Guild Wars 2

Sigil of Energy has needed a nerf since players mostly figured out the game. Extra dodge instantly on demand is way too powerful. It contributed to making bunkers overly powerful and spamming avoidance the norm rather than selective use of avoidance at the proper times showing skill.

The change may have been a little too strong (may need a few more seconds), but the concept is fine. By making it a vigor buff, it means builds which already have many sources of vigor not have ridiculous amounts of dodge. It also provides an alternative to going for your profession’s “dodge on crit” trait.

Lol no, OP. Both maps are awful compared to conquest. The “esports” people tried to help, but gave up when their comments fell on deaf ears.

Spirit watch’s cap point structure, particularly the middle point, is awful. Lots of open terrain and the middle point can’t see anything on the map while being reasonably near the point. The orb mechanic is terrible – instead of shaking up the map or helping the team which has less nodes, it just helps the team with more nodes gain a larger advantage. And the orb running is hugely inconsistent – you can’t teleport, but you can charge or superspeed with it over an equal distance. Anything tanky with movement increases excels at it to the point where it’s almost unstoppable.

Stronghold had major issues since it’s first live server beta test. Archers being useless was a common complaint through every beta test of Stronghold. Most of those issues were not addressed.

So no, esports didn’t hijack this game.

But that’s my point. Two professions are broken out many more which have access to quickness.

The problem statement is spot-on.

I don’t particularly care for your solution. I think it’s a bit too extreme compared to just reducing access to some conditions and boons.

Storms Fury.9307:

Reviving and Stomping is a Universal capability of all classes.

Therefore it is extremely unbalanced to have some classes capable of super fast reviving and super fast stomping.

Why is it inherently unbalanced? Because you don’t like it? Quickness stomping is a tool that some professions can bring which distinguishes them. How is it unbalanced and stability, stealth, or invulnerability stomps aren’t?

This is really just an overreaction to the fact that some builds have too much access to quickness and slow was a little too good. Either that or it’s a cop-out because they couldn’t fix the quickness/slow animation glitch with stomping.

Amulets are fine for almost 3 years. HoT hits everyone uses new stuff exclusively. Everyone is incredibly tanky. Remove tanky amulets. Infallible logic…

The problem is elite specs (and revenant) which HoT added, not any of the amulets being removed. And instead of making up a ton of new combos, just break the amulets into multiple items already. 4 stat amulets are contributing to power creep as well.

Out of the ones being removed, you could argue for a shave on celestial, but the real problem is lack of stat customization and needing more than 3 or 4 stats to be well-rounded.

They should really look at making some of the Scrapper’s defense/sustain traits mutually exclusive.

Josh Davis.6015:

Aside from skill adjustments, another way we can adjust balance in PvP is by looking at the runes/sigils/amulets that are available for use through the customization panel.

Amulets
Split the amulets into three items using the existing combos (recommend 40/30/30 split). This gives much needed stat customization. In particular, it allows for a proper mix of vitality and toughness (less all of one and none of the other) while maintaining a healthy balance of power, precision, and ferocity, which is holding back a lot of potential builds. This lack of stat customization is part of what is contributing to celestial being so prominent. Further, if any particular combos seem too strong (Minstrel, Viper, etc), they can be restricted to one or two of the slots.

Stat Combos
Add Zealot. Not exceedingly strong, so don’t foresee any huge balance issues.

Runes
Pack Swap 4pc and 6pc. Lower precision accordingly. Reduces personal damage gain by 1.5-2%.
Durability Swap 4pc and 6pc. Lower vitality accordingly. Shaves about 500 HP. Considering lowering boon duration by 5%.
Trapper Remove from PvP.

Sigils
Energy Reduce endurance gain or change it to restore endurance over time. Even consider changing it to grant Vigor instead.
Geomancy Reduce bleed stacks by 1. Need to balance it for condition damage users.
Doom Consider removing from PvP. The healing reduction from poison is very potent and easy access to that benefit on professions which don’t normally have it marginalizes builds which bring poison.
Hydromancy The snare effect is useful for builds which have to keep opponents in melee. If anything, lower the damage a bit.

Josh Davis.6015:

In general, our goal for PvP is to be faster-paced with a higher-level of lethality than what we’re seeing in S1.

