Guild Wars 2

From what I remember from “the other game”, Bashiok was pretty good and frequent with communication, knowledgeable about the game, and friendly.

Burning isn’t really that overwhelming. However, certain skills apply multiple stacks of it and you can use some of them in quick succession. If ANet reduced the stacks and increased the durations on the offending skills, it wouldn’t be so bad.

Probably not assigned to it at the moment. Wildstar is re-launching with free-to-play and Blade-and-Soul is coming to NA and EU soon.

The bolts go out on a whirl finisher anyway; the whirl finisher bolts are not tied to the base ability’s bolts. So all you lose is a few extra hits toward VoJ (it’s very rare for all the bolts to hit).

Definitely worth it for a nice quality of life improvement. Waiting out retaliation (which guardians can easily stack to 10+ seconds) is not always reasonable.

Someone always forgets to click it, so you’re stuck waiting anyway. Over time, players have grown accustom to this and slowly grew a habit of just tabbing out, using the restroom, getting a drink, etc. during that period, especially because doing it beforehand risks you being booted from the queue.

Suggestion: Change the initial state to “Ready” with a shorter duration. Anyone can click the button to say “I need more time”, which sets you to “not ready” and increases the time to the total wait time.

Agree with the OP. Just remove the bolts and bake their damage into the base. They hit randomly and for smaller amounts of damage, but have a lot of negative side effects.

You can still get the effect bolts from the whirl finishers (not sure if they count for retaliation).

1. Amulets/Stats Yes, we need more stat customization. But a much simpler system is to just split the amulet into multiple items using existing stat combinations. Players can then mix and match like they can do in WvW/PvE.
2. Incentives/Rewards Exclusive rewards would be nice, but long-term PvPers are motivated more by good competition. Automated tournaments and a meaningful leaderboard would help a lot more. Reward tracks would need re-vamped to compete with the amount of gold you can earn through PvE. Cutting down on the number of transmutation charges and tomes of knowledge would do a lot.
3. Automated Tournaments Yes, we need these. Offering gems as a reward would be incentive enough.
4. Scoreboard I think you’re talking about the in-game scoreboard, not the web-based leaderboard. The in-game scoreboard leaves much to be desired and teaches new players to value the wrong things, but making it better would take a lot of work. In the near-term, it would be better just to hide it. In a game which isn’t a total blowout, everyone easily gets a single point score necessary for reward credit.
If you’re talking about the leaderboard, there was a discussion thread with ANet responses on that. The general idea is that MMR-based didn’t work well (no incentive to keep playing), but the “farm boards” were arguably worse because there was no skill aspect.
5. 2v2 and 3v3 Not needed. The game isn’t well balanced for small-scale elimination and never will be because minute differences mean a lot. The people who want this are a vocal minority. AspectGG runs a 2v2 tournament weekly, but it doesn’t even fill to capacity with teams (16 teams = 32 players total. For reference, 8 conquest teams is 40 players). Academy Gaming runs a weekly non-pro conquest tournament and it routinely gets over 16 teams signed up.
6. Solo Queue Don’t bring this back. A lot of players think solo queue was the greatest thing ever. It wasn’t. On NA, solo queue was for “1v1 heroes” who ignored the conquest mechanics and any team coordination. The winning team was the one with the fewest terrible players. The solo vs. pre-made argument is a complete exaggeration. Solo players are often matched with and against partial groups. When they lose, they claim the enemy team was a pre-made as an excuse for poor play or improperly match teammates.

Ele definitely needs toned down. Burning just needs stacks vs duration on a few skills adjusted. Then we’ll be decent.

I would also like to see better stat customization.

Skill-less insta-death killed PvP? Inconceivable!

There isn’t anything wrong with the idea of a burst-heavy meta. The problem with this one is that it was heavy reward for little risk. Mesmer screws up burst? It’s okay, spam again! Still failed? Go invis and try again in a few seconds! Run into a group and win with a zerker amulet? Sure!

If you want to see proper burst, look at s/f fresh air ele pre-patch. It could put out a lot of burst damage, but lacked sustain. You also had to set up your burst or didn’t work out well. Defenses were there, but had to be used properly including how aggressive you were and your positioning.

sinject.4607:

it’s a nerf to power-based builds/professions that never needed to happen. people are quick to applaud this as they see it as a nerf to mesmer but it affects guardian, thief, ranger, and engineer in ways that are completely unnecessary.

if you can honestly say there is any justification in nerfing any of those profession’s damage output you have no idea what you’re talking about.

