Oh this I know… However people saying they have no clue how to avoid blurred frenzy… Just really? It is likely one of the worst skills in the game for pathing. Any slight incline ensures that the clone stands in one spot for a second then he kinda lollygags over to his target then we can maybe swap and do the combo if our target hasn’t figured out by know that we are about to burst them…. The 2s immob for the burst is knid of our reward for the off chance of having it actually work.
Well the pathing bugs need to be fixed and is hardly an excuse. The thing is it has a similar role to bulls charge but on 1/5th the cd. With that in mind it is more of how the skill forces defensive cds because it leads so perfectly into a full burst. So right now the reward of landing a 40s cd and a 7.75s cd skill with a comparable delay is fairly similar, hardly enough to make up for cd difference and the consequent load that puts on an opponents defensive resources.
Mesmers actually aren’t the worst culprits for low tells and risk – reward. I would almost say they are the next closest after a warrior, maybe guardian beforehand. Though that depends on the spec. High condi specs with staff clones putting out the majority of the damage, no. Phantasm specs, obviously no.
Mesmers just have conflicting mechanics. Shatter spec promotes more in-fighting which requires a high amount of escapes. Still they probably have a bit too much in this regard. ~3.5 second between dodges on top of the other escapes. Then the immob on swap really doesn’t need to last 2 seconds.
Then they have more of the evasive specs that have accumulative range damage. At that point the number of escapes become way out of line for what they are doing. But actual tournaments are time based so these don’t pop up much but none the less are still unhealthy.
The way I see it is this:
Fighting warriors you have to pay attention to what they are doing and react to it
Fighting other classes you focus on forcing your own playstyle on your opponent
Warriors – Both players fully interacting with one another
Everything else – play at your own place aside from paying attention to 1-2 skills that are reasonable and worth reacting to. Otherwise mostly just spam evades and cycle through your rotation.
Don’t worry I have been giving the devs the same msg since day one. Then again this is where we have ended up.
Maybe it is time to start putting a new game together that matches with the vision most players seem to be looking for?
The problem is your using a longbow and the longbow follows a trend similar to the other classes. The reliability is just too high to foster an interactive game. Warrior has better not join the ranks of the other classes, then this is truly a casual game.
PvE does have quite a large barring on PvP though. Do you really think all class design was taken without PvE in mind? I would say the whole ranger class is heavily based on PvE. What about the asura? Would that have been included in an e-sport? Downed state a bit arguable but sure had its PvE roots.
Similarly adding WvW and the need to render large scale battles causes compromises. Just compare the quality of animations to blade and soul.
I am willing to bet class design would be completely different if it was only done for PvP.
I must say the game is quite far off from what I would consider ideal. It really seems like the Devs don’t have a system in place that really looks at the goal of each class, weapon set or trait line. The ground work, the vision is just missing.
Did the devs always intend bunkers to exist to the degree they do or did they just roll with it when they started showing up?
What do the devs consider a reasonable limit for the amount of invuln time a class can have?
How do the Devs view what warning is appropriate for the level of impact a skill has?
For the warrior sword, what is the playstyle trying to be achieved?
There seems to be so many questions without a tentative answer. More the Devs just throwing up an array of tools that loosely fit from a lore perspective and rolling with what the players make of it.
For example if I was designing the warrior sword this is what I would look at. Of course the weapon is quite plain as it is now so it would need to go beyond what we currently have.
What is the goal with the weapon?
Playstyle – reactionary + conservative, sustained damage, melee
Build path – hybrid pressure focusing on bleed and movement impairment
Ideal role – Frontline dps that is able to put out reliable pressure on a target and disrupt their actions.
How is this achieved?
Flow – react to an opponents movement with skills 2-5. If successful should create opportunities to land a full autoattack chain to output good pressure.
Autoattack causing majority of damage through long duration bleeds and a high impact 3rd hit.
Other skills being dedicated to maintaining contact, disrupting opponent and preventing incoming damage.
How does the weapon currently function compared to these goals?
Survivability is lacking for a sustained damage build – Needs higher base damage, less scaling so stat allocation can be more focused on defense. Skills having a larger defensive role.
The ‘reliable’ damage can be easily prevented through condition removal – Needs a tool to disrupt condition removal attempts.
I think it really depends on how torment is implemented. If it lasts 5+ seconds it isn’t going to be a dynamic change that promotes a reaction. If it is mostly a ~3-5s condition with a more noticeable effect people will play around it more.
But… still seems overly focused on affecting the warrior.
The other thing that is always a concern is how they use traits to buff a class or cover its weakness. Those traits become mandatory and crowd out options.
Wrong approach – Trait that makes burst skills remove a condition
Correct approach – new burst skill that removes conditions
The problem is widespread between all warrior builds so give it to all warriors not a specific build.
