Guild Wars 2

At the livestream this friday, they are going to go over the “critical damage change”…

I don’t like the sound of that… Not one tiny bit

@spoj: converting rampager into power/crit.dmg/condition seems like a good idea, but doesn’t address the problem of conditions being largely ineffective against dungeon bosses, and again falls short if considering the multiplicative nature of berserker’s stats (seeing as condition damage scales with neither power nor critical damage).

EDIT: Gokil beat me to the answer

@Gokil: TTK = time to kill, basically how long it takes to get enemy from 100% hp to 0%

Ok, how about this ( thanks for pointing out the berserker part spoj ):

base condition damage is reduced to negligible amounts
condition damage scaling is upped to make up for the difference
power scaling on condi weapons is upped to make up for the base damage loss
power affects conditions by reducing the in-between tick time

Gokil.2543:

Silferas.3841:

Ok, let’s look at it from this point of view:

Zerk: Power/Prec/Critical damage – multiplicative scaling with 3 stats
Ram: Power/Prec/Condition damage – 2x multiplicative scaling with 2 stats (provided proper build)

Zerk: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with more damage each crit
Ram: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with conditions stacking faster when i crit, with conditions hitting harder

Now the difference is clear, but the fix would be apparent (yet demanding). Make power affect condition damage. This would either be achieved by further multiplying stacks of conditions applied according to power (let’s say 900 power = 1 extra stack static for the purpose of demonstration), or with power decreasing the period of ticks (2000 power = bleeds tick every half a second instead of every second)

Result: dire is not affected, rampager is boosted

Q.E.D.

Or turn rampager’s into a condition damage/condition duration/power set.

That would be a doable thing to balance with berserker’s without changing mechanics too drastically

EDIT: or condition damage/condition duration/precision for on crit procs.

That would solve the multiplicative issue, but not the issue of people not running rampagers. The deciding factor in PvE is the TTK, and unless that is increased on rampagers it will remain a second class citizen.

Ok, let’s look at it from this point of view:

Zerk: Power/Prec/Critical damage – multiplicative scaling with 3 stats
Ram: Power/Prec/Condition damage – 2x multiplicative scaling with 2 stats (provided proper build)

Zerk: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with more damage each crit
Ram: I hit tougher, with higher chance to crit, with conditions stacking faster when i crit, with conditions hitting harder

Now the difference is clear, but the fix would be apparent (yet demanding). Make power affect condition damage. This would either be achieved by further multiplying stacks of conditions applied according to power (let’s say 900 power = 1 extra stack static for the purpose of demonstration), or with power decreasing the period of ticks (2000 power = bleeds tick every half a second instead of every second)

Result: dire is not affected, rampager is boosted

Q.E.D.

@Gokil: PVT is already far inferior to Dire in terms of damage output, it is only preferred because of how Zergs work in WvW, and for world bosses, where conditions do you no good because of the condi cap and massive cleanses in zergs

EDIT: and almost forgot, condition damage scales (for most builds) with precision as well, increasing your chances of stacking 1 or 2 more bleeds (depending on gear) with each hit. It’s not 3 stats scaling with each other like in berserker’s, but that’s exactly why condition damage output needs to be higher

Awesome discussion! More attention needs to be brought to this problem so that ANet may see why exactly there is so little variety in PVE.

My viewpoint on the solution consists of several steps that should be taken in order for rampagers to be truly usable in PvE:

1) stats need to change, so that precision is not the main stat. As suggested in this topic, a split would be in order to make sets with Power/Prec/Condi and Condi/Prec/Power rather than having precision as a main stat
2) scaling with power on condition weapons needs to be normalized. There are some weapon sets that allow use even with power specs (engineer grenades, warrior sword), while there are sets where such usage is discouraged in game (mesmer scepter)
3) condition damage on bosses needs to be brought to such a level, that over the course of the fight it would even itself with bonus from critical damage. If we compare the (theoretical) rampager changed to Power/Prec/Condi with berserker, we get 71% critical damage from full ascended berserker as opposed to 745 condition damage from rampager’s. The final damage increase (just for the sake of comparison) is on berserker’s 221% critical damage (amounting to 32% bonus damage on critical hit from gear) against close to doubling condition damage output (according to wiki doubling condition damage on lvl 80 requires 850 condition damage). This in an of itself would be a balanced mechanic, if we didn’t consider the fact that boss fights usually don’t last long enough for condition damage to take full effect (stacking bleeds ect.) and the power scaling of skills isn’t (at least all weapons) on par with power based weapons. Therefore what needs to be done is to bring the power scaling on condition weapons on par with power weapons, as well as bringing the condition damage output to such a level, that throughout a boss encounter (I’d need more data on average boss clears for further calculation and I am just trying to demonstrate my point) it would amount to said 32% damage increase, or potentially upping the bonus of condition damage higher if power scaling is not adjusted.
4) (EDIT because I forgot to add): vulnerability needs to affect condition damage output as well

Sirendor.1394:

This is 100% wrong… what do you know about any player here? I’m sure I would beat you in any duel, so don’t talk about skill. Zerk gear is simply superior for this game’s PvE. It is a matter of gear and stats. It is not a matter of L2P. Didn’t know people could be so unreasonable.

