Guild Wars 2

Vasdamas Anklast.1607:

Does anybody else think that confusion’s mechanics is over the top and denies countermechanics?

Well confusion damage is way easier to counter than burn damage : don’t use skill and if you must, choose wisely which one.

What is always fun to read is that every game put a good team versus a bad one… but strangely enough everyone on the forum seem to think he does not belong to the bad team he has been assigned to.
People who complain because they are paired with baddies should group together and mess up the matchmaking by entering as premade because apparently so many good players deserve a better place in the league. Go on invite people from the forum, create teams of good players and normally there won’t be any issue any more.

(and no, waiting “till it sorts out” is not an option – people were advising that during the previous season too, but in practice the “sorting out” turned out to require way more time than the season length)

Actually letting things settle is necessary because I’m sure (because I witnessed it) that many people haven’t a single clue of changes since last season and played yesterday the same build as last season. Worse, some may not have noticed they have no amulet in their build since merc got removed.

The problem with condi builds is that they are more defensive by nature. When you dodge out a zone, go away from the boss… your conditions are still ticking. On top of that, most condi weapons are ranged, that is more defensive again.
So they can’t be as high as power melee build, hence not “competitive”.
That said, there are different condi build for different purposes. If you are just speaking of raids, thief venom share (as long kitten people are in range) or scepter/pistol chrono/mesmer (60 bleed stacks applied by an almost invulnerable phantasm!) is quite competitive on high toughness boss (red guardian, Gorseval) and for other bosses they are viable since they are no DPS check. Not to mention they also remain good if you have to move.
All profession relying on burning loose a lot when the boss starts to move since most burning application comes from fields (engi’s napalm and fir bomb, berserker LB rage, WH/dagger/focus for Ele, guard’s symbol, Ranger flame trap and bonfire) and they switch to another (bleed/poison/torment) when these conditions are not met.

Rev condi build relies more on burning from mace 2 and corruption trait on long fights, or static mobs while torment becomes better in pvp/open world (or moving target). I’m not saying it is as high as other profession, in fact I did not run any test on golem but from a design point of view they are not so different as other profession.

So it is hard to get high dps with torment, easier with burn … this is supposed to prove that the build is torment-based.
It is like saying engie condi is bleed based because of shrapnel… no the best ticks come from burns, bleed is the cherry on the pie. In case of rev, Torment is the cherry on the pie, but contrary to engie it becomes something strong when the boss moves.

I also think next Espec may give a ranged condi weapon, along with an new legend based on the weapon :
-Scepter with Togo or Varesh Ossa
-Shortbow for Eir, Aidan or Urgoz
-Sword for Kanaxai (yeah range sword is weird but who would have expected ranged hammer)

Is Rev really tourment focused? I mean, most condi builds on different profession can focus on different condi, only sometimes can they focus on both. There is often a strong condi build (most likely burn based) and a weak one (often bleed based) which gives other tools. For example you can focus on bleed with Earth Ele, and that comes with good defensive tools. On the other hand, burn based condi ele stay on fire attunement and is way stronger than the bleed counterpart.
Fire-based ele, engi, berzerker, ranger and maybe guard all require the target to not move too much to achieve high DPS due to static fire fields.

In the case of Rev, though the numbers do not seem totally right at the moment, there is a stronger burn based build for static bosses (mace 2 requires no movement, arguably Facet of elements too) combined with the burn on elite use.
The second build, torment based, is for moving targets. Those are punished through movement (torment and chill on crit). The numbers may be not as high but you gain some functionality with it.

Threat.7450:

This idea would set a record for “Fastest AFK”.

As soon as some guy presses B and sees an amulet or utility that he doesn’t approve, that’ll be it. " I’m AFK if you’re gonna use that * amulet!"

It’s a good idea in theory, but the environment is too toxic. It’s best to just team queue with people that you already know their builds.

This is actually a valid concern that I share. And of course to fight against that either a better “report” function would be needed or if the guy unlog seeing this he could be replaced during the pre match dead time.

What is lacking though is a good competitive team only mode. At least have some tourny between teams (I mean teams such as the ones recorded in guild panel). The structure of GW GvG with a leaderboard and tournaments invitations was a good one.
The ranking of solo player is kinda good right now.
The game is team based, the simple idea that somebody can call himself a good conquest solo player sounds misplaced. If one is a good player he should find good players and create a good team that will show good play to reach a good ranking.

The thing is one can share his build and stats as much as he wants, he will never force people to do so.
Sure, this is normally the strength of teamplay but in an environment where teams and solo players are mixed the difference becomes too large.
Of course, there is a risk that somebody will see someone not having the metabattle amulet and start to bully the guy even before the game starts but in any case, this kind of player will always find a good reason to bully someone for one reason or another.
I’m not too familiar with Lol but I remember that I started the game by having one of each archetype ready to be able to compensate for the people who were selecting their hero before even saying hello. That was not a reason for winning but at least it was a way to not have three carry and no mid.
I read a lot of complaint about “my team is bad and so on” but I think the problem starts with “I don’t know what my team is composed of”. Many people assume their teammates have a Meta build but truth is during leagues, we are paired with a lot of players who even don’t have a clue of what the word Meta means (well the definition is broad so I’m not sure everybody agree on a meaning but at least we have a slight idea of the concept behind the word).
My experience as non english player is that many other players don’t visit the forum related to their language (I never read /post on the french forum save for some translation that I find weird) and won’t spontaneously look for english websites and so don’t necessarily know that the “advised” way to play one classes or another is this or that build. Those people then don’t understand why their teammates becomes upset when they discover their build.
My feeling is that a lot of player frustration, especially during leagues, come from the fact that the game does not help you to read your team comp. Giving us some clue (or even the entire build) would strongly help.