This is something I have argued a number of times before, though met a lot of resistance towards getting this issue addressed.
The issue is also a bit more complex as it is largely integrated with the cast time of many high impact skills and maintaining time to kill for the non-outlier builds.
Personally I would increase endurance cap to 150%, increase recharge time to 15s and nuke sigil of energy. This would decrease the sustain of active defense making conservation more important. From there I would then remake a large number animations for high impact skills so that they are more reasonably reacted to as opposed to trying to maintain as many invincibility frames as possible and hoping to catch some of them.
If more endurance generation is needed add it in sources that can be countered. Such as skills that grant vigor when they connect. Counter of a counter I know but we aren’t talking about stat based counters, we are talking about playstyle.
The game had potential but it has just been managed poorly. Too many mechanics aren’t adding to the game the way they should be.
Some things that just aren’t fun:
Interaction between players is not emphasized.
AI centric
Downed state
Emphasis on rotations and creating uneven fights / escaping from uneven fights
Node control / bunkers
Lack of build diversity / Balance
Poor reward system
Many of these issues have seen no progress and in fact in many instances they are reoccurring mistakes. Many people here might disagree that these are issues but that is why they are still playing when many have moved on.
Agreed but wow has the game digressed. Looks like the warrior is becoming more like other classes with less counterplay. Long bow burst skill covering way more than a point now? Is that really the ideal change to help buff the weapon? I mean really…
I agree with a number of points Diage made but disagree with some of the specifics. Gw1 was great. How the game promoted team play was done excellently but that hasn’t carried over to Gw2. I also agree with Gw1’s issues being the learning curve and lack of transparency.
However removing the attrition system, although it does make the game easier to understand does create a number of other problems. Also the choice to remove the attrition system wasn’t made for PvP but instead PvE, as an attempt to decrease down time. If they were actively trying to reduce under the hood affects what is with all this on crit procs? For PvP it has the consequence of reducing the risk-reward of skill usage. This is something that hasn’t been actively addressed by designing skills with higher risk-reward in mind. It is also compounded by the frequency of active defense in Gw2. High Impact skills need to be used repeatedly to force active defense usage allowing other high impact skills to land. Ends up being too many skills are used on cd as holding onto skills for too long prevents that player from overwhelming an opponents active defense.
The real issue here is visibility. It is more than possible to create an attrition system that impacts only a subset of skills while allowing better visibility of the attrition state of the opponent and increasing risk-reward.
The other thing I disagree with is the lack of a holy trinity isn’t a plus. The team coordination in Gw1 resulted almost entirely from the presence of a monk. The back line changes the situation from how long will it take us to push a kill through to how do we actually push a kill through? The guarantee is no longer there causing the difference between teams to be an extra player as opposed to a couple extra seconds. Partially the downed state addresses this by reducing the guarantee but its implementation has so many other issues I am not going to get into.
A players self reliance for defense has just been taken a step too far. With active defense in Gw2 monks in their entirety aren’t needed but there should still be much more team dependence on defense. Actually having a single person dedicated to team defense makes the game easier to understand than each player contributing marginally anyways. Ideally each player can contribute to defense to a small extent, as seen through linebacking/interrupting enemy offense while having a person heavily focused but not entirely on defense. Healers > Bunkers+downstate in promoting team interaction.
Then in all honestly class design as a whole is pretty bad in Gw2. The consistency to impact ratio is really far off for the vast majority of classes. There is also a number of class roles being limited functionally due to risking them stepping on another classes toes as well as some roles being underrepresented. The trait system can be massively improved, not just through tweaks to individual traits but the entire layout of the system. The trait lines don’t give the impression they have a truly distinct goal in mind and are limited to a large extent by the inflexibility of the attribute system. Eg. they have to put condition damage next to something for each class even if it doesn’t quite fit the goal of that line.
Personally I think it will take a new game to turn this genre around. Gw2 has put itself out there really as a learning instrument as opposed to setting itself up for success. But when your being funded by a corporation like NcSoft who doesn’t believe PvP is a safe investment that is to be expected. At least they have revealed there is a market here that is very underrepresented.
i would argue that everything else needs to be brought to the warriors level. in fact, all these posts here describe how a warrior is basically what other classes should have been: good telegraphing moves, good damage, lacking some important aspect (such as cc or condi remove) that another class could provide for it. you know, teamplay. istead of each class being sulf-sufficient and completely removing any need to coordinate with your team during a fight.
This is what I have always argued. The problem with warriors is other classes have very reliable damage. This causes the necessity for large amounts of active defense which ends up affecting warriors the most due to their damage being more telegraphed.
Warriors are the best designed having the most interaction with their opponent but are also the least viable. The way the game has gone is just frankly boring. Most classes don’t require paying close attention to their opponents to make sure their damage gets through.