OK, go solo Lupicus naked (no armor) like he did (he even posted a video in this topic a few posts back). It’s a form of a PvE duel (since this is a PvE discussion). Go ahead, I dare you

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Silferas.3841:

@Turtle Dragon: ok, can you make me a video of a full zerker thief 30/30/0/0/10 or zerker ele 30/10/10/20/0 that doesn’t ever die with any party in CoF 1? I know warriors can do it, but that’s because of maximum HP and one of the best (passive) heals in this game, but that’s an issue of one class, not a gear spec.

First, I only claimed that it can be done for CoF1 final boss, not the whole run.
Second, to show that someone “never dies” would be a very difficult thing to video. You want me to video his everyday CoF for you? How many videos will be enough to show you that he “never” dies?

For final boss, take a look:
All it takes is 1 Guardian with Virtue of Courage, Renewed Focus and Retreat, and the Zerker party. You see the large AoE circle? Retreat. Next AoE circle? Courage. RF to recharge Courage, next AoE circle? Courage. that boss does the AoE circle about every 10 seconds. 40s is more than enough to down that boss with full Zerkers. You do not need to dodge even once. Thief and Eles welcome. Again, never dodged once, never took a single hit.

Yes, and here we are getting into the area of teamplay. Not pugging, not general dungeons, not berserker gear, but teamplay, which is the area of organized teams.

I don’t see why PUGs should get the same results as teams. I don’t see why PVT should be as fast as zerker, I don’t see any reason to do anything about any of these things. They can all run dungeons, they won’t fail them, they won’t be hurt by any mechanism that makes zerker superior to them. They will just be slower.

And about the “never die” thingie: you never die in an organized team. You PUG and you will be hugging the floor in full zerker on ele or thief the moment you fail one minor thing, and that’s balanced.

I think we can all agree that increasing the difficulty of PVE content (generally, not selectively) is the answer.

@Turtle Dragon: nobody is against upping the difficulty of content in this game. We are all against upping the difficulty selectively for berserker players and making it not worthwhile for people to run that spec anymore. Everybody will be ok if the game got more challenging, but where would be the reward in running a spec that has it harder than everyone else when everyone else would be able to finish the content in comparable time?

@Turtle Dragon: ok, can you make me a video of a full zerker thief 30/30/0/0/10 or zerker ele 30/10/10/20/0 that doesn’t ever die with any party in CoF 1? I know warriors can do it, but that’s because of maximum HP and one of the best (passive) heals in this game, but that’s an issue of one class, not a gear spec.

I just wanna read the blog post already so that I may know whether to delete my PvE characters and move on to WvW/PvP full time or whether there will be some fun in PvE left after ANet’s done with it, because frankly I find running tank comps in PvE boring beyond belief. If I am forced to run a tank spec to complete a dungeon, I’d rather not do the dungeon at all.

NoTrigger.8396:

a full berserker build can provide as much support as your tanky hulk build.
because gw2 doesnt have a trinity and everyone can do damage, cc and support at the same time.

concept of guild wars 2
concept of the guild wars 2 combat system.

Well said.

This is exactly the point that every one of us who defend berserker builds is trying to prove. The fault lies not with berserker gear, but with content being too easy. Do not force an artificial trinity on us, it would take away all of the fun in this game.

This game is not some kittenty WoW clone. Stop trying to make it into one. Many people who play this game despise WoW and all it encompasses.

stof.9341:

Silferas.3841:

kyubi.3620:

well then we can always reduce zerker damage by half. Best way to balance thing will keeping active defence a key feature.

I am starting to feel like you are here just to make people angry.

But I’d be alright with that as long as damage is halved on EVERY single set in PVE. That’d make encounters take longer and therefore make it more challenging for berserkers.

Well the issue then would be that PVT is far too faceroll and easy. The solution is obviously to shave some tankiness from the set and put it into Precision and Crit Damage.

