Guild Wars 2

Skyhammer is a great map, but it does need some tweaks. I’d rather have it than Spirit Watch in solo queue.

Sachit.9753:

Zeal 5 shouldn’t be changed

Its great for symbol builds and gives free retaliation, a light field and some heal ticks with Writ of the merciful (Honor X)

No, it should be changed. However, you can keep the theme by using a more beneficial symbol and increasing the health percent at which it triggers.

I’m learning to use it. It’s a little extra burst, which helps a lot for staff. They just need to add some kind of timeout for the orb so it resets the chain when the orb flies off into nowhere.

There’s a fine line between too much damage and not enough. If burst is reduced just enough that players can escape before dying, the games can turn into stalemates.

Giving power-damage builds an option for some toughness would help a lot though.

When a single build of a single profession after a buff pushes out multiple builds and professions from the meta-game that were all mostly balanced and viable before, you have to nerf the overpowered profession.

A healthy meta-game allows for varied team make-ups with different strategies. If certain professions can’t fit well into a healthy meta-game, they need to be buffed.

You can’t only do one, but it’s better to first address the handful of professions that complete destroy a previously healthy meta-game.

The amulet stats aren’t the problem. Take away defensive stats and everyone just blows up in a few seconds. That’s not fun for anyone.

No. The last thing we need is for everyone to be a glass cannon.

Split the PvP amulet into two rings to allow more stat customization. And change PvP Knight to be the same combo as PvE Knight. That makes power damage less glass cannon.

Then fix condition damage builds by addressing the following on a case-by-case basis:
1. The strength of condition damage procs, particularly burning on critical hit.
2. How easily conditions can be applied to an individual or group. It shouldn’t be easy to do both.
3. Evaluate the duration, intensity, and possibly DPS of conditions. Cutting off a second of duration on some abilities or one less bleed or confusion stack does a lot to reduce overall damage and prevents condition stacks from quickly turning into a landslide.

Good synopsis and lots of good ideas so far. A couple suggestions:
Zeal
- Spirit weapons need an overall re-work and I wouldn’t bother messing with traits until then. In particular, Eternal Spirit (spirit weapons aren’t destroyed when commanded) is practically mandatory when using a spirit weapon. I would just make Eternal Spirit baseline, but increase the cooldown of the spirit weapon command abilities. Then you can have a trait lower the cooldown on the command ability to bring it back to where it is with Eternal Spirit.
- Zealous Blade healing needs a healing power coefficient. Even something small like 0.01.
- Since Zeal has a secondary stat of condition duration, its traits should take advantage of that somehow. Right now, all it does it give us slightly better up-time for burning to ensure Fiery Wrath is active. But in group fights, you can almost guarantee the target is burning anyway.
- The 5pt trait in zeal is a nice idea, but wrong ability. Change it to Symbol of Faith (regeneration) at say 50% HP and it’s much better. That would even make it worthy of being 15pt or 25pt. It also gives non-symbol weapons help for spec’ing into Zeal.

Valor
- Focus Mind should be removed. Either make it baseline (two of the four meditations are instant already) or combine it with Monk’s Focus.

Other
- I want to see the hammer #1 chain tweaked. That 1 second cast time on the auto-attack makes hammer very cumbersome to use for anything besides CC and blast finisher.

Why does anyone use Azurite for anything? You can get vitality through other stat combos.

ALWAYS use berserker or valkyrie jewels over any other item slot. The jewels give 1% crit damage for 5 stat points. Most other places it’s 10+ per 1% crit damage.

You’ll need to re-do your gear for ascended pieces.

You generally don’t want to go above 2800 armor for survivability. After 2800 armor, vitality gives better returns. You only keep going if you want a tank build.

I would recommend Strength in Numbers in place of Retributive Armor. Even with almost 1900 toughness, you still get less than 100 precision. With Strength in Numbers, you get 150 toughness and you can change some toughness on your gear to pick up precision. It also helps nearby allies, which Retributive Armor doesn’t.

Not sure if Sigil of Force and Sigil of Accuracy stack. Either way, Accuracy isn’t that good unless you have extremely high crit damage. I would go with an on-crit sigil like Fire (AoE) or Air (single target).

You seem to be lacking a lot of boon output to take advantage of Altruistic Healing. AH builds often go for Inspired Virtues (5 points in Virtues line) so that using virtues gives boons, especially the 3 might stacks on VoJ.

I recommend going with Blind Exposure (VI in Radiance) over Signet Mastery and using Shelter as your heal. If you time Shelter properly (takes some getting used to), the damage you block combined with its healing has left you with more HP than the larger heal of Signet of Resolve. As an alternative, Inner Fire (IV in Radiance) is good for WvW or dungeons with lots of burning.

I see no problem with having condition damage in the precision line. Sword and scepter tend to proc passive VoJ most and with VoJ renewal on kills, you can have a high burning up-time without adding to condition duration. 1h weapons also pair well with Torch, which adds to the burning. It’s a decent damage bonus for a secondary stat and fits well in the trait line.

