Guild Wars 2

Hell even SWTOR has more balance patches than this game, and that’s saying a LOT.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Rickster.8752:

gesho.9468:

seems like legit concern.

the change was supposed to benefit 2h builds, but hambow happens to be op and 2h/2h, so…

given hambow hate, not the best time for the sigil change, isn’kitten

nerf healing sigil by 15% (they plan 8% right) and go with sigil change, i’ll say win-win.

It isn’t about that though. It isn’t about hambow being 2h weapons. It is about hambow being on kitten cd with weapon swap. So they benefit too much if they chose to use 4 swap sigils.

relax, they said they will adjust the sigils to facilitate this.

Really so they’ll balance the sigils for warriors and then the sigils will suck for everyone else? Sounds like anet would actually do.

Zorgog.3908:

Ok I don’t usually post but….I don’t know how long the op has followed the game, but if you have for a while you would realize that big changes, such as class balancing and pvp stuff, are done little by little. It’s their whole philosophy on balancing that they’ve stated from day one. I’m honestly surprised so much has been done already.

Also, you do realized some patches are purely for bug fixing and story content right? This patch is one of those. I’m not sure if the balancing patches even come out monthly. Ostrich-eggs once said in a stream that you all act like a bunch of spoiled children when it comes to this game. He’s right. Stop throwing a tantrum in the store that basically gives you stuff for free.

God I hate people like you. First, arenanet did NOT do stuff “little by little” when they overnerfed eles and overbuffed warriors. Second, we do not act as spoiled children. We act as paying customers that actually persist on getting what we payed for.

And just so you know, development companies willfullingly breaking pre-release promises isn’t just childs play. Blizzard for example was in court for the Diablo III debacle and had to pay compensations.

Romek.4201:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Honestly it’s not an overreaction. I played a lot of MMOs (GW1, WoW, AOC, WHO, Rift, SWTOR, …) but never, ever, have I seen a class more systematically destroyed than elementalists in pvp.

Nerfing overpowered stuff is fine.
Nerfing fun is not.
Nerfing swiftly and with kneejerk nerfs without any testing at all is not fine.
Nerfing a class HARD in every single patch for more than 6 month is only OK if it the class is still overpowered after all the nerfs.
Letting a class rot after you destroyed it, for more than 6 month, without a single useful buff or nerf-revert, is ridiculous.

AOC was fun – they still run Servers? I was on Mitra^^
everyone i met in this game heared heavy metal

I think it’s still running as free to play yeah. Man pvp balance in that game was ridiculous. I remember my conqueror hitting like a wet noodle for the longest time, then came the patch that upgraded the gem and suddenly I was literally oneshotting every non-tank character in the game.

ITT devs trying to wiggle their way out by arguing semantics.

Honestly it’s not an overreaction. I played a lot of MMOs (GW1, WoW, AOC, WHO, Rift, SWTOR, …) but never, ever, have I seen a class more systematically destroyed than elementalists in pvp.

Nerfing overpowered stuff is fine.
Nerfing fun is not.
Nerfing swiftly and with kneejerk nerfs without any testing at all is not fine.
Nerfing a class HARD in every single patch for more than 6 month is only OK if it the class is still overpowered after all the nerfs.
Letting a class rot after you destroyed it, for more than 6 month, without a single useful buff or nerf-revert, is ridiculous.

Mogar.9216:

Bsgapollo.5364:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

reikken.4961:

1076

I mostly take vitality instead. my defense is for burst resistance, not for sustain

Toughness gives burst resistance. Vitality gives sustain resistance.

Wrong, he was right.
Vitality is meant for surviving a single huge burst. toughness is for sustain over duration.

Toughness reduces base damage per attack. Most burst class burst you with crit damage . Crit damage is a X of the base damage. For example a thief who back stabs you with 100% crit chance and 100% crit damage mod would do about base * 2.5 damage. By reducing the base damage you reduce the size of that burst lot since toughness is factored in before crit damage X is applied . So toughness is indeed better for dealing with bursts.

This.

If you have 20k health but only 900 toughness a thief will burst you 100% to 0% in 2 seconds.
If you have 15k health but 1500 toughness the thief will need much longer to burst you giving you time to react.