The only thing I see is a lot of those problems come from a PvE design philosophy. This game is pretty obviously designed for PvE first. There is no way a game focused on PvP would design the ranger as it is. Where are the skill shots? Why is their damage so passive? Why do I have to bring a pet? What happened to the interrupt system? There is no way the ranger was designed to interact with other players positively. If you break down each of these the choices they favor PvE but obviously have large negative consequences for PvP.
Downstate vs healers. Healers are a pain to find in PvE but PvP they add an entire layer of depth to the combat. Gw1 PvP was literally defined by how awesome monks were. They were what the team interaction was based around. Progress could only outweigh a monk if coordinated. Not keep hitting a target and it will eventually die regardless of if you pay attention to what the rest of your team is doing. Downstate can be nice in PvE though, such a simple nice deed you can do without being class dependent.
Basically Gw2 has reached its niche and it isn’t what many of the e-sports crowd are looking for in a game. It caters to its group of players and is a bit rude to pull out the rug from them even if the majority are looking for something else. It just leave the door open, rather widely for a new game to come in that focuses on the other crowd.
On a side note about ensign I believe there was a number of Gw1 players who were removed for strongly disagreeing with the core principals of a game. If what you want doesn’t match the core principals of a game, sucks but that is one area where strong negative feedback doesn’t help much. Maybe useful in looking at other audiences to target in a later title?
I definitely think arenas would be the preferred game mode for the less hardcore crowd. Sure conquest has more depth but at what cost to the average player? It is riddled with 1v2 fights along with bunkers and burst specs. Who enjoys fighting someone then have a burst class show up while your cds are down?
Conquest also has glaring issues with giving the player information outside voip. An individual has no control over what fights are taking place and where because they lack any sort of information. It just ends up lacking a sense of fairness which arenas provide.
Arenas then allow for the much more diverse set of roles that can be taken. Don’t have to worry about having high mobility and burst roamers, bunkers, things good at killing treb, etc. I think arenas will allow for more middle ground builds to show up. Balance is still a real issue though. I think saying it is a team game is just a cop out for balancing. Conquest gives you the option to 2v1 players with builds that are exceptionally strong in 1v1s or throw a bunker at them. Those options don’t showcase balance but give some tools to help minimize imbalances. Even with the current problems with arenas they are already showing more potential.
Personally I don’t think conquest is even the ideal gamemode for adding that extra layer of depth. It lacks phases, encourages bunkers, doesn’t provide a way to equalize uneven fights, doesn’t have the tension that a match can still be turned around from a large deficit and encouraging fleeing fights before they resolve. Now I do have a game mode in mind that addresses all that but… with how things have been handled so far I can’t exactly trust Gw2 to do it justice.
HOW ABOUT:
-0.2 seconds on weapon swap time
Fast Hands changed to “First three attacks after swapping weapons always crit”.You’d be able to max out at 3 second weapon swap time (with rune of the soldier) for maximum versatility. I’d even say it would be OP.
Only problem I see is that it might be a slight nerf to warriors only taking around 15-20 points in Discipline because Fast Hands is a flat -5.
Do you know what it means to have guaranteed crits…especially on a class like warrior…let alone on weapon swaps?
Yes. It’s pretty kittening good. You can run durable and do far more damage than you deserve to do. And it’s pretty clear that warrior is pretty kittening bad. Everyone else is saying “warrior needs more sustain!” or something like that, but that’s taking away the classe’s niche of hitting hard consistently, it just makes them into a psuedo guardian.
Of course, if it’s really that bad only next hit critting is also okay.
Now the real question is why do guardians exist? Why couldn’t the whole role of the guardian be compressed as an alternative spec for warrior? That way there is more control over how much sustain a player can put into their melee class. Instead of going from no sustain to massive sustain. Warrior right now has no continuity. Glass or go home, because hps is basically the multiplier for defensive stats.
Why is ranger’s pet better then the Warrior?
Pros:
- More health.
- Ignores most pathing.
- Double the armor (due to perma-protection.)
- Better boons/buffs. (perma regeneration!)
- More sustain. (more HPS, better buffs.)
- Better temporary abilities. (better invulnerabilities.)
- Easier to use not so animated knockdowns. (self-explanatory.)
- Better condition removal. (All you need to do is switch me out to clear all conditions! Not only that my master can cure them off me!)Cons:
- Less damage.
- Can’t be controlled by a player.I’ll kill any ranger’s pet easily. So no they aren’t better then us.
Can a rangers bet do this???
Yeah didn’t think so.
That build doesn’t work anymore. That was when warriors were strong and weapon swap sigils didn’t have an internal. When leeching gave warriors an additional 200hps and dps AND you could use those with intelligence for big eviscerates. The 200 hps from leeching basically doubled warriors hps. For warriors to be equivalent to back then mending would have to heal for 10k.
