularly grounded – but you also said there were no meaningful buffs. By extension, I assume you can’t read since you glossed over the Improvisation change which changes a broken/nonfunctional damage modifier into something that works.
I mean, look at thief. In the most recent update the pretty much universal consensus is that thieves got massively nerfed. Several weapon skills and abilities were rather severely hampered, in return for an increase in initiative regeneration that most don’t think compensates enough.
And your suggestion? Basically return initiative regen to the old rate, but without undoing any of the nerfs or introducing any meaningful buffs. “The worst of both worlds” as it were.
Sorry, but it’s simply dismissible on its face. It shows a total lack of understanding of the class and its current position in the meta.
Initiative regen as a class mechanic is inherently broken in a number of ways, increase the base regen to 1/second was too much at once, a 33% increase. Those thief builds that didn’t utilize traits and skills for additional regen benefited greatly. Looking at shortbow number 3, you now have almost infinite dodges/evades.
Because when you look at the relative power and effectiveness of AoE skills versus direct damage skills IN COMBINATION with elements of risk vs. reward, Combustion Shot is an outlier in terms of effectiveness and low risk/high reward – especially with Cleansing Ire in combination with it.