Adding a condition chance on crit for a lower DPS condition won’t change a thing. First, you’d have to replace a minor trait, and I don’t think anyone would give up any of the current minor traits in Radiance. Even if it was a chance for bleed on crit, it’s still not that much damage. You need a weapon that can stack conditions for a condi damage build to work and probably want cover conditions. And pure condition damage builds aren’t common (in terms of quantity of builds) and I’m not sure if they were intended for every professions.

I would say the worst fit for a secondary stat is condition duration in zeal. It helps with keeping burning up for Fiery Wrath, but guardians have few conditions, damaging or not, that last long enough to heavily benefit from condition duration.

One of the biggest limiters to build diversity in sPvP is the small selection of stat combinations on amulets that often put all your eggs in one basket. This immediately weakens many trait combinations and weapon choices and leads to the prevalence of glass cannon DPS.

Issues with Current Implementation
1. Amulets are not varied enough to supplement the stats from traits. Traits and weapon selection should govern how a build plays. Stats should be customizable enough to support that playstyle. The current stat choices on amulets cannot fill in the gaps for the numerous combinations.

Power damage builds are most impacted, so using that as an example, only Berserker and Soldier are widely viable (Valkyrie has limited scope). Unless you went down your toughness line and used toughness runes, you’ll be very squishy with a Berserker amulet. Similarly, a power damage build without precision and critical damage isn’t very threatening. If you don’t go heavily into your precision line with precision runes, you have to pick the Berserker amulet or have mediocre damage with the Soldier amulet.

The lack of customization also limits power-condition hybrids and offense/defense hybrid builds. About the only builds not limited by amulet choices are condition damage builds that use the Rabid prefix. It provides them two offensive stats with a damage one as a primary and a powerful defensive stat.

2. Builds are often extremes of high damage with low survivability. Using the same example as the previous item, the power damage builds often choose heavy damage low defense options over too little offense. And with a good chunk of a team’s players making these choices, everyone dies quickly and kills quickly. The result is much faster paced gameplay.

If all of these builds could pick up maybe 300 more toughness, it could cut incoming direct damage down by 15-20% with a small impact to outgoing damage. It becomes far more difficult for any single player to burst down a target from full in seconds, furthered by the small drop in damage from everyone transitioning to a little defense. The inability for a single player to kill another quickly in turn necessitates team coordination for burst setups, peels, etc.

3. PvE/WvW players are discouraged from doing sPvP. Although it means nothing for those that sPvP regularly, a lot of people I know that PvE and WvW don’t want to play sPvP because they can’t replicate their build in sPvP. Even if their build is bad, it’s still a barrier to entry and them learning a better one.

Suggested Changes
1. Change the PvP Knight combination to Toughness primary. No one uses the current PvP Knight amulet and few use the jewel. In a team-based setting with lots of small group heals, a moderate amount of armor is far more valuable than extremely high HP which can never be replenished except outside of combat. The PvE Knight combination would give power-based builds much needed survivability through armor without dramatically sacrificing their damage.

2. Split the amulet into multiple items This is the biggest roadblock to increasing build variety. Subtract out one more jewel’s worth of stats from the amulet and then split the remaining stats in half and make them rings, each with a jewel slot. This gives you the same total stats as we currently have (well, actually +1 because of rounding), but you can now supplement missing stats better. Each ring would be 337 primary and 247 secondary.

3. Increase the stats on PvP Celestial Amulet. Another un-used combination. If you do the math, the PvE Celestial combination has each stat at about 60% of the secondary stat of a three-stat combination. PvP Celestial Amulet is 50% (the jewel is at 60%). When you spread stats around so much, they all need to be a little higher. Reduce the critical damage on the amulet slightly if needed.

TLDR: Amulets limit build diversity and lead to glass cannons. Split up the stats to allow less extreme builds and fix bad stat combos.

The combo works, but it’s not like most weapon set combinations where you can get away with hitting all the abilities then swapping, repeat. You’ll have to adjust to a playstyle that sticks with one of the two weapons for an extended period of time, usually greatsword. You only swap when the other weapon gives you a clear advantage.

The heavy condition damage amulets aren’t a problem; the professions are. With the latest change to necromancer Dhuumfire, the condition damage is strong, but it’s arguable whether it’s too much.

Balancing condition damage options for professions is difficult. You have to find a balance where they can put on pressure through conditions in the face of condition removal, but not make everyone fall over dead shortly after condition removal has been expended. Part of this is in the conditions applied. Burning and Fear (with Terror) do the most damage per second. Bleeding does the least per stack and because it goes up in intensity, is often the first condition to be cleared. But the rate at which bleeding stacks can be adjusted in balancing. Then consider which conditions you apply to a single target vs. an area.

A good case study would be why grenade engineer was strong before the June 25th patch, but didn’t break the meta-game whereas necromancer after the patch did.

It would certainly open up a lot of warrior builds.

The downside of sword in PvE is that the third attack in the #1 chain is a very narrow attack rather than a wide cone like the first two attacks in the #1 chain. So you have to be aware of that with positioning.