Please avoid the PvP “arms race.” Set benchmarks for what an offensive, defensive, or support build should be capable of and balance to those. How much burst or sustain damage is reasonable? How long can someone chain avoidance or how much up-time on it? How many might stacks or what up-time on fury or protection should a build have on its own? And most of all, how much of that is allowed when considered together: the best burst can’t have best CC and high avoidance; there have to be trade-offs. When you try to solely balance something relative to the current environment, you get have power creep.

Distaste.4801:

I cannot attest to post-WotLK, but Vanilla WoW PvP destroys gw2 by a huge margin.

Rose-colored glasses. WoW PvP gets out of hand toward the end of an expansion due to gear scaling, and vanilla was no exception. Also, there was always an ideal composition (e.g. feral druid for running flags in WSG vanilla, arenas in later expansion had a selection of a few). However because your BG group in WoW was more what you could find (you couldn’t just swap classes because gear mattered a lot and progression was character-based), it seemed like it was more flexible.

I do agree that ANet needs to go back and take a serious look at core game balance and establish some ground rules which can loosely objectify the balance of an ability.

• Should condition damage work alone, or should it be a supplement to power like precision is? With condition damage being powerful by itself, you get on a slippery slope were you can stack too much defense while doing a lot of damage, especially if you have access to multiple condition types.
• Boons should be far more limited so that you can’t easily get 100% up-time on stronger boons, especially on a group, without sacrificing elsewhere for it.
• Stop the arms race. Don’t pile on more boon strip, condi clear, and unblockable everywhere because one build is causing trouble. Address the offending build instead.
• Fix bugs like abilities or movement getting locked during immobilize or leaps.
• There are clear winners for runes, usually because they provide heavy boon output.

In addition, the PvP system has heavy flaws which need to be addressed.

• Stat system is all-or-nothing and needs more granularity. 900 ferocity and 0 precision or 1200 toughness and 0 vitality makes no sense.
• Change how leagues are implemented. If league placement is meant as a way to rank players, you have to abandon rating for matchmaking and win determination. If you want to maintain rating, then league progression should be a facade only, mapped to rating, with extra progression if your league is much lower than your MMR.

Yes.

The half-day or so when Descent into Madness (mesmer fall damage trait) was doing 100k+ damage.

Okay, here’s how you fix it properly:

You have MMR and league rating (essentially number of total pips though all divisionis). League rating resets at the start of the season, MMR stays the same or gets a percentage chopped off at the end of a season. When you win, you get bonus pips if your MMR is much higher than your league rating. Matching is done solely with MMR. This pushes good players to higher leagues quickly at the start of a season.

Nothing changed at all. Good players foresaw this from the start.

DH very effective at most skill levels because it doesn’t require much skill to pull off burst combos. However, the higher skilled players can see through the obvious combos, and DH has nothing else other than falling back on meditation healing to out-sustain other DPS.

Basically, DH is like the old 100blades warrior. It wrecks mediocre and bad players, but doesn’t do much against skilled players unless left alone. It needs significant re-design to add more depth; all that was done after BWE3 was to increase the damage and utility to silly levels while keeping the mechanics extremely shallow.

So the issue is that players didn’t understand there wasn’t going to be a balance patch?

It doesn’t matter whether a patch was planned or not! Something this broken needs to be a priority for fixing. If you let it persist, players will quickly become fed up with it and leave. That’s why players expected a balance pass.

And given that this is a recurring theme (remember lack of d/d ele balance?) why would anyone trust that the next iteration will improve or that the next season won’t be equally as bad?