Or as I said, there is no zerk issue because the best thing we can do for the game is decide that PvE = zerk gear and everyone uses the same gear and the PvE content is tuned for that one

I said every set mate, PVT-ers would be hitting for 500 damage.

I’d honestly prefer normalization to berserker in PVE to any other solution in here.

kyubi.3620:

well then we can always reduce zerker damage by half. Best way to balance thing will keeping active defence a key feature.

I am starting to feel like you are here just to make people angry.

But I’d be alright with that as long as damage is halved on EVERY single set in PVE. That’d make encounters take longer and therefore make it more challenging for berserkers.

I will keep this simple:

Active defenses = GOOD = promote active play, skill, knowledge of the game, skill, group cooperation, skill… did I mention skill?

Passive defenses = BAD = promote passive play (stand and get hit), reward unskilled players with level of success that they shouldn’t be reaching

Any good game needs to be designed in such a way, that the better you are at the game, the better reward you receive. If the game wants to be very popular, the skill floor will be set so that every player can eventually finish his goal (as opposed to hardcore games where casuals get effed). However if you remove the ability for skilled players to vastly outperform newblings, you will get another Farmville or some similar shaite. GW2 is already very casual, any kitten can finish any content in this game. Making it any more casual will really turn it into an overblown farmville.

SO: make new challenging content, then make the old content much harder (no specific anti-zerker changes, just make the content actually challenging for all players). Great players will keep making use of active defenses to go through the content fast, bad players will need to use tanky gear and will still complete the content. There will be place for any gear in this game.

The only change that actually needs to happen is condition buffs for dungeons. Condition damage should really be interchangeable with critical damage…

@kyubi: what you are asking for would kill this game off. Many people (myself included) would not bow our heads and wear PVT because melee berserker would mean the equivalent of death for us.

Defensive gear: useful for noobs, WvW, zerg events (like scarlet invasions)
if you would demand more usefulnes you’d need to introduce the role of a tank = holy trinity

the only way defensive gear would get more recognition in gw2 would be if there would be new content that isn’t actually braindead and would require you to run it until you can figure out a way to do it in berserker. There is no other use for bunker stats and never will be.

And hybrid defense builds are something for PvP or WvW, or (once again) noobs running dungeons, there is no way you can make those useful without making berserker builds useless, and that’s not gonna happen

@kyubi: you really seem to be out for blood tonight. You are forgetting be basis of this game. Every party needs to be able to clear any content. That would include 5 dagger/dagger thieves in full berserker gear without a single trait in defense.

Anyway… dodging 100% time? If you are dodging you are not dealing damage, so no, there is no dodging 100% of the time. Also, dodge is the most important game mechanic in this whole game, even ANet themselves have said so. PvE content needs to be such, that every major attack that would down you in one hit can be dodged (if you think about it a little, that’s how bosses are designed).

There already are incentives to using ranged weapons: it’s easier. Why else would you see so many bearbows in dungeons?

People are completely misunderstanding the upcoming change and what this game is about. Everything is viable, everything has some sort of advantage and disadvantage to it. It’s just that berserker is the fastest option, and it would be nice if some other DPS sets (like rampagers) were brought up to match that proficiency, as well as if more content would come out (so that defensive gear for running the new content would have meaning).

@Arvid: people do dungeon speedruns because there is no new dungeon content worth doing, and the old dungeons simply get boring, so the only purpose to actually doing them turns out to be profit. What we have in terms of said content has either always been here, or offers horrible rewards for time invested (aetherpath).

I used to be a PvP only player and I always thought ANet didn’t care about us at all, but I did manage to find one community that has been neglected even more than PvPers, the dungeon runners. If dungeon content came out at least as often as PvP content (which is by no means frequent, actually I’d say the opposite), there would be the variety you ask for, and there would be people doing the “normal” runs (simply because there would be no speedrun strategies devised for the new dungeons).

This all boils down to lack of content, rather than imbalance in gear stats. People in berserker gear still get one-shot in dungeons. Have you tried doing the Spider Queen in AC with a bunch of people with 300 AP? They get obliterated even if they try to do it all the speedrun way, because they lack the knowledge of the dungeon and bosses, and therefore can’t handle it with DPS builds. That IS BALANCED. But it’s way too worn out by those of us who do it regularly, therefore it might look to an observer like imbalanced.

Yet again I will say, all of the problems discussed are problems caused by lack of new challenging dungeon content. Yes, I know people will argue that there is living story and people still run it all with zerker, but that’s because living story keeps the scrubs playing the game, it needs to be braindead easy for people to keep playing. Dungeons on the other hand don’t have to be such. They can be challenging, and they should be, maybe even would be if any came out…

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

I would like to say that we really appreciate posts with reason, well thought out points, and that inspire discussion. The OP post hits all these points and then some. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this post. I know the Skills and balance team has looked into the balance of all stat combos recently specially Berserker. I will let them give more details as that is their project, but I just wanted to step in and stay thanks to everyone (specially Blood Red Arachnid).

