Guild Wars 2

Ashkew.6584:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ashkew.6584:

“Official evidence for nerfing rangers” title should be: “Claims about evidence for nerfing rangers”
But really this is just a propaganda type of attempt or troll

Dont worry, when the report is published you wont be saying this

You’re right, and when you publish research instead of conclusions drawn from research you’re not showing yet, i won’t.

I dont understand. I work tirelessly for the community and get no thanks at all. Who else is conducting research into the games balance in a completely unbiassed and scientific way? Yet nobody tells me “gj henry” or “thank you so much henry” or “you are awesome henry”. It is a disgrace

Minor issue. Look at engis elite lol. Perma stealth for all. And its only going to a 40s cd. Not enough lol. Its still going to be broken

Ashkew.6584:

“Official evidence for nerfing rangers” title should be: “Claims about evidence for nerfing rangers”
But really this is just a propaganda type of attempt or troll

Dont worry, when the report is published you wont be saying this

Cynz.9437:

Can we see some of those research results and how you collected them?

One of my team is compiling the document. It should be available soon.

Demandred.7930:

Yes, sometimes it does seem like ranger pets are better at pvp than me.

This was another sentiment i came across quite alot during my research. It doesnt seem like a healthy state of affairs. There is also an issue that the number of people who hate fighting rangers is now up to 42%. Only 2 months ago it was only 21%. This is a shocking rise in such a short period. I have my team keeping an eye on this stat to make sure it doesnt keep spiking up. Some are nervous, but i think the worst could be behind us.

Sorel.4870:

There is no opinion to be had. Your math looks solid Henry. Thank you for opening my eyes on the matter.

No problem. I have been getting some initial data on engis too. But i am not ready to share it yet. I want to make sure that all my evidence is water tight before i move it into the public domain. Look out for that next week. Of course the patch might change things. And i might have to redo a few calculations.

Hi everyone,

Henry back again. How are we all doing?

I did some research over the last week and was shocked by the results. A large number of people want ranger pets to be nerfed alot. My research showed that a 30% nerf to the damage of all pets in pvp would be acceptable to players.

Having collected the data, i ran the numbers and found that druids were overperforming by between 11 and 32% in ranked pvp matches. With the pet being responsible for most of this overperformance. I was shocked by these results, but the facts speak for themselves.

Ranger pets need big nerfs.

Any thoughts and opinions are welcome.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Henry

zapv.8051:

Just can’t understand why they are removing settler’s amulet from the game. Do any OP builds really use it?

Toughness and healing power as a combo is just unhealthy in general

Aereniel.7356:

Lordrosicky.5813:

1, Helseth is entitled to his opinion, however….

2, There is a reason Helseth is banned from these forums, its so we don’t have to hear him opinions.

3, Helseth is rude and hateful to people on his stream and in game. I have no idea why he chooses to act this way, and I have no idea why arenanet as a corporate entity want to be associated at all with such a toxic individual.

4, He claims it is part of his “persona”. So his persona is making people feel kittenty about themselves by persistently mocking and bullying them? Yeh, great “persona” that is.

5, He might be good now (I have no idea if he is tbh), but he was always overrated in the past. Very overrated. The extent of his skill was telling people how good he was over and over until people believed it. He might be good now (finally) but before that I played him alot and he was an average mesmer who was way behind the best 3/4 mesmers on EU.

I have nothing against him personally. I do, however, think that going out of his way to mock and be rude to a large percentage of people he encounters is not really something that should be tolerated by the community.

Come on Henry, lazy bait. You’ve been around long enough to recognize the difference between Lord Helseth the performance and Sandro the performer. We’ve seen him develop from the HairSeth days, when he was just a regular non-salty nerd on Grouch’s State of the Game. And contrary to what you claim, I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to see the value of his social disruption to the scene and the community.

Helseth’s brand of mocking antagonism is a time-honored trope that challenges and shakes up the status quo. He’s the jester who blurts out uncomfortable truths about the king and the court, raising a mirror of critical self-reflection. He’s the carnival that subverts through humor and chaos. Without disruptive forces such as him, our scene would be dominated by sycophants and white knights who suck up to Anet all day, praising every bumbling mistake they make. Wise kings don’t decapitate their jesters.

As for the scathing brand of mocking humor, it’s a bit of an acquired taste, I won’t argue with you there. But if Helseth were just another troll without substance, he would have disappeared from the scene a long time ago. The same would be true if he did not have considerable love for the game. So the next time you listen to his torrent of expletives about Anet’s balance decisions, remember the greater value he brings, even if the methods are not to your personal liking.

True to some extent. But it goes too far. At the end of the day the internet is just a medium over which people (REAL people) communicate and interact. To be rude and make pretty harsh comments about people constantly on the internet to me is no different to doing it in “real life”.