When you start a conquest game, you have some time to talk to your team and change your build. That’s cool but you cannot force people to write, especially on EU where your have multiple language and some people just don’t talk english.

Having an idea of what people in your team play is a good advantage because it helps you to understand what kind of role they are going to play. While seeing the entire build would definitely be even better, I think there is right now no UI part designed for it and creating it may be time consuming.
On the other hand, having on the B window a small word after the name of the player (only for your team obviously) representing the amulet he wears could be easier (I suppose) to implement and lift some element of surprise in a game. Having surprises is a good thing for PvP but not when it is coming from your team.

Right now when you log in a game and see, say, an Ele, you assume he is playing bunker/healer with cleric amulet. Then you will start the game counting on him for team fight sustain… until you realize he is constantly switching from fire to air and uses no shouts. If you had seen is DPS amulet from the beginning you could either talk to him directly or change your build on the fly.
I think it would avoid some unnecessary frustration in PvP…. what do you think ?

Ravenmoon.5318:

What are you guys onto about? Merc amulet was the sole reason condi builds were so strong. This is a good change. Now they’ll either go glass condi or power, not both. Their skills would not hit for much, leaving most of the damage to be done through conditions. Which should’ve been the case to begin with. There shouldn’t exist any +power +condi.damage amulets. Ever. Otherwise the AI play is too strong. It’s the one thing I don’t like about this game’s PvP.

Do you mean there should not be any +Condi +Power as primary stats ? In that case I agree with you.
But having 1050 Power/560 Condi or the contrary is a good thing for hybrid builds though. Especially since they are slowly pushing some weapons into hybrid roles….

Xyonon.3987:

Lemme tell you a few things you might not have known Engis can offer your team:

• Engis have only ~10% less damage than an Ele or Thief and is Nr3 in DpS ranking (Staff Ele vs large hitbox increases the gap by a lot!)
• Engis are able to offer super speed for VG.
• Engis are able to offer Protection when required, like breakbar phase at VG.
• Condi Engis are able to take 2 spirits at Gorse on their own and blind the adds to prevent kicks.
• Power Engis still have the most cc of all professions in the game (except venomshare thief). Rocket Turret is the new Slick Shoes with huge damage on toolbelt.
• Engis are able to reflect and blind for Sloth and Trio.
• Engis are the best suited for taking out mortars or saboteurs while also clearing the respawning snipers in between.
• Power Engi offers reflect, bulwark, high ranged dps, cc, mobility, emergency heal and gyro, super speed and protection for Matthias without being suiqshy or vulnerable to knockdown or red bombs. HOW DO YOU NOT WANT THAT!?

Btw:

• Throw Mine and Mine Field both strip boons and have 15 and 17s CD without alacrity. So 1 or 5 boons every ~8s.
• Blast Gyro deals 332 defiance bar damage on specific targets like saboteurs or mortars. Ram and it’s toolbelt deal 332 dbd aswell good direct damage. Rocket Turret’s knockdown rocket combined with the turret detonation knockback sums up to 450 dbd. It’s toolbelt deals as much damage as big ol’ bomb and has the same cd.
• Hammer skills or just traiting scrapper for super speed is a lot of mobility.

---

So much about raids. But now that fotm came back to live too, there is nothing more powerful than a condi engi in T3 or T4 fractals. But that’s a different story now, this is about raids… ;P

Greez!
- Ziggy WAHOO!!!

It seems like we can ask anything to our beloved profession… Can we also organize wedding ?

But in your list, there is one thing that is lacking : we are not ready to be a raid healer. I tried several times to make it work on the paper but apart from those times when your group is packed on a boss (say Gorseval for example) there is no chance to have a good healing presence on several spots, and with that we don’t even buff too much our teammates. I’m sure you already tried to figure that out, have you found a good way of being an engi healer or at least a good buffer?
I know that only Ele can do almost everything and that we should already happy with what we have. Other profession don’t have as many tools (pun!) as we have and are restricted to fewer roles … but who cares about the others :P

My biggest gripe on raid and their accessibility at the moment is that to reach the dps check you are too much dependent on the perfect items (food, runes and sigils brings a lot of dps) and on the 80+ % quickness uptime. So in the end it is better to be rich and have a good mesmer (a good druid helps too) than having skills.
Rotations on many professions are super simple or non existent and fights mechanisms are quite easy to get after the first few tries and they are not deciding factors for a long time.

As for the (yet again) diverted discussion about reward and easy mode, I could maybe see the point of having an easy mode but only if the only reward would be magnetite shards only to buy basic ascended gear, and maybe some upgrade component (sigils/runes/food), not even exclusive skins…. don’t even talk about armor precursors. An easy mode should only prepare people to fight for real. But again, while the fight mechanisms are fun and well thought, they are not difficult to understand at all. As I said dishing out the max dps is the part of the fights you have to learn and to practice your rotation an easy mode won’t help too much. Time would be better used on the training golem.

