Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

Volrath.1473:

I got a question.

What is the purpose of Ready ups?

Good question. I’ll take this one! Before I was hired at ArenaNet I ran show called “Guild Wars 2 Guru’s State of the Game”. Aside from the forums, it was one of the main bridges we had with the developers behind PvP and balance. Unfortunately for the show, last summer I was hired on at ArenaNet and had to shut it down.

I know we can’t always talk about extensively about what’s in development, but ideally we’d like for Ready Up to fill that gap, even if we’re just goofing around on stream a bit, playing some casual games. Ready Up happens twice as often as State of the Game did, and we won’t always have things to preview. That said, when we are finally ready to show something off, Ready Up is going to be the place you’re going to check it out.

The topics for each show are posted prior to each episode – allowing you to choose if the show is worth your time or not. They’re not mandatory. Even if we’re not talking about balance or features, etc, I’d still love to have everyone come hang out for an hour every two weeks. If you’re not interested in watching scrims, or whatever else we happen to be doing, then we’ll see you at the patch previews.

Hope that helps.

Edit: If you have suggestions for segments or topics for the show, outside of “tell us all the things” feel free to post them. I don’t spend as much time working on the show as I did when I was on the PvP team, but I’m all about improving where we can, and I know Allie feels the same way.

PS, Hi PvP forums, I missss youuuuu!

Grouch, being that you were in our shoes before and you also complained about the transparency of communication with A-net. What are your feelings on the level of communication/transparency currently?

There wasn’t much thought given to the change.

Dahkeus.8243:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Dahkeus.8243:

Dude, you really didn’t need to necro your post.

No one plays Diamond Skin.

There’s really no point in mucking up all this conversation all over again.

Diamond Skin was a badly designed trait. We get it. However, it’s a trait in a terrible spot on the talent tree and it’s on a profession that’s in a terrible spot in sPvP, so it doesn’t matter.

They could delete this talent from the game and it wouldn’t make an ounce of difference.

Right now, but as ele gets buffed this trait could easily become a major problem. And if you haven’t played as a necro or engi vs a diamond skin ele then you wouldn’t understand just how much it makes you want to quit the game.

So…you’re saying it’s a good idea to bump a 3+ month old thread because you think that this trait that’s 30 points into the Earth tree will be overpowered after the ele gets some as of yet unspecified buffs from a balance patch that we know almost nothing about?

These forums are filled with threads beating dead horses. We really don’t need another dragged out of the graveyard right now.

Tyler has already stated that eles are “crazy” strong against the current meta on their internal servers. I’ll give you a guess as to what contributes to it. Cleansing wave and?

It’s going to be an issue when the feature patch is released…guaranteed.

Solstice.1097:

Ive been playing condi war. Yes you can faceroll over noobs, but once you start playing against good players you have to play smart to win 1v1s, doesn’t matter their class.

My condi war only has 19k health and cleansing ire is my only active condi clear so it’s not exactly a bunker. And I only have 1 block sword #5. All you have to do is dodge or block my pin down and impale, stay out of LB burst circle, and use your condi clears if I land flurry on you, and you’ll be just fine.

Oh is that all I have to do?

Dahkeus.8243:

@ OP: Awesome constructive post that raises some good points.

Personally, I would be ok if professions were a bit more restricted in terms of what their range of strengths could be. I.e. if guardians were always very tanky, but never as high dps and if necros always had high condition damage, but never had high power, etc. However, the I don’t think many people are as open to having professions as restricted to niche roles as I am. Also, this would probably cause huge issues for PvE. =P

Diversity isn’t the problem. It always comes down to the speed at which balance is assessed.

ThiBash.5634:

This is something I can support.

A while ago, we had a similar discussion about how the health difference between ele (light armor, 10k hp) and warrior (heavy armor, 20k hp) was so large that it made dungeons hard to balance. If you make a boss do 7.5k damage with an attack, it’ll be a near instant kill for the ele while the warrior doesn’t even lose half their health bar. The result is that for warriors, the boss is too easy and for eles it’s extremely hard.

This post is an extension of that concept. It’s well written and certainly something worth looking at by the devs. They’ll probably know this, and maybe they chose to make the roles extreme on purpose. However, it does make things more complex for the reasons stated in the original post.