In addition, you are how you act. You can’t say your a nice guy and then do a ton of stuff which points to the contrary. You are how you act. Our actions are what defines us I guess.

Its not a big deal. He can do what he wants, I agree people should be more thick skinned and stuff. But really lets stop pretending that being horrible to a ton of people is justified due to some sort of act. A good parallel prank youtube channels where they do kitten to people and claim its just a “joke”.

1, Helseth is entitled to his opinion, however….

2, There is a reason Helseth is banned from these forums, its so we don’t have to hear him opinions.

3, Helseth is rude and hateful to people on his stream and in game. I have no idea why he chooses to act this way, and I have no idea why arenanet as a corporate entity want to be associated at all with such a toxic individual.

4, He claims it is part of his “persona”. So his persona is making people feel kittenty about themselves by persistently mocking and bullying them? Yeh, great “persona” that is.

5, He might be good now (I have no idea if he is tbh), but he was always overrated in the past. Very overrated. The extent of his skill was telling people how good he was over and over until people believed it. He might be good now (finally) but before that I played him alot and he was an average mesmer who was way behind the best 3/4 mesmers on EU.

I have nothing against him personally. I do, however, think that going out of his way to mock and be rude to a large percentage of people he encounters is not really something that should be tolerated by the community.

Rukia.9860:

The game is still fun for me until you run into the cancer builds… #respect to those that run non-cancer-meta build.

I still playing thief like a boss, and always get comment like “wtf how so much damage on thief?” if played right they are still 100% viable and strong as hell, especially with staff aoe.

Only prob is I die instantly if I’m not in an evade frame lol.

Staff is barely just enough fun for me to ignore the cancer and play, I actually kinda like being the underdog because your enemies are more surprised when you rek em.

I’m not sure how this meta will fare but time will tell, not sure if removing bunker completely was the move to make, but it will definitely be better than what we have now.

Thats the point. Its not removing bunkers. Its removing bunkers who do massive damage. Bunkers, real bunkers, will have to come back to fill the void left behind. Those bunkers will take team work to use effectively and will lead to more defined roles rather than just 5 hybrid bruisers vs 5 hybrid bruisers

For those who are new to the game you might not remember the early metas which were based around specific team roles, team work, clever rotations and build diversity.

Whilst it is true that elementalist was too strong for a long time, the meta in general was pretty fun for everybody.

Firstly everybody could play the role they wanted. Support focussed players could play a bunker guardian. Dps players could play a thief or a mesmer and do well. People who enjoyed back point 1v1s could play rangers and eles. Condition players could play engineer and necro.

It took skill and team work which was fun. Teams had to be smart with how they rotated their bunker guardian. Playing a 3 cap was difficult because of these defined roles. Team fights were fun as it was less about self reliant classes and more about the sum of the parts.

Any good meta should have defined roles like bunker guardian. Celestial instantly ruined everything. Now i single engi and ele specs you had healing support, condi removal, damage, condi damage, tanking ability and downed state cleave. This made many other roles obsolete as you could just bring a hybrid in place of anything else.

It also took skill out of the game. It is the easiest thing in the world to kite round with a high healing celestial class and not die. The maths is in their favour. No longer did teams need to worry about rotating the bunker guardian or playing smart so they are close enough to this support class for buffs and condi removal. It became so everyone was self sufficient and capable of everything.

All this is because of amulets which provide both offence and defence. Celestial bei g the ultimate.

Every healthy meta should allow for all types of builds. If a meta doesnt have a bunker guardian in it then it is not healthy. The basic rule of balance is that no one build should be able to do everything. Removing celestial and soliders will instantly make this game fun again. Now if something has huge damage it will be kilkable.

I am shocked anet made this change as it is amazing. I personally know of quite a few players planning to return to the game with a competitive mindset as a result

Coulter.2315:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Incorrect. Passive procs arent always bad. They add complexity and skill in many cases in fact and they add to the depth of the game.

Care to give an example Henry? :P

There are many examples my good sir. They make you react to the passives. I remember it used to be a skill in necro vs rangrr to wait for the passive cleanse and then load damaging condis.

Malediktus.9250:

Honestly, the suggested changes are outrageously bad. If you nerf bunkers there will be 1-3s kills everywhere again.
Better start with nerfing all AOEs, amount of cc and remove minions/pets.