Asrat.2645:

A lot of the recent patches have shown pretty clearly that they dont want to bring elites back in line with core.

Not really sure.
Last patch has been pretty much about uping non Espec related skills, or at least weapons which don’t have necessarily a strong synergy with their elite specs.
It is like when they upped boon corruption on necro which in turn became meta as reaper. The reaper part was not really involved (actually January patch had a nerf on reaper-only trait) but it turned out that people picked it mainly to add huge chill uptime on top of corruption. But the corruption itself does not require Reaper. April patch reduced chill availability but did nothing to all the core skills improvements.

Although I agree the Elite spec system will make sense when there will be more than one so that players will have to trade something, I would not say there is absolutely no incentive from the devs to equalize core profession and elite counterpart. The problem is that today, everytime they boost anything on core lines, it boosts the elite specs in the same way. And since they are developing things based on this state of balance, I don’t really see them adding some locks because they’ll have the entire game to once again review….

I don’t know if the balance team plays with stats in general on their test build (actually nobody knows what they do nor their vision…. well nothing) but playing a bit more with the amulets statistics could be a solution to limit the powercreep, and healing at the same time.

Irony : way too OP, I understand why you propose that though. A delay between retaliation procs could be enough to stop auto attacking.

Flame jet range increase would be a bit too much, but a burn of 2 secs after kittens (and remove the last hit burn obviously) could be nice. Especially since rescaled burn is not that strong anymore with a single short stack.
I’d like to have flame blast ground targeted for a better control, unblockable detonate, why not.
For air blast, I’d prefer an increase in reflection time (like 2s seconds after initial blast, with some tell) rather than burning.
Napalm as rev mace is a nice idea, could also be a field at caster. Or something added to the field itself ?
Smoke vent radius could be slightly increased…

Edit : is hitting 5 times a dirty word oO?

My only issue with balance in the game, PvP (low level) or PvE wise is that the efficiency of a build is not correlated with the difficulty to play it. Last season had necro as stars because everybody was able to run it and do a minimum of damage by simply putting marks randomly with a copy-pasted build, in PvE the highest dps for raids are either auto-attack or 2/3 buttons.
Sure there is some margin of progression and some necros were actually much better than ranom marks ones but many profession don’t have an “easy” build while some have one that dishes a lot of damages.
On the other hand, a huge problem with balance in PvP come from players who still don’t understand that the game is not a death match game. Sure some builds are really powerful but then try to isolate the player and either kill him 3v1 and disable him from the game or just ignore him if you are 1v1.

I am really looking forward to the next season because mesmer is actually a profession that requires skill. At low-mid level, I have experienced a lot of harmless moa (you run and pick the player but there in no focus on you). The shatter have obvious tells and now if you want to lock a player you also need to place your illusions in such a way that you can remove several stacks of stab with diversion… this is going to be interesting to see how many people will succeed.

What about not more power for the moa’d player but a huge boost in defense (condi and power damages). In that case Moa would be more an unbalancing factor in fight, transforming 2v1 into a 1v1. So thief would be a +1 class while mesmers would be a “-1” one.
If the fight is already a 1v1 then using it would not be a wise choice.

Actually used it for debuff in Fractals if nobody can/want to do it. It was crap before they revamped the insta but now it has some value.
Oh and it is a good open world troll towards ele when no 1 2 3 4 LB ranger is around

Just wondering if something like this could work for condi ele http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBLhdygIUzAW0AY2AwHBWEAM3W7st2WggAQB4AA-TBiAQBWSJ41U6BSlBAUPA0eAAQU9HAcCAC4+DkCYRlVA-e

The combo of Elemental surge with arcane power is quite good. I did not try in the raid test area but in PvP lobby and one can easily stack more than 20 stack burn (well it is oscillating but in pvp I did not reach 100 % burning duration).
I just thought about this build at that time because you can easily ping pong the might with a PS and fury is not a problem… meaning the Herald can drop Glint for Mallyx and rotate between 2 DPS legends.
I never tested it for real though but maybe it is viable, though not optimal.

Well I do think the leaderboard should be for Legendary only, but not only the first 5 you can see in game.
But before any assumption on this system representing well or not the skill , it could be interesting to see some analytical data provided by the devs. I’d like to see at the end of the season a correlation factor between legendary ranking and MMR as well as a correlation factor between average MMR and division.

In your example, doing a few games per day may be a bad things in order to climb the legendary levels but is also a good protection against rank loss. In an ideal competitive environment every player’s skill should be challenged the same number of times. A lot of people complain about grinding the division but one could object that not participating is also a way to secure positions.
So before revamping the system I think it would be good to have data proving that this one does not work. But that is up to the devs (I think Evan Lesh is the one playing the most with metrics) to show us what works and what doesn’t.

From TTH : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PDsORWyb50

full article : http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2-teases-spring-update-with-new-video

This means if a ability does 100 Damage, the top end of it should be 108-110 Damage.
Of if a player is doing 1,000,000 Condition damage a game, the lower end players should be around 800,00-900,000.

