Guild Wars 2

The guards between the two gates do have CC. I think the first set stuns and the second set has a bola which knocks down on the return. What you’re seeing is that guards don’t dodge or avoid damage or CC, so they die quickly. Like practically every other NPC in this game.

It didn’t work correctly and they still haven’t fix it. It was giving dishonor when it shouldn’t and compounding too quickly in some cases.

Penalizing disconnects doesn’t truly solve the problem either since you can just AFK in spawn instead of leaving the match.

He means on traits with an ICD, not utilities.

I’ll start with the easy stuff:

• Stats Ya, the new PvP amulet system is dumb. The only reason we got for it is that it’s too hard for new players to understand the amulet + jewel system. We need more granularity in PvP stat selection.
• Runes ANet didn’t like how you could mix and match runes for powerful 2 pt bonuses. They changed the runes to be more top-heavy (more pieces gives bigger benefit). As a result, it no longer made sense to mix and match.
• Shared PvE/PvP Gear This was a good decision to bring some unification for all modes of the game. You’ll adjust to it quickly.

The big thing is the trait changes. It may seem limiting at first, but it’s better in the long run. The problem with the old system is that every trait competed against every other trait. A grandmaster trait didn’t compete against just the other traits in its slot, but against low-hanging fruit all over the tree. That’s partly why grandmaster traits seemed lackluster. And because of that trait competition, it was very difficult to create unique or interesting traits which were viable.

The new system creates mutual exclusion between traits. When there are less possible combinations, it’s much easier to balance and you can make a lot more interesting choices. For example, defensive traits can be made to compete with each other; you can’t take both. That limits heavy damage builds from having an overabundance of defensive traits. In addition, you can now theme trait lines (some professions do this better than others). The traits in a line can all work together to create a certain playstyle shift.

Cyhann.2609:

How about having the players giving signficant buffs to nearby allied NPC, which are so severe that killing the player is going to be a higher priority?

Then you’ll just have bunkers walking them down and no one can stop them. The NPCs will be through the gates well before the player dies. Bad idea.

Also Archers really could use a movement speed boost.

They already got one. And it won’t help either. Their HP sucks and their chase stuff like crazy.

Unranked and Ranked wins reward more track progress. But ya, PvE is generally the fastest way to level up.

The bright side is that a lot of stuff in GW2 doesn’t require max level.

I would expect the defiant bar to fill up gradually as orange and then immediately flip to blue when full. It’s a UI thing, not necessarily a game mechanic thing.

You get 4 tomes per completed track and I think one each time you rank up.

I have 1300, I wish I could sell them.

Bugs

• Not sure if this is how defiance bars are supposed to work, but they fill up orange, don’t flip to blue, and you can’t CC or have CC count.
• Doorbreakers try to attack the trebuchet for some reason. I think they have to reach the gate, be hit by the treb, but still live. Not completely sure how this happens.

Issues

• DB Health/Armor Not sure, but it looks like DB armor is higher and HP is lower again. Condi damage is destroying them quickly, but power damage takes noticeably longer.

Trying to keep the NPC guards alive is a losing proposition. Their only purpose is to break a poorly executed DB push. A DPS player will kill them easily no matter how much you heal them.

The issue with guardian burning is how many stacks they can apply in a short time. If the damage was less of a burst, it would be perfectly fine. That could be achieved by reducing the number of stacks and increasing the duration of each stack.

Sounds like you’re just playing with bad players. I don’t have any of these problems other than stability channel.

Conquest is still a much better format for competition. Stronghold is supposed to attract new PvPers.

Decreasing diversity is largely from the crappy PvP amulet system and increasingly less stat diversity.

You’re either glass cannon, really tanky, or celestial. There’s almost no possibility for anything in between. If you’re a glass cannon and don’t have escapes or can chain immunities, then you’ll be trained down quickly by those which do (thief, mesmer). If you can’t stack might or offset it with power in some other way, celestial doesn’t really work. For the tanky amulets, you need crit chance to make them work and for guardian and elementalist, you need vitality if you want to be tanky and most amulets don’t offer it. Many bunker or support builds also need healing power to work well.

