Guild Wars 2

You honestly expect match making to be good when balance is so bad?

Think about it, someone looked at Revenants and went, “You know, 600 range, 3 second stun on cooldown of like 10 seconds.” Someone looked at Dragonhunter and went “Traps reeeeeeeeaaaaally don’t need casting time and virtues can be infinitely better.” Lets not forget Druids! Someone looked at druid and went, “Needs TONS of CC, less PvP, more people unable to attack.”

Chronobunker I can see slipping though the cracks, same thing with Reapers and Tempests. But the others, it’s just plain dumb, no one put their foot down to say that’s a really bad idea.

DeWolfe.2174:

There should be absolutely no insta-cast or mimicking insta-cast with cancel.

But Esports, if you are going to make a mistake you should be able to stop it!

In all seriousness, fakes are a legit part of sports, especially martial arts. The only difference is, faking a roundhouse kick is vastly different from faking a mega-uberstun turn every enemy around you to stone attack. You cannot fake a flying double back kick and you shouldn’t be able to fake other powerful attacks either.

I can see thieves and mesmers abusing the heck out of this, using decoy or any sort of invisibility and traveling across the map.

Silverthorn.8576:

So it is normal that a non skillplay passive rules the meta? /SeemsGood

It is normal, remember dhuumfire on release? Diamond skin was created solely because Dhuumfire terrormancers were absolutely destroying everybody.

Diamond skin does need a rework, but ArenaNet needs to do more than a hotfix for Elementalists. For pro-fixing advise look below.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/If-I-were-to-hotfix-nerf/first

Thieves have 3 major weaknesses, CC, blocks and blinds. Thieves rely heavily on hitting their target quickly, doing lots of damage, then running out.

Warriors are pressure based are drastically hurt as well because they cannot keep up their pressure damage when they are being tossed around like a ragdoll.

Thieves in the meta has been in trouble even before heart of thorns, when it comes to being an assassin-like class, mesmers are just better in every aspect. What kept them around was shortbow 5 but sadly in a meta where CC is spammed like auto attacks they cannot contribute much at all.

Unbeatable team comp? 3 bunker chronos and 2 bunker druids.

All you do is decap and stand on 2 points the entire game, you have plenty of alacity and blur to keep any teammate in trouble alive. You don’t actually have to kill anyone, Glyph of the Tides is all the decap power you’ll ever need and with portal the enemy team can never successfully collapse on a point.

Why are revenents still OP with tons of blocks, stability, teleports, evasions all with low cooldowns?
Why do druids have so much CC?
Why do reapers still have massive condi-pressure?
Why are scrappers allowed to be tanky with a glassy amulet?
Why do dragonhunters have 0 casting time traps?
Why was chronobunker a thing?

Josh Davis.6015:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Erik what are your plans for balance?

The amount of CC out there is nothing short of ridiculous, people being toss around like ragdolls. The amount of sheer condition spamming is just as bad as the huge amounts of condition removal. There is so much boons out there yet so many of it feels like it has little to no impact.

I was hoping to join the development team myself and redesign a lot of mechanics from the ground up to create a healthy combat system. For fun I challenged myself to redesign combat with a more impactful and with dynamics in mind. I’m reaching 40 pages and I am not even done with 1 class.

You got a lot of work ahead of you.

Erik and the rest of the PvP team focus on the infrastructure that drives PvP (maps, leagues, matchmaking, reward tracks, etc). We have a separate team that handles balance from a more holistic perspective (keeping PvP, WvW, and PvE in mind).

The good news is that we’ll be sharing some of the details of our next balance update with you as soon as next week. Stay tuned.

Raids need a redesign, if you nerf damage to much raids become unbeatable. That’s not healthy PvE in my opinion.

Erik what are your plans for balance?

The amount of CC out there is nothing short of ridiculous, people being toss around like ragdolls. The amount of sheer condition spamming is just as bad as the huge amounts of condition removal. There is so much boons out there yet so many of it feels like it has little to no impact.

I was hoping to join the development team myself and redesign a lot of mechanics from the ground up to create a healthy combat system. For fun I challenged myself to redesign combat with a more impactful and with dynamics in mind. I’m reaching 40 pages and I am not even done with 1 class.

You got a lot of work ahead of you.

A lot of these issues could have been forseen prior to the season release, but this is the first time ArenaNet has ever had a league system so it’s understandable.

_

What isn’t understandable is the gross imbalance, sheer power creep, multiple bugs and a massive overflow of CC turning players into a ragdoll.

Ross Biddle.2367:

jessiestiles.9437:

It seems to be broken. Exhibit A:

Ooo, is it exhibit time?

B:

That’s working as intended. It’s called abusing match making.

Evan Lesh.3295:

The Ace.9105:

Snip

Snip Snip.

This would explain that team match making is nothing short of being a total nightmare.

The question is, why bother with team queuing? At this point it causes more problems than it helps.

One time I queued with a player that was low rank (he wanted advice on how he can improve his game) and we won every match with flying colors, one match we even got two pips. Yet, if I soloQ matches are significantly different. I can completely understand why players take advantage of this, you can go from 50-60% win rate to 100% just by having the right ally.

Ironically I can tell the match making is trying to work, pitting an emerald-rank warrior and a diamond tempest against rubies. I’d have to be carrying the warrior through 2-tiers, but the thing is, the skill difference between some tiers really isn’t that large. In the end it doesn’t matter, as long as my team pulls some weight we were able to win matches with much ease. Even won matches that “favored” against us and gave 2 pips. I stopped playing rank after that, I cannot take PvP with any amount of seriousness anymore.

It also makes me not appreciate anyone who has legendary rank.

Er, so you are blaming ArenaNet for their game to be hackable? That’s like blaming the tree for wrecking your car.

So far the biggest hack is the teleport, which is minor compared to other online games with completely game breaking cheats. Heck, there are bots in League of Legends at challenger rank. Just be happy the chronobunker isn’t a robot able to outplay a 1v5.

So uh, the lesson here is, don’t cheat. You’ll get your kitten banned.

Silverkey.2078:

Nova Stiker.8396:

WRONG.
What is the most powerful class right now? Revenants. They practically have little to no weaknesses. So if you nerf Diamond Skin, REAPERS will absolutely dominate the game. It doesn’t matter if Reapers are not the most powerful class, they have all the tools they need to crush every other class.

I’m sure people will disagree but Reapers will never be a problem. Simply because if you focus them they die. Even if you focus a revenant or a scrapper they don’t die (or at least not without wasting you a lot of time). Yes, reapers are painful, but I don’t see how they can become apex predator in the gw2 meta.

Tempest hard counters Reapers, while you can focus a Reaper down unlike the the Revenant and Scrapper, Reapers can condi-burst. There is no build in the game that can handle their beastly condi-burst other than Tempest.

I’ve been in matches when we had 3-4 reapers and the other team only had 1 bunker druid or no bunker at all. It is always an absolute slaughter, as long as they have minor support, Reapers can run in and just wreck everyone in seconds. Yet, just add 1 Tempest and the reverse happens.

Without a doubt, Revenants are the most powerful class right now but Reapers are a different type of power house. If you had a team of Reapers vs. a team of Revenants, the Reapers will always win.

Stop asking for hotfix nerfs! Well, okay, ask for them but it will do no good.

Alright, alright, so let me explain. Guild Wars 2 has a downward spiral of balance, if you simply move the ball along, it will hit another wall.

For example, Diamond Skin, thanks to the perma protection, regeneration and the aid of high healing from Elemental Bastion Elementalists are practically immune to conditions. Obvious right? If that gets nerfed, one of the most problematic bunkers will be fixed allowing for more class diversity.
WRONG.
What is the most powerful class right now? Revenants. They practically have little to no weaknesses. So if you nerf Diamond Skin, REAPERS will absolutely dominate the game. It doesn’t matter if Reapers are not the most powerful class, they have all the tools they need to crush every other class.

This is exactly what I mean by a downward balance. Guild Wars 2 PvP balance is more like a chain than a battleground to the dominate role. Okay, nerfed Reapers. Now Tempests and Reapers are in check, BUT UH-OH, now Viper Revenants can now take the top of the chain. Nerf them! Now Druids are a bunker with no predators. Nerf them! Now chronobunkers, nerfed. Now Scrappers can take anything uncontested! Nerf. So on, and so on.

I stated before that to fix this issue Guild Wars 2 PvP combat needs a rock, paper, scissor system. Bunker beats spike, spike beats pressure, pressure beats bunker.

It’s important to have that sort of system because the only time something becomes overpowered or too weak is when something breaks the system. So if warrior bunker is the weakest bunker, it doesn’t matter, it will still die to pressure and can still beat spike. But hey, what do we know right ArenaNet? Just keep pretending it’ll keep working.

It’s okay that you cannot see certain attacks because Esports

It’s one thing to say something you want to do, and not do it. It’s understandable, sometimes things get in the way.

_

It’s another thing to say something you want to do, then do the complete opposite. It just means incompetency.

omg, guys, you CANNOT nerf the serious problematic healing and invincibility for the bombers because Esports.

DeusVI.7942:

Why is this only posted now? And what about revenants being able to hit through warrior’s endure pain with Malicious Reprisal ????

Because ArenaNet doesn’t care about the PvP, duh. Its easy to have problems when you ignore them

EEEEEEEESSSPPPPPPUUUURTZZZZZZZZ

Silv.9207:

Sigil of Doom: when you swap your weapon, the next attack inflict 6 seconds of Poison.
Be happy.

8 seconds, basically near perma poison as long as you keep swapping weapons.

BUT IF YOU WANT REAL POISON BRING BACK DHUUMFIRE! 6 seconds of burning on ANY critical hit with no cooldown! It’ll kill the entire PvP community in a couple days

Zuik.7158:

bump bump, wat is this, plz no, fix now

Na. It’ll be like the immobilize bug or the Tornado self-rez, it’ll stick around for 6 months. Remember, it’s the ArenaNet balance team.

There is no balance because there is no balance team. Duh.

Azukas.1426:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Yes.

• Dhuumfire on release. Necromancers went from low tier to unbeatable Gods. Class variety was completely destroyed and you had entire teams of necromancers. Try having a meta where EVERYONE was forced to play necromancer. This event was also known as the Day of Dhuumfire, PvP community was absolutely destroyed to this kittenly overpowered ‘buff’.

• The buff to immobilize was stupidly annoying and frustrating as hell, 20+ seconds of being stuck depending on who focuses you, combined with the immobilize bug; if you were immobilized while in the air the result was you couldn’t use any skills, basically a super stun. This particularly made Battle of Kyolo and Skyhammer nothing short of being a complete unfun and frustrating nightmare when half your deaths was because of the bug.

• Launch guardians/thieves. There was a time thieves could land a 27k backstab and guardians could survive an onslaught of 4 people bashing them. Thought chronobunkers were bad? A thiefs backstab would land ~1k damage on a bunker guardian and 20k+ on anything squishy. A class that can 1-shot anyone and a class that can survive a nuke strike to the face all in one meta, it was messy.

This meta is really bad, but at least you don’t get killed because you walked down a ledge and got stuck for 12 seconds. EEEEEEEEEEESPPPPPPUUUUURTZ

ArenaNet always suffered to balance since day 1, heck, even GW1 had serious balance issues.

At least people died and matches were finished with a 500 score. This meta is the worst due to it being so kitten boring. There are zero “OMG what a play” moments like previous metas. Its literally watching paint dry with extremely colorful spell effects.

Pick your poison.

Sure, during the dhuumfire meta people died but everyone was necromancers playing the same build. You couldn’t play guardian, ranger, warrior, thief, ele, NOTHING. Everything was reduced to a single build on a single class. It was so stupidly overpowered, nothing could even come close. You can dedicate your entire build to raw condition clear and it would not matter, you’d still be blown up by conditions.

You know why Diamond Skin become a thing? DHUUMFIRE is why ArenaNet made diamond skin for elementalists.