I really think the problem with warriors is their class design philosophy. Warriors have to be differentiated for thieves and guardians in some way. Which is basically them not being allowed evasiveness, sustain or defensive boons. Now they are still melee classes that need a way to survive so where do they get that from? Passive defense? Well that is just plain inferior right now and well boring in the first place.
So at the end of the day what is a warrior? Right now the warrior has the best cc and good damage output with the lowest reliability, sustain and active defense. Could say they have high passive hp/armor but at the end of the day they still have the worst survivability due to having the lowest sustain + active defense. So where is the problem?
Warriors are undercut on sustain and active defense to too large of a margin in an attempt to make them unique. The other issue is reliability which is frankly a problem with the other classes. Classes having less reliability and more counterplay = good, you know like a warrior. Not like this ranger thing where damage just happens and you can focus almost all your attention on evading. Warriors I feel like I have to bait dodges with lower impact skills and count cooldowns, other classes, nah, getting damage through is cake.
Honestly the combat system is more fitting for a dueling system with the no holy trinity, amount of particle effects and large mobility discrepancies between classes. However how elite skills were implemented doesn’t fit dueling. When I first saw their approach to elite skills I cringed as they went for more of a moba design instead of sticking to their Gw1 style. Mobas have a lot of down time while a combat system like Gw2 doesn’t so their style doesn’t transfer over cleanly.
Its also that going into release they nerfed the warriors sustain by probably 30%+ unintentially. Bumping the cd on mending up to 25s from 20s along with adding internals on all weapon swap sigils so the nearly 200 hps they were getting from leeching sigil was lost. So warriors are much weaker then they were during beta but they have retained the stigma that they are fine.
It also isn’t uncommon for games with duels to introduce an aggression system. Once the timer ticks down the more aggressive player wins. So if your bringing a bunker build into a duel without the purpose of eventually getting a kill your just wasting your own time.
From the soloque perspective the game actually is not inherently team based. The game provides too little information about what is happening elsewhere for much teamwork to occur without voice com.
Now with a premade the game can be considered a team based game but how accessible to a normal player is a team? Honestly without prize tournaments and e-sports this will be the minority. Now I don’t think your team rating should be determined by duel performance. That is just silly. Ideally it should be a combined ‘team’ or ‘guild’ rating with solo and team queues being separate.
But for solos, dueling is probably the more accurate system. At least with the lack of UI giving players information of what is happening around allies. The ability just isn’t there to make correct choices and for a good player to have as large of an impact.
I kinda question the idea that the game is ‘more’ balanced in a group setting. Definitely can’t say it is balanced for 1v1s either. But does the balance actually improve when you introduce more people? I suppose bunkers become more than functional in a team setting, but what else?
Its not like there is many skills that only work in a team setting. Look at the balance for AoE skills, they are balanced such that they don’t become irrelevant in 1v1s either. Its the same with many support skills aside from res skills. Many team oriented skills are also the preferred skills for someone watching their home point, expecting mostly 1v1s.
Really one of the few things offered by having multiple players in the map is being able to pick and choose fights. So there are ways for a class that gets hard countered in some matches to be effective somewhere on the map. But what if things that inherently created hard counters weren’t a part of the game? Designed with no condition damage? Classes having integrated condition removal rather than it being optional?
Or make it so when you immob them while they are in ride the lightning they actually stop. Think you are counter playing them with that well timed immob? Guess again.
Agreed. Though I am not sure how much can be turned around with Gw2. More about lessons to be learned for a new title. What I think most people enjoy can be summed up to the combat engine. Of course some would say they enjoy many of the other aspects, but that’s probably why they stick around. To cater to the players that left would be to step on the toes of many that stayed. To me that shows a need for a new title. The people who enjoy this game seem to be of the minority with the numbers we have seen other games have. Personally I think it is more than reasonable for a new title with a similar combat system as Gw2 to beat out League as an e-sports title but I don’t think that game would look much like Gw2.
There is just a number of systems at the core of Gw2 which I think limits what it can become. Even if many of players current demands are met there would still be much room to improve on. Then there is the whole issue of meeting those demands in the first place. Some of the issues I see are:
Monetization – Are there any aesthetics being sold for the PvP community? They have 5 races (Asura >:) making the development of aesthetics less cost effective. Aesthetics also end up being the only method of character progression so it competes with the gem store.
Game mode – Is conquest the best choice? I think unanimously that is a no. How reasonable is it to switch game modes now when it has a direct impact on balance? It has already been shown how elite skills limit what can be done, though I think how elite skills were handled on their own is another issue. A game mode I have in mind that might give league a run for its money isn’t something that can just be added.
Downed state – Something like 40% of the remaining players don’t like the downstate? Yikes. This is a really a poor option to add more team interaction compared to alternatives. Honestly not something most of us would have thought until seeing it, but now we know.
