Guild Wars 2

Photinous.4628:

Better for the game play? Probably. But whether this translates to more profit is, I’m sure, the real question. Remember, Anet is a company that needs to make profit to continue and dedicating a team solely for PvP balance could be a waste of resources if it doesn’t translate to a profit growth somehow.

Better game play means players stick around longer and new players join. ANet’s own statistics show that players who play more often spend more money on the game.

x indigo x.6981:

“For generic condition removal, the most recently applied condition or conditions will be removed first.”

Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

Which was wrong for probably a year or more before the June 23rd patch.

I would be nice if it was LIFO. It hasn’t been LIFO for a long time. Before the June 23 patch, it was a semi-fixed removal order based on any particular skill.

But Jasher, when Abjured wins, it’s rarely close. The difference in skill is clearly evident. The only time in the past few months where I recall Abjured coming close to losing was against the team with two mantra mesmers before the recharge bug was fixed.

NA’s lack of competition stems mostly from fickle rosters. How often do you see the same five players on a team from month to month? If NA could have a couple teams which were consistent, they could actually improve over time.

hisorange.3957:

Ok please stop it, I understand that they wanted to lock builds from the start, but why they still doing it when we log off and back with different builds?

ANet didn’t want you to switch builds after the game started. However, when they implemented that, you couldn’t switch characters either during the prep or the game, nor could you rejoin the game on any character if you disconnected. And you suffered dishonor. In order to not punish true disconnects, they added a grace period for rejoining the game. The side-effect is the behavior you describe.

Arcaedus.7290:

Consecration skills deal placing down a wall, or area of effect which is beneficial to allies and harmful to foes. In order for shelter to fit this theme, its functionality and maybe mechanics would have to be changed.

There’s no rule saying all consecration skills have to work like that.

The prep time is to devise a team strategy and adjust your team composition. For example, if you have too many bunkers and not enough DPS, one of the bunkers would switch.

It was never intended for you to counter-comp the enemy team.

I sound like a broken record but…

Just split the current amulet into multiple items and let players mix and match. Easy to understand, relatively easy to implement, still able to control combos (e.g. no Dire).

Everyone says d/d cele ele needs nerfed. Most teams run at least one, if not two, so bringing that in line will help a lot.

Categorizing heals and elites was a bad idea. The ones which were changed across all professions are still underused or in rare cases became too strong (Rampage). Like Silhouette.5631 said, by categorizing the skills, it makes the skill weaker if you don’t have the trait for that skill type.

Sunshine.5014:

At the start of a new division, you don’t have anything to lose.

You only lose pips or tier, but you can’t lose a division. So this is what people will do

1. play normally to get to a new division
2. as soon as you get into a new division, keep throwing matches to have an artificial low MMR, you don’t have anything to lose. No pips, no tier, and can’t lose a division.
3. when you’re comfortable, queue with a premade and enjoy your low MMR queue. You can have a winning streak that can carry you to the next division.
4. repeat step #2

If there is no benefit of having a higher MMR, people will purposely tank it. We need to have higher rewards for higher MMR.

You do realize ANet can easily stop this. It depends if add division as a high weight to match-making.

If match-making is heavily or fully restricted to division:
First, your rating will normalize quickly once you resume winning. Assume that the distribution of player rating in any division is Gaussian (most fall between two rating values). No matter how far you’ve tanked your rating, you’ll almost always be matched with players of appropriate rating for that division. Beating them will very quickly bring your rating into alignment, especially with Glicko2.

Second, ANet probably has a cap to how many pips you can gain for a single win. After a few games, your rating will return to where it should be. Higher divisions have multiple tiers, and each tier has 5 pips. Your rating will have returned to normal well before you can break out of the tier.

If match-making is still based mostly on rating:
If you tank, you’ll be matched with people below your division. ANet can base pip gain on how close your rating is compared to the rating range of your division. Since you tanked, your pip gain is extremely slow until your rating recovers.

Alternatively, ANet can just have hidden negative pips in higher division. If you tank, you go into negative pips, which you need to earn back before you start progressing in the visible pips.

OP’s argument is based on a fallacy.

Higher leagues take away pips for losing. You only have incentive to tank MMR at lower leagues which don’t have pip loss. In order to continue to progress, you need to continue to perform. In order to jump leagues, you need to perform much better.

Let’s say you tanked your rating in the low leagues. Once you start winning again, it will be disproportionate to what your rating predicts and your rating goes up. By the time you reach the higher leagues, your rating has increased to its proper value again.

If implemented correctly leagues will essentially be division based on rating.

Lack of adrenaline gain is a big issue for warriors and limits the use of burst abilities. However, it shouldn’t be buffed to the extent that all warriors can use burst abilities on cooldown. There needs to be some degree of trade-off.

Part of that would mean reducing the adrenaline gain from Cleansing Ire.