Hmm, where to start…

1. Matchmaking is Broken Don’t even start with solo queue vs. group queue; it’s broken on a more fundamental level. This example is enough: I’ve partial queued and players in Pro League are on the other team. Meanwhile, someone on my team is double-capping a node I was already on. That size of a skill and knowledge differential shouldn’t happen ever. And this was in the middle of the evening during NA.
2. Elite Specs They were supposed to be a side-grade or alternative playstyle. Currently builds without the elite specialization aren’t competitive. The only one which comes close is d/d ele. This is based on two weeks of Pro League data.
3. Build Variety / Balance Count yourself lucky if there’s one viable PvP build for your profession. Looking at the EU Pro League data, there were zero warriors, zero thieves, and in week 2, zero guardians. NA also had zero warriors. If you look at amulet distribution, celestial + marauder makes up about 75% of the amulets used. Some of the PvP amulet choices aren’t used ever. In a healthy meta, I would expect to see two or three distinct builds (different role, different playstyle) per profession.
4. Power Creep Incredibly powerful traits added, specialization change gave you more traits and combined many older traits, new runes with powerful abilities, etc. Damage creeps up and forces squishier builds without extreme defenses (lots of block and evade) out of competitive play. CC/AoE spam to win rather than having to coordinate CC chains and burst.
5. Slow Developer Response / Lack of Developer Communication During spring and summer, d/d cele ele reigned supreme. Every competitive player knew it was too strong. ANet didn’t even acknowledge the issue until weeks after tournaments began restricting the number of d/d cele eles you could have on a team. And even after that it took a while for a balance patch. This problem greatly magnifies all the other issues. When things are bad and stay that way with no hope of a fix, players just give up.
6. Not Spectator-Friendly Despite repeated focus on making GW2 an e-sport, including increasingly larger cash prizes, it still looks like a mess of particle effects and even knowledgeable viewers have trouble discerning what is happening. However, the perceived focus on “e-sports” while so many other issues remain leaves a sour taste in the mouths of the general player-base.

Indure.5410:

Like you said Zeal works great for PVE and not as well for PVP, but changing it to a Retaliation line makes zero sense. It would cripple it in PVE since Retal is worthless and PVP should not be balance around a passive unskilled benefit.

Read my suggestions. It doesn’t expect Retaliation to do amazing damage. Instead, it makes having retaliation more beneficial.

You can take the Mallyx legend and the Corruption and Retribution trait lines. Resistance and then stability on dodge makes it very hard to CC a player be it soft (cripple, chill, immob) or hard (stun, etc).

The entire point of using Writ of Persistence in PvE is the symbol duration increase. It gives hammer 100% protection up-time with little effort. That simple, effortless 100% protection up-time is not good for a healthy game. And therein lies the issue with any symbol trait: you can’t do too much with it or else hammer auto-attack becomes too powerful in PvE.

Zeal needs the size increase portion of Writ of Persistence for PvP/WvW. The duration increase should be dropped in order to stop easy hammer 100% protection up-time in PvE. The healing from symbols is laughable outside of hammer auto-attack and I would recommend simply dropping it. Removing Writ of Persistence leaves a slot in Honor which could be replaced by a trait which is better for all-around healing and doesn’t depend on a single weapon to be worthwhile.

Zeal works for PvE by layering damage increases against NPCs who like to clump quickly and then stay in place. But it’s rather bland and falls flat on its face in PvP/WvW where players move out of red circle (and are probably already kiting you).

Zeal also has too narrow of a focus. It needs to reflect being a relentless zealot in pursuing foes. Retaliation-related abilities fit with that theme and work well with existing zeal mechanics far better than in Radiance. Retaliation isn’t amazing, but it does contribute some damage. Zeal would need to make Retaliation more beneficial to round it out. Zeal also needs to make symbol-based play a choice, rather than making minor traits useless if you don’t.

General

• Hammer#1c needs cleaned up. Reduce the symbol duration to 1s (still does 2 ticks) and reduce the activation time for this attack slightly. However, this symbol being on an auto-attack makes it a problem to add symbol-based effects due to the low cycle time. May have to move it to another ability.
• Writ of Persistence removed from Honor. It was limited to gimmicky PvE hammer builds which gave 100% protection up-time (and shouldn’t exist IMO), but Zeal really needs the radius increase to be effective. Those PvE builds still use Zeal anyway.
• Might need to cut down on Retaliation traits in Virtues a bit.

Minor

• Zealot’s Wrath (just a rename of current Zealot’s Speed)
• Retribution: Deal extra damage while under the effects of Retaliation
• When retaliation you apply deals damage, apply 2x 3s vulnerability to that attacker. No ICD since no extra damage is dealt directly.

Major1
Utilities

• Protectors Impact (the fall damage trait). Because ANet insists that each profession has one. At least it makes some sense in Zeal.
• Zealot’s Speed: Gain 2s superspeed when you create a symbol (5s ICD). Gain 2s of superspeed when you perform a combo finisher in a light field.
• Symbols are now fire fields instead of light fields. When creating a symbol, gain 2s fire shield (5sec ICD) This will address issues in PvE where players didn’t like getting retaliation in place of might, especially when a guardian used a hammer.