I think arcane shield is good mechanic wise, it simply has a WAY too long cooldown (like most ele utilities actually). It’s nowhere near as good as armor of earth or mistform yet it shares a cooldown with them.

Arcane shield cooldown should be something like fourty five to fifty seconds.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

How did you guys misunderstand?

They said it was stated for the next “balance update”.

The one today is a “Living Story” update.

They are splitting them out this year as they found that when they combined them, people focused on the wrong thing. (i.e. if the update contained awesome new content, but only minor balance changes – too many people complained about the balance changes and it distracted from the new content).

They said “next feature patch”. A feature patch is a defined term in software development, meaning it was today’s patch.

The balance changed aren’t in meaning they STRAIGHT UP LIED ON THE STREAM.

Yes I’m in software dev too, but somehow I didn’t misunderstand what they meant.

Anet have responded here if you’re interested

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/So-no-pvp-changes-this-patch/page/2

Then you don’t know what feature patch means.

Rednik.3809:

Do OP understand that leap skills have travel time and affected by slow effects, thats why they are don’t have targeting? Targeting requirement = teleport skills in GW2.
Also, killing whole class of skills just for sake of few wvw roamers, lol, this is beyond ridiculous.

Ride the Lightning doesn’t teleport yet requires a target.

DanyK.3842:

Punishes players for using game mechanics. Seems reasonable to me. In fact in the next patch I’d like to see: debuff [Stoned] deals 420 damage on jump.

Next patch:
- Removed endurance
- Dodging now costs 50% of your HP.

The sad thing is, I actually believed that arenanet changed it’s pvp ways when they started all the forum interaction and the balance preview stream. Alas, nothing has changed, all is vain.

Apparently anet simply isn’t capable of doing hotfixes.

It took what, more than 2 weeks before Dhuumfire was hotfixed? LOL.

azuzephyr.7280:

Seriously, a handful of tiny shaves is called a Kneejerk change? pvp could use kneejerk changes, lots of them, just test them out on a public ptr beforehand.

I’m not hopefull for this ‘massive’ alteration in the ominous future tbh

This. The only kneejerk changes GW2 ever had was most of the elementalist nerfs (especially double RTL nerf + mistform healing) and the warrior buffs (healing signet + adrenal health) yet suddenly now they only want to shave? Frack that!

kyubi.3620:

People complain about viability of builds however i know Anet cares for its community and will always work toward achieving a better game. Give them time and keep believing.

We already game them more than 15 month. Enough is enough.

Living world team puts out changes that require new art, new game mechanics, new effects, new spells, new audio and more every 2 weeks.

PVP team can’t even put minor balance changes out once a month.

And arenanet still tries to argue that pvp players aren’t second class citizens? That’s ridiculous.

In the year 2525, if man is still alive.

Yeah, another customer lost. Fracking pve players get constant updates every 2 weeks yet we pvp players can’t even get balance changes once a month? That’s ridiculous

What about the whole balance preview then? When will that be posted? The day the quote feature build unquote will be released? lol

I’ll be gone till april then when the next quote feature build unquote will hit. Nobody cares about living story.

Josh Davis.6015:

The first ‘feature build’ as we’re calling it, won’t go live until the current Living World story arc wraps up. The next feature build will contain substantial PvP updates, the balance items we talked about on Friday, and hopefully even more things that we aren’t ready to talk about yet.

The scope of the balance changes going in is massive. Honestly, putting all of the changes we talked about on Friday straight into the game today would have been extremely kneejerk, and I’m sure many of you would agree that some of the changes needed additional eyes on them before they hit live. We want the time to go through the feedback and make adjustments, and we’re already doing that.

I’m sorry if we gave you the impression that there would be a balance update today – that was not our intent.

A feature build is a well defined software development term. Today was a feature build. Therefore “next feature build” refered to todays patch.

I’m sorry but there are only 2 ways this went down:
a) You guys lied
b) You guys don’t know basic software development terms

Ghostextechnica.3270:

How did you guys misunderstand?

They said it was stated for the next “balance update”.

The one today is a “Living Story” update.

They are splitting them out this year as they found that when they combined them, people focused on the wrong thing. (i.e. if the update contained awesome new content, but only minor balance changes – too many people complained about the balance changes and it distracted from the new content).

They said “next feature patch”. A feature patch is a defined term in software development, meaning it was today’s patch.