Every 4 to 6 months.

Just split the current amulets into multiple items and allow players to mix-and-match. It’s easy, follows the system used in the rest of the game, and still allows ANet to restrict certain combinations (like Dire).

TheGuy.3568:

The problem is simple. The stack application per skill is too high. Not the burning it damage it self just the number of stacks applied. If all the skills that say apply 3 stacks of burning or more only applied 1 or 2 this likely would not be an issue at all. I do not think there needs to be a hard cap.

Pretty much this.

No skill should have more than 2 stacks of burning. If the damage is justified, increase the durations to reduce the condi burst.

Yes, you can cleanse it. That would be fine BUT if you don’t cleanse it within two seconds, you’re dead or near-dead from full. That burst is what’s broken.

Sorry, no.

PvE is stale and boring because the mobs are completely brain-dead. Apparently mobs were actually more intelligent during the first beta weekend, but it was “too hard” and ANet nerfed it.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

no one else thinks 21 precision per 1 critical chance is extremely confusing to new players?

Nope. The entire reason they have precision and ferocity is so they can tweak the conversion ratio as needed.

You need to have chest, legs, and foot armor in order to get armor credit for gear. The armor value used if you have that slot filled is based on level 80 exotics. Outside of that, all stats are decided by your PvP amulet and runes in the “PvP Build” menu accessed at the top of the screen in heart of the mists and during the prep period of a match.

Laraley.7695:

Tempest is terrible.

If you’re an attunement face-roll ele, maybe. Tempest emphasizes risk/reward. It may not be totally there on the reward part, but the concept is solid.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Now if your playing tempest… gtfo

Tempest isn’t that bad. Could use a few tweaks and has some bugged traits. A couple of the shouts are okay. Warhorn is good for sustain, but doesn’t have good anti-burst damage like focus.

I’ve seen two decent revenants all weekend. The good combos aren’t intuitive, which is where people are getting stuck so much. Mallyx is overpowered, honestly.

Wolfey.3407:

Welcome to the PvP forums! here’s a list of cons.
2) People will quit or afk more often when things don’t go there way

Not necessarily true. People give up on matches when they’re hopelessly losing. If matchmaking is doing its job, the number of blow-out matches should be low, especially with more people queuing. So I would strike that as a con.

Heavy Light needs replaced/reworked. It seems fine for the DH, but it’s terrible for the health of PvP because it’s an unpredictable CC. You never know if the arrow will knock you back.

Tie it to another skill like #2 and make it 100%.

Skyhammer >> Spirit Watch

Spirit Watch has a bad layout and the orb is prone to so much cheese. Leaps and superspeed work but teleports don’t?

Skyhammer could be really fun if they cleaned it up properly:

• Make the side point areas larger
• No AoE from underneath B
• Remove a few of the panels
• More space in the control room and not instant-death when falling from here.

If it was a small increase, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s increasing the distance of mobility skills by a lot.

Feedback on Changes

• Doorbreaker Time-to-Kill DB health seems to have been lowered. Players can kill them much faster now. This is a great change, since it makes DB rush all-ins a lot harder to execute. However, their low HP / high armor state allows condition damage to kill them in seconds. Suggest lowering armor and boosting HP to give direct damage and condition damage more equal weight.
• Lord Break-Bar Nice improvement; you can longer chain CC the lord. However, during the daggerstorm, the lord gives itself stability in addition to the break-bar which seems a bit excessive.
• Hero Info Polish is really nice. I like the icons and the alerts help with which team summoned which hero. However, would it be possible to move the boxed alert closer to the top of the screen or make it more transparent (or both)? It sometimes blocks my view.

Issues

• Scoring In too many games which go to 15min, a heavily defensive team wins, despite losing both gates. Meanwhile, they’ve barely dented the attacker’s gates or lord because they’ve spent all game defending. This runs counter to the idea of the game mode (kill the lord) and makes stalemating the most effective way to win. Suggest increasing the team score points for breaking a gate, especially the inner gate, to at least 100 (currently 50). That way, defenders have to be better than the attackers, not just hold out for 15 minutes.
• Archers Archers move faster than DBs, but that’s not enough to differentiate them. They die just as fast a DB to players, do pitiful damage to gates, and get distracted by everything. They can’t even kill multiple guards without dying. Give them more HP and allow them to fire while moving until they reach a gate.
• Heroes as a Come-Back Mechanic Heroes need better damage against gates. Right now, summoning a hero is a waste of time unless you have both gates down. If a gate is up, you can leave one defender to just whittle away at the hero’s health because it’s not a major threat. Worse yet, the game calls it out and inexperienced players flock to the hero summon, even if it won’t do them any good.
• Guard One-Shot of Doorbreakers Now that DBs can be reasonably killed by players, this mechanic seems excessive. It also seems like the guards got a small HP or armor buff. Having to prioritize the guards makes this game mode feel too much like PvE. If they kept bonus damage to DBs, it would be fine, but it should still require more than one guard hit to kill a DB.
• Stability on Supply/Hero Channel There needs to be a way to break the channels other than CC. Defensive professions or those with pulsing stability on an elite can channel the whole time and it’s hard for most professions to interrupt it. Making the trebuchet remove stability isn’t good enough. You have to turn the treb and have perfect aim, since you only get one, maybe two chances. Meanwhile, stability removable does too much to hurt normal players assaulting a base.
• Trebuchet Auto-Rebuild Couldn’t tell if this was still in, but if it is, it should be removed. With the supply drop from killing enemies while defending the inner gate, you have an alternate source of supply to easily rebuild the trebuchet.