It’s pretty simple to fix too. Just divide the PvP amulet into multiple items and allow players to mix and match. Your offensive builds can now pick up a few hundred toughness, which makes them a lot less squishy. Low HP professions can now get the HP they were missing without completely compromising a build. Hybrids can now exist that can actually crit and not hit like a wet noodle. The arguments against doing this have no legitimate backing.

Hmmm… Rampage without stances isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s that stances in conjunction with rampage are the problem?

Rampage isn’t that hard to counter-play. If the warrior pops it before baiting out dodges and defensive cooldowns, it will just be a little extra damage, but not a kill.

Sunshine.5014:

Archer can kills the guards very fast. Not many people notice that.

Yes, because players killed them before the archers ever got there. The archers were busy chasing players and dying.

I’m not too miffed about the CD increase. At 30sec you could spam it and still have it back when you needed it. At 45sec, you have to be a bit more judicious about when to use it.

I don’t think they want to reduce it to 0 cast time. They made it 1/4sec so that you couldn’t cast it during other actions. Maybe give a few extra seconds of Fury to compensate?

Ragnarox.9601:

We are in a good spot, worst elite spec.

Don’t tell that the to the elementalists; they got Tempest.

I remember when Ventari was first revealed and guardians said it would kill guardian. Then again when they revealed Herald. It’s complete and total overreaction. Chances are Druid is overbuffed and will be scaled back.

The point is that CC is supposed to counter it, but can’t. Only boon steal/corrupt does, and those abilities are somewhat limited.

Post Stronghold feedback here.

Bugs

• Doorbreakers (probably archers too) leave ghosts when stealthed. The ghost appears where they were when entering stealth until they exit stealth.
• Sometimes the banners don’t load their color and have a checkered pattern. Never saw this one before.

Issues

• Archers STILL useless Aside from dying just as quickly as doobreakers, they squirrel too much to be of any use.
• Trebuchet Self-Repair Remove this. It makes it way too easy to defend when players are split across the map. The reason self-repair existed originally was to allow a team to break a hold on the depot. Since then, kills behind your outer gate cause enemies to drop supply, which allows defenders to then break a stalemate.
• Break Channel Only on Interrupt This should probably be removed and turned into a standard channel. It’s too easy for some builds or professions to full channel mist essence while under multiple stacks of stability. Quickness + stability on guardian is hard to stop.

Probably prompted by PvE more than PvP.

TheNoose.3976:

Are you guys liking this mode?

It’s not terrible like it was in earlier betas (PvE race), but I still much prefer conquest.

It used to be like AV during the first few stronghold betas. It was too easy to keep the initial Doorbreakers alive, which turned the game mode into a PvE race.

In the last few BWEs, the Doorbreakers were made easier for players to kill. That allowed a single or two defenders to hold off half-hearted Doorbreaker pushes without completely losing a gate. As a result, the matches are stalemating and more often than not, running to timer. I haven’t played this weekend yet to see the changes.

If you’re playing a profession or build with which you’re completely unfamiliar, go to the game list tab and find a standard ANet server (all have names Server ### where ### is between 001 and some three digit number) which has people in it but under 10 and join it. This is the recently removed “Practice” option.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

So its only people who play some kind of tanky/cele/bunker builds that don’t like this map?

No, those builds are the most successful on Courtyard. It’s the damage builds which hate because everyone blobs and spams and it’s so easy to die to cleave.

I miss stronghold beta weekends; no courtyard.

If the rewards were proportional to team score on a non-linear scale (much more rewards the better your team does), AFKing wouldn’t be so bad.

I’d like a reward track which DOESN’T have level up tomes or transmute charges. Seriously, I have 1300 tomes…

It’s bad balance through RNG. IMO switch Tornado to Lich and increase the cooldown.

What do you consider “good enough” for ESL? It’s pretty subjective.

Obviously you can move the winners out, which AG does. But what about people who don’t win? It’s a single-elimination tournament that as far as I know doesn’t have any point system for seeding, so it’s hard to judge. Is one team within the targeted skill range and just had an easy bracket to get to top 4 or top 2? What if a better team had a hard bracket and didn’t get very far. I’ve played in AG multiple weeks and it’s a complete crapshoot. One week we had two rounds in a row where our opponents had 100 points or less. Another week we had two sets of hard-fought 2-1’s in a row from the get-go. You can’t use final placement as a good metric for skill with how the tournaments are currently run.