When we look at GW2 we see a lot of 100-300k’s, a few 500-600ks, and 2 800-900ks. This means by my standards

- Players are not being competitive with specific builds
- Some builds are massively under tuned, or over tuned
- Someone is bad at paying attention to server metrics or understanding them correctly.

A “Spec” is a build. In general, I use this to refer to “meta-builds” or “cookie Cutter Builds” But it may apply to any “spec”.

If the development team was following principles of logic we’d see things like

- No skill having + Weapon bonuses (instead lower the cool downs) as 20% reduction in a cool downs is a significant upgrade to damage, and forcing people to pick that over other options, when the already need that weapon for that build concept totally invalidates the purpose of the other three abilities with out naturally making the different options valid.

- All Builds having a target Damage output, that equates to a targeted life expectancy in time rates (20-30seconds is prime from my experience of faster moba like gameplay)

You talk a lot about life expectancy, metrics, game damage/healing…. but the real metrics you never mention (because you have no access to it) is : how much is your contribution to team score
Your comparison with other games can’t hold if you don’t take the goal of the game into account. This game is not about duel/arena. I know it does not suit your liking and want the game to be different but it is not going to happen.
You can do a kill in a game in 10 seconds but if you don’t cap the point you just granted 5 points to your team (1% of victory) which translates in holding a point for 5 seconds.
You can’t just account the contribution of one profession based on its dps or healing. Resistance, mobility … are others parameters which have to be taken into account, and maybe with a greater factor. You applied strict concepts from other games but never cared that the rule of the game are different.

Salamander.2504:

Eh, I would look through the illusions traitline and compare it with chrono if I were you. Illusions is a weird traitline in that it’s the least similar to the other core class mechanic traitlines. If Inspiration or Chaos were the core traitline that you deemed “elite” it might work, but it just won’t with illusions because it’s where all of the condi pressure comes from. Illusions is the only class mechanic traitline in the game that has such a heavy focus on increasing DPS.

On the other hand, Chrono has such a focus on support and utility that being mesmer or chrono would really be a choice of gameplay.
On the other hand, the suggested change is not incompatible with balance modifications, like having more dps trait in domination or duel or swap some trait from illu to those lines. It could be even easier to do those changes because there wouldn’t be any fear of broken combos.

I’d like this idea of upgrading prof spec into an elite one. The main problem is that after June trait revamp, another one would be required because some weapon and utilities are strongly attached to those lines like spectral or arcane skills, gadgets, warrior longbow or mesmer scepter. For some it would maybe be ok but for other (like war longbow) it wouldn’t fit with elite specs identities.
Sum up : Great idea but way too much work right now and I am not sure that the different metas need to be so much shaken.

Ah it is more clear now : you are looking for a job and try to get attention.
Small advice : don’t start your discussions by saying the employer you want to work for is bad, it raises your chances.
And since you’re a good designer, can you unveil which game you designed in the past? Must be an awesome one

So if you ask us for a list of things that will ship in April, we’ll probably be coy because we think it’s nice for you to have presents to unwrap on release day, but more than that, the truth is we don’t even know. We’re working on a lot of potentially great improvements for April, all themed in the direction of less grind and more rewards, and they won’t all make the cut, but any reasonable subset will make a great release.

From the AMA on reddit.

I think our jobs are to delight you with what we ship, not with big talk or big promises. So hang tight. Release day will be here soon enough.

From OP’s post.

The two together made me think that Mo’s stance is to not advertise anymore what comes exactly with patches so I wonder if they won’t stop to write a blog post about their big updates.
The same goes with balance. We are one week ahead of the patch (or more ?) which is totally unreasonable to preview the balance changes, let the community discuss, review the discussion and make some changes.

Thats what the league system does wrong: If you suck, you can still advance, either by grind, luck or if there is anyone who sucks even harder.

I see leagues as a way to get the legendary backpack for everyone, but at different speed. The only ranking that counts should be the legendary division where you loose tier, pips and levels.
A lot of games do like this so that casual players have this impression of moving forward and improving but the only ranking that is really important is the top tier division.
The issue here is that people basically stop their season when they reach legendary. There should be better reward and visibility for those who climb the legend tier and ultimately have a leaderboard only for them and not only the first 5 who should get a special aura on their character until next season starts.

most likely you will have to grind content you do not like to get the number of points to max things

What is this grind you are talking about ? Because all you have to do is complete a specific task once, there is no grinding. It is not repeating content over and over to buy a token, or doing everyday the same task to fill a reputation bar.
Grind is a nice buzz word but by using it for everything it is losing its meaning.

Sorry but healers in raid don’t heal everything out. If your group does not use self-heal there will be a lot of downed people. By the way this is exactly why the best times are achieved by zerk healers although healing power scales a bit better with druid or tempest.
If you look at toughness tank, the build are most of the time hybrid (support, condi, bruiser) so again there is no strong trinity here. And last, chrono is a support / DPS hybrid (well a lot of support and few dps).
The state of the game right now, has better class at better jobs and hopefully the next espec will give other roles like a real dps role for mesmer, a good healing ability for war (which has already a strong mandatory support/dps role)…..

