Guild Wars 2

Brockolosso.8316:

I am totally for it, the removal itself was stupid since the devs were only bypassing balance changes with it…

Except that those balance problems still exist.

If you got placed in mid-high gold and finished low platinum last year, the system did work correctly; the soft-reset screws up ratings and prevents you from placing as high as you were last season. Basically because the people you’re playing against are also lower in rating due to the soft reset, the system places you based on those ratings. IMO soft reset should be removed or be less extreme (e.g. (2*rating + 1200)/3)

DCs during placement matches throwing off the result, especially in your first few is a different issue which needs to be addressed.

Your rating is actually made up of a rating, rating deviation, and rating volatility. The latter two increase when the season is reset and cause larger swings in rating. Eventually they’ll settle.

Jski.6180:

So is this spvp only or for every thing?

PvP only right now.

What division were you in last season? If you ended up in the same place, then the system is working.

Given that you’re placed properly, then seeing a few blow-out matches during placement makes sense. There’s a soft reset of matchmaking rating (MMR) at the start of the season where your rating is brought closer to the average. You likely ran into blow-out matches during placement because your initial MMR was too high due to the soft reset.

When we had Solo Queue and Team Queue (1-5 player groups), solo queue had horrible queue times, subpar matches (from low population) and was driven by “solo queue hero” mentality. Everyone who wanted to play a team game queue into team queue, regardless of group size. So ANet just ditched solo queue.

In S1-S4 people whined about constantly being stomped by premades (which wasn’t true in the least), so ANet caved and the whiners decided on solo queue. Now we have a bunch of solo queue heroes and the PvP population is dying.

This is why design-by-poll is bad.

Fashion Mage.3712:

This is gonna come off as offensive, but there’s really no other way to say it: Have you guys considered balancing the game instead of just removing content for no apparent reason?

PvP team is different from profession balance team.

The PvP is trying to reduce overall damage by removing sigils which are too strong. They’re also culling useless or near useless sigils. If they instead kept overpowered sigils at reduced numbers, they would barely be useful – like a sigil of air which does 200 damage or less.

@Ithilwen

Your argument makes no sense and is factually inaccurate.

First, OW is a PC game as well. The character design is the core of the game and had nothing to do it also being on consoles. OW is essentially an iteration of Team Fortress, which has been around for two decades on PCs.

Second, HoT is what dumbed down classes and reduced variety, not balance. HoT elite spec power creep is the opposite of healthy balance. Most HoT elite specs are designed with a specific playstyle in mind, so it’s not surprising that when those elite specs are far better than any core spec, those are the only playstyles which remain.

Third, if you eliminate or reduce class stacking without proper balancing, whiners will just find a new mantra such as, “Our team’s DH sucks, that’s why we lost,” which leads to more toxic teams, “Terrible people like you are why I can’t play the class I want.”

Restricting profession on teams is a bad solution to solving balance.

Evan Lesh.3295:

4 Escape was changed from only cleansing immobilize because it felt weak, but perhaps it could do something like only cleanse cripple/chill?

How about this: Remove immobilize, but not chill or cripple. Give 2s of super speed. The superspeed will temporarily counteract cripple and chill’s movement speed deficit instead of completely negating them.

The downside is that if you use escape when not impaired, superspeed may be too strong.

Class stacking is not a problem. Balance is the problem.

If you didn’t have a handful of easy to play builds which perform exceptionally well at most skill levels (DH being the poster child), you wouldn’t see professions being stacked to the degree that they currently are.

OP’s comparison to OW is full of crap. In OW, you are loaded into the game and select your heroes from there. Each hero has a role and a relatively simple kit. In GW2, you load into the game with your character and build and there are no set roles. Characters have large kits of weapons, abilities, traits, and stats.

Loving the continued developer feedback.

General
Everyone critiquing these sigil changes needs to realize ANet’s target damage increase metric. If it’s fairly reliable, it’s a 5% increase overall. If it has ramp-up or is less reliable, it can be slightly higher than 5%. If it’s very reliable or in a small window, the average bonus over time is much less than 5%. This is especially true with on-swap sigils, since weapon swap is often accompanied by a damage burst.

