Guild Wars 2

Arpheus.6918:

I’m really glad that the devs communicate changes before they come. That gives us the opportunity to give some feedback before changes which can really affect balance in a bad way get released.

Yeh but they then don’t listen. Many many good players told them not to do diamond skin but they did it anyway.

Hi,

I am currently ranked no.1 (or was at the time of writing this OP) on the EU. I appreciate that the game is hard to balance for the developers because it is hard to distinguish useful feedback from meaningless QQ from people with less experience.

With that being said, let me tell you the OP/lame stuff at high level solo Q. Hopefully this feedback can be of use:

1, Elite ranger spirit – even at 320/second this heal will be too strong.

2, Ranger shortbow 1 – too high dps for an auto attack where there is no risk/reward to using it.

3, Warrior sustain – is too high. I know they need high sustain but with their immunities/lyssa then things aren’t good. Something needs to give.

4, Warrior longbow burst skill – its bugged so it clears 3 condis even when it hits nobody. This bug have a big effect on gameplay. Needs some creative design thinking to fix this. And maybe reduce the area of this skill which is too large to allow skillful counter play.

5, Lyysa runes – Obviously too strong, obviously didn’t design it to be used with 48 second elites. ICD needs to be over 70 seconds imo.

6, Thief evades – Still a problem I think.

7, Elementalist instant burst – need to somehow add some counter play to instant skill abilities with high damage. Not sure how to do this. Thats up to the devs, but it sucks.

For build diversity:

Guardian needs some mobility help deep into an offensive trait line to help roaming builds.

Necro needs a viable defensive line by fixing the minor traits in death magic.

Ranger needs some active condition removal (such a condi loss on pet swap low in a power line) and its shouts buffed to make it so emphatic bond isn’t required.

Warrior needs significant nerfs so other builds on other classes can have a chance to breath and exist.

Elementalist needs its RTL nerf reverted to just 20 seconds always cooldown, and should have slightly stronger sustain but reduced damage at certain times. Almost diamond skin should be reworked so it is useful always and never just brokenly lame (like lose 2 conditions when changing to earth)

Thief is fine except for some nerfs needed.

Mesmer should be in a good place after the vigor nerf.

Engineer needs its condi immunity removed/nerf to 90%, incendiary power made skill based, but improvements to the scaling of some of their attacks with power.

GL everyone, and thanks to the devs for a fun game which hopefully can keep improving and hopefully no more power creep

Obviously this is just solo Q as I don’t play in a consistent team ever.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Rickster.8752:

I have played alot of necro for a long time. Maybe more tournament games than almost anyone else. So I would guess I know more about it than you.

feline grace untouched. A minor trait with this effect is the best thing in the game – the ABSOLUTE best trait in the game – its that simple.

1) good thing it’s only a guess

2) the two best traits in the game atm, for their respective trait point investment, is protection injection on engineer and vigorous precision on guardian – both need to be addressed, for sure, as they are outliers in terms of relative power, but I’m still working on those

The issue so far in this game’s tpvp development has been the length of time between balance patches, the huge swings in power balance, and the progressive power creep. The easiest way to check two of those three things is to bring entities down in relative power and create opportunities for diversity among builds.

Its called balance for a reason. The aim is to balance skills and traits. Making a half kitten d list isnt balance. It just introduces more problems that it fixed. Anyone can post a “things that are OP imo” list. That is all this is. Just the opinion of some dude who is too lazy to fully flesh out his ideas into a genuine balance document.

And yeh, I am sure you know loads about the game. You are like a prodigy of gw2 I am sure. You will have made millions of dollars playing the game already right…..get off your high horse. This game is childs play and is totally devoid of any skill whatsoever

Sepreh.5924:

Rickster.8752:

Your necro changes are horrendus. If you were in charge of this game you would actually kill it faster than anet. Reduce physical damage on scepter? You must of plucked that one out your kitten as it literally makes no sense. And moving terror to gm just makes necro bad as you lose so much damage and survivability.

Moving terror to gm would make sense if you moved dhuumfire from spite to curses gm. That way, you cannot take both dhuumfire and terror. Build diversity ensues.

