Guild Wars 2

(What a veteran pvp player sees when he reads these updates)
Profession Balance Goals for the Winter 2016 Update

In an effort to make Pro Leagues moderately more interesting we at Arenanet have decided bunker Mesmer, Druid, and Rev will all have their crazily overpowered revive and stomp capability screwed over by making it so Slow and Quickness do not effect reviving an ally or stomping an enemy. We also did this because slow makes the animations look incredibly broken, so reducing what it can effect is great!

Elementalist

Next on the chopping block is the revered Elementalist. This class has been pulling more healing/group boon generation/condi clear than anything that has preceded it in the entire history of this game (using only celestial amulet mine you). Just because we at Arenent think slow cancerous gameplay is funny, we understand there might be one or two people against it, We are taking Diamond skin, one of the most controversial skills and axing it like it should have been, bye eles, you’ve had a good run.

Engineer

Some gibberish about gyros and pve. Scrapper, having double S, massive condi reduction, tons of blocks, moving shadow field, ridiculous amounts of armor, might have been a little much on the tanky side. Since this is the case, we think axing it down like the eles is the best way to go, expect some minor changes that, in the end, will be meaningless and you will be just about as tanky as always.

Guardian

Say what? You walked into a bunch of traps and died again? Ya, Arenanet devs kept having that issue too, since crazy rupts, stupid high damage true shots, enormous damage from traps, is a bit too much for any noob that walks into them we’re going to nerf them into the ground. Also, there is no chance DH or Bunker guard will be viable in the next season because of the crazy low healthpool that will make the builds succumb to an agonizing death in what is definitely going to be a condi meta.

Mesmer

If you would rather be a God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals than actually get the title God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals then I would recommend playing bunker mesmer until we try and nerf it. Currently, it is the only way to solo queue your way to legendary and make terrible teams look decent in pro leagues. We even tried following YOUR suggestions by making well of precog an invuln, etc. but nothing seems to work. In fact, since this next meta won’t have tempests around to heal, druid and bunker guards can’t stand on point, we KNOW this will still be a thing, but we think it would be better if it took a more passive role, in fact, instead of reviving and stomping, we think it would be best if you just focused on survival. So, we will shave the defensive capabilities a bit, and Alacrity will get a very minor nerf (it’s a big thing in PVE remember?) it also won’t be a revive god anymore (because of the general nerf to quickness) but will still be the only thing available to tank point unless we actually buff Guard health (which we won’t).

Necromancer

We like where necromancer has been this season and have decided to try (but probably fail) to make lifestealing a thing by upping the lifesteal to just about every trait that has it and make it so lifesteal bolts work in Reaper Shroud (my be a good thing with spin to win on top of wells? Who knows). In essence, this will most likely be the next INCREDIBLY OP class because Tempest will no longer be a hard counter class to keep it in check, conditions will be ubiquitous and this class will only get better at giving them.

Ranger

We’ll be looking into all of those ranger’s traits that no self-respecting Ranger would touch with a barge pole and will fiddle with them in an attempt to make them slightly less pointless. In the first quarterly update, we’ll messing round with shouts but completely ignoring all of the crucial things that Rangers have been shouting out for for like Sword AA and short bow reworks. In the future, we’ll continue to scratch our heads regarding ways to make any pet that’s not Smokescale or Bristleback semi-viable. And those Druid hippies? They’re getting hit over the head with the nerf staff. – BROKENCAPS.4561

Revenant

Now that everyone has bought HOT to play the overpowered as kitten classes like Revenent we’ve decided to finally start nerfing it. The general goal of this class is to rip off as many skills and utilities from other classes as we can, we decided not to take the creative approach, but instead, to take the quick and easy approach of just mashing everything we had together into something that we had to make overpowered in order to sell this game. Since people have been getting a little upset at the power of sword 1 spam, we’re nerfing it, since the Defensive capability is actually insane, we will nerf it a little. We as Arenanet will neglect to mention the changes everyone asked for though, like nerf to UA, fixing the fact standard character models don’t apply, etc. (Oh and we’re also not going to touch on the fact that the slow/quickness nerf will destroy Rev’s downstate)