No. People will then run dedicated bunkers and finally team roles and skill will return. And people who like running glass or condi or support specs will finally be viable. Cele was just meaning there was no point bringing any of those because it did everything. It gave damage pressure,condi pressure, support and tankiness. Really it killed the game completely. It took all team work and skill out of the game. And all fun out of it. If you played seriously before celesital and hamgow with solider you would und3rstand

Mercenary amulet is not worth adding and i say this as a condi player. Its just like solider and cele in that it gives too much sustain and offense together and therefore kills build diversity

foste.3098:

Corrupt boon change is not too bad of a powercreep, the scepter aa chain is. Idk what they are thinking making a fricking auto attack corrupt a boon. If you go through with it at least make it on crit corruption.

It is the third in a chain. In reality its impact will be beyond minimal. Think how rarely you get off the third in a chain. Its pretty rare. And its often random dodged, blocked, etc

I think people are overestimating this change. i doubt it will be a big deal at all.

Necro does need more boon corruption though imo.

Well actually boons in general need to be nerfed across the board. This is mammoth task that will never happen though.

Anet do not like nerfing things at all because it is bad PR

Lettuce.2945:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Lettuce.2945:

Blue Hare.8612:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Incorrect. Passive procs arent always bad. They add complexity and skill in many cases in fact and they add to the depth of the game.

Agree, Passives that require you to do something to proc them are good. They add depth as you can center your build or playstyle around them and be actively trying to proc them.

It kind of separates good and inexperienced players, good players try to optimize their play to utilize those procs at their full potential. Players that don’t know what they are doing just play and proc them accidentally without thinking about them.

Of course there are some passives that you can just trait and forget, those are quite boring.

Oh. Player carried by poorly designed passive traits spotted. Yeah you’re totally right. It’s definitely skillful and intentional when a player drops you to 25% hp and voila, you get a shield that heals you for 4K or an invulnerable elixir that buys time for you to recharge stealth gyro and reset the fight even further. Yeah, totally. That doesn’t carry at all. You’re absolutely right. It promotes skillful play, no doubt.

Nice sarcasm. You are wrong though dude. The passive procs are fine generally. Stop crying about it kitten . This forum is full of mindless qq

Yeah definitely mindless. I don’t know what I’m talking about at all. Wanna duel though? Pretty sure this “mindless qq’er” will kitten on you easily. You just can’t handle the truth. Look up the definition of passive. Do you even English? Passive requires nothing active. It just something that happens in specific scenarios. Just get out of here with your troll post. Stick to PvE forums.

If you’re gonna back down from my challenge, I won’t even acknowledge your posts from this point on. Just a confirmed troll.

Lol. Post of the year dude congrats. Glad to see i won the argument so you had to resort to a duel challenge. I am only a sapphire player so no doubt you would humiliate me witb your greatness. But still, no need for you to reply as you have lost the argument

Lettuce.2945:

Blue Hare.8612:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Incorrect. Passive procs arent always bad. They add complexity and skill in many cases in fact and they add to the depth of the game.

Agree, Passives that require you to do something to proc them are good. They add depth as you can center your build or playstyle around them and be actively trying to proc them.

It kind of separates good and inexperienced players, good players try to optimize their play to utilize those procs at their full potential. Players that don’t know what they are doing just play and proc them accidentally without thinking about them.

Of course there are some passives that you can just trait and forget, those are quite boring.

Oh. Player carried by poorly designed passive traits spotted. Yeah you’re totally right. It’s definitely skillful and intentional when a player drops you to 25% hp and voila, you get a shield that heals you for 4K or an invulnerable elixir that buys time for you to recharge stealth gyro and reset the fight even further. Yeah, totally. That doesn’t carry at all. You’re absolutely right. It promotes skillful play, no doubt.

Nice sarcasm. You are wrong though dude. The passive procs are fine generally. Stop crying about it kitten . This forum is full of mindless qq

Stop living in the past dude. Anet have done well with the elite specs

He cant know that at all. Pure speculation and very narrow minded imo. Anet have tested and have metrics. I trust them

Wrong. They have to let the meta settle and people enjoy playing their builds and fine tuning them. Nobody wants regular changes. 6 months is fine for an mmo

Incorrect. Passive procs arent always bad. They add complexity and skill in many cases in fact and they add to the depth of the game.

Pepsi.8907:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Firebird.8324:

Well, warriors got a few incredibly minor buffs, literally nothing to gawk at, or even assume is OP. I mean, tempest diamond skin arguably better, awesome buff to reaper, CRAZY buff to thief, and warriors get what, a few rifle enhancements? Oh and the “defensive” (LOL) buffs something like +20 health per second added on to the one heal any warrior will ever take.

Arenanet, if you really WANT to remove warrior from PVP just remove it like an amulet, enough of this behind the scenes stuff where you pretend to be balancing and actually end up making people like warriors not only actively leave the game, but convince their friends to as well.