Then, spite gm can be replaced with something that is good for non-condition-based-damage builds

Yeh that would be awesome. I can agree with that. But it should obviously be done at the same time as nerfing all these other specs from other classes. I dont enjoy necro much anymore because there is only 1 spec. The more they nerf bleeds the more reliant necro is on dhuumfire and terror. So do your change – but then all these condi immunities and alot of the condi removal buffs should be reversed. The whole thing is a massive power creep. You cant nerf 1 side without nerfing the other.

On ranger – it needs condi removal on active skills.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

You realize the introduction of Dhuumfire merged 2-3 necro builds, right?

Minor variations of the same build. I have played alot of necro for a long time. Maybe more tournament games than almost anyone else. So I would guess I know more about it than you.

The thing is your ideas create more problems. Everything should be nerfed. You cant nerf stuff like you suggest and then leave things like feline grace untouched. A minor trait with this effect is the best thing in the game – the ABSOLUTE best trait in the game – its that simple. Same with critical infusion. Minor trait. 5 points in a line and you get one of the strongest traits in the game? Same with Incendiary ammo.

Same with ele. You nerf all this kitten and leave ele (largely) untouched and you will get a really broken fresh air build which just wrecks face. Impossible to res against. Impossible to dodge.

This game is so far gone that the only thing that can save it is simply an expansion and rework of the entire system. Any changes like these just add more problems unless they are so significant that they literally nerf everything. And we all know anet wont nerf everything because:

1, they are scared of forum qq from people having their class nerfed
2, it takes them 6 months to knock 1% off OP stuff anyway

Your necro changes are horrendus. If you were in charge of this game you would actually kill it faster than anet. Reduce physical damage on scepter? You must of plucked that one out your kitten as it literally makes no sense. And moving terror to gm just makes necro bad as you lose so much damage and survivability.

No they are not in a good place. It is a BS spec which is:

1, Skill-less as the maximum dps comes from an autoattack
2, Ruins the game for everyone else – can’t see anything which happens at all
3, Not fun to fight against – fighting against someone who can auto attack with massive pressure is terrible
4, Makes the game unwatchable – cant see anything which happens
5, Makes the game a joke

This game will never grow or even stop declining until spirit ranger isn’t viable in pvp in any way. Only then can progress come.

Compare dota2 friend system/spectator mode with gw2. It is like comparing a 2013 top of the range pc with a mainframe from the 1960s. Seriously the difference is that shocking. This game just isnt AAA quality. The infrastructure is shockingly bad.

Worst trait ever made. We told them and they didnt listen. It has no place in the game. At all. Total immunity bs which is 100% win rate in certain 1v1s and otherwise just not good. They wont remove it because they are wayyy too stubborn

I find it funny all the badies like to debate these things. Honestly if I wasnt good enough to get ranked highly on the leaderboards then I would accept my opinion is irrelevent because I am a noob. On other games I dont go telling everyone what the balance is like because I am a noob. So its funny to see so many baddies argue with sensotix when he is 100x better than them

resign would be terrible as people would just afk and tell people over and over to type /resign. Have you guys even played where that is an option?

This post looks bad to me. Even in the unlikely event that you know what you are talking about – they will never change anything this fundamental. It takes then 6 months to “reduce sun spirit passive by 1 second” and you expect big reworks.

Will never happen. This game is broken and skilless till an expansion which is never coming,.

If they removed all maps that had bugs then there wouldnt be any maps. Remember when they said temple you wont take falling damage down to the bottom buff? Yet everytime you pretty much do take falling damage. That was hilarious.

Yeh 2017 is going to be amazing. The 3 people left in the game will LOVE it when these game modes move into tournaments.

This game will be an esport – anet 2012.

That was pretty hilarious in hindsight

The essence of pvp is standing on a point and trying not to die. Right Anet? Right?!?!?!

O wait, turns out that wasnt the essence of pvp! O noes! They kittened this game up because they were too stubborn to listen to people who knew better.

But phew, at least we get new game modes coming in “custom arenas”. Which is just selling hotjoin servers. You know hotjoin? The horribly unbalanced thing where people are actually encouraged to just join and leave mid game! Hurray!