Thief

Guys, we get it. You’ve got no sustain. You’re at a disadvantage nearly every fight because while everyone else is healing/blocking/immune/dropping conditions, you’re just twiddling your thumbs. Half of your traitlines are worthless (including BOTH your defensive lines), and you’ve had a shortbow cemented into your second weaponset slot since the games inception; But there’s good news. We’re upping your melee AA damage! Isn’t that great? Oh, also, we’re going to finally put out the Dumpster fire we turned Acrobatics into half a year ago. Kind of. Maybe. You trust us, right? -evilapprentice.6379

Warrior

We’ve taken a look at the warrior’s abilities and decided to experiment, adjust a few things (nothing big and fancy like a rework to make the berserker class cool and viable, just a few number changes). We’re going to rework rifle because we at Areneant KNOW that every Warrior wishes they had a better reason to use rifle (LOL) and since we failed to come up with a way to make warriors kill revs/bunker mesmers we decided to shy away from making damage oriented changes and instead make changes to add tankyness and sustain, exactly what this game needs after the shenanigans going on in the current Pro-League games. All in all, warrior will still be kittened though, and they can cry all they want but we at Arenanet don’t give 2 kittens about these particular players.

In the end, whoever was planning on buying HOT at this point most likely has been forced into it already by the insanely OP elite specs/Revenent and Arenanet has grudgingly decided to do a few small nerfs here and there that will hopefully stop Pro-Leagues from being such an utter failure to watch or even be a part of. I have an idea, maybe make a Public Test Server and get some feedback on these upcoming changes, so we don’t have to blame the future terrible meta on just Arenanet .

Spartacus.3192:

“Warrior
We’ve taken a look at the warrior’s baseline abilities, adjusting cooldowns, damage, and in some cases even functionality. Our goal for this iteration is to give you a bit more to play with in a single weapon set so that the cooldowns feel more active and fun to play around with. Rifle has also seen a bit of a rework, gaining a more defensive nature while retaining its overall purpose of kill-shotting every enemy of Tyria. We’ll also be taking another pass at improving the berserker elite specialization, focusing on increasing its usability in various game modes and promoting more active skill use in trait design. Lastly, we’ll improve the warrior’s ability to sustain themselves in combat.”

Please make Fast Hands baseline and do something about Adrenaline loss. Sustain changes will be very welcome.

Thanks
Retired warrior.

I will confirm that baseline fast hands WILL NEVER HAPPEN this is quoted from a developer who was collecting warrior feedback in teamspeak.

The fact they never fixed cele ele no matter how broken it was tells me whatever “balance” patch they may have will have 0 effect. Move to overwatch like I am Countless .

Diamond solo queue can get to legend solo, I’ve seen it. You literally have to play a hard carry class though, something that can 1v1, troll 1vx fights after everyone has died, get rezes, watch home, decap, move down bodies (to prevent mesmer rez) and rotate at esl/pro league level.

In this case I would recommend a marauder Rev. Hard carry is also possible by a chronobunker mesmer, but you have to be able to play a dps class like a scrapper/druid/rev in the case that you already have too many bunker mesmers on your team.

If you play things that do damage, can’t hold points, can only 1v1 some things, cannot rez/stomp very effectively, you simply cannot carry hard enough to solo queue through diamond.

If yopu play things that are outright bunkers like diamond skin tempest or bunker mesmer you have to be careful because you may be matched up with other bunkers making your team entirely too tanky.

So, in essence, play the most godmode OP kitten known to man that is rev, it can do it all baby, like EVERYTHING, with almost no weaknesses.

Cynz.9437:

They forgot it, just like they forgot to reset mmr :P

HOLD THE PHONE, you have a GOLDEN opportunity to make money. Simply stay on teef until the game game starts and tell people that you will take 5g from at least 2 people to switch to a rev. You will be swimming on gold in no time bud .

Does it annoy anyone else that revs are SO broken OP that “standard character models” has no effect on them? If you’re struggling as a rev, make SURE to make the smallest possible asuran character.

