There’s always some form of salt with patches, like people telling you condi builds are extremely easy to play (the most complex DPS rotation in game is on a condi build) but their true mistake was not immediately replacing seaweed’s mechanic with something else and/or adjusting power builds to compensate.
While this is true for engi, it is somewhat of an exception. Condi builds in general used to be easier to play than power ones, not just because of the rotations, but also because power builds generally rely on more conditional modifiers. SWS was one of these and its removal isn’t bad on its own, however the condi trend is real.
The condi build is by far the easiest to play and has the highest damage potential.
If condi rev was viable then they wouldnt buff him in the first place. You dont make any sense at this point cause even devs found condi rev to be subpar choice, unless you consider yourself to be smarter than everyone else ingame, including devs with access to data?
Subpar or not, it was over-tuned as usual. Or do you think that it is currently at a reasonable and balanced state?
From a PvE perspective, I think it’s passable. It might be slightly overtuned, but not to the point of being broken. I’ve been playing a condi rev recently and I didn’t feel like I had a solid reason to pick Mallyx up until now. Sure, it was supposed to be the condi legend. Sure, there were some condis here and there but I ended up favoring Glint over it. Now? I find myself leaning toward Mallyx for that insane UA. But leaning toward Mallyx is how a condi rev should be supposed to feel, IMO.
Here is a PoV from a WvW players. The power dps thats in PvE will not be the same because the power dps seems really strong in PvE raids due to the fact that raid bosses have no toughness or damage reduction. They have a cc bar and a lot of vitality. The condition damage probably seemed lacking in dps because it wasn’t doing as much dps as the power builds. I get that.
You get it wrong. Condi dps outperforms power on most raid bosses. It already did prior to SWS nerf.
Of course it works just fine. You can just fine put more effort to deal less damage. But you can do it.
There are no “power and condi players”. There are power and condi builds. I have characters built on power and others built on condi. What gets me mad isn’t that “power is no longer king”, it’s that they’ve nerfed the underperformer. It makes no sense and it’s bad for the balance.
No need, unlike you I like Tempest. Though I’m fairly sure I could run core ele in a raid. It’s not optimal, but then, as it is Tempest isn’t either. I have zero interest in PvP, so can’t help you there.
Any group can kill people and take no damage. For instance, if the people forget to attack. Which is pretty equivalent to them forgetting to walk away from a group of mesmers with almost non-existent dps.
Wave would be nice. Certainly better than losing 80% of the projectiles due to body blocks.
Not talking about WvW, but in PvE, the meta is still “zerk or marauder or gtfo”. I was yesterday in mount draconis, with air overload eles all over the place, zerk GS warriors and staff DD that were one-shot killing each and every trash mobs all around… I had the hardest time finishing my renown heart with my condi necro.
So I understand that nerf.
Except nobody uses SWS in the open world. It simply isn’t needed. Just because you can faceroll everything in the open world with just about any build – both condi and power by the way – doesn’t mean a thing.
Speaking about PvE, there’s only one sensible measure of balance, and that’s raids. And there power dps was already falling out of favor, because condis are much more reliable. I understand the intent to counter the micromovement play, but it didn’t need to be done in this silly way. If anything, they could have removed the movement condition from SWS. This way it would still give a comparable (still lesser!) boost than the meta condi food and there would have been some sort of balance.
What they made is they’ve further imbalanced the condi vs power conundrum.
New Player, Sad Player. Expansion ruined it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Feanor.2358
The current system allows you to join an instance with a reasonably high chances of success.
There would be no difference between a pug LFG map and a pug normal map, that is if megaservers weren’t actively trying to screw you. LFG allows you to fit around 25% to 50% more people into a map and more people means the content is easier, since scaling wasn’t designed to keep up the difficulty. If scaling was actually fair so that a full map was even slightly in line with the minimum scale, chances are the zerg would always fail. You don’t need 100 people for these maps, but only 20 decent players (1 group per objective) as group events are scaled for 3 people minimum. When people LFG, 1 full map is potentially killing off 3 other maps. The only reason to LFG is because the average player simply cannot handle the difficulty of HoT, so they rely on overpopulating to greatly reduce the difficulty, where a 100 person zerg is essentially scaled for half that.