@OP: Nice post. For what it’s worth, you have my vote.

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

Health point normalization is a must for any pvp game. It took the other large MMO a few years to realize that. Unfortunately, it’s going to take this company longer to come to terms with. The sad part is they know of the issue, but the people who we interact with aren’t the ones making the call.

Any game, which features pvp, should always balance first around pvp and then adjust pve mechanics. I would think there are far more “knobs” to turn in a pve setting than there are in pvp.

Do you feel that communication has one up or down since Grouch was removed from his role and promoted to testing the China/Korea release?

What are some areas you feel you can improve upon when acting as the community coordinator?

Do you feel that you do an adequate job on communicating to the pvp community?

Avead.5760:

If there was an actual pvp community these “mistakes” would have been found immediately after they were born. And then given their pace on fixing things everybody would leave again..
Quite frankly this pvp thing in gw2..couldnt have ended any other way than what it is now.There is no professionalism from their part. They dont know even what they are building.Spvp is just like a side minigame..

That’s what happens when your full staff consists of 5 people.

gaspara.4079:

Pyriall.5027:

gaspara.4079:

urdriel.8496:

Sry, but if in a MMORPG a mechanic doesnt have counter is broken, something broken is unbalanced, something unbalanced is bad designed.

The cooldown system, and whether you like it that is what the initiative system is for thieves is not something you counter. That is like saying “I can’t counter Warriors cooldown on Fierce Blow, they are op”, which the first part is entirely true. There is nothing I can do to increase the cooldown of that ability, that same is true of initiative.

The thing about initiative is that its a front loaded and all abilities share a cooldown so if instead of using each ability 2-5 I can choose to use 2 four times in a row and then 4 if that is better tactically, however the better skills can’t be spammed indefinitely and an initiative-less thief is a worthless thief.

Additionally the values of utility (and in some cases damage) are less than other classes skills so that they are balanced and to discourage spamming the same skill.

If you did spam the best abilities (which do get spammed) how long before you had enough initiative to use it again? Now compare that to other professions. This whole nonsense that a thief is the only profession that is restricted if it uses all its initiative is ludicrous. On any other profession if I use all my abilities and weapon swap and use all those abilities I’m left with just auto attacking. The same holds true for thieves EXCEPT their abilities will be up sooner than any affective cool down of any other class.

Please don’t forget that initiative is shared between weapon sets, so Thieves do not have the luxury of switching weapon sets and having 4 more skills to go through. Without 15 points into Trickery you can only use your most powerful abilities, they are Cloak and Dagger (dagger offhand), Black Powder (pistol offhand) and Infiltrator’s Arrow (bow) and each cost 6init, twice and then you are completely out of initiative. At that point its as though they have just used every ability on both weapon sets and all you did was use two abilities that are roughly equivalent to a 20-25 second cooldown ability on another class.

Like I said before its purely a front loaded system, if you predictably spam the same ability, a smart opponent will easily be able to deal with you. Which is why I maintain that the reason Thieves are called “op” has to do with the fear associated with things we can’t see and thieves being designed around smaller scale encounters.

And like I said…if you weapon swap with zero initiative how long before you can use an ability? This whole idea that thieves are at a disadvantage that no other profession encounters as a result of depleted initiative is a farce.

The most prevalent s/p build can use pistor whip 4-5 times in a row before they are completely out of initiative. Imagine any other profession with this type of playstyle.

Ugruk.4069:

Leeto.1570:

Ugruk.4069:

Leeto.1570:

style.6173:

Leeto.1570:

So because you held far as decap engi against bad team it is OK that warriors go to farpoint and die 5 times because “they so OP and kill errything”?
Is this just to brag or you really dont understand how incompetent player going far point is bad for team?

You and the OP are both arguing the extreme cases. The actual answer is somewhere in the middle. Far point should be pushed depending on what is going on in the map. Teams need to adjust strategy based on what is happening.