Though I do agree that the OP’s post was well thought out and constructive, I’d have to point out (yet again), that it’s UNTRUE. As has been demonstrated in another topic, defensive gear setups are nowhere near disadvantaged as compared to berserker in terms of survivability and in these terms, the game is balanced.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0kDnswWyjY (leaving the proof of tanky gear being good enough to get players through high level content without any active defenses)

So what exactly are you asking for guys?

Condition builds to deal damage similar to power builds? That’s not acceptable. Condition builds are much more sustainable and easier to play than berserker builds. Getting 1, maybe a maximum of 2 stats to optimize your damage as compared to 3 (all of your set’s stats) cannot yield the same results.

I could agree with tweaking condition damage in such a way, that with a (possible) remake on rampager’s gear (to make it Power/Prec/Condition damage) it would make up for the sheer difference in numbers with berserker’s gear, so that condition damage could be a substitute for critical damage, opening up a path to several varied builds. It would be a simple and elegant solution to lack of build variety, but anything more complex than that would not be a matter of balancing builds, but overhauling all of the game’s content.

I’ve read through the whole OP’s post and I do have to admit he has done a nice job analyzing the game mechanics, but ultimately worked with the wrong data, seeing as it has been proven that for majority of PVE content defensive gear setups do not need any active defenses, healing and tanking gear do suffice (watch the Lupicus without any dodges with 5 clerics dudes video in the other zerker thread), which ultimately renders your argument invalid.

If zerker is to be put to the same level as condition damage/support I demand toughness/vitality to be removed from condition damage specs, or condition specs that do have it should get much less condition damage.

Oh yea, I still remember how they fixed Elementalists in PvP from Apex to absolutely useless and unwanted. And shatter mesmers, and beastmaster rangers, and all those other specs that have been “fixed”.

Every possible scenario that I can think about, is either too expensive for ANet to actually implement, or sucks balls.

Fastest clear time spec = meta

nothing’s gonna change, people are just going to leave

There are only two ways in which ANet can stop the dominance of berserker builds.

- nerf their damage output to be in line with other specs – that would be ridiculous, seeing as THE dps spec should have the highest dps, otherwise it would stop having any place in the game altogether

- make it so that berserker specs cannot beat the content alone, invalidating their statement that any group composition can beat any content, which would make a LOT of people VERY angry

There is no solution to the zerker meta other than removing the gear type altogether, which would mean everyone is going to run assassin’s, which would have to be removed as well, which in turn would make everyone run cavalier’s/knights mix, and this would continue on and on until power specs would be no longer capable of dealing more damage than condition specs.

Also, implementing mechanics that would limit damage per second on bosses would kill the game completely. The dungeons are only bearable to run, because you can do them quickly with a decent party. If they change that they need to increase the difficulty, but most importantly increase the rewards. As it stands champion farming is already the way to go if you want to earn money, which is just ridiculous.

Don’t make this game completely casual please.

Just remove it from solo queue already!

@OP: The problem you have described is a problem of bad matchmaking. Since you obviously have no idea what you are doing in pvp after such a long time, you shouldn’t get matched against people who do. This game was originally built around active mechanics (including active defenses), which has somewhat deteriorated over time with all the AI/AoE/Passive stuff added/buffed in the game, but the core of active play has somewhat remained present. The reason you feel like gw2 is imbalanced as a person coming over from other games is simple:

most other games are about eating damage and just using the right combination of spells to defeat the enemy. That means passive defenses play a larger role in those, and consequently the playstyles of those games are vastly different. Even if classes do have active defenses, their strategic use is too different from how dodge in gw2 works.

There exists not a single class in gw2 that will be ok with just standing still and eating damage from a DPS character, not even if you are pressuring the other character yourself. You simply need to dodge some attacks otherwise you are going to end up dead. You apparently didn’t dodge anything, judging from what you described. But that’s not the problem of the game, that’s the problem of you being a newbie getting matched against an experienced player, therefore the problem of matchmaking

Permastealth = doesn’t go out of stealth for a very long periods of time and just sits inside of a tower, usually stealthing a mesmer alongside himself.

Anet themselves have previously stated that they ARE OK with thieves going in and out of stealth in combat, since that is the thief’s’ primary defensive mechanic (evasion being an alternative, though you rarely if ever see both in one build). Also, thieves eating through single target’s defenses is only to be expected. They are a single target focused class, that is supposed to pick off solo stragglers.