The only sad thing (but it is another discussion ) is that Espec (save scrapper and maybe DH) made their class better in every aspect (Tempest is best for support, heal, dps range, melee and condi… maybe tank as well). They should have boosted the former traitline 5 and made it a Espec as well.

The problem is not necessarily the complexity but the tool you have to read it.

In other games, when you see a character (hero or specific class) you know what are his tools to work and you can expect the player to have a specific task on the game (healer will heal, jungler will gank…).
In GW2, when you log in a game, you see the core class of you teammates. That is the moment when I like the forced unbalance since when you see the icon of the guy, there is like 90 % chance that this character is built following Metabattle.
It means, you know how many support there is, how many dps… but even here you don’t really know what the guy will do.
At high level, people use the first 1 min 30 to discuss build (stats…) but SoloQ is full of people who jump in the game and don’t even say hi, and at least where they go.
Having complexity sorted by the forced Meta is maybe a cheap solution to readability of the game but in the structure of the game right now, there is not so many more solutions.
Besides that, non Metabattle teams have their chance, it lies here in rotation. You can compare Gw2 to Moba as much as you want, but this game does not start with a mirrored game where you farm gold (and try to deny gold to the enemy) and when the characters are stong enough you have team fights.
Here there is no " each one must play is lane correctly" but the entire team must react altogether. If you want to compare Gw2 to something else, well the closest is GW1 GvG. In both game you have to secure your home, try to force the enemy to defend his base while you have a team fight in the middle where you try to contest and hold the point (pulsing point or until morale boost occurs).
The big difference is that Gw1 GvG couldn’t be randomly joined, but you had to set up your team beforehand…

Maybe a simple nerf on CD increase to due chill to make it in line with Alacrity. At HoT launch if you were affected by alacrity and chill simultaneously they were countering each other, it is not the case anymore.
Chill would still remain strong and accessible for necro but alacrity would help more against it.

Purple Miku.7032:

tl;dr – Dungeons were nerfed because of the game going F2P, so if the expansion didn’t happen or if they for whatever reason didn’t decide to make the base game free then the dungeons probably would’ve just been left untouched with their original rewards.

Really nice point of view, I actually didn’t think about it this way. But it makes totally sense. Maybe there is also a part where they also did not push too much F2P player into dungeons when they discover the game. I actually had several friends who bought the game and quit short after they started running dungeons because they found them non intuitive. When you come from other games, skips and boss burning are not the way you are used to run dungeons.
So if MMO players wanted to try the game and face the dungeon, there are chances that it does not give the best impression of the game (if you compare to other MMO).

The sad point on this is that they anyway did not manage to attract enough player to convert from F2P to HoT apparently so dungeons were somehow cut from the game for almost nothing

Anari.2137:

First, if your not going to read the entire topic, you may not want to reply. IT shows your emotional, and not addressing issues from an intellectual level. We dont nerf or change things as developers because we get emotional hate it, we change it because the metrics shows its not good.

1. No, Absolutely absolutely, absolutely not. Where in the world did you come up you balance a game around the 1%? I cannot even begin to fathom how you think that balances the game.

A game is balanced around the foundation, and the concepts applied. For example “target livability rates of 20-30 seconds”. Not around “what the top players think”.

2. i dont know what wow you played, but none of what you just said is true. This game has an almost identical balance system to wow. 3 Specs, Gear stats, and is set up naturally to hybrid. So where ever you came up with the concept that they are different is insanity. The only difference at the moment is the split the gear in gw2 into 2 items (amulet and runes) and make a more extreme power variation (which is the cause for the balance problems).

3. Yea Wow allowed for addons. Those addons actually make the game more balanced, because it allows the players who are less able to track multiple things react better more consistently and more quickly. So i cant really see the negative side of this point.

4. I am a Multi-Glad/Hwl. I lead a top pvp guild on Tich horde. That statement you just made in this point tells me you really were not competitive in pvp. God Comp is arguably the best comp because its well rounded and able to deal with so many situations, however it’s utterly bulled over by turbo cleave groups. So to put wow meta into perspective, its close to paper rock scissors with lots of paper groups. that is not the fault of developers, its just largely due to the classes players pick and them being so easy to get over the rest.

Additionally, dont even try to tell me this games meta at top end does not have cookei cutter builds, because there is more certainly a “top build” for this game, and unlike wow, its one specific build, built around perfect execution of boon/buff spam, and 1 shot killing.

gw2 is a joke for balance when it comes in comparison to wow. Sorry to break it to you, but blizzard is miles a head of any other game out there when it comes to this stuff, and if anyone was to come close to this kind of balance i’d bet that riot games could do it but i wouldn’t hold my breath after that point.

1/ Apparently I’m not the only one to not read (so I will skip the part of not having intellect involved in the discussion and being just emotional) because where did I speak about 1% and top players thoughts? I said that during a season you grab better and better stuff (at least it was the case before) which increases you stats and hence your output damages in a non linear manner (haste or crit caps for example). So while you don’t have all stats your are not doing the best with your character. So it is obvious that balance has to be achieved based on maximal stats not on gearing phases.