Balance – Maybe this is just me, but the games balance seems quite far from the ideal. Roughly speaking I believe a shout warrior is the closest thing to ideal. Enough sustain the fight doesn’t end without plays being made. Somewhat limited active defense so it has to be well used. The ability to turn a fight around in short order if things are executed well. Animations that are well defined and allow counterplay. Too bad that’s not even close to how the game plays out. Maybe this can be achieved but that’s pretty far off.
Trait system – I actually find this more limiting in diversity than not. Some things just aren’t useful without the associated traits but those traits aren’t always accessible. Too much of a weapons use depends on traits where it is either useless or too strong. Traits should aim to instead augment things that are inherent, rather than also a variable.
Hidden character stats – Knowing what your opponent has available is very important. Well… At least if that played more into a players gameplan to approach a fight. Too many small things that aren’t normative that can greatly impact a fight. And it is mostly decided outside an opponents knowledge.
Condition damage – I disagree with the existence of a stat to progress armor ignoring damage. Too much rock-paper-scissors. Armor ignoring damage should exist but shouldn’t be on such an extreme slider.
One example I would like to bring up that highlights a bit of the interaction between abundance active defense and reaction time to an attack is how fighting a shatter mesmer plays out.
The combo of mirror image + mindwrack is outside reactable range, though it does have some criteria before it can be used. That being how close you are. So the situation becomes once a mesmer matches that criteria the opponent spams defensive cooldowns until they hopefully negate the burst. The opponent uses cooldowns before they see the attack, which is necessary due to the cue on the mesmer’s burst. But then because of a large abundance of active defense they aren’t really punished for not catching the burst either. Many classes can waste cooldowns without the burst actually being used and still have some left over for when the opportunity comes around again. Becomes too much of in X situation always execute Y. So both aspects of this interaction I would say are less than ideal at promoting an interesting interaction and that if the cue was increased the burst would become obsolete.
Should you be able to react to all stuns?
Should you be able to react to only a certain number of stuns per class?
Should you be not be able to react to any stuns?
Should cast time be proportional to stun duration?
For myself I think it should be this:
Stuns that are mainly used for interrupt purposes shouldn’t really be something that can be reacted too.
Stuns that are longer and used to get a burst through should allow reaction.
The distinction between the two would also depend on how much damage a class can be expected to deal within that window. So the distinction between a thief’s interrupt and a guardian’s would be different.
I don’t think standardizing stuns at 0.4s is best. Part of this is an assumption of adding in a casting bar, which I think is more like giving someone a cast rather than preventing the injury in the first place, just less ideal. With animations there is a bit longer delay before an attack becomes distinct from others and that depends on the quality of the animation. Then there is an opportunity cost based on cast time which is a way of distinguishing skills, which applies once you have entered a cast time that can be reacted to. So I could see it ranging for 1/2 second to even 1.5s cast time along with other effects to reflect this for the skills to be distinct from one another.
This is something I have been strongly advocating for awhile. I always found fighting a warrior enjoyable. More glassy S/D eles would be in this category as well. Hammer guardians are also pretty good if it weren’t for sigil of energy breaking the need to manage defensive resources well.
Builds with better skill cues encourage a higher level of interaction between players. Combat between specs like this just feel clean. However this is something I feel is lacking quite a bit for many other specs. Take necro marks for example. Huge aoe, unblockable attack without a real cue, plus they persist. Cast one of those and it is almost guaranteed to hit. That just turns the fight into two players playing at their own pace with minimal interaction. There is no real sense of ‘what can I do better’.
Personally I find part of this problem being a product of how much active defense can be stacked. A warrior can’t kill a guardian because their attacks can easily be interacted with. So to deal with a guardian you need something with highly reliable damage that is difficult to interact with. You see a similar thing with condition specs, the short spammable 3-4s condis aren’t effectively interacted with by condi removal and become the biggest players in a fight. So the issue becomes quite far reaching.
Loving how the downstate results hit home quite nicely. Always thought that mechanic alone hurt the potential player base dramatically. Poll even shows this in a more biased part of the community. Maybe this will finally put some weight into getting it overhauled.
Really they need to learn how to execute a multistage balancing approach. Sure nerfing quickness is good for the long term once other changes go through. But that’s exactly it, such a change needs to be supported by other changes.
Honestly their slow and steady philosophy to balance is just slow, not steady. When your only adjusting one thing that is going to affect the meta, especially like the quickness nerf there are going to be large repercussions. Not taking these into account is not steady.
The problem seems to be that they didn’t have a game mode in mind when they designed classes. Its seems like they first designed classes and then picked a gamemode that best matched that iteration of class design. Which has left us with conquest.
Really other game modes would have worked if classes were initially designed around those game modes. That way they won’t get pigeonholed into a specific game mode, especially one that doesn’t focus on combat enough.