Blind mechanic is fine. Certain abilities that apply blind continually or with too short a cooldown need adjusted.

Retaliation is supposed to punish high frequency attacks. That aspect of it works fine and should not be significantly changed. However, some abilities, especially those that apply retaliation to an area or to nearby allies, need the duration of the boon lowered. Many of the durations are a hold-over from beta when retaliation did less damage per attack but over a longer time.

Blind itself is not a problem. It’s certain abilities that apply blind continually that are a problem. Abilities that only apply blind once are just another form of dodging.

Here’s my unconstructive feedback: All people whining about the necromancer nerfs should shut up and learn to play. If you’re a necromancer and couldn’t tell how broken the dhuumfire condition necromancer build was in PvP and how it was trivializing gameplay, then you’re bad at necromancer. There’s more whining coming from necromancers in the past week than I’ve seen from warriors in the past 6 months when they’ve been in an even worse state in PvP.

If you want to offer constructive feedback, that’s fine. But re-posting memes and other insults toward ANet and non-necromancers across the forums doesn’t help your cause.

Kyzen.7452:

“Upon a Critical hit you will enable your next attack to inflict burning for x seconds, This effect can only trigger once every 10 seconds.”

Once you land a critical hit, an icon will appear much like basilisk venom or Incendiary Ammo allowing your opponents to see this and give them a chance to react & allow you to synergize with your team to use this more effectively.

This goes against the philosophy of playing the game and not the UI.

I’m really looking forward to playing tPvP now. Thanks for the quick turn-around on a sensible short-term fix, ANet.

For the people complaining about the Dhuumfire tweak:
1. This is an interim fix. It was something easy to change that didn’t require significant bug-testing and QA work. Completely re-working the ability is not something that can be done in a day when you consider the development overhead. Changing a number is.
2. This is a significant damage nerf to the popular condition necro builds. Cutting off 3 seconds of burning at 1300 condition damage is a reduction of over 1900 damage every 10 seconds. That can give their target a few extra seconds, which is a lot.
3. ANet is going to further adjust or change Dhuumfire and other aspects of necromancers and other professions in the future. So keep posting issues and suggestions for the future.

Dhuumfire is the main problem. Before the patch where terror existed and all the other conditions existed (save for torment which isn’t that prevalant), necromancer condition damage was strong, but you could cope with it. Now it’s over the top mostly because of Dhuumfire. With condition duration increases from Spite and runes, you get 5 seconds of burning every 10 seconds, which deals 2500-3000 damage for each application. Because of how condition removal works (last applied removed first) and the variety and frequency of conditions applied, the burning rarely gets removed. The bleed stack is often removed, which accounted for a lot of damage pre-patch, but now it’s not nearly as big of a chunk of the total damage because of Dhuumfire.

Short Term
Use a PvP/PvE split on Dhuumfire and make the sPvP version a much shorter duration like 2 seconds. That way it gives a little burst factor and another condition to remove, but doesn’t contribute so much damage so quickly. It also leaves PvE out of the picture.

Long Term
A lot of things need to be addressed with necromancer and a happy medium found between them all.
- Dhuumfire needs to be useful for condition builds, but not overly powerful. It also needs to work for hybrid builds, which seems to have been one of its original goals.
- Staff could use a re-work. A lot of people (not at the top level) just do 2-3-4-5, weapon swap and it works a little too well. While marks are on cooldown, staff feels very boring.
- Weakness should behave consistently (no RNG) for a short duration, like an offensive version of the Protection boon.
- Life force mechanic needs re-evaluated. Pay attention to using death shroud offensively (mostly power builds) and defensively. For example, a heavy damage condition build like the old 30/30/10/0/0 which uses death shroud only defensively should have less access to large amounts of life force so that they remain a glass cannon. More defensive or balanced builds and those which use death shroud for damage can generate life force faster. However, also need to address the start of a match with 0 life force vs. mid and late game with 100% life force.

The way it was introduced was poor. Instead of saying “deals double damage to a moving target”, it should have been “deals damage twice to a moving target”.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The AoE-Stability is what is making the guardian superior to other bunker-speccs. An ele can also provide condition-cleanse, even more heal and shares-boons. However, these 6 seconds of stability are so important, many ppl don’t realize it. It’s 6 seconds during your whole team is not affected by CC. Where we have pulls, fears, knocks etc. this AoE-Stability is a big aspect, why you actually can win a teamfight.

I figured as much. But the other part of the question was whether guardians need to be brought down or other professions brought up to match the capabilities of bunker guardians.

saVdoom.2067:

Off the topic: Does no one find it funny that everyone has already settled that every single competitive team must have a guardian? …

It’s worth looking at why. Are guardians too good at bunker, or do other professions just need improved. What do guardians have, such as plentiful stability, that other bunkers don’t?

The reason “roamers” get so much hate is because many are looking for fights, not trying to contribute to winning WvW.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I think the combat system is better when conditions and boons must be strictly used at the right time, than when you can spam them and fill your UI with icons.