While my reaper is named “Over Powered Necro” and I play one hell of a reaper, it absolutely does NOT belong on any meta list. The meta comp is obviously double mes double rev and tempest or tempest double rev scrapper bunker mes.

The reason why necro doesn’t belong is it simply does not have enough sustain and cannot benefit from much of the healing being given out by druids/tempests in the midfight. In essence, it will die far before any of the enemies do.

Aomine.5012:

Firebird.8324:

I play a reaper.

As a reaper, I counter druids.

I will destroy them in 1v1s, team fights, and skirmishes.

Your answer is simply to play a condition heavy reaper. If you do not believe me,
message me in-game with your druid and we can duel, crushing 1v1 centric builds with reaper is quite entertaining.

I agree. As Druid, I often lost to truly skilled Reaper(legendary division usually) if they start the fight with 70%+ LF. Druid’s strong point is CC and burst, and if you nullify both with high hp and stability and heavy condition, Druid will fall under your feet.

I run wander’s amulet with spite sig corrupt boon vamp sig and plague sig (specced into spite ofc) and against a regular flavor of the month reroller druid need 0% DS to beat them in a perfect 1v1 scenario. Against an elite druid I need at least 30% and most CDs to be up. If I had 70% plus, all the druid can do is run, or be flattened. Same with Bunker mesmers.

ArthurDent.9538:

It is simple to understand how and why it works but tricky to get it to work consistently in an actual match. Masically there are 3 impacts in a line, with small overlaps between each impact. If you target is the perfect distance away from you then you will hit them with the overlapped section of the impacts and get double hits. Since there are 3 impacts that means there are 2 spots where they overlap, between the first and second, and then between the second and third. Since the second and third impacts do more damage, having the target in that range is optimal.

Thank you, that was very kind.

Rebound.3409:

@morrolan besides these leagues being a huge exploitfest and a joke..nothing to do with any skill what so ever, i understand his question because PvP players are not restricted in any way shape or form from getting let’s say the fractal backpack. Nothing resets there. On the other hand here it resets and forces you to exploit in order to get the backpack.

The question is how many seasons are this year. If there are 4 seasons it should be ok for anyone to get them as long as they get to ruby which is easy to get to. If not, well….for most ppl it will be impossible to get because of the resets, which make things unfair.

Not everyone exploits, I got legend by solo queuing, duo queuing, and trio queuing, with those of the same or similar divisions. The real exploit is rerolling flavor of the month BS like Chronobunker just to AFK on point through games and get pips as easily as a seasoned ESL veteran playing at the top of his game. BALANCE ANET, BALANCE.

Jesus, I want to do that, let us know how so we can abuse it and Anet is forced to fix it.

I play a reaper.

As a reaper, I counter druids.

I will destroy them in 1v1s, team fights, and skirmishes.

Your answer is simply to play a condition heavy reaper. If you do not believe me,
message me in-game with your druid and we can duel, crushing 1v1 centric builds with reaper is quite entertaining.

I play a reaper.

As a reaper, I counter druids.

I will destroy them in 1v1s, team fights, and skirmishes.

Your answer is simply to play a condition heavy reaper. If you do not believe me,
message me in-game with your druid and we can duel, crushing 1v1 centric builds with reaper is quite entertaining.

I appreciate that Arenanet has laid out some of the planned changes in the upcomming season, I hope they also release balance notes early as well. I Really like the simple and elegant solution to the Amber Shopping issue and the transparency as to how you got or lost that pip.

Now please find a way to handle a person DCing and I’m only so-so on the whole win streak idea, I see massive rage in the future when that’s lost to a DC or some other problem

Eolirin.1830:

My only concern with these changes is that they may make completing the league progression achievements impossible for too large a portion of the playerbase. Having to get out of Ruby to get tier 4 is difficult enough as it is. Will you re-examine that particular set of achievements in light of this change?

No, they finally have an exclusive PVP item that Only hardcore pvpers can get, there is no reason it should be handed out to the masses like candy. There are SO MANY awesome looking PVE skins that I will never have by spending all my time in PVP, so let us have this one item, and get back to killing random mobs.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

RSLongK.8961:

No, its not for the casual player. Theres plenty of Back Pieces for casual players. This is for the Best @ PVP to get.

insert buzzer sound here

Wrong!