Fourth you’ve been out of the game for a while I don’t think you have a feel for the current meta, sorry. In the current meta you’d actually rather be the 1(cantrip ele) in the 2v1 rather than the 2.
When cantrip eles aren’t able to do what they currently do, conquest will be an amazing game type. I still think it is.
The meta really hasn’t changed much since we stopped playing. Those bunkers allow the freedom to create uneven fights around the rest of the map because you have someone able to hold against uneven numbers. With their high mobility there is some insurance you can force a fight around the bunker. Same as a staff ele when you could swap to dagger for ride the lightning between points. Its partially the cause of the problem but not the exact point I was getting at. It is definitely the bunkers that create the dance of uneven fights which hurts what is happening in the rest of the map.
That is how I feel about the current meta, way too much of a focus on where you send people. Seems like more of a dance of creating 2v1s than actually playing the game. Honestly the current meta makes me miss the AoE meta. At least that way there were even fights that were seen through to the end. Uneven fights are probably the least fun thing imaginable with the games current pacing and the downstate.
Gw2 is all about the combat. That is its strong point. Dominion is a hash of map control and combat but ultimately fails at both compared to the alternatives.
I find it strange Anet went with the whole no healers in their sequel. I found monks iconic to that game, being the best designed healer of any game I had played. Having classes being more self-sufficient does help with smaller fights but I don’t think a more support/healing oriented class and self-sufficiency are mutually exclusive depending on their relative contributions.
Bunkers however are definitely not a good replacement, I don’t understand how bunkers are supposed to be a teams anchor. Now a monk is an anchor, if the monk falls you need to play safe. Bunker falls? Sucks but ok? Just not enough team interaction there, sure there is ressing but compared to the interaction of a dedicated healer ressing just seems like a sideshow (an impactful but bland one). Personally I see them as the product of having too high of build extremes, whereby to balance the extreme offense there must be extreme defense. I however don’t see bunkers as necessary to good gameplay, actually the opposite. Tighten the extremes, get rid of bunkers. Maybe add some more true support options for flavor. Much better.
(edited by Fourth.1567)
Are class changes going to be more aggressive and involve a multifactorial approach? ie changing where a classes strength comes from to improve gameplay/counterplay.
Are traits ever going to get an indepth adjustment?
What are the devs perspective on extreme builds? Are the bounds too large presently?
Agree with the basis of many points though not all completely accurately display the problem.
Lack of healers
I am tempted to say it was just a mistake. Really Gw1 was based entirely around the monk. The design of the monk was really iconic to the game and all the depth that class brought to the table is missing in gw2. It hurts the degree to which fights can scale on the high end and takes away the depth or coordinating attack upon multiple fronts to apply pressure. Now this isn’t to say it can’t still work, it will just work in more of a niche sense. It does have a large impact on what game modes work. A lot more can still be done with the supportive aspects of the game without committing to healers though.
Game modes
With the choice of game modes I don’t think it was a terrible choice in itself. What was a terrible choice was to only focus on this single game mode. The game mode itself doesn’t encompass enough of the spectrum to stand as a single entity. Dueling would have been a good option to help, but the game has a lot of core issues that need to be worked out first.
The big difference between a game like league and gw2 is phases. League progresses, Gw2 remains static. Static games don’t have as much re-playability and as such can’t really be stand alone. Other options are needed, even if only one of them is truly supported competitively. Arenas would also be a rather static game mode and wouldn’t alone fix the game but could help break it up. Right now though given the low population of the game taking an approach of giving a large number of options could be bad by splitting the population up too much. Could of worked before but is probably too late now.
Rewards
Really are non-existent. The funny thing is for a number of players they help deal with repetitive gameplay thus giving the devs a chance to implement more options to break the repetitiveness. But really there were no reward systems in place so the population drops quicker than it would have otherwise. But rewards could still be added to try and bring some of the PvE crowd over. Something that could inflate the population but would require other areas to be fixed first to have a lasting effect.
Class balance.
Yeah core mechanics need refinement. Counterplay just wasn’t fully taken into account. There is just so many things that could be redesigned around counterplay.
One thing I find a bit funny. Warrior are made to be vulnerable to conditions such that they must rely on their teammates. Now who are these teammates that pack enough condition removal to help a warrior over come this weakness? Few classes have strong team oriented condition removal, usually having lengthy cds. I don’t think I have seen team coordinate this type of play. Also the thing that really makes you go huh, warriors have arguably the best team oriented condi removal. How does that work?
Thats really just an aside but just showcases how core class identities weren’t entirely thought through and a lot of work can still be done there.
The best skins for performance are actually the smallest and least visual skins which is mostly starter gear or some of the event items. Ranking up really doesn’t have any incentive, except for maybe the bags?
The only matchup in this game that has viewability includes a balanced s/d ele (not a bunker) or a shout warrrior. Just because of the setup required as there are stages to the gameplay. The other matchups all lack this with time to kill being many times too short, or not existing.