It really wouldn’t change much. Position on leaderboard doesn’t mean the post isn’t biased or has a flawed perspective because of profession/build, their team, the time at which they play, etc.

Leagues will help a little bit because they give perspective into problems at various levels of play. For example, turret engineer in the past was a problem for low and mid levels, but not for coordinated, high level players. But you still have to filter through the bias and people who are carried by their builds into higher leagues.

Revenants do some things better than guardian, and guardians do some things better than revenant. Revenant’s balance is also a bit rough right now on the side of being a little too powerful.

The tournament organizers submit the prize rosters to ANet. ANet has to process those rosters, do any verification they need to, and distribute the prizes in-game manually. It’s pretty sporadic and can take 2 to 4 weeks.

Also, if you won gems, there’s no notification. They just appear in your wallet.

Mighty Blow was never intended to be a major gap closer, nor should it be. It’s a high damage attack and a blast finisher with a low cooldown.

In beta it didn’t move you at all. The small movement was added so you could hit things just outside of melee range. If you want to do something, clean up the after-cast a bit.

Hammer 1c - Suggest reducing the symbol duration by 1 second. Then lower the cast time a little and adjust the direct damage to line up. The biggest problem with hammer is the awful sustained damage and how clunky the auto-attack feels.

Hammer 3 - Projectile needs to be slightly wider. It’s way too easy to side-step it.

Hammer 4 - Mostly fine as-is. The cast time and cooldown is in-line with other single-target CCs. Possibly increase the damage coefficient.

It will come back anew in BWE3.

Stop adding more amulets. Instead, split the amulet into multiple items and lets players mix and match. It accomplishes the same goal, but will never be at the mercy of ANet again.

A few reasons:

1. Vampirism runes are bugged with vapor form.
2. They give you a few seconds to get your cooldowns, especially water attunement, back up.
3. If you’re in team fights more than 1v1s, the immunity gives allies a chance to peel for you.

If you’re in 1v1s a lot, then strength is probably better.

It’s hard to say at this point. There are a few unknowns still:

1. Yet to be revealed elite specs. Will they fill similar roles?
2. Changes to PvE AI and fractals. They’ve been working on improving the AI in the background and are trying to make fractals more challenging. Which tools are preferable will have a big impact.
3. Will guardian’s competition get nerfed? Revenant was a bit over-buffed in BWE2 and may be scaled back a bit.
4. Will guardian receive changes with HoT?

From a PvE perspective, it’s too hard to say. I’m sure guardian will remain viable, but it may no longer be in as high of a demand.

WvW still heavily favors guardian because of stability.

PvP is where I see guardian being left behind. Bunker guard barely hangs in, burn guard is a gimmick, and pretty much any other build is sub-par. The specialization changes didn’t make a lot of needed fixes for guardian.

So you want rocket kittens?

They really need to get a 2-3 month balance cycle going.

online.1278:

like, how to? I always run away when enemy turned into Rampage and come back when the rampage gone, when I play guardian bunker.

Assuming you’re a standard bunker build.

Rampage has relatively slow, single-hit attacks. First, its 2 long cooldown CCs (Throw Boulder and Seismic Leap), both of which have obvious animations, and can only be used once per transform. It has a shorter cooldown CC with kick, which also has an obvious animation, and a CC on the last part of the auto-attack chain.

You can use the following abilities to negate at least one attack:

• Protector’s Strike (Mace#3) – blocks one attack
• Shield of Wrath (Focus#5 – if using Focus) – blocks up to 3 attacks
• Dodge – avoids one attack. You have Sigil of Energy in both weapons, so you have at least 4 dodge for the duration of the Rampage.
• Activated Virtue of Courage – blocks one attack, gives you protection and 3 stability for 3 seconds. Also breaks stun.
• Focus#4 – blind one attack. Wait until later in case they used Berserker Stance before going in to Rampage.
• Retaliatory Subconscious – gain Aegis (one block) when CC’ed.
• “Retreat!” (if you have it) – gain Aegis (one block).
• Shelter – Blocks all attacks for 2 seconds.