On Hit

Frailty
At best you get 5 vulnerability (5% damage). Considering it’s unlikely you’ll get to 5 stacks in PvP, this is worse than some of the static damage sigils. As a sustained damage sigil with a ramp-up, this should allow you to get over 5% increased damage if you can keep it proc’ing on CD. Increase the maximum stack by either increasing duration, lowering CD, or raising the stacks to 2 and increasing the CD slightly.

Generosity
Remove this. The transfer is too random because condi and boon removal is random. Most of the time it will be terrible, but on the odd chance it transfers a huge burn stack, your melt your opponent.

Nullification
Suggest removing. Boon removal should be restricted to profession abilities.

Strength
I think this balancing is about right. I think 3 might is around 5% damage, so the maximum damage potential is worth the ramp-up and risk of not being able to proc on-cooldown.

On Swap

Battle
I think it’s about right, but might need 1 more stack or slightly longer duration. The damage bonus is in a small window, so you’re more likely to get full advantage from it.

Doom
Remove. The healing debuff of poison is potent and should be limited to profession mechanics. If you want conditions on-swap, apply use something without such a powerful secondary effect.

Exposure
I think it’s fine. Maybe 1 more stack. It’s guaranteed 5% damage increase in what is likely to be a burst window.

Revelation
Not sure if this will be really strong or a complete bust like other reveal skills and traits. I’d say put it in and monitor it closely between seasons. Remove before season starts if it’s too strong.

Greater Nullification
Remove. Same reason as Sigil of Nullification.

+ Renewal
Suggest adding this for support builds. It’s area healing and not extremely strong for personal sustain.

Passive

Separation
Remove or lower the damage bonus. Too reliable for builds which nuke from range. Point-Blank Shot into Rapid Fire being a prime example.

Paralyzation
Agree with other posters. Change name to Impact.
The problem with “stun” is that it only applies to “stun”. Not knockdown, knockback, launch, etc. This sigil should affect all these effects and be balanced as such.

Smoldering
Burning is a strong condition compared to others, and builds which use burning tend to stack it in bursts. The duration bonus may need to be less compared to Sigil of Agony.

TalleFjanten.7159:

Why is this still a thing, just seperate them already. I know pvp is dead and that teamq queues would take hours but deal with it and soloq like normal people.

Yes please do. That way, solo queue can die out after a couple months like when they were split in the past.

Chase.8415:

Did you even read my post?

The issue is I feel trapped into playing one class because of the account based MMR.

Yes. You’re complaining that people don’t want to swap to fix team comps. You assume that’s because they’re not equally skilled at another profession. You also assume that skill differential between professions is huge.

So your argument is already on weak footing. But here’s where your argument falls apart: Let’s say there was profession locking and profession-based MMR and you played something else. Then you get a team with a bad comp. You’re back to the original problem, except now no one can switch to make the comp better. THAT is why people came to their senses and voted “no”.

• Season starts with a soft reset (rating + 1200) / 2
• The season just started. Many people are still doing placement matches

Profession-specific MMR would not solve this problem. Adding a matchmaking factor for unique professions would not solve this problem.

The negative consequences for profession locking were real and noticeable. The positive benefits were vastly overstated and unlikely to ever become real.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

why remove healing sigils ?

sigil of blood
sigil of water

Blood was extra damage and also a noticeable amount of healing for DPS builds. If it did come back, the damage and healing would need to be much less, to the point where it was barely noticeable.

Not going to focus on numbers as much as effect.

Take Another Look

Doom The healing reduction from poison can be strong for sustain builds which don’t normally have it. I’d argue for removing it.

Geomancy Still seems too strong, since it’s applying all its damage in that 5s window. Maybe make it like Intelligence and have each of the next 3 attacks inflict one bleed?

Stagnation Basically the same thing as Hydromancy.