I might go into this in more detail later when I have time.
I kinda have to agree with the OP. I have seen a lot of a current players defend the downed state but that is why they are the current players and others are not. Really hard to say which group is the minority given how many have left.
For me the downed state seems like a safety net, not only that it helps prevent burst but also something good teams can cling to as their distinguishing factor. And wow does using the downed state in your favor win games. It does help increase the skill cap and reward having synergy with your team. But I find this method inferior than having the combat itself reward the greatest amount of synergy as who is going to clap for a great res play as opposed to timing interrupts on healers during a burst?
For the people who don’t think an asura model has a large effect and is a ltp issue, that’s just not correct. The acuteness of visual stimuli have a direct effect on reaction time. The time it takes for your eyes to integrate the information is larger and can be the difference between being hit by a bullscharge or dodging it. Its also even worse because the animations of asura don’t become distinct from one another until later in the animation sequence. The difference isn’t such that your going to never be able to dodge but the probability of you missing a dodge is much higher.
Even is FPS if many players could they would change the colour scheme so enemy players are flourescent green and cut back the level of detail in the models so only important information is shown.
A lot of the top players that are understanding of how the casual experience effects the longevity of a game have long since left the game. They know the game has a weak foundation and is years off from building this up. At least another year to implement all the features that are lacking, then a number of years to slowly bring players back and build up hype again.
They are missing:
More game modes
Proper rewards
Matchmaking/ladder
Profession balance (animation tuning/scaling the learning curve/increasing number of viable builds/changing mechanics that aren’t fun)
Observer mode
Hype (Prize Tournaments, changing pvp to ftp, expansions etc.)
Definitely not a list that can be accomplished in a short order with limited resources. For the mean time this creates a large disconnect between the current competitive players and those not truly committing to the game yet.
The thing I am most concerned about it whether they are actively hiring or transitioning more people to work on the PvP side of things. Right now the game feels like it is years out of being a competitive game with the current pacing of things. A lot of people are quite discouraged by the allocation of resources between PvE and PvP.
With the downed state I would say it is necessary with how the game currently functions but definitely not ideal. It would actually be possible to overhaul the downstate while keeping its current purpose the same and removing a bunch of the negative aspects of it.
I don’t find downstate having nearly all their damage coming from a reliable source a good thing. I think it should consist more of big burst skill shots that need to be charged before they can be used. This would give players more control over preventing damage from downed state players, rather than the damage being inevitable and help make 1v2s more feasible.
Rallying should also be adjusted, possibly instead of having the player get out of the downed state completely their downed state hp is healed by a certain %.
I think we need some real perspective on this.
Warriors actually can do quite well in 2v2 and 3v3 setting when using builds similar to what Schwahrheit is inferring. Their 1v1 is actually pretty good as well but there are hard counters they will run into. Their 4v4 and 5v5 viability actually tends to be less than a GS/Axe warrior even though it looks like on paper these builds bring better group utility. This stems from the frame a warrior brings having a number of holes in it that become more prominent in a larger fight, limiting how long they can fight for and how much mileage they get from their better supportive aspects. A warrior just isn’t a risky target to focus, damage on them tends to stick even if they are spec’d defensively allowing them to be a great target to swap to. So for larger fights its best to front load their effects so you can actually get the full mileage out of that position.
100b tends to be the most efficient build at avoiding the warriors innate weakness. Other, more balanced builds tend to fall behind as the longer a fight goes on the worse of a position a warrior is in. This is because the design of the warrior makes a number of compromises for their higher health pool which effect itself diminishes as the fight length increases. Most of their skills have a single functionality compared to other professions multifunctional skills which leads to issues with lower sustained active defense, condition removal and range limitations.
Really I feel the game should promote more of a balanced warrior build. Having the strongest build being glass cannon causes problems at lower skill brackets. A lot of the % multipliers should be shifted to more flat values as well as give warriors stronger trait and skill options that help alleviate some of the compromises they are currently making such that a warrior is actually able to sustain themselves in a fight and fill a role similar to the ele d/d build.
This is an old meta just reoccurring. Works for a short while until teams adapt towards a counter.
I find watching 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 fights enjoyable. However watching 2v1s over and over again is really bland. There is a lot of strategy in a normal game which can be interesting, however I just don’t see it being an E-sport game mode. The game is based heavily on strategy which effect isn’t all that apparent. I just can’t see that attracting a large casual viewer base. It might be a competitive game mode but not really an E-sports.
1v1s are just much more viewer friendly where the intricacies that effect the outcome being more apparent to viewers. The game just obviously wasn’t balanced for 1v1s.
It is possible to add in more of a 5v5 game mode that will attract a casual viewer base but right now conquest isn’t going to fit that roll.
