Guild Wars 2

200 seconds cooldown is WAY to much for a lousy 10 secs quickness. The Ethereal is nice but glamour/staff already have almost full uptime on that, so it’s just a bonus nothing more. Either they heavely(it’s an elite that should be way better then utilities with 60-90 sec cooldown) reduce the cooldown, or increase uptime to at least 15 secs. That’s just my take on it. Or it should be glamour skill so that traits with glamour stuff affect it. Moa is only good in specific situations and WAY to long cooldown. Mesmer/Ele and a few others really should all have at least one 90 sec or lower cooldown elite (like thief/warrior/necromancer/guardian). and the cloack one, meh just meh. Decoy is instant cast, adds a clone on top of it, and has almost 3x shorter cooldown. It’s also a skill that has no offence at all to it, so using ‘superior rune of lyssa’, makes it kinda pointless (remove all condition/get all boons, on elite use).

They promised to increase duration of Quickness effects and they didnt on Time Warp fail. Although i can live with the nerf. But 10 seconds is incredible short, no matter how you turn it, and ‘only’ a 50% increase is to few in 10 secs to make a difference on ‘slow casting’ professions imo.

Vizunah is french (correct me if i’m wrong), so I don’t see english/other language ppl hopping onto it. Vizunah declines it has canadian (or other french american) players. That leaves only France county, Wallony in belgium and some affrican countries. That makes me conclude Vizunah is a France +1 gmt playing server that has special shifts in when it’s players play. Imo evening = primtime. France +1 gmt (same as 90% desolation) = peak hour. If these facts are wrong, then come with honest replies ‘we are not only in gmt +1, because we got people from country X’ thanks. All i want are honest replies, and Troma did that succesful. I hope the other vizunians are ‘as honest’ too.

And I repeat, correct me if I’m wrong If you don’t, well this assumptions will remain sadly.

The reason i’m asking these questions is because i’m tired of the ‘no we don’t have american time zone people’, but ’ we have a life, it’s not france +1 gmt people morning capping. Contradiction I don’t like.

Cheers[/quote]

An honest post. I like that Troma the realist.

Fact is I work parttime, if i really want to, i can ‘morning play’ on some days as well, but I don’t bother with it, less fun, and it would interfere with my sleep rythm

Be completely honest about this Troma. If all vizunah would have a normal life (go to sleep at night latest, sleep at least till 7-9 am, go to work, complete the day, go home 5 pm, and conclusively would stop your nightcapping team because they finally have a life again. In this case, can you state with 100% confidance that vizunah would remain in t1 (or first spot on EU list for that matter)? I don’t think so. Your political answer to this won’t change it

In the few hours desolation has their players online and active, vizunah is 90% of time BEHIND US in point. So nope wathever the score may tell you desolation rocks. When elona/VS/Deso battles where going, desolation even had 35k lead after the weekends, and it was only countered by morning capping.

You may be victorious because you discovered morning capping is META. It’s your right to follow meta. But it’s boring, without an actual fight, and without honour. If you still feel the superior Vizunah pride for winning. If score mattered anything, desolation would be so demoralized we wouldn’t be fighting anymore. We are still here because we like battlefields, having fun, having victories (real ones, on the battlefield). So if Vizunah wanna stay ‘number addicts’ (for lack of better word with all the filters around here), I make a good laugh. Knowing vizunah is imprisoned in their own number dependence, says a lot about how much fun you guys have.

Vizunah = most efficient server

Deso/SFR = best spike performance. Vizunah cannot beat other server in primetime This is a victory for sfr+deso/defeat for vizunah. No matter how you turn it. No matter how much you value the glicko point system. No matter how hard the next post will deny primtime importance. No matter how much pride you have. Go ahead and counterpost, it doesn’t matter. The fact is there

Stop having so much pride for ‘obvious’ victories.

If vizunah maybe finally can beat other servers as well in primtime, and have the leading ‘peak performance’, then we maybe can start admitting vizunah is nr1 in everything. (not just score that only values meta gameplay).

Ether feast scales VERY GOOD with healing power. The small difference from the Celestial amulet I already felt. Same goes for vitality and thoughness. The triple defensive stat increase makes a lot of diff in wvw. And it’s on of the FEW ways to get so much free stats (with little offensive sacrafice). Lunaria rings (celestial), sacrafice more stats, compared to the 3 stat focussed items. Imo If you only EVER gonna use one ‘celestial’ equip, it should be amulet any day. Hell even condition damage is used as i’m using the minor trait ‘clones do bleed on crit’. The lower damage compared to my 8% crit rate exotic is negligable. For other professions (like warrior) the question is much harder since they dont have use for condition damage (not much at least). Almost every mesmer build has deceptive evasion, and thus condition damage. You guys should not forget about that. Secondly Ether feast with 3 clones out, heals very good. The slight +56 healing boost, already made a difference for me.

Imo mesmer are amongst most powerfull gw2 professions. In wvw Greatsword, is incredible good. With the 3x beam, it’s incredible hard to dodge this ‘instant triple hit’ damage. You might dodge two of the strikes and that’s it, then the next one is already firing. And RIGHT THIS SKILL they are gonna boost? I’m trampled. If they boost sceptor from mesmer, I would 100% understand, but now they are boosting one of the best ranged auto attacks in the game to even better. Jesus.

Mesmer was the last profession that was ‘released’. (aka official announced). They may have had the mesmer long ready already though.

I disagree with the ‘maps are ok as it is’, ‘eb is to packed’. I hate borderlands because are you are running more, then doing stuff. EB is just ok, but getting bad because of the ‘camping playstyle’. Every enemy ‘camps his side of the EB’, and keeps his towers, making supply camps one of the few available captures at any moment. Fun = lot of capturing (to me), and defending an attack. Especially defending stonemist is fun, but it doesn’t happen al to often.

Np, was really surprised to hear that It might have been changed, cause one of my plans always has been to make a rune of lyssa build. And lately i’ve been thinking that necro is the best for it, since the 48 sec cooldown almost perfectly matches the internal cd. You can just ‘count’ 2 secs and be sure it will go off, unlike thief where you have to count 14 or 5 sec depending on traits.

Tested and confirmed in the mists. 50 seconds. I first resummoned it 3x at full 60 seconds cd (never used the second ability). It always worked. I then traited to 20% minion cooldown reduction. I first casted the skill again because the old cooldown didnt work. I tried then again when the new cooldown was active. (48 seconds). After the skill was not on cooldown anymore I counted 3 secs, to be certain i’m not under the 50 secs internal cd. And it works flawlessly. If you guys have it failing, it’s only the second skill. Edit, works with the second skill as well for me in the mists.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune

Check this page without clicking on the rune. Here’s the trace of the 50 seconds. I don’t know why they removed it.

Zorion.7504:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Wiki has stated for the last months that the cooldown is 50 seconds, and my tests in ‘the mists’ confirm this. Unless the latest patches have changed it. I havent tried it on necromancer yet though.