Cry more. Anet know what they are doing. They have tested these changes. You haven’t. Therefore you know nothing

Because Anet’s previous balance changes proved that they were capable and had near flawless balance with very few mistakes that couldn’t, absolutely, be seen before launch.
I mean who could have known about burning scaling so horribly, 100nade being bugged, Alacrity’s 66% being way too strong…
They definitely managed to give result earning people’s trust in their capabilities as a dev team…

Everyone makes mistakes. Its hard to get it 100% right. But for every QQ about something that turned out to be OP there is 100x the QQ about things that didn’t turn out to be OP.

Firebird.8324:

Well, warriors got a few incredibly minor buffs, literally nothing to gawk at, or even assume is OP. I mean, tempest diamond skin arguably better, awesome buff to reaper, CRAZY buff to thief, and warriors get what, a few rifle enhancements? Oh and the “defensive” (LOL) buffs something like +20 health per second added on to the one heal any warrior will ever take.

Arenanet, if you really WANT to remove warrior from PVP just remove it like an amulet, enough of this behind the scenes stuff where you pretend to be balancing and actually end up making people like warriors not only actively leave the game, but convince their friends to as well.

Cry more. Anet know what they are doing. They have tested these changes. You haven’t. Therefore you know nothing

Uh oh, Pluto the Wise is done with season pvp. Anet better have an emergency meeting first thing on Monday to try and fix this

Agreed. Solo q is fine. We dont need actual solo Q, people need to cry less

Urgent? yeh, nobody cares bro

lol the new trait will be unusable its awesome.

Think about it logically. They put a ton of condis on you. So your health drops. Then you no longer get the clear. Its pretty obvious how bad the new trait will be. It is win-more. Logically bad. Because defensive traits when you have high health = when you dont need them. So its terrible.

Its not about a buff or a nerf. Its about removing a lame mechanic. They could replace current DS with something 100 times better and it would still be a good change.

The 3rd scepter auto rarely hits anyway. So its really not that good. But I would still think they should make it give something like 3-5% life force instead

HipposWild.7185:

They’re seriously removing cele? Is there any direction or is this all just firing from the hip with your eyes closed? There is no hope here

Statistics show many of these amulets dominate the meta for a long time now. When a few amulets are a large proportion of the meta for years they should be fixed. Statistics prove anet correct

Very good changes

You used to actually have to use skills and cooldowns in a clever way.

Now its like every auto attack puts insta 6 conditions on you and then everyone has 10000 condi removals.

This is total power creep. Now its just uncounterable offense vs uncounterable defense. So its “balanced” but its not fun. It is just spam. And its terrible for new players. I started a few games recently and even as an experienced player I was confused by all the visual effects (or lack of)

*When this game was designed it was meant that combat was balanced around dodging. So the big hitting skills were designed to be visible and dodgable. Now everything is big hitting, even auto attacks. And this is combated by the huge uptime in boons, evades, blocks, immunities. *

So they lost the vision from the original game designers somewhere along the road. The original devs made such a great game. The best I have ever played in this genre. But it has been ruined by terrible design work since then. When Jon Sharp left it was the end of this game. i think he actually kept the other devs under control and stopped it being just a cluster of “cool” (aka. terrible) ideas.

Now there isn’t much to dodge. Even if you do then some auto attack will tag you for 5k (or some pet). Really….they ruined this game.

There was probably a reason anet didnt give warrior condi removal when released. There was a reason that thief had stealth. There was a reason mesmers were weak to condis. There was a reason necros didnt have stability. There was a reason eles didnt have everything. There was a reason celestial wasnt 30% more stats (or whatever it was). There was a reason engineers didnt have aoe perma stealth. There was a reason that quickness wasnt everywhere. There was a reason that evades on offensive skills was limited. There was a reason for all this.

And the live dev team threw all that out the window and gave everything to everyone. They basically gave you 40 of the old traits. Seen as you now get more traits and most are 3 previous traits. This was crazy. Now you can spec into shouts with a single trait (for example). So it ceases to be that you have to give up something to take something with the new traits.

The people who designed the traits, the skills, the balance over the last 2 years have failed. I respect their work. And I respect everyone at anet. They love the game, and they work hard I am sure. But from my perspective they have ruined this game.

Massive and completely un-counterable damage and yet nothing ever dies.

Great work.

It will also be terrible for casuals. I played this game without knowing anything about anything recently. And sometimes I was stun locked for about 30-40 seconds in a team fight (no joke). Because of these wells. And it throws you in the air. It is hilarious. I can imagine someone just playing casuals randomly dying to this BS and just never coming back. Why would you? The CC in this game is crazy. And apparently every class, including squishies like mesmers, can have a ton of stability???? How does this get through testing lol. It is hilarious. I am actually enjoying playing at the moment because its like a case study of the worst balanced game in history. Clearly stupid and broken stuff which breaks the rules of classes is in place. Mesmers will huge condi removal and stability? lol wtf. No wonder they are insane. They literally took away their only weaknesses.

