Guild Wars 2

Some of these ideas are nice (I really like the Mist Token idea). I have a few comments and issues with the OP’s proposals from a veteran player perspective:

Rewards

• The reward problem isn’t so much unique rewards as the reward rate not being anywhere close to what can be accomplished in PvE. If you’re new, the dungeon tracks are pretty good – you get exotic weapons and armor. But if you already have that stuff, you’re just getting crap to salvage, no matter which track you do. Adding unique rewards only keeps players around long enough to get them and then they go back to other areas of the game.
• Downtime between matches directly affects reward rate.
• Less transmute charges and Tomes of Experience or an option to choose them.

Matching and Ladder

• The current leaderboard is awful. It’s based on time, not skill. In fact, it disadvantages better players because they wait longer for matches. Before anything based on leaderboard standing is added, the leaderboard needs to reflect skill over quantity of games. It’s a big reason why this test ladder season is so lackluster.
• Matchmaking for higher rated players usually takes around 7 minutes and if you partial queued, you still get terrible teammates. I don’t know what’s going on, but if we’re still going to get bad matches, just match us faster.
• Additionally, it seems that new players deviate too much in rating initially, which leads to frustration.

Balance and Gameplay

• The specialization change will not affect the balance cycle. Balance cycle is affected by ANet’s scheduling and patch cycle – not any difficulty in balancing. This will remain true until they change their philosophy or staffing allocation. A two to three month cycle is probably best.
• Toning down sigil procs (and some profession ones too) would help all levels of gameplay. The burst can be frustrating, especially for inexperienced players who blow up in a couple hits and have no idea what they can do to stop it.
• Need to change the amulet system, especially with divorcing stats from traits. Many guildies don’t like to PvP because they can’t closely match their build from PvE/WvW. The reason given by ANet for the current amulet system was to make it less confusing for new players, but I’ve still seen people without amulets, runes, or sigils. Someone in HotM has to point out the “PvP Build” button at least once a night.

New Players

• Not sure if one exists, but an arrow pointing out the “PvP Build” button and the contents inside would be good for new players.
• The “Practice/Play/Compete” layout didn’t really do what it was supposed to. Hotjoin is an auto-balance cesspool where people of all skill levels farm their dailies or just beat up on bad players. Suggest that for players above a certain rank (maybe 20?) that PvP dailies can only be completed in unranked and ranked and PvP reward track advancement is even more limited than it currently is in Hot Join. It doesn’t curb the problem entirely, but makes it more clear that practice is for new players and trying out builds.
• In the death log, maybe add a class and weapon symbol for each ability so you know what to avoid next time without looking at the wiki? Or allow a hover-over?

Talyn.3295:

Which would win out?

Wall of Reflection.

Ralkuth.1456:

Ah, I’m just reminiscing about the roots of Medi Guard.
Medi Guard -is- the most common build now. But it -wasn’t- 2 years ago. Back then, Virtue Bunker was the thing. Medi Guard is something you run for fun.

Medi guard was always around, but typically used with greatsword and more damage traits. It was never used at a high level because it was too easy to kill and the burst was too easy to avoid. Medi guard only became extremely popular in the past few months because of some buffs and the build being used by the WTS winners.

Hammer medi is the only “new” thing, taking the best of the old medi guard and virtue bunker builds while maintaining burst damage with procs.

Genesis.8572:

I saw a great idea floated around of removing the falling damage traits and turning them into some form of mastery traits.

They’re already modifying the fall damage traits to trigger on other events as well (like being CC’ed). They just didn’t have it ready for the preview for all professions.

Glicko2 has “diminishing returns” on rating increase/decrease built in. How it’s implemented and tuned is a different question.

Symbolic Avenger’s numbers aren’t final. It will likely be reduced to compensate for brain-dead PvE mobs which stand in your symbols. And if the AI actually improves to avoid powerful AoE effects, Symbolic Avenger’s weaknesses will be more obvious.

@Arken.3725
You realize I started this whole “move WoP to Zeal” thing, right? The trait specializations for many professions, not just guardians, have traits following mostly the same layout as they do on live. Many need re-arranged to meet the specialization goal. The layout on live was done to prevent or discourage over-specialization.

People are forgetting that with the new system, you choose three specializations, not one. The point is to make each specialization line narrow and force you to actually specialize – not just pick the best low-hanging traits from all lines.

If all symbol traits were put into one line and you wanted the moderate healing from symbols, take it. You still have two other choices and you can still pick a group support line and a utility line or self-survival line.

Additionally, I would argue that consecration trait(s) should be in Honor rather than Virtues.

Why do people think gating ranked will help anything? If matchmaking is working properly, then new people and bad people will be placed with and against people with an equal lack of skill. If you’re matched with people of disparate skill then that’s a problem with rating and matchmaking.

The reason why high rating players have longer queues is because the population is smaller compared to average rating players. The game spends longer trying to find an equally skilled match.

Other than Glacial Heart, which is pretty much guaranteed due to Sigil of Intelligence, not really. GS doesn’t burst super hard since you have time to avoid the spin. The ridiculous amount of sustain on medi guard with a zerker amulet is the heart of the problem.

Black Box.9312:

If you put it in Zeal, nobody will take it at all because the only symbol builds that will utilize Zeal will be DPS-oriented builds that will take the increased damage trait instead.

Disagree. The 20% against enemies standing on symbols is pretty big, but most symbols only last about 4 seconds. How many attacks can you get off in that time in PvE? What about in PvP where an enemy is likely to move off your symbol in 2 seconds or less, usually with some form of an evade? ANet also may tweak that 20% if it’s too good (likely true for PvE if AI doesn’t improve).

In PvE, you can look at Writ of Persistence as 40% increased symbol damage (67% with hammer) and 2% increased party damage for 3 seconds per symbol. And then you get some more boon benefit and a little bit of healing on the side. In PvP, it’s much harder to get out of the symbol and you give up more ground to do so.

