Guild Wars 2

The team with the most bunkers typically wins.

Uncoordinated soloq teams can not take full advantage of certain synergies and class abilities.

Your best bet is to spec bunker and equip runes/sigils/traits that benefit the group.

In my case, I have tons more experience on necro and ranger, but only win a little over 50% if I stick to the standard dps builds. When I switched to my banner heal warrior, it’s ridiculous how much easier it is.

Frankly though, I wouldn’t even play soloq. Many of the most experienced players don’t even bother.

It’s even more frustrating than a hotjoin because at least you expect double capping nodes, going lord at the wrong time, dying off a node, failure to rez/stomp.

Plus, the match-making is still whack and most games are not even close scores.

If you can get real good at a thief, then Soloq would be for you because you can basically just play it like a duel server where you constantly harass far-nodes and pick your fights. If you do it well, then you win your team the game.

Here’s a better idea…

Why not allow stealth, immunities, and everything else contest a point???

Then, you will actually see which professions are truly OP for any PvP outside of “contest modes”.

This has to be done sooner or later because they’ve already mentioned implementing non-contest mode PVP.

If they don’t allow everything to start contesting a node, then it will be near impossible to balance the professions for both types of PvP.

Certain professions will either be very OP or UP depending on the type of PvP and corrupt the player base in each mode.

Of course, this is simple common sense…most MMO game developers are pretty stubborn and like to overthink even the most obvious and logical things. (Just look the ridiculous proposal to add torment to an auto-attack.)

Why do you think that Warriors are so much more popular and powerful in PvP than rangers?

Total immunity while also the ability to capture the point…heavy armor…never have to worry about pressing heal skill…lots of stability for stomping/rezzing = more warriors wanted over rangers.

Exile.8160:

lol a PU can’t hold a point and take too long to kill anything it’s not a problem in competitive play

It doesn’t matter about the small percentage of people playing super competitive tPvP.

Many more people quit the game over 1v1 imbalances versus team imbalances.

Plus, they already mentioned adding non-point capture PvP, so it’s more important than ever to start balancing the classes for 1v1.

Guess what…if you balance the classes 1v1, then you are pretty much guaranteeing balance in team v team with the exception of a few niche abilities here and there.

When you make a class/build so OP in 1v1, then that’s when people conclude (rightfully so) that the game is just stupid because only a small percentage can ever play with the exact class combos and at the same high level needed where the 1v1 imbalances suddenly “evens out”.

Anybody with any sense can see that adding torment to an auto attack is about the dumbest thing imaginable.

Wait…scratch that…for a team of developers that concluded that Raid of Capricorn was too imba for hotjoins and needed to be deleted, but Skyhammer was just fine for competitive PvP…I guess I understand the logic of adding torment to the auto-attack an OP build/profession.

It’s also comical that they did a similar thing with Dhumfire, but at least it was a 30 point talent. It was nothing that Necros asked for or needed, much like this buff to PU…and guess what…they basically had to nerf it (and a bunch of other condition abilities on Necros) that it is now extinct.

Given the logic of the past…I guess this is just par for the course…/golfclap for consistency in bad logic

kirito.4138:

Skyhammer is fine.

People just don’t realize that it is a different game mode which goes beyond conquest.

It’s actually conquest on a higher level. You need to count more dodges, anticipate enemy skills/cd, positioning, and map awareness. Normally you can miss a few of these and still be alive in typical conquest, but in skyhammer you are punish severely or handsomely rewarded.

The handful that do realize simply refuse to switch to a build/play-style suited for the map. Which leaves the select few that do adapt to wreck havoc on them.

If all professions could stealth and push 1 button to insta-kill…it STILL wouldn’t be “fine” as you claim.

No game is taken seriously when you can get 1 shot…especially by this level of cheese… plus some professions have more of the ability to do it than others.

Logic this obvious shouldn’t even need to be explained, but apparently you have found some contorted rationale to make it seem “fine”.

If Raid on Capricorn was so “imba” due to water combat that it had to be removed from even hotjoins, please explain the logic of how Skyhammer should be in rotation for ranked pvp.

I doubt you’ll respond, but I have popcorn and a good chuckle waiting for your next display of “logic”.

Anastasis.7258:

For people who were trying to defend Nerco Life Force. Do you know that you can build your Life Force for free by hitting some specific structures in Khylo?

First of all, I did not beg or complain. Most of those warrior nerfs are basically the idea I discussed with pre-balance designer Roy.

Reply to Kirakulos: I do play Necromancer myself. I basically play all classes in this game except ranger. I main warrior and I do not defend my own class like ostricheggs or anyone else. All these content are 100% for a better game balancing.

Like I said, if the balance team are more towards to criticize Classes System, They should make some reasonable reason to make these changes.

Warrior: Adrenaline Decay when out of combat- Makes sense since adrenaline shouldn’t exist while you are not fighting.

Mesmer: Clones Dismiss when out of combat- Makes sense too since you shouldn’t need anything to protect you while you are not fighting.

Necromancer: Life Force still exist when out of combat- Is it really make any sense?

Your call, but my main target is focusing on warrior balancing, not Necromancer.

Very primitive logic that is quite surprising coming from an experienced player.

Anybody with even a little experience in MMOs knows you can’t compare 1 ability from one profession and use the same logic across the board. It doesn’t work that way and it’s shocking if you don’t know that.

Secondly, your “example” for a necro is even more absurd. Khylo isn’t the only map in rotation and are you saying necros should cc themselves and pound on a structure just to build enough life force so they are equal to other professions?

I’ll make the logic real simple for you to process.

Take a warrior and necro in a duel and make it where neither can use adrenaline or LF. What do you think would happen?

Remember, a necro has no stability, no block, no evades, no invuln, no vigor, no aegis, no stealth, limited mobility, and is at the bottom for dodges. Take away LF and you have the most kitten class ever created in MMO history (and that’s actually how necro’s start matches!)