I didn’t think there would actually be people defending the AI shait builds. Turns out I was wrong

Warriors, let me explain something to you. We, those who play other classes, hate you at this point. We hate you so much, that we pick up builds that disgust us, just to beat you. Like my mesmer, I turned the beautiful shatter art-form build I used before into an ugly non-stealth condition clone/phantasm build with passive heal like you have. I hate playing it, but I kitten warriors with it. I destroy them, and that gives me the will to keep playing it. Hambows, Bowswords, Axe wars, they all die eventually. No amount of cleanses helps against my continuous condi application, and I need no skill to play the build. Since I use no stealth, I don’t get my point decapped and I am tanky, with good protection uptime and passive healing, so I can sustain just as much as the warrior does. And I will keep playing it, until warriors feel the impact they are having on this game and the course in which it is developing. Hopefully one day, we can all shake hands and fix this game out of the cc-lock meta, out of the condition spam meta into something skillful again.

My favourite class is the Mesmer, although I rarely play it these days, if at all. I only seem to be able to enjoy the class if I play shatter based builds, since the fluid gameplay, surplus of teleport skills, and various combos you can pull-off make for such a wonderful flow withing the game.

Unfortunately my favourite build is not truly viable at the moment, so I have to make due with cheap replacements from other classes.

Spirits are an unbalanced mechanic that is horrible in PvE and group WvW and overpowered in PvP. Here are the reasons:

1) They clutter the screen and protect their master from projectiles in PvP
2) They provide passive as well as active benefits that outperform classes to whom those benefits should be a signature move (spirit ranger having better protection uptime than a guardian for example).
3) Their playstyle punishes active play and rewards auto attack spam, yet provides a level of efficiency which most of other classes cannot match.
4) in WvW and PvE they die too easily
5) they require major trait investment to be even usable

In my opinion a rework of the mechanic itself is in order. Spirits should imo look like this:

Disclaimer: numbers are solely for the purpose of demonstration of my train of thought and could, or in most cases should, be a subject to balancing changes.

Sun Spirit: 1/2s cast time, 35s cooldown, 5s duration, HP reduced by 30% from what it is now. Ground targeted, range 900. On summon the Sun Spirit creates an aura of burning around itself, which stacks 2s of burning every second on an enemy standing inside of it, in addition enemies are blinded in an area when the spirit is summoned.

Earth Spirit: 1/2 cast time, 35s cooldown, 5s duration, HP reduced by 30% from what it is now. Ground targeted, range 900. On summon the Earth Spirit creates an aura of protection around itself, which stacks 3s of protection every second on an ally standing inside of it, in addition enemies are immobilized in an area when the spirit is summoned.

Lightning Spirit: deals damage and stacks debuff on enemies inside of AoE, on 3rd stack of the debuff enemies are stunned. Stunned enemies receive double damage.

Frost Spirit: 25% damage increase for those 5s
Water Spirit: Heals 4k HP in an area on summon (no extra heal for the ranger), heals 1k HP/s for 5s.

in addition the traits would be changed a little bit:
Spirits Unbound – not changed, spirits can follow you
Nature’s Vengeance – spirits create an area of effect spell when they are killed. Sun Spirit – lava font (increased radius one), earth – churning earth, water – healing rain, lightning – static field, frost – frozen ground
Vigorous Spirits – spirits last extra two seconds and their health is increased

Ranger would be fixed in these ways:
no more rewarding of an auto attack spam
no more passive bonuses present almost constantly
no more screen AI clutter
proper counter-play to spirits working in a way in which it was intended
on-demand utility which would allow for active play with spirits
having a direct, visible and immediate impact on the course of fights
reworked frost spirit would make a ranger very likeable for dungeon speedrun parties
reworked traits would make it so that spirits are not useless even in wvw group fights
improved support options and overall ranger viability

Thanks for the builds guys, will make sure to try them out, was getting bored out of my mind by the meta specs lately anyway.

Hello, I come as a seeker of knowledge, what I seek is hidden behind big crits and stacked power, but most importantly, behind a pile of dead bodies.

But seriously, does anyone have a viable burst build? I really want one. The patch hit not that long ago, and I might have been just too preoccupied crying in the corner with a hammer sticking out of a nasty gash on my head, set aflame and confused, choking on a poison in a pool of my own blood. And no, I don’t consider bludgeoning someone to death with a hammer burst. And neither do I find shizzling my swordizzle around someone’s kitten for half a minute to be one either. All I am asking is for something that plays similar to the old mesmer shatter builds, or valkyrie eles, or d/p thieves, but playing of which does not impair my team’s ability to win in whichever tournament queue considerably, and doesn’t carry “played this since beta” as a requirement to be nearly as effective compared to everything else that runs around on the playing field.