Zeal has very little synergy as far as a support build is concerned, so it just doesn’t make sense to put a support-oriented trait there, even if it is supposedly the “designated” symbol spec.

Is it support-oriented just because it has a small healing component? If it didn’t have the healing component, would you consider it support? Does that mean Zealous Blade is self-survival?

@Salamander.2504
I’m curious what game modes you play (PvE, WvW, PvP) or what you’re focusing on.

In PvE, you typically go full offense. There’s little need for heavy support and I doubt that will change anytime soon. Most of the support-ish guardian PvE builds which used the current symbol traits in Honor did so in part because they got a benefit from them offensively as well.

In PvP there are much better supportive choices in Honor than the new Writ of Persistence. I already described its weaknesses. The best use of the new Writ of Persistence is to pair it with other symbol traits from Zeal to make a hybrid build. And that begs the question: why not just combine them into one line to focus on symbols.

Salamander.2504:

Exedore.6320:

All the symbol stuff should be in Zeal, most notably Writ of Persistence

I have to disagree 100%. […] Writ of Persistence is great where it is.

You’re over-inflating the support benefit to the three symbol traits which were rolled into Writ of Persistence. At the same time, you’re not looking at how the new trait system works when considering trait placement. I’ll focus more on PvP, but also touch on PvE.

First, the defensive and support aspect. A support or defensive guardian will usually be using two of hammer, mace, and staff. All three have symbols so it looks great, but you need to look at how allies utilize symbols. No matter which symbol it is, allies are not going to stand in them, even larger ones, for long. Staying mobile and kiting is a far bigger survivability advantage than any symbol provides. Staying put incurs more damage than what the symbol negates. And for hammer, the #1 chain often resets before the Symbol of Protection goes off when the guardian is kited in PvP or by AI.

That leaves the guardian as the overwhelming benefactor of Writ of Persistence. In actuality, it’s more self-defense than group support. Since it’s mostly for yourself and you’re defensive and able to stay in one place against light pressure, the size doesn’t matter as much. But against heavy pressure, you’ll want to move a lot and even the bigger symbols will leave you as a sitting duck for ranged DPS. The healing isn’t all that spectacular either. Even with maxed healing power, it doesn’t go over 200HP/tick. If the healing was boosted significantly, the trait would quickly become far too powerful, especially when combined with other symbol traits (subsequent paragraph). And with general increases to boon duration gone, you’re not getting as large of a benefit from stacking the boon of the symbol; it will last the duration of the symbol.

Then there’s the competing traits. Pure of Voice is a shoe-in, since shouts are still the best support abilities. And if you’re looking for healing, Force of Will kinda works. Assuming the healing on others part isn’t all that spectacular, you still frees up 300 stat points which you could put into healing power. Combined, that healing will outclass the healing from symbols without the restrictions of staying in one spot.

The problem with not combining the symbol traits into the same line and making them compete will cause balance nightmares. In particular, the anchor guardian (somewhat high defense meant to tank trash mobs while everyone else is full zerker). They’ll go Zeal and Honor, take lots of symbol traits and just let stuff melt while having permanent protection on top of huge damage increases. ANet will have to cripple symbol traits in order to break the build, but it makes the symbol traits uncompetitive with their peers in major trait slots. Stopping this collection of lots of overlapping traits is one of the reasons for moving to the specialization system; traits which modify specific sets of abilities are restricted to one line where they can be fully controlled, allowing for balance while remaining competitive.

Lastly, the argument for using Writ of Persistence with an offensive focus. The increased size and duration when combined with higher damage allows the option for an area denial build. If you go near the guardian for this period, you’ll take heavy damage, but lose that if they chase out of that area. It fits the lack of guardian mobility compared to other professions. The small amount of healing is just a bonus, and can be easily tweaked without hurting the trait. It can also directly compete with Symbolic Avenger. Symbolic Avenger provides concentrated damage, but you can get off the symbol easily. Writ of Persistence would make it harder to avoid the symbol, but the damage is spread out.

And by keeping the symbols in a trait line with offensive focus, it encourages more build variety. The anchor guardian I mentioned before would still be perfectly viable and could take other Honor traits. But they aren’t seeing the huge damage increases because some symbol traits are now mutually exclusive. You could also mix that up with a PvP focus where you push in with a group and take over nodes, but you can’t readily survive on your own at the same time.

TLDR: Writ of Persistence doesn’t really support all that well outside of PvE. By not making it mutually exclusive with other symbol traits, it creates a balance issue where it couldn’t be competitive with its peers in a major trait slot. Putting it in Zeal doesn’t prevent it from being used in conjunction with a supportive build, but allows better balance through mutual exclusion.

Kanashi.5104:

You bring up some good points. I didn’t really touch on positioning of traits, merely the output of the traits. I can see skills like Virtuous Hammer and Writ being moved into other trees due to their theme or flavor. However sometimes it’s ok to separate these a bit because it can help with promoting going into another tree. It’s a strange kind of balance where you want all choices to be worth it but not place everything perfectly into a few trees that basically no one will ever deviate from.

Spreading out traits to make all lines appealing is the design philosophy of the old system. It didn’t work because every major trait selection had to be balanced not only against its peers but against all major traits in other lines. It was a balancing nightmare where there would always be a best choice.

The new design philosophy is that trait specializations actually make you specialized. Each line is aimed at a role or function(s) and if you want to fulfill that role or function, you have to choose the corresponding line. Typical roles are area damage, condition damage, personal survival, group support, and class mechanic. Functions are more variable, but you often see things like weapon types or groups of weapons, e.g. two-handed vs. one-handed or melee vs. ranged, ability type, profession theme, e.g. Aegis, Retaliation, Burning, etc. With this design change, you won’t see any variation in which line is chosen for filling a particular role. This is intended. If you say you’re an Honor guardian, others will know you’re group support.