The justification is that it was unavoidable damage with no counter-play. If the damage of a profession is too weak with these changes, then buff that profession in a way that there’s still counter-play.

Northern Towers These don’t seem to have any strategic value. They only count for PPT and they don’t allow you quicker access to anything.

Travel around the map It’s extremely confusing to find your way around if you’re not familiar with the map. Though travel times seem okay once you figure out the paths, finding the route initially is daunting and you often run into walls or terrain you can’t pass. I think the big problem with this is the minimap. The roads and walls blend in with the terrain and it doesn’t highlight cliffs well. The fire keep is completely blocked on the minimap.

If this is intended, that’s fine. But they need to tone down other sigils too.

ANet tried to make Arcane not so overwhelmingly powerful by making Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana mutually exclusive. By the elementalists cried a flood of tears. Elementalists have to realize that if they want variety, then the few extremely powerful traits and abilities need to be toned down in order to buff others.

With mesmer toned down, it’s not that bad anymore. d/d ele needs to be brought in line and then it’ll be pretty good.

When the nerf comes, the d/d ele tears will be delicious.

Though increased base vitality for guardian would be nice, what it really needs is a fix to the terrible PvP stat system.

Incendiary Powder should stay where it is and be re-worked to allow counter-play.

Lifeforce gain on necro is pretty balanced. If you want a lot of life force, you need to spec for it. Necro needs the DS damage reduction bug fixed.

Fast Hands completely defines the warrior profession. You can’t balance both with and without it. ANet needs to either remove and re-balance the weapons or make Fast Hands baseline.

posthumecaver.6473:

Why is everybody ignoring the real problem for 3 years this game run without any burn stacking, the moment burn stacking started everybody is whining but telling the real problem.

Uh, no. You do realize d/d ele got a myriad of other buffs and the changes to allow them a full other trait line great contributed? The burning stacking contributes, but it’s not the crux of the problem.

Mesmer nerfed, now we need d/d ele…

For all your grandstanding, the forums were right (after the initial reaction).

Going to disagree with a lot of what the OP said.

1. Blinds
I don’t see this a major problem. The power of blinds against engineer varies by build, just like it does with every other profession. If you’re blinded, then don’t use a key CC or damage ability. And with the automatic utility goggles trait, it’s not so bad. Certainly not as bad as blinds against a hammer warrior.

2. Unblockable
Mirror Blade shouldn’t be unblockable. The damage and utility combined with the relatively low cooldown don’t warrant it. Unblockable should be reserved for utility effects with low or no damage from them skill itself, or ground-target over-time or charge-up effects. I never saw the logic in giving out unblockable to high damage skills when evades still work on those skills.

Besides Mirror blade, Phoenix is the only high damage unblockable skill. Phoenix’s unique mechanic may require it, however (otherwise it would fail often against a group). Traited necro marks are debatable. They’re as much for utility as they are for damage.

3. Defensive Traits
Engineer doesn’t need that many defensive traits. One of the themes of the profession is control, and controlling opponents stops them from doing damage to you. That offensive control also helps you on defense. This playstyle works fine except against players who can’t be CC’ed due to stability, condition immunity, or stealth.

4. Role
Engineer changed considerably with the patch, so its role is still solidifying. Comparing it to mesmer (up until today) or d/d ele (until that gets nerfed) is doing it a disservice, since nothing else could/can compete. I’ve seen engineer work as a skirmisher and a point holder (BigZam in EU Go4Gups). With all the CC, it can probably find a role with de-capping enemies too. It just needs some time and for outliers to be reigned in.

5. Stability and CC
Mesmer was completely OP (nerfed today) and Rampage from warrior was also nerfed. Lack of self-stability isn’t that bad, but which abilities could be re-examined.

6. Damage Traits
Mostly agree. The big issue is that the Firearms line goes overboard on crit chance in place of damage bonuses. That leaves Explosives as one of the few ways to boost damage output. The other lines are defense/utility, so lack of increase damage isn’t that unexpected.

