Guild Wars 2

Stand The Wall.6987:

Swagger.1459:

snipples

I feel like at this point youre just repeating yourself without actually reading through anything just so you can get the last word in.
I addressed every point you made in a previous post.

Just pointing out the facts buddy.

Thank you for the video Nike!

Enjoy…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=z8_-zFjyU00

Edit- Thank you devs! I’m going to reasearch what one I want and load it up so don’t ban my account! Thanks again!

The devs are not going to go the amulet route 4 years into the game so the handful of people, who are too lazy and too cheap to make ascended gear, are happy… Not hard to get any exotics or build up ascended.

Also, the devs are not going to squash everyone’s efforts to get their gear and kill a gold and material sink in the process.

Amulets kill the already way too limited build diversity, and are not a replacement for actually working on improving professions and combat.

Want to pvp without gearing up? Structured pvp is a click away.

I would like a melee weapon that doesn’t do crappy damage and need stacked buffs to be competitive.

Wvw needs more maps with open area objectives to spread players out and to be more roaming group friendly.

The rational thing the devs could have done was to make some type of difficulty settings. Sadly they didn’t, and ended up alienating a portion of their player base in the process.

And before anyone jumps in here about “but its legendary armor! needs to be cray difficult!”… Having to kill 150 bosses, for time gated LI, is a feat for any player, let alone casuals.

The devs bombed raids on many fronts. They didn’t make the content inclusive for all, made players wait 2 years for armor and encourage those who want to experience the story to go into a finished instance or watch a video… None of that was or is professional.

DeceiverX.8361:

I don’t main thief anymore, swagger. I’ve pretty much been maining power reaper since HoT released.

Thief has an advantage against reaper, but it’s not as ridiculously bad as many complain unless they spec for no mobility and then try and chase. The thief absolutely has to engage to deal enough damage to kill a necro unless if playing P/P because its only other sources of damage come from melee attacks. A power reaper can kill a thief 100-0 in under two seconds as well as keep pace enough if the necromancer decides to build for it. I do it very frequently because after years if playing the thief I understand the significance of its weaknesses and how to exploit them. Who knew, knowledge of a profession would allow for an understanding on how to beat them.

Mirror its disengages and be ready for re-engages. Watch the terrain for BP rings. Have a weapon available which can deal with a melee engage and punish the thief – I prefer GS – and keep your fingers ready to stunbreak and keep track of how long ago it last BV’ed.

Power reaper can shut down an engaging thief at every turn if it decides to play a more aggressive build. I see too many necros and reapers complaining they can’t deal with thieves when they themselves don’t try anywhere in their build to provide counter-burst, good stunbreaks and mitigation, a stealth-tracker, a ranged kit, or bumped mobility. Daredevil is cheesy and forgiving in its own right, but it can be dealt with quite easily on the build-level in most cases. It has advantages, but it’s like whining that DH doesn’t auto-shut-down meta necromancer.

If you want to criticize class differences based on certain aspects of superiority, I’d assume you’d make the trade of giving up life force and shroud for more mobility, correct? Because that’s pretty much what you’re requesting.

I really think you need to reread my comments in the thread, particularly the one above your post.

This is not about who can kill who in a duel thread, it’s about movement based skills. Would you understand more If I said disparity in access to movement based skills between Druid and Necro? Or Warrior and Necro? Or Druid and Engineer? Or Warrior and Ele? Or Guardian and Necro?… Those questions starting to ring a bell as to the topic?

Again, read the post above yours and absorb it a bit more please.

@James

I’m fully familiar with the original design intent that led us to the awful state professions are in for wvw and structured pvp. I also know the devs are changing professions and improving the quality of gameplay…

All Jon P quotes are from this site published on 6/10/2011…

http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/

*"Jon P: When we actually made the decision to not have healers, it wasn’t my job to talk to others about it directly, so I’m unsure how heavily other people were consulted.  I know some were skeptical and were worried. A lot of people like to play healers and liked to play monks in Guild Wars 1. That being said, it’s not a secret around the office that I do not like to play healers, so I wasn’t too sad to see them go!"

Now we have Druid. Improved healing Ele. Ventari.

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/25/gw2-druid-ranger-elite-specialization-livestream-reveal/

*"Jon P: The whole game is built very offensively on purpose. You see a lot of sports that are defensive, like American and European football, and you see that defence wins all the time and that defence is often the best offence. We’ve developed a system where, hopefully, offence is the best defence. That you don’t want to say “what are they doing, how can I counter them?” instead you want to say “I’m doing something and I’m doing it well enough that they have to counter me.” I think that’s a much more interesting approach, as it’s then not about reacting but becomes that the best players are trying to make others react to what they are doing, which creates a more dynamic environment."