I’d rather kill 3 other maps and be successful than rely on every player in my instance being decent. We both know how this would end up. And I believe players at large would make the same choice. Largely because they actually do. Explaining how something could potentially work if the players were something that they aren’t is just an utopia. And it is precisely the reason why utopias fail, by the way.
The system accounts for the player behaviour rather than ignore it and just wish it was different. That’s why it works.
Can’t cleanse all the power dmg someone does, but you can cleanse condi dmg after already being hit by it.
And you can block power damage. And reduce it by toughness and armor which are far more common than resistance. If you’re going to cherry-pick, you’ll need to do it far more elaborate.
the mesmer group does plenty of damage if you are caught in front of them.
Just like any other group of 5 will not die if you don’t attack them. As long as they aren’t realistically gaining advantage from using distortion in this specific way, I fail to see a problem.
The Mystic Clover RNG hardly matters in the long run. It will only shift the overall price of the legendary by a few percent depending on your luck.
Not being a theory crafter, and being someone that kind of enjoys condi builds without min-maxing them, I’ll answer from my limited perspective.
Before condi builds were made viable, the only build players conceded to be worthwhile was berserker. Talk about boring, you either had to stat up as a glass cannon or take forever to kill things. Now there are two main prongs of building rather than one, and ANet is pushing the second one to keep people from going back to “berserker or gtfo.”
Um, actually…
There will always be a single optimal way to kill things. Whether it is condi or power is irrelevant – players at large will still go that single path. And it will still be full glass, regardless if it’s zerk or viper.
People get annoyed not because there is an alternative. The alternative already existed. If anything, it is the condi dps that needed to be toned down on certain overperforming build. Power builds in general are harder to play, in part because of the SWS mechanic, and were already losing in many scenarios.
And what did they do? Nerf SWS, keeping the silly mechanic, making it even harder for a power build to compete with a condi one. Sure, it’s no longer “zerk or gtfo”, it is now “viper or gtfo”. Much change, so wow.
meanwhile, i still get 100%-0% by air overload as a warrior.
Funny, I can’t remember the last time I even finished an air overload with an enemy warrior around me.
A nerf to condi food wouldn’t have done much, at least if you guys are talking about the rumoured % nerf to duration that didn’t come to pass. Just swap 1 sigil to malice. Not quite the full 5% hit power classes got.
But then you lose a sigil. It might not be quite the same, but it would have been much more in line.
I feel like ANet really missed the ball here, more-so than has happened in the past. Not only did they destroy power classes in the meta, as that damage lost cannot be recuperated by any means, but they also didn’t even get rid of the movement modifier on seaweed salad.
Seriously, the following change would’ve been so much better in every possible way:
Seaweed Salad
+10% damage while HP is over 90%
Swiftness WhateverIt would’ve fixed the movement problem they cited, would’ve kept power builds relevant, and would’ve not thrown the Seaweed Salad TP market into mayhem. There would’ve been no downside whatsoever.
Doesn’t even need the extra requirement at all. Even before the nerf Condi food gave a comparable boost without any requirements.
No, it needs something so the other foods make sense. With what RisingDusk said as someone who uses seaweed in WvW a lot I’d probably have gone a different direction. That is how things should be done, an optimal option given a set of criteria with a different optimal option given a different set of criteria, otherwise what’s the point of all the options other than to waste the money of people who don’t know?
Nice theory, however the condi food is unconditional and clearly most powerful. So if SWS was to keep a condition they should have added a condition for veggie pizza as well to make it fit in this philosophy. Which I agree with, btw, I just don’t see it in the game.
New Player, Sad Player. Expansion ruined it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Feanor.2358
I believe that the only way to ensure that mega shards don’t appear dead would be for convenience tools like the LFG and Join In to be removed.