Simply said, I want a burst build that rivals the current meta builds in effectiveness, namely has good matchups against them. Does anyone please have one?

I know my search might be in vain.

All is vain

cymerdown.4103:

The Good

Changes In PvP Rewards: My god, these changes have been AMAZING so far. I think I speak for a lot of PvPers when I say that finally having some attachment to the rest of the game and being well-rewarded for our time spent PvPing was a vitally-needed change in order for sPvP to succeed. I personally have seen a lot more people in HotM lately, and I think these reward changes have a lot to do with that. Great job here, and I expect some really cool additions in the future.

Keeping Ranks: When I first heard that ranks were going away, I was a bit surprised, since I knew there would be a lot of people upset by it. For so long, that little number was just about the only sort of reward to work towards in sPvP, and taking that away suddenly would be jarring to many people. Thankfully, a feedback thread went up, and the people concerned about it spoke up. Glad you guys listened to feedback, and in fact doubled down on it by increasing rank point rewards from Solo and Team Arena. I liked the little acting job on “Ready Up!”, well played indeed.

Thief Updates: I might get some backlash for this, but in my opinion and from the results of my team’s testing so far, the Thief changes seem to have gone pretty well considering the broad extent of the tweaks that occurred. Not only was the outlier spec adjusted in a necessary way, but the power level of other specs were raised appropriately. Time will tell for sure, but so far it seems that the changes here are going well.

Patch Preview Thread: For the first time, we were shown most of the patch notes from the upcoming patch well in advance, to get a good feeling of the community’s responses to the changes. This was a very good idea, and I’m glad that some changes were adjusted based on the player’s responses. I’d love to continue seeing this going forward!

QA: As far as I know, I don’t think there were any major hiccups related to this patch. Great job, QA!

The Bad

Attention to Balance Feedback: Relating to the patch preview thread, there were some changes made that the community by-and-large thought were negative. A big example is Diamond Skin — most PvPers dislike 100% immunity traits that have no cooldown (Automated Response is another example). Despite much feedback given in that thread and many other threads regarding the topic, the change ended up going through. Of course, it’s impossible to support every single opinion, especially when many of them contradict. In this and some other cases, though, it was pretty much a landslide of opposition, so it’s understandable when there is some disappointment after no adjustments were made.

New Heals: I love the concepts of the new heals, but they aren’t looking terribly useful for sPvP so far. I understand a lot of them may have been designed with WvW and PvE in mind, which is fine. Testing has shown that many of them are too unreliable or are missing something that the other heals have when it comes to sPvP.

Elementalist Updates: We’re only a little over a week after the patch, so it might be premature to give feedback here. So far, though, nobody seems to have been able to make Elementalist work in high level play (GF has been trying as well). The main problem seems to be their sustainability and ways to deal with conditions (Ether Renewal is too unreliable against Trickery Thief). A lot of their sustain and mobility was hit too hard in previous patches, and this last update did very little to restore those vital aspects that made Ele viable in the past. Also, D/D Ele is too similar to Warrior in role, but Warrior currently just does it better.

The Missing

Adjustments to Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature: Warrior and Ranger saw some adjustments to their best specs, but I was personally baffled that nothing was changed to the two skills in the game that I believe are far and away outliers in power level: Healing Signet and Spirit of Nature. These two skills far outstrip the healing and elite skills for other classes in PvP for high level play, especially in small-scale conflicts. I think most of the changes made in the last patch were more or less on the mark, but hopefully these two skills will see a little attention in the future.

Ready Button For Solo Arena: This is a highly requested feature, and it was a bit disappointing not to have yet. Having a popup to test if the user is AFK (if so, drop them from queue and requeue the others) when the queue pops would drastically reduce the amount of 4v5s seen in Solo Arena.

Pretty much this

Seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding a few things. First of all, it’s not just warriors that should be brought in line.

All AI builds should be removed from PvP. Not rebalanced, removed. No more spirits, spirit weapons, necro minions (flesh golem could stay because it’s ulti), turrets (utility ones, heal and ulti can stay) and phantasms should be reworked in pvp, to only fire off their attacks once (they should be indestructible before that though), but their cooldown (as a weapon skill) should be adjusted accordingly to deal damage on par with other classes (cd to half or similar). EDIT: ok I just realized that halving phantasm cooldowns would completely break shatter builds, so maybe give a phantasm trait that halves the cooldown, but make the trait inaccessible to shatters).