Now look at shift from “built offensively for a reason”…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZHhJQn0B8

Irenio… “The berserker meta has been great fun, but not super healthy for the game” and “Berserker meta is going away.”

*"Jon P: I think the ranger pets are terrible right now, no one would argue with that! If you wanted to talk about least played profession, the ranger would probably be it. We’ve been making A.I changes which are slowly propagating to the pets right now, while we’ve also been looking into more radical things with the pets.
Right now the pets feel like this thing you have, rather than a part of your character. Like those other professions that have undergone some radical changes, I’m hoping by the next time we show the game, or certainly before we ship, the ranger pet will have that synergy. That’s one of the biggest failings we have right now. For those that are concerned, we are also concerned but we aren’t concerned that we won’t fix it, just not right now. We are going to make it feel synergistic, but it just takes time."

We all know how core issues have not been addressed, and this ranger pet quote highlights those lingering design issues.

…The devs had issues with balancing secondary skills in Guild Wars, so we didn’t get them here, but somehow the devs who created City of Heroes did not have such issues with Power Pool secondary skills and max level Incarnate skills for all players…

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Power_Pools

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Concealment
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Fighting
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Flight
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leadership
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Leaping
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Medicine
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Presence
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Speed
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Teleportation

Also, https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Incarnate_System

The devs from City of Heroes eliminated certain disparities, like access to basic movement related skills, so each class and powerset was enjoyable to play and could contribute equally, all while making each class unique and distinctive… Meanwhile here, a decade later, GW2 profession designs, skill designs, “balance” designs, role designs, UI designs…. and much more…. are not even 1/10 of the quality of a game that ran parallel to Guild Wars…

RP PvE profession “balancing” designs are part of the reason why wvw and structured pvp are not doing better, and this movement topic is a part of that “balancing” professions equation because the foundation of combat was built on movement and positioning.

Edit- and to address your “gw2 not built around 1v1” comment… Neither was City of Heroes, but they still managed to make sure ALL classes had access to movement skills, roughly equal healing sources, ways to deal with CC, access to the same secondary skills… to eliminate unnecessary issues. On top of that, teamwork roles and gameplay was far far far superior to anything this game currently has to offer, so much so, that the devs are finally now trying to make a bigger push to improve spvp teamwork judging by a statement from the recent ama.

Bolded responses.

DeceiverX.8361:

Coming from a newly-mained reaper who used to almost exclusively play thief.

Necromancer and reaper both have the tools to kill a thief if the thief commits to killing the necro. Of course, this assumes the necromancer builds off-meta (gasp) and builds for a little mobility instead of sacrificing literally every trait and utility it has to pump out more condition damage or soak more damage. The daredevil in particular counters the meta condi reaper. Play power, play smart, play aggressively, and kill a thief. I usually charge thieves when on my reaper because I think they’re the easiest profession to kill. Druid, Berserker, and Scrapper are much more problematic because they have superior mobility and can commit to an engage/apply pressure back and also still deal more damage than they take.

That has nothing to do with the topic. Also, Thief is easy vs necro due to all the movement skills, superior positioning, stealth, faster and higher consitent damage output

You can’t provide all professions with the same mobility – especially when comparing the necromancer to the thief – due to other differences between the professions. The thief has no source of 1200 range damage while the necromancer’s core shroud AA on a power build can hit an upwards of 8k each, has great control and nuke potential on staff, and said necromancer has an effective health pool of 3x/4x the thief and substantially better hit-soaking capabilities.

Sure you can provide movement skills like these to all professions. Besides, under this scenario thief still has access to the most mobility, plus stealth. You main thief and are concerned with a 300 unit difference in range with all of its movement skills?

It’s also important to recognize that it’s these differences which define the class’ use in WvW. Necromancers are heavily-utilized in group play, while thieves aren’t. The thief is good in small-scale, and the meta necro options are designed not to flourish in these environments but instead work as hyoercarries in group play, be it small or large.

Skills define the class, but classes shouldn’t be defined by their lack of movement in a heavily movement based game. See that necro pve rp designed greatsword? Yeah… it’s pve rp stuff like that which hurts competitive play.

With some blatantly overpowered aspects of the elite specs aside, I think there’s a great spectrum of which professions can do what. Elite specs were also intended to be designed to change some of these slightly – the matter is just right now the elites are massively power-creeped, and the game is suffering.