Its exciting to find out all the clearly unbalanced stuff in this game. Long may it continue. Mesmer will be the best class till the next expansion because its conceptually too strong. It has massive condi removal, stability, CC, boon removal, blinks, unmatched mobility, boons, invulns, huge burst. It will never be balanced. And its awesome

Archon.6480:

I don’t know, but I can hear Gravity Well pounding away in my sleep. Bang, bang, bang… over and over again. Face two mesmers on point and it is: bang, bang, bang… bang, bang, bang… bang, bang, bang… bang bang bang… You’ll be bopping up and down for 30s like a rag doll.

It will also be terrible for casuals. I played this game without knowing anything about anything recently. And sometimes I was stun locked for about 30-40 seconds in a team fight (no joke). Because of these wells. And it throws you in the air. It is hilarious. I can imagine someone just playing casuals randomly dying to this BS and just never coming back. Why would you? The CC in this game is crazy. And apparently every class, including squishies like mesmers, can have a ton of stability???? How does this get through testing lol. It is hilarious. I am actually enjoying playing at the moment because its like a case study of the worst balanced game in history. Clearly stupid and broken stuff which breaks the rules of classes is in place. Mesmers will huge condi removal and stability? lol wtf. No wonder they are insane. They literally took away their only weaknesses.

Its exciting to find out all the clearly unbalanced stuff in this game. Long may it continue. Mesmer will be the best class till the next expansion because its conceptually too strong. It has massive condi removal, stability, CC, boon removal, blinks, unmatched mobility, boons, invulns, huge burst. It will never be balanced. And its awesome

Cynz.9437:

Daniel.9240:

It’s funny but it is the concept of a chronomancer. It isn’t fair but if you put a single condition the concept will break.

Not trying to be too salty here but just an example: thieves are supposed to be master of shadows, stealth etc. Yet scrappers are better at it atm. Then thieves are also supposed to be deadly in 1v1 combat but they can’t 1v1 to save their live – Anet throws their own concepts out of the window whenever it pleases them.

Well I also found that stealth engi thing. That thing is ridiculous. How did that get through testing too. The stealth gyro. Its so OP and seems to be perma available.

As for the mesmer elite thing. I am glad people agree with me. I really don’t understand why it resets elite. That is clearly always going to be overpowered. Double moa? That means in a team fight they can just moa 2 people? Time warp twice? Use that OP as kitten well twice? That is insane. Like that will never be balanced. That is conceptually way too strong. Took me 2 games of gw2 to figure that out recently.

I just played recently. Isn’t this crazily OP?

http://heroesofthestorm.wikia.com/wiki/Rewind

Check this out. Doesn’t reset elite cooldowns because that would be broken. Same on a ton of other games too.

They aren’t going to nerf anything.

Locuz.2651:

Lordrosicky.5813:

This is why I told everyone when they proposed their solution to the exploit issue that the proposed change is terrible.

Once again its taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut. And it will just result in less fun pvp and more people just quitting.

You can’t try to solve a bunch of exploiters queuing with low ranks by penalising the vast majority of people who just play with friends at different ranks. Now all those people are screwed. So there will be less people pvping because according to anet they can no longer play with friends.

I doubt there are many people without friends at different ranks. And now if player A (sapphire) wants to queue with player B (legend) because they are friends then guess what. Player A will jsut get farmed and player B will be guarenteed to lose. It leads to just terrible situations.

End result = more dead pvp. Just like when they “fixed” 4 vs 5’s (it didnt work btw seen as most 4v5 was due to people rage quitting or dcing) by making you accept the queue pop and therefore sit in the heart of the mists.

As i said:

Locuz.2651:

- If you queue with friends and one is diamond or higher? Get ready to get stomped by ESL teams even if half of your team consists of beginners.
- Get ready to get flamed hard if you duo q with a lower rated friend. Since your entire team will suffer due to the lower skilled/division friend that ends up in matches way out of his league.
- Get ready to gain lots of pips vs teams that are made up off 80% sub par players with 1 player that plays more often. All of a sudden u gain the same pips for esl teams and random guild teams that have 1 legendary and a couple of lower rated ppl.
- Hey lets introduce some friends to pvp and play some games together? Well we cant really since playing with me = playing vs tournament level teams, which isnt fun for newer players.

Pretty much. This is so obvious.

Either way, it is almost certain to me that the solution was chosen because it was easy and could quickly be rolled out.

The change will make things worse not better. Just like changes before. I just dont think they have that control structure that is able to filter some of these ideas.