Nullification Removing a single boon has a heavy RNG element. Get the might stacks and it’s amazing. Get regen or retaliation and it’s not that great. Boon removal is probably best left to profession skills.

Possible Additions

Renewal or Water It would be nice to have another support sigil in the mix.

Have to say, I really appreciate ANet devs previewing changes along with explanation of the philosophy behind changes. As well as responding to feedback. It’s really refreshing and hope it continues.

Just to clarify, the list in the original post are the only options once this change goes through?

draxynnic.3719:

From my perspective, though, you’re essentially attacking a strawman too.

Not in the least. When stronghold was played with even moderately organized teams, the best approach by far was just to full-on push with doorbreakers. Defenders were unable to kill the DBs in time when the attacking team was all there with them.

So the argument that defense works and it’s not a PvE race ignores the reality of the game mode. If stronghold was in ranked, players would take the most efficient route to winning, which factors in the least time/effort. PvE race is the outcome.

The idea that stronghold is incredibly diverse with many roles is only true when it’s played by people who have no inclination to actually win, i.e. casual players.

I’d rather have the old Khylo over the new one. The only camera issues were in the ramps on the inside. They could have adjusted those without completely re-working the entire tower.

And the “jump puzzle” changes took it too far in the easy direction; they need to take longer to navigate.

@Reaper Alim.4176

Nice strawman. Actually quite a few of them.

Competitive != money tournament. And Conquest actually did fairly well. The 5k viewers were for weekly tournaments; finals pulled in far more. Conquest was on the rise until HoT’s awful balance and power creep destroyed everything – not just PvP.

You’re just a stronghold fanboy. You view it through the lens of what you want it to be, not what design flaws led it to become: a PvE race. This is PvP, not player ignores players. You even admit to one of many major flaws in stronghold.

You then proceed to blame the matchmaker for Conquest being random and luck-based. When in reality, players have a lot of control over their comps and working together. There are a few bad eggs which can’t work together and spoil games, but those aren’t enough to negate the rating. In fact, the rating system is fairly accurate.

And I actually wouldn’t mind stronghold, even in competitive, if it was fixed such that it wasn’t a PvE race. But let’s face it, that’s never going to happen. It’s another half-finished project.

vesica tempestas.1563:

i was replying to the poster above who thinks Stronghold is PVE. I think Conquest is good, and stronghold offers a change of pace and strategy.

If you want to win, you play stronghold as a PvE race and ignore other players. You don’t have to kill players ever in order to win.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’ve seen it in matches, repeatedly. In a number of separate matches, I’ve encountered a player with 25 stacks of bloodlust. this makes them devastating to fight.

Perhaps this is a hack, I don’t honestly know. I have seen it in matches though.

No, you just don’t pay attention. Stacking on-kill sigils give 5 stacks per kill in PvP. So if you’re good at getting a kill and running away (like a thief), you can maintain 25 stacks fairly well in a match where you’re winning.

The problem is that if your side isn’t doing so well, you’re not getting kills and the sigil is near useless.

Stronghold is for casuals. Not competitive players. Accept it.

Conquest is great. Stronghold is the crap PvE race mode.

PaladinVII.1647:

2. Post a preview of changes before releasing them. Allow time for the community to digest the preview and respond.

100x this!

In the past, giving the community a few weeks preview allowed for constructive feedback and a better overall game.

When would these changes take effect: before, during, or after Season6?

“On Kill” Sigils
Agree with removal. The “useless or snowball” argument covers it.

Geomancy
I don’t mind the design as much as the balancing. It’s weak for non-condi builds, but too strong for heavy condi builds. Disabling it and re-balancing Sigil of Earth is a better choice.

Hydromancy
There’s two parts to this: CC and damage. CC is useful for builds which lack it, but not overly strong. Still, it could be argued that sigils shouldn’t give new effects to a build. Direct damage in addition has always been excessive. Worth noting that this is the only sigil which applies any type of control effect.