It’s not op when all professions have access to them…

Edit- and you can have unique classes with access to some form of movement skills… https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetypes

Random vid of city of heroes…

Edit 2- and I do like this statement because it highlights the spirit of this thread… "Necromancer and reaper both have the tools to kill a thief if the thief commits to killing the necro. … Movement and positioning are core designs of combat in this game, and there are unnecessary disparities in this department like I said.

Unfortunate to see not much has changed.

http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/

“Ginko (GW2G): The ranger is supposed to be the pet profession, and bringing a pet is always supposed to improve the performance of the ranger. In all of the demos so far, most rangers didn’t bother to have their pet with them during combat; they either died quickly or didn’t seem to do much when they were around. Considering the ranger class was intended to be the class that specifically focuses on playing with a pet, what does the design team want ranger/pet gameplay to be like at launch? What kinds of gameplay is ArenaNet trying to foster for the ranger so that the pet and ranger work together instead of the pet simply being similar to a random melee ally?”

“Jon P: I think the ranger pets are terrible right now, no one would argue with that! If you wanted to talk about least played profession, the ranger would probably be it. We’ve been making A.I changes which are slowly propagating to the pets right now, while we’ve also been looking into more radical things with the pets.

Right now the pets feel like this thing you have, rather than a part of your character. Like those other professions that have undergone some radical changes, I’m hoping by the next time we show the game, or certainly before we ship, the ranger pet will have that synergy. That’s one of the biggest failings we have right now. For those that are concerned, we are also concerned but we aren’t concerned that we won’t fix it, just not right now. We are going to make it feel synergistic, but it just takes time."

I have a post coming soon about “balancing” professions, but I wanted to post this first because it is one of the “balancing” ideas I have that will need greater explanation.

The developers of City of Heroes did a really great job at making sure each class had access to certain features that made all classes more balanced, and one of those features were movement based skills. Having equal access to various movement based skills made it so each player could be competitive in player vs player modes, and across the game for that matter.

We all know there are unnecessary disparities with movement and positioning skills among professions, and we need not look any farther than the difference between a thief and necromancer… It’s these types of unnecessary disparities that need to be addressed, so I bring to you a combination of ideas from both City of Heroes and Guild Wars 2…

Idea 1- CoH power pools

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Power_Pools

“Power Pools are supplemental power sets available to all archetypes, beyond the primary and secondary power sets selected during character creation. A character may select powers from up to four power pools per build.”

Idea 2- Zephyrite Aspect Skills

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-guide-to-bazaar-of-the-four-winds/

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aspect

”What are Aspect skills?

The citizens of the Zephyr Sanctum (“Zephyrites,” as they call themselves) have developed a unique understanding of wind, lightning, and the sun. They have learned how to utilize these Aspects in their daily lives. By imbuing crystals with the energy of the Aspects, the Zephyrites are able to share a taste of this knowledge with others.”

The combined ideas…

Aspect Skill Pools

Aspect Skill Pools are supplemental slot skills available to all professions, beyond the normal set of slot skills for each profession. A character may select skills from up to two Aspect Skill Pools per build. Aspect Skill Pools and skills can be changed out of combat.

(Important notes: Unless otherwise noted, all utility aspect skills below will have common factors. 600 max range/units. No cooldown for usage. No outgoing damage. No stun break. No evade… These are meant to be purely movement based skills with no additional effects…

Elite dodge skills will override normal dodges, similar to how the Daredevil Grandmaster Traits function. These new dodges have unlimited use, but do NOT make use of evade as we know it. These elite dodges are designed to only provide a 50% damage reduction to all sources and do NOT have any extra effects such as outgoing damage or stun breaks tied to them.)

Aspects of the Zephyrites

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrites

Utility Skills

*Aspect of Lightning- Passive skill. Global 25% cooldown reduction to all weapon and slot skills. Does not stack with other cooldown reduction traits.

*Aspect of Sun- Passive skill. In combat forward, strafing and backpedaling movement speeds are all 210 units.

*Aspect of Wind- Ground target skill. Gust of wind pushes 600 units.

*Elite Dodge Skill- Whirlwind when you dodge. 300 units. 50% damage reduction. No evade

Aspects of the Nuhoch

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nuhoch

Utility Skills

*Aspect of Balance- Passive skill. 25% chance to be immune to float, knockback, knockdown, launch, pull and sink effects.