“The Ascension is designed to reward investment in PvP by any player "
source

any player

“Any player” != PvP Elite

The Elite will just get it faster. And that’s as it should be.

DO YOU REALLY want to start quoting Arenanet on things??
We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.

You clearly don’t need a legendary item for hard core pvpers if you are “admittedly” a casual pvper. Even the exotic backpack is called, “Elite’s Wings of Glory”. This is the same as saying, “I want Anet to make it so I don’t have to do world completion to get a regular legendary, it’s too harrrrddd” and obviously this would undermine people who go through the effort to complete that.

Ross Biddle.2367:

jessiestiles.9437:

It seems to be broken. Exhibit A:

Ooo, is it exhibit time?

B:

You queued as a warrior, you were already kittened.

I would like to say, to everyone going on about alacrity, that it does have counterplay. First, I did not add it to the list simply because it is not technically a “boon” it is a class specific thing that cannot be stripped, similar to how Necromancer can have vampiric presence or guardian can have strength in numbers.

Second, considering no outside force can actually strip alacrity the best thing to do would be to nullify it, and chill does just that. If you see many memsers on the opposing team (and hopefully few tempests) just run some wanderers reaper builds and spread that chill like a pimp with aids.

Arenanet, please explain why I can have a game where a person on my team disconnects from the very beginning and I still lose 1 sometimes 2 pips? Does the system expect us to 4v5? If 4 people DC at the start and only one guy is there for a 1v5 will that 1 still lose pips? Fix ur god kitten system to account for kitten like this, also add that kick for AFK button already, you guys are slow as kitten.

I agree, well spoken, and excellently made points Pepsi.

try playing a condi reaper and see what it feels like to get pushed by a thief, it’s just as bad as facing a tempest. Thief is not THAT bad, warrior, on the other hand, is useless garbage.

Plain and simple there are far too many of what I like to term “God Boons” in this current meta. Here is a list of what I think are the most powerful boons in order from most powerful to least.

1) Resistance (renders many condi builds useless)
2) Quickness (get almost any rez or stomp or do TONS of damage)
3) Stability (in this CC meta, this boon is GOLDEN)
4) Protection (33% damage reduction normal, 40% damage reduction by tempest)

To many classes can give out far to many of these boons. If you look at your team during a queue you will see EVERYONE with protection, which is anywhere from 33 to 44 percent damage reduction. EVERYONE also is loaded with might, fury, swiftness, in many cases stability, resistance from durability procs across a teamfight, etc.

The main culprits of this are:
Tempests
Revenents
Bunker Mesmers
Scrappers
Druids

Nerf the AOE protection, the on dodge stability, mesmer quickness uptime, druid quickness uptime into the ground please. Oh and nerf durability runes more, get rid of vitality and the onproc buffs.

BUNKER MESMER
Auramancer
revenant

Anyone want to take me up on that 500g bet?

ReaperJr.5967:

I realise that reapers aren’t on this list. Figures.

They are incredibly slow, main target in every fight because they are not THAT hard to kill, can’t 1v2 very long, start with ZERO DS, I can’t really find much reason to add them as they aren’t that OP, but I’ll add them to the list simply to not look THAT biased.

LOL, don’t even consider the fact that it takes around 7-8 years for someone who only plays PVP (albeit, in some moderation) to get Champion Brawler.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Warriors aren’t useless. When i kill one i get 5 points just fine, often easier then with other professions. That’s certainly useful.

I think ANET should force them to wear cloth to reinforce this.

Arenanet, I know your balance team thinks they have the right answers and everything will be swell, but it won’t be. Every single balance patch has been letdowns. In the past, you just could not find a way to properly nerf cele ele, and it took you AGES to fix turret engies. Now we have a list of OPness so long, that I think this game will forever be broken:
Bunker chronomancer
Diamond skin forever aoe protection tempest
TANKY AF with marauder amulet scrapper
Do I even need to say Revenant? It needs an enormous rework to be even close to the other classes
TANKY AF druid with marauder amulet
True shot spamming DH
reaper (to make myself not look biased (even though I am, at least a little tbh))

What I’m trying to say is, if the community cannot trust you to balance the game on your own, please make a site, or use ur god kitten forum to display some of the changes you’re thinking about so we can give an opinion.