As for the “OMG, what a play” moment. During the immobilize buff you’d be saying, “OMFG THIS kittenING BUG, kitten THIS kitten BROKEN BUGGY GAME!” I had players refusing to play the Battle of Kyolo map in ranked because of the bug, AND the bug lasted like 6 months. I’m still scared to jump in PvP because the bug screwed you over so hard. The bug terrorized the community from jumping.

I’d take nothing dying for 15 minutes then being forced to play necro or half my deaths being the result of a bug.

No, it will not be fixed.

EEEESPPUUURTZ guys, come on! Take GW2 PvP seriously without ArenaNet actually fixing problems.

Yes.

• Dhuumfire on release. Necromancers went from low tier to unbeatable Gods. Class variety was completely destroyed and you had entire teams of necromancers. Try having a meta where EVERYONE was forced to play necromancer. This event was also known as the Day of Dhuumfire, PvP community was absolutely destroyed to this kittenly overpowered ‘buff’.

• The buff to immobilize was stupidly annoying and frustrating as hell, 20+ seconds of being stuck depending on who focuses you, combined with the immobilize bug; if you were immobilized while in the air the result was you couldn’t use any skills, basically a super stun. This particularly made Battle of Kyolo and Skyhammer nothing short of being a complete unfun and frustrating nightmare when half your deaths was because of the bug.

• Launch guardians/thieves. There was a time thieves could land a 27k backstab and guardians could survive an onslaught of 4 people bashing them. Thought chronobunkers were bad? A thiefs backstab would land ~1k damage on a bunker guardian and 20k+ on anything squishy. A class that can 1-shot anyone and a class that can survive a nuke strike to the face all in one meta, it was messy.

This meta is really bad, but at least you don’t get killed because you walked down a ledge and got stuck for 12 seconds. EEEEEEEEEEESPPPPPPUUUUURTZ

ArenaNet always suffered to balance since day 1, heck, even GW1 had serious balance issues.

Belial.9350:

Have to counter passive damage with passive defense, passive condis with passive condi cleanse.

Why not have things that take skill to land and skill to counter?

Because ArenaNet balance the game the same way they play.

Burtnik.5218:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Burtnik.5218:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am thinking that he is talking about the Revenants 4 second taunt thanks to Vipers. It’s the longest CC in the game for some stupid reason.

Happens once to single targer “every” 45sec. Its predicable. Use stab and cc to bait it out. Thats what most does either way. I would like to see indicator of this trait on bar tho so both player and enemy can know when its up.

It is predictable however 45 seconds is really, really low. Just look at Reaper’s Protection, 60 second recharge.

However, I think the trait is bugged. There have been times I baited it out and nothing happened, yet, the trait still goes on cooldown. Not only that, it can trigger through walls.

Maybe, sometimes i was wondering where my taunt is but then again with all that random stab/immune to first cc etc idk. Difference between this and reaper protection is that eye is single while reaper is aoe. Last stand is 8sec stab+free stunbreak on 40cd, dh places daze trap that provides stab+aegis on 36 (or 45, not sure) cd etc. Hard to catch stunbreak every 30sec while recovering all endurance and so on.

As you see eye is not really all that broken when compared with similiar stuff. But im up for removing all these passive craps personally. Slot n forget, 0 skill.

I don’t mind passive abilities. The issue is when they are clearly too good. 3 second taunt? You can blast someone 8k damage with an instant-cast Chill of Death trait.

Of course, ArenaNet balance the game the same way they play it.

Chip Skylark.2367:

Sunshine.5014:

Pepsi.8907:

Xillllix.3485:

Ele play tempest bunker because nothing else is viable for the class in this high-damage/condi meta.

If they nerf tempest we will just use rune of earth and still bunk on point because there is nothing else left to do for the class in pvp.

Because they design tempest to just do what we could already do they gave us more healing and protection, but if they nerf that tempest becomes completely worthless.

What Anet needs to do is create build variety, instead of trying to create the meta.

