Guild Wars 2

I don’t believe they’re fake but look like an early version, so people need to calm down, final notes will probably look kind of what was leaked minus/plus some things that may or may not include the stuff listed on this thread. Just wait and see and calm down. ALSO, the leaked notes are for balance changes only, they do not include bug fixes which is half of the things the OP lists.

Given how they’re written and based on what the devs have said was coming to this patch and what they include I would be very surprised if these aren’t real.

But while they probably are real they also look like an earlier version of it, so I doubt we’ll be seeing everything on there on the final notes and there may be some added things. Just wait and see.

HPLT.7132:

Still no reward system revamp, still no solo q.
But of course Custom Arena’s Beta end was worth to be mentioned.
Torment is hopefully not available for current mesmer and thief meta builds.

GZ

Wildstar this is your chance!

Wildstar? Lol… …

Archaon.6245:

Julius.1094:

Archaon.6245:

As i said many times…if you REALLY think going asura gives you a big advantage just make an asura char and it’s done you are at the same level now…you know you can go pvp with lv1 char so at the end of the day where’s the problem? But if race size is just an excuse when you get facerolled i don’t think getting an asura would improve your skills so much….if you can’t spot asura’s skills it’s your problem cause 90% of pvp community already fight asuras with no problems at all….and maybe, just maybe…that asura who destroyed you last time would kik you anyway even if you go asura too..

Ugh, tone it down a tad, bro. Where did I use that as an excuse for losing to anybody other than in your head? Of course making an asura evens things out thank you for that intelligent insight my point is that that’s not as fun as what I propose. Nowhere did I say “can’t spot animations at all”… I said that it’s harder to spot, specially in team fights with a lot of things blocking your view, and it seems to me most of the community (I’ll avoid making up statistics) agrees with that based on the fact so many roll asuras for that very reason, specially among high ranked players. My point is that the game would be better off if it just wasn’t a factor, that it would be more fun to play and watch if players could just pick whatever race they like most. Do tell me, what’s wrong with that?

I actually play 3 classes in tpvp and 3 races…human, silvary and asura and there’s no difference at all…good players would get you no matter the race you’re playing..and i don’t feel any difference myself between fighting a norn or an asura at all, even during mid teamfights…i mean, all humans or big asuras and small norns? Seriously? I think that anyone let’s say over r25-30 must not have problems on fighting asuras, sure maybe harder for a r10…but i don’t think you can actually find a 40+ saying asuras are unfair cause they’re harder to identify and stuff (Unless he spent his whole life farming hotjoin only)…because no, they aren’t…it’s nothing but experience, like pretty much everything else..

Eh I’m not gonna argue, but a quick forum search on the topic will show you half a dozen threads with many high ranked players saying the opposite. So… saying no one over 35 must have a problem with it seems a little iffy. But you are certainly entitled to your opinion. Btw, i suggested it as a toggle which means you could continue seeing PVE sizes in PVP if you prefer them.

Archaon.6245:

As i said many times…if you REALLY think going asura gives you a big advantage just make an asura char and it’s done you are at the same level now…you know you can go pvp with lv1 char so at the end of the day where’s the problem? But if race size is just an excuse when you get facerolled i don’t think getting an asura would improve your skills so much….if you can’t spot asura’s skills it’s your problem cause 90% of pvp community already fight asuras with no problems at all….and maybe, just maybe…that asura who destroyed you last time would kik you anyway even if you go asura too..

Ugh, tone it down a tad, bro. Where did I use that as an excuse for losing to anybody other than in your head? Of course making an asura evens things out thank you for that intelligent insight my point is that that’s not as fun as what I propose. Nowhere did I say “can’t spot animations at all”… I said that it’s harder to spot, specially in team fights with a lot of things blocking your view, and it seems to me most of the community (I’ll avoid making up statistics) agrees with that based on the fact so many roll asuras for that very reason, specially among high ranked players. My point is that the game would be better off if it just wasn’t a factor, that it would be more fun to play and watch if players could just pick whatever race they like most. Do tell me, what’s wrong with that?

candlecan.9827:

Lets be logical here.
Is this issue annoying? yes
Is it game breaking? no

This is a quality of life issue. An option to show all players as human or something would be a nice addition, but on a priority list I would rank this very near the bottom. Demanding a dev response is kind of ludicrous

Very little atm in pvp is “game breaking”, so if that’s your criteria for things being addressed I guess we won’t be doing much. There are plenty of balance issues, and this is a balance issue and also a match viewing issue, both of those things are key to a game trying to break into esports. You would rank it near the bottom, ok, good for you. This issue is a lot more visible in high level pvp, so that might be why it’s not very noticeable to you.

Taym.8326:

Julius.1094:

There’s been a few threads about it… yet Anet seems to not respond to any of them. Can you devs share your thoughts on it? I wont’ reiterate why it’s a problem, a lot of people have discussed it in length, here is my simple proposed solution:

When players are in the Mist ONLY (sizes are as is in PVE) race sizes are normalized so regardless of what was selected in character creation:

All humans and Sylvari will be the same size (mid of character creation measurement changeable scale) and serve as the baseline.

All char and Norn are 10% taller than the baseline, all asura are 10% smaller than the baseline.

This could be a toggle so players that want to see the pve sizes can.