Your belief is so wrong. This is probably the only way to really kill these zones, and here is why.
The current system allows you to join an instance with a reasonably high chances of success. Removing it would basically mean you need to rely on RNG to end up in a successful zone. And while now you actually can step up and ensure the success of your instance (I’ve done this myself on many occasions), without the LFG you will have literally no power to affect the chances of successful meta. Meaning the removal of the LFG system will directly discourage players from even trying to play these zones. It’s a horrible idea.
P.S. And what if you want to play the meta with a friend? You need to rely on RNG to end up in the same instance again?
Anet you have allow the players to have dps meters, an see the other teammates what dps are making. Today i have been kicked in the end of the fractal from the people that use the meter an flame insulting me an more cause i didn’t play meta war in the party i create at the lobby i ask what i want an wen the fight was hard an they suck an fail i was to blame.
To be fair, if people are relying on you to play the meta build and you don’t, and they don’t know that, then yes – you are to blame. Meta builds rely on other meta builds for support, PS warrior being one of them. The difference is night and day, and worst of all, when you’ve grown accustomed to running in a meta comp a deviation from it can cause a lot of failing and frustration. Because things just don’t seem to work like they are supposed to.
Aside from that, only one dps meter shows the dps of party members without their explicit agreement, and it only shows an estimate. Buuut… I would guess dps is just a pretense, or rather a justification for players who felt annoyed by your build.
Please don’t take this personally. I’m all for ‘play your way’, but I can understand the other side too. Consider the possibility the players you’re playing with find the content you’re playing hard because of you. They should at least know beforehand. This way if they stick with the party it’s their own choice and they have nothing to complain about. Or, they are free to leave and find another one.
Repeating it over and over again won’t make it true. I’ve said it – if you don’t like it, don’t play it. Don’t give me that bs about core ele “not being a class”. If you like it, you’ll play it and squeeze the most out of it. In WvW I still see many eles run core specs with no tempest. I understand it is easier to complain on forums than acquiring the relevant skill, but it’s also unproductive.
Most eles weren’t over 90% HP most of the time anyway, so I don’t think it’s that much of a nerf.
Irrelevant. The change is in the Seaweed Salad, not the Scholar bonus.
~4.5% in efficiency assuming you stick with seaweed. IIRC the next best food was ~6% gain, so I’d say around 4%. But it seems unfair, since the condi food gives ~11% extra, assuming it’s the last 20% to cap condi duration.
Find a way to kill a raid boss with this, video it and post it on Reddit.
It’ll be nerfed within two weeks
I give it a week, can’t have anything showing exploits in PvE, but if it’s pvp or WvW it takes months if ever.
It doesn’t just need to be an exploit, it needs to be useful.
People who leave generate no monies for the game.
You might consider this when labelling the design “flawed”. More people will leave because they have (or perceive to have) nothing more to do in the game than will leave because they were invested enough to start a legendary but found few hours of WvW to be the dealbreaker.
It’s more or less a for fun build. You can’t do anything useful with it (except not die).
Reminds me of a certain ghost thief build.
Except that ghost thief can actually deal damage, this build cannot.
it doesn’t hurt anybody yet. However anet should not allow this kind of unwanted skills behaviours. i personally i would opt to limit the allies affected to 3 from the trait Inspiring Distorsion.
That should make impossible to stack enough distortion to have it permanent.
And make it useless in PvE because someone can be bothered to walk away from a group of trolls?
Marauder is actually pretty nice for solo PvE. Unlike group scenarios, the extra precision is not wasted so the dps loss is quite small.
By the way, you may want to consider using Celestial. It is not even close to optimal, but you’ll be more survivable and you can experiment with both power and condi builds without needing to replace your gear.
You can never design something with universal appeal.
I beg to differ and present you the following evidence: kittens.
Point well taken.
Oh deer, you actually used Conjure Earth Shield for the altars! Impressive. Dat dps, too…
Well, it certainly backfired for some players, like myself.