*Aspect of Nuhoch- Passive skill. Jump forward 600 units.

*Aspect of Potoni the Massive- Ground target skill. Jump 600 units. Jump height is doubled.

*Elite Dodge Skill- Leap when you dodge. 300 units. 50% damage reduction. No evade.

Aspects of the Itzel

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Itzel

Utility Skills

*Aspect of Whatever- Passive skill. 25% reduction to all critical hits.

*Aspect of Itzel – Passive Skill. Stealth perception 600 units.

*Aspect of Bladedancer- Ground target skill. Teleport 600 units.

*Elite Dodge Skill- Teleport when you dodge. 300 units. 50% damage reduction. No evade

Aspects of the Exalted

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Exalted

Utility Skills

*Aspect of Flight- Passive skill. 25% reduction to all AoE ground target damage

*Aspect of Exalted- Passive skill. “Water walking” and no falling damage.

*Aspect of Tarnished Sage- Ground target skill. Hover 600 units.

*Elite Dodge Skill- Become a golden ball of light when you dodge. 300 units. 50% damage reduction. No evade

Aspects of the Dwarves

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dwarf

Utility Skills

*Aspect of Stone- 25% reduction to all condition damage.

*Aspect of Dwarf- 25% Increased skill speed.

*Aspect of Jalis Ironhammer- Ground target skill. Charge 600 units.

*Elite Dodge Skill- Charge when you dodge. 300 units. 50% damage reduction. No evade

… These are just the core concept ideas and names, just wanted to toss it out there. Will have some edits as well.

Amaranthe.3578:

for PvE in the open world,like HoT maps and the new LS maps.
can anyone recommend a build that will be bulky enough for those maps yet hit hard enough?

This is what I generally use for all pve stuff. The build is all Celestial, but sometimes I switch to Viper armor (just the armor). You have to be proactive with CA skills, particularly 3 and 5, so I make use of staff to build up AF faster.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW3fnUqAFsiVsCurAUtglCBr5DMseBwb1x6a9pLEtCAlI9wA-TxhFABUp87OdDDcRAkU9H42fgPlgA8EACAgAczbmNbzgzbezbezbeu5Nv5Nv5NLDg+CA-e

Edit- The build was doing just fine yesterday while soloing centaurs in the new zone.

Eleazar.9478:

See an amulet system would go a loooooong way to improving this fights. As you know you’ll have a down side to what stats you take. But nope everyone wants there broke kitten

No, amulets don’t fix core issues or replace profession development.

Players have the right to play how they want, not how you want them to, as long as it’s within the game design and rule set that the devs created.

This thread, and some comments, seems an awful lot like qqing about some imaginary honor system, for builds and combat, that you are trying to impose on others… sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.

I have my list of gripes, but you don’t blame players for using what the devs provided, you blame the devs for not developing or fixing problematic issues…

Curby.4897:

Nice to see this post getting some attention. hopefully the right people look at it too.

The devs are not going to add in a structure decay mechanic… Objectives, themselves, are easy enough to take already, and choking supplies is already a thing if you weren’t aware…

Edit- “This promotes Defending – Protecting your camps – Small teams/Roamers will have an actual impact on the map again.”… solo players and havoc groups already do stuff to have an impact…

“I feel this will make for educated gameplay instead of mindlessly k training like it is now.”… load up TS and command then come back and tell me it’s a “mindlessly k training” task.

Slowpokeking.8720:

I mean many people had waited for the update but we didn’t get it. To make us happier, can Anet give us some free gem or a free BLC ticket for the delay mass?

I was thinking a Legendary of choice instead…

Vyrulisse.1246:

Kinda alarming that the fate of this entire patch which you’ve gotten us hyped for nearly a month over is tied to the last day like this. Maybe give yourselves some room next time.

Well, perhaps next time you can write to the six and ask them not to drop a snow storm in Washington state the day before a patch is set to launch… or… even better… you can just be more reasonable.

Goldfox.5729:

Mylerian.9176:

Goldfox.5729:

For EU players it’s already getting very late, and many people have work tomorrow. I must say I’m quite disappointed by this delay.

Nothing they can do. They can not control the weather! That’s like saying I am disappointed that the airline won’t fly me to Miami cause there is a hurricane.

They can’t control the weather, but everyone knows that if you’re hosting a server you should have backup electricity and maybe arrange things beforehand instead of letting us wait for over 5 hours on a patch day…

They just had the worst storm in 8 years. There were travel bans. People can die in bad weather like that…

Stuff happens