Completely agree. ANet needs to do a pass on all the stronger boons and stronger conditions and adjust durations or possibly the effect.

I rolled a necromancer after the patch and after seeing how powerful they were. I actually like it. I’ve learned a lot from playing it in sPvP, and although a lot of things contribute to the overpowered condition spam, Dhuumfire is by far the biggest contributor.

Although a lot of people point at Terror, an offensive fear is mostly used to guarantee a kill or a huge chunk of damage from an existing condition stack. That means the problem is with the condition stack. And there’s a subtle mechanic at work with Dhuumfire. When you remove conditions, it’s done in a LIFO (last-in, first-out) fashion. Because new bleeds are applied constantly, the bleed stack is almost always the first to go. Prior to the patch, I’m surmising that bleeds were a significant chunk of condition necromancer damage. Therefore, just a little bit of condition removal could reliably knock off the whole stack and make a big dent in the damage of a condition necromancer. Bleeds being removed still happens, but now necros can apply burning, the highest DPS condition, which is quickly buried on the condition stack. Even though the bleeds may be cleared, the burning is still around, giving condition necromancers a huge damage boost. From what I’ve read, condition necromancer damage was in a pretty good spot in sPvP before the patch. Adding an extra 2500-3000 damage on top every 10 seconds broke it.

Fixing Dhuumfire isn’t simple either. Many people feel burning is essential to a condition damage build in sPvP. It’s just too good in its current state. At the same time, the trait is ignored by physical damage and hybrid users. How can you tweak Dhuumfire so that it’s less prevalent in condition builds and occurs more often or for longer durations for dagger and axe? Do you instead tune down the condition application rate of other conditions to compensate?

Quite possibly the dumbest idea yet.

As long as moving in a massive ball is the most effective strategy, people will continue to do that with or without an icon. With your idea, you’ll just have people constantly spamming in map chat “where’s the zerg?”. They get an answer, run to the ball, and it’s the same as previously, but far more annoying because people are clogging up /map and /team.

If you want to stop zerging, you have to make it not the best strategy.

@Bash
Is the amulet supposed to be carrion?

Also, don’t go overboard with it. It’s good in PvP/WvW, but when you go out of your way for it, you’ll hurt yourself too much in other areas.

killahmayne.9518:

Those who think that class viability will change and the meta will change is wrong unless they make some significant changes either to the PvP format, gearing, etc, class balance and AoE spam/conditions. It is just the truth.

Condition spam does need fixed. But increasing the number of viable builds does alter the sPvP meta. If there are a lot of options, then each team composition has strengths and weaknesses. One will become popular, then a new one that capitalizes on the current one’s weaknesses gains favor. The meta shifts over the course of a month or two, and this cycle keeps going. It only stalls when you have certain builds that are undeniably better than any other such as bunker guardian or condi necro/engi.

It won’t affect WvW because of how things stack. But WvW has a whole host of issues, which is why it’s more a casual PvP.

The people asking for deathmatch are a small but vocal minority. If it really was that popular, you’d see a lot more custom arenas dedicated to it. Just like there are only a handful of dueling arenas that have people in them.

A big reason conquest feels boring is lack of incentive to play it properly in hot join. You get more rank points and glory by constantly flipping nodes than by actually holding them and trying to win. The scoring needs to change to promote proper conquest play. Once you do that and improve balance, conquest will have much better replay value by creating more varied matches.

Mace’s main problem is that it’s slow, immobile, and partly reactive. In PvE, this isn’t much of an issue. Just be aware that if you have to chase mobs around a lot, mace won’t work that well. Also, because the third part of the #1 chain only hits a single target and has a comparatively long cast time, the AoE damage isn’t as strong as other weapons.

If you’re building mace/shield, I’d say to go with soldier gear (power/toughness/vitality) with some knights or beserker’s mixed in to get your crit chance up to around 20%. Many NPCs aggro primarily based on high armor, so making mobs come to you makes the mace’s immobility less of a factor. I’ve found that mace works well with 20 in Honor for a symbol build (larger symbols and symbols heal traits), which helps you and the group.

Curo.2483:

Exedore.6320:

I don’t think they can stop AoE from hitting things on top of a wall,

This ties in to my comment about phantasms. It was changed so that phantasms could not hit things they did not have LoS to, so I think it would be possible to stop AoE as well from hitting things they do not have LoS to (they = the casting player).

Phantasms need a target. They blocked that by doing a pathing check. Most AoE is ground target. You target just below the lip of the wall of the AoE curves over. Completely different mechanic.

I like some ideas, disagree with others. These are the ones I disagree with:

Aegis is better as-is. Many professions have noticeable chains with CC and burst abilities. Timing Aegis to counter the key part of that chain fits well as a “skill shot”. Protection is already around for short-term damage reduction.

Protection should remain as-is, though the duration from various abilities needs to be re-evaluated (mostly reduced). It’s meant to negate a short burst of physical damage, but some builds can make it last for a while.

Not sure how the swiftness change would pan out, but it does seem too good right now. In particular, it would make WvW feel bigger without actually making the map bigger.