You should always tell people not to go far. Why? Because bad players think they will be cool lone wolfs and gonna carry team by going far and either fighting 1v1 without decapping or just die.
Once player has played enough this game he will understand himself when to go far and when not and noone will ever tell him “dont go far” because every time he goes there it will either get decapped, fully capped or he is gonna kill someone.
But please kitten dont encourage new players to go far cause people dont deserve to loose million times till someone learns when to go far and when not.
Same with these “decap engi so OP”, you even know how many decap engis i kill on daily basis that think they are gonna be white knights and carry their team by going far? Do they understand that they will not get far after i kill them and help their team on other point? No they just go and die on far 5 more times.

You kill them with what exactly?

I play power necro mostly in soloque, and bad decap engi is kitten easy because most of my burst is autoattack, ye i need 2nd player to kill good decap engi but bad ones who just randomly dodge around are super easy.
The d/d power spec i play really counters decap engi, getting him to 25% is quite easy with unblockable chill + immobilize + corrupt boon, and then when he is immune to condis i just finish him with either my autoattack or my 2 channeled burst attack.
Only way he can survive me is with good timed dodges and knockbacks but very few engis actually know how to play it.

Ahh, but still you can kill almost all classes if they are bad (with a few exceptions).

Will try d/d istead of d/warhorn, can you PM me the build please?

Forget d/d, run d/f…the burst is so much larger, plus you can strip stability.

20 points in defense for dogged march and cleansing ire + healing sig. After that, play what you want.

gaspara.4079:

urdriel.8496:

Sry, but if in a MMORPG a mechanic doesnt have counter is broken, something broken is unbalanced, something unbalanced is bad designed.

The cooldown system, and whether you like it that is what the initiative system is for thieves is not something you counter. That is like saying “I can’t counter Warriors cooldown on Fierce Blow, they are op”, which the first part is entirely true. There is nothing I can do to increase the cooldown of that ability, that same is true of initiative.

The thing about initiative is that its a front loaded and all abilities share a cooldown so if instead of using each ability 2-5 I can choose to use 2 four times in a row and then 4 if that is better tactically, however the better skills can’t be spammed indefinitely and an initiative-less thief is a worthless thief.

Additionally the values of utility (and in some cases damage) are less than other classes skills so that they are balanced and to discourage spamming the same skill.

If you did spam the best abilities (which do get spammed) how long before you had enough initiative to use it again? Now compare that to other professions. This whole nonsense that a thief is the only profession that is restricted if it uses all its initiative is ludicrous. On any other profession if I use all my abilities and weapon swap and use all those abilities I’m left with just auto attacking. The same holds true for thieves EXCEPT their abilities will be up sooner than any affective cool down of any other class.

style.6173:

Leeto.1570:

So because you held far as decap engi against bad team it is OK that warriors go to farpoint and die 5 times because “they so OP and kill errything”?
Is this just to brag or you really dont understand how incompetent player going far point is bad for team?

You and the OP are both arguing the extreme cases. The actual answer is somewhere in the middle. Far point should be pushed depending on what is going on in the map. Teams need to adjust strategy based on what is happening.

I don’t believe people are saying don’t go far. More of the complaints are centered around pushing far after you have just secured home and mid. What typically happens is someone pushes far and another trickles over to help. Those two get wiped and then you lose mid.

Rickster.8752:

Do you think it is a problem that the devs must watch and play only on NA?

Is this the reason for lack of attention balance?

If they watched high level EU team and solo Q would they address the broken specs in a more timely manner?

Remember things like nerfing sigil of paralysation. I don’t really think many top EU warriors ran that but anet thought fixing the bug might influence the meta. Were they basing their information off NA? There are many other examples of when devs don’t really have a clue what people play (minion master being nerfed – nobody plays this at the top of solo or team q in EU – although nerfing it is a good idea because it is BS).

It is worrying that NA died completely and few good players remain there. Because I think it is causing problems with anet basing balance decisions off flawed builds

What are you going on about? The developers don’t pvp here either…which can be shortened to: “The developers don’t pvp”.

bhagwad.4281:

The magic of a decap engi (screenshot attached) – this was in team q but were were a pug. The opponents were all 40-60. Granted, they didn’t have much damage or I would have surely died (and two mesmers stealthing all the time definitely helped me get the cap), but they wasted so many resources defending their close (our far), that we got the remaining two points the whole game.

Moral of the story. Going far to counter and divert the enemy’s resources is a perfectly valid strategy. Especially if you can be assured of a decap. You don’t need to kill the guy on point, you don’t even need to cap it. Just decapping it for 10 seconds or so and they dying is a good enough value addition to your team to make you worth it.