“On Critical” Sigils
Mixed thoughts on this. If reducing the strength of sigils is a concern, then all the suggestions so far just increase it. The effect would need reduced or cooldown increased in order to compensate.

Using Sigil of Air (50% chance, 3s cooldown) as an example, and assuming a 0.75s attack time average and all attacks land, I calculate a 16% damage increase in the sigil over time. You’d have to bump the sigil cooldown to 3.5s in order to keep damage over time the same.

I disagree with making the on-crit effect tied to a weapon swap instead. It makes warriors, necromancers, engineers, and elementalists (less time between swaps) more powerful than every other profession. Further, not every build swaps weapons on cooldown, which would weaken sigils for them.

Other
A few other sigils to consider:

• Doom: (poison 8s on next attack after swap) Though not a problem now, it was in pre-HoT. d/d ele used it to give the healing debuff aspect of poison to their kit, which doesn’t have it. This created a problem because d/d ele relied on out-lasting opponents and a healing debuff helped a lot.
• Nullification: (remove boon on crit 5s CD) Though not powerful now, changing how on-crit works could make this a little too strong. And with how boon removal works, there’s a lot of RNG. Boon removal should be limited to profession skills.
• Generosity: (transfer condition on crit 9s CD) condition transfer should be limited to profession skills.

Soft

/15chars

Changing amulets/runes/sigils will not help PvP balance in the least. Meta is still overpowered HoT elite specs and has been since HoT. The only changes in the meta happen when ANet nerfs those meta specs.

vier.1327:

Why not?

1. In the post-HoT incarnation, it had way too many total stats. If it did come back, the total stats would need reduced considerably. Before the trait re-work, trait lines had stats and amulets had less. Celestial was a percentage of those amulets. When stats were removed from trait lines, celestial maintained its percentage of the new higher stats. So celestial gained way more stats than non-celestial.

2. Pre-HoT, the issue was a handful of skills which were too strong.

3. Most forum posters don’t understand #1 and #2. They blame celestial amulet for their losses and troubles in PvP. And ANet tends to listen to people who shout really loud, even if there’s no logic to back them up.

Same as last season.

DH didn’t change much, still going be the faceroll build for most skill levels. Solo/duo restriction is still around, so expect continued toxicity and less teamwork.

The problem is that Spirit Watch is a terrible map. Voting for Spirit Watch in order to get achievements is like intentionally failing PvE events because there’s an achievement or item linked to failure.

Xillllix.3485:

With GW2 we have no clue what’s coming up: The balance team seems worried about DPS meter races and meaningless numbers instead of the gameplay itself.

This is the main problem with the profession design (balance) team. There’s no outline of problem areas, targeted areas, etc. when they start an update cycle. Further, they seem to not care or understand how elite specs have ruined gameplay with ridiculous levels of defense and offense in one package.

Making an online game into a 2D or 3D fighter is one of the dumbest moves any developer could ever make.

A large part of what makes 2D and 3D fighting games strong on consoles/arcade is the frame-level timing of abilities and tells. When players easily have 300ms or more round-trip, that aspect of the game dies.

Which brings us back to: damage is not the problem in PvP – it’s utility.

If you increase the damage on Zeal, it’s still not worth it. In order to compete, it needs utility like snares, CC, survival, etc. And if it gets that strong, DH’s will swap Valor for it.

Yes, zeal needs work, but dragonhunter needs toned down at the same time.

1. Release HoT.
2. Vault doens’t work right with quickness; make quickness not affect it.
3. Wait 1 year
4. Make quickness affect Vault.
5. Wait 1 day
6. Realize you never fixed the original problem and remove quickness from Vault.

This is why we’ll never get a decent balance patch.

You can’t fix power creep with more power creep. Just because DH doesn’t use it now doesn’t mean it won’t use it once it’s buffed.

Jourdelune.7456:

@Exedore

1- My post is about a new PVP offering. Not about OP HoT spec. But yes, the MOBA format that 100 millions players love could bring that to our spvp community. To achieve that, you need to offer that. A small download, a F2P fair offering and a great game. We have the last, but not the first two.