Bleeding stack limit can’t be raised because of technical issues. It’s probably deep down in their code, so making exceptions for PvE bosses isn’t simple. What really needs to happen with bleed is to re-evaluate the number of stacks versus time. Abilities that stack a lot of bleed could be switched to less stacks but more duration. Or they could make a single bleed do a little more damage, but then scale back the number of stacks and tweak the duration of each, keeping the limit at 25. You would still hit the cap on world bosses, but 5-man content should rarely see it.

For a master level trait, 25 feels about right. Any more and it would be too good when combined with other healing traits. It should definitely scale a little bit with healing power.

ACs need to stay in the game as-is until ANet can globally address how to counter siege up against a wall of a tower or keep and how to counter players on top of walls. ACs are the go-to weapon because they’re the only weapon capable of indirect close-range fire.

It’s too easy to kill siege and its operate that’s not behind a wall or on the back lip of a wall. I don’t think they can stop AoE from hitting things on top of a wall, but a good starting point would be to make Oil and Cannons give their users heavy damage reduction from all sources (at least 50%).

Just a general note: It takes a lot of adjusting going to any non-AH build if you’re used to one, so give it time. AH is good for un-focused builds, but the Valor trait line doesn’t offer anything enticing besides AH for most builds.

I’m using the following right now, though still experimenting:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7g-Bx;0NFF3093RG-90;9;4J9-JJ16-3;329-58-L-V45;1JF04JF046BV
In PvE/WvW, I shift to a better balance between Soldier and Berserker gear and use a different rune set. Also, change Inner Fire to Blind Exposure for PvE. I’m playing around with different weapons right now, since mace is a bit too immobile, looking at staff or hammer right now.

For condition removal (from a PvP/WvW perspective), I find Purging Flames for light condition removal and Absolute Resolution for heavy condition removal works much better than just Pure of Voice in an offensive or balanced build. Pure of Voice doesn’t do well against heavy condition stacking and because you’re often using shouts for the base skill, you can’t take good advantage of the condition removal. Purging Flames also puts up Burning, which helps Fiery Wrath and it’s a Fire combo field. Also, if you exit and re-enter, it can cleanse additional conditions (likewise for applying the burning).

The biggest drawback I’m seeing is the lack of power, which prevents any offensive build. While having a smattering of everything is nice and we can do well with that, not having a focus is a huge drawback. Right now, it’s looking more as an alternative to cleric’s gear setups.

For damage builds, it’s probably best to have a mix of power stats (soldier or berserker probably) and celestial if you’re going to try this.

And worth noting, there’s a celestial amulet in sPvP. You can try it a bit there.

It’s been out for just over a day, far too short for all the “it’s undeniably terrible” posts to hold much merit. It’s different yes, but learn to adapt to it before you completely reject it.

I can agree with temporary removal or delayed use in the tournament rotation until players have some experience with it. Putting a new map, which has added mechanics, into immediate tournament play is just inviting people to come and complain.

The cannon hitting through dodges should stay. The mechanic forces a defender to leave the node or die a quick death. For all the complaints about bunkers, a way to quickly remove them should be welcomed. If the cannon becomes dodge-able then players can just bunker while dodging like on Khylo. The burst damage is also good. It should hurt a lot so that you want to avoid it. However it is currently a little too hard to avoid if you’re fighting someone with CC. I would either shrink the area a little (still keep it larger than a node) or increase the time between the activation and the damage by a second or two. That way, random CC won’t get you a cannon hit, but well-timed or coordinated CC will. I think increasing the time to deal time is the better option since it forces a bunkering player further away. It also serves to reduce the overall rate of fire.

The jump pads seem too plentiful to me. They should add a little difference, but not be extremely pervasive. Keep the ones near nodes, but consider removing the ones between the nodes.

The falling kills are an interesting mechanic. They make positioning and awareness of your surroundings extremely important. Few maps required players to do this, but if you know what your opponents can do and play safe until they use their CC, it’s not too bad. I could constantly knock my friends off the map because they aren’t experienced in PvP. When they spammed knockbacks at me, they rarely knocked me off because I positioned myself correctly. I need to play the map more to draw a more definitive conclusion on the knockbacks. I am worried about fear though. Many knockbacks and pulls are telegraphed. Most sources of fear are instant and can force you further away than a knockback.

The other thing I’m worried about is snowball matches where a slightly stronger team holds 2 nodes and the cannon. The cannon may break up assaults with just one person defending the node, freeing up most of the team to defend the cannon itself. Also, the cannon gives a huge intelligence advantage, giving away your opponents’ movements (though there are some underground routes that may counter this).

Temple of the Silent Storm is a great map. The vertical nature, secondary mechanic, and closer points make not playing center viable. But if you have people sitting on points, you may give up buffs. It’s a great mechanic. One of the reasons it wasn’t used before in player-hosted tournaments was the engineer double heal bug (now fixed). You might see it being hosted in competitive tournaments now.