I will bet 500g to ANYONE, by the way, that Revenant will continue being incredibly OP after season patch, that Scrapper, druid, and chronomancer will all be WAY too tanky with marauder amulets, and the game will still have nothing to do with a coordinated burst, but rather, terrible attrition.

Move bunker mesmer up to “god tier” and REMOVE bunker guard from “good” as it is complete garbage.

Oh, PLEASE, throw more suggestions into this shredder of a forum.

Jelzouki.4128:

Bunkering shouldn’t be available through invulnerability, that includes evades.

There is no counterplay to invulnerability, especially with such abundant alacrity application.

A diamond skin ele, or a bunker gaurd (rip) are what bunker should be. There is counterplay.

Diamond skin ele is close to as broken as a bunker mes. The tempest makes it very hard for people to die and the mesmer will pickup any and every rez.

Nova Stiker.8396:

I’m diamond 4, played hundreds of hours on Tempest.

Even if you were using Magi’s Trinket, under weakness while the ele had Knight trinket, frost aura, protection, Rune of the Scrapper, Rock Barrier, under the effects of Phantasmal Defender and attuned to earth; you should be doing more than 8 damage vault, I’m thinking the elementalist was hacking. I can understand if vault hits in the mid hundreds given the example I mentioned above, but in the single digits? You’d have to have ~10,000 toughness to achieve something that extreme.

I agree, I just did testing on my tempest and cannot get anything to hit me that low.

Sounds pretty cool.

Doggie.3184:

IMO they need to rework/delete all auto anti-cc/condi traits and let people actually play their class defenses manually

That would be the day, my tempest has too many passives to count.

Yasi.9065:

Lets see, my aura ele has atm… just for you… standard meta build.

Health: 18,995
Diamond Skin wears off at: 17,096
Raw damage you have to deal: 1,899

I can think of at least 1 build per profession right now that can drop ele below diamond skin constantly without that much of a problem.

You are WRONG it takes 2658.6 damage if you factor in the protection. Also keep in mind a tempest can quadruple dodge roll (dodge, dodge, switch to fire, dodge, burning retreat dodge) and has passive 200 heal per second with constant uptime on regeneration and vigor.

I play necromancer, quite a lot, and I cannot stand the no counterplay diamondskin. Most forms of necromancer/reaper are high condition damage and this is understood quite well by the individuals who play Tempest.

Upon entering a fight, especially the opening fight (where I have no deathshoud), I will be immideitly pushed by one or more tempests who will ignore almost everyone else and make it their mission to kill me. All I can do is cc a bit and run, run run run or I die.

If I start making my way to a point and a tempest sees me, GG on that fight. If I get into work late and there’s only one cup of coffee left and a tempest is going for it, GG, no coffee. If I wake up at night in a cold sweat because of a nightmare, a tempest was there. If I played condi necromancer on Guild Wars 2 and later died from cancer in real life, GG a tempest was there. If I attempted to get into heaven but they were only letting in one more person and a tempest was in line of ahead of me, GG, no happy afterlife.

Give diamond skin counterplay, they can tank any amount of condi classes without even healing. They also have 100% uptime on 40% less damage from buffed protection as well as 100% uptime on vigor and regen, making it way to easy to maintain the health threshold.

Carmela.8756:

Hello

I paused now for 5 Months and came back to gw 2. Today i played my first PvP Game and getting ridiculous flames because i play thief. They say this class is unplayable. What’s going on here?

LOL try playing warrior

Pakkazull.6894:

Oh please god no, I want this nightmare of a PvP season out of the way as quickly as possible so they can perhaps balance the game and make it not suck. While they’re at it they should remove the current league system entirely and replace it with one that actually works.

YES

Both myself and Crysis have breached 2 million before

I am impressed, you sir have done a great deed for the world.