2/You should invest more time in GW2 because you don’t really get the build process. Wow has 3 specs per class (4 for druid) and choosing one determines the skill you get to use, as well as passive bonus. And then you can choose 6 additional skills, for each you have a choice between three, all having a theme (CC, defense, dps..). In GW2 you choose 3 spec lines out of 6 with each having 3 passive bonus and 3 actively chosen one (each with a choice between 3). The very fact that one can mix those spec lines bring a broader variation on spec build for every class. On top of that skills are chosen by the player, not by the spec you choose. On top of that the bonus on gear is not fixed during the season and chosen by devs but by players… again the number of possibilities grows even more.

3/ Saying addons makes things more balanced is for me really weird to read. You write " it allows the players who are less able to track multiple things react better " … skill in GW2 is not to be able to write the best macro or have the best addons for interface but to be able to track multiple things! Huge philosophical difference ! Games are here really different .

4/Yes there is a meta in both games, or cookie cutter build. But this is exactly what people call unbalance. It is a simple reaction, but you come here to say you do better job on wow because everything is balanced, and then you say " yeah some builds are just better… but it is the same here !". So I don’t really see your point unless you want to tell that the choices are better done philosophically in wow…. but if in the end the results are the same, I do wonder if you are not a bit too much emotional….

And last but not least : a big difference is Wow PvP is an arena where the goal is to kill the other team. The goal in GW2 conquest is to hold points on three different spots. Sure reaper has huge damage and sustain (well he has a big CD of survival and after that he dies)…. but he is so slow that if you make him run between points you will have a big advantage. Else you isolate him and put him out of game for few seconds which will buy you another cap.

Sorry but I couldn’t go really further when you start to have WoW as an example. If you want to be exhaustive about it you should mention that
1/ balance is made around the highest stuff you can get during a season, but without this stuff you can largely sit on your golden rule.
2/There is a very weak building process in wow. The 34 different spec have a predefined skillset and gameplay. You choose some things on the side but not so much. You don’t have choice on your stuff bonus, there is no hybrid build possible.
3/Late in MoP, when I stopped, I also remember that PvP was like PvE, that is unbeatable without specific addons. The stupidest one for PvP ( Gladius) was one that was telling you that PlayerX was using a specific CC on you, even if you could not see that player (in your back for example). If you were warrior, you knew it was the moment to use your spell reflection.
4/Every season, there was a three-men team comp that was meta and had more chance to win… not every team was “balanced”

I am not an expert in balance, nor am I saying that Gw2 makes it perfectly but saying that WoW is much better balanced is not really true. That is maybe true in PvE where every dps class does the same dps within an error of 10 %, but the price for this is that every class have more or less the same abilities and the same rotation (one small CD, one or two proc, one filler and some big CDs).

STIHL.2489:

The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content

I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

LS1 failed because it was temporary. That’s why LS2 was permanent, and then the LS model was replaced with an expansion model.

People still fight Vinewraith. Heck, Dry Top and the Silverwastes are two of the best things to come out of the Living World. They still get played today. Yes, the Marionette is remembered fondly, but that’s because it was part of a bigger and more exciting world, with constant updates. Not because it was temporary. Tequatl still gets killed many times a day, and it’s arguable a less interesting fight.

As to SAB only being a cool feature because it’s temporary, that’s just not true. It’s also weird how many of the people invested in keeping SAB turned off seem to be people who don’t actually like it that much. I don’t love WvW, but I don’t try and get it shut down eleven months of the year.

I do love SAB as much as most people. But what I said are my observations : no permanent content is as praised as non permanent one. The reason underneath is quite simple : when it comes only from time to time it looks fresh. After a month it is “usual content”. Vinewrath is fought everyday sure but nobody I saw in game talked about this fight as one of the best in the game world… it is just one world boss for most people.
If PvP leagues were open all the time, there would not be so much players, because nobody feels the urge of doing it so we’d postpone it to a later time. WvW tournaments were (will be) the same, it attracts players to do thing they would not necessarily do at that moment and by driving so many players together at one time it creates a much more enjoyable experience.
Turn SAB permanent and after 2 or 3 month, less and less people will play it. It will still be enjoyable but not in the same fashion as a festival. Even during the first year when SAB had been available 2 times (April and Sept), the “Back to School” update was less successful (from dev comments at that time).

SAB is only a cool feature because it is temporary. Anet understood quite early that temp content is the best experience for players hence all LS1.
How many speak about Marionette as the most exciting boss they fought in GW2? Yet when Vinewrath was was released, everybody mentioned how it reminds the Marionette… but after 6 months few people still care about it.
Tower of Nightmare was super fun ! But it was just a zerg fest in a small map. The fact it lasted only 2 weeks makes it one of the funniest experience in the game.

If you want to continue to love SAB so much, it is better that it remains a temporary content.

Q: If I don’t like buying houses (because of their colour or their size) while playing Monopoly, why can’t I get hotel ?
A: Because that is the rule!

Q: But games are suppose to only be fun !
A: Yes, and they can only be fun if there are rules. If not then I decided it’s a game over for you… now !

There is 2 kinds of bow because it is easier to remember that *short*bow have a short range of 900 while *long*bow has a long range of 1200 (or more).
Also during development (until first demo I think) you were rooted while firing longbow. They were supposed to do more damage while losing mobility (like true shot now).

Tachenon.5270:

If you don’t feel ‘robbed or betrayed’ now, how will you feel if they do it again? Especially considering that your current acceptance of such behavior is an open invitation for it to happen again.