Major2
moderate damage increases

• Re-worked Symbolic Avenger: Symbols are larger and apply 1s burning each tick. You deal extra damage while inside your symbols (it can stack, but would only happen with weapon swaps and a few triggered traits in Zeal).
• Shattered Aegis: Deal damage to nearby enemies and gain 3s light aura (or maybe just retaliation is better) when Aegis you apply is removed. Up-front damage is less than current. High up-front damage is too hard to balance since Aegis can appear and be consumed quickly and hit a player who didn’t trigger it.
• TBD damage trait.

Major3
Utility and small damage increase.

• Spirit Weapon trait: Spirit weapon command abilities have reduced cooldowns and create a symbol. Sword->Wrath, Bow->Vigor, Shield->Faith, Hammer->Protection.
• Two-handed weapons have reduced cooldowns and increased damage. Two-handed weapon attacks heal for 15 (0.015) and heal for double when they hit a target within 180 range (note: melee is 130). Re-work of Zealous Blade.
• When you use a healing skill, create a Symbol of Wrath and gain 3s Quickness (trait triggers when heal completes the cast).

Honor is a mess, seemingly a collection of traits which didn’t fit anywhere else. It’s the group support trait line, but it needs to do more than just defensive stuff and needs to be more than just healing. For the healing it does, a lot is dependent on healing power, but it provides few bonuses to it.

General

• Symbol traits should all be in Zeal. This won’t hurt use of Writ of Persistence in PvE, since Zeal is commonly used in PvE. For PvP/WvW, it’s not that useful and newer, better traits could be added to Honor.
• Need some kind of healing power conversion or source. This is preferable to just raising coefficients across the board.
• Need offensive support as well as defensive. Ideally should allow for both styles of play (Zealot gear use, for example).
• Staff is the only full support weapon. Hammer and mace have some, but also have offense. Instead of looking at a specific weapon, consider commonality.
• The shout trait is arguably better in Virtues and Consecrations trait here. Honor seems more about staying with your group, but shouts also cater to a more independent play style.
• Staff needs the boons it provides increased in duration baseline.

Minor

• Vigorous Precision: Unchanged
• Selfless Daring: Increase base to 300ish, lower coefficient to 0.7 (slightly weaker at very high healing values, stronger at lower ones)
• Pure of Heart: Same as current, but is a minor. Remember that Aegis you apply to allies heals those allies when it’s removed.

Major 1

• Protective Reviver. Consider having it reset virtues instead of granting boons.
• Activating an elite skill grants you and nearby allies 3x stability for 5s. “Feel my Wrath!” is often used for reviving, so it helps there and allows it to compete with Protective Reviver. It also provides benefit to the Signet of Courage active. It’s not bad on the other elites either.
• TBD

Major 2
This is an offensive support slot

• Empowering Might: Needs some kind of limitation to prevent ridiculous stacks from Whirling Wrath in PvE, but right now it’s too strict. Need to allow might stacking from overlapping effects (e.g. symbol tick and normal attack) and bonuses for hitting multiple enemies, but not have it stack through the roof. Reaper had some per-enemy or per-attack limits on its Chilling Victory trait, so that’s a possible solution. With this change, probably need to take another look at Altruistic Healing and have it not benefit from might, but increase the healing per boon. Otherwise, healing is a bit over the top.
• Wards (Staff#5, Hammer #5, Longbow#5?) immobilize and slow enemies who attempt to cross, in addition to knocking them down. Allies near you gain fury 5s for each enemy affected (1s cooldown for the fury effect). Addresses problems where players who are running collide with the ward and end up on the other side after the knockdown, even though they’re not supposed to be able to pass.
• TBD

Major 3
Powerful defensive support slot.

• Pure of Voice or an Improved Master of Consecrations. Consecrations, when improved enough to make you want to stay in them, will be very powerful group abilities for an area.
• Force of Will: Becomes a conversion trait converting healing power to vitality and increasing healing on other allies by a fixed percent. Specifically targeted toward Zealot, Cleric, and Crusader stat sets. Don’t ever expect to see Nomad in PvP.
• TBD

Valor is pretty strong, focusing on Aegis and personal survival. Has a few weak points with major trait choices and one overly strong point, Monk’s Focus.