This would maintain the feel for the race size differences but make the difference small enough where it’s a non-issue. The results would be people would make whatever they want, pvp would have racial diversity which is more fun for players and viewers, and tournaments wouldn’t be a bunch of tiny asura doing stuff that’s hard to follow which would be a big improvement towards esports.

Is such a change (or some different solution) being considered/developed?

I figure eventually tournaments (player run tournaments not tPvP) will have limitations on races. I suspect they will limit things to human characters only to limit the amount of animations to memorize, but I don’t think something like regular PvP which means nothing needs a fix for.

Ignoring the fact your last sentence doesn’t make sense, forcing players in tournament to play just one race is a poor bandaid solution to something that could actually be solved. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of players aren’t in tournaments.

Zumi.6384:

Unfortunately it’s not that easy of a fix. From my understanding, if they changed the size/frame/design of the different races, they’d have to create all new armor skins, weapon skins, animations, etc etc etc for each one. It’s an insane amount of change.

Ah, no. The change I suggested is not to the proportions just to total size. The box of fun for example has a proc that increases your size, so does rampage, the engi elixir S makes you tiny. No armos/skin/weapons/animations happens for those effects all the visuals for the character armor/weapons/model/animations are simply scaled up or down evenly. So the scaling itself is not complicated, setting up the toggle and programming the switch from PVE to PVP is more complicated but I can’t imagine it being all that difficult to program given what it is and what I can gather from GW2’s code structure without having seen the programs they’re running myself.

Penguin.5197:

Imo all they really have to do without making drastic changes is make all asura max size for asura in pvp.

Max size norn mesmers are a problem as well.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Emapudapus.1307:

Warrior is viable in pvp, maybe not op as elemntalists or bm rangers but somewhere average.

ooo all right.
but i see a lot of people stating that
“warrior is weak in sPvP”
“warrior is useless in sPvP”
etc

why is that? O_O

Nope, not viable. Sorry bro.

There’s been a few threads about it… yet Anet seems to not respond to any of them. Can you devs share your thoughts on it? I wont’ reiterate why it’s a problem, a lot of people have discussed it in length, here is my simple proposed solution:

When players are in the Mist ONLY (sizes are as is in PVE) race sizes are normalized so regardless of what was selected in character creation:

All humans and Sylvari will be the same size (mid of character creation measurement changeable scale) and serve as the baseline.

All char and Norn are 10% taller than the baseline, all asura are 10% smaller than the baseline.

This could be a toggle so players that want to see the pve sizes can.

This would maintain the feel for the race size differences but make the difference small enough where it’s a non-issue. The results would be people would make whatever they want, pvp would have racial diversity which is more fun for players and viewers, and tournaments wouldn’t be a bunch of tiny asura doing stuff that’s hard for viewers to follow which would be a big improvement towards esports.

Is such a change (or some different solution) being considered/developed?

Underwater is totally unbalanced for PVP, news?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Hey all! Let’s make sure to remember that matchmaking is based off your rating and not your PvP rank. Players cannot currently see their ratings but our new matchmaking is much more efficient at pooling players together for matches. You should be experiencing much smaller rating deviations in games without a terrible sacrifice to queue time.

Be sure to give constructive feedback on how you feel the matchmaking is working for you.

Aside from splitting solo and team queue rating (PLEASE…) I wish I could PVE while waiting for matches. As it is between having to go to the mists to queue and that annoying pop up box that doesn’t actually wait when you click “wait” it’s really annoying to try to do that. If players can seamlessly PVE while solo queing and waiting for match to start the wait time would be far less noticeable not to mention get pvpers to pve more. I get that players need to go to the mists and understand their PVP skills/stats before queing so queing from pvp is problematic but that’s easily solved by making that feature “unlock” after a certain number of matches. If waiting for queue is less of an issue longer queue times for better matching isn’t as bad.

So when you first go into the mists you get a “letter” from the pvp trainer that gives some important pvp advice and tells you about how your stats are different and ALSO let’s you know that you have completed five tournament matches you can queue from pve.

JonathanSharp.7094:

We also think that we need to improve the PvP rewards. I can’t give too many details (sorry to say that so often guys), but this is something that’s already in the plans.

You guys need to speed up PvP development… We’re not that far off from a full year since release and rewards/structure/quality of life/balance, still play like beta >.> the foundation is there and is great (or I wouldn’t be playing) but the polish is far off and really needs to move along faster. If you guys had a test server open to a large number of players you could be testing changes much more efficiently and implementing broader changes with each patch…

When people start using homophobic, racist or sexist slurs. Because that’s not “trash” talk, it’s hate speech and it creates a hostile environment for many people who buy the game to have fun.

If people want to call others “bad”, “noob” and the like, whatever, just ignore it. I don’t do it because it’s silly/immature. If you beat somebody and they call you bad they are insulting themselves, which is an irony that flies right by some people.

Jasher.6580:

I’m 100% certain that all the people complaining about the lolPhantasm build are either:

A. Have been playing the game for a long time, are bad at it and there is no hope for them to get better.

or

B. New at the game and will get better but they are currently bad.

Hmm, what is your leaderboard ranking oh great spvper? Because a number of people on the threat are above 200, so unless you’re like, top 50 I’m curious to know by what criteria you call them “bad” for pointing out a balance problem with a build.

No. Pvp in GW2 i separate, I want to pvp against players who WANT to pvp, not pvers who are just there to farm experience and don’t give a kitten. NO. Go away.