That’s normal. You can never design something with universal appeal. There are those who will like it and those who won’t. Assuming my premise is correct, the success or failure of this change would be measured by the changes in WvW population. So basically only ANet knows. But since they are sticking with the change, I’d guess it has been at least moderately successful.
Would Legendary weapons/armors having personalized stats between 3-4 stats break the game balance?
I’m personally a big fan of theory crafting my own builds, which my pocket regrets so much….
So, do you guys think having legendaries with personalized stats be bad?
Consider the possibility someone finds a specific combination of stats that a) doesn’t currently exist and b) outperforms the current meta. Legendary gear will immediately become mandatory for endgame content. It was never meant to be a super-expensive mandatory tier of gear. It was meant to be fashion/prestige tier.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to play around with stat combos, specifically ones with Concentration. But I don’t think ANet will do such thing. It’s just too risky.
New Player, Sad Player. Expansion ruined it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Feanor.2358
I don’t know, seems to me like you just did exactly what he described. Not an hour after he posted and you’ve already written this multi-paragraph analysis to try to undermine what he’s saying. “Professional team of posters” might be overstating it, but there are certainly dedicated defenders like yourself around.
Does that surprise you? I would guess the active posters on a game forum are primarily invested players who spend a lot of their time in the game. For that to be true, they likely feel mostly positive toward it. Additionally, they likely are reasonably experienced. So it is only normal to see them disagree with criticism which can be summarized into “game too hard, fix pls”.
My Thief uses pistols in PvE. You start a fight with mad damage using Unload until your initiative is drained.
It’s not the meta build for pve fractals/raids but open world sure u can do whatever u want.
When it comes to meta though pistols are not even close to being viable most of the times
10 thieves with pistols took down Sabetha recently. Surely, that should qualify as being close to viable. It’s not optimal, but that’s another story.
Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.
Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better
Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.
I read this as you saying rotations are necessary for content completion. I can’t think of anywhere in the game where having a “perfect rotation”, a term I hear alot, makes a difference between success and fail.
Raids.
Mashing random buttons won’t take you far. Yes, there’s a certain thief build who can literally only autoattack and be good enough, but this assumes the support classes do their jobs fine, which isn’t done by said mashing. You certainly don’t need to be perfect, but you certainly need to be familiar with your rotation.
So yea, to some extend, it’s only 5-10%, but 5% on 13 bosses can mean a delay of an entire wing.
OR you’re being slower because of the player and not the gear he’s using? Most pugs are’t top of their class. Plus you might be using some tactics specific to your group which aren’t widely known (like we do in my static). Attributing to the delay based on lacking gear seems to be the least likely, by a wide margin.
The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time
Really? I seem to remember differently. Comparing T4 fractal parties an year ago and now, I’d say the skill level of the players I see has definitely increased.
My heart hopes that instead of continuing this nonsense with Balthazar as upcoming Villian, that the story truly places him in a position of an Antihero. The Batman of Tyria per say.
There are two problems I see with that.
First, consider the GW2-only players, who barely have a clue about Dhuum and Menzies. Dropping supervillains you never heard of isn’t particularly good writing in my book.
Second, the Batman of Tyria is obviously Lord Faren.
@hlaraujo: It was clear we’re not going to kill all the dragons. The story warned about it long ago, so this was expected.
(edited by Feanor.2358)
your current matchup score:
12. sfr – 111
10. drakkar – 123
9. gh – 126how can you think you should be in t1-2 when your score looks like this. if you so desperate to fight fsp, transfer to piken/gandara/deso.
oh wait deso full
oh wait gandara full of gankers and no one use ts/follow commander
oh wait piken full of casualsmaybe you should focus more on ppt then
Again, focusing on ppt isn’t fun.
Also I don’t know where you get these ideas about Gandara. There usually is a commander during the active hours and people most definitely follow. By the way, thanks to all the Piken and Jade Sea players from the epic battle at Bluevale last night. I hope you guys had as much fun as we did.
New Player, Sad Player. Expansion ruined it.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Feanor.2358
NCsoft net plunges 74% on weak game sales.
http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3033273&cloc=etc%7Cjad%7Cgooglenews
Kind of says it all.