People: do you want this to become standard operating procedure?

Over three years of history, has it been the case for so many things? It is so easy to just have seemingly deep thoughts about Anet psychology and how they robbed us and will do it again because we don’t complain enough.

I don’t feel robbed or betrayed because it is now almost 10 years that this studio has made games that suits my needs as a gamer. I tried other games but never felt home like I did on GW and GW2. For ten years, this very company entertained me almost on a daily basis, gave me new friends, even lovers!
Sometimes I got upset by some choices, many times I got surprised by how a simple game can turn my excited about a new feature. And during those ten years of daily entertainment I did not even gave this company enough money to pay one month of salary of one of their employee…

So no I don’t feel robbed, I am not happy with this cancellation but I’m not suddenly suspicious about Anet which should be some bad devil who wants to eat all my money by making me believe in Santa and then fool me. I have a brain and I use it to analyse the present, to sometimes speculate about the future… but also to remember the past !

Tachenon.5270:

DoctorDing.5890:

Some players are not pleased. The majority of players will never own a legendary.

Irrelevant. Anet took money for something they advertised and didn’t deliver. Do you want that to become a habit?

On the other hand there are things we got which were not advertised (not specifically now with HoT but with core game as well). It is tricky to start to count things because if one want compensation for unreleased promised things, then we should pay a compensation for released unpromised things.
I think this will just put Anet to their previous behavior of being secretive about what they’ll release with next expansion and only talk about ready-to-ship things.
But let’s just be honest for a second, if HoT would have only set 1 precursor crafting advertised, who wouldn’t have bought the expansion just because “no new legendary”? People having decided to buy the expansion just because of the new weapons must be far less numerous than the amount of posters in this thread. It doesn’t cancel their bad advertisement, but it is certainly not the sole reason for spending money on HoT.
They could just have emphasized the crafting feature and say “oh and by the way we have 4 new legendaries included, have fun… maybe later there will be more but for now we don’t talk about it”.
Basically we never feel robbed or betrayed for things we don’t know we could have had… so expect a long time of no promises and just discoveries of what they have decided to ship….

I already said that somewhere else but to me, the expansion is not half done but rather “rushed”. From story to Espec balance to economics balancing (scribing, Fractals for example) everything feels not polished for me.
It is really clear that they wanted the expansion to be out in 2015 but their famous high expectations on polish was not met in that case.
The last drama with legendary is also a perfect example. They have done a good way of precursors acquisitions, and even made 23 of them. Well 20 +3 to be released til people know where to find the needed content. But then they (I think) hurt the inspiration drought wall.
Knowing how Anet is with information they shouldn’t have talked about the new Legendary weapons, just introduce the precursor scavenger hunt (that is already more than the half of the work for this feature). Then they could have released one or two or even wait till they have 4 new ones as “surprises” and when people would have started to ask when the next one would be coming …. “when they will be ready, for now enjoy those”.
I read with joy that 70 people are actually working on the next expac because I do think they will go back to their standard and just release it when it will reach the quality they want to reach.

There is already some incentives to play dungeons : low level mats. Their price has rised after dungeon nerf because they were a good source of it.
That is the kind of things that were good with downscaling and why making all dungeons lvl 80 would be bad.

On a side not, life one year ago was not as easy. How many people were here on the forum to complain about dungeons, whether they were too easy, too short, too hard, too long, about the fact that speedruns were killing the economy, about the fact that even speedrunning them the rewards were not high enough, that they were skill less (zerk meta around a corner), that they were higly skilled gameplay (managing active defence to be able to wear zerk armor)……..
Today everyone seems to agree that it was the best content in this game and that they shouldn’t have touched it.
Also don’t forget about several bugs that were never repaired (some were at best acknowledged).

Henry.5713:

Also, it is so strange how much it bothers people to not be able to gain even one reward in this game.

I agree on that, though I’ve not seen many complaints about glorious hero armor…. which was a reward for those who dedicate enough to one game mode so that they can be high ranked….
At least raids are not limited in time and everyone will ultimately succeed … and get the legendary armor.

Maybe in the future, if they are happy with how you get those legendary stuff through Fractal, PvP and soonish WvW tournaments (speculations here ofc) they will think about other methods of earning them.
But one also has to take economics of the game into accounts, because easy legendary armor will affect material prices strongly. Nobody will make any ascended anymore so they have to be extremely careful on this. They are already by locking it into a collection and hence not letting players have one of each type.
In the end locking this special type of armor behind a high gap of challenge is a good thing because it only means it will be slowly introduced into the game so that they have enough time to evaluate its impact on many other aspects.

To me the main issue with Rev is that every trait lines have both sustain and damage in high amount so choosing one trait line does not really take something from you. You don’t really have to choose, you get everything, maybe free beer as well xD

For example, in Shiro line you get ferocity bonus in high amount and life steal. Glint is the same… well Herald as a whole is a way more powerful upgrade to a profession than any other elite spec. But hey that is a way to compensate for the ones that are not good.

Spira.4578:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I’m fascinated by how many post the same half dozen people have made complaining about this the past 30 pages.