Well it’s the same thing for chrono, in all honesty.
Nothing else is viable, shatter is laughable really and I won’t even start with condi mesmers…
Chronobunker is unfun and clearly not why I main a mesmer, but I still think it’s much more in line with the recent block and WoP nerf… I wouldn’t want other “fixes” or they could very well fall out of meta… their damage is laughable truly.
Maybe something done with Alacrity, make it a normal boon or reduce the amount on wells… that’s the only thing I’d consider as far as necessary changes goes.

But yeah, I can already see people accusing me of defending mesmer because I main one and unwilling to see it’s “OPness”

For Ele it’s even worse. Compare a glass Chronomancer/Scarpper and a glass staff Tempest. Which one do you want for your team?

• Chronomancer has multiple ways to survive a combat, at least until help come, or you can stealth port away.
• Scrapper on Marauder has as much sustain as a full bunker Tempest
• Marauder Rev has a lot of blocks/evades/boons and a great heal
• Even a glass DH and Thief has more survivability than a glass Tempest.
• On Tempest, as soon as people realize you’re glass, you will be totally shut down.

Good luck running away from a Rev with port every 5s, perma stab and chill, and autoattack you for 4k. In low MMR you can sneak in a few Meteor, but when you face decent players I’d love to see how it can survive. Even then, a Marauder Rev/Scrapper is still a better +1 than glass Tempest because they have better DPS.

In short, glass Tempest has worse damage, and worse survivability. That’s why most of the Ele run bunker. There is nothing else.

…because D/D celestial and s/f fresh air were never a thing, yup, glass staff is definitely the only ele spec.

Did you just start playing ele last week or something?

Ele’s went bunker when everything started spamming powerful CC and conditions with stupidly low cooldowns. Honestly, ele’s will be in the same spot as warriors if they didn’t have diamond skin.

Tempests needs nerfs, but so does everything.

Burtnik.5218:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I am thinking that he is talking about the Revenants 4 second taunt thanks to Vipers. It’s the longest CC in the game for some stupid reason.

Happens once to single targer “every” 45sec. Its predicable. Use stab and cc to bait it out. Thats what most does either way. I would like to see indicator of this trait on bar tho so both player and enemy can know when its up.

It is predictable however 45 seconds is really, really low. Just look at Reaper’s Protection, 60 second recharge.

However, I think the trait is bugged. There have been times I baited it out and nothing happened, yet, the trait still goes on cooldown. Not only that, it can trigger through walls.

I am thinking that he is talking about the Revenants 4 second taunt thanks to Vipers. It’s the longest CC in the game for some stupid reason.

And allow the Reaper overlords to steamroll all classes? No thanks. Necros are not top tier, but if you get rid of the hard counters there is no stopping them from dominating PvP.

If you fix one problem, others will show.

The bunkers natural predator, Strong Pressure, has been CC’ed to death.

Typically a healthy combat design goes a bit like this, Bunkers -> Spikers -> Pressurers -> (repeats) Bunkers

In a battle of cooldowns you need a third man, bunker counters spike (or super high, super quick) damage with their own high, quick defense abilities. However, bunkers are vulnerable to pressure, since pressure doesn’t rely on cooldowns they can sustain themselves while applying unrecoverable damage to bunkers. This is where spikers becomes the predator to pressure, dealing quick, strong damage that pressures cannot recover from. Then it repeats with bunkers out sustaining spikers.

By this design no one play style can rain supreme, each play style has a weakness and even non-meta classes are still viable as by design they have a naturally designed strength against certain others.

_

What does this mean for Guild Wars 2 PvP design? IT MEANS IT’S SIX GOD CLUSTERkitten OF A MESS

Naix.8156:

Trigr.6481:

It’s not really the fact that metabattle is making the meta worse. However its existence pretty much means that balance is so slow that popular builds are able to sit on that website for 6+ months at a time at the minimum. A stagnant game has never really led to anything good.

Trigr.6481:

However [its] existence pretty much means that balance is so slow …

Trigr.6481:

…metabattle’s existence pretty much means that balance is slow…

Logic seems solid to me. Let’s get rid of metabattle so we can get faster balance patches.