The following will help you survive:

• “Stand Your Ground!” – 5 stability for 5 seconds. Negates a lot of CC, allowing you to stay mobile.
• “Hold the Line!” – Protection helps negate the auto-attack damage.
• Shield of Judgment (Shield#4 – if using shield) – Protection helps negate the auto-attack damage.

It’s also important to note that it takes 5 seconds to de-cap a node from fully captured and takes 15 seconds to capture a neutral node. That means you can leave the node for a total of 4 seconds throughout the Rampage – more if they leave the node too.

Most warriors tend to use their CC abilities early, so you typically want to use one of your two stability abilities as soon as they activate rampage. Try and save the other for later in case they get you in a CC chain. Do your best to keep your distance. The fraction of a second they need to catch up means a few less abilities used during the Rampage.

This thread is such a farce. Its promoters don’t really understand what they’re talking about. For example, chess is easy to solve conceptually, but its decision tree quickly becomes immense and takes too long to realistically process. We have multiple models for weather, especially if you look at hurricane path prediction. If they’re so great at what they do, why do we still run multiple different ones which come up with different results? The result is that models aren’t perfect. And grandmaster chess computers and meteorological models are run on supercomputers. Much more than what a game developer would have.

When you talk about an MMORPG, there are many more variables and possible decisions than in chess. And because it’s real-time – not turn-based – timing of each decision becomes a further variable. It becomes so ridiculously complex that you can’t realistically solve it. You can try and model it, but models aren’t trivial to do and aren’t perfect. But you can only model what normally happens. If someone puts together an unexpected combination of abilities or traits which wasn’t in the model, what then? Do you put every possible permutation in it and make it even more unwieldy, uncertain, and require immensely more time to run? If it didn’t turn out well, you need to tweak some numbers and do it again.

The best you can realistically do is make a lot of assumptions and look at subsets of encounters in a vacuum. Developers do this a lot and come up with “good enough” balance. It can never be perfect because you’ve made so many assumptions and limited the scope. But maybe once you actually go play it, it may turn out differently. So you go back and tweak it again. Now consider you have a myriad of match-ups and skill interactions which vary. In order to realistically examine that, you make further assumptions about a generic enemy. But that can’t always account for details. For example, slower attacks are more susceptible to blind and block. A defender may end up with an advantage against those.

Worst of all, the OP’s original assumption is that ANet hasn’t balanced TTK. Maybe they have, but your assumption of the value of TTK is incorrect and ANet uses once which is much higher. Maybe they actually balance DPS vs bunker and it’s working how they want it to?

online.1278:

my question is that are you able to actually keep capped point from rampage warrior or engi? Can you prevent it from becoming neutralized?

Yes, but you’ll blow a lot of cooldowns to do it.

Game design is as much of an art as it is a science. It will remain that way until we can create AI which perfectly replicates human behavior and will exhaust all possible permutations of events.

Here’s an article the OP and people agreeing with him should read:
http://www.eldergame.com/2010/11/how-to-balance-an-mmo-and-how-to-stop/
And it only goes over a simple scenario. You can see how quickly complexity creeps in.

In BWE2, stronghold was stalemating a lot more. You could no longer rush DBs to get access to a lord quickly. Without a timer, people would start groaning waiting for the stalemate to end.

However, the focus on improving the 15-minute stalemate resolution is misplaced. Instead, the mode should be adjusted so that that scenario rarely happens. Reducing the suck factor on archers and mist heroes would definitely help.

IgnisVulpesXI.3015:

If you’re a glasscannon and you get caught off-guard, you should be punished for it; if you get focused down, it’s either bad positioning, too much enemy control or too little friendly control.

Or you got hit from someone in stealth for 10k+. Kinda hard to dodge what you can’t see coming. Stuff like that is why vampirism runes are so common.

A big problem is the crappy amulet system; you can’t DPS unless you’re a glass cannon. A few hundred toughness would go a long way toward making burst not ridiculous, but that’s impossible in the current system.

You can say that about half the amulets. The amulet system in PvP is terrible.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Rune of Vampirism simply needs to be removed or changed. It’s such a free-get-out-of-jail-card it’s ridiculous.

There’s one problem with that.

Currently, Rune of Vampirism is the only thing stopping damage builds from being insta-gibbed by other damage builds. Removing it may turn PvP into lol insta-gib.