To counter the cries of, “do not go far” you provide proof evidenced by decap engi….GG

Thieves keep other beserker builds out of ranked play. That’s the problem in a nutshell.

Ugruk.4069:

People still haven’t figured out you have more hammer skills than dodges available… “Hurr durr dodge all the things!!! Not OP”

Well, you know you can cc them right…wait. Well, you know you can kite them with chill, cripple, and immobilize right…wait. Well, you know you can play a warrior yourself right?

Have you seen Jonathan Sharp in spvp lately? I’m not sure he even plays it anymore. The point he was trying to make about the iceberg was the glacial pacing improvements would come at. It’s our fault for not reading between the lines.

Zoose.1640:

Just speaking for myself here, I don’t enjoy getting on the forums too often because it’s often not very constructive and pretty troll. : P

To be fair, you say everything is pretty “troll” even when it’s not…

GrandmaFunk.3052:

SlyFoxSays.5342:

I count 4 people in the BG pvp lobby……thats a bad sign.

is it?

I pvp every day but I don’t go into the lobby more than once every few weeks to change up some gear.

No need to look at the lobby. Just look at the hotjoin server populations. When you have 3 to 4 full servers and others with 3 or 4 then the general population is dwindling. Now, when you add that to the already lengthy solo queue and team queue times, it’s easy to see there are very few people playing in spvp. Allie will give you a different response and say the “pvp” population is growing, but she includes the wvw players in those totals.

It’s fine, internally this is there strategy. They made a decision to let the few remaining dedicated players leave, instead of trying to appease them. They will then make a “big” push to attract new players to pvp. This allows them time to start the process all over.

Let’s also remove stability and aegis from lyssa runes, thank you.

Vile.5678:

I dunno about anyone else but when I played a kitten ton of S/P thief the easiest and probably most broken aspect was the auto-facing it did as it prepped for PW. Simply by pressing 3 it would face you in the EXACT direction of the enemy then all you had to do was shadowstep to them in some way. This means you don’t even have to know where your enemy is to get a successful PW off so long as you had them targeted.

Removing the auto-facing it does would be a great nerf imo. Especially considering you don’t even need to know where your enemy is to use any of the shadowsteps.

On a side note I think the immobilization on IS is too long.

Nice! Pistol Whip has an immob…no wonder!

Take a look at the buff to critical haste.

Allie Murdock.8152:

The show isn’t only about sPvP, so I expect you will be disappointed occasionally when we feature other areas of the game that you are not interested in.

We try to announce a few days in advance what the plan is, so you will know ahead of time if it’s something you want to watch.

The next Ready Up will be on the 14th (Friday next week).

What will the topic(s) be?

The problem, like so many abilities, is that is over budget. You can not have an ability tied to offense, defense, and control. It’s just a no no. There are several abilities in the game that falls into this category. The problem with the thief profession is that this is magnified by the initiative system and there ability to use, in succession, abilities that are over budget.

Allie Murdock.8152:

FYI, we don’t think it’s balanced. That’s why we’re still balancing it.

The OP actually makes a good point, though. For this particular feature build, we have not shared much about what’s going on, we get that. Don’t mistake that with we’re not doing much, though.

Thanks for the feedback

What is the new balance philosophy? Are you guys going to go back to shaving or huge impactful changes? Do you believe that the once every 8 months will approach can sustain the “shaving” philosophy?

Tyler Chapman.1832:

I personally would love to sign up to learn from all these Tyrian heroes!

Hey, when are you leaving?

style.6173:

Bunker Guard
Bunker Engi
MM Necro
Spirit Ranger
Warrior

in that order

I would rank a bunker warrior above both MM and Spirit ranger, as it relates solely to bunkering.

Samhayn.2385:

If I shaved once every three to four months…..

more on topic, maintaining this new patch cycle and only doing minor changes to class balance doesn’t seem like it will work out very well. Especially if you don’t have a test server or at least dialogue about coming changes.