Within each line, now that it’s supposed to fill a particular role, each major trait selection will be different ways of doing the same thing or closely related. Using elementalist as an example, the GM trait in air gives you damage either as a straight damage increase, resetting your air attunement (air often has high damage abilities), or damage when you CC. What this does is prevent builds from having a multitude of self-protection traits while using full damage gear (PvP perspective) or taking every low-hanging straight damage increase trait (PvE perspective).

Ranael.6423:

Next WTS starts next week and finals will be held on 8 August at Gamescom. I wouldn’t see such a big meta changing update being released during this event.
Unless they find a way to let people play with the old build for the competition.

ANet uses private servers for the WTS finals. So it’s conceivable that they could roll out the trait changes after the WTS finalists have been selected but before the competition. Doing that would make it hard for the WTS finalists to practice, though.

There’s no confirmed release date for HoT. Most speculation puts it at 3Q 2015, which would fall around September.

Thoughts on Traits
The current distribution leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of traits are still poorly placed. They were kept in the same line as they are on live, even when one of the design philosophies of the specializations is to keep similar functions together. For major trait pairings, there’s only a handful where you even have to think about which you would pick, and it’s not just a numbers thing.

All the symbol stuff should be in Zeal, most notably Writ of Persistence. Longer/Larger symbols could form a nice competition with increased damage while being on symbols (at least in PvP). But for all the focus Zeal has on symbols, it needs some way to reliably generate them outside of weapons which have one. I do like that Symbols become more of an area denial effect in PvP if you go with this line. It will be interesting to see it play out.

Pure of Heart fits better in Valor, since Valor has so many Aegis traits. Having it compete against Altruistic Healing and Monk’s Focus would also stop bunker guardian builds from having ludicrous amounts of healing.

I think Vitures would be far more interesting if each major was a choice for the same virtue.

Hammer vs. GS in PvP
I disagree about hammer, specifically Mighty Blow, being more reliable damage than GS. Any time I run into a guardian with a hammer, I can avoid the vast majority of their damage and CC from hammer. The downside of concentrating everything into a few attacks is that all of it can be easily avoided. Greatsword has much better sustained damage than hammer, but burst from GS isn’t as powerful due to it being over time.

Also worth noting, a large part of the burst you see from hammer is Glacial Heart, which can crit for 2000 or more, aided by sigil of intelligence. I can see landing Mighty Blow reliably when used in Judge’s Intervention (hard to see it coming), but outside of that, you’ll need a partner with CC. And if you have that, GS burst is just as effective.

It really comes down to sustained damage and a tad more mobility vs. a little more CC.

Given the obviously incomplete state of every profession but elementalist – engineer wasn’t even implemented – it’s at minimum a month off, but likely multiple months away. They need to implement stuff, check rudimentary balance and feel, and run QA testing before they ship it.

I think boon duration and condition duration are just gone except for runes, sigils, and select traits. Global increases to boon and condition duration caused too many balance problems.

IMO they should swap Fiery Wrath (10% vs burning) with Retribution (10% while under Retaliation).

Realistically, it’s not gonna happen. But it shouldn’t matter if ANet does the specialization system well.

With the new specialization system, the choice of trait line is dependent on the roles you want to fulfill. Some lines may not exist on some professions, but you typically see the following: personal survival, group support, group/area damage, condition damage, class-mechanic specific, single target damage. A bunker would pick personal survival and support. A bruiser probably picks personal survival, but may forgo support and probably take a trait line for single-target damage.

Within each line, the choices at each tier should be competitive with each other and you pick the one that fits your playstyle or group composition the best. Some may depend on weapon skill choice.

The end result is that variations by role are small, but the line selections of each role will be different.

Revive traits should all be rolled into one which is a choice in a support line.

Fall Damage traits should either be removed or merged into other minor traits. The fall damage reduction should just be a bonus – not the reason to take the trait.

You have to look at what you gain as well. One of the new traits in Radiance is 10% increased damage while under Retaliation.

Also, without traits, 1-handed weapons don’t have any higher of a crit chance than any other weapon. The Radiance trait line on live has precision tied to it, but stats are being removed from traits and added to gear with these changes.

As far as viability of sword in PvP, it will either be where it is now (decent, but there are better choices) or develop into a build focused on burning in addition to damage rather than pure damage.

YuiRS.8129:

New Medi guard: lower burst, lower condi removal, slightly higher burning damage (unless burning is nerfed with the changes).

This change may bury Guardian in PvP.

Medi guard in PvP is pretty ridiculous right now. The amount of burst and sustain it has is over the top and it’s relatively easy to pull off.

If you look at the current hammer medi build and the new traits previewed Friday (which will change), then you’d take Valor and Virtues. You’d be missing Glacial Heart, Justice is Blind, and Vigorous Precision. However, you’d probably pick the trait which casts a meditation on heal in Valor and likely Strength in Numbers, which makes up for Vigorous Precision. Glacial Heart was taken more for the burst damage than for the CC, but you can pick either Radiance or Zeal for increased damage. With all the burst from meditations, the percent damage increases will make up for lack of Glacial Heart’s burst. So I don’t think you’re losing much at all. It will just be different.

First, remember that numbers on many traits and abilities will be changing. With the HoT trait changes, you can only go off the general idea.

That said, I think the change to put Evasive Arcana and Elemental Attunement into the same slot was a very good decision. If they had not done this, Arcana would be an extremely powerful line, which would completely overshadow all others, and each of those traits would overshadow their competing traits as they do currently.

If that leads to problems for elementalists, other traits or trait lines can be tuned to make up for it. But don’t expect to get another all-encompassing trait.

Overview
The previewed Guardian traits need better grouping and choices. Each specialization should have a theme and everything for that theme should be in that line. Each set of three choices should take similar effects and have them compete against each other (e.g. AH and Monk’s Focus). Here are my suggestions to work toward that goal (PvP/WvW background):

Zeal
Theme is Symbols and offense with two-handed weapons. Symbols provide powerful AoE and area denial in PvP, but their traits need cleaned up and a little less pervasive. Spirit Weapons could fit better. One-handed weapons and anything heavily burning-related was moved to Radiance.