A small note on bunker guard, as I am a high level bunker guard and have used it in many, many esls, bunker guard has great sustain but cannot hold its own against the amount of conditions and power burst currently available because of its VERY small health pool.

Also, would you mind computing and adding tempest as well? They are broken af bunkers too.

Alekt.5803:

Quickness on Aura?… For Elementalist? Please go away. Do you not know how useless quickness is on elementalist? Or imbalanced weapon-wise? There is no change with quickness if you cast eruption; it is still takes the same delay to explode. And quickness on overload actually result in a damage loss (ticks are not faster).

Elemental Bastion nerf. I suppose that you are also proposing buffs to the awful other grandmaster traits on Tempest? That’s a very nice way to cut marauder tempest. All this in your quest to nerf the effect on celestial by 10%, you nerf to oblivion builds that are way more interesting.

Invigorating Torrents. Vigor and Regen removed. That’s a nice way to just cut the potential condition clear. It is also a nice way to make Latent Stamina worthless (I don’t expect you to know that the ICD is only on the swapping portion).

Absolutely pathetic changes. You butcher an extremely wide variety of builds in collateral damages, break the current most used tempest builds, and leave tempest to be a flat steaming pile of nothing.

YOU ARE WRONG, quickness goes GREAT with overloading attunements, casting meteror shower, etc.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I honestly think there’s a bug in pip loss. Everytime I go against a full 5 man premade that is on the top 10 guild list, I always lose 2 pips. According to the chart posted on Reddit, the losers should only lose 1 pip at most.

The worse you lose, the better chance that you will lose 2 pips

I’m going to give the ACTUAL history of the warrior meta:
At the VERY START warriors did incredibly high burst damage with hundred blades + quickness, at this time, quickness meant 100% faster ability use.
Then quickness was nerfed, and so was war.
During this time, warrior was just as bad as it is now in terms of meta.
Heal sig was added and warriors picked up hammer and bow and might stacked with soldier and the hambow meta was born.
Then cele ele outshined hambow and it fell by the wayside
then cele shout warrior became a thing, then it got nerfed into oblivion
then beserker/maurder rampage warrior became meta, then beserker didn’t live up to the other OP(/cough “elite”) specs and it’s terrible.

Ginaz.3206:

The game matches you up the best it can. The 50/50 W/L thing is a myth made up by terrible players. It does not “try to make you lose” at any point.

Also, you’re supposed to rise by being good. You’re probably not good, deal with it.

Not a myth, any MMR system will make it so you rise in MMR to a point where you face extremely hard teams, then, if you lose, your MMR will go back down to the point where you face people of your own level. The system is trying as hard as possible to make even matchups, if the matchups are indeed even, then there should be a 50% chance you will win or lose, which will lead to a 50/50 split.

This is how it is supposed to be and similar systems are implemented in many other games.

Asato.5479:

Seigfried.5938:

Off topic, is that a 4k screen you are playing on?

off topic, yeah it looks like ! :O

on topic, lol XD

Yep, I had to downscale it with obs so it wouldn’t lag

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Hey OPN, I am not quite convinced this is glitch. Have you consider passive procs?
When you first cast mark 3, you gained a condition, that I could not make out from the small bar. It is possible that this proc is from the enemy. Then you transferred the condition back to the group, but we know that condi transfer counts as the original source. Thus, when you stomped the warrior, it treated it as stomping the enemy to the other guys, thus rallying them.

I would be interested to see the berserker build. Brief review of the traitline does not show any condition changes. Maybe it is the fatal damage trait not working properly.

I’m definitely thinking this is what happened. It’s a known bug.

If you really think it’s something else, try the test again with runesets on everyone that don’t have offensive procs. Pack runes are a decent choice for this.

You are wrong, we also had the elementalest stomp crysis while I was on crysis’s team and I was rallied.

You’re forgetting something. It is FAR to easy for any random player to pick up meta Revenent/Bunker mesmer build and pip grind. The fact is, these classes WILL propel much lower tier people into leagues they can’t compete in, then they whine when they go against 5 queues and pro-league players. This leads to a Lot of the forum hate for leagues.

I’ll be the first to say it WARRIOR OP