This would give MOBA review website a Real PVP game and not a MMORPG offering that tried to do pvp.

2- Top players from the past didn’t help expand the spvp player based. Actually, the spvp community is much more worse than it was in the past.

My point is that you’re not fixing why GW2 PvP has been in decline since HoT. If you don’t fix that, it doesn’t matter how many people you bring in, since most will get frustrated or bored and quit. Nor do you address GW2 PvP having a daunting learning curve to entry.

So first, the problem with GW2 PvP since HoT. The HoT elite specs have introduced power creep, but the bigger problem is that that power creep has really dumbed down the game. Skill has been replaced by spam because you now need to make many mistakes in order to be punished instead of just one. This is why so many players, including ESL-level players, quit.

Second, there’s a lot to learn about GW2 PvP when you’re new. That can be overwhelming for a new player. In a MOBA, you have characters with fix abilities and roles. It’s very clear what each does or is supposed to do. In GW2, you have so much customization which players have to shift through before even joining a match. But how can they know what’s good or bad without playing a lot? So on top of being completely new, you may be setting yourself up for failure by making a bad build or playing a good build in the wrong way.

To summarize, the two big things GW2 PvP lacks: healthy balance and ease of entry. Download size only matters for a few countries where the game size would put a dent in download caps.

choovanski.5462:

i have never understood the issue with easy to play classes/characters that are easily counterable at a certain skill level.

i feel like they just grind people’s gears because they feel that they have more skill so they somehow deserve to win, even though they are losing. honestly, as far as im concerned you don’t have enough skill to win if you lose, so it’s not unfair. it’s just bruised ego.

If developers had attitudes like that, all PvP games would die in a couple months.

At all skill levels, winning or losing needs to be primarily driven by skill; a handful of easy to play builds can’t be allowed to dominate. If low and moderate skill players are up against a brick wall, it’s hard for them to improve. They get frustrated and quit, or they play the ez-mode build, and get bored.

Also remember that many casual players don’t have hours to devote to playing the game; improvement will be gradual. And some will never be top tier.

So if the top end of the PvP playerbase has basically quit, what makes you think any new ones will want to try the game or stay?

DH has two problems:
1. The skill ceiling is too low. If you’re skilled, you can easily beat it.
2. The skill floor is too low. At low and mid skill levels, you can spam buttons and perform exceptionally well as a DH.

The complaints are coming from #2. It’s not a problem that should be ignored. The same can be said about warrior to a slightly lesser extent.

You realize that if you make a core spec really strong, the elite specs will find a way to incorporate it. Either all core specs have to be the same level as elites, which leads to immense power increases, or – the easier and cleaner option – the elite specs have to be brought down to the core spec level. A third option is to take 1 or 2 of the more powerful core specs and make them elite specs. That mutual exclusion indirectly nerfs elite specs.

You specific changes favor brain-dead power creep – like what elite specs are – instead of fixing what’s actually wrong.

Using greatsword as an example:

• Whirling Wrath’s damage is fine with the buff and the speed reduction means you can’t spam it and win. The problem with Whirling Wrath is the miniscule projectile damage which destroys you on retaliation and other similar effects. Just remove that aspect.
• Leap of Faith is fine. The game doesn’t need more evade, especially on a profession which has good sustain. It already has a blind on the end.
• Symbol of Wrath is not fine. The first problem is that it’s static and really easy to avoid. The second problem is that retaliation is only situationally useful.
• Binding Blades is fine. The cast time allows for it to be dodged, so you have to be careful not to spam it.

The big problem with the Zeal trait line is that it focuses heavily on symbols, but the key trait to make symbols even partly viable in PvP, Writ of Persistence (particularly for the larger symbols), is in another line and overshadowed by better choices. To make zeal fully viable in PvP, you need a trait that makes symbols snare or root opponents or re-work the line to make symbol traits optional (major trait choices).

You realize free accounts can PvP. They just don’t get HoT.

If HoT specs weren’t so brain-dead OP, that setup would be fine.