7. Conditions
Incendiary Powder was way too strong pre-patch and IMO should still be re-worked to have counter-play options. Bleeds at high condition damage are close to where they were pre-patch. Only burning got hit hard and burning was the majority of a condi or cele engineer’s damage. You’re just highlighting how ridiculously strong IP was pre-patch and how it carried engineer.

I played engineer as my second profession and really enjoyed it. I gave up on it shortly after this patch, but I’m starting to realize that was a bit premature. Engineer changed a lot, and trying to run what you had before more than likely won’t work. You need to view engineer like you did when you were still somewhat new to the game. Experiment with various trait combinations, utilities you didn’t used before, etc.

One item I will add though:
Grenade Kit
This kit needs toned down in order to make engineer more well-rounded. Grenade kit does damage similar to a melee weapon from range with tons of utility (conditions, vulnerability stacking). It’s hard to improve other skills when Grenade Kit is as strong as it is currently. If you improved other skills and traits without toning down Grenade Kit, engineer would quickly become overpowered.

Burn.5401:

Funny how almost noone complains about the most broken kittenhing at the moment – Rampage. You all play warriors or something? That class is even easier than d/d ele.

Rampage isn’t actually that bad. Unless you get caught off-guard, you can avoid it for the duration and the warrior isn’t so great afterwards. It can only be used 1.5 minutes for 20 seconds, compared to ele and mesmer which are broken 100% of the time.

Quite a few of them play with ANet employees. I’m sure they can provide feedback directly. That being the case, why post on the public forums?

SkiTz.4590:

rchu.8945:

Because cele meta with builds that can survive 1 vs 3 dishing out decent damage and fight that takes forever is more skilled and “fun”, right?

People aren’t leaving gw2 pvp because of a burst heavy meta.

Actually, they are. Though it’s not the burst that’s the problem. It’s that the builds doing it, especially mesmer, can’t really be stopped from doing it. Executing the burst is easier than avoiding it and there’s little penalty for screwing up your burst; you just do it again a few seconds later. If you fail multiple times, you can just run away. So really, players are leaving the “no-skill insta-kill” meta.

The lack of skill on certain builds is no different from the cele meta from before the patch. Both aren’t ideal. However, at least with the cele meta, you could do something before dying horribly. That’s why it was better than this skill-less burst meta and didn’t chase people away as quickly.

If you disagree, then rebut this: s/f fresh air elementalist had just as much burst as mesmer does now and has for months if not years. It was played fairly often, but never as much as d/d ele. It’s because s/f fresh air had proper risk:reward. The burst took thought and planning to execute. If you screwed up the burst, you couldn’t easily disengage. And by investing so heavily in damage, you had to have good positioning so that you weren’t killed quickly.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

So basically, add a permanent version of Lunatic Inquisition.

Which people only played for achievements because it was so boring.

Do you know who would win survival mode? A super tanky necro which is unkillable in 1v1. Then once everyone starts playing one, the mode gets incredibly boring and isn’t played.

So everyone is OP like mesmer which means no-body is OP and everyone dies in 2 seconds?

I don’t play mesmer, so can’t really say much other than they kill people near instantly out of stealth. Necromancer had a lot of interesting ideas added to the traits, and an effort to make traits within a line work together well. That was really good and I wish other professions go some of that treatment.

Nilkemia.8507:

That being said, this game’s PvP is better than any other of the games I’ve played.

GW2 PvP isn’t that great; it’s just every other MMORPG is so much worse.

PvP really just needs to go back to 3-stat items (except celestial) and have multiple items which can be mixed and matched like PvE.

Also, take off some of the excessive toughness and turn it into vitality.

I’ve pretty much quit other than dailies (may give up on that soon too). A friend of mine completely quit until a balance patch comes out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few others joined us.

The game is in a terrible state right now. Mesmers and Eles are completely ruining it. But even once they’re fixed, there are still many issues left to resolve e.g. passive sigil proc damage, lack of needed stat customization, etc. The severe lack of communication about balance from ANet doesn’t help things.

It’s been a month since the big patch. The initial overreactions are done. The things which people still complain about are probably overpowered.