Monk’s Focus The amount of sustain provided by this trait in addition to its other effects (Fury, utility cooldown reduction) is too much, especially with Renewed Focus counting as a meditation. The up-front healing needs reduced. To compensate, increase the healing coefficient or reduce the up-front healing further and give it some over-time healing component. This trait needs to be toned down so that sustain can be added as choices to other lines without making guardian sustain too strong.

Valorous Defense Trait is fine. It doesn’t do a lot on its own, but works well with other block/Aegis traits.

Courageous Return IMO this trait is fine. It procs when you revive allies (not just on being revived), which is great for a support guardian. Though it may be better to remove this, make Protective Reviver in Honor reset virtues instead of granting boons, and replace this with a more selfish trait.

Strength in Numbers Trait is fine. 150 stats to a group is a lot.

Might of the Protector Trait is fine. Maybe reduce cooldown to 0.5s, but the cooldown needs to stay. The point of the cooldown is to make the trait meaningful with one-use blocks like Aegis and not exceptionally strong with only Shelter.

Focus Mastery Change scope to be focus and shield, granting protection to those affected. Shield#4 protection would change to something else. Consider moving to honor, since it’s more group support.

Stalwart Defender Gone

Retributive Armor Moves to slot occupied by Stalwart Defender. It competes better with Communal Defenses and Strength in Numbers.

New Grandmaster Major Needs to be something for personal survival which can compete with AH and MF. Suggest a damage reduction proc when below an HP threshold e.g. when below 35% HP, gain protection for 5s, 5s ICD. Doesn’t have to be a boon though.

Strength of the Fallen Change down state portion to “Do not degenerate health when downed if an ally is nearby”. Change 10s interval to “duration of damaging conditions (bleed, poison, burning, confusion, torment) reduced by 15%”. Remember that conditions deal partial damage based on remaining duration now.

Arken.3725:

The only ones utilized are from Necromancer.

Necromancer only uses signets (other than Plague Signet) because the Signets of Suffering trait is so strong. Too strong IMO.

Arken.3725:

How are they appropriately balanced? Ever notice the only signets that are ever utilized are the ones that are self-empowering(Dolyak for instance) or incredibly strong offensively(Plague).

They provide stats, which are equivalent to other signets, and the cast time on CC of 0.75 is appropriate compared to other abilities. The CC is pretty strong too (3s stun or 3s immobilize).

Reducing the activation time would definitely make them stronger, but a little cheesy. You could also reduce the cooldown significantly so that using the activation isn’t that big of a penalty. But really I think you’re seeing a general problem with signets. Out of at least 28 in the game, only a handful are used, usually for powerful activation effects while the passive is ignored.

Need one for Zeal and one for Honor.

The signets other than Mercy and Courage are appropriately balanced. Just that so many other abilities across many professions are out of hand. Possibly reduce the cooldowns on Wrath and Bane and change Wrath to Precision instead of condi dmg, but that’s about it.

The numbers can be tweaked. Resilience is new, so it’s hard to say what’s a proper number.

Leaving out names of traits. Numbers can be tweaked.

Minors

• Burning duration increased by 30%
• Increased critical chance by 10% against burning foes
• Critical strikes against burning foes reduce the recharge on VoJ by 3s. 1s ICD

First Major

• Increases attack speed, projectile speed, and reduces cooldown of one-handed weapon abilities.
• Gain condition damage equal to a percentage of your precision.
• When your passive VoJ applies burning, gain 10s of might. Zealous Scepter in Zeal gone.

Second Major

• Increased damage against burning foes. Fiery Wrath in Zeal replaced with Retribution.
• Striking a foe with over 3 stacks of burning applies 5x vulnerability for 10s and cripple for 3s. 10s ICD.
• Torch cooldown reduced by 20%. When you critically hit a foe, apply 5s of burning in a 180 radius (3s CD).

Third Major

• Signets passives are 20% stronger. Signet CD reduced by 20%. Activating a signet applies 2x burning for 3s to target or affected area.
• Gain 2s resilience and apply burning for 5s on your next attack when you have 3 or more conditions (20s ICD).
• TBD, something more PvE-friendly.