Interesting idea but I think this is a work around to a design problem. The real problem is outside directly communicating the game does not supply information about what is happening elsewhere and is very harsh on organizing solo que players. The map UI just needs to be drastically improved along with the 101 other things.
Agree with Vyndetta and Lowell. AoE is definitely too strong. It doesn’t come with much of a trade off compared to single target damage.
However given the more limited nature of skills a player can bring I don’t think harshly penalizing AoE would be the correct approach as it would degenerate into situations where obviously players geared towards AoE are going to win team fights and players geared towards single target damage are going to win small encounters. Such a predictable outcome would be boring.
I think the bigger problem is the number of mechanics that restrict movement to too large of an extent. Personally many cap points feel too small and I would prefer to see players being enabled to avoid AoE rather than globally nerfing AoE damage by increasing the size of cap points, probably in the order of 20%.
The other thing I am going to harp on is certain things need % resistance to AoE damage given their inherent vulnerability to AoE (get this tech!). This can be used for downed players, treb, nerfing instant shatters using mirror images in exchange for illusion AoE resistance, etc.
so we need to sttop nerfing and start buffing stuff so there is more options so there can be new metas right?
it seems in my mind im trying to say what you are saying but writing it jsut doesnt work.
ppl are trying to take the easy way out but the easy way out isnt going to make it to esports. when you watch the olympics and you see someone go that extra mile do that harder thing it pays off if its successful but if they fail it it has big consequences
go big or go home i say. take moa for example i may have been moa 5 times in tournaments because i paid attention. so i was ok with the old moa they took a big risk trying it so they get the reward. but the community QQ so hard because they didnt want to learn how to dodge it now they nerfed it so hard you will never see it again.
my point is keep nerfing everything it will eventually all be gone except 1 meta everyone has same utilities same elites and then the game is to boring not only to watch but to play also. this is not the game KRYSHADE told me about and the community for a competitve game is not what it should be.
we should have forum posts on hoe to make game more exciteing talking about how to over come challenges we should be calling other teams out in a friendly manner. not all this QQ stuff or getting serious saying ppl are not good and belittling them.
What does this have to do with new players dieing to burst specs? Their problem is they aren’t taking optimal advantage of their active defense and high burst damage punish this. What can be buffed, rather than nerfed to help this relationship while having a minimal impact on higher level of plays?
assuming anet has a bunch of competent programmer to balance the game, why are u so mad about qq on the forum? you are 4months late and waking up now with this kind of thread is silly.
you know, for anyone is more simple qq on forum than l2p and ask advice from players.
you wasted your time..but maybe u were waiting for paid to popbecause the game is getting less skill capped by the day it seems and i think its because of all the QQ from ppl that need to L2P.
i hear from 2 sides all day. 1 side is its to hard lets QQ all day instead of L2P and the other side is this game is being turned into a viva pienata party game were the whole family can sit down and be lvl 80 and play it then if they suck they can qq instead of learning how to play.
im just sick of it. i want this to go to esports (yes imma get quated and say it will never go but whatever) for that to happen it needs to be interesting and for that to happen we need to stop all this silly QQ and l2p.
You need to understand how a game gets to esports. Telling people to L2P doesn’t do that, it does the opposite as it avoids the root of the issue. For the game to be an esport there needs to be a viewer base, ie. from a casual player base. This is nearly non-existant right now which is partially due to the new player walking out of the gate and getting instagibbed without proper warning by the specs that are QQ’d about. Sure it can be fine at higher levels of play but for people starting out IT IS VERY BAD.
If you want the game to succeed the meta is going to have to shift to something that is less toxic at entry level, even if you find it is fine. The only reason that makes sense to tell players to L2P rather than address the core issue is out of fear of a meta shift and your ability to adjust.
I can’t agree with sataar. This whole thread is just full of him boasting rather than trying to progress towards a resolution. I think the only piece of advice given was keep your distance from a warrior and watch the enemy mesmer’s timewarp cd and positioning. There is also no consideration for what new players experience. Top players just saying L2P to new players is like asking the game to be guillotined from the bottom up.
The thing is balance can’t have a singular focus at the top level. Telling people just to ltp isn’t going to help the community. We are obviously seeing balance issues at lower levels of play where players haven’t learned all the other classes burst rotations and are just instantly dieing. Have that happen a couple times and have them quit the game, yeah that is good… Hardly the only reason the game is bleeding players but still a very notable one.
Saying ltp isn’t the solution in this case. It is more of a global problem with burst specs where in order to win perfect use of active defense is necessary. Can new players be expected to do this? Hell no.
What should be asked for instead of straight nerfs is more of an adjustment to burst specs with many of those classes strengths being moved slightly towards other areas to give new players a bit of a buffer. Animations also need to be cleaned up with the level of importance of the skill being reflected by the animations to help lessen the learning curve.