The balance changed aren’t in meaning they STRAIGHT UP LIED ON THE STREAM.

Aberrant.6749:

Harper.4173:

Xenon.4537:

coglin.1867:

It has bothered me for a long time that I spend traits or utilities for mobility just to see some other profession create a gap while running away by using skills designed for gap closing.

I am okay with the skills that require ground targeting of some kind. But skills like rush should require a target that is in range to function.

In before they nerf such skills the same way they nerfed Ride the Lightning. Gonna be a tear-filled day…

And what if you’re wrong and they don’t? Keep hatin’.
RTL had 1500 range – GS 5 has a range of 900. There’s a bit of a difference.

1,200 http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rush

Please learn your own class’s skills.

1500 with swiftness or 25% speedbuff.

Yasha.5963:

How would they monetize it?

Armor style packs?
Dye packs?
Additional class slots?

There are a lot of ways to monetize such a thing. Just give F2P players only 1 or 2 class slots, and let them pay for visual customization (or buy the full game of course) for example.

I would love for other classes besides guardian to be able to bunker mid. Since release guardians hogged that spot and never let it go. Ele was close to their ability in bunkering mid at release but was nerfed into the ground.

I’d really love to see staff ele being able to bunker mid like guard again. Would do a lot for teamcomps too.

As others said, stand your ground is probably the biggest offender for guard mid bunker ability.

That’s why I only ever play roamer in soloq. It’s just too frustrating as a bunker.

Rednik.3809:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

Also, reduce duration of immobilize, chilled and crippled by 33% + melandru runes (25% reduction) + food (40% reduction) = warrior ignoring any and all slowing conditions.

So you assume that warrior traited and geared for condi duration reduction, but ignoring a fact that opponent can trait and gear for increased condi duration. Try again.

Not every class has condi specs therefore most don’t use +condi duration food.
Roamers generally use -condi reduction food.

Try again.

Black Teagan.9215:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Giving elementalists a readily available way to debuff enemies with revealed would be a solid boon to the profession and introduce more build diversity.

NO!!

The only classes who should get Revealed are Ranger and Necros.
Eles have more than enough thief counters. Counters that works also against Nonstealth thieves.

What? Thieves are pretty hard ele counters.

Rezz.8019:

Elementalist is pretty much random button smash and thieves are not really glassy at all anymore, just like they’re not really cannons (bursty). I agree with the others.

You’re confusing elementalists with engineers.

IFreedom.4637:

Arius.7031:

IFreedom.4637:

Since bloody everone here who seem to have problems about the kitten land speed of warriors have no idea what they are talking about. Heres a easy version for you chums.

I would assume u guys have problems with the full running warrior, in order to achieve this movement a war has to equip gs, swd/warhorn with bulls charge. In this setup a warior will have a hard time doing damage both with a group and solo, making it the easiest set up to fight. Sure he would run away at first signs of a loss but he would be of no danger to anyone even if the war is in full zerk. (If you have problems dueling this kind of warrior you do have to work on learning to fight better with your class.)

The seond most mobility set up is those with gs with any other weapon and bulls charge. This set up will have the warrior left with 2 utility slots. And if u see the war use bulls charge during the fight, only the gs will be left to escape (which I will get into later) even in this spec dd eles, thiefs and some mesmers are able to catch and kill this warrior.

That third most mobile warrior is those with only gs without bulls charge( the wepon set and utility I run the most) in this build most classes which pay attention to when the war draws out the greatsword and cc smartly would be able to catch and finish off the war.

Learn more before you go take a huge dump in the forum.

GS alone is more than enough to escape most situations, ftr. instantly making 1500 distance between yourself and your opponent, assuming you both start from the same location, is as far as the longest ranged attacks in the game (traited grenades/longbow). Also celestial warriors who use sword/gs are effective, not particularly so but it’s not weak.

I am not sure how other people fight warriors, but it certainly sounds like they face tank and do skill rotations without thinking. I roam on my guardian as well and when I see a war either turn or take out a gs I would use septer imob/ gs pull. I just hate how people think that range is everything for an escape, unlike shadow step/blink/rtl/lighting flash. A warrior’s escape are all prone to cc.
And please gs/swd warriors have joke damage. Damage yes but weak and easily kitable but then again people here seem to like eating hb to the face

Easily kitable? You’re joking right?