Well played anet. Well played. Maybe one day you will learn Maybe then we get tournaments for non player vs point game modes.

Dishonored is actually a reward in this game because it stops you from playing the horrible pvp lol

Divinity.8041:

Is it human psyche? I hear people saying I am in the top xxx of soloq/teamq.

^ Is that supposed to mean you are “good?”

Why are you guys still trying to act like any of this actually means something when both suffer from systemic problems and inadequacies?

Just curious, it is quite laughable.

If you are near the top of either you might not be good. Might of had luck in solo q or be carried by comp/team mates in team queue.

However if you have NEVER been near the top of either then you are bad. Sorry to say that. And that is why people talk about it. If its so easy to get to the top then you should have no problem getting there……

Fortus.6175:

The Good

-As mentioned above thousand times; thanks for the rewards changes.
-New skills, although underpowered and cost 25 skillpoint and costs25 skill points in PvP where everyone is supposed to be in equal footing?!
-Thieves got some nice buffs, been seeing them more lately, specially in ranked. Initiative buff does incredible things although most people dont really notice that much.
-Stealth got a minor hit, although not enough it is a good step towards getting there.

The Bad

-Elementalists in the same if not worse state than before; lots of traits moved to higher tier when they didnt need to! Thanks for moving Blasting staff but the rest changes were atrocious, sorry.
-Diamond skin: useless, completely useless, but then you face a rabid necro 1v1 and it is overpowered, completely overpowered. Overall it is just useless though, the amount of niche scenarios in which it could be slightly useful does not outweight the drawbacks, specially not considering it is a grandmaster trait. I think we can do better than that!
-Thieves and backstab, just abilities out of stealth and the lack of way to block/evade/blind them witout revealing them. Either the backstabs need toning down or blocking/evading/blining should apply reveal and make the skill miss, no way around this, sorry.

The Missing

-Elementalists need a serious boost to survivavility. Passive traits will not cut it, they need to have a survival tool specific to the class: Deathshroud/fear necros, clones/stealth/chaosstorm/chaosarmor/blinks/daze mesmer, blinds/block/heals/protection/moreheals guardian, evades/spirits/regen/protection ranger, stealth/teleports/blinds/blinds/stealth thieves, etc etc etc…. you get my point, eles what do they have? Heals were nerfed into absolutely nothing, every patch since the D/D deal, which if they were to be taken at their max potential to the current meta, they would probably even struggle. Then what? Cantrips on 75-90 secs CD, which is the equivalent to elites in other classes, a guardian can get protectio and stability teamwide on 26 seconds CD, we have something that lasts about the same, selfish, on 4 times the CD….. and no, the package does not justify it, a guardian does about the same if not as much damage as ele but a guardian can survive it all, yet it has the same hp as the ele….. same base hp, ever wonder that, even a glass canon guardian, which does aout the same damage? I think eles need to be taken to the draw board, decide what do you want attunemnts to be used as, what do you want ele’s inherent defense that does not involve putting up 4 elites worth of stuff. the only boon sharing thing we had got moved to 20 points. You need to give us something to work on, there is absolutely nothing an ele can do that anybody else cant do 4x better, without the fear of blowing in one rotation.

Man you people really don’t get it do you. Ele needs ZERO buffs. Other stuff must be nerfed. Ele is a bit of survivability away from being the new warrior. Its INSTANT UNDODGABLE damage on s/f ele is INSANE and very very very strong. If they buff the survivability then you make ele the new warrior. They should nerf other stuff as ele is fine right now. In fact ele is a little too strong. The damage is too strong. But RELATIVE to everything else it is weak. But it should still be nerfed – just less than everything else.

BUT anet are dumb and will do what you say. They will listen to the baddies and buff it to the sky and then ele will be broken/undodgable and lame bs. Just like warrior kind of is.

The good
Rewards I guess are good to get people into the mists – but does nothing to help pros.

The bad

Diamond skin – we told them it was a dumb idea. They didn’t listen.

Balance – They listen to bad players. So the devs (no good player is a dev) listen to bad players and we get bad balance. You should have to be CURRENTLY in the top 50-100 in either solo q or team q to post on a new “balance discussion” forum. And the devs should listen to people who have proved they are good at the game in either team or solo q.