Aside from bugs on Spirit Watch, it just doesn’t work well as a competitive map. The vertical nature itself isn’t bad, though the center point placement has issues. What breaks it beyond repair for competitive play is the orb running mechanic. There are so many special rules that favor certain professions and certain builds. Leaps/charges work, but teleports don’t, etc. and movement speed boosts are pretty much required and not all professions have good access to them.

I’m still undecided on Skyhammer. The cannon mechanic, including the inability to dodge it, makes it great for forcing a bunker off a point and allowing the point to be neutralized. However, it could also secure victory for the winning team by giving a friendly bunker unparalleled area denial. The death fall mechanic adds another level of skill for when to break the glass and when to use knockbacks, etc. However, it may be a little too plentiful. That’s not hard to adjust by making platforms bigger or removing some of the glass. Also, Fear may be a little too good here, as it’s instant-cast (very hard to avoid) and moves people further compared to most knockbacks. Launch skills (longer knockback and can’t stun break instantly) are usually more telegraphed.

Demon.5082:

I have a question (more for ANet). If every class receives access to the 33% movement boost (or 25 from signets/traits), then why was this mechanic implemented in the first place. They might as well remove it and increase the speed of all classes inherently by 33%. I feel that too many classes have access to switfness/movespeed and instead of giving it to the remaining few, it should be removed from some of the existing classes.

If it’s done right, it’s a trade-off to more DPS and burst or defense. You can either get to all the battles faster or you can do better in the battles. The movement increases are needed for DPS, but not really defenders. Though you bring up a good point, which is that mobility may be too available and some professions need it toned down rather than others having it increased.

Laserbolt.6731:

It’s unfortunate that with so many classes and variety of builds, there are only a handful that are good enough for tPvP.

Is this a consequence of conquest mode? Would other builds be viable if there were different kinds of play?

Maybe they wasted thier time coming up with to much variety, 90% of in useless.

It’s definitely not a result of conquest. If anything, conquest allows for more options. Using the guardian example from the original post, it has the potential to do a lot more than bunker, but it has terrible map mobility which holds it back.

Variety itself isn’t bad, but when you’re developing something this big, lots of things change over time. Something that was good months ago may suck now because other things closely or loosely related changed. And in a crunch to release, you don’t have the time to re-visit everything.

Also, when you’re not sure exactly how PvP will play out, it’s hard to design for it. Using guardian as an example again, they can bunker well because of stability. Was the abundance of stability intended? Is it a good thing for the game? Depending on the answer, you would nerf guardians or give more self-stability to other professions. The only thing that’s certain is that every profession needs access to swiftness or movement boosts that don’t severely compromise their damage potential.

Burst Ability
Okay, if you’re going to compare burst skills to other professions’, it’s really two skills since you have two weapons. And you have some choice in what those skills are, which most other professions don’t have. What I was getting at with the burst ability cooldown is that if adrenaline is the limiting factor and not the cooldown itself, they it has its own unique mechanic. If you can gain adrenaline quickly, you can do two burst skills within a couple seconds of each other. That would make adrenaline generation abilities and traits far more meaningful as a choice.

If you go with 2 or 3 adrenaline abilities that are still bound by a cooldown and not adrenaline regeneration, it’s still just extra ability with a cooldown using your logic. Just like the current burst abilities, some will be always used and some will be mostly ignored.

Meta Game
I still disagree about the arms race with respect to boon hate. Boon hate is not as globally powerful as condition application/removal. But that’s getting off-topic. The point is that when trying to counter a problem, you have to examine the cause. In the case of condition spam, everyone, not just warriors are having trouble with it.

Traits
“<profession> has it already” alone is not enough to justify a trait. Your “Finish Them!” does have potential, and it’s more a problem with PvE targets being giant punching bags than challenges. Your “Last Breath” is still questionable though, as someone already mentioned. Engineers and Warriors play differently, so while it may be okay for them, it may not be for warriors.

Blind and block (the single attack form) are an intentional weakness of slow, high damage weapons. However, blind and block are bad against fast attacks, which is where retaliation shines. In a game intended to be more visual, knowing how weapons work is important. If one can suddenly act differently, though the recipient doesn’t know that, that’s bad design. Adding special rules that needlessly complicate gameplay can kill it. Yes, Signet of Might can make an attack unblockable, but it has a cast time and a tell, and your opponent can tell you’re running signet of might and to be aware of that, so an opponent can adjust to the fact that suddenly one mechanic doesn’t work how it would the other 99% of the time. Using a utility skill for this is also a huge price to pay, often more than a trait.

I don’t like how much unblockable has been spread around either, but for necromancer staff, it was to fix problems with how the ability was triggered. For necro staff, it’s supposed to be an AoE that is passive until someone hits it. But if you cast it on a group of people and one of the people in the AoE was randomly selected as the trigger and blocked it, it did nothing. Necro marks are also not heavy on burst, so making them unblockable is similar to just making them trigger the block on the one person and still go off in the area. Though the fear mark being unblockable is a little silly. I don’t know the reasoning for the thief one.