I must be blind but I cant find it on the wiki
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_rune_of_lyssa

The wiki must have been changed lately. Until 3 weeks ago, it has been stating this since just after the start of the game. It was under the superior version, in one of the notes. ‘the 6th effect has an internal cooldown of 50 seconds’.

We are the masters of condition applying. I tried it on a lot of classes, but it’s the best on Necromancer. Mesmer confusion doesn’t work in pve, and in wvw is to easely removed/countered/doesn’t last long enough. The staff clones, attack to slow and to random to apply reliable condition damage. It’s not bad, but for condition build, I take Necromancer any day over mesmer.

We are the masters of minions. Although this is more of a lore thing then the truth. Anet needs to improve minions.

While we may not be the fastest or most reliable condition removers (guardian has more of them I think), many of the necromancer tools remove more then one condition, many of them even remove ALL CONDITIONS. In in that specific way, they are also ‘the best condition ’handlers’. Turning them into their own advantage (damage on enemy), is quite nice.

They are the masters of ‘forms’. Our elites (plague form and lich form) are both some of the best ingame in my opinion. ‘worthy’ elites. Something I miss on my elementalist. The elemental summon is to weak/long cooldown, fiery greatsword is only good, when you are able to survive without needing to rely on water skills for a while, and cooldown is quite long, Tornado is good, but only in very very specific situations. I prefer Necromancer any day.

They are the kings of Aoe. I’ve alwyas like aoe. Elementalist comes close to what I like, but the spells are just not my cup of tea. Having almost spammable marks on staff, utilities that are also aoe, a heal that’s aoe, elite that’s aoe… I just love it. And epidemic is not a ‘target area’ aoe, in that way it require very good timing. But I like that, if you manage to time it well, it’s one of the best aoe’s in the game (or the worst if the mob is dead when you cast it, or time it wrong).

Attrition we are not good at. Simply for the reason of Stuns. We lack stunbreakers, and many professions spam them. Against stun spam necromance has few tools to survive. Stuns in my opinion are the only True thing that prevents necromancer from becoming Attrition. I understand though that necromancers need a weakness and stuns perhaps should be it. But we could use some more stabilities. Especially on one of our utilities like maybe spectral armour. I don’t see the point of a 90 sec cd skill, being op, if Stability was added to it. Once it’s on cooldown the enemy can still relentless ‘stun’ us, it’s just a short window of safety against control, that every class should have access too.

Wiki has stated for the last months that the cooldown is 50 seconds, and my tests in ‘the mists’ confirm this. Unless the latest patches have changed it. I havent tried it on necromancer yet though.

Since Client performance IS important now, should I upgrade my amd 6950 to Nvidia 670 Gtx?

Wow what a lovely Stonemist battle XD Desolation holded both Vizunah AND Seafarer off for over an hour! Never had so much fun in wvw. Screw the scores! This is true wvw. And i had almost no skill lag (for once). And badges of course, always welcome. Good fighting Sfr/vizu.

Arenanet, I beg you to give Spectral armor Stability. I’ve thought a lot about it. And I think it’s right to do. You are scared to lower the cooldown Anet. For balance reasons obviously (otherwise you would have lowered it already, is my Guess). I can live with that. However in wvw, were stability is incredible important, Necro’s are one of the few professions to fall far behind, because we don’t have it. Well we have it, but it only works for power builds (Soul reaping is crit damage trait line). I have a condition build, and it’s simply not possible to sacrafice 30 trait points for the stability. The elites also grant it, but sometimes i gotta drop early out of it to heal, wich means I loose the Stability, and they are on a long cooldown.

We are not asking for spammable/overpowered Stability. But Necromancer is meant to ‘kill slow, survive long’. And having no stability, really ruins it in wvw. 5 Enemies (that know what they do), can completely control a necromancer, without giving him a chance to escape. Stability with a skill like Spectral armor (and the trait), would fix it. Elementalist get is also (and they already have way more ‘anti crowd control’ mechanics, so one long cooldown counter to crowd control, is the least Anet can give to necromancers.

Dark path instant, please yes! Now it’s useless. If i want to use it, it’s to close a gap. Most of time ppl are running away then. And if they do, dark path is useless because it’s to slow.

Leorcyn.1063:

@Phoebe : Trust me when I say we were not really prepared to SFR moving up a tier, along with Deso staying here (this combination of servers was the last one to make VS fall, and quite spectacularly, because we ended-up third on week 02, which is only 7 weeks from now).
And to keep up with the pace, we had to play full potential. Above full potential for some I would say. If we really had that much potential, we would have reacted differently in the week, the match-up turning to our disadvantage on monday (even if the graphs show otherwise, that’s when we lost the week).
So please don’t speak about things you don’t know. You are just devaluating your server and SFR if you really think we didn’t play at full potential.

(and I can spot sarcasm very well, I may not be as stupid as you think I am )

I’m inclined to be believe you, but everytime Vizunah square looses a matchup, for some miracle reason, the next week they win again. If you now played at full potential, and Sfr + desolation do at least the same effort this week, this means you would loose again. Let’s find out this week, if you statement is correct, Vizunah square cannot perform (much) better then last week.

After the Blacktide ‘falling apart’, I haven’t seen Vizu Loosing. It’s also the longest period of time i’ve been fighting them. I know they lost before, but it’s good to know they still can. And the ‘undefeatable Gods’ was sarcastic.

‘And vs stands’. What a joke. You lost this week, cause you didn’t expect it too. That means you didn’t play at full potential (your fail). Then again you guys already play on an inhumane rythm. So that means next week wathever crazy strategy you do, Desolation will stay at normal human pace. If we loose because of that, it almost feel like a win to me. But what am I saying here? Vizunah cares only about numbers, so yeah, ignore my post

Satisfying to see Vizunah Loose. The undefeatable Gods, got defeated nonetheless. The amount of confidance in their posts ‘we just are the best, score proofs it’ and the current state of point, should kitten a lot of Vizunah. Maybe they will finally get a normal sleeping pace, and make the matcup more interesting.

Congratz to SFR. You punished vizu for focussing mainly on defending upgraded towers.

I’ve been playing warrior, guardian, necromancer, mesmer, thief and elementalist in wvw, all have about the same playtime. If I get bored, I play another. If this update is char bound, then that would force to play the same char over and over until it bores me to hell and even continue then to get some ranks… Not so cool imo. Sometimes we almost have nobody of a certain profession online, and could really use their support, then I offer to Log on that profession, and offer my services. Is Arenanet aware, that this will kill this kind of freedom?

If only you guys would come to Belgium

At first I was in pure love for Anet (gw1, early gw2). Now, I didn’t really loose it (yet), but i’m on the verge of loosing it. They keep promising stuff they don’t actually do. Their own interests (fighting bots), is more important then honest players interests (honest farmers).