• Increased Symbol damage could probably be removed (maybe condensed). A better alternative is to increase the duration or number of vulnerability stacks from Symbolic Exposure.
• Writ of Persistence would fit nicely as an alternative choice to a trait which directly increases symbol damage. Instead of doing more damage/tick, you have more ticks and are more likely to hit mobile enemies and you deny a larger area.
• A trait which increases combo interaction with light fields would be good.
• Change the spirit weapon trait to make spirit weapon command abilities create a symbol based on the weapon.
• Swap Fiery Wrath for the new Retribution trait, since symbols with combos will be causing a lot of retaliation.
• Even the fall damage trait kinda fits here.
• Create a symbol on weapon swap?

Virtues
This line should focus only on virtues, allowing you to do different things with them. The problem comes with passive vs. active. This line will always favor active use because of the reduced cooldowns. ANet should consider not having a minor trait reduce cooldown and instead allow major traits to make a targeted cooldown reductions. One cool thing I thought of would be to have each level focus on a virtue:

• Adept – Virtue of Justice: Choices are Justice is Blind, Wrath of Justice, and a the passive part of Supreme Justice with a virtue of justice cooldown decrease.
• Master – Virtue of Resolve: Absolute Resolution, Battle Presence + cooldown reduction, and TBD.
• Grandmaster – Virtue of Courage: Indomitable Courage minus the passive reduction, Unscathed Contender with cooldown reduction or proc frequency reduction, and TBD.

The downside is that this line becomes hard to avoid.

Valor
Theme is Aegis, blocking, armor, and sustain through healing. It’s in a decent state from the preview, though defensive lines will never appeal to the current PvE meta. My concern is that it may overshadow Honor a little too much for all but full defensive players.

• Grandmaster: Replace Retributive Armor with Pure of Heart (Aegis heals on removal). It fits the Aegis theme and it also consolidates three big heal traits into on choice. Monk’s Focus is a large burst of healing, but restricts abilities. AH is selfish, but is a lot in groups. Pure of Heart helps your group and wins or loses based on other choices.
• Master: Retributive Armor replaces Stalwart Defender. This slot is now a choice between a selfish trait, and two group traits with trade-offs which all increase defense.
• Adept (maybe): make it Aegis-themed and choose an effect for Aegis removal (direct damage, burning, retaliation). Kinda sucks, but the line is strong overall already.

Radiance
Theme is burning, one-handed weapons, and critical strikes. To contrast zeal, this will line will have less AoE and retaliation; instead, it has high damage through burning, even if being kited.

• Master: Fiery Wrath, Kindled Zeal/Amplified Wrath, Radiant Fire. Choice of more physical damage, more burning damage, or more burning application.
• Adept: Zealous Scepter minus weapon restriction, Inner Fire, Right-Handed Strength.
• Permeating Wrath goes in this line somewhere, allowing for AoE with burning.

Honor
Group support line, but focus on doing stuff actively – not just boons and healing. Consecrations and shouts both fit. Also include support or control weapons (mace, shield, staff, hammer, focus?). Here are some trait ideas:

• Consecration Trait: Bonus endurance regeneration when in a consecration. Make me want to stay in it and not die horribly for it. Also, suggest not doing the ground-targeting at all – IMO guardian should be close support, not backline.
• Off-hand Trait: Allies affected by off-hand abilities gain protection. Reduced off-hand cooldown. Shield #4 effect changed.
• Control Trait: Wards (Staff #5 and Hammer #5) also hurt enemies (slow?) and help allies (protection/vigor/heal?). Maybe make Shield #5 a ward.
• Remove on-crit emphasis.
• Boon duration increase trait?
• Some offensive group support as a minor trait.

I’m worried most about Honor. Even in ANet’s version, it feels like left-overs being carried by Vigorous Precision, Selfless Daring, and Pure of Voice.

I think the changes were presented too soon. Elementalist was good, but the rest were too raw.

In most professions besides elementalist, there is still a lack of focus in many specialization choices. The old system spread traits for specific abilities around or traits which did similar things (swiftness, healing, etc). The new idea seems to want to join them together in the same place, often making you choose between different triggers for an effect, but it’s not there yet.

SobeSoul.6910:

The problem I see with it though is there’s nothing wrong with 1500 nades as is.

The reason isn’t very clear unless you watched the stream. I just finished watching the engi part and it adds more context to the original post.

Mortar (the elite skill) is being re-designed and is now Mortar Kit (still an elite) and will be 1500 range. ANet wants Mortar Kit to be the long range area-effect weapon for engineer, with a secondary focus on combo fields. 1500 range grenades and poison grenade being a combo field overlaps that a lot, so Grenade Kit needs to change. The question is what should it be doing now.

Grenade Kit
Removing the old Grenadier trait was a much-needed change; you couldn’t balance grenade kit with the old trait (effectively a 50% increase in damage) since grenade kit either had to be useless without the trait or too good with the trait.

1. Number of Projectiles I don’t know about 3 grenades by default. It contributes to high vulnerability stacking (more of a PvE thing) and particle effect spam. Less projectiles but making each one a little more potent might be better.
2. Range Reducing the range has a huge effect on the role of the skill. Currently it’s used to out-range enemies while staying safe and do area denial along with burst damage with hefty contribution from the toolbelt skill. 900 range will be shorter than rifle and pistol with the changes, which dismantles that role for grenade kit. If it’s being changed to more of an AoE damage and suppression weapon, then lowering in the range makes sense. But then it’s basically a ranged bomb kit. If the range is kept longer, the damage needs to be toned down a bit and turn it into more utility.
3. New Trait for Radius and Velocity Radius increase would be fine. Velocity increase would need to be small so that you can still avoid the projectiles.
4. No way to Increase Range Good. Traits which change the range of skills, especially long range skills, become problematic for balance.
5. Poison Grenade Change If I’m reading it right, this would make it work like all the other grenades. This really hurts the area denial role of grenade kit.