Yet…your logic saw fit to equate LF to adrenaline???

You are aware that you can generate adrenaline passively right?

Using your EXACT same logic in reverse, Necros could say they also need an ability to generate LF passively.

Hopefully you see the sheer folly of your argument by now

Hotjoins are a total embarrassment to Anet.

All they do is teach bad habits and have nothing but lopsided ‘competition’.

The only thing it’s marginally good for is testing builds, but anyone relying on how they do with a build in hotjoin is in for a rude awakening.

Even WoW 2.0 (or whenever they first released non-competitive battlegrounds) had a better setup over 10 years ago.

Instead of fix underwater combat, they threw their hands up and gave up.

Ironically, it was only active in hotjoins which are more pointless now then they were pre-patch.

Yet…they kept skyhammer in ranked pvp…/facepalm

I would have loved to been in the Anet meeting where the topic of which map to delete came up and some clown said “let’s get rid of Capricorn in hotjoins, it’s really causing a lot of players to complain and hotjoins are serious business”…then…others actually agreed.

When the topic of skyhammer comes up, someone says…“Let’s keep it as is…it’s totally fine and nobody cares”

Seems like a twilight zone episode if you actually think about how ridiculous the logic is.

Darnis.4056:

Lordrosicky.5813:

To be honest if they fixed the bug and allowed you to be healed (with regen etc) for your health pool whilst in death shroud it would be fine.

This is not a Bug, Necros would be Ridic OP if this went through.

You’re right and wrong at the same time, which is why there is such a catch-22 with a Necro.

If you study the design of a Necro, it’s main flaw in design is relying on LF for almost 100% of its defensiveness/survivability.

As a result, nothing is an easier kill when a Necro has little to no LF.

People tend to forget how easily they kill low LF necros in just a few seconds (warriors and thieves even faster). Instead, they remember the times when they are facing a 100% LF necro who has all the various fears off cooldown available.

This huge delta in survivability creates a totally different impression about Necros from players (and apparently developers).

Here are the main problems:

A Necro starts with ZERO LF and there are no passive traits or out-of-combat ways to generate it other than a ridiculous pre-match ritual that obviously wasn’t intended.

A Necro has zero access to vigor, evades, invuln, stealth, block, and other types of defenses that mitigate 100% of incoming damage whether you are facing 1 or 100 foes.

Even with 100% LF, a necro has virtually ZERO defense or escapability against large numbers of people because LF gets eaten up instantly when zerged.

Since other professions have access to defenses that mitigate 100% damage and/or escapability, you have an imbalance that is just an inherent flaw in design.

It would be nice to know how much LF the developers assume a Necro has when balancing them in 1v1 scenarios. How about their survivability in 1v2 compared to other classes? How long they can survive or escape 1v10 compared to others?

Once you realize the inherent weakness in survivability and escapability compared to other classes, it’s almost IMPERATIVE that a Necro be OP in 1v1 to offset the discrepancy in almost every other scenario.

Personally, I would fix the Necros lack of survivability/escapability versus making them OP in 1v1 to offset their weaknesses in other areas. However, that option was presented to ANET and they chose Dhumfire instead (which ironically now is virtually extinct).

The problem with Necros is most classes can offset their weaknesses now with certain signets/runes/utilities – especially something like celestial amulets.

With Necros, they have no virtually no way to get defensive attributes such as vigor, stability, aegis. They also have no evades, invulns and no stealth or mobility which means they basically have to tank damage.

Unfortunately, they start with ZERO life force and it takes forever (in PvP terms) to fill the LF bar. Most necros have to go into DS before it gets even near full at the start of a match.

On top of all that, you can’t heal or use tons of your other skills while in DS.

Oh…and when you do have to heal…it’s cast time is well over 1 second which is a lifetime in PvP.

The design is actually interesting and would be intriguing if other classes had similar huge weaknesses to exploit. However, that is not the case.

A warrior NEVER has to even click their healing skill. This is like playing tic-tac-toe and giving them an extra turn. They also have full immunity to physical and condi damage for long periods on short cooldowns, high armor, high mobility, stability, and equal damage potential.

They do have one resource to manage – adrenaline – but it fills up in a fraction of the time it takes Necros to do the same.

We could go through other class comparisons as well, but since warriors are 4 times more plentiful in PvP, it makes sense to highlight the obvious problems that haven’t been addresses for quite awhile now.

Good thing Necros are at least desired more than warriors in PvE…oh wait…

Without auto-balance, hotjoins would be one-sided and non-competitive.

Oh wait…we already have that with auto-balance.

Kudos to Anet for solving nothing, but adding this additional aggravation to the already one-sided, non-competitive, and bad-habit forming waste that is called hotjoin.

If team swap was supposed to make hotjoins more competitive and fair, then it’s failed miserably.

It’s only aggravating players and making things worse.

When’s the last time that team swap in hotjoin made a difference?

How many competitive hotjoins do you get out of 10? Scratch that…u will need a sample size of 100.

Gratz to Anet on creating a “solution” that solves nothing and aggravates players more than it helps.

Ironically, it’s sPvP that needs to be “balanced”, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to force it. A game will even start with 4v5.

Why would you EVER start a game uneven?

Anet has actually hit a double fail…They chose the wrong type of active balancing for meaningless hotjoins and they did NOTHING to make sure ranked pvp is balanced.

Kudos!

vincecontix.1264:

Dude its part of all online games not much anyone can do apart have harsh penalties to ensure players play the match they qued to play. Anet has done that already, I myself had five 4v5 today and I also happen to dc in one of my matches. Its part of playing online games its more noticeable in gw2 due to fact there are 10 players in a match as oppose to 2v2 or 3v3, so there is high probability for there to be an afk or dc.

This is just a BS excuse for something that should be addressed.

There were 40 man raids in WoW 1.0 where people never DC’d with old internet routers/technology/etc for the entire march to Ragnaros.