Additional
A lot of players were still spamming DBs at the start and running off. I don’t think many realized the changes to DB health and haven’t adjusted their gameplay yet (escort is far more important). I suggest another SH beta in the near future, with the change list posted ahead of time.

Edit Played around with archers a bit and updated the bullet.

zorokai.1486:

Problem i find with Stronghold is that all the mode has turned out to is Rush gate Rush lord – no strategies – no skill – just mass aoe.

It used to be this way. They finally fixed that for this BWE. Doorbreakers are noticeably easier for players to kill, especially with condition damage. As a result, there’s a good back-and-forth and supply has meaning (though fighting over the depot still doesn’t happen much).

Xillllix.3485:

I find these tournaments are much more about the rotations than anything else. Not that the builds aren’t important, but they are mostly chosen in regards to being able to bunker on a capture point, buff allies on a point, or spike someone off it.

The combat system can’t be balanced around that.

While it’s true that the winner is ultimately determined by rotations and pairing the correct players for the situation, some builds make that a lot easier. When an cele d/d ele can fill almost any role, you have a lot more freedom with rotations.

Can certain people learn that the Celestial combo isn’t the problem and that it’s a few specific builds which are just too good? Chaith (Five Guage) hasn’t played Celestial since the patch (he’s been Marauder or Soldier). Only d/d and staff eles and condi signet necro can get away with using celestial. These are builds which have lots of conditions and also might stacking to offset the low power on celestial amulet.

If ANet would allow more stat customization, you’d see a lot more variety, though these specific builds would still be too powerful.

senoph.2930:

I’m referring to utility skills, not utility as a role. Even looking at the Ranger’s Trap skill, it’s definitely much better than the Guardian’s.

If I wasn’t forced into the poor DH virtues, I’d consider using a trap for a utility skill. Cripple would really help melee Guardians.

Not all elite specializations are designed for utility/support. Reaper is supposed to be damage and debuff, but the greatsword is too weak and so are its shouts. No one really knows what Dragonhunter is supposed to be.

Changes to Shoutbow:

• Shout healing base amount healed was changed from 1480 (0.9) to 1000 (1.0).
• Warhorn trait makes warhorn skills remove 1 boon (used to be convert 1 boon) .

General changes:

• Vigor is 50% increase to endurance regeneration (old 100%).

Other builds also got buffs whereas Shoutbow didn’t see many.

Drama or conflict in sports is good for entertainment, as long as it doesn’t get too carried away.

If you could get traps (unchanged from this beta) without the rest of the Dragonhunter baggage, would you use them in PvP/WvW?

The problem with traps is more that they don’t fit with a spec which partly emphasizes ranged play.

Sagat.3285:

Please not this again about celestial and to OP conquest will always favor a more bunker focus look at thief/mesmer their primary assets are mobility.

If conquest favored bunkers, why did the teams with heavy bunker builds (ORNG and GLHF with bunker guard and TCG with shoutbow) not win? Abjured won partly because they utilized high mobility to back-cap ORNG.

If you look at the WTS team compositions, each has a celestial d/d ele (usually fire d/d) and a thief. Thief mobility and stealth support can’t be matched. Celestial d/d ele can hold a point for a while, 1v1, help revive allies, and has enough mobility to decap nodes. When you have a build which can do a lot of things well, why take one that can only do a few (damage or bunker)? Or if a build completely eclipses any others, you almost have to take it.

Additionally, you don’t see many other zerkers because thief (and mesmer to an extent) tends to keep them in check. If a thief engages onto another zerker, the thief can either win, or make the other zerker a non-factor in a team fight. It’s been that way for a while. The only zerkers which see high level play are the ones which can deal with thief pressure.

Celestial ele is too strong right now. It allows them to hold points and do decent damage. When you can do that, why bring a zerker?

Part of it is that mesmer is already strong before the elite specialization. It’s hard to weed out which contributions are from core and which are from Chronomancer on top of it being new.