Countless you are my hero

We can’t have balance patches because ArenaNet doesn’t have a balance team

Darwin Iznang.1342:

Seems to happen more when quickness is applied to you. Even so, just breaks the game. So many fights at mid lost because we cannot stomp the first downie.

It’s working as intended.

EEEEEEEEEEESPPPPUUURTZ

Caedmon.6798:

Several times again in pvp and wvw.

FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX FIX

NO NO NO
NO FIX
EEEESPPPPUUUUURTZ

Agemnon.4608:

Yeah those are good within the match itself but sometimes people need something more basic. That thread also doesn’t go over risk management with your pips. I can back up my advice though with a screenshot:

Here is the back up to my advice. I stopped doing rank a while ago since I was no longer having fun PvPing.

Smart players won’t use metabattle.

Fun fact: Signet necro is better than any reaper build right now. It has better shutdown, safer pressure and doesn’t have much in way of predators as pressure builds aren’t very strong thanks to massive CC spamming. While reapers do have better team fighting it doesn’t matter because of strong AoE healing. Which is also why we cannot just nerf ele’s because everyone will be bowing down to the reaper overloads and see even LESS viable classes.

Fun Fact #2: Power ranger is really strong right now, the only viable pressure build in this meta thanks to thieves being pushed out because of CC and strong stability on certain specs. Pressure builds are great against bunkers as bunkers struggle to out sustain the flow of damage but because ArenaNet lacks a balance team is why the meta is just beyond ugly.

Go here for better tips:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/10-tips-for-high-level-play/first#post5874436

We all said that was broken when it was announced.

We all said that was broken in the betas.

We all said ArenaNet is completely stupid when it comes to combat balance and design.

Nothing new here, move along.

If they nerf Tempest everyone will be bowing to our necro overlords… Again. If you fix one problem, another big problem will show.

I have a live feed of the ArenaNet balance team working on the major issues.

I’m not going to lie, queuing with someone low rank is super easy pips.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSPPPPPPPPPPPPUUUURTS

sephiroth.4217:

You guys know combat log is buggy right?

On the other hand, I do remember a game yesterday in conquest against an Ele and I complained that “Fire Grab” only crit for 260….

I can understand that, without burning, ton of defense, it can hit rather low.

I’ve been seeing decap rangers since the start of the season.

Glyph of the Tides has no telegraph and is practically impossible to avoid.

EEEEESPPPPPUUUURTZ

omg, we have been over this and explained why it cannot be fixed. Espurtz is why.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Pepsi.8907:

90% of current “bunker” build run cele and it is not because of healing OPness but rather how effective it is by making an inbetween “bruiser” type that can survive for a long while and still dish out decent amount of damage…

Just felt like I’d clarify.

90% of bunker related builds run cele because of the condi stat.

Wrong. 90% of the bunker builds run cele because it’s the only amulet with toughness, vitality and healing power.

Also, if you were to remove the ability to bunker from the game we’d all be bowing down to our Necro overlords, for a second time. Don’t recreate the day of Dhuumfire, PvP has suffered enough and doesn’t need a second mass extinction.

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

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

The bunkers natural enemies, the ‘strong pressure’ has been CC’ed to death. Can’t have strong pressure when you are perma snared and spammed with stuns and knockback.

So what you got is a dominate role with no real predator.

If you want to nerf bunkers, allow warriors back into the meta.
If you want warriors back into the meta, get rid of all the ridiculously powerful CC and stability.

If you nerf bunker ele and bunker mesmer, everyone will be bowing to their necro overlords again.

Celtus.8456:

Can’t support this enough. But extend it again to total freedom of hotjoins, PvE, WvW, and so on…There is no good reason not to, despite how many excuses they try to make.

And yea to support your other point, it is hard to stream this when most of it is you standing/jumping around in the lobby. Opening up the game again will give streamers more capabilities to entertain, and this likely leads to more viewers…more viewers = esports? (Working to the same goal anet is trying or pretending to try to have here).

omg you know nothing about Esports. Esports is when you say you are Esports, offer money AND DO NOTHING ELSE!

eureeka.5368:

this is funny , save and re-post lets get it viral

I’d take an awful programmer over a stupid balance team.