Bottom line is, what role should grenade kit have? Where does it fit in relation to bomb kit (high damage and area denial, but makes you vulnerable by being in melee) and normal weapon #1 skill (ranged, but not extremely powerful)? Right now it seems to act more like a long range bomb kit with slightly less damage.

Jasher.6580:

I disagree, I don’t want to have jewels back. If the cost for better balance means less options. So be it.

I rather not have them having to factor in more variables when doing their balancing.

“More stat customization = harder to balance” is a common fallacy that gets paraded around the forums. Adding more stat customization only indirectly leads to more balance concerns because it will allow many more viable builds. I think that’s a good problem to have.

Increased stat customization won’t significantly increase the balancing burden. If you think of stat customization like a slider, you have extremes (max offense, max defense) and then a “super middle” (celestial). We already have those. What more stat customization does is allow players to achieve locations between the extremes and all will be less than the “super middle”. Your balance trade space doesn’t increase.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

only the 5 basic stats gets raised to 1000

Oops. I was counting condition damage and healing power too. Will re-do my post.

I think you can forget about condition duration and boon duration being stats. It looks like ANet will be using targeted increases instead. For example, I would expect that one of the necro specializations will increase bleeding and maybe poison durations by some percentage as a minor trait.

Alexander.9810:

The potential for insta burst and unkillable builds is through the roof if all the amulets get 800 more stats.

I wouldn’t say it’s through the roof. You’re not getting all the stats added directly to amulets.

• Base character sheet stats are being increased from 926 to 1000. There are 4 basic stats, so that’s 296 stat points.
• I’d guess the total stat pool is 970 at the high end. I arrived at this by 700 primary stat points with 14 traits, minus 150 since half of the profession-specific bonus became baseline, plus 60% * 700 for 3 of the 5 secondary stats which can be found on gear. I could see it being closer to 700 or 800 though, depending on how ANet balances it.
• If what remains from the stat pool after increase to base attributes was all turned into PvE zerker gear, it would be something like 277/198/198.

Considering a lot of burst builds already get 300 or more offensive stats from traits, it’s significant, but I don’t think it will be overwhelming.

Edit: Goofed up and counted healing power and condition damage. Fixed

The old amulet jewels weren’t enough. They were 14% of amulet stats. Instead, I suggest an amulet and two rings. Amulet is 50% of the stats and each ring is 25% of the stats. It makes sense, is pretty simple, and offers a reasonable degree of customization.

1. [PvP] Is the PvP amulet system being changed to allow more customization? Stat customization is already problematic now; without stats from trait lines to make them more well-rounded or fill in the holes, it will be even worse.
2. [PvE][WvW] Will you be addressing boon and condition duration food buffs? It looks like global boon duration and condition damage duration increases are being removed from trait lines in favor of targeted increases. Will you be doing the same to food (and similar) buffs?
3. How are “must-have” traits being addressed? It would suck to have these specializations only to be forced into one or two of the choices for “must-have” traits. For example, traits which grant vigor for multiple professions and the Fast Hands trait for warriors.
4. [Elite Specializations]If you choose an elite specialization, are you required to use the special weapon? If not, is it worthwhile to not use the specialization-specific weapon? If yes, how will weapon swapping work?
5. [PvP]Can you progress PvE/WvW specialization unlocks through PvP? ANet has promoted progressing your character by doing what you like (PvP, PvE, WvW). We don’t want to take a step back on that.
6. What are you doing to address power creep? d/d ele: now with diamond skin. ’nuff said. Will a lot of current powerful traits be seeing reductions, or is the goal to make players more powerful?
7. [Guardian] Will you be able to take the current Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage together? If not, then why? These two traits are key to Virtues builds and really help the guardian support allies.

Czerny.6530:

I know this is satire, but it brings up an interesting point how most defensive stats are completely useless in PvP. A sign of poor game balance or just a phase of the metagame? I think active defenses need to be nerfed a bit.

Defensive stats aren’t completely useless. Yes, active defenses are better, but it doesn’t make defensive stats irrelevant. The problem with defensive stats in PvP is that you can’t get them in healthy amounts outside of celestial amulet. For example, no one needs 900 additional toughness. But having 200-400 wouldn’t be bad. The amulet system in PvP is a significant problem.

I don’t think the changes in the OP are good. Yes, it will hurt turret engi, but it doesn’t really address the other problems of turret engi:

• Turrets in places you can’t reach, especially from melee.
• Heavy CC from turrets dying. A nightmare for melee to fight.
  In addition, making baseline turrets easier to kill will make it pointless for any engineer to use them unless they’re a full turret spec’ed engi.

I would instead recommend any or all of the following:

• Reduce the reduction on Metal Plating. 30% reduction is the same as giving turrets over 40% additional HP. Altering this trait weakens turret engi without hampering un-traited turrets.
• Revert velocity increase to Rocket Turret. It’s near impossible to avoid the basic rocket fire, which hits pretty hard. Staying alert allows you to avoid some damage.
• Move Accelerant-Packed Turrets back to a master trait. This causes turret engineers to choose two of: CC and damage on turret death, increased turret damage and range, boons on turrets. Without the extra CC or damage, turret engis won’t be able to force players off points as easily.
• Fix turrets being deployed in mid-air.

For all the people that don’t want to believe this, here’s a simple scientific setup:

Hypothesis: Sigil of Air has a 5sec ICD

Test Setup: Engineer with as high a crit chance as possible (rampager or assassin amulet, 6 into precision line, precision runes). Equip Sigil of Air and flamethrower. Auto-attack indestructible dummy (~4 attacks/second and you can let it keep doing).