Lich is fine. It has quite a bit of counter-play (block, blind, LoS, projectile hate, protection works to an extent). It also only lasts 15 seconds on a base 180 second cooldown. You’re likely experiencing Chill of Death and Close to Death as well as Air + Fire sigil procs all in a short window. Lich without that stuff is pretty tame.

Rampage might be a little too good, but it’s not game-breaking. You can kite rampage, but if it gets you in an initial CC lock, you’re probably dead or going to blow a lot of cooldowns.

style.6173:

What is wrong with the balance team?

It doesn’t exist.

The PvP developers are mostly working on PvP systems: matchmaking, game modes, reward system, etc.

The profession developers are focused more on making new things which sound neat. They don’t have much insight into PvP balance – or any balance for that matter.

ANet or their management doesn’t seem to understand or care that they need a dedicated balance team in order to make a good PvP game.

Mesmer and d/d ele are completely broken right now. There’s no counter other than outnumbering them. It’s been a month, top players have figured this out.

Rampage may be too good, but it’s not game-breaking like mesmer and d/d ele. Burning stacking is cheesy and needs fixed, but it’s not game-breaking. I don’t know why people are asking to nerf engineers (other then when Grenadier was bugged).

Apparently shield sees a decent amount of use in PvP on EU. The CC from the bubble and protection aren’t that bad.

It just needs its #4 boosted a little and it’ll be a good weapon.

Hammer has terrible damage because of the way the auto-attack is structured. It needed the Glacial Heart trait for the extra burst and CC to make up for that. If the third part of the auto-attack chain was less clunky, hammer would do more damage overall and would be far more viable in PvP.

Eurantien.4632:

New player vs new player: pew pew ranger = OP.
Veteran player vs veteran player: pew pew ranger = Free kills.

Who do we balance for?
Do we balance around the idea that people should be able to learn to play?
Or do we balance around the idea that people cannot learn, and are forever casual?

You balance for both. For the veterans, you pay attention to detail and get it as close as possible. For new players, you only need to balance enough so that it doesn’t feel completely one-sided.

1. Celestial amulet is fine
It was slightly nerfed in the trait re-work and wasn’t even the problem before then. The problem has always been the builds which use celestial amulet. They have easy access to burning and could offset the low power values with trait line stats (before the re-work) and might stacking.

2. Pack runes aren’t a big problem
I agree that Rune of the Pack is a little too good, but it’s not contributing to huge imbalances in PvP. There are many more issues which should be addressed first.

3. On-Proc sigils do need nerfed
When such a large amount of damage comes from attacks which can’t be predicted or avoided, it really kills the action-based gameplay. You can’t counterplay these sigils. It goes beyond Air+Fire though; Some swap sigils are pretty powerful and if you nerf Air+Fire, others like Blood will take their place.

4. Remove 4-stat amulets; Allow proper stat customization
Yes, we desperately need more stat customization. However, the 4-stat amulets contribute to power creep. It also subjects us to the glacial pace of patches and the whims of ANet as to what we get next. Players will continue to want different amulets and you’ll end up with a ton to scroll through. Instead, just divide the current 3-stat amulets into multiple items (e.g. amulet, ring, ring) and let players mix and match them like they do in PvE/WvW. It’s not too hard for new players to understand, and it won’t create additional balancing points. Both of those counter-claims are rubbish.

5. Healing Power scaling isn’t so simple
It’s not wise to just across the board increase healing power scaling. Doing targeted increases would be a better approach, especially for builds which can already utilize healing power to an extent. ANet erred on the side of caution with Healing Power. If it’s too good, then you could just heal-bot everything, and that’s not good for the game. Right now, some Healing Power is good for some builds, but too much and you’re giving up any damage output or survivability. That’s fine, but we need the greater granularity with stats.

Sykper.6583:

Exedore.6320:

If the score is tied, then the winner is the team with the highest individual score.

Is that confirmed?

Yes, it’s been that way since launch. The first time a tie happened and someone posted here, a dev replied explaining the tie-breaking.

If the score is tied, then the winner is the team with the highest individual score.

Necromancer downed state can proc sigils and traits now. If those trigger, they get a pretty big burst. Other than that, necro down state damage is fine.

Except the zerker mes can just avoid the tanky melee and still kill it.

Mesmer and d/d ele are completely broken right now. Other stuff needs adjusted, but it’s not game-breaking.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm i think the real reason is “balancing woes” and someone claimed that the current rigid amulet choices make it easier for balancing and so on.