This is why I told everyone when they proposed their solution to the exploit issue that the proposed change is terrible.

Once again its taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut. And it will just result in less fun pvp and more people just quitting.

You can’t try to solve a bunch of exploiters queuing with low ranks by penalising the vast majority of people who just play with friends at different ranks. Now all those people are screwed. So there will be less people pvping because according to anet they can no longer play with friends.

I doubt there are many people without friends at different ranks. And now if player A (sapphire) wants to queue with player B (legend) because they are friends then guess what. Player A will jsut get farmed and player B will be guarenteed to lose. It leads to just terrible situations.

End result = more dead pvp. Just like when they “fixed” 4 vs 5’s (it didnt work btw seen as most 4v5 was due to people rage quitting or dcing) by making you accept the queue pop and therefore sit in the heart of the mists.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Its an amulet probably in 50% of builds when its one of maybe 20 or so amulets. So it should be in 5% of builds.

50% is alot more than 5%. This is basic statistics which should be used for game balancing.

But either way, they wont nerf the amulet in 2016 or probably 2017 so I wouldn’t worry about it. It will never happen.

It’s not about how much an amulet is used, it’s about how useful it is. Not all designs can be used equally across people.

That being said, Guild Wars 2 PvP just isn’t designed for 3 stat allocations because of how poorly things scale.

Well it pretty much is about how much it is used. If a single amulet out of 20+ is like 50% of the meta then its pretty clearly and mathematically warping the game and therefore too strong. Meanwhile there are 20 other amulets which rarely see use. Because they are undermined by the raw stat advantage gained from 1 particular amulet.

Celestial got buffed when 3 trait lines became a thing because it meant more traits and the ability to build a more rounded and powerful character.

Either way, the discussion is pointless. The factual statistics point to it being the most obvious nerf possibly in the history of GW2. Nothing you or I think matters. Math/facts >> opinions.

Its an amulet probably in 50% of builds when its one of maybe 20 or so amulets. So it should be in 5% of builds.

50% is alot more than 5%. This is basic statistics which should be used for game balancing.

But either way, they wont nerf the amulet in 2016 or probably 2017 so I wouldn’t worry about it. It will never happen.

Ario.8964:

Big post inc:

Runes:
Removal-
Trapper (not sure why this was ever put into the game mode)
Mercy (with the idea of normalizing res this rune being removed would assist with that idea as it will no longer be a way to boost res speed)
That list was shorter than I thought it’d be… oh well, on to sigils

Sigils
Removal-
Geomancy (passive procs like that sway combat too much when combined with doom and/or leech)
Hydromancy (again passive proc damage for doing something not related to actually dealing damage is dumb and it is even worse when on chill reaper)

Nerfed-
Energy (just needs to have endurance restored be about 33% of endurance to stop every bunker from having mega evades but at the same time benefit those few builds that rely on pure dodging ability to survive)

Amulets:
Removed-
Celestial (replaced with multiple 4 stat bruiser type amulets that can still allow classes to achieve similar things to what they had before but not being all around amazing at everything) (p.s. nerfing might access and prot access will help with this)

Issues that need to be addressed relating to amulets:
Condi duration bases need to be lowered overall if viper is going to remain in pvp and with it people have condis that last an absurd amount of time. Even DOT builds should have to constantly be engaged in combat in order to win fights, not just able to stack 30 yrs of 10 stacks of condis and then leave and wait til the enemy dies.

Base damage and healing everywhere needs to be reduced and have scaling increase. If someone invests in a bunker build, why should they be able to do significant damage? If someone invests in pure dps, why should they be super hard to kill when they face tank you or be able to full heal themselves any time they want? I know you want to avoid the holy trinity style of play but there is too much base stuff that people don’t have to focus on investments in stats hence why cele ammy becomes a problem when applied to certain classes.

Boon access needs to be toned down for most classes. Nobody should ever be able to maintain perma 25 might and/or perma prot. That eliminates the need for investments and serves to only allow boon heavy classes into the meta. Boons should serve as small buffs used to turn the tide in a crucial moment or benefit a team in a fight when it’s most needed. Right now builds are being made around boons so you have bunkers getting 4k crits on other bruisers while being mega tanks as opposed to zerkers who get maybe 4.5k on the same targets. That is not a big enough margin between the dps focused players and bunkers.

Professions:
Elementalist-
DS being reworked is great but with tempest there is still the issue with ridiculous amounts of reflect uptime. Hardcounters are bad and the amount of reflects they have are near hard counters to ranged builds and then the heavy aoe they have makes them strong anti melee fighters. There needs to be counters but not this level of a counter. Small number tweaks to duration will go a long way to making this a wonderfully balanced class with skillful play required to be good. I’m not an ele main so I’m not comfortable going further into base mechanics on this class as I do not possess the exp necessary with this class to tell you those things. But I will say scepter needs better autos and I think we all agree on that.