Jackums.3496:

Your concerns would be valid if PvP was balanced around 1v1, which is the only area the phantasm builds excel. However, that’s not the case.

Phantasm builds do just fine in team fights as well, illusion of life and the AOE from Izerker alone are great team fight tools. On top of that, nothing can really hold up against them 1v1 at equal skill level, specially not engies with perma retal on every phantasm. Mesmers, shatter too but to a lesser extent, and def phantasm build along with BM rangers are the only noticeably OP classes/builds atm. The reason is similar for both, having “pets” that hit way too hard, enabling them to focus on survival while the pet does dmg. The end result is that their damage is too high for how hard they are too kill, same issue eles used to have. This is pretty straightforward stuff, there is no need to reinvent the wheel just tone down the ranger pet/phantasm/mindwreck damage some and it’s all set.

Thesilentflute.8761:

With a rune set and sigil this class is able to build and maintain 25 stacks of might thats 875 power 875 condition damage through out a fight resulting in the most over powered dps in the game.

Necros are scarce in the spvp because HGH has taken their place why have boon stripping along to counter bunkers when you can bring a class with such strong dps that you can just burn through their boons with dps alone along with any reinforcements.

When faced with any melee opposition they just grenade their feet and kill them in seconds. My thief can withstand 1k blades from a war, but one grenade shot from HGH engineer and he is down.

Do necros need a buff sure, but this is our real balance problem.

HGH condi engies are not spikey at all, even with full might stacks they need to wear you down with condis their direct damage is only moderate. If you save your condi removal to get rid of burn/high stacks of bleed (instead of just hitting it whenever you see any condis up on you) you cancel out a lot of their damage. They also have little to disengage with and generally only one defensive CD which means they are fairly easy to lock down and weak against focus fire. Grenades are hard to land at range unless the target is bad and doesn’t know how to look up and get out of the way, the arch is fairly slow at range distances. They’are also much weaker in team fights against enemies that know to keep spread out while grenades are flying not allowing nades to hit multiple targets at once. They’are also very weak against anything that removes or steals boons (which in tourneys is includes thieves and mesmers, which are very common classes). I’m not saying the build is UP but it’s not OP it has plenty of counters and weaknesses. It’s actually a good example of a balanced build.

Zenith.7301:

There’s a duel with phantaram which highlights how a warrior baits stun breakers/evades with leg specialist roots and once the target has wasted their evades they go with the combo.

A warrior can kill a BM bunker ranger — the ranger just needs to make mistakes. But in a team fight, there should be enough pressure where a bunker has had to use his dodges/stunbreaker, and that’s when the warrior mops up.

So a warrior can beat a BM ranger if the ranger makes mistakes and the warrior doesn’t. Well, I’d say that’s true of pretty much any 1v1 with any class involved, lol.

jportell.2197:

The “unique” thing about Mesmer bugs is they sneak their way into the patches and then break something on the Mesmer… Now sure this happens to other classes too… But how long does it take them to fix bugs as a result of a patch for other classes? Couple days? maybe the next patch at the latest… us… Bugs that hurt our weapons destroy our builds and render traits useless get introduced then never addressed for months other than the slight nod from a dev “we see it we will try and figure out what is wrong” then nothing… that is what is unique about mesmers… The bugs aren’t ones that have been around forever but they get introduced and then never addressed.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbej03cdA41rzbvsto1_250.gif

Stealth.9324:

I don’t think Asura is harder to target, they have the same size of Target Box as every other class out there. I don;t have to see what they are casting. I look for hint. For example: If a Player play Mesmer GS and he raise his sword when his health is full. You don’t need to see he actually raise his sword, all I need to see is the tip of the sword being held up, then I know IBersker coming up. Not that hard really, IF you get used to it. Play one Asura to get to know an Asura,please.

If an asura is standing in front of you in a clear area no, they’re not harder to target. Now put a tiny asura in a team fight where there are tons of spell effects, turrets, illusions, ranger pets, etc. everywhere. To click on something you have to be able to see where it is and asura just get lost in the clutter much more easily. Is it impossible to do, or game breaking or the end of the world? No. But is it balanced? No. There are 5 races in the game so players have options, if one gives a small advantage that’s a serious problem might as well turn everyone into asuras in the mists.

jportell.2197:

Currently mesmers have only some variation of one build to be viable in tourneys 0/20/0/0/30 with 20 points to be put wherever. Every single patch something gets broken…. for mesmers… We go up in arms about it… a dev randomly posts saying they are looking into it. Then no further mention is made of it. I am putting the post up here because it seems like class issues will get more attention if they are actually posted in the sPvP forum since that is all Anet seems to care about when balancing/fixing…. This most recent patch was supposed to be a bug fix patch. Yet the most harrowing bug that has been plaguing us since Feb 26th was the illusionary berserker bug where it either misses 3/4 attacks OR the attacks connect but it still does a max of 1k damage wasn’t even addressed…. This is with all appropriate traits and gear to max phantasm damage on a power weapon.
Add to that now that Mesmer bouncing attacks (both long range weapons we have rely on bouncing) bounce to a useless clone even if the Mesmer is in range to receive the bounce but the clone gets it because they are slightly closer. Before this most recent patch winds of chaos return trip would always go back to the Mesmer meaning they would get the clones buffs from WOC and the mesmers double tap if they had illusionary elasticity… now it goes to the clone that is closest which does absolutely nothing to help that clones DPS since they get a base of zero.