No support for 2/3 man groups – So when I play and cba to premade but want to play with 1/2 other people we have long queues and then get total noobs on our team. Support 2 man groups. Most people only want to play with 1/2 other people most often. Surely a company like anet has stats which show this?

The missing

Balance – every class is still brokenly Op and the “nerfs” were so minor that 1 spamming spirit rangers are still lame and viable. And all auto attacks are too strong – largely because sun spirit gives aoe dhuumfire which = every auto attack causes burning.

I dont really play this game nemore though. And when I do its only to play with people I enjoy playing with. I dont take it seriously at all. As this game is a bad joke and is soooo going in the wrong direction mainly because they dont listen to good players. Devs should have more humility, other games they either do this or have devs who play the game at a high level. Anet has niether.

They were going to tone signet of spite down then they did their “talk to the community bs” and after careful consideration they reversed the nerf. Hilarious really

By 2015 maybe spirits and things wont be amazing. Funny really. They nerf all the res skills like signet of undeath and illusion of life – but with the spirit of nature they let it have a 1 second cast time.

This game is awful at this point. Sorry guys. People laugh at this game. What sort of pvp game is one in which (maybe) the strongest build revolves around using 4-6 Ai things to do all the work for you whilst you literally dont press a single button to do maximum dps (sb #1). Why do you think that even when you watch streams of people with HOURS into gw2 who play the game all day – even they just qq about how bad the game is.

This game is a laughing stock and it will only get worse.

Have fun waiting 4 months for a 3% reduction in healing signet. Or they just buff everything some more so everything is as brainless as warrior. They are already pretty much at this point. This game is dead.

There wont be another balance patch for at least 3 months. Quit this game is my advice.

Wont work. Most people who solo q do so because they cba with the cheese you get in team q where the comps teams run matter more than anything else by far.

The reason is because arena net didnt listen to people during alpha about this one game mode being boring. So they didn’t listen in alpha. Then in beta people said just give us 2v2 and 3v3 arenas with respawn tickets. They didn’t listen then either. Then at release. People said give us arenas. Anet didn’t listen. Then after a year people said give us arenas. Anet didnt listen. Then about 3 months ago, after everyone quit, anet decided that maybe they needed new game modes.

My prediction is they wont put the new modes into the tournament rotation though. They will just put it into custom arenas. Which defeats the object completely.

All this is why nobody with any skill really plays this game anymore. Because its pointlessly bad and based around playing a bunker build and standing on a point.

Nary Why Irk.8150:

Yes, sirius tournament esport.
And this is veri sirius post.

Funny seen as you do the same thing and exploit everytime on legacy.

And yes, this game will never be an esport when someone as bad as you can be competitive purely due to a 1 spam passive build. That is the sad truth of how much of a fail this game is. Even people who are laughed at as being really mechanically bad at the game (you) are effective purely due to playing the worst build in any multiplayer game ever (spirit ranger) which even a rank 1 could play well.

It goes way beyond what you are saying. The problems are so huge that they cannot be fixed except maybe in a completely reworked expansion.

The combat is flawed and unsatisfying because of things like passive procs. BUT that is only 1% of the problem. And just add to the power of auto attacks, which are way way too strong.

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

SPESHAL.9106:

This is similar to many other “issues” with the game.

In the grand scheme of things, diamond skin may be balanced, but it’s the type of ability that shouldn’t be in the game.

It’s useless in tons of instances and way too hard a counter in other situations.

Just because these average out to be “balanced” doesn’t mean this type of delta between uselessness and OP is the right “fix”.

In fact, it makes it a pretty lame and lazy way to"fix"things.

I would think you’d want the game to showcase differences in skill versus who simply picked the right build/profession.

Some advantages should be given by your build, but not to a ridiculous extent.

Mesmers are even more ridiculous in how their builds hard counter some specs 1v1, but it’s “justified” based on some perceived weaknesses in group play and 1v1s against other classes.

Tone down the ridiculously abilities for each profession and the game will truly showcase skills > build.

Exactly.

The thing is even before this change I made a thread on it and LITERALLY dozens of top players came in to say this change was a terrible idea. But they dont listen to people who understand how the game works (the top players). They just listen to the bitter people who got rolled by a necro and now qq about it.

If they have the humility to fix this trait then I will respect them. I suspect they will try to balance around it which will lead to more power creep. The fact is, staff and scepter on the necro need more damage in their attacks to counter things like this, But this would be a bad idea for the game generally.

Anet really dropped the ball on this one. AND what is worse is that they were warned this would be the case. Warned by elite players…lots of them. They really really need to have no respect for their player base, and to stop thinking they know best all the time. This change was horrendusly bad for the game. Absolute disgrace of a trait. Makes the game seem like a joke.

Draehl.2681:

I don’t have a problem with this trait existing. More traits should be so powerful/unique/niche. But where is the Necro’s equally groundbreaking equivalent? The devs take such baby steps with any buffs we get, yet are clearly more than willing to roll the dice on other professions.

Scepter and staff should scale with power better (currently the scaling and base damage is awful) then this trait wouldnt be so bad. Currently, DS is a ticking time bomb. It will be broken eventually

Prepin.3962:

I was on the fence about making a necro and figured it would be best to see what happens after the patch.

This is rather disheartening to see, and of course the pve limitations with regards to conditions is pretty kittenty as well. Sounds like necros are in a bad spot all around.

Necro is more than fine. It is more the direction of this change. This change sows the seeds for something broken and really really lame.

zone.1073:

Step 1. Summon flesh golem.

Step 2. Wait for flesh golem to autoattack the ele a couple times.

Step 3. Take advantage of the hole poked into Diamond Skin and condi away. Repeat steps 2-3.

Step 0: ele focus fires golem and 1 shots it

Let me clarify – I really like the devs and they do a great job – even though I like to moan :P. But generally this change is just lame

garethh.3518:

jmatb.6307:

ronpierce.2760:

BlackBeard.2873:

Requiem.8769:

If you had any power, you would have been fine. You didn’t. If you’d been in a teamfight, he would have lost that 10% immediately. You’re running headfirst into a brick wall – that is one foot wide. Step 6 inches either direction and you’ll be fine. You can try to argue “oh I shouldn’t have to” and keep running into that wall, but please don’t complain about the immobility of the wall when you’re choosing to run into it.

Quoted again for truth! Necro building for 100% pure condi with a tanky amulet gets upset b/c something would require him to not be tanky with hella damage? Carrion fixes your issues. Teamfighting (which a necro should be doing anyway) fixes your problem.

People have complained that condi-builds could have glass-damage with non-glass survivability. Take a non-tank amulet and enjoy the life that power-builds have had to deal with forever (giving up some survivability for their high damage).

So; okay with this carrion thing.
“Just take carrion and adapt to meta qqqqqqqqqq!”

Condi necros lost 1 bleed to their staff 2 (the main source of condi damage on the staff, 33% nerf)

Lost 1 bleed on a (Scepter?) attack. Another decent sized nerf.

Weakening shroud got obliterated to 2 sec of weakness and a tiny bleed when used (WAY less than half its old effectiveness)

Carrion removes the bleed from proc portion from curses because it has no crit.

Then they do this. Yeah that’s not trying to fix a meta, that’s saying kitten you to necromancers.

This is why so many players are incapable of providing feedback that matters. You take this crap so personal, when all you have to do is take a deep breath, change your amulet to zerker/valks/soldiers, and run a power build.

Sigh…
So because it has counters, does that mean that it improved gameplay?

Diamond skin is not OP, it is actually, overall, pretty underpowered.
But it fits into that same mold of gameplay Anet has been pushing GW2 towards…
Faceroll OP.
Like condis, like CC-wars,like S/D thievs, like phant mesmers, like spirit rangers, exc.

In this case the skill is useless when it isn’t faceroll OP, that is bad for gameplay in either situation.

GW2 needs help.
The game is dying if not on its last leg.
GW2 is getting terribly made skills that are hurting gameplay.
That is quite literally the furthest thing from help.
With changes like these, the devs are actually using their time to make GW2 die faster…

That’s laudable.

I am the necro in the video. This is another account I have. And yes – this is 100% my view. it probably isnt amazing as a trait. But that isnt the point