That’s also a load of kitten.

If you keep the current stat combos (possibly even remove the 4-stat combos), but allow mix-and-match of them like in PvE/WvW, then there’s no direct increase in balancing difficulty. The only increase in balancing difficulty is that a lot more builds will be viable. That’s a good problem to have.

When you look at stats, the effect is very objective and quantifiable, unlike traits and utilities which are more subjective and harder to quantify. It’s easy to discern the impact stats will have. By keeping existing stat combinations, you also limit the extreme cases (all damage, all defense, etc). The current amulets are the extreme cases, so you’ll never see anything worse. Celestial is the exact middle of everything and acts as a balancing point for spreading out to many stats.

A prime example of where more stat customization would help and is desperately needed is bunker guardian. It’s base HP with cleric amulet is so low that’s it’s almost not viable; it can’t survive burst very well. If it was able to pick up additional vitality, it would do a lot better. In general, proper balancing of toughness and vitality stats for defense – instead of a mountain of one and none of the other – will do enough to curb rampant burst while not directly nerfing glass cannon builds.

ANet couldn’t make dishonor work properly, which is why it’s still disabled. Fixing it is probably lower priority than other projects.

Maganda.8179:

that’s why u change it only in spvp. i admit im not programer so i dont know how much work it is, but u have to admit that it would totally change pvp.

On the technical side, calculating collisions will increase server load, has to be done server-side or with server-side checks to avoid hacking, and can get pretty messy if players have high latency (hence my earlier comment about line of warding).

On the gameplay side, it will dramatically change how a lot of abilities interact. Many movement skills become far less effective because they can’t go through or over players. What do you do about pet, turrets, minions, etc? Unlike GW1, there’s a lot of terrain. Players could body block enemies into a corner, which becomes chain CC. Teleports become extremely powerful because they can go around. I can keep going, but you get the point. It’s not simple.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

yes, i want that as well, but “unfortunately” it would be “too confusing for new players” to handle. more amulet choices might be the only thing we might ever get in the future.

That it’s the biggest load of kitten excuse ever (not blaming you, I know ANet said it). New players have to figure out stats from multiple items in PvE, which is where ANet forces them to start anyway. The most confusing thing for new players in PvP is finding the button that lets them change their PvP build. After that, it’s pretty simple to figure out. And frankly, that’s a lot simpler than scrolling through 50+ amulets.

Highlie.7641:

The last meta wasn’t balanced at all. The reward Vs Risk was horrible. This is also a mmo it will never be balanced. It’s a waste of resouces to try, Fix the reward vs risk equation and things would be great.

How is this meta better for risk/reward? Mesmer opens up and CCs while doing a truckload of damage (high reward). They’re never in significant danger because of the CC (low risk) and if they are, just go stealth or teleport away and do it again.

d/d elementalist in a 1v1 has so many defenses that they can screw up multiple times and still not die. Their opponents eventually die to high combined burning + lightning whip damage as well as geomancy+doom sigils.

If you want risk/reward, offensive warrior has always been the best example. If they can land their attacks, they get a big reward, but you incur risk in either using them liberally and missing or eating damage while waiting for the right moment.

It’s not a little change. It’s simple to understand, but it has widespread repercussions for both gameplay mechanics and technical aspects of the game.

In conquest, it’s hard to determine whether an individual choice was good or bad. As a result, it’s hard to score players and hard to reward them (reward used to be based on score long ago).

For example, a center node bunker that stays and there doesn’t get attack might be doing the right thing. But they could also be doing the wrong thing by not moving to another point to assist and letting someone watch for enemy movements to that node.

Is holding a node in an outnumbered fight so that it doesn’t go neutral good or bad? You could have chosen to go to a different node and caused an out-manned fight there, rather than eventually dying and letting your enemies cap the node you’re currently on.

Is assisting a rally a good idea? That person may just die again and the damage you took to get them up may not have been worth the contribution they added. It’s better to let a rally bot die quickly so they don’t rally enemies at a bad time.

There is no PvP season running. The leaderboards are inactive.

NO.

Granting more types of conditions contributes a huge power boost to builds which don’t have that condition. Though not as much anymore with the condi stacking, it’s still powerful.