If the balance patches are so infrequent, you cannot maintain a “shaving” philosophy. Let’s take a look at where we are currently. It will close to 8+ months, since the last major patch, and when the feature patch is released. With the pacing being this slow, this feature patch will have to have MAJOR changes to professions. You’re talking about huge changes that would essentially be equal to that of a major content patch/expansion from other MMO’s (being that’s what they wanted to mirror). So far, those “previews” are not major changes.

This is one for the community coordinator. I don’t think it’s revealing too much to ask which philosophy they are working towards. Are the next round of updates, after the featured patch, going to be quick shaves or is it back to one patch a year?

How are you going to maintain the “shaving” philosophy with such infrequent updates? Or has the philosophy shifted, again, as it relates to balance?

EoNxBoNx.9213:

I will agree that the initiative system is broken, is entirely black and white. But there is one sentiment that whenever this argument is brought up, some people always seem to ignore.

Imagine, Heartseeker, with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds terrible to me, lets move on.

Imagine, Shadow Shot with a 5 second cooldown. Sounds awful.

Imagine, Dancing Dagger with a cooldown at all…

Imagine, Headshot with a 3 or 5 second cooldown.

.

What’s so bad with those? I’m being honest here. It sounds awful in comparison to what thieves currently have, but compared to other professions those are still very modest cool downs for the strength of the abilities.

I do like the suggestion of increasing the initiative cost on consecutive use. The question is, does AA reset the using of an ability?

119. CC Danica is fair and impartial when reviewing threads. You will not find a better moderator.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I like this question. As you said, our focus right now is to better integrate sPvP with the rest of the game. This will hopefully do one major thing: Bring more people into sPvP that are already playing Gw2. This will mean more competition, and better matchmaking. The new ladders (which I hope you’re giving feedback for in the CDI thread) should be a good way to gain prestige for being the best.

Apart from competition and prestige, what kind of things are most attractive to the high-level players? Personally I’m not hyper competitive and play all parts of the game, so the rewards overhaul will be amazing for me :P

I can’t wait for the patch personally. It will be close to a year since any substantial pvp changes have been made. Which essentially means there will be a complete overhaul done on many professions and their mechanics. You guys are too good to us!

Evan Lesh.3295:

…there are ones you like, otherwise dyes are the other ONLY other option.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_reward

Fixed that for you. You’re welcome.

90. If you didn’t like the stealth mechanics in other games, rest assured that GW2 didn’t repeat those same mistakes here!

71. When 50% of your players dislike a map, don’t worry. It just means that other 50% of us like it!

69. Good thing the meta finally settled, you know after those tool tip changes. So many new builds have been discovered.

Ixl Super Ixl.7258:

pistol whip is so stupid, even more stupid than the s/d at its best. This stupid build made so many terrible players who were nothing before look good.

Welcome to GW2. Every profession has one of these builds.

The game isn’t worth fighting for anymore. You realize the MASSIVE amounts of change this patch would have to deliver? With the amount of time in between any real patch, this would have to encompass a year’s worth of changes.

57. The pvp population is so large that queue times are non-existent.

44. Pvp updates are TOO frequent. I wish they would slow down so the meta could settle.

silvermember.8941:

BakiSaN.9281:

Did they say they have separate teams for PvE and PvP? Why should the PvP team have a break from PvE releases?

maybe Because PvP isn’t a big enough priority for them to separate the two? Why would they go through the trouble of separating the two just to appease a couple of forum PvPers?

Maybe they are doing what is best for them as a company?

Alienating half of the player types is always a good strategy. I wonder how that worked out for Trion. Oh yeah, they went f2p and lost significant revenue when the pvpers left. They couldn’t quite figure out why though…

James Megawatt.9021:

I don’t know if you play hotjoin or soloq but please if it is hotjoin, that place is far from the truth, it is full of noobs and yes a thief reks everyone there. But in solo/teamQ they are somewhat underpowered right now.

Read the title again. Thieves do in fact make other zerker professions pointless. This applies to ranked matches both solo/team queue.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Glass Guardian would like a word with you.

This is true in a 1 v 1, but you know as well as I do that DPS guardian cannot serve the same function/purpose on a team that a thief can. The guardian cannot engage the back line dps, burst, and disengage.

Spooko.5436:

Five Sig Yolo, or Skill Spam Yolo

This ain’t your daddy’s warrior. Five sig cc lock is legit.