Yepp and we’ll not stop until ANET makes a positive move to calm the community down.
The people on here are the vocal minority that are willing to waste their time complaining on the forums (and deal with some people while we’re at it), however, a lot of players in game are annoyed and kittened about ANET’s decision, but simply don’t want to waste their time on the forums.

Yeah and maybe half the players don’t even have a clue about it cause they buy and play the game and yet don’t even know when balance changes. Actually I never saw the cancellation mentioned in LA chat, nor has anybody spoke about it in my guild.

So nobody will represent the community, even by repeating the same words again and again.
Anyway, I think the “conversation” is now over. They stated what they’ll do, people complained, other not then people started to complain about each other, like always. Nobody is representative of anybody else than himself, it is useless to try to hide behind high thoughts, laws or throwing words like betrayal, spoil kids or whatever. If they change their mind, they’ll do another post but it won’t be because this very thread is too long.

cranos.5913:

As for rewards though, I think they made a mistake here. IMO raiders would’ve been fine with normal exclusive skins, putting legendary armor as a reward for it was probably not a great idea. It just makes all casuals who don’t wanna put in the time extremely salty, which means a great deal of complaining as seen in this thread, which means the likely possibility the raid team will go the same way the legendary team went as soon as wing 3 is out.

I am not sure it is a bad idea if it is planned ahead. By that I mean every expansion will receive its amount of powercreep. It happens in every game and it drives also people into new content. So one could expect that after next expac release, Raid 1 will be easier than today, so eventually everyone will get at least one set of legendary armor. The better player will get it faster, the others later, I don’t really see why it is a problem.

So far my guild is not able to beat Gorseval (well everybody in PUG group can but we as a group can’t…) so I don’t count myself as one of those who will get his armor quick, but at least I try

cranos.5913:

The funny thing is that raiders (at least the ones I know) don’t even care much about legendary armor. They’re into meta builds and min/maxing which means the stat swap becomes borderline useless once you smack some runes onto them.

This argument can be the same for non raiders then because they barely need more than exotic which is quite cheap to do. But the rune problem is the same for everyone.

It is funny cause long ago, when they showcased the warrior for the first time (back in 2010 I think) they emphasized him as Master of weapon. That time I also thought it could be nice, as profession mechanics to have a 3rd slot of weapon accessible with F2 where you could only put a long bow or a rifle so that you are prepared for every situation…. but I guess it would be hard to rotate properly between weapon sets ….

Ah I didn’t mention the tablet auto return, which I think is a bad idea. In fact being able to have presence on both spots is a real strength for healer Rev. Imagine for example to be able to heal the tank on VG with tablet while you are healing your pals on green zone with staff and/or shield… or the other way around.
I’ve never healed with my Rev in raids so far but when I did on WB (fwiw) I really liked to have “regularly” two spots of actions. I say regularly because optimizing healing on Rev requires switching legend quite often for Invoking harmony.

The water field on protective solace would be a bit too strong too, you could maintain it for too long and too cheap cost. However, a 3sec field upon purifying essence could be a nice addition.

It is funny how many people try to fit the concept of ritualist in Espec (top three being Necro, Rev and Guard). I am always interested by reading such suggestion as being ritualist at heart since Factions.
Your ideas are quite nice, I like it a lot even if other concept as ashes and wepons buffs are out. Anyway almost every features of ritualist made a conceptual come back in GW2, but they are scattered in every profession.

I must admit that my main problem for revenant build is that right now the trait lines are, for most builds:
X – Invocation – Herald, with X being the line that improves your role.
There are not enough synergy between other lines, or conversely to much synergy between Invocation and Herald with the others.
While I see the pattern for every profession that Espec should be the way to go for every build (obvious marketing reasons), I fail to see how Invocation has to be that strong. There is almost no synergy between Devastation and Corruption, this latter being unfinished since the revamp of Mallyx during beta.
For example I would gladly exchange maniacal persistence and roiling mist because Corruption should be stronger towards criticals and condi in general while Invocation should grant bonus to different aspects but to a lesser extent because it is more versatile. If Invocation was to be a crit oriented trait line then they should nerf/remove the sustain and support it can bring.
For Ventari, an exchange between hardened fundation and eluding nullification would be good for simple gameplay reasons (toughness aggro for the first one and the ICD of the second making it worth a minor trait… still removing 2 to 3 conditions would be more in line with other professions).
For Jalis I would like to see more Retaliation into action. First by increasing soothing stone retaliation, maybe add it to Forced engagement too. In the trait line, a minor increasing the duration or the efficiency of the boon, instead of enduring recovery could be also welcome. Right now empowering vengeance is really lackluster because retaliation is not enough available. On the other hand, trying to create a dodging tank (stab and retal on dodge, endurance on hit) doesn’t really work well out of ranged tank with hammer. But even so, the ranged tanking is a tricky gameplay for every game mode (in pvp you bunker on the point not by dodging out, in raid you don’t want the boss to move more than needed )

They tried a new design with rev and that is a good thing, but sadly they stopped when the support(raid)/damage(PvP) build were fine. I mean the pure healer spec is really powerful with good presence melee and ranged, the raid tanking is somewhat possible but there are some details that should be looked at.
And PvE condition is right now not competitive while it should be really high because being melee but unlike thief there is no support in it.