This was done for PvE raids. Right now, alacrity is highly prized in a group and only chronomancer brings it. The thinking is that if other builds can bring the buff, it creates more variety. But if you put it on a crap set of abilities, it won’t make it playable.

Falan.1839:

Otherwise the balance is better than pre hot, were builds liket Cele Rifle Engi or Cele DD Ele were far dominant than anything in the current Meta. Also, there are no “dead” classes atm which aren’t played at all, while during other metas there was usually at least on class left aside completely.

Rofl, HoT power creep is way worse than the balance issues pre-HoT. The difference between HoT and pre-HoT is how forgiving and spammy the elite specs have become.

You could beat a mediocre cele d/d ele by avoiding the right attacks. Most just spammed them and they had nothing afterwards. Cele rifle engi was carried by a single trait (incendiary powder), which ANet just never nerfed. But if you cleansed IP quickly and the engis didn’t cover it with other conditions, cele rifle engi was also easy to deal with. Against Hambow warriors, you needed to dodge the longbow F5 and just kite or stab through their hammer CC chain.

Warr and scrapper are still going to dominate 1v1 because of their healing, anti-CC, and damage immunities/blocks. Ele will still be the go-to support because of their area damage and healing/cleansing. DH and warr will still carry at low levels with their high block uptime and high healing for having a damage-heavy build. Can’t punish mistakes when your target avoids damage and CC for so long.

This patch gets a D.

It had lots of power creep, did little to address current power creep, and all the damage boosts and cooldown reductions were applied haphazardly.

Good (what kept it from being an F):

• DH trap healing is no longer ridiculous
• DH F1 is now realistically avoidable
• They at least recognized that Adrenal Health is a problem
• Dodge/evade spam thief is recognized as a problem

Bad

• Lowering cooldowns just increases spam and removes the need to make decisions. When cooldowns across the board are lower, you can make up for mistakes by spamming other skills and then your skills are off their shorter CDs.
• In most cases the issue is mechanical, not damage or CD. Guardian GS#2 did need a damage increase, but the big problem with it is the many projectile hits mean you get heavily punished by Retaliation for that insignificant amount of damage. Necro GS#3 didn’t need more damage; it needed more range. Necro GS’s big problem is that you can’t easily catch anything and the weapon’s defenses rely on hitting your target. If GS#3 had bigger range, the life force gain would help that survival and gap closing issue.
• Nothing was done to address the high level of elite spec power creep across the board. I doubt you’ll see non-elite meta builds in the next season.

Ithilwen.1529:

5 man teams make people look and feel better than they are, farming solos. Sorry, I guess that must feel good, but I’m not willing to play punching bag for someone else’s jollies.

This falsity needs to stop being perpetuated. Just because people queue together doesn’t instantly make them any better or more coordinated. Even if they get on voice comm, if they don’t know how to rotate or focus, it won’t help them.

Groups typically get an edge because they balance our their builds and tend to respect their builds’ roles more than a PUG. And those qualities are synonymous with increased skill.

Acrisor.8097:

As players, we voted solo-duo. This boat has shipped away long ago, to never return again.

The previous poll was predicated on it lasting only a season with a subsequent post-season vote on whether to keep it. ANet changed their mind after the fact and I’m sure if people knew this was permanent, the vote tally would’ve been much different.

Basically anything not running an elite spec is fine.

Elite specs are mountains of power creep that make up for multiple mistakes.

Magnito.6187:

It’s indirectly leading to avoiding class stacking tho. People who took 10 seconds to think realized that and voted ‘Yes’.

Maybe in your imagination.

Part of matchmaking is finding matches for people who are in queue longer. It works against the factor that tries to make professions unique per team. Unless you have a large population and profession selections aren’t dramatically skewed, you’ll end up with stacked professions anyway. All you’ve done is make them wait longer for worse matches because the skill rating differential increased over time.

From the huge complaints on the forums, it would seem DH and warr numbers are dramatically skewed. So no, this will not prevent stacking.