If Sigil of Air procs once within less than 5 seconds, the hypothesis is disproven. Let’s say we have a 50% crit chance and a 50% proc rate. On average, one of those 4 attacks within a second should proc the sigil if it’s off ICD. Let it go for 10-15 minutes and see if the interval between any proc was less than 5 seconds.

It’s not rocket surgery.

runeblade.7514:

Treb counters larger NPC groups.

You would think, but no. DBs need at least two hits to kill and if you’re in a coordinated group, one person should be denying treb use anyway.

With the current incarnation of stronghold which we tested a few days ago, it’s unlikely roles will develop much. With coordinated groups, the game mode is best played as a a PvE race and you win or lose based on how well you pull defending NPC guards away from your doobreakers in the first wave of supply.

Assuming ANet addresses that somewhat, here’s what I see:

• Damage Similar to conquest, but with a focus on sustained team fights over hit-and-run burst. There’s less need to move around the map in stronghold, and if you do, you’ll be doing it as a group with your support player(s).
• Support Similar to your team-fight bunkers in conquest. Their goal is keep everyone alive and kicking – both player and NPC. Instead of being on a point, they move with offensive NPC trains.
• Anti-NPC Specialist A damage player variant specializing in preventing offensive NPCs from destroying gates. Being ranged so that you can attack from inside the base is crucial. Damage will be more AoE-focused with CC geared toward stalling NPC attacks.

I don’t see these roles happening at all:

• Supply Runner The offensive NPCs are only effective in larger trains. Having one person shuttle supply back and forth causes the NPCs to string out too much and fall victim to cleave damage in team fights. Keeping one player behind also puts your team at a disadvantage in team fights. What will likely happen is that the offensive group will push until they stall, then all resupply and summon a new group of NPCs in a ball.

I see these roles as unlikely:

• Roamer/Ganker There’s little need for players to disperse around the map. If someone does go off solo, they can likely hold their own against burst players.
• Assault/Defense Someone that switches between lanes. The transit time is too long to do this constantly, and investing heavily in mobility weakens your impact once you get to a battle. If either attacking force stalls out, it will just retreat as a group, wipe the other assault force, resupply, and re-push.

Stronghold has a lot of problems in its current state and if it goes live without some significant changes, it will be skyhammer 2.0 (best thing ever for the first few days then pushed aside to the point of people not wanting it).

I played for about 7 hours almost entirely with a 5man team, so these views are based on coordinated strategies.

PvE Tactics Decide the Match
A group with some support can keep doorbreakers (DBs) alive through player damage until both gates are down. The biggest effect on the DB push is how many are one-shot by the guards. The melee guards are especially potent since they can cleave down three at once.

However, the guards can be pulled off the path of the DBs long enough for the DBs to pass through. But if you slip up even a little, a single attack can take out half your DBs. As a result, the single biggest deciding factor in whether your DBs break the inner gate is execution of PvE tactics.

No Need for More Supply
If you corral the guard NPCs properly, your initial wave of DBs (between 5 and 10) can break through your opponents’ inner gate. Unless you completely fail at PvE, you’ll never need more offensive NPCs. That means no reason to ever visit the supply depot after the first 15 seconds of the game. This negates what was intended to be a crucial feature of the map intended to promote PvP combat.

Race Instead of Competition
With re-supply being unimportant and manipulation of NPC guards being the deciding factor, the game mode turns into a PvE race. Execute poorly and you lose unless your opponents also fail. Defending with players only serve to slightly delay breaking through a gate or putting damage onto the lord.

The most effective thing that a defending player can do is prevent opponents from corralling the NPC guards. The second most effective thing is to instant-res the lord in order to buy time for their team’s offense.

Little Chance for a Comeback
If you happen to have poor execution, there’s no way to recover from it on your own. If you defend your lord, it still eventually dies. Even wiping the opposing team in your lord room doesn’t buy enough time for your team to run across the map and kill their lord. Your opponents will resurrect and just rush your lord again, which is likely at low HP already.

Even in a match where both sides fail the initial DB push, the mist heroes are inconsequential. They can be killed before doing any significant damage to a gate or lord and don’t do anything else along the way.

PvE races that depend on out-smarting a few NPCs won’t go over well in a PvP mode. Once PUG groups settle on some variant of rushing with DBs at the start and have some minimal coordination, games will have become who can PvE best, not who can PvP best. What can be done to change it? Here are some of my ideas:

Lower Doorbreaker HP
Players should be able to kill DBs faster. As a result, there is less need for NPC guards to kill them and gives defending groups an actual chance to stop DB trains.

Guard NPCs Don’t Doorbreakers
It’s already been shown that the current NPCs between the two gates can be easily out-smarted. A small goof in NPC management that should not be the difference between success and failure. The purpose of the guards should be to prevent attacking NPCs from getting through gates quickly without enough help, and they can do that without instantly killing DBs. This change combined with the previous one would put far less emphasis on defending NPCs.

Doorbreakers Attack Once and Die
Suicide Skritt bombers (or to be animal-friendly, they toss their bomb and run away). Their damage would have to be increased (20-25% of gate HP probably compared to current 12.5% or 1/8). The aim here is three-fold. first, You don’t have to stop all the DBs in order to ruin your enemies’ plan or simply slow them down. Second, the push with 5 initial supply of DBs could actually be stopped from getting through the first gate and would be incapable of getting through the second. A slightly delayed 10 supply DB push could be easily stopped from breaching the second gate. This slows down the PvE race and makes the supply depot actually important. Third, it creates a more distinct trade-off with archers. Archers will do more damage if left alone and can hit the next gate or lord, whereas DBs would be to break a heavy defense or to take a quick risk.

Mist Hero’s “Elite” Death-Touches a Gate
The elite would have its current effect on the lord, but also a cooldown to prevent the hero from going through both gates or a gate and hurting the lord before it reasonably would be killed. This would make the mist hero more important and a bigger priority. It could be used to break a turtle team or as a way to leap-frog ahead in the PvE race.

Archers are pretty useless.

Players kill guards much faster and once the guards are gone, archers have no purpose. They also tend to wander too much from their lane, which delays them getting to the enemy base. In lord room fights, the miscellaneous NPCs die quickly to cleave and AoE so again the archers have little purpose.

kdaddy.5431:

I honestly cant help but chuckle at people who think this is better then conquest.

After this beta, the stronghold fanboyism will decrease significantly.

The biggest problems with stronghold are:
1. Stronghold snowballs pretty hard. If you screw up pulling guards away from doorbreakers, your offense push fails. If your opponents’ pull the guards successfully, they’re through the second gate and will likely win. There’s no way to come back from that.
2. Focus is too heavily on the NPCs. It’s all about killing/defending the doorbreakers and aggroing guards away from them. The players are an obstacle to focusing on NPCs, but unless you’re a full glass build, you wait until you’re through both doors to deal with players.

In contrast, conquest by its very design gives the team with more nodes a disadvantage by having to spread thinner in order to hold them. It’s a natural comeback mechanic, not a forced one. The few NPCs in conquest are only the focus for a short time.

echo.2053:

Exedore.6320:

Mesmer
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

oh I missed this gem lol – guys i think this skill should be nerfed because its highly telegraphed with a slow moving projectile, theres just no chance of my DODGING it so all I can do is block but its unblockable and i think its unfair pouty face

Give me a reason it shouldn’t be unblockable like practically every other damaging ability instead of crying that you’d no longer be able to spam it into blocks and not be punished for it.

Besides phoenix (which I also said to change), the only other naturally unblockable skills are ground-effect spells, interrupts, or boon steals. Making Mirror Blade blockable gives it consistency within the game. Why should a dodge or evade work, but a block shouldn’t?

Rym.1469:

The problem is, without Embrace the Pain, Warrior really struggles hard to keep any adrenaline. If Warrior was allowed to strike as many hits on any profession as on Necromancer, there would be no problem. But try getting adrenaline on S/D Thief, Mesmer or Engineer.

I’ll definitely agree that what you’ve pointed out is a problem. However, leaving Embrace the Pain as part of Cleansing Ire isn’t a good solution.

Jekkt.6045:

elemental attunement changes suggested by him are horrible, would destroy most of the non d/d builds as they heavily rely on that protection.

I’d like to see your reasoning.

d/f and d/d are the builds which rely heavily on the long protection duration because they’re in close combat often. Focus in the d/f build still gives it strong sustain even with less protection duration. Scepter and staff builds rely more on kiting and positioning to survive than taking hits for an extended time, so they won’t see a huge impact from slightly lower protection durations on earth swap.

why does mesmer need a nerf?

These weren’t major nerfs. The change I proposed to Halting Strike is in line with toning down other procs.

Shatter mesmer is fairly strong currently, but kept in check by thief. In toning down thief burst through reduced sigil damage and providing better stat selection, mesmer won’t be nearly as vulnerable to thief and will see wider play.

doom counters celestial, that’s why it’s used, why would you reduce the duration, even if it hits squishies too but that’s just a bonus.

The builds which predominately use Sigil of Doom are the celestial builds. Damage builds typically don’t use the sigil because they won’t last in drawn-out fights against a sustain build anyway. So by your reasoning, celestial builds are keeping celestial builds in check. They can do that without Sigil of Doom, which hurts other sustain builds and is a another obstacle for damage builds.

Also, keeping poison access restricted to professions abilities creates a more varied PvP environment; if poison is so powerful, a build which can apply it often becomes more enticing when compared to builds which can’t apply poison at all.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

cleansing ire is also working as intended, already balanced, there is no need to remove “embrace the pain” from cleansing ire.

Cleansing Ire has been a problem since it was introduced and still is. The condition clear it provides is one of the strongest in the game.

The key problem with Cleansing Ire is that it allows condition clear regardless of how well the warrior is playing because of the “Embrace the Pain” (gain adrenaline when hit) component. That component also keeps Adrenal Health (regenerate health based on adrenaline level) going strong. By removing the Embrace the Pain component, defensive builds have to land attacks in order to keep clearing conditions at a high rate. At the same time, this change also reduces their use of burst abilities, which provide a lot of damage.

Offensive builds won’t be restricted as much, because they’re generating adrenaline from attacks. This also makes choices more relevant between fast attack / multi-attack weapons, slow single attack weapons, and abilities which grant additional adrenaline.

If I remember correctly, you go into the cave. You jump on a box then onto the structure for the campfire then you can jump onto the ledge. Eurantien did it in the WTS qualifiers.

Disagree with Phantaram’s list. Why change stuff that’s only recently become popular despite being in the game for years? Instead, address stuff that’s continually been in the top builds.

The way I look at it, the “meta” tier builds are a tad too good and need to be toned down, rather than many other builds brought up. I focused on those and proc damage, especially the unavoidable kind.

General
- Sigil of Air, Fire, Blood, Leeching all reduced in damage by about 15%.
- Sigil of Geomancy reduced to 2 stacks at 8sec duration.
- Sigil of Doom poison application reduced to 3sec duration.
Damage and other effects should come from the profession and build choices, not from sigil procs, which are mostly unavoidable or difficult to predict.
- Sigil of Energy changed to grant Vigor for 8sec.
The instant dodge is too good. Intent is that it helps builds with limited vigor more than builds with a lot of vigor already.
- Sigil of Intelligence changed to grant Fury for 3sec on weapon swap.
Too hard to balance the guaranteed crit across all builds; effects like this should be traits or skills. Some Fury is beneficial, but not overwhelming.
- Rune of Nightmare disabled in PvP
The semi-random CC effect isn’t healthy for skill-based gameplay.
- Amulet stats split across multiple items.
Better stat customization is needed. Current selections are either too squishy or have too much defense and not enough offense for many builds.