What hurt me most so far is Person X sentence ‘the forum is not a representation of all the players’. While this may be true for a bit, It’s truly unrespectfull to the forum community, and proofs they are not reading our posts. The 3k+ posts thread about thief ‘op’ complaints, I doubt it’s read. Theres a lot of good arguments (for and against), in there. But Person X behavior (and the general Forum behavior of Anet), proofs that it doesn’t matter to them. We are nothing to them. Somehow they have a better way of knowing opinions of all the 1 million + guild wars 2 players around (person X words). You gotta tell me how you do that Anet. Seems like a joke. Another thing that implies this ‘dont trust forum’ thingy, is the mention of the Alpha team. They played the game before everyone officially did, and they are still around making recommandations to Anet. Are you kidding me? a 500-5000 man team is worth more then forums posts?

Person X is also to naive. Gw2 office is not paradise. It’s ‘read your mails’, see potential problems, talk about them, find solutions, go home, enjoy resting time, sleep, repeat this pattern. Now you guys just do, ‘paradise, paradise, paradise, gw2 is oh so good’. You guys are ignoring Core Problems.

However I know some of Anet team (especially devs, like the one fixing story mode bugs), is working non-stop very hard. I also know 85 people, working for 3 million gamers is virtually nothing. A part of me wishes because of this they would work harder because the game needs it. Another part doesnt wanna push them to hard (I know having hard work conditions is not cool, so ofc i don’t wish this for Anet).

Anet keeps promissing ‘boosts’ to compensate for nerfs. So far they lied. Almost all nerfs had no counterboost. They also feel heavely ‘wrongly informed’. They think aoe’s are op? Jesus. Some of them yeah. All of them? Hell no. Playing tire 1 wvw(meta, so I think this is the most valid opinions out there, not your hidden ‘extract opinion from 1m gamer-magic-machine’ (Person X = to naive)), I know Barrage is the most op Skill in wvw (wich you specifically mentioned where you think aoe’s were op). Other skills, if you know how to play, don’t mean a lot. Barrage is the only aoe, that can turn a very large area into a suicide field (berserker rangers). Now will you take this info in to your heart Anet? Recent findings, I think not. This is not a call to nerf ranger, if anything, they need tons of boosts. But aoe wvw meta = Barrage spam (berserker) by loads of archers.

And that’s the point of my post: Disappointing trust in your forum (and whole) community Anet. We deserve more trust!

You don’t allow flaming, nothing in this post is flaming. Just an opinion. I left out the person who i was calling by name first, because I know it would result in a warning. There’s enough indications to know of who’m i speak, so draw your own conclussions. It’s not a flame, just a warning from a concerned customer.

I played rappelz Mmo. If any of the gw2 crew ever played that game, do not copy their bevavior. Almost anything they did was a mistake. It’s the best advice i can ever give you. Do not follow their (Nflavor/Galanet) mistakes.

Because I to late realized I had more chance of Anet reading here then in wvw topic. (this is the only topic they won’t close for sure).

I have a Guardia, thief, Necromancer, Mesmer, Warrior and Elementalist lvl 80. All are great and have up and downsides. In the end I prefer Mesmer, because of the great utility they have, and clones are so much fun. Ele/Thief follow closely behind. Guardien is next (very good profession but a bit boring and slow). Warrior is nice but not my playstyle. They feel squishier then my other professions, even when having heavy armor/most health ingame. I don’t have a full gear set yet though but it’s quite close, and PVT, so i’m amazed it’s that hard to survived close combat. Warrior basically relies on damage to kill foes (not completely tru but compared to other classes, quite true). Necromancer with conditions is nice, but I felt the constant condition removal from players was a bit of a to easy counter to it. Add on the no escape abilities (invulnerability, stealth, blink, ride the lightning kinda stuff, short cd stunbreakers, etc), and I feel like the profession is slightly underpowered. Their melee is not my thing either (feels a little to low damage wise).

@ Troma, I am trying not to hate you guys. And lately i’ve seen no glitch abuse so that’s a good start. Seen some good organized zergs (that won/lost by 50-50 margin, so that keeps the fun in it). However it’s kinda boring, that vizunah square is so addicted to camping.

Can you please come out of your nests a bit more (klovan, jerrifer, aldon, Wildcreek, Stonemist)? That would improve the fun.

/No offence intended.

Omg best proposal I ever saw. Server like vizunah square will be kitten however. They rely on the free +500 at night/small loss at peak hours ratio to win.

Karolis.4261:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

snip.

Do you know how hard it is to land full backstab on a good player. Oh and dont say basilisk venom.

Easy. The only players hard to target is elementalist, with incredible fast run forward abilities. Fleet shadow trait = garanteed hit, if you can follow the player. If ran in circles, dodged like madness on my mesmer ,and they still hit perfect backtstabs. And if a thief knows BS is gonna fail, he just trows ‘dancing dagger’. Wich is almost 100% ensurance the next one hits. There’s many professions not equipped with speed abilities. (like mesmer), or ranger/necromancer without signet. Or guardian without boon build. They simply CANNOT outrun a thief. They can’t. So the thief wins. Shadow step utility is the only thing a thief needs to kill a player. I’ve only seen one profession escape my grasp, and it was an elementalist spamming ride the lightning as fast as he could. Without delay. It was close but he escaped with 20% health. Other professions, no chance to escape me. Just as my other professions (i got 6x 80) barley have a chance of escaping a thief.

This is all about 30 SA/30 berserker tree, 10 acrobatics (superior popular) build, with heal whilte stealthed, increased stealth duration, two initiative gain on cloack use, fleet shadow, 100% crit rate on stealth etc. That build is near perfection. Especially fully berserker. Two backstabs (full berserker), kill almost any profesison, unless he has 3k+ armor. With this build a thief can land 3-4 backstbs before running out of energy. Not much punishment for failing their attacks. Other thief builds however are easy to counter, if you have a bit experience. Anet should focus on balanced this specific build.

If only one of the traits in this build is moved, nerfed, or removed, then thiefs imo should be balanced.

I have a thief as well, and with current cullings it is OP. 1 vs 1 I win almost all the times (except vs thief). Either 100% fix culling (that means INSTANT VISIBLE PLAYERS after a cloack effect), or nerf cloacking in wvw (only wvw!).

Lets be fair. Anet will not upgrade servers. So culling will still exists on slow system, no way they can fix that, no matter how positive Habid (developper), is. Conclusion: nerf culing, by nerfing cloacking.

I may be dumb programming wise, but I don’t get why in a 1 vs 1 fight (no skill lag, wich means the server has enough resources – skill lag = 3-way Stonemist castle fight), Enemies show up 2 secs after cloacking. Yesterday a thief, hitted me 4x before he appeared. I pressed closest enemy like madness, and even after the ‘revealed’ smoke, i couldnt target him. Wich I for god sake need on my mesmer if I want to put illusion on him.