Cherry-picking data to support your point? That’s cheap. To summarize: comparing post-expansion result with the same period an year later with no expansion in the mean time is meaningless. Of course the sales are going to be much lower.
I thought D/WH, you aren’t supposed to use Fire Attunement for anything except Flame Dash? Is that correct?
No, Wildfire is a dps increase. Basically on every even switch to Fire you’d use Flame Dash (because Wildfire will be on cooldown), on every odd switch you use both. You still spend minimal time in Fire, just press F3 right after you press 5.
1. Getting gut at melee will certainly help, as this is how you deal most of your damage, regardless of the weapon choice. That being said, feel free to just pick a different weapon. Personally I prefer scepter/warhorn, but staff is also a viable option.
2. You don’t get a lot of breakbar capability. You should know your options, but in general don’t expect to successfully break it on your own. The ones I’d recommend knowing:
Warhorn:
- Air 4
- Water 4
- Earth 5 if desperate
Dagger:
- Earth 3
Staff:
- Air 3
- Air 5 (with correct placement)
Conjures:
- Icebow 5
- Lightning Hammer 3
- Lightning Hammer 5 (with correct placement)
3. Definitely. Overloading Air (and Fire, depending on the build) is a major contributor to your damage output.
4. Don’t get hit. There are two sides to this. First, you learn the monsters and their attacks. Second, I know I can kill most mobs before they can take me down. The ones that are tough enough to survive my burst usually have slow attacks which are easily evaded. That being said, it takes practice to solo group event champs, so don’t start rushing into these.
5. Full zerk Fresh Air scepter/warhorn Fire/Air/Tempest. For heal I most often use “Wash the pain away”, followed by Glyph of Elemental Harmony (better self-heal, some extra boons but can be interrupted due to longer cast time) and Ether Renewal (I only use this in Bitterfrost, because the amount of chill is annoying). Elite is open, but I like running Fiery Greatsword. It’s part of the dps rotation and it has nice mobility. For the remaining 3 slots you absolutely want Signet of Fire for the extra crit and Glyph of Storms, because it’s simply awesome in PvE. In the last slot I pick either “Feel the burn” or Icebow.
It’s the meta build for a reason, but in PvE feel free to experiment.
You are not the centre of wvw, and wvw should not be balanced around you. Get your followers to work harder in the PPT department, defending, upgrading, and you will adjust our score accordingly, doing nothing ppt on reset night/weeknds cause “the fights bro, the fights bro, stonemist bro” hurts us more than it helps us, sure kdr being positive is nice, but it is not the sole objective of wvw.
This is the core of the problem, IMO. The whole system relies on matchmaking based on scores which way too many players simply don’t care about. And why should they? Yes, PPT is an objective in the game, but the game is set in such a way that winning or losing it hardly matters. And the drive to play the game isn’t winning it, it’s having fun. Hence, many choose the fights over PPT, because it’s more fun.
I actually don’t know what would be a good solution. Increasing the effects of winning obviously can make the players care about PPT, but it is likely to make the game much more stale and that’s no fun.
Here, it’s just impossible.
Most of the active raiders have been in your place at one point. So it is certainly possible.
There are two ways to do it.
1. Sign up for a training guild/run. They teach you the basics and help you with your first kills. They often won’t take you much further, because of the constant influx of new players.
2. Join a guild that does regular guild raids. These will usually accept any willing guild member, provided they have a spot open and you follow their instructions. Keep in mind some guild statics will use slightly different strategies for the bosses.
So again, I would bet that ANet didn’t make this change to drive people to WvW; there are just too many better ways to do that.
I don’t know. They seem to be using legendaries as an incentive on other occasions, too. Both backpacks are strongly tied to specific content, and so is the envoy armor. By the way, I don’t know many active players in PvE who do not possess at least one legendary weapon.
Hello,
I’m currently running s/wh for fractals and so far It has been fun. I also use the weapon for solo PvE since I really dislike the dagger’s fire attunement.
I’ve been reading quantify’s build and it states that the build is only good for small hitboxes and that staff shines at large hit boxes due to meteor shower.
S/WH has been the most fun, Staff is okish because of the storm but sometimes It feels meh since I have to rely on magic weapons for consistent dps.
Can I really avoid dagger/warhorn for semi-hardcore PVE? What do you use for fractals/raid/solo?
You can use whatever you prefer, they are all good enough to beat basically everything the game can throw at you in PvE. Staff isn’t optimal against small targets, but it is also good enough, if you prefer it.
Plenty of people play WvW for all sorts of reasons. It’s not at all clear why they changed it.
To give incentive to PvE players to try WvW. And by “try” I don’t mean “press B, pick a world, look around and say you don’t understand what’s going on”.
And you know what? It works. I’m still primarily a PvE player, but I do enjoy WvW, now. And I originally started playing it for the Gift.
For 10 dollars a month, I don’t mind. What does that mean? Reduction in allll expansion prices after 1 year membership, constant cash shop price reductions, etc etc. look I understand that anet still makes good money…..for them to have such a big staff….they must make good money, but if you’re all sooooo caught up in their reported revenue, then that’s the solution. Pay to play with tweaks. You don’t like it?? Then don’t complain mate because that’s THE only solution.
Congratulations you just saved ANet a lot of money. They can fire their whole marketing department and just follow advice from forum. That has to be a good business strategy.
MS used to be a well balanced risk/reward skill vs other players. Now, not s much.
It used to be well balanced in PvE as well.
the current HP system in gw2 that requires players to join “HP trains” in order to gain Hero Points seems broken and unchallenging. players gain HeroPoints just for being part of a group and not for actually having skills in the game.
It requires no such thing. There are players who do these solo, for the fun of it.
HP trains exist for players with many alts, who find no fun in unlocking their N-th elite specialization, in the same way they unlocked the first N-1. They are simply an efficient way to do something you need to do before being able to play your character properly.
So, in essence: no thanks. The HP system is fine as it is.
So how is acquiring Ad Infinitum any different?
In that the hardest requirement for it is still easier than almost all raid ones.
Irrelevant. See below.
It is still locked behind endgame content. You need to play a lot of fractals, including T4 ones.
True. I guess that’s a bit unfortunate, and i’m pretty sure i did complain about it at some point. Still, the amount of grind and effort required does not compare to raids.
1 item vs 6. One would think the amount of effort to gain 6 times as many items would be higher.
Let’s be realistic – the people who are invested that much in fractals aren’t orders of magnitude more than the active raiders. If anything, both groups overlap heavily.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Any dedicated raider should be able to do t4 fractals easily, without putting too much effort into it, but the opposite is definitely not true.
I can agree on this. A lot of T4 players just get carried. But I’m not sure they are persistent enough to aim for Ad Infinitum. In any case, I was speaking mostly about the serious FotM players. Of course, not all of them raid. But I’m certain they could, if they tried.
Raising these concerns seems quite late, at the very least.
I keep raising them since legendary armor got announced. Up to recently, raiders were replying that i shouldn’t worry, because surely there will be another set acquirable outsode raids, so i should just shut up and wait patiently.
Apparently other people believed in that, and that’s why they were silent until recently. Unfortunately for them, putting faith in Anet turned out to be completely unwarranted, so i’m not surprised they’re angry now.
Fair enough, but anger doesn’t give credibility to a particular weak argument. Asking for more sets to be added, locked behind different content, I can agree with and support. Saying there shouldn’t be items locked behind content, in a game literally full of such items, I can’t.
Auramancer ain’t my thing, but I’m fine with being backline staff artillery in WvW. It might not be the most optimal choice for the role, but it works.
Same in PvE. Our damage potential is among the highest, but we’re hardly optimal in many cases. Other classes, condi dps builds in particular, can easily outdps an ele by simply being easier and more reliable. CRanger being the prime example. Still, you can be a decent enough damage dealer pretty much everywhere.