Guard-
Trap interaction with ports needs to be addressed. Right now porting through one of their traps like dragon’s maw or test of faith will still proc the cc or damage from the trap. That eliminates the biggest possible counter to a class that already hardcounters the classes that focus on ports. Unblockable cc needs to be looked at too as that is just unhealthy design. What’s the point of blocking vs a guard or DH if their attacks can just go through your blocks? Outside of that a few buffs to base guard to make it a real choice between that and DH are in order but seeing as how I don’t main it I don’t feel I should speak on what that should be.

Thief-
Mostly in a good spot, I would prefer DD didn’t give damage on dodges as it eliminates dodging as a strictly defensive tactic but others would disagree. A few weapon buffs (not to autos or to d/p) would be nice to allow thief to have greater build diversity. For example I would like to see sword 2 return cure 2 condis and have a quicker cast. Also would like to see sword 3 cycle on blocks as the hit still connects it just has it’s damage mitigated. Also Double dagger needs some looking at without buffing d/p at the same time (otherwise it will continue to overshadow the set). Can’t speak a ton on traits as we don’t know what acro looks like yet but I will say preparedness out to be made baseline and mug should maybe be looked at as being baseline (right now our class mechanic requires too much traiting to be effective for us to use and it’s not healthy imo for that to be a thing). Revealed should be normalized across the game at 3 sec again for the sake of possible D/D builds emerging in pvp. Revealed needs to be looked at as other classes imo should be able to rip the thief out of stealth (being able to extend reveal like sic em and analyze I can see as a possible ok thing but taking them out of stealth is just not good as it shuts down half of what the class can do)

For the three classes above: Buff hp pools (at least to 15k like Mesmer) to allow them to have greater diversity in how they make their builds (I’d suggest normalizing hp pools across the game but maybe that’s just me)

Warrior:
Seems like you guys have the right idea, giving them the ability to sustain in combat better. I don’t have intimate knowledge of warrior so unfortunately there’s not much I can say here. This one I will leave to the professionals. (p.s. defiant stance needs to have the same functionality as infused light)

Mesmer:
Gravity well I think should be looked at. It is a large cc with pretty heavy damage and can be used twice. Seeing as how it is unique to the chronomancer I could argue nerfing the duration on it as every person who uses it will be able to channel it twice. Or you can keep the duration but remove the cc for every pulse except the last one and then MAYBE buff the damage so it can still be an influential skill but it doesn’t function as a “gg” button. Rest of it you seem to be handling pretty well with your post so I will leave it as is for now.

Necromancer:
Reduce base chill damage and take steps towards removing the large hitting passives on the class. If the nerfs to boon access go through then this class should be fine in terms of not having ridiculous damage. At the same time it does need a bit more utility in the form of heals not tied to shroud or AI.

Revenant-
Reducing the amount of base healing goes a long way. But they also need to not be able to pulse perma boons to their party. If the suggestions I put above for general balance go through rev should be fairly under control. (most of its issues are boon access and spammable condis that last for a long time). A reduction on confusion stacks from banish enchantment would be great. Maybe just from 3 to 2.

Ranger-
Pet damage is silly. A bunker druid should never be able to kill someone and the fact that with pets like smokescale and bristleback they are able to burst heavily is bad. Now all the pets ranger has should hit as reliably as those two, but the damage should not be that significant if it’s going to be hitting you as much as pets will with reliability increases. Reduction of base heals (with scaling increase to benefit investment) and base pet damage should be a strong start to fixing this problem. Now to avoid the class becoming trash tier they would need to be compensated by giving the weapons on ranger more synergy with trait options and some of the damage taken from pets would need to be given as base damage onto the actual ranger.

Engineer-
Hammer 3 could be changed from 3 leaps to 1 to help cut down on sustain for mara builds. Hammer 2 needs to be either a defensive or offensive skill, not both. Cutting down on might stacking overall will also help with the issues on this class. Reducing hammer base damage would be good, and changes to stealth gyro would be awesome (removing the reveal and giving it a cast time to avoid the whole instant stomp avoidance.)

General balance and QoL improvements:
I realize not all of this can be done right away but looking into the future it would be great to start working on these things-

Stealth needs to be unique to thief to allow for it to be balanced as a defensive tool for the class. Other effects can be given to other classes to balance losing the stealth on their skills (possibly even a parallel effect called invisibility or something to still keep the effect but have stealth be an actual tool for the thief to utilize and allow anet to balance easier without the hassle of having to worry about making mes or engi too strong)

Boon base durations need to be reduced if there are going to be stats and amulets giving boon duration as a benefit in order to help deal with the whole perma boon build thing going on now.