Elementalist
- Elemental Attunement protection duration reduced to 3sec.
- Drake’s Breath animation now shows the correct range.
I don’t play ele, so can’t say much more. The d/d cele build is strong in 1v1 sustain, but similar variations aren’t too powerful. Not sure which knob to turn.
- Phoenix no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

Engineer
- Incendiary Powder reduced to 1sec of burning (10sec ICD) on rifle and pistol crits. Swapped to Adept tier.
Incendiary Powder is a huge amount of damage from engineers in sustained fights and it’s completely unavoidable. Overall damage was reduced. Proc change prevents grenade kit from easily applying it at long range.
- Accelerant-Packed Turrets swapped to Master tier.
Hinders a turret engi’s ability to control a node. Taking this trait now means giving up either increased turret damage or boons on turrets.
- Transmute no longer affects CC and movement condis. ICD reduced to 10 seconds.
Engis randomly avoiding CC is bad for skill-based gameplay.
- Slick Shoes duration reduced to 2sec. Puddle duration unchanged.
The constant knock down is from being ringed with puddles, not being hit by a single puddle multiple times.

Guardian
- Selfless Daring 50% PvP-only nerf removed.
Reverts an early over-reaction to bunker guardian. Sigil of Energy change also factors in.
- Glacial Heart re-worked. 100% proc on Mighty Blow. 1.5sec chill but significantly reduced damage.
- Smite Condition damage with conditions reduced to be +50% of the damage without conditions.
- Monk’s Focus reduced to 1300 (0.5) heal and grants regeneration for 2sec.
Medi guard instant damage is extremely high, so reduce it somewhat, but increase utility as a trade-off. Total healing with full damage stats reduced slightly and changed to be less up-front.

Mesmer
- Halting Strike unable to crit
Cap burst potential of stack-able instant damage.
- Mirror Blade no longer unblockable
High damage attacks should be blockable.

Necromancer
- Mark of Blood +1 bleed stacks in PvP
- Grasping Dead +1 bleed stacks in PvP
Undo some of the nerfs from the Dhuumfire era. With sigils nerfs, this will keep necro bleeds at roughly the same power.
- Chill of Death capped at 2 boons and damage reduced by 50%
The proc is far too strong currently.

Ranger
- Rapid Fire duration and number of shots reduced slightly.
One dodge should avoid a larger chunk of the damage
- Point Blank Shot base ranged reduced to 600
- Eagle Eye grants a 25% increase to range instead of a fixed 300 units.
A 1200 range knockback, which is nearly unavoidable, is too good with such strong follow-up. Effective range of this skill reduced while not affecting the rest of longbow.

Thief
- Infiltrator’s Arrow increased in cost or lowered in range slightly.
Thief mobility for back-caps is a little too good, to the point where no one can compete.
Thief burst will be toned down by sigil changes and allowing formerly full glass professions to have some defense through amulet changes.

Warrior
- Combustive Shot now pulses at 2sec intervals with 2sec of burning applied each tick.
The condi damage and area control granted by this skill is too strong repeated combos are too easy.
- Cleansing Ire no longer grants adrenaline when hit.
Kiting or keeping a warrior locked down can now reduce their damage slightly and condition clear.

I’d be fine with returning the bleed stacks to Mark of Blood and Grasping Dead if you nerf Sigil of Geomancy and change Nightmare Runes.

Corrupt Boon and Putrid Mark changes are fine, though you could argue that Putrid Mark should still affect allies with a cap. Weakening Shroud is an Adept trait, so it shouldn’t be too powerful.

It’s hard to say one way or the other about Terror.

In game development, any game or feature which isn’t yet released is the best thing ever and will render all existing similar games/features irrelevant. Until it’s released that is…

Play stronghold for a week and then see how it compares to conquest.

No. Because the match would suck skill-wise anyway.

Couple problems with it

1. Strong against players who don’t coordinate and rotate well. You can easily finish off a turret engi 2v1 and move on or ambush them off a point and force them into a choice of losing a lot of HP or dropping turrets off-point. If they do the latter, you just disengage.
2. Little skill required. Someone with no prior experience can play it and be extremely effective in low and medium skill matches.

I guess we’re turning this into another thread about blind hatred of the celestial amulet…

Nathaniel.4905:

Cele is OP. 3 out of 5 builds per MetaBattle use it, which means it is being used in tournies.

Correlation != Causation. You see these builds often because they are strong. You still haven’t addressed the question of whether they are strong because of the celestial amulet or because of the build itself.

You also see a lot of the builds on the “great” list of metabattle in tournaments. They’re almost there, but being held back for some reason or another. Cele is used in 6/16 of the meta+great group. And even then, it’s still used only by three professions (engineer, ele, warrior).

Celestial amulet is fine; certain builds which use it are a little too good. The common theme of all those builds are

1. A way to compensate for the lower power value on celestial. Cele rifle goes 6 points into their power line. Warrior and Elementalist have multiple blast finishers to use with fire fields.
2. Easy access to generous amounts of burning applications and other conditions to use as damage or cover conditions.

The casual player uses it, and with some lucky button mashing, they are now owning. The trade off is nil, and the sustain it gives is stupid.

So what about medi guard and turret engi? Those two builds are far more friendly to new players and button mashing than d/d ele, celel rifle engi, and shoutbow warrior. By your logic, we should nerf zerker too and every amulet turret engis can possibly use.

Again, it’s a problem with the professions, not the stats they choose.

Cele staff elementalist is an example of a celestial build that isn’t considered to be OP by most. They have good defense – enough to not die 1v1 and survive for a while in a 1v2. However, they usually can’t kill anything by themselves either – at least not quickly. Funny thing is, they use a very similar set up to d/d ele other than weapons and a couple traits.

There are no melee professions. And none of the professions are forced into ranged weapons. It just so happens that for a lot of builds, ranged weapons provide the best complement to melee weapons. Would you consider d/d elemenalist a melee build?

Don’t use sword #3 on guardian for damage. The DPS difference between guardian sword #3 and the auto-attack chain is negligible.