Anet tell me this: If you turn camera, GPU is 100% ready for it. It all has it calculated, and is barely slowed down by this. Why do you remove cloacked players from the enemies clients gpu? Cause lets face it. If the gpu still knows the cloacked player is there. With all the teraflops available, it’s incredible piece of cake to make them 100% invisible/Visible in a matter of microseconds. The fail on Anet side is, that they unplug cloacked players frmo the enemy clients, and let the servers intructions queue be the decisive matter in when you see the thief.

Also in my opinion backstab is OP. Now don’t flame me. I like the skill and wanna keep it as it is tbh. But the crazy damage multiplier on top of 100% berserker builds (2,5 or more multiplier), is a bit off tbh. Even on a 2600 armor build (almost max a light armor can reach, without sacraficing damage to much), they kitten (9k damage). Wich means to simple backstabs = win. (And with traits they can do at least 3 backstabs (even 4 if they crit enough and the trait on crit gives them some iniative back (minor trait 15 points ,berserker tree), before running out of Initiative.

I have 6x 80 chars. And i agree with OP. I love thief, and don’t want it destroyed or nerfed. But 300 health per second while cloacked, together with shadow refuge is op.

And ’it’s easy to pull thief out’, don’t let me laugh. Last week i tried this TONS of times on my mesmer, both GS 5 and focus 4. Guess what most of the time the thief still got free. If you dodge inside your shadow refuge, you avoid all this kind of stuff. It’s a peace of cake.

If 3 thiefs run with the ‘heal when cloacked’ trait, it’s kinda op. You cannot kill those thiefs. They just outheal/outcloack you at the same time. Even when you down one of them. Even superior aoe they can heal right tru it, with the passive cloack heal + downed ress.

And culling of course. I’m pressing T (if i tagged thief with control + T), or closest enemie buttons non stop, and trust me, when a thief uses a skill that cloacks him 4 secs (like the heal, traited 1s stealth), they are not selected/visible until at least 5 secs. And let’s be honest. If they don’t improve servers (wich they won’t, without monthly fees to pay for it), then culling will always be in wvw. And because of that thief should be balanced.

Some servers like to abuse a technique (one thief goes all out, maybe dies – most of time escape though), one he dies, out of nowhere two thiefs come, one puts a SR, they all heal because of the passive, the downed thief gets up in no time (even with heavy aoe/control abilities), the other one puts SR, they happely flee. And they do this again in 1 minute (really not long imo in wvw).

I love thief, and part of me want it to stay as it is. But other part of me knows the truth, that they are (albeit slighty, on a thin and fragile line), overpowered. I could lie about it, and keep enjoying their OP’ness. But that’s not the kind of morale I have

PS this only counts for wvw. If any update may come, do so only for wvw. Leave thief as it is in pve.

Hammerguard.9834:

I main a necromancer and I just finished leveling a mesmer to 80 a couple days ago. In my opinion, mesmers are garbage compared to necromancers and I feel it’s because of their weapons. I just can’t find a weapon on mesmers that I’m happy with. They’re all bad… They at least have room for improvement.

For people who have only played mesmers, it wouldn’t be so easy to see an issue.

Funny thing is i think the same about necromancer. Focus is clunky (most of time the chilling doesnt work, nor the other skill). condition damage is focused on bleeding, with is so easely removed. Traits are bugged. Dagger 4 works 50% of time. Apart from dagger auto attack, melee damage kinda sucks (thief beats it hands down, even GS warrior/guardian do imo damage wise). Healing skills to long cd. (they are strong, but cd is long.) Minions don’t respond (bad AI). Etc etc. Not saying necro sucks. But it’s quite buggy atm, and the weapon sets feel limited. I also hate the incredible limited about of escape skills necro has. Low amount of stunbreakers etc. Long cd on signets (should be shorter).

Tbh at some point i shared your feelings about mesmer. However now after so many hours i don’t share it anymore this opinion. Mesmer has more viable builds, and all weapons have good purposes. But you got dig deep to understand all purposes of mesmer. OP says temporal curtain sucks in pve. This is so single minded. It has loads of uses. Swiftness on allies, cripple on mobs, light combo field (retaliation on leap sword 3 skill, works twice even), and on top of all aoe interrupt. Hell if you trait it, i can even reflect projectiles. See where i’m going? On ‘lousy’ skill, but in the end one with tons of purposes. That is the nature of mesmer. Never look at a skill with a single mind.

It’s totally fine rofl. I once spammed all my confusion i had on ele. He just kept removing it. After 2 minutes battle he still fled unharmed. It may be dangerous to some profession, but hey everyone must have a weakness.

Sounds to me like you are a ranged player. Stand close to the boss from start to finish with melee weapon only. Then come back to this topic.

Shaojack.3871:

SoR player experience tl:DR

American t1 is way more balanced then EU t1. That is why you have fun. Vizunah square is not fun to fight, and almost impossible to beat. As long they are t1 EU it’s not fun.

Tbh i’m kinda jealous of american balance in t1. The matchup scores seem to show it’s quite exciting. Very different from EU t1 that is. I’m even considering paying 36g to an american server cause the balance in wvw seems better there.

1000000000000000000% agree. Vizunah Square can only be beaten by boring tactics (coward behind walls, spamming siege). And having 24/7 coverage. Wich no server in EU has except them.

Spot 2-3 in EU will have huge nightmares, and it will never change until vizunah square drops the ball. I in fact hope they never bring special reward for the winning servers in the next updates (something they said they would), cause it would make it unfair for ppl in tire 1.

To bad you dropped SFR Desolation doesn’t like vizu either. I wish we didnt go up lol Why did you play so bad To be honest SFR guarding 2nd spot for a while was a good thing for desolation (more fun).

Fact: as long as vizunah square is in t1, t1 will never ever be fun.

Jaghen.8314:

Phoebe Ascension : you’re bad and you should feel bad…

Gotta love the oposition between forum warriors though…
SFR whining about off-hour cap while VS zergs are so easy to kill off.
DS whining about VS zergs being unkillable.

Although, my bad, I say DS, P.A. is a well known server hopper…

Well tell me vizu, how can a ranger punch out 2k auto-attacks (must be full berserker, no other chance), yet survive a 18k spike, without healing? Logic tells me there is a cheat here. If zergs spam aoes to each other (natural behavior), hp bars in both zergs should go down in fast speed. Then either one zergs (or both) retreat, or they fight to the last man. Vizu sometimes don’t even move their feet(incredible mistake, not moving = dead in large part of guild wars 2) , stand right into many aoes, and no single hit point bar does down. Sorry but that’s unnatural. Even superior teamspeak coordination cannot achieve that.

Strategy is one thing. (like waiting to take SM, until another force weakens defenders first), I’m all ok with that kind of strategy. Backdoors to victory however another thing. A backdoor is something only one server has discovered and uses to their advantage to win.

Desiderius.7259:

@Phoebe

Thanks back:

At Elona Border your primary goal is our garrison, instead of vizu spawn or vizu bay. At your homelands it seems to me, that you dont want to attack the hill, but instead our bay, while vizu is constantly attacking our spawn. Strange strategy? Yes.

Vizu zergs are not unbeatable, but you have to have enough people to kill all the 50+ twinks.