Overview of Changes
Just a quick summary of why stuff is missing/changed

• Amplified Wrath’s raw increase to burning damage was a bit much. Replaced that with the stat conversion trait, which keeps a theme of crits and burning tied together. Not sure if burning on block adds all that much value.
• Justice is Blind fits better off in the Virtues line IMO. It’s more utility than offense.
• Inner Fire granting Fury felt excessive since there were so many critical strike traits.
• In PvP, if you set up burning stacking properly, you can should be able to get a decent burst off.

Arken.3725:

Theme’s don’t exist anymore so I think that argument is moot.

No, they just suck with guardian. If you look at other professions, trait lines have a theme or playstyle in mind. Necromancer does it best.

Thematically, Zeal should be the line with the most damage output potential and it is…on paper.

“Best damage” is not a good example. A good example is that Zeal should support a playstyle where you’re out in front and aggressive, as opposed to being more conservative or defensive. Retaliation fits well with this line and it’s a decent boon, as much as you hate it.

If anything, i’d like Radiance to be the condition line. The problem with this is you still only have burning access and…that’s it.

The concept of a “condition line” is gone from almost every profession. Instead, you have a condition damage friendly line, but it doesn’t necessarily require you to go for condition damage as a stat. And Radiance does that – just poorly because of awful filler traits. Give me an hour or so and I’ll provide suggestions.

Arken.3725:

This is why we have opinions on this matter. I disagree, the ability to stick to your opponent has always been an issue and a necessity for more focused damage. Zeal would fall in the category of more AoE.

Thematically and even in gameplay, Zeal and its associated traits are more about constantly sticking to a target.

Radiance still functions when it can hit a target for a burst in a few seconds, and then bide its time with range or doing damage through burning until it can get on the target again. The one-handed weapons, off-hands, and even signets all support this kind of play. It does need some better traits to increase the spike and land it more reliably.

Do you just want radiance to be zeal but with burning?

General Reduce Virtue base recharge to 20s, 40s, 60s base. Remove the “Virtues recharge faster” from the minor trait. Instead, individual Virtues traits focus on either reducing the recharge or boosting the passive effects. Right now, the bonus for using a virtue feels too much like a penalty unless you spec heavily into the Virtues traitline.

Virtue of Justice The active should apply 2 stacks of burning.

Absolute Resolution Increased healing from VoR active and removes 2 conditions on use. No passive boost. Possibly reduce recharge slightly. It was just too powerful before and nothing could compete.

Battle Presence Passive is stronger and affects allies.

Unscathed Contender Also reduces the interval for passive Aegis on VoC.

Indomitable Courage Reduces recharge on VoC slightly, but no longer reduces the passive interval.

Permeating Wrath This is probably a better fit in Radiance as a major trait.

Justice is Blind should probably be in the Virtues trait line.

Renewed Justice (Radiance Trait) should reduce the recharge by several seconds for critical hits or hitting a burning foe with a low CD. Basically allow radiance to use VoJ active more often.

General Consider making each major slot have all 3 choices apply to the same virtue (or something un-related to virtues). Interesting thematically, but not sure how it would apply for gameplay.

Radiance should focus on:

• Burning
• Critical hits
• 1-handed weapons

It’s abilities shouldn’t require it to stick on a target, just get a few bursts and then back off and let burning or other effects do their work.

Retaliation focus belongs in Zeal. Swap Fiery Wrath and Retribution and ditch Radiant Retaliation for starters.

Consecrations are for area control – specifically having an area where you’re very powerful. But staying in them typically makes you a sitting duck for attacks, even in PvE. Make me want to stay in them!

Purging Flames Removes 2 conditions from allies and applies 2x 3s burning to enemies on cast. Applies 1s resistance to allies in the area and 3s of burning to enemies in the area every second. 4s duration.

Hallowed Ground 0.75 cast time. Applies 1s of stability and 1s of protection to allies within the area every second. 4s duration. 40s CD.

Sanctuary Radius increased to 160 (provide safe areas from melee). Cast time reduced to 1s. Duration reduced to 4s. Healing increased significantly. Cooldown reduced to 90s (any more and it’s too strong in PvP).

Master of Consecrations This belongs in Honor and Pure of Voice should move to Virtues (shouts fit better with the boon-centric play of Virtues). Consecrations last 25% longer and restore endurance to players within their area of effect.

Since spirit weapons are traited through zeal, change the trait to cause them to drop symbols when the command ability is used (remove “spirit weapon attacks cause burning”). It would have good synergy with the rest of the zeal line. Example:

• Sword – Wrath
• Hammer – Protection
• Bow – Vigor (at location of command cast)
• Shield – Faith

Spirit weapons also need to either not take damage or be given more HP (amount needed varies by weapon).

Not sure what can be done to make them stick to players better. Maybe make all the command abilities targeted (or ground targeted) and give it a speed boost for a few seconds.

Yes, viewership numbers of under 2000 people for weekly tournaments…

One of the big problems for viewers is lack of roles. In the current meta, everyone can do everything reasonably well. Gone are the days when you had “bunker”, “sustained damage”, “burst”, “far-point assaulter” etc. If the casters can look at stat and trait choices and identify a role for a person, that’s good enough IMO. Go with any stat system that’s best for the player base.

Ya, no.

Case in point: d/d ele. It was hands-down the best build for so long I don’t even remember and nothing could counter it or compete with it.

“Perfect Imbalance” means that a build has strengths and weaknesses.

infantrydiv.1620:

I’d be all for that, but I’m pretty sure Arenanet has decided that for viewership purposes, having single named amulets is the way they want to go unfortunately…

Gameplay and fun leads to viewership. Restricting stats in PvP drives people away.

Just break the current amulets into 3 items, let players mix and match with the existing prefixes. No need for an endless combination of amulets.

Dragonhunter needs nerfs and buffs. It’s damage and sustain is exceptionally high yet very simplistic. That makes it strong against average players, but weak against coordinated, skilled players. The over-buffed numbers need toned down while adding some depth to the skill set.

NeXeD.3042:

I’ve been playing pvp mmos since 1998. GW2 pvp is one of the best pvp experiences I’ve ever had. The others are Ultima Online, DAoC, and Darkfall. GW2 is the only game I’ve played that comes close.

It seems to me most people who think this is a failing esport are the ones who just couldn’t cut it, and they attempt to spread this Esports is a failure idea. They complain about OmG why would they spend 400k on a pvp competition when “I” think they should spend it on balance because the game is clearly imbalanced because I didn’t make it to pro leagues! Dunning kreuger.

Just because you like it and they throw $400,000 at it doesn’t make it an e-sport.

Everyone says the e-sports ship has sailed because the viewer numbers are continually poor and the experience for the general player doesn’t encourage a large, stable community. Matchmaking is still frustrating, balance is still awful (there are less than 9 viable high-end builds) and only seems to get worse, etc.

OP is wrong on about half the issues:

1. Infrastructure would definitely help. But it’s not going to completely hold it back either. As long as the base game is fun and engaging at multiple skill levels, it will succeed.

2. There are defined roles, but it’s not clear what they to average players or viewers. However, giving rigid roles wouldn’t really improve anything. MMORPG PvP is very fluid – you can’t really shape it to follow some formula. Add to that, the bruiser meta further blurred the lines. When we had bunkers and burst, you could mostly tell what someone was going to do and what their strengths and weaknesses were. Now it’s just a mess.
Unfortunately, you can’t change this given GW2’s design.

3. Conquest is the best competitive PvP format for an MMORPG. No contest. Although other modes may be popular, they’re not good for competition. The biggest issue with many of them (capture the flag, deathmatch/annihilation) is the staring contest/stalemate. In deathmatch/annihilation, pushing forward typically involves blowing cooldowns, and if opponents fake it out, you’re behind. As a result, both teams end up waiting for the other to make a move. The other extreme is the stalemate where neither team can gain an advantage. In Capture the Flag, it’s often both teams sitting at their base with the enemy flag being carried by a near un-killable tank.

4. Graphic spam hurts, but I’ve grown to think that’s a facade. Even if you could see animations, would an average player know even half of them? Sure, they may know them for the profession they play, but not all 9. It goes back to the issue about defined roles. It used to be that a bunker held a node and assisted teammates, DPS needed to coordinate burst, thief would roam around to back-cap and gank, etc. Even if you weren’t that knowledgeable about how they did it, you could see if they were being effective at their job.

The best way to become an esport is to have a strong base game. When a lot of people play it, a lot of people will watch it. GW2 has a few issues with getting a lot of people to play.

• PvP has a high learning curve. It’s hard to find out what you did wrong and iterate. Conquest is very deep with rotations, when to stay at a node and when to leave it, who to send where, etc. However, that’s not very obvious to most players and there’s no real way to teach what’s good and bad about map-level play.
• Poor balancing, limited useful choices. Out of all the possibilities, only a few are actually useful. This is partly due to sluggish and poor balance and partly due to lack of stat customization. When only a handful of combinations are actually useful, general players will struggle to find something which works and often give up. It’s hard to tell when it’s a bad build, lack of skill, or just mis-matched. Limiting stat choices to extremes adds to this frustration. Average players will die quickly on a DPS amulet, or be frustrated at not being able to kill anything with overly tanky choices. Because traits and runes often cover for amulet choice, it’s hard to make small changes or ween into a build. You also don’t have any variation in playstyle.

Here’s a better question: Why does ANet keep adding proc-based CC to the game when players have continually said it’s not fun.

I’ve seen two main schools of thought:

1. Go all-in with one defender. The thought is that the defender can use the treb or have AoE which goes through the door and that is enough to kill the initial wave of Doorbreakers. Meanwhile, everyone else keeps the initial DB wave alive and CCs the guards before they can one-shot the DBs. You need a support build to keep DBs alive through burst and heavy condi damage.
2. Go heavy defense with one or two people to clear a path. You start four on defense to break up any possible large rush (the first strategy) and use one very mobile DPS to clear out guards. While the other team is attacking, the floater spawns a few DBs to gradually whittle away the gates. You typically win on points using this method, so channeling mist essence is important.

I haven’t really seen anything else be that effective. A more even split means DBs die on offense or don’t die on defense before they get through a gate. Or your push fails shortly after a gate goes down.

It’s good seeing that someone else understands the DH issues and isn’t just saying “OMG nerf traps”. Better DHs are only using two traps anyway: Purification and Test of Faith.

One other thing to put on the list is the healing of Purification. It’s 8500 + 1300 from regeneration with 0 healing power on a 30 (24) second cooldown. Consider reducing the overall for more initial heal or some effect on trigger besides a direct heal.

Then enlighten me. What depth exists in Stronghold?

Yasha.5963:

Stronghold is far more complex and more strategic than conquest.

It’s not even close. Most of stronghold’s strategy/tactics are learning how to abuse the terrible AI. Once the NPCs are dead, there’s no reason to stay. If it starts to stalemate, the only remaining depth is sending someone to stability channel mist essence for points and waiting for the timer.

In conquest, you constantly have to think about which players to send to which points, whether to add to a fight or abandon it, when the secondary objectives are worthwhile or if they’ll detract from putting people in fights.

It’s pretty simple: Casual players like Stronghold because it’s simple. Competitive players will play conquest because it has far more strategic depth.

I just want tracks which don’t have tomes of experience. I’m closing in on 1500 and it’s not worth clicking through all of them for spirit shards.

The huge spikes are mostly from Cruel Repercussion. That trait needs to be replaced. Otherwise, Coalescence of Ruin is very manageable.

Here’s what happened:

Dragonhunter at reveal and during the first two BWEs was woefully underpowered due to poor mechanics, bad traits, and bad trait placement, as well as under-tuned damage. In BWE3, some of the stuff was buffed and DH became playable, but still suffered from poor or uninteresting mechanics. After BWE3, Karl added a plethora of buffs.

The result at HoT launch is silly levels of damage and sustain due to overbuffed abilities and traits. However, the mechanics are very simple and shallow. That leads to many players finding DH overpowered, but top players can brush it off most of the time.

However, Minstrel provided some HP, which bunker guard desperately needs. Without some extra HP, bunker guard is too susceptible to burst.

Agree. Skills need counter-play and risk-reward trade-offs. Shield of Courage is pretty good with that right now.

roelvanesch.2817:

I don’t think ‘does chill do OP damage for a condition?’ is the way to look at it. More like: is it OP damage for a grandmaster trait?

Trait position no longer matters except for what it competes with for the slot. You could put all three grandmaster traits into the adept slot and it wouldn’t change anything.

The question is nothing more than, “Is the trait too strong?”