Yet with all these bugs people are still sad because of ITV… this is on a VERY long cooldown untraited and it does have an animation WHEN THE MESMER PUTS THE WALL DOWN THAT SHOULD BE A HINT! Then people gripe about MOA… For its obscenely long cooldown its a one and done deal… Maybe if they did something about timewarp mesmers wouldn’t use moa as much. In tourneys if I get Moa’d I dodge dodge 5… and wait…. if you get focused by more than 1 person after the MOA is cast then that is good team play and guess what you were prolly toast to begin with.

Jsharp also mentioned helping warriors condi removal? Mesmers get Pdisenchanter which with the current issues of bouncing attacks who knows if it will actually clear any conditions from the Mesmer… Null field/Arcane thievery/MOR… The only very good one for condi cleanse is MOR yet for what it does the cooldown is a little too long especially considering all the passive condi removal that other classes get or the fact that they get condi removal in their heal skill… Mesmer heals? How good are they? Ether Feast is about as counterintuitive as that warrior heal they were talking about in SOTG. For those of you that are still griping about Mesmer being OP for what ever reason you want to come up with… look at what bugs get fixed for classes immediately after a patch release… See how often those bugs fixed are for mesmers…

For more info here is a list of broken Mesmer traits/bugs/uncalled for nerfs that are hurting the class and destroying viable build options that have not been addressed other than a slight dismissive nod.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Game-breaking-mesmer-bugs-nerfs-issues/first#post2130553

Most classes have bugs right now, as well as many of the runes and sigils. So nothing “unique” about mesmers there. Now down to the mesmer class itself as it is currently played, it’s amont the top 3 strongest 1v1 classes in the game, if not the top class, while still being very useful in team fights (unlike BM rangers for example). It probably one of the best natural survivability in the game (meaning, survivability that does not require any or minor investments into it) which means they can often run full damage stats on everything and still be hard to kill. They also have some of the most game changing utilities in the game. Please. If anything it needs a nerf.

Lighter.5631:

So im a zerker warrior, i never had any problem with bursting classes down real fast or hurting bunker bit by bit.

but heres a ranger i just met a few minuts ago.

he was shooting someone else so i thought it might be a chance for me to at least take his hp down to half,

so i immobilized him and used 100b, most of the hits land and dealt quiet ammont of damage, but he just heals back and regen.

and what happened next is just horrible, he just walk around while dealing a lot of damage on my ally. i keep hitting him continuously , gs 1 2 3 4 5 switch to long bow same thing. no matter how much i hit him he just regen back the same amount or more.

my knowledge to ranger is limited, can some one please tell me what`s going on and how to counter it

At equal skill level you cannot beat a BM ranger on a warrior. He will use dodge attacks if you imob and have a passive and active stun breaker to deal with knockdowns. Not to mention more toughness than you, waaay more healing than you do, can dodge more, can kite you and has regular access to protection and far better condi removal. You’re unlikely to catch him and if you do high toughness+protection will take the edge off your burst which he can then heal off fairly easily, if he focuses you his condi dmg will just eat you up. Here is some real advice: until warrior is buffed don’t run it, the class has a niche role in team pvp if the team is set up for it but for yolo queue or any type of solo play you’re just a liability.

Oh and all those tells are much harder to see on tiny asuras which is what most players play in PvP, because apparently Anet devs had never played PvP in an MMO before designing this game.

Daecollo.9578:

Traits:

Juggernaut’s Tenacity
Grandmaster Trait, Strength tree.
Healing received on skill activation, heals intensify the closer to death you are.
100%-70%: 10 + (1 * Level) + (0.02 * Healing Power)
70%-33%: 20 + (2 * Level) + (0.033 * Healing Power)
33%-0%: 30 + (3 * Level) + (0.045 * Healing Power)

I don’t see this belonging in the strength tree at all. And on what skill activation? It should be on heal activation. I do think something along these lines, of improving warrior healing the lower their health gets would be cool/fit well with the class and unique. Merging the Shield Mastery and Missile Deflection traits (which is a great idea although the toughness bonus would have to be lowered or removed to do so) would open up a trait slot in the defense line. I would add it there and make the trait “Juggernaut’s Tenacity” heals the warrior for additional health on healing skill activation base on health. There would be this high risk rewards involved where you got a bigger heal the lower you got but also risked getting downed before getting if off if you tried to wait for the big bonus at the lowest bracket.
Less than 90% – 150 + (.33 * healing power)
Less than 50% – 500 + (.33 * healing power)
Less than 10% – 1200 + (.33 * healing power)

Some really good concept ideas on list although the tuning on a number of them is OP. I’ll give you specific feedback on some others when I have a chance. Good stuff!

ResJudicator.7916:

There’s a pretty simple solution to this that would make both camps happy.

Just make it so each player has the OPTION of using normalized models for other players. This would work the same way that the “Show Team Colors” option currently does:

If I check the “normalize models” option, then everyone else’s character will always appear to me as a regular-sized human. BUT, each player will still see his own character as he originally designed it. So if you play an Asura, you will always view your character as an Asuran. You can play in all the tournaments, etc., and on your screen your character will look exactly the way you designed him/her. However, on my screen, your character will look like a regular-sized human.

This solution let’s people keep their character customization, but let’s the hypercompetitive players maintain and even playing field. As far as tournaments go, it would be up to the Caster to decide whether to check the “normalize models” option or not.

I’ve seen other people suggest this solution before, and I don’t claim to have originated it. In fact, it’s already been implemeneted with respect to team colors. I could deck my character out completely in pink, but if you have “Show Team Colors” selected, then my character will look either “Red” or “Blue” to you depending on my team. It is only logical to apply this same idea to the character-race problem.

This option will have to be implemented as it’s probably the only truly suitable option for an MMO that also wants to have a pvp esports worthy and it respects players choices and is pretty fair. I still think, with that change or otherwise, that the game would be better off the different race options had less extreme size variation, not by a lot, just a little, it’s over the top. I also think asura weapons should look larger in proportion to their body, but those are refinements. A “normalize” toggle would do it but I don’t think it should make everyone exactly average human sized, asura should be a little smaller than human (like 10%) and norn a little bigger (about 10% as well) just it doesn’t completely lose the game’s original feel.

If I like an MMO an try to stay involved in development by making suggestions, as do many other players. The most frustrating thing about GW2 development though is how you test changes. You basically rely on the live game to see whether something works or not. Since it’s live you have to make changes very small and incremental so you don’t brake the game, and players have no idea what those changes will be for the most part until they come out. The whole process feels sluggish and more frustrating than it needs to be.

You need a test server: set a limited number of players and allow players to volunteer for it, if more players volunteer than there are spots pick ramdomly. Get a few hundred players in there and let them test stuff BEFORE it goes live. That way you can test multiple things at once, test more radical changes and get lots of feedback and testing samples by having players just play. Then when you do release a patch it can have a lot more changes at once, players will know what’s coming and the community will feel actually involved in development. I am very curious to hear from a developer why you don’t do this.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oni Link.4621:

JonathanSharp.7094:

We think that Warriors need more sustain in sPvP. You’ll see this reflected in upcoming balance changes.

Traits are huge in this, and just like you saw trait reworks recently for Warrior, we’ll be doing more trait changes to help to this end.

It’s Sunday, but I still wanted to jump in here to let you guys know we’re not ignoring you!

Finally an answer That may be the start of the Warrior “new era” :P
Everyone here hope for some nice improvements in next 2 patches.
And if you need ideas, GW2 forums are full of them

We read the forums a lot more than you know. Karl/Peters and I actually print out threads sometimes and bring them to balance meetings.

We’re not ignoring any of the classes, I’m sorry if people feel that way. We simply don’t have time to personally post in all threads, on all our sub-forums.

It feels that you’re ignoring classes because warrior has not been viable for months. It had a niche role before the haste nerf and that was taken too. When you did give warriors a couple of buffs on the last balance patch they were really minor and barely made a dent in the class. And it surprises me that you didn’t realize that would be the case, do you not test stuff internally? Why even bother giving a class buffs so small it just moves them from UP to slightly less UP?

Harrier.9380:

Every major moba has DOZENS of champions, with most of them also having couple diffirent skins. GW2 has 8! classes, and no matter which race is used, particle effects on their animations are EXACTLY the same. It’s really not that hard to learn them and what skills they’re paired with. You don’t need to see ‘azura / female / Devout armor / medium sized body’ to realize this charging guy is Ele doing Burning Speed, you just need to see a trail of fire behind him. It could be attached to Asura, Norn, Ettin, a Coca-Cola truck, whatever, you can still say it’s Ele doing Burning Speed, because it’s unique animation.

TF2, since you mention it so much, it’s exactly the same. I don’t need to see a guy in white coat to know there’s a Medic around, I just need to see a trail of light following someone. If I hear a rocket launcher, I know there’s a soldier around, I don’t need to see a guy with a helmet covering half of his face to realize this, I’m already prepared for him being there.

The reason it’s described as “visual cluster****” has NOTHING to do with character models, but with the tons upon tons of particle effects flying all around (worst offender here being mesmer) and it’s already being worked on. THIS will indeed benefit ‘quality and future of the game and the entire community’.

Here’s idea: let the devs finish something they already have started, and if that doesn’t help, then we can start thinking of radical solutions.

Agreed on class effects making it easy overall to pick them out. And yes particle effects need to be toned down, but that’s only half of the issue. Watch tiny asura standing in the particle effects then watch other races. Other races to put it simply stand above it, and the size of their weapons makes the aoe ground effects a lot less likely to block view. With tiny asuras though their waist deep, right in the middle of the ground effects, and their kitten is hard to see even without the particle effects there. They’re the problem and most pvp teams run mostly that.

I don’t think asura should be taken away from pvp, it’s not their animations that’s the problem it’s their size and the size of their weapon, they just need to be bigger overall by about 33%, have their minimum height not be as low, as a percentage of their medium height, as other races and have their weapons be bigger in comparison to their body (make their weapons about 50% larger they then are now, after making them 33% larger. Char should have their lowest height lowered by about another 20% and Norn maximun height needs to be toned down by about 10% while their minimum height lowered by about 10% as well. Those adjustments would bring things close enough where while not equal they also wouldn’t be a significant issue.

Eh, I have to agree, though I like the boon stealing/debuffing mechanic. Signet of rage is the only viable warrior elite atm for spvp. And it is way too weak against anything that ca n remove boons. Against a sword/dagger thief you’re actually just making sure you’ll die. 30 seconds boons is way too long, you’re too screwed if they get stolen/debuffed. If warrior had other elite options I’d say, w/e, that’s the risk with brining that one, but they don’t. So yeah, something does need to be done, the OP’s suggestion is overkill but, as boon hate get buffed signet of rage becomes worse and it’s not like warriors can afford to get any worse… they aren’t viable as is.

My point is that your design suggestions are extreme, not adjustments but broad changes. People that play this game play it because they like it, if you refine it you’ll get them to stay and bring more players, if you make extreme changes to it you may attract some new players but you’ll also lose players who will find they don’t like what the game turned into. If you think, as you seem to, that your design suggestions are all decidedly improvements and everyone will love it let me point out to you that is your opinion.

We just don’t agree there are too many evades/teleports, I think it makes the game more exciting than having people just running around spamming buttons at each other and adds an element of timing when to hit skills better.

My point is when most condition removal is active your complaint that the few ones that aren’t need to also be active seems odd to me.

New games modes would bring new players, but not enough new players fast enough to accomodate the various queues that many game modes would require. I want more game modes but they should would be added one at a time over long stretches of time as the pvp population gradually grows.

Weakness should change, it’s UP and people don’t care about it. Blinds on the other hand are used all the time. The problem is new players just spam it, blinds should be used in anticipation of a big attack, example, on my engi with flamethrower if a thief goes stealth near I wait a moment than pop AOE blind often resulting in him getting hit by it just as he goes in for the backstab making it miss. You can get a stomp on some classes by using an instant cast blind right before they cast their cc downed ability, etc. The examples are many but the point it’s to be used strategically to stop an important attack and it works for that purpose. Your suggestion would make it not a sure thing, so it could no longer be used reliably in that manner, it would make it overall stronger and be best used by just putting up w/e you can thus changing the nature of the condition entirely. I happen to think it is fine as is, so yes if they need to rework something entirely and change a lot of abilities to do so yes they should.

Gandarel.5091:

Julius, this is a false concept about splitting te community.

More gamemodes bring in more players, more attenton, more time spent and more fun and diversity.

Without spliting the PvP playerbase players will get bored, mostly if they don’t like that only existing gamemode.

Without splitting the playerbase there won’t be anything that could be split nor keep.

More modes (content)-> More attention -> More players -> More profit -> Everyone is happy

So if we add 3 new game modes the pvp population will quadruple in size? Ok. Good luck with that. New game modes can attract new players but they also do split the community as each mode requires a separate queue. So it has to be done gradually and carefully not just go all balls in and add 4 game modes in a game less than a year old.

No cast bars, and no making everyone human. Race sizes just need to be readjusted to bring them much closer together. Not only would that be more fun, but also add a tad more realism to the feel fo the game, as a tiny asura with a 1 foot long hammer knocking down a gigantic norn looks kittening stupid. I know it’s a game and nothing about it is realistic, but having at least a little realism in there adds to the atmosphere.

That’s not the way to go… way too specific. Players need to be able to get their “personality” across by customizing their character. It’s not hard to tell a class at all if the models are reasonably sized, this game is very visual. The problem is a lot simpler, it’s just the tiny asura with tiny weapons. It’s just hard to see their details and armor, they’re really the only ones it’s hard to tell what they are just by looking at the model and when a whole team is running them it’s just… ugh.

I think for serious tournaments Asura should just not be allowed, I understand not every player takes them to take advantage of the less visible animations , which sucks for viewing matches, and some actually like them, but until Anet adjusts their sizing it’s cheesing it and bad for viewing.

Ezrael.6859:

When I read about this in the patch notes I thought it would make all the characters on the winning team do the cheering animation.

I think that would be much better, for them all to become immune to damage and do the cheering animation upon victory in a match.

Rather than the PvE quest completion shield appearing across our screens.

That would be so much better, just so much better I can’t even… please ANET?

Kravick.4906:

ANet made a post some where in the ranger forums that they will never allow rangers to directly control the other pet skills because they feel that would make rangers require to much APM.

Lol, engineers have f1-f4 tool belt skills they have to manage along with everything else, and they are all situational/need to be timed. If we can do it, what’s so different about managing 3 pet skills?

Paradoxine.8192:

Design

• Changed all elite skills to be more similar to build defining skills rather than add-ons. Elite skills from this patch onwards will generally have much lower recharge rates (less than sixty seconds) and will greatly impact the focus of a players build. For example, ‘Epidemic’ is now an elite skill and many of the previous elite skills have been changed to heavily modified utilities. In addition, the use of an elite skill is now optional and players may use a utility within the elite slot if they so wish. We feel this will allow players to make more practical use of elite skills and make more varied builds.

• Changed a few previously AoE type skills to single player targeted skills.

• Reduced the pervasiveness of AoE particle effects greatly.

• Started a general move towards reducing the number of evades, teleports, immunes and gap closers. This is intended to make gameplay less chaotic, but will be done over the course of the next few patches in order to both gauge community reactions and ensure that combat does not become too slow-paced.

• Greatly increased the effectiveness of conditions across the board and also greatly increased the downtime for condition application. Multiple auto attacks that previously applied conditions have had their condition application removed and their damage changed to reflect this. Greatly reduced passive as well as active condition removal to complement this change.

• ‘Passive’ condition removal has been changed to be both more active and give more control to the player. Traits that remove a condition every 10 seconds have been changed so that an extra ‘F’ skill(e.g F5) is added upon selection, which will have a cooldown of ten seconds. The UI for certain classes has been changed to accommodate this. The condition removal skill will appear at the end of your other class specific skills(Virtues, etc).

• Modified all classes in order to bring each class to the same level of overall battle effectiveness.

• Effected changes intended to make each class more unique and varied, as well as increase the number of viable builds therein.

• Increased the selection of non-RNG sigils and runes.

Balance changes

• Changed the blind condition so that it increases the chance of missing an attack by 50% during its duration. Changed smoke fields to have generally longer cool downs but stack the duration of blinds each tick. It should be noted that durations will generally be short to begin with, with the duration increasing as necessary in future patches. We feel that this will make the use of blind more effective as a support condition.

New Game modes

• Added King of the Hill, Deathmatch, Capture the flag and Relic Run. More information about these new game modes will be outlined in an upcoming blog post.

Quoted just what I want to address. A lot of your design suggestions just reflect a different game that isn’t this one.

AOE is just fine as is, nerfing it would have many unwanted consequences: rezzing teammates would become too easy, stealth would become too strong, multi target builds like minion necro, mesmer and ranger would become a lot stronger when they are already fine, etc. All of which would require their own changes. Plust AOE forces players to be aware of where they are standing which adds depth.

Teleports, evades and immunes are fine, they all require people to pay attention to hit a target (you can’t just spam, u need to watch the animation and hit at the end of the immune and evade etc.) only thing i would change is the mesmer teleport CD is too low.

The suggested change to condition would change the game and not for the better, just different. Different for different sakes is a waste of development time.

Most condi removal is active, the passive ones add a different flavor, what the game needs is an UI for procs and other passive effects (so you can see whether the condi removal is about to tick) otherwise the mechanic is fine.

“Modified all classes in order to bring each class to the same level of overall battle effectiveness. Effected changes intended to make each class more unique and varied, as well as increase the number of viable builds therein.” These are just really vague and an obvious goal, you don’t make any specific suggestions.

That change to blind would make it OP, change its purpose and force devs to revise every blind ability in the game. No.

That’s way too many game modes and would spread the community too thin. Fairly soon Anet should add ONE unique new game mode so there is a bit more flavor. A third one shouldn’t be added until the community is a lot larger and much further down the line.

Bumping this thread to get some more suggestions from people/remind devs since yet another patch comes out addressing none of the issues. Edited original post.

1- Split solo/team queue, split/better leaderboards
2- Buff unused/underused traits/skills for more build diversity
3- Better PvP rewards/something to do with the endless piles of mystic forge materials

katniss.6735:

D/D is doing all the damage?
wat?

You do know this is a pvp forum right? And that unlike mobs any decent pvper will simply move or dodge roll out of staff AOE and take no damage, right? But please, link some more pve damage logs. So helpful to the discussion.

Muramasma.1570:

What this boils down to, is that you want staff to be able to do everything the other weapon sets can do, and do it at a greater range on top of that. This is simply not how the weapon was designed. Do you really think that you should be able to do tons of damage, while still having access to chill, cripple, a mass stun, the ability to stack godly amounts of might, great AoE heals, etc. etc.? Stop trying to Rambo it up with every weapon and spec you stumble across; the very fact that they all play differently is where diversity comes from.

My advice to you is to get a good handle on the different combo fields and your blast finishers, spec with defense in mind, and stick with a couple of teamates focusing on different cap points. And don’t go chasing that thief that got away for kittens sake.

Staff ele is underpowered. Almost no one runs it not because none of them know how to play, as you imply, but because it’s underpowered, which does not mean useless. Your whole post most makes a case for what it can do but does not change the fact it does not do enough.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I think the casters did a great job, but I do believe they need more experience with analysis.

I led the Academy of the Mists team for this past MMORPG Invitation. We were humbly invited to sign up by Bas and immediately knew we were out of our leagues to begin with, but in order to fill up the brackets in the short time, we were going to give it our best shot.

We are a new team, and have much less experience than any of the other teams. Given that, I was really looking forward to re-watching our matches to get more feedback on what we could have done better as a team. What types of plays we missed, and what types of engagements we should go for and not go for. What types of team comps we should’ve used. Etc.

However, that was not the case. In fact, I would probably never want to watch those horrid recorded minutes ever again in my life. I believe casters should respect all teams that play, no matter what. I can understand some fun in picking out some very bad plays, but almost the entire stream as a huge ‘You Guys Suck’ commentary, which is very discouraging to say the least to take that next step into becoming a better team.

I believe any team willing to compete should be given an equal, objective analysis. I assure you we weren’t trying to ‘troll’ the viewers or the other team in any of the plays we were doing. We wanted to try different tactics and we weren’t used to fighting such organized teams. It was also mostly my fault for not being able to manage the team that well. In addition, we were super nervous. It was our first tournament with 3k~ viewers.

Thanks for taking your time to cast Blu and Grouch. But I really hope you consider being more professional when less experienced teams start appearing in bigger tournaments.

Fully agree, I got really uncomfortable watching that match. In any sport you got your top teams and some teams that are new and not nearly as good. That’s ok, it would be very hard to get at 8 or even 16 team tournament where everyone was almost at equal level. What matters is that every team that goes in gives their best. The caster’s attitudes pretty much discouraged new teams from stepping up and giving it a try. It was embarrassing for a game just hoping to break into esports and that still has very few teams.