Vizu with only 40 (ive counted nice and carefull as a cloacked thief), we had 60. In 20 seconds they killed 15 people, many of them very tanky. In that timespan nobody of them died. Only after that our zerg managed to kill 5 of them, with even more casualties. And is just to fast. Every time I die I look at my combat log. I want to know how they kill me. I think i have the right to know wich ability kills me (or what profession). I took one 8k blow in downed state. It was nowhere in combat log. Only thing there were 1-2k long range shots. So I want to know vizunah square where did you get that 8k damage from, without putting it in the enemies combat log? Seems like a cheat to me not? (And no they didnt use channel abilities like Rapid fire, I watched my combat log carefully for them). It’s things like this that makes vizu win, and that I wanna unravel. Uncover the secret winning methods of vizunah square.

elona wth are you doing? Are you guys pure kill machines without strategy? Every second vizunah square has SM they can treb you. Every treb of Deso pointed at SM that you kill, is another option LESS to to enter SM and take it away from Vizu.

And both servers are suspiciously attacking our side of the map. Elona is barely bothering with vizu map apart from rogues. I’m getting the idea, elona is a bad looser (they can’t win from Vizu so they target weakest helping their overpowering enemy vizu even more). I call that a sign of being a coward (no pun intended, but I don’t know a friendlier word for ‘running away from the truth’ (wich is that you are loosing).

PS Arenanet, do something about vizunah square. It’s the worst server to play against. Only a computer can beat them. So every two server a weak that are matched against them, are having a week totally no fun, but only frustration. Still figuring out how vizunah square is overpowering so much but they definitely have a secret strategy in zergs. I met zergs over 70 ppl spamming aoe’s (not vizu for clearance). We still had a chance to defeat them, and with some casualties eventually did.

Vizunah square however walks with zergs of 40, defeating EVERYTHING in their path, even coordination doenst help. It’s like they are a computer, they always have the perfect response, and face it, every human makes mistakes. Even the over focussed french people. Yet somehow they always escape their doom.

Some facts i discovered. They abuse rangers. I think it’s for 1500 range and cause culling. they always go in berserker, yet survive easely 20k spike damage. Their thief, (he alone vs 5 of us), no reason for culling at all, still manages to cloack like madness for over a minute. Even after we see the visible smoke, it takes 5 secs for him to load up. Wth! My thief gets ripped apart the second he comes out of cloack, that means they see me (i was 900+ range from zerg, out of the area’s they aoed at). So that means vizunah square has no culling.

No culling server vs culling server? yeah right. Habib wvw developper. Please sneak onto vizunah square. Learn french. Read the chat, and learn their exploits (i’m sure they are exloiting every way possible atm, they just kill to easy).

Kodash/Baruch bay have BIGGER zergs then vizunah square. yet deso countered almost all of them. Vizunah square however. 40 ppl against 50+ ppl spamming aoe, they just keep standing like we are doing nothing. One day i’ll find out the vizunah square cheat/exploit/strategy abuse. And that day Vizu will drop out of t1. Until then vizu, may karma punish you for being so evil/sleepless for a cheap meaningless, rewardless victory.

I like wvw. I like strategy. I like player skill. I can live with being outsmarted. Hell loosing is nothing to be ashamed off. But the rate vizunah square is doing is unnatural. Without honor. Please remove that kind of gameplay from wvw. Some players will do everything to win (buy gems, get gold, buy trebs with that, just to beat enemy server), use exploits, hacks, unknown bugs by anet to their advantage. Please fix every exploit, so that vizunah square cannot abuse them anymore.

A natural zerg battle goes like this, both engage with aoe’s. Most see red circle and avoid. Players start engaging, and using their best skills. When those are on cooldown it’s a battle of healing/support/Cc vs damage. Then everything fragments, some players (closest) will get full focus of enemy zerg, and maybe die fast. The others should have plenty chance to still survive. With good armor, no zerg should be able to down anyone before 12 secs, when the battle begin for the first time. That’s my experience fighting loads of zergs.

Vizunah square escapes this pattern as the only server I ever fought. Somehow they manage to down 10+ players at different sides (so they are not in aoe range of each other), in a matter of seconds. If my incredible luck i can survive it, I try to spike them down since that kinda damage only can come from berserker. Guess what even if I focus all my energy on one distracted enemy, he survives over 10 secs, without the support of his allies. When he is finally downed (to late compared to same situation, but reversed) all his allies jump in less then half a second to him to powerheal him (there no outdamaging a zerg ressing a downed player.) That is unnatural.

Berserker zerg can spike but dies fast. Bunker zerg lasts long, and cannot be spiked. Yet vizunah keeps both attributes without any sign where they get that kinda power.

Erasculio.2914:

nethykins.7986:

Forum feedback would show:

Nothing.

The forum community is only a very small part of the total players. To make things worse, it’s not a general sample – it’s a specific subgroup of players. And to make things even worse, it’s a specific subgroup including many of the worst kinds of players in the game.

I’m not happy with the idea of the AoE nerf. But to say “no one in the forum complained about it so it’s not an issue” is ridiculous – the forum does not represent what players think, much less what is or isn’t an issue in the game.

Players are not game designers. More often than not, players are not capable of doing good game design. Developers should not ask players to tell them how to design a game, since this will more often than not lead to failure after failure due to lack of long term planning, lack of care about the impact changes have in the game as a whole, and the self-centered nature of most suggestions.

Funny think is Anet statet in their making off book, the community is part of the game. Without us they could not make the game how it is (their words not mine). So basically they should listen more to us they do now.

No stabilitty, no spammable (short cd) stunbreaker, unreliable condition removal (ok this is wrong, but face is necromancer the master of conditions, have only 3 20+ sec cooldown condition cleansers – fail compared to rune of the soldier shout guardian (or even warrior).

Anet says they are supposed to outlast enemy. Meh I tried everything, and it just doesnt work. Even fully building around Death shroud for tanking of damage doenst work in wvw. No anti-CC = no life in wvw. You must also sacrafice utility slow for swiftness (warhorn alone is unreliable).

To much broken/bad traits. To much unreliable weapons, dagger just bad (should hit multiple weapons). Axe, same (should do more damage, and hit more enemies). Scepter is ok but to much bleed focus. It should do burn, bleed and poison, to reduce ‘removal’ by enemy chance. Or they should introduce necromancer specific condition.

Fear is to short, to long cooldown.

18k hp is nice in pve, but in wvw, doesnt mean a kitten, enemies eat try it. Every anti CC ability is sooooo much better then a few thousands of hp.

18) Wvw downed state is now messed up (can be somewhat countered by devastating aoe’s), but with single target damage, being much more viable then aoe’s, will turn the zergfests into ‘target vs target’, ‘if target does downed, we ress him fast’ endless battles. The biggest zerg will most likely win now (now smaller zergs sometimes win, by betteer aoe strategy). You want to take away this intense feel of strategy and involvement?