Passives (invulns, counter cc’s, etc.) need to be removed from the game. It does not promote healthy gameplay (as was seen with vamp runes pre nerf) and the counter cc’s punish players for timing bursts properly with cc which should never happen in any game that wants to build a pvp playerbase.

I’d love and support a split in balance for pvp and pve if the resources are acquired, if not then I’d like to see pvp be the balance focus as pve can still be completed with any build on any class so there’s not too much of an issue there outside of elitists who will never be pleased.

Class stacking (even in queues) needs to go. Balance issues are just exacerbated when you have the ability to use multiple of the same op build in a team. Yes queue times may be slightly longer for some but if it means more balanced and enjoyable matches I’m sure most would be okay with that.

We need to be able to queue from outside of Hotm, whether that means letting us pve or letting us duel/hotjoin is up to anet but pvp players need something else to do while they wait in queue (which could help balance out the long queue time that may come out of removing class stacking).

Over time it’d be pretty cool to see people instead of picking 1 amulet for use in pvp be able to pick choices for stats on armor, weps, and trinkets just to add some extra diversity and make more builds transferrable from wvw and pve to pvp. Also lessens the chance of “1 meta build to rule them all” type situations as customization options will be greater also preventing the issue you encounter with amulets where some combos are completely overshadowed by other options.

That’s my list atm, I will add in more if I think of it. Great start on balance changes from the post Josh, love them so far and can’t wait to see where this takes us in the future

Edit: oh I almost forgot, the amount off cc overall is too much. Maybe some skills need a functionality change to stop this perma cc nonsense we are seeing. It is not healthy for a game trying to be competitive in pvp for the amount of cc present right now to be there.

This is literally the best post I have ever read on this forum. Great job dude. Hope they listen to people like you.

Forsaker.9213:

Well Anet logic. More power creep inc and thats all.

This is what they do whole time . " We gonna nerf this and this but buff that and that"

Why cant u simply nerf and leave it like it is.

Agreed.

Nocta.5274:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Why buff theif damage? It will be buffed massively when other classes have their sustain nerfed.

And remember what happened last time warrior sustain was buffed….

Because they probably ant thief to be a glass canon, but right now the reward for the risk of it is not there at all. Do you feel threaten when a thief auto attack uncontested you right now ?
Not really, only by blowing all his initiative into a burst that he does any meaningful pressure. By buffing thief’s auto damage, thief can pressure and use inititive in more calculated ways without sacrificing all defense.

They are a serious threat to anything that isn’t a meta “OP” build. The OP builds just have to be nerfed. Thief is really strong its just other stuff is too strong. If the sustain of classes like revenent or whoever is nerfed then thats a huge buff to thiefs.

Imagine if necro sucked and then suddenly they did a patch where they nerfed everyones condi removal. Suddenly necro would be much better. Even without changes to the class itself.

More thief damage will just continue the power creep towards other classes needing more (often passive because its instant) damage reduction in order to cope with the high damage. How do you think mesmer became so unkillable? The power creep of having to survive thieves damage.

SO thieves don’t need buffs. That would just continue this games rapid decline in skill level and FUN (most importantly). Just giving thief uncounterable huge damage is not going to be fun for anyone. Auto attacks across the board are the one thing which should not be strong as you can’t dodge or avoid them because they have no cool down. Auto attack spam is as brainless as it can get. You dont even need to touch your keyboard to do it.

As for the other changes. The diamond skin change was needed 2 years ago when I told EVERYONE about 100 times that it was an unfun and stupid mechanic. Celestial amulet should be removed. Its been 2 years where this amulet has probably been 50% of builds. As in ONE AMULET OUT OF ABOUT 25 is about 50% of the meta for 2 years. It should be 5% of the meta if it was balanced.

50% is alot more than 5%. This is SIMPLE MATH. As in, this is what development companies do. They have statistics which show how much a particular stat arrangment is used and if it is used way too much then its OP and should be nerfed. Apparently anet don’t use such basic statistics in their balancing which leaves balancing open to human bias and results in a terrible meta over and over. The fact celestial hasn’t been removed or nerfed is pretty much amazing given the clear FACTUAL AND MATHEMATICAL evidence that it should be.

Why buff theif damage? It will be buffed massively when other classes have their sustain nerfed.

And remember what happened last time warrior sustain was buffed….

Go back to WoW imo.

You will thank me in 6 months.

The balance patch will make things worse not better. Wait and see.

It will just be more buffs to things like passive procs. Maybe now you get all 6 trait lines! Hurray. And probably be some other change like. Now you can’t move in HOTM whilst you queue. Or they removed ranks.

lol