In order to prevent living forever, total stats have a cap, ANet hasn’t put nomad into PvP (and probably won’t), and has limited the coefficients on healing power to the point where it’s only useful to a handful of builds. The first one is the most important.

However, this is getting off the original topic. The problem the OP is seeing is that you need the multiplicative effect of having both Toughness and Vitality (and healing power) to compete with Power, Precision, and Ferocity. Toughness alone stacked to large amounts just isn’t as good.

Ithilwen.1529:

I think the exact opposite. Burst isn’t skillful play to me. It’s simply pushing buttons quickly.

Yes and no. The poorly designed burst builds which usually become too powerful are as you’ve described. The better ones require timing when you button mash or setting up for the burst. You can’t just open up with the burst and win 90% of the time.

The capability to split them has been in since launch. A few abilities are split, but most aren’t. Examples:

• .Retaliation and Confusion do 33% less damage in WvW and PvP.
• Boons from the guardian shout “Save Yourselves!” last half as long in PvP.

ANet doesn’t want the skills to have drastically different effects in PvE and PvP/WvW, so they’re reluctant to split. A few more skills were split, but with the specialization changes, they removed the splits. They may add more as they iterate on design/balance.

Is this a troll post?

According to Hugh Norfolk from last beta, Overtime is only supposed to trigger if at least one lord is in combat.

Might have changed or might be bugged.

On Toughness and Diminishing Returns:

As I showed before, Toughness itself does not have diminishing returns as a whole; only the damage reduction portion. However, it does have diminishing effectiveness relative to other stats. After a point, you get more effective HP from adding vitality than adding toughness. To make a character more survivable overall, you want both toughness and vitality, and possibly some healing power.

However, you can’t do this in PvP. The PvP stat system needs fixed. Other than a couple combinations, you either get far too much Toughness and no vitality or excessive vitality with no Toughness. The other possibility is both, but with limited offensive power (no precision or not enough power).

So the crux of the problem is really the PvP stat system. Power builds ideally want 5-6 stats (power, precision, ferocity, toughness, vitality, and maybe healing power) in different quantities. ANet needs to split the PvP amulet into multiple items and allow players to mix-and-match like they can in PvE/WvW.

OP needs a math lesson.

Yes, the damage reduction from Toughness decreases with each successive stat point i.e. it has diminishing returns. However, the increase in time-to-die is linear. Each successive point of Toughness will increase how much total damage it takes to kill you by the same amount.

Using the formulas:

Damage = (weapon * power * coeff ) / Toughness
TimeToDie = HitPoints / Damage

If weapon, power, and coeff are constant, then only toughness is variable and increases as:

Damage = 1 / Toughness

Plug that into the other equation and you get:

TimeToDie = HitPoints / (1 / Toughness) = Hitpoints * Toughness

That’s a linear increase.

Wolfey.3407:

Anet can’t put their blinders on and be like “PvP is all that matters ever”

It’s very simple and easy to focus on only one thing and one thing only.

I’m not saying WvW should be ignored. PvP needs more attention to balance. WvW needs its mechanics improved (population/coverage being the big ones). Is this due to a lack of staff, or management priorities? If it’s the former, I can understand; if it’s the latter, I think it should change.

Wolfey.3407:

For all of these people demanding a separate team for PvP…..
Are you going to be ok for separate teams for:
WvW
PvE General Content
PvE Fractals
PvE Living Story

Balance is very important to PvP, more so than in WvW or any form of PvE. It should have more manpower devoted to it. Similarly, PvE needs far more content than PvP and gets more content developers.

Burning damage is fine.

The problem is that there are a few skills (mostly from guardian and d/d ele) which can apply multiple stacks and those skills can be used together easily. It allows conditions to do heavy burst damage if you don’t immediately remove it. Just reduce the number of stacks (more than 2 stacks on any skill is a bit much) and increase duration in order to smooth out the damage a little.

More stat customization is desperately needed for PvP.

• It’s not too confusing for new players. They have multiple items for stats in PvE/WvW. They have more trouble finding the “PvP Build” button than anything else.
• It won’t directly create balance issues. You’re just working within in a trade-space and you already have the extremes with the current amulets. New builds which arise might be imbalanced, but that’s due to the build itself, not stats. And frankly, having more builds, even if some need nerfs, is a good problem.

I followed it until that last section where it says “Just group balance changes arbitrarily at six months. It’s not a bad idea.”

While the article does have a point that you can’t constantly be balancing, there’s also a point at which you aren’t balancing often enough. In a PvE scenario, you can wait longer and balance isn’t as important as long as everyone is still useful outside of extreme min-maxing. But in PvP, balance is a large part of the game, and you can’t let things linger too long. “Extra Credits” is much better if you’re talking about PvP balance.

ANet wants to do templates, but they don’t have a good and easy to implement idea for it. As a result, it drops in priority relative to other things.