19) Guild wars 1 Elementalist is incredible underpowered. long cast time for weak aoe’s, wich way to high mana penalty. Roots are much bigger punishment in gw2, so the added roots equal mana penalty. But their tremendous low damage, is a nightmare. Do the same to gw2 and you will a lot of damage to the community. Do not in a single moment use Gw1 memories/principals for the continuüm of guild wars 2.

20) No matter how carefully you proc the data, your already confidant idea of nerving aoe damage will one way or another destroy certain build, play styles, even professions. You nerfed enough by now. It’s time to stop. Only PVP has reasons for nerfing (so all class are equal), but in wvw/pve, if anything, boost unreliable single target skills. Please for the love of guild wars 2, the 5 Gods, and the community, do no stupid aoe nerfs. Saying you’ll do it carefull, is like saying ‘tonight we’ll drive off a cliff, but we’ll do it carefully’. Get it? Please no nerf. Nerving = player fun destroyed. Player fun destroyed = game destroyed. Game destroyed = Anet existance? I know this is exaggerated, but you guys often take decision (faulty ones) so easely, it makes me think, you guys think you are at an immortal job throne. Of course that is not true.

Aoe Elaborating.

Churning earth, superior long casting time, a single move, stun or daze, Knockdown, screws the skill. Secondly a high damage melee profession, can dish out a lot of damage in those 3 secs casting time. That alone is balance. Nerf it, destroy it.
Meteor shower. Long cast time, roots. If player forces you do move or dodge, bye bye meteor shower. I used meteor shower a lot, and its only viable when fully cast (not interrupted early). That is quite hard both in wvw and in pve. Sometimes in wvw i really want to finish the cast and my hp drops from 17k to 3k. Then I must go out very fast or die. The funny thing is, this risky action I just performed, killed nobody. They all just backed out of meteor shower because it’s so obvious. Or they got a ress in downed. PVE meteor shower is a gamble. Sometimes only 3 meteors hit (bad damage). Sometimes a lot of them hit. Even when a lot hit, i think elementalist deserves a unique aoe capable (still with lot of gamble in it, and risk) skill like this. You can nerf it again (after beta nerf). But you will also destroy the skill usefullness.
100 blades, only hits 3 ppl. Here the nerf is there already. 100b is a 100% root, in super dangerous melee range, where aoe’s might kill you in a few seconds. (it is known mobs focus on closest enemies thus the warrior most of time, and then spam both melee + aoe attacks on them. in fracts this mean super heavy agony damage + aoe + condition + melee damage). That alone make this skill balanced. The only reason the perception is there this skill is to strong is because the attacks add damage, in one number, making it look like a huge damage strike. A meteor shower or some auto attacks, almost do the same damage in the same lifespan. Hell a thief can do a 30k strike in 4 secs. So again perfectly balanced. Even with the very high damage of this skill, gravelings in AC die super slow, i think i would need 4x 100b (fully going off), to kill one single graveling (the bigger ones, not the smallest). Why would you punish us to even worse, almost certainly die a few times, scenario’s in dungeons, by nerfing skills like this?

9) Many parts of pve consist of loads of strong monsters attacking you at the same time. Are you implying that when 10+ strong mobs (Orr, fracts, any veterans of sort, twin bosses etc), will have a free lunch at us? If single target damage is the most viable damage (result of nerfing aoe by any degree), then it means we will kill these monster tremendous slow, being killed in the process of not having a ‘breath’-moment (to regen hp, cool down of skills).

10) What about existing aoe penalties? Casting times? Roots? 5 target limit? Easely interrupted? If you nerf aoe’s, then why should these downsides still exist? Why should be be triple punished for something? Now your heart may say ‘this aoe nerf is justified’. But realize having to work around all these downsides at the same time, is not fun (wich is exactly what game is about). If i remember correct, Jonathan, it was you who scrapped ‘all warrior skills’ cost adrenaline, because it just made warrior unplayable. In my humble opinion a severe aoe nerf (without single existing punishment removal), is not playable either.

10) Broken single target skills. Sometimes in wvw people go downed, and CANNOT be hit by anything for some strange reason. Cause they somehow, manage to abuse the terrain (like they go slightly below the earth). Ive seen it happen about 20 times in my wvw career. Funny fact? Aoe was the ONLY VIABLE way to kill them. Point? Fix bugs first. Then balance.

11) If you nerf aoe damage, i’ll go to thief or mesmer. My point? You push a player that like his profession to another he likes not so much, but that he knows is much more viable at the job (single target damage).

12) Aoe’s are necessery strategy against some professions. Mesmer clones. I can’t count how many times i killed 10+ clones, downed the real mesmer down to 25% hp, and he still somehow got away in the chaos of renewed clones (I had mesmer control +T’ed so somehow he used skill that made me target one of his clone, like decoy perhaps. Aoe are viable here. If you push us to single target damage, then mesmer is superior overpowered. With all the clone fooling/tanking, mesmer will have twice (if not triple) the survivability of other profession.

13) Continuing point 12. Thiefs using shadow refuge. One of the most powerfull skill in wvw, and only can be countered by ONE MEASURE. Aoe’s. Even with current damage rating, my aoe’s only ever killed twice or so a thief in Shadow refuge. (100+ times they still escape my aoe spam in it, or survived it simply). Nerf even more? Halleluja. Thief profession here I come!

14) Nerfing or removing aoe from Wvw and it’s strategy impact. Siege weapons only viable thing? Server who are reluctant to use siege will fail automatic? Arrow cart nerfed? Or kept and it will overpower any aoe skill ingame (because nerf)? This means defending something will be an autofail at some point (cant defeat a force with only 1-1 tactics).

15) Tiny ledge in defence building, on top of the walls that look at the enemy, is incredible anoying. You must stand onto it or you cannot damage enemy, even if it is right into your sight. Either remove it (i can live with it – even though it makes aoe’ing wall easier), or you fix it so ledge itself does never ever cause ‘obstructed’ to defenders. Now ‘rush aoe cast’ get out to survive’, is the only method (and you must stand onto dangerous ledge for that).

16) If aoe’s are overpowered, why do you insist on giving monster superior aoe abilities? I know it’s part of the challenge, but if you nerf our capability, why can the fractals dredge path, endboss battlesuit, aoe with such overpowering madness? It can aoe kill you twice in like 5 secs. Dodging one time is not enough if he keeps focus on you he will lock onto you again. The aoe make if you happen to stand in middle dodging fail (you still inside aoe marker). And worst, you MUST take his aoe, or fail the debuff at times. I like challenge, but i fail to see why player would get nerfed while mobs retain this ability. There is no counter to a well placed aoe by the battlesuit. Especially not when he does 5 in a row (happened twice today).

17) I have 5400 wvw kills. Some player loads more then me. Still you guys never ever have enough time to do this much wvw. My conclusion? Every wvw battle is different. Playing one day or week, will definitely give wrong impressions. Wvw is so chaotic, that wrong conclusion are easely drawn. OP aoe’s seems one of them. (at first week i might have agreed, having played wvw so much, I vastly disagree). Spammable immobalize killed me way more often then any easy to avoid aoe.