Movement skills remove immobilize.
Also, reduce duration of immobilize, chilled and crippled by 33% + melandru runes (25% reduction) + food (40% reduction) = warrior ignoring any and all slowing conditions.

Nice try.

The wording used in the stream when talking about the class balance changes was “these will be in the next feature patch”.

The next feature patch is today. So either the balance changes are in or they balantly lied to us in the stream.

LOL that’s the last things ele need. Also it wouldn’t change ANYTHING about their (non-)viability in pvp.

katniss.6735:

That spec works well in tpvp btw. ;-)
I’m using fire runes to maximize power, pvt ammy.
Guardians and thieves are still OP damage to it.

If you run Ether Renewal in PVP without Rock Solid you’re gonna have a bad time.

Conncept.7638:

Dual.8953:

All balance changes mentioned in the Ready Up livestream should be added tomorrow, although, they stated there’s a slight chance there will be some revisions. Also the devs have stated that there will be many more balance changes that weren’t announced during the live stream session.
I’d drop a link but I’m on my phone.

Nooooo… they were asked that during the stream, to which they stated it would be a while before they would see live, possibly even as far as after the end of the LS story arc in march.

They said the balance would be in the next feature patch, which would be tomorrow.

Yes. Either ALL gal closers should behave like RTL (double cooldown if it doesn’t hit anything) or NONE should and RTL should be reverted.

Mochann.5298:

Who’s Doc Howler again?

Apparently he’s the hardest storyline boss in the game. In a like level 10 quest. Searching the forum for him reveals that even guardians and thieves have extreme problems with him, repeatedly wiping until a high level character helped out.

oZii.2864:

piffdaddy.8014:

I do think ride the lightning is the reason eles aren’t completely viable in spvp. Other roamers such as a thief, Mesmer, or even a warrior all have ways to disengage if the fight is not in their favor (for instance 1v1 on far point and 2 others come to assist enemy team). Eles have NO way to get away; ride the lightning is almost always on cooldown when you need it.

Dagger mainhand may be able to be a mediocre side point bunker after next patch, nothing more. Spirit ranger or engi will still be much better side point holders. Burst roamer ele will still be a liability to the team(for reasons I mentioned, no reliable way to disengage like other roamers have). WvW roaming is again lackluster because no reliable way to get away (other than maybe firey greatsword which is a freaking elite skill)

Yes you can wvw roam with a group of friends who are ready to rez you when needed (roll with a thief who has shadow refuge). Solo, you really have no way to get away while a warrior can troll around all day with his greatsword, outrunning zergs. Thieves will chase you down and basilisk venom you from range.

I tried to post a thread about ride the lightning in the balance forum but for some reason I can’t :/

RTL is not the reason Ele is not viable. Warrior have always had as good mobility as Elementalist. The warrior can bunker and still do more damage. Warrior always borderlined taking the Elementalists roaming bunker position it didn’t because it was weak to conditions and had no sustain. It now has the tools now for that.

Those once weak warriors have muscled in on the “Role” that ele use to fill now all E;e can do is wish to TIE the warrior in a mobility race with a RTL revert. Then you would say the mobility tools line up and have to look at the rest of the qualifications for that “Role” and who can do it better. This is more of a problem with conquest requiring certain “Roles”.

More simple example is:

Warrior = 1200 range on rush and lets say 1400 with swiftness(I think it is actually 1500) + rush 16 sec cooldown trait GS. Throw on sword lets say also then has 600 range leap on 8 second cooldown lets say 800 with swiftness.

Ele = 1200 range RTL with old RTL 15 seconds. Burning Speed 600 range on 15 second cooldown lets say 800 range with swiftness now with evade frames.

So the mobility tools line up for D/D vs War with Warrior having the edge slightly. S/D can’t match that mobility.

So then you have to look at the rest of the tools besides mobility since they basically cancelled each other out.

You forgot warrior whirlwind which also has 600 range with swiftness, on a 10 second cooldown.

Mochann.5298:

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

I’d go even further and say that any kind of thief is a hard counter to glass zerker eles. Thieves are the main reason you always have to have a metric frackton of toughness.

Dunno about wvw but if a thief uses shadow refuge in pvp for defense (instead of rezzing) than it is ALWAYS game over. Bombard the refuge with aoe = dead thief.

To the left of the armor vendor. Some elephant-man looking guy? Dunno what race he is.

Dogged march should lose the regeneration. It makes no sense.

MiniMe.1960:

coglin.1867:

Artaz.3819:

Fair enough, give Warriors pull abilities on each melee weapon then.

Requiring a target in order to activate Rush or Leaps would be even a greater buff to stealth (where you immediately lose target) and clone classes (read: Thief and Mesmer). You know because those two classes need even more buffs because they aren’t popular at all…

TL;DR bad idea because you didn’t think about the easy counter classes

Why use such an unnecessarily complicated solution, when adding a target requirement as in other skills solves the entire issue.

killahmayne.9518:

If people want to cite sword/GS as an example of broken mobility, How about I cite the elementalist with fiery greatsword, teleport and rtl? Can anybody catch that? Seriously. Or thieves with shortbow and shadow step and stealth, or rangers with sword + greatsword.

Warriors wielding only a greatsword, with no trait cooldown only has average out of combat mobility. Which many people tend to have in WvW.

Perhaps you should read the thread. It is in reference to any and all professions weapon skills. So yes, this includes swoop, rush, savage leap, fiery rush, and the like. Thieves short bow is excluded, it requires ground targeting. Similarly whirlwind attack is excluded from the list. Blink and rocket boots or bulls charge on the other hand are utility skills, thus require the sacrifice of a utility slot for the mobility.

So to recap, because some posters appear to have an issue staying on the topic here. We are discussing weapons skills only, not utility skills. Further more, of the weapons skills, we are only discussing the ones with no targeting of any kind required. Again, because time and effort (ever so small as it may be) are required to use them.

MiniMe.1960:

I remember when Warrior just sucked.

I call shenanigans (to put it politely)…..You do not remember that, because it was not the case. If you have something well thought out or intelligent to add, we truly welcome your input. But when you start off with a line such as this, it is clear you are just trolling, or displaying an unreasonable bias.

Well what smart input did you just send? I play GW2 since the beginning and Warrior was an easy kill. Please enlighten that stupid little me please.

Greezzz

Before the haste nerf 100b warriors were (while squishy) extremely lethal in pvp.

Simply ignore Burnfall he’s a known forum troll.

Rednik.3809:

LordByron.8369:

I have a great idea…

Why don t simply reduce the range and double the cooldown on miss?
Can be done with initiative cost also…should cost double and give half back on hit ….

I m sure it would work perfectly leaving untouched the gap closing ability…

You mean “just double cooldown”? Because all warrior gap closers are non-teleports with literally non-existent chance to hit against any opponent who able to press movement button.

So, exactly like RTL, yes. It’s called balance and/or justice.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Vargamonth.2047:

Dogged March is hardly a mandatory trait.
Can it be really useful for some specific tasks? Sure. But it’s not like you need it for every build (not even in PvP ones) nor it does clearly outperform every other choice.
Talking strictly about PvP, Cleansing Ire feels A LOT more irreplaceable.

Just for clarification, I used my situation as an example. Cleansing ire is also mandatory which stops other choices such as passive balanced stance and endure pain. While I like choices. Have 4 choices, all of which are essential isn’t the same as having 7 or 8 choices which have an impact but aren’t essential.

Tell that to eles who have 6 essential traits…

If this was ever implemented the flag would need to give you 5 weapon skills no matter what class you are (like warrior banners), disable all your heal/utility/elite skills (like mistform and moa does) and set your runspeed to a fixed value, and you can never run faster than that.

Buy mystery coffers for random equip, buy dungeon packs for dungeon equip.

ThiBash.5634:

DiogoSilva.7089:

The problem with Powerful Auras, is that it does nothing in solo playing, while there’s always the risk of any buff making it way too strong in team play.

You could buff your elementals. Also, apart from open world PvE, true solo play is rare…and if your build is teambased, why not find a teammate/WvW ally?

Questing, Solo-Roaming in WVW, roaming in pvp. There are a lot of solo activities.

Then make a thread in the bug forum and/or report the bug ingame.

I fully support this. Being 5+ seconds immobilized is just silly and unfun.