Sprawl.3891:

According to anet and the blind fanbois who run premades esports grow by hosting tournaments not making casuals enjoy the game.

HEy look over there 4k views on twitch!! Zomg

Esports also grows by having more people playing the game which happens when it’s fun and there are options. Having a premade only leaderboard with decay and with team tags, would also really help esports grow.

Look at the leaderboards right now and other than really well known teams like zzz, tell me based on it who the top 10 teams in NA are. Oh wait, you can’t tell that based on the leaderboards at all, hmm, isn’t that the point of having one?

So “bug” fix patch, was thinking, ok, that will be good. There are a lot of bugged runes fixing them would surely open up some new possibilities. Then I look at the patch and there are bug fixes for underwater skills… but you don’t even touch runes. I do not understand your priorities.

THEN I see all those improvements to spectator mode… which is nice and all, but nothing regarding queuing or leaderboards which is so much more important atm… I used to play more but honestly at this point I don’t even feel like playing without my full team on, and we all have jobs so that doesn’t happen that often. If there is one, or two, or three of us on, we got nothing to do. We can hot join… people dropping in and out constantly, most don’t even care about holding anything they just zerg around and farm glory, the whole thing makes my eyes bleed, or you can queue with let’s say 3 players who are on, except that you seem to pretty much always get a full premade when you do that, which you’ll go up against with 2 random players.

Or you can yolo queue. I had one night where I started in the 210’s on ranking then no joke, i get 1 4v5, 2nd match my ragtag pug goes up against a solid premade, 3rd match another 4v5, 4th match i got a rank 1 and a rank 7 in my team against a pug of full 40+, the rank 1 is running glass staff ele and probably died about 12 times that match. That’s when I said kitten this kitten. Now that was frustrating but I could say, w/e it was just bad luck, i’ll have better luck tomorrow. Except that it dropped me over 500 spots on the leaderboards… which seems like a pretty heavy price to pay for streak solo bad luck (why is the leaderboard that volatile anyways when got over 800 matches played??)

I just don’t understand how addressing these issues by splitting queues and having separate/better ranking leaderboards isn’t a TOP priority.That way if you got your full team on you can do full premades against full premades and have a full premade leaderboard with proper decay for inactivity (what’s up with all the people with like 12 matches played on the top 100 who probably haven’t logged on in months? …) so it actually reflects the competitive pvp community with some accuracy. Then a separate queue and leaderboard if you’re yolo queing or queing with just a friend or two, under a separate leaderboard where you can just go and have fun with it. I mean you currently have pvp set up to encourage people to play LESS than they would like to. Let me say that again so it sinks in, your current options encourage players to play LESS. I don’t know, I’d have everyone working on this because if people aren’t playing does other stuff really matter? But I guess, maybe next month? Probably not. So July? August? I won’t hold my breath.

It got really awkward at times and the commentary did lack depth many times, however, it is hard, they are still learning and the observer tools are still really rough. In view of that I think they did fine for the most part. The maps also really need more viewing angles.

Honestly one of the biggest problems with watching tournaments atm for me are all the kitten tiny asuras. The same thing that makes them stupid for pvp, that their animations are hard to see, makes them stupid for viewing. When the angle is looking from above in a team fight it’s just a lot harder to see what’s happening with all the tiny people with tiny animations that often just get lost in all the AOE spell effects. If the models were larger and with longer arms/larger weapons (basically, not asuras) the animations would be a lot easier to see on the stream and the fights would look better. I don’t know what possessed Anet to add in a tiny race to a game they wanted to have serious pvp, or why they haven’t fixed it yet being that it’s not that hard.

milo.6942:

hello my friend julius
pls kindly consider situation where:

1. burst dmg is lower & pace of combat is marginally slower
2. support is slightly improved
3. there is a game type that encourages teamfights (not conquest)

and you can easily see how this game could be good
regards,
milo

Anet has slowed down the pace of combat though. The 1 second instant kills are pretty much gone, you can still burst a target down really fast with 3 or 2 on 1 but, it makes sense and I think it’s fine. I think damage is in a good place, and rather than nerfing that, improving sustainability for classes that die too easy atm will slow down that pace in a better way. Very weak or nearly absent defensive CDs and condi removals (or ones that require too major a tradeoff off in damage/utility) aren’t an acceptable class “weakness” for any class in a game with high burst and really heavy hitting and ccing condis. I think if all classes have access to their own flavor of, (which is mostly true for pretty anything other than warrior and necro) but reasonably strong sustain, through self healing, self condi removal and defensive CD options, that slows down the pace of the game without nerfing damage and makes it more dynamic.

I do agree that team support abilities and traits could use a bump to encourage more teamfighting, and that it would be cool to have game types other than just conquest. But conquest is really fun too and I happen to like where the game is going, it just needs tweaking.

milo.6942:

hello friends
best change for short term: buff warriors
best change for long term: nerf rest of classes so they’re not so independent
regards,
player-who-is-looking-for-better-pvp-game

I don’t really agree, with no dedicated healers without sustain and some degree of independence the pvp will become too much about quickly bursting people in 2 seconds. Sustain makes for longer more dynamic fights and Anet has stated that’s the direction they want to move in. The biggest problem for warrior is that it really has the worse sustain in a game mode that’s all about sustain.

AOE is fine. Moving on.