All AoE should be highly telegraphed (meteor storm) or utility only (well of darkness). Necro marks should have a proper animation and “explosion time” like lava font or churning earth, and so should every other damage type AoE.

Yes, dear warriors, we all know these things need to happen to make the game better, however they are not what this topic is meant for. This is a topic about fixing the warrior. I have listed them here, so that all of you warrior players writing here know, that we are aware of the changes that this game needs.

Here is my original suggestion on how to change the warrior: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Let-s-talk-about-Warriors/3389207. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so. It’s high time this topic turned into something productive. In the first place all of you warriors should be happy we are even discussing this in the first place. In this game (if you haven’t noticed) it’s customary for unsatisfied people to go around creating compaint topics until they get whatever class is in question nerfed.

@Trooper: so only warriors can judge warriors? Don’t you think that no warrior would ever want their class nerfed, especially when they are having such an easy time last few months? Leaving class balance to the players of the class alone will result in power creep, as classes who are underperforming will keep asking for buffs, which will in turn bring new passive bullkitten into the game and make it unplayable for everyone.

So how would you like if we changed shatter mesmer, so that it would be immune to conditions, have a long term invulnerability that DOESN’T prevent point capture/loss, give it access to high duration swiftness, stability and turned F1 to also give long duration stun on land with 3 illusions, F2 to make a large confusion field on the node and overall kitten it up?

Because mesmers are the dueling class, I, as a mesmer player, feel it’s uncanny that we might have a hard time dueling anything! Mesmer like that would be balanced! And good for the game!

^ post above is meant to display the current warrior mentality on a different class, it is by no means a serious suggestion

@Deimos: yes, I have actually played a warrior myself. For the purpose of learning and understanding I have done about 100 tournament matches on my warrior, a vast majority of which were victories, and I can assure you, that facing a warrior at my (average skill level, where majority of the players are) level, and beating him takes way more skill and focus than playing the warrior and beating someone.

@Trooper:

let’s sum it all up:
reduction in soft cc duration (cripple, chill, immobilize) which gives extra regen
self-condition cleansing every 7 seconds (let’s only count longbow as it’s 100% reliable), which includes soft cc and poison which is supposed to counter warrior sustain
immunity to hard cc
immunity to conditions including soft cc
immunity to direct damage
close to permanent swiftness
soft or hard ranged cc or gap closer on every weapon (hammer cripple/f1, mace offhand knockdown, axe cripple, sword leap, GS leap/whirl/cripple, ect.)
passive sustain that outheals majority of other classes’ heals with no active requirement

generic other direct dps class (same category as warrior):
no reduction in soft cc duration, including melee specs like d/d ele or similar
sparse condition removal options on long cooldowns, as everything needs to be focused on damage to deal sufficient burst
all immunities are either self-impairing (distortion on mesmer breaks all your clones, so you can’t shatter, mist form or elixir S make you unable to take action ect.), or non-existent at all (weapon skills are another topic, but warrior has shield to cover that)
swiftness comes in short durations on long cooldowns, or not at all (mesmer, d/d or scepter ele, thief on any spec …)
cc is very rare, usually only 1 or 2 skills in the whole build that are a necessity to land to deal your burst.
Active defense mechanics and sustain, that require timing, positioning and can be interrupted most of the time or outright outplayed (the sole exception being stealth, to which you can still deal damage quite easily because of the ridiculous AoE from longbow)

So you are basically telling us to go, and kite a warrior that is immune to everything we throw at him, is faster than us, unlike us can use crowd control of which he has plenty, and will eat me alive as long as he lands almost any of his skills (be it cripple or immobilize or stun or knockback or w/e), and most importantly has defense mechanics that cannot be outplayed and don’t impair him at all, on the contrary even boost him up (zerker stance adrenaline regen).

And all of this is supposed to happen while he is standing on my node, capping it.

There are builds that can do that. Those builds are abominations that disgust everyone who dares fight against them, and they exist only because warriors have pushed the fun builds that took skill to play out of the game.

Wake up warriors. Having a build that does everything very well is detrimental to the game. You MUST sacrifice something in order to be good at something else.

It saddens me how blind the warrior community appears to be to the real state of their class.

They say: if you nerf our sustain, we won’t be able to hold/contest points!
But I wonder: Well, which other berserker amulet (including the other heavy class) glass cannon build holds/contests a point alone? None (even if you made a guardian build that could hold a point with zerker amulet he couldn’t contest one).