The biggest question is, why ignore block, but dodge, etc still work? Is there a reason, like necro staff marks, that blocking negates more of the ability than a dodge?

They should at least get rid of 8v8. Scale it back to only 5v5 or 6v6. Hot join still has a purpose in educating very new people as to the layout of the map, but 8v8 promotes bad builds too much. 5v5 or 6v6 (to allow some buffer in leaving/joining) slows the game down quite a bit and is much closer to tournament play. That at least makes it slightly better for developing builds.

Going full tournament is bit too much until they get a better rating system in place and make it visible to players.

Harrier.9380:

Improving the existing F1’s doesn’t adress the current issue of Burst. Think about it, and give me exact definition of Warrior’s unique class mechanic.

I don’t view classes solely by their mechanic, but as a package. I see warrior as a weapon master class with access to a wide variety of non-magical weapons. They have a very direct combat style with an offensive focus – instead of buffing or supporting allies directly, they hinder enemies. In contrast, guardian is more magical and has a more group-centric focus.

I do agree that the adrenaline system could be improved, but I don’t see additional abilities as the best way to do that. Right now, in most builds, it does feel like just another weapon cooldown. The rate at which adrenaline is gained versus spent needs addressed. If you can generate it too fast, it’s another cooldown. Too slow and it feels clunky. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think during earlier beta weekends, burst abilities didn’t have a cooldown and were only limited by adrenaline. That would make for an interesting mechanic.

As for the time needed to create new skills… about 70-80% of the F2/F3 skills I suggested are already in game.

It’s not hard to make a skill, I agree with that. There is some difficulty in implementing them as an F2/F3 skill with a resource system. But the biggest time sink is balancing all these new skills not just within the weapon, but across weapon swaps.

Arms race was already happening for quite a while by the way, Warriors were just left out of it. What I proposed was not to counter a ‘few builds’ but to adapt to the current meta state where mindless ranged condi spam makes winners and meele power builds are free kills.

The condi spam of the current meta is a result of those few builds, mostly necromancer. There was no arms race before and there isn’t one just yet. But player reactions of more condition removal are pointing it in that direction.

Also, take a good look at the spread of the traits I suggested.

Alright then…
New XII – Finish Them! – Deal 20% extra damage when target is below 50% health.
This would be mandatory for PvE. It would have to be nerfed to nothing as a PvE equivalent. I’m concerned about having two drastically different effects. It may also cause issues with secondary mechanic NPCs in sPvP.

Adrenal Health (15p) – Regenerate health each time you gain adrenaline (80-100 per adrenaline strike).
Depending on implementation, it could be hundreds of health a second. The gain adrenaline when hit trait procs left and right from incidental hits and fills up your bar very quickly. If this remains in effect when the bar is full, it’s crazy good. If not, it’s worse than the current.

IX – Cleansing Ire – Also makes meele burst skills immune to blind.
This trait is already stacked and blind is supposed to be that powerful. Address blind spam from other professions instead.

New XII – Last Breath – Become immune to conditions at 25% health.
Is this permanent? Does it affect existing conditions or just new conditions? If it doesn’t do anything to existing conditions, it’s crap. If it’s permanent, it’s too good.

New 15p – Inspiring Presence – Increase power and toughness of nearby allies by 100.
Remember that “allies” includes self. A free, unconditional 200 stat points is pretty huge. Also, how does it stack with the major traits that do this?

XI – Burst Mastery – Burst skills cost less and become unblockable.
Unblockable Eviscerate, that’ll go over well…

I’ve covered the adrenaline-based ones and the anti-condition ones before. Overall, all these changes do are make different extreme glass cannon builds and possibly a very powerful bunker build.

If you really want to open up warrior trait selection, there’s one simple change you can make: Fast Hands (weapon swap cooldown reduced to 5sec) becomes baseline for the profession. Pretty much every build takes it and for good reason.

Godofallu.2935:

Hitting a stunbreaker too early when knocked down puts the stunbreak on cooldown but doesn’t remove the stun/knockdown. This punishes players who have fast reaction times or have been looking for a certain knockdown animation. Please fix this asap.

This isn’t a bug, though I don’t like it. Using a stunbreak in a knockdown, knockback, stun, etc works fine and instantly breaks it. Using it during a launch (formerly blowout) skill does not work until after you stop moving. Launch causes you to bounce along the ground for a long distance, whereas knockback is more direct and shorter distance. It requires players to know the subtle difference and also which professions and which of their abilities have a launch.

There are a lot of things to fix about WvW, but the biggest one is stopping the zerg vs. zerg combat. The game is more about numbers than strategy and tactics. If you give a smaller squad the ability to stop a larger one in the open field, the giant zergs won’t be necessary. Theoretically, the meta would then shift to small (5-10 players) and medium squads (15-25 players), which are much closer to the squad sizes of guilds. That would then bring a lot more people to WvW. Less people in a blob also means less stress on the server, reducing skill lag.