Saying it’s unreasonable to expect 10 players to stay online for 10 minutes in 2014 is sheer folly.

This is a problem that was harvested by the poor job Anet has done with hotjoins. Hotjoins make it easy for players to quit, switch teams, and learn other poor habits.

The counter penalties to punish this behavior in ranked PvP are laughable.

You’re always going to have SOME kitten players who que when their internet connection isn’t reliable or rage quit, but everyone else shouldn’t suffer.

It’s totally corrupted PvP and made it unplayable. I tried to do 1 game last night just to see if things had changed and sure enough – 4v5.

It’s unplayable – not because of the ridiculous builds they created with the last patch – it’s because they force new players to play with experience players. It’s miserable for both.

Hotjoin is teaching people nothing but BAD habits – rage quit, double cap points, run dumb builds, etc.

sPvP is even worse. My win rate used to be over 60% when it was mostly experienced players on both sides and communication before/during the match. Now, it’s just a glorified hotjoin and people don’t even care or try.

I tried helping new people, talking strategy before the match, etc. but nobody cares anymore, so I just go through the motions too.

Occasionally, you can get a decent run of tPvP, but it’s sad what has happened and how many people have quit.

First of all, it’s ridiculous that they put new people up against experienced people in ranked pvp or even hotjoins…no other MMO puts brand new players in such a situation.

Your best bet is to spectate others or watch streams. So many people try to learn first hand and get frustrated and quit.

If you don’t know what you’re doing and get stomped pretty regularly, then stick to hotjoins and spectating until you get the hang of it. There is no point being a masochist and also hurting others on your team if you don’t feel up-to-speed.

Hey guys…here’s a great idea…

Why don’t they have both 8v8 and 5v5…so that those who like 8v8 and those who like 5v5 can play whichever they want.

Maybe some people will even switch between both.

Oh wait…that makes way too much sense and was what we already had.

Instead…let’s just make everybody play 5v5…fewer people will play…the games will never start off fair…and most certainly they will never end fair or with a close score.

I challenge ANYONE to play 2 games in a row of hotjoin where the score and rosters are even close. Heck…it will take you an hour+ just to get 1 in a row.

Who on earth can objectively say hotjoins are better now than before? I need to smoke what you are smoking if you think it’s better now.

Isn’t it ridiculous that they designed a class with perma evade AND stealth.

I’m speaking both for the Thief who can’t survive long otherwise and the opponents who have to deal with this cheeze.

I’m struggling to conceive of developer meeting where they sit down and say “Yeah…this sounds like a great idea…let’s give this class with stealth the ability to evade almost every attack too…it will be fun for both sides.”

Ironically, they did it twice with mesmers too…albeit on a smaller scale.

Some people rage quit over anything…but I’ve seen people quit the game totally over the amount of cheeze that is in the game now. There used to be only a couple of cheezy things, but the last patch made it “balanced” where almost every class is running cheeze builds that either 1-2 shot you or never die.

GW2 used to be a game of skill with great balance in TTK…now, it’s Build Wars 2…not skill.

The game is on its last leg with PvP. Few people with extensive experience play anymore and it’s barely surviving based on newbies right now.

Unfortunately, they put newbies in matches with experienced people, which makes it a miserable experience for both. (Imaging if WoW, Swotr, etc. put level 1s in BGs with end game level people.)

For everything they “fixed” in the last patch…the created a new and even bigger problem.

On a macro basis, the game is now empty. They got rid of pvp ranks which makes all that effort (which was the ONLY “reward” for PvP before) wasted.

Instead of fixing underwater combat, they just chunked it from every BG and even totally eliminated an entire BG. What a waste of programming and learning certain skills, combos, traits for experienced players! If they “give up” instead of fixing things, it’s hard to blame players for quitting either.

They made the most obvious blunder imaginable by combining sigils that could easily get exploited and didn’t properly project certain runes being OP. (What’s scary is that they almost let confusion runes go through too until the community set them straight at the last minute.)

They got rid of 8v8 hotjoin for no reason. It was a great compromise and change of pace from the WvW zerg and the 5v5 competitive pvp. Now..you can’t get 1 hotjoin to stay 5v5 to save your life. It never starts 5v5 and the scores are always lopsided. People are getting the frustrating “team swap” 10x more than in the past which is further evidence of failure.

Matchmaking is an absolute joke…they say PvP is “close to where they want it”, but who on earth could possibly say that with a straight face. It’s absolutely miserable for new and experienced players trying to solo que. Who could play this game for more than an hour and not notice the big problem. (just read the catankerous chat in a sPvP game…lol)

Heart of the Mist is a statue museum…literally everything is gone and there is no point for players to just be sitting in this area…it just looks stupid by any objective measure.

AI in this game is the worst programming I can remember. It’s even worse than WoW 1.0. Still to this day, you can summon minions/illusions/etc and they will just stand there or get their abilities sabotaged for no reason. It’s another thing that’s embarassing by any objective measure…yet the “fixes” in the last patch were tons of things nobody was calling for (removal of ranks, 8v8, removal of capricorn, combo of sigils, etc)

Last but not least….they spent all this programming last patch adding new stuff nobody called for…removed things nobody had a problem with…yet they did NOTHING with Skyhammer…Unfreakinbelievable!

This is the twilight zone if PvP is “close to where they want it”. If none of the above make sense, just watch the population stats in PvP and I GUARANTEE they are going down – not up – after the initial “glow” of the last patch wears off.

As someone who played since release, the PvP aspect of the game is actually at an all time low for me. I rarely ever play.

You can’t even get a decent hotjoin match much less a sPvP or tPvP match. Almost no hotjoin stays 5v5 throughout (at least with 8v8 there were quick replacements). Instead, one quitter just spawns a bunch of quitting on both sides.

Same for sPvP…the matchmaking is so bad and leaderboards so wonky that it’s more aggravating then fun. The rewards are so ridiculously bad that it makes things even worse.

As for balance, it’s comical how they can say things are where they want. Who could possibly play let’s say a necro and then swap to a warrior and think things are equal???

Who could say 2 shotting people with fire/ice/strength runes builds are “where they want”?

Who could possibly play the game for more than a couple hours and say any aspect of PVP is balanced and fun?

Some may disagree, but all you have to do is look at the popularity of the game, que times, and dearth of active hotjoins to see that my opinion is more the norm.

Darnis.4056:

Sucks the most for honest Shatter mesmers like me :/
I get hate tells from pvehotjoin heros all the time,
“omg ur so skill, ai ftw, gg”

Most of the time they die because they eat 4 Mind wrack 3 Cry of confusion instantly..(Roughly 16k damage with Blurred frenzy going)
Highest warlock crit I’ve seen so far in game was 8k, on a thief, with 25 vuln (oh yea, sit in my chaos storm bro) and 19 might on me.

Pro tips: Don’t sit in chaos storm, Each time you’re dazed? That’s 8 vuln. if you get 25 vuln on you, My auto attacks start hitting for 2.6k.

Interesting…Let’s forget about the ridiculous Phantasm damage on their own.

You say you can also do 16k damage “instantly” while evading attaches AND stack multiple conditions in a 240 range AND build 19 might AND add more vulnerability for a daze AND have your auto attacks hit for up to 2.6k if your opponents make a mistake.

Ooops…I forgot about your “Cry of Confusion” too (it’s actually Cry of Frustration, FYI).

Is all this massive damage and good stuff on 180 second cooldown? No?
60 seconds? No? 45 seconds? Nope?

Can’t you also be stealthed, harder to target, and/or blink out of range too???

If it only works on PvE heroes, then please elaborate further why you play this build…

Thanks for being a self-proclaimed “honest shatter mesmer”. I understand the profession has a few counters at high level, but here’s the problem….

If a newbie gets penalized this bad for making a mistake and it can happen to them over and over and over….every 30 seconds at least…then I think you highlighted a big problem and, ironically, gave yourself the evidence of why you get those PMs.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Popping in to say we’re still looking into summon damage.

I think you will notice that having SOME summons scale with the owners stats and some NOT will create problems if major things change with buff/stats/gear/etc. (i.e. like this recent patch).

I think WoW dealt with a similar issue many years ago and just decided to have everything scale because it was too difficult to constantly change things every time a new tier of gear got released and some classes didn’t get the full benefit.

In GW2 case, it looks like the few summons that DO SCALE are the outliers and creating the more drastic problem.

However, the ones that don’t scale can create equal problems because they will do far too much damage when the owner is specd strictly for defense/healing/tank.

A quick fix is possible, but I think this is the core problem you guys will eventually have to address.

Neurophen.9738:

I spent a while trying to reproduce crazy high warlock hits on the target golems with various builds. Didn’t get anywhere close to 12.8k with a pure phantasm build. I did see a swordsman crit the light armor golem for 7k but there was a bunch of vulnerability stacks on it, and 6k crit was more usual.

As far as I can tell the damage is basically the same as before the patch.

If you’re not able to get the same crits other mesmers are getting, you may want to check with some experienced ones on how to do it.

Almost everyone has noticed it happen by now.

The bottom line is that you can’t have this type of damage coming from ANY scenario…much less one that is pet AI and not even a 180 second cooldown type.

What’s even funnier is that people are trying to justify it based on conditions on the target.

Are you saying it’s fair to have someone able to put a ton of conditions on you AND do this extreme damage too?…All on short cooldowns???…lol

Even if you claim 100% of the conditions came from another source (which isn’t likely), this is ridiculous if the game is balanced on team play.

Veterans of this game will remember we already went through similar stuff in the past where Ranger pets were doing too much damage and had no range restrictions. They could just sit back and let the pets do all the work. This was absurd…even for Rangers 100% spec’d for pet damage…and it was fixed.

Necro pets never did anything NEAR this type of damage, yet they just had their damage shaved too…so trying to justify this Mesmer phantasm damage is just embarrassing.

But like I said earlier…no matter what…people will still contrive excuses and scenarios to say this is fine and balanced…so keep the entertainment flowing.

Having traits that counter other builds/professions are fun and good to have in the game. It adds an element of strategy into your preparation and counter preparation.

However, if the idea is to have combat based on SKILL… it’s never a good idea to have super hard counters…especially in just 1 trait.

Having a big advantage occasionally on a cooldown is fine…Having it via a passive skill 100% of the time is a poor decision.

The delta between this trait’s “usefulness” and “worthlessness” is way too big.

It hinders both the ele and condi classes and takes skill largely out of the equation.

Nobody was complaining about Capricorn…it was a fun change of pace in the same-old-same-old hotjoin rotation…it was hurting NOBODY…yet they remove it completely and kept Skyhammer in the ranked rotation.

What kinda logic is that????

You could have removed Skyhammer altogether and virtually nobody would have complained…except certain cheese build engies.

Instead…they turned a creative map played just for fun into a complete waste of programming.

How could anybody who plays this game regularly come up with this “idea”?

Seriously, I’d really love to hear the logic I’m missing and/or the massive feedback that was saying to keep Skyhammer in sPvP and get rid of Capricorn in hotjoins.

It’s beyond disappointing…it’s just crazy!

I was PvP rank 60 and played necro for a majority of that time…although never MM since rank 20.

I just tried it again the last few days and can see that it is very noob friendly, but can also be played at a high level if you know how to chain minion skills.

However, anybody complaining about this build needs to L2P. It is so easy to beat if you know what you are doing.

On top of that, I found the pet AI to be still awful. I stopped playing it at rank 20 over a year ago because my Golem would just stand around doing nothing sometimes.

Come to find out…it’s still got the same primitive AI programming that its always had.

Even WOW 1.0 had better pet AI over 10 years ago than GW2.

Whoever programmed the pet AI should be embarrassed…even moreso that it is still this way so long after release.

If anything, the dishonor debuff should be MORE penalizing.

People DO leave because of losing.

And…Most people with connection issues are due to THEIR poor internet service/computer…not ANET.

If you have high disconnects and/or like to ragequit, then you have ZERO business playing in ranked sPvP.

Not only are you hurting yourself, you are hurting others. It’s common courtesy…much like you wouldn’t sneeze on people if you’re sick.

Like most forum posts, this one is complaining about something from the selfish perspective of “how it impacts me only”.

Xaylin.1860:

SPESHAL.9106:

No matter how ridiculous the damage or bug in the game…you still have a handful of people who will try to defend it.

The only ridiculous thing is complaining about the damage as long as you can’t even tell in what kind of scenario it happened. iWarlock is known for dealing an insane amount of damage in PvE on bosses so I’m not surprised seeing it happen in PvP. Instead of instantly assuming a bug people should at least try to figure out what is going on.

Maybe renegade ran the en vogue Runes of Strength and had 25 stacks of Might? Did renegade run any Phantasm modifiers? The Thief most likely had a whole bunch of conditions on him since he just came out of a Chaos Storm. If he got dazed he also might have had 5 stacks of Vulnerability. If he got interrupted you can add 3 more stacks ontop of that. He also had 2 stacks of Vulnerability due to Leap. He still might have been under the effect of Immobilize from Leap. We don’t even have a clue how many other conditions he might have had.

I’m actually more suspicious about the Swordsman hits than the Warlock hits.

Lol…exactly what I said.

NO MATTER WHAT…this is insane damage…and we aren’t even talking about something with a 180 second cooldown.

Yet..people are trying to rationalize it and think it’s explainable and balanced.

Xaylin.1860:

renegade.4851:

regular 10/30/0/0/30 d/p thief build with berserker amulet
I’ve had the same swordsman numbers against guardians for example

So Pyro is right.

Seriously… what do people expect when they go full out glass cannon?

You know what’s hilarious about these threads?

No matter how ridiculous the damage or bug in the game…you still have a handful of people who will try to defend it.

What rational person thinks that kind of damage is fine?

One of the streamers – Toker – got hit by a phantasm (not rogue) for 9k too tonight.

There’s something weird going on.

Just fight the NPCs in the mist and you will quickly notice a dramatic change – unless you are new to the game.

There was nothing noted in the patch notes about a change this big, so it’s probably a bug somewhere. As someone already noted, I suspect it is due to a glitch in the ferocity re-programming.

Maybe these NPCs/minions/phantasms still have the previous hard coded crit damage AND got ferocity added too.

It needs to be fixed fast before more people notice.

I feel sorry for new players…even the NPCs in the Mist are wrecking them.

Granted…this isn’t a big deal…especially for certain players who don’t care about aesthetics…but what is the point of HOM main area..

You got all these people just standing around in an area with no purpose anymore.

No rune/sigil/amulet vendors…no bank…no glory vendors…no need for tourney vendor…no forge.

It just looks silly seeing people stand frozen in this area now…like a Medusa dragon turned everybody into statues.

Either make the dps trial/training areas the new “main” hangout…or bring bank/market options to the area so people can do something. You might even have less afkers at the start of the match if people could be more active in HOM.

Add it to the list of things that went backward this patch..not forward.

1. Take away build diversity because it’s too hard for new players to understand
2. Take away under water combat and remove all those items, abilities, and strats developed over the years.
3. Remove the perfectly fine 8v8 option in hotjoin which actually was a perfect change of pace between mass zergs of WvW and the super small focus of 5v5 over large maps.

All of that stuff is now wasted programming.

It’s like they are only catering to new players who like FPS or the hardcore tournament players.

Even among those groups…How many ever really complained about build diversity, 8v8 hotjoin, or Raid on Capricorn?

All this game needed was a better reward system to keep people interested and some tweaks to certain professions here and there.

Yet…they have removed good programming and added programming for tons of 30 point traits that will never even be used by 10% of the players. You can tell these traits were contrived just to make sure each profession had a quota of 1 new trait per line.

This is unbelievable, sad and funny at the same time.

The better question is…“Will the game be more balanced as a whole than before?”

Seems to me like they only had to tweak warriors and a few overbudget builds/abilities for several professions to make things pretty balanced.

Instead, they basically did “expansion-level” changes and look to just be exchanging one problem for another. In some cases, they are fixing one thing, but breaking 2 more.

Thank goodness they listened about Perplexity runes in sPvP, but there are a ton of other things in this patch just as obvious.

Justin ODell.9517:

What are your arguments for the fine-tuning approach that jewels give? What exactly did it open up? What is now going to disappear? I’m genuinely interested in both sides of this one.

I’m not sure the jewel change will yield a ton of arguments for those unhappy with the dumbing down of the game. However, you’re ignoring all of the other things that being changed to “dumb” down the game.

The rune changes have countless examples of changing people’s build. I don’t have to give you examples, just search your database of all players above rank 30 and see how many of them currently mix and match runes to get a playstyle that they like.

I say this not just to complain about the change, but also to congratulate the developers on making a very build diverse game that is fairly well-balanced. In fact, with the exception of warrior healing signet, elemental love, and some tweaks to certain OP abilities/traits for various professions…the game is about as balanced as you could expect.

Removing the build diversity makes no sense and your logic makes no sense if you really think about it. New players were already guided/defaulted away from mixing and matching runes/jewels/etc. If new players were mixing and matching totally dumb combinations based on bad UI, then I could understand the change.

The fact that more advanced players mixed and matched is not a sign that “mixing and matching” was a problem. It’s just another indicator of skill and experience, which is what every game should aspire to have. If mixing and matching created OP builds that were better than the defaults, then that is a specific problem to address…not evidence that build diversity is a problem.

Again, I say this in a complementary way because you’ve already gone through a lot of effort to make sure these extra options for players don’t cause any major problems.

I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to break some bad news to you about your logic supporting this change…any new player who finds build diversity and mixing/matching gear more of a turn-off than positive aspect won’t be playing your game very long regardless.

You might as well make a first person shooter if that’s the players you want to attract because there are countless other things in the game play of GW2 that require far more learning curve than mixing and matching runes/jewels.

I decided to compare the current Dhuumfire to the post patch version to see exactly what % nerf Anet calculated for this grandmaster trait.

It’s hard to do an efficient analysis using sPvP, so I decided to test the best case scenario for the post patch version.

First, I spent 60 seconds (+/- one second for inaccurate time keeping) hitting the indestructible Target Golem with Dhuumfire traited and was routinely able to get 5-6 procs of burning while spamming scepter 1.

To test the post patch version, I traited for quick LF generation and I did everything possible to build LF as quick as possible (used locust swarm and unholy feast on cooldown).

I swapped to DS everytime I had enough Life Force and it was on cooldown. I also immediately swapped out of DS after just hitting 1 Life Blast, so I could go back and build more Life Force for the next cooldown of DS and Dhuumfire.

Even with this absurd effort that in no way will resemble real life…the average was only 4 Life Blasts spaced between the recharge time of the Dhuumfire.

This crude but conservative calculation means the nerf is over 20% even with a totally unrealistic rotation.

Against the Mist NPCs that fight back, this rotation isn’t even possible and the nerf is more like 50-80% (in addition to it neutering your defenses because you’re having to blow Life Force and fear just to make sure the life blast hits and you get this grandmaster trait to do anything.)

Against real players who dodge, evade, immune, stealth, block, blind, reflect, etc. you can easily imagine the nerf % being a multiple of my target dummy experiment.

Now…maybe I’m missing something…maybe they are going to significantly increase the payoff for hitting a Dhuumfire with Life Blast and/or reduce the internal cooldown. If so, then you would have a more complicated formula for calculating the nerf %.

However, if not, then they probably would be better off just removing the trait altogether and replacing it with something that is actually worthy of grandmaster level.

Either way, it’s peculiar that a passive and widely regarded OP heal like Warrior Healing Signet gets only a 8% nerf…Perplexity runes which aren’t even allowed in sPvP because they are so OP get only a 30% nerf…yet a grandmaster trait gets made active and nerfed at a much higher %.

I would definitely be interested in hearing the logic behind this from Anet.

Uhtameit.2413:

Sure, it will proc less. The fact that it procced every 10s made scepter AA op, now it isn’t OP and QQ-ers are everywhere .

I love your tears.

I’m glad you finally abandoned your “counter” and “L2P” arguments and resorted to the more accurate characterization of your posts – “Ha..Ha..Sucks to be you”

Save yourself the embarrassment next time and just say that in your first post.

Uhtameit.2413:

I like how all the necro fanboys just ignored my counter arguments. Nice. Time to L2P I guess.

I’m pretty sure it is you who needs to learn to play if you think the “counter” to the Dhuumfire nerf is….

“How about taking X in soul reaping to get some LF, and using Life Blast while the opponent is feared/immobilized? no? I guess not.”

I’ll explain this one more time, so you can specifically prove it to yourself.

Record an hour of playing sPvP with Dhuumfire and then count how many times it procs and how much damage it does.

Then, go ahead and spec your “counter” in soul reaping. Record an hour of sPvP and count how many times you land a Life Blast. Don’t even bother playing smart and saving your LF and fear for defensive purposes. Go ahead and swap to DS as much as possible and waste as much LF as possible to cast fear/life blast to get a hypothetical post-patch Dhuumfire to proc.

Count how many times you were able to do it and it will be a fraction of what proc’d before. Not to mention how much you neutered your defensive/survivability just to get your Grandmaster trait to do anything.

After you do this exercise…come back to the forum and admit that it is YOU who needs to L2P.

SuperHaze.4210:

A lot of veteran necros thought that dhuumfire was not necessary. At the time of implementation, the necro community was asking for mobility and CC buffs but instead got dhuumfire. It’s good to have access to a powerful condition such as burning, but to have it proc on crits makes it too passive of a tool. I think having it proc on Life Blasts is a decent idea, but we won’t know how it will affect our gameplay until it’s actually implemented. I see what the devs are trying to do with making the game more active and since DS is so underused in condi builds, it forces us necros to be a little more active and to use all of our abilities.

Whether dhuumfire was necessary is debatable, but something was definitely needed at the time. They decided NOT to give additional mobility, evades, vigor, stealth, stability, immunity, or any other kind of defensive buffs…so…I think they’ve pretty much admitted now that they were wrong to give an offensive buff.

Unfortunately, they still haven’t made any material changes to defenses or LF generation to compensate for the Dhuumfire nerf…so…there is genuine concern.

If you think the nerf to Dhuumfire isn’t massive, all you need to do is record an hour of sPvP and count how many times Dhuumfire proc’d. Now, go back and count how many times you landed a Life Blast.

It’s an enormous discrepancy…plus it will be forcing you into your defensive stance when not needed just to get your 30 point talent to do anything. Condi necros will almost always be out of LF compared to now AND doing less damage.

If they think an 8% nerf to warrior healing signet is a material decrease to their survivability, maybe they should run the numbers on how much extra damage necros take with no life force…it will be MUCH bigger than 8%.

Anyone running Dhuumfire post patch will quickly realize how much of a nerf it was to BOTH damage and survivability.

Now…that being said…I can totally get on board with making the game more “active” versus passive…ONLY IF THEY ARE CONSISTENT.

The Warrior healing signet and allowing perplexity runes into sPvP are two of the most obvious counter examples. Anyone with half a brain knows these things are OP and used over other options for a reason. The major problem with these things are the passive aspect…yet they have done NOTHING to make them more active.

These turn their whole Dhuumfire nerf logic into sheer folly and makes Anet look silly.

There is a reason that Perplexity wasn’t allowed in sPvP…and it wasn’t because it was OP by the small amount of nerfs proposed in this next patch.

If that were the case, then Lyssa would have never been allowed in sPvP either.

It’s a baffling decision by Anet…

They decide to take something that is clearly broken and previously wasn’t even allowed in serious PvP…yet they spread the broken aspect to other areas of the game.

I’m going to go on record and say the game is far better without Perplexity period..then the proposed “solution”.

Time will tell who is right…but I guarantee it will have to be “fixed” again…anybody with any sense can see that.

You know what further proves the folly in their logic?

They take a Grandmaster trait like Dhuumfire and nerf it because it’s too passive (arguable deserved)…yet…they add Perplexity to sPvP where EVERYBODY can have an even more OP virtually passive skill (what half decent player can’t interrupt even by accident?).

Necros now have to invest 30 traits points to get Dhuumfire. On top of that, they will now have to have life force…switch into death shroud…then hit their target with a much slower cast time/projectile skill just to get the 30 point trait to do a couple seconds of extra damage.

Yet Perplexity is fine…lol

Peter’s comments are exactly what I suspected and indicative of a flaw in almost all MMO game design.

They use these giant spreadsheet to “calculate” balance between abilities/classes. However, far too many things can’t be represented in a spreadsheet or hard numbers so these are areas in almost ANY MMO where there are problems.

I did a post many months ago highlighting the most common areas where developers struggle to “balance” things (i.e. stealth, cc, mobility, burst, etc.). And sure enough…some of the most significantly nerfed classes since release have been ones originally created with the most stealth, cc, burst, and mobility (i.e. thieves and mesmers)…yet they are STILL strong!

In the case of healing signet, developers often underestimate the value of a “passive” versus an “active”. Not only that…most healing skills aren’t insta-cast…so you have more than just a global cooldown and extra step in your “fight” to manage. You also force other classes to spend time casting something that can be interrupted and also create an opportunity cost for these classes.

As I’ve said many times, it’s almost impossible to balance a core ability that is active for everyone else, but passive for one class/profession. You are essentially giving them the equivalent of an extra turn in tic-tac-toe, which then makes it essential to “balance” a bunch of other areas to make things fair.

Passive healing signet will ALWAYS be either OP or UP because of their failure to recognize this issue….Peter’s comments essentially endorse what I’m saying although he appears to still be confused as to why.

Regardless of rank, this guy is near the mark in identifying the outliers that have needed to be fixed for a long time.

I’ve been saying similar things.

The game is pretty well balanced except for certain outlier abilities that are just ridiculous and in obvious need of fixing.

They are finally addressing the most obvious (i.e. warrior healing signet) after months of people telling them this had to be done. It’s debatable whether they are doing enough for people to choose the active/other healing skills, but at least they finally recognize the problem.

You can’t have one class/profession never have to click a healing skill and have it properly balanced. It’s like getting an extra turn in tic-tac-toe. On top of that, warriors have so many immunities and stuns that it can put even the most skilled players on their heals against average players. The abnormal growth in warrior pvp population should have tipped them off long ago about the skill-less-ness of warrior gameplay.

Eles have problems that need fixing ASAP, but the ridiculous burst build is another obvious outlier that should have been identified and fixed long ago.

Pet AI dominating PvP builds for rangers, mesmers and necros is another really bad decision. It looks like that is getting addressed fairly nicely this next patch, but it’s been a problem far too long.

Things like Diamond Skin and Automated Response are obvious outliers with far too big a delta between being worthless and OP in different situation. These type abilities totally REMOVE skill from the equation and make outcomes strictly dependent on build matchups.

Lyssa runes has been an issue since day 1. Not sure how they can say it’s balanced for all elites, yet they tie the 6 piece bonus to elite usage….This is BAD design and should be fixed.

Here’s the pickle ANET created though…

They intentionally made some professions – like a necro – with little mobility and no immunities. Instead, they made their defenses based on DS and tanking damage, instead of avoiding it.

Thus, if you change the amount of damage being shelled out, it impacts different professions unproportionately. Reducing damage would help Necros and some other professions/builds much more than others.

For example… stealth, mobility, and immunities can help you avoid infinite amounts of damage…so “reducing everything” won’t impact those “defenses” as much as it would a profession that uses non-infinite damage defenses.

ANET keeps affirming that they INTEND things to be this way, so it really puts them in a pickle in terms of balancing the professions and increasing/decreasing damage.

For example, should a Necro be balanced on having 100% LF at the start of a fight, 50%, or 0%…Since DS does not have the “infinite” defense capability of other defenses, should DS allow a Necro to tank 1v1 damage, 2v1 damage, 3v1 damage???

In short…it seems obvious to say “reduce everything”…but they made some fundamental design decisions that make it a little more complex…and can actually harm balance more than it helps.

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ll be honest, I like tier lists, especially when they’re well-made. They’re an interesting insight into player perceptions at different levels of play (even if I think I have a decent grasp on it already!). I also accept that the lists are subjective and are often interpreted in various ways by different individuals.

I’d love to see a new version of this thread flourish, but I think it’s important that we provide context for the lists. Casting a wide net and saying “rate these professions!” is invariably going to cause some polarizing discussion, and I think it’s fairly obvious why. Instead of creating a tier list based off of professions, I think it would be more prudent to create a tier list that includes popular or ‘meta’ builds or even roles, considering that professions are able to be played in such different ways depending on how you build it. For example, there are a multitude of builds for engineer – some top-tier, and some low-tier, but they’re both under the engineer umbrella, and each provide varying levels of results.

Anyways, just my 2c! Try to keep things constructive.

Wouldn’t you have internal stats (via the leaderboards) showing which classes are un-proportionately ranked higher?

It should be US asking YOU to share this information…instead of us littering the forums with subjective analysis.

The stats don’t lie. Just take a profession like guardian and see how their average rank compares to others.

Do this for all of your professions and bingo! You have a good idea of which professions are best at PvP.

The specific changes to warriors can be debated, but right now it’s obvious what the problems are:

1. Passive heal that is too strong and negates ever using the active
2. Too many/long immunities

When everyone else has to use a heal skill and one profession does not, then that’s like playing tic-tac-toe with an extra turn.

When you combine it with the amount of CC and still very high damage, plus add in anywhere from 6 to 8 seconds of near immunity, and it’s like giving someone the 3 first moves in tic tac toe.

It’s total easy mode when I play my warrior compared to almost any other profession.

There are a couple builds that can counter a warrior, but it’s still way too easy a profession. The passive heal is the obvious problem when you compare professions.

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.

MMO designers seem to consistently over/undervalue the effects of 4 things:

1. Stealth – It’s hard to factor on a “balance spreadsheet” the ability to not be targetted and/or reset the fight whenever you want.

2. Mobility – Any class without mobility will be severely kitten in many scenarios even if they are ok in 1v1 duels or even zergs.

3. Passive abilities – Not having to click a button for something everybody else has to do is HUGE. It’s like having one extra turn at Tic-Tac-Toe.

4, Artificial Intelligence – Classes with lots of reliance on AI are extremely hard to balance for multiple scenarios.

If you look at GW2, Anet has had problems with all 4 since release, but it’s nothing new to MMOs.

It’s just a little surprising that the fixes have been wacky.

For example, when Necros were bad/extinct, they didn’t give them any mobility…they just went overboard buffing one spec’s damage and CC to make them viable.

The same is true for Warriors although they went a step further and made it where they don’t even have to activate a heal AND they don’t have to worry about crit gear like all other classes.

When thieves were ridiculous, they did a lot to neuter damage, but very little to address the major cause for their imbalance (too much stealth, evade, dodge).

Next patch may finally address some of these areas, but who knows if it will be enough.

I could be wrong, but I project Mesmers being the next subject of balance issues after the patch due to several of the issues noted above.

Huttball was/is great, but the map was just a tad too small. Some of the different class mechanics (like jugg leap) made it far too easy to score.

In GW2, it would be ideal for certain maps which all have enough room that no individual class would be super dominant.

Some non-mobile classes like necros/engy would play the same role as snipers in Swotr.

Also agree with the PvE side of Swotr…it was very well done and few games made you feel as attached to a character/storyline. Companions in PVE was brilliant from both a gameplay and storyline perspective.

People will complain about anything.

I don’t see what the big deal is. You have 5v5 solo and team que as well as hotjoins — if that is what you prefer.

Personally, I like the option to choose 5v5, 8v8 or do WvW. If you think 8v8 is too much of a zergfest, what do you think about WvW? Should that be deleted too because of your personal preference?

Most pvp maps are plenty big enough to support 8 players. If you spectate 8v8 hotjoins, only a small % of fighting is spent in AOE zergs. The real difference that there is a ton more action off the nodes than compared with 5v5.

This is hardly the biggest problem in the game needing a whine thread.

These posts are comical.

Which MMO has better balance, combat mechanism, and PvP variety?

It’s not perfect, and there are tons of things I could nitpick too…but take a step back and realize how many permutations they have to balance in PvP.

Each class can play multiple roles and there are exponentially more options depending on the armor, runes, sigils, trinkets, etc.

I’m actually IMPRESSED by the balance they’ve been able to achieve in this game on the whole.

Yes…PvP rewards are weak, there should be an Arena playstyle, and balance issues like warriors not having to worry about clicking their heal nor spec for crit are obvious things that should be fixed.

However, it’s still a game that can offer you lots of challenges with mastering different builds, playstyles, and in multiple venues (solo, team, wvw, pve).

Best of all…if your class happens to totally suck at everything or you don’t like it/get bored…you can immediately respec or reroll to FotM without grinding.

Before you blast Anet, think of all the fail MMOs in the past and make sure it’s not just a personal issue that’s causing you to get frustrated.

I know it’s hard for some people to digest that a game doesn’t revolve 100% around them and their specific wants.

It’s unfortunate that the matchmaking element was overlooked before rolling this out.

It’s turned off a lot of players to a new feature that should have been a big plus for the game.

I love the great intentions of Anet and the game is actually one of the best MMOs out there, but it’s still frustrating to imagine how many more people would be solo queing (or still playing) if the matchmaking and ranking weren’t so warped.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hey Felivear, thanks for the post!

We knew for a while that Warriors were stronger than the meta seemed to indicate at one point, and we knew a fix for the sigil was coming.

We have to make sure we aren’t making you guys download new clients all the time for fixes. We knew the sigil of paralyzation was strong, but we also knew our fix was coming in today’s update.

Hope this makes sense and thanks for the post!

It’s perfectly valid for a developer to state that they know a class is more powerful than what is being represented in the game. After all…they designed it…so they should know.

However, claiming it was just the sigil making them too strong doesn’t seem to jive with those of us who have been playing.

I would contend that the player base WAS RIGHT about warriors not being viable in the Meta.

Things only changed when Anet buffed them – not because players suddenly learned how to play a warrior. In particular, it was the healing signet and berserker stance change that made the most difference – not the paralyzation sigil.

If you don’t believe me, just spectate any warrior now and count how many use the healing signet and berserker stance utilities versus how many don’t. Also, compare it to how many players used them PRIOR to your buffs.

Bottom line…the players aren’t always right…but with regard to warriors, it’s also sheer folly to imply that the players were slow to adapt. I would argue it was Anet who was slow to react and properly buff them.

Whether you guys went too far is debatable, but I think there is clear evidence that warriors (or any profession) is far too strong with a passive heal that is so good that the active portion never has to be pressed.