They say: warrior is in a good place and everybody else is just envious because they are viable now!
But I wonder: does viable mean covering more of the pvp population than (almost) any other two classes combined? Or does viable mean having one build that can do everything that other classes have to specifically spec into on it’s own?

They say: It’s ok for warriors to be stronger than other classes, because they are heavies!
But I wonder: does your brain function properly? Are you not ashamed to post something like that publicly? Do you really believe that, and if you do, do you think that a game that works like that will last?

They say: this game is not balanced around 1v1, because it’s a team game!
But I wonder: does team game mean the same as teamfight game to you? 1v1 matchups are just as important as teamfight capabilities.

Guys, I know being a master class that stands above all else feels good, but wake up. It’s hurting the game. Everybody who doesn’t play a warrior hates warriors at this point. Nobody is asking to make warriors not viable again, but they should be the same as everybody else. If they go glass cannon, they should be squishy. If they go bunker, they should be survivable. If they go CC, they should do less damage.

@To all those defending warriors: for the past few days I’ve been playing both solo queue and team queue almost constantly, and here are my findings:
1) there was not a single match where there wouldn’t be present at least one warrior. Not a single match.
2) team queue suffered from warrior stacking much more significantly than solo queue. At least half of the teams I have faced had 2 or more (usually even 3) warriors. While beating teams with less warriors normally, I have rarely, if ever, won a match against a team with 3 warriors. It was not a matter of having bad team composition against warriors, since I played with different people on different classes. The only counter-composition was playing warriors ourselves.
3) Not even having champion legionnaire title (something basic for pvp players), I have achieved the highest win/loss ratio with my warrior that only ties for the first place with spirit ranger.

No other class in this game has access to such superior combination of mechanics like warriors do at this moment. Free access to CC, damage, sustain, mobility, AoE pressure, single target pressure, hybrid type damage ect. makes warriors vastly overpowered compared to any other spec in this game.

My ideas for fixes:

1) Make healing signet more “similar” to the new signet of ether that mesmers have received. It would by achieved by this:
i) healing scales with adrenaline level (adrenaline spam for condi removal would mean much less healing, just like with the mesmer signet and it’s condi removal trait)
ii) healing would take place every 3 seconds (allowing for better burst impact on warriors)
iii) healing signet active would be changed to “recharge all stance skills”
iv) 40 seconds cooldown on activation (as almost every warrior takes sig cd recharge trait + active would be vastly more powerful than mesmer’s)

2) and following changes would be made to stances:
i) base duration of every stance would be gutted to 1/4 of the current duration
ii) stance activation consumes adrenaline, for ever bar of adrenaline spent you gain 1/4 extra duration (meaning 3 bars would give full duration as it is now).
iii) the numbers are ad-hoc just to demonstrate the thought process, they could be like 1/2 and for full duration adrenaline must be spent but it’s all about the thought process

does this seem familiar? yea, it’s all inspired by mesmer’s own class mechanics. With the exception that mesmers don’t get 3 separate immunities, but only one with a short duration, yet on a very long cooldown (don’t bother mentioning blurred frenzy, warriors get so much crowd control that comparing mesmer’s weapon skills with warriors’ is just dumb)

You have lost me when you stated that S/D and shortbow are “fair” (which is simply not true, that spec will either be broken or useless, there is no in-between. It needs to be completely removed from the game), yet complained about mesmer evades and mesmers in general.

I mean seriously? Complaining about mesmers at this point in time? You must be seriously bad if you feel mesmers are too strong in tPvP right now lol.

But as to the rest of the topic: yes, power based builds are too punishing at the moment. They need to either be more rewarding (leading to power creep and one shot builds) or condition specs need to be more punishing (killing the purpose of condition specs).

This post shall enter the history of guild wars 2 as the single most significant event since launch

Took me a while to realize you were talking about wvw dueling. If you however WERE talking about PvP dueling, you must be from another planet than me, since I see almost no other class in PvP duel rooms than dps Guards and thieves.

Also, no matter the game mode, PU condi mesmers (along with all other condi classes) autofail against eles starting this patch. Phantasm builds can still give you a headache but having heavy AoE options on all weapons makes eles one of the best counterclasses to phantasm mesmers. And remember, no phantasms, no damage AND no healing with the new healing skill.

Stop complaining, start playing

I play a warrior and every single nerf to warrior this patch is just and deserved. Honestly I am starting to believe that only people who play several classes extensively should be allowed to comment on the state of balance in this game, because everybody else seems to be thinking that owning others is a privilege of their class and is deserved by the virtue of skill, rather than broken mechanics, which is simply not true.

I agree with all the arguments listed here against introducing more passive play into the game.