Ballista Re-work
Ballista as an anti-siege weapon is stupid. The siege it’s trying to counter has longer range and has indirect fire (doesn’t require line-of-sight). Instead, it should be anti-personnel against tight groups suitable for the open field.
- Double base damage of #1 and #2.
- Increase base range, and then increase projectile speed slightly to compensate.
- Raise the initial height of the projectile so it can fire over small walls and hills.
- The #1 attack has some width and hits everyone in the path (pierces), even if it misses the selected target. If technically possible, make it useable without a target.
- #2 remains the same, but increased damage.
- #3 changed to use the same new mechanic as #1, but is a knockdown.
- #4 ability (through world XP) is now a recycle option, which returns 10 supply and destroys the ballista.

Traps
These have so much potential to help small squads, but need more options
- “Quicksand trap” that dramatically slows enemies through a pulsing debuff (not a condition). When triggered, the area persists for a brief time (say 30 seconds) and as long as you’re in the area, you’re slowed. This can be used to set up a kill zone for the re-worked ballista and to delay a response to stopping an attack.
- Minefield. When activated, sets off a series of explosions over a short time (say 5 seconds) that deal a lot of damage and bleed and cripple. Basically, if you step on it, you’re going to die or come close to dying. If a big group charges into it as a tight ball, there’ll be a lot of dead bodies. Remember that siege and traps have an AoE cap of 20, not 5.

Rally Mechanics
Limit the number of downed players that can rally from an enemy dying to 2 per enemy. The biggest issue in group combat in GW2 is that you’ll have a bunch of enemies downed and then some random up-level dies and rallies them all, which completely changes the momentum of the battle.

Fort Siege
Fort siege (oil, cannon, mortar) mostly sucks. It seems good on paper, but is awful in practice.
- Almost every tower mortar is in a terrible spot. Half the keep mortars are in terrible spots. If it’s an indirect fire weapon, put it in a spot where it can’t take direct fire from enemy players on the ground. Move them to elevated terrain or add in the large circular sections along walls extending into the fort so that they can be placed further back. Also, don’t put it in a location with obstructions (inner garrison mortars).
- Oil and Cannons are great for damage and at stalling or defeating enemy attacks. Except that anyone trying to use them dies a horrible death in seconds, rendering them next to useless. Anyone using cannons or oil should have constant stability (effect, not a boon like earth elementals) and reduced damage from all sources by at least half. Attackers can no longer suppress the use of these siege items and have to kill them instead before going after a gate. A vigilant defender can now delay an assault by even a large force.

Incentive to attack the leader
The three-way fight is a nice idea, but what often happens is that the winner is decided in a day and the other two servers fight for second. The middle server gets hit by the top trying to maintain the lead and the bottom, trying to move into second. This draws pressure from the leader, which ideally should be the focus of both the second and third place server.
- Similar to out-manned, when one server has a significant score lead (not PPT), attacking the leader gives significantly increased rewards (experience, karma, gold, world XP). It could also scale with how badly you’re being beaten. A 10% margin would give +20% rewards, 15% gives +50%, etc.
- By pulling down the leader and pulling up the other two, the match-up seems closer, which draws more people in and is generally more enjoyable.

Very good synopsis. I’ve played guardian, warrior, and a little bit of mesmer, and the strengths and weaknesses of each are spot-on. I also like the warrior suggestions that don’t make the profession ridiculously powerful.

A lot of these changes aren’t going to happen or are too over-the-top. Additional weapon abilities (your F2 and F3) for each weapon will take far too long to implement and balance. The condition removal and health return is crazy good. Instead, concentrate on fixing the existing ones and especially the utility skills.

I agree that burst abilities should be more compelling. But you don’t need additional abilities for that, just fix the current ones. Bring them all up to the level of Combustive Shot and Earthshaker. The traits that are based off current adrenaline level are a sound concept and should probably be at master level with their old values or slightly lower. The issue with them is that some weapons, such as greatsword, have no reason to ever use the burst ability. If using the burst ability is necessary to get the full benefit of the weapon, the problem goes away. The “bank adrenaline” traits are then beneficial if your burst ability is situational or if you want to throw out some extra damage before using your F1 as part of a damage spike. That adds further gameplay depth to the timing of using your burst ability and also is a consolation if your burst ability misses.

Another issue is that you’re gearing up for an arms race, which destroys PvP in MMOs. Adding extra condition removal, unblockable, condition ignore, etc, in order to counter a few builds completely screws over the less frequent use of those skills by everyone else. So then everyone else needs buffed to compensate and you enter a cycle where the last build to be buffed towers above all others. AoE blinds, especially those that pulse should be examined for their cooldowns and spammability. If you use a blind properly, it should stop or delay a big attack. The same goes for a block. The current condition-based meta needs to have the offending professions adjusted rather than everyone rising to counter them. If warriors still have problems with certain conditions, such as movement-imparing ones, then a targeted approach like mobile strikes or warhorn #4 is better.

One specific thing I would change is to make Kick a stunbreak with 1s of stability (so you can’t be knocked down mid-cast). That differentiates it from the other CC abilities and gives it a secondary role to make it worth taking. I would remove Stomp because Kick and Stomp are too similar.