1 Anet don’t lie to yourself. There is no going around PVE/PVP split for some of the skills. You already broke your own rule with Safe Yourself and boon runes.

2. Alpha team has to much influence (see wvw aoe topic for my long arguments). Where are we in this story? Aren’t we as important or ‘right’ about things? Your making off book implies you will take our council to heart, well read all 300+ messages here then. With an open mind please. You guys are (honestly) biased, because, you know if ascended weapons will come or not, if they will have better stats, and if so how much. Your mind is already taking this info into account for aoe ‘update’ (fix is not right description, more of a nerf imo). Please don’t biase yourself around info you know, and we don’t. The game is what is it, and that is the live steam of game. Not what is in your planning book.

3 Apart from few skills, i hardly think aoe skills are op. Post below this one will elaborate on Meteor shower, 100 blades and churning earth (three Iconic aoe skills, on why anet is wrong). Keep in mind other aoe’s are even weaker, so even without the listed aoe skills downsides, they are very ok.

4) I’ve always hated auto attack damage on some weapons. Especially condition damage themed auto attacks are terrible and unreliable. This is the bigger simptom rather then fixing aoe’s. Like why do scepter (mesmer, ele), auto attacks, do such bad damage? You push people to the other weapons, which by mere coincidance have more aoe’s.

5) all the most potent aoe’s (except Clusterbomb perhaps) have cooldowns. Meteor shower, 30 secs not usable. Churning earth same. That alone is punishment alone. In another game, some of the cooldowns where 30 min. (but the effects where 100x bigger then any guild wars 2 skills). I think cooldowns are a punishment that is vastly underestimated by JonathanSharp & Co. Guild wars 2 is a much faster paced mmo then most (you can die super fast), so don’t even think about increasing any of the existing cooldowns they are fine. I often change weapons to find out the skill I planned to use is still on cooldown. Enough balance for me.

6) Unbalanced in wvw? Are you joking? 5 limit is an incredible limitation. Right now 30 vs 50+ zerg can hold of some time (not forever), by putting the right aoe’s, in right environment (small passage). You are saying ‘fine, 30 man team, we find it justified you are screwed, so we will take away you ability to hold of the much stronger enemy with aoe’s. No way.

7) Ok still about wvw aoe, but now the ‘kill potential’, wich seems OP in JonathanSharps & co opinion. Role a elementalist. Make him full berserker. Try to even cast a meteor shower on a wall, against a 50+ zerg attacking you. Just test it (you are here to do that right?). The most probable answer is, ‘you are right phoebe, I died before my aoe cast was complete, I must admit, Berserker is not reliable on elementalist, unless played in team or incredible careful, wich by itself is a very big downside’. Now try a more balanced option (mix some defence, aka water, with air traits), use knight gear (still defence but good offense too). You damage will be good, but nothing spectacular. 1k crit at most on bunkers, 2k on glass canon (their fault, they are not eligable for complaining). Ive RARELY killed people with this. rarely. This is not a lie to defend the skill. People run out of meteor shower, because they know it hurts them. Ive had much better succes with single target focused damage (admittedly, the few reliable that exist) focussed damage. I suddenly got more kills and drops. Aoe to potent? No thanks. Wrong.

8) The ‘and wvw’ part in your sentence, seems a bit put their to cover yourself from WvW responses. Still your last updates where purely PVP focussed decision, if wvw counted even a little bit, some of the updates would have been done differently. The only exception being mesmer portal. Still that was a nerf. I can’t remember a boost to any skill ever, that definitely seemed intended for wvw. You guys seem to displace wvw as the least important part of the game (and pve too). In pvp stats are tremendous boosted (compared to other game environments), that makes any balance there, unbalanced in other game settings. Any nerf there, is a triple nerf in pve, and half a nerf in wvw. Stop forgetting about this please.

Stiv.1820:

If they are adding a Prestige system they will want to be careful to make sure just zerging and spamming AoE isn’t the best way to gain it. They may just make it worse at getting kill credit and things like that, not necessarily worse in it’s damage effect.

Nice thinking. Having played a f2p mmo that basically had to make similar decision as Anet (and failed horrible at most), i know very well, this to be possible. They are already punishing real farmers, because otherwise bots would get to much loot, with diminishing returns, wich means they don’t favor the honest crowd of farmers. This means with the new ‘wvw reward system’, they basically nerf, aoe’s just for the sake of nerving loot.

If I may say so, as a semi-glass canon ele (15k hp only, nice – but not amazing, crit rate + damage), my aoe’s rarely proc multiple kills (and exp/drops). My best way to get badges of honor is going to another profession. I won’t tell the details (everything you tell that is good for you might get nerfed later by Anet). I wanted to think better of Anet, but thinking back again about ’Slaver’s Exile’, guild wars 1, they have proven they can be stubborn at nerving succesfull ways of beating the content. (they nerfed/fixed almost all the viable ways to do that dungoen, until hours and hours of suidice stomping was the only possible attempt (not garanteed succes), to win that dungeon. Imagine this in gw2 (kinda already exists in some dungeons, story mode, just not as harsh), you will have to pay 100’s of silver to repair (no repair cost in gw1).

Anet keeps saying how good they are for their community, in their marketing stuff. I’m starting to believe the opposite.

dunnberry.2964:

As said already this “trusted alpha team” is obviously pretty crappy and don’t really know what their doing with all these mistakes before the game came out and how it’s been changed since

The making off guild wars 2 book doens’t mention alpha team at all. It always talks as how great (and important) guild wars 2 community is as a whole. They say our opinion is incredible important in the design of the game.

Well here we go, i’m 100% against alpha team. Since beta they have given wrong advice. If they are responsible for the D/D 4th thief skill (dont remember name you trow dagger to hit multiple enemies), then they are just plain ignorant. The alpha team seems to settled in, without deserving their spot. Working for an organisation that relies on volunteers, i know how easely, some people get freebies, even though they dont deserve it, simply because their daddy/mom does important stuff for the organization. No offense, but it seems, friends/family of Anet team is involved here. And again no offense, but those ppl are to close to guild wars 2 themself, to be open enough to talk about serious stuff. Like they will be honest against their Anet staff daddy, when they hate something he made.

That aside, A specified alpha team is to small to reflect the community. I know for a fact (again, just like last time their were forum complaints), many people agree with the complaints in this topic, and I know again you will ignore it Anet. Where are we going with this? Anet + alpha team ignores the real (million people) community? Sorry but this bad decisions imply it.

In another mmo that failed on many parts, still they had a nice implementation of aoe’s. The more targets you hit, the fewer damage. And it scaled pretty well. Above 3 targets, damage went down significant. Above 5 though it was to hard (10k damage becomes 100 damage). If little more progressively, and you might have the perfect system (if they remove the 5 cap).

Maybe you guys focus only on pvp (I’ve never done this yet). Last time you balanced, you must know it killed part of the thrill of pve/wvw. What may be tru in pvp, may not be tru in pve. If you guys only play pvp (superior small, irrelevant part of game imo, although some will disagree), the most, and then balance the game, you are doing it very wrong. If you want to balance pvp, leave other part of game out of it. I don’t know when you guys (after gw1 split skill system pve/pvp), suddenly though you can balance pve and pvp with the same skillset. You broke your own rule already with boon duration runes, and Safe Yourself! shout, yet for other stuff you will make the obvious mistake again. In the making off book, it says the community is very important for Anet and they will always listen. Well lets see if you listen now, i think I formulated a long enough post for a good argument. But with only 80 people in the office (and most ppl busy with software coding, (and the few response in forums proving it), i think you guys don’t read posts like this. And that’s very sad. Of course other opinions count too, i’ve seen many good posts in this thread.

Churning earth, superior long casting time, a single move, stun or daze, Knockdown, screws the skill. Secondly a high damage melee profession, can dish out a lot of damage in those 3 secs casting time. That alone is balance. Nerf it, destroy it.

Meteor shower. Long cast time, roots. If player forces you do move or dodge, bye bye meteor shower. I used meteor shower a lot, and its only viable when fully cast (not interrupted early). That is quite hard both in wvw and in pve. Sometimes in wvw i really want to finish the cast and my hp drops from 17k to 3k. Then I must go out very fast or die. The funny thing is, this risky action I just performed, killed nobody. They all just backed out of meteor shower because it’s so obvious. Or they got a ress in downed. PVE meteor shower is a gamble. Sometimes only 3 meteors hit (bad damage). Sometimes a lot of them hit. Even when a lot hit, i think elementalist deserves a unique aoe capable (still with lot of gamble in it, and risk) skill like this. You can nerf it again (after beta nerf). But you will also destroy the skill usefullness.

100 blades, only hits 3 ppl. Here the nerf is there already. 100b is a 100% root, in super dangerous melee range, where aoe’s might kill you in a few seconds. (it is known mobs focus on closest enemies thus the warrior most of time, and then spam both melee + aoe attacks on them. in fracts this mean super heavy agony damage + aoe + condition + melee damage). That alone make this skill balanced. The only reason the perception is there this skill is to strong is because the attacks add damage, in one number, making it look like a huge damage strike. A meteor shower or some auto attacks, almost do the same damage in the same lifespan. Hell a thief can do a 30k strike in 4 secs. So again perfectly balanced. Even with the very high damage of this skill, gravelings in AC die super slow, i think i would need 4x 100b (fully going off), to kill one single graveling (the bigger ones, not the smallest). Why would you punish us to even worse, almost certainly die a few times, scenario’s in dungeons, by nerfing skills like this?

AOE damage of mobs is hilarous powerfull at times. While i know it’s part of the ’it’s a boss so it’s a challenge’ philosophy, if you nerf player aoe, mob aoe got to be nerf accordingly, cause we kill them slower thus take more damage in the added time.

In wvw this means siege is only viable weapon? But that cant be cause you LIMIT space for arrow carts. So basically when Seafarers rest/Vizunah square (super focussed zerg servers), comes at your tower, you are lost (as you have to few arrow carts to hold them off, and aoe’s are not viable. Single target damage from defense position is stupid, ppl just run out (heal again), come back, (or get a ress). And the small stones at the defense position edge, make a lot of attacks ‘obstructed’. Fail. We cant use auto attacks while our hands/face have a straight line to enemy? fail. That’s why aoe’s are popular. You jump on the stone edge, you risk (mesmer temporal curtain pull), you do aoe (that at least gives viable pressure), then you are forced to retreat or you will die (you took a lot of damage while standing so much in the open). Remove the stone lets (or the obstruction it causes) if you want single target viabilty!!

And a lot of testing? Sorry no offense but i don’t believe you. 1-10 hours in mmo landscape is hardly testing. I played 1200 hours, And playing a char 100-300 hours, rather then 10-40 hours, gives a lot of other conclusions.

Part of reason I have 5x lvl 80 is because the limited amount of skills ingame (and thus fast boredom. Mesmer for instance, all a very fun profession, but (imo) the sceptor sucks, so it’s useless, offhand torch sucks. That leave very very very few viable weapons left. Now with aoe nerf, even more weapons, will not be viable in my opinion. Now i’ll prolly have to make again another profession.

Matt Witter.6982:

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do. There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

I’m trying to keep myself rational here (not going in a rage) but it’s very hard. Atm Elementalist is punished with lowest hp in game, lowest armor ingame. And many skills are not viable at all (like staff air 2+3 super bad). Having some of the best aoe’s in game is the ONLY way to compensate. And now you are taking it away. Balance? Haha. So this means Elementalist will now have to do single target damage in future (or crappy aoe damage, so nobody will use it)? The squishiest ingame profession, with relative BAD AUTO-ATTACKS, is FORCED to use it anyway, and still live with the existing penalties? No thanks.

Secondly, in wvw a wel balanced build (armor, damage) Can survive most aoe’s if you know whare you are doing. Against a 40+ zerg, even 10+ meteor showers barely control the battlefield. The moment they are up, ppl run out, no harm done. OR they pop a heal and just retreat for a while. I rarely killed ppl with meteor shower. I almost have to WAIT TO USE IT, until someone is like half or 25% of his max hp. Then it may kill them before they can respond.

And pve well what about it? If 15 monsters are hitting you, you are not allowed to put an aoe field? that still maximum damages 5 of them? Holy ****. So when in fractals, many veterans attack you at the same time, you are only allowed to do weak aoe damage or viable single target damage? while does monster can kill you in 4 hits (so if they all hit (and crit) you at once, you are dead (even with 2400+ armor).

Unless you have a crazy idea to compensate, this is just bad bad bad.

I thought you guys finally learned ’don’t nerf, stuff that is fun don’t change it to much, only do minor tweaks, so players can still have a thrill with their magical wonderfull skills’. You didn’t. You are making the same fail again. AOE damage is part of every fantasy game. Take it or leave it. And you have just decided to make that core design of magic, ‘not viable’. Why do I keep saying ‘not viable’ when I don’t know the update yet? Because I don’t know a single aoe skill (not even meteor shower, churning earth, 100b), that atm is not well balanced. They all have big penalties. If you nerf them more, it make them not viable. There, I said it. I just almost completed my 5th lvl 80 char. Ive used almost every single skill in the game. Aoe’ing is one of the things I like, and all my chars have at least one build based on it.

If you nerf aoe’ing, i’ll jump again on my mesmer. And this is not a good thing. Mesmer single target damage is kitten good compared to necro, ele, etc. So basically you are boosting mesmer here. OR your will nerf mesmer, also, wich aint a good thing. Basically balancing aoe’s like you want, will destroy other things in game, wether you do your best to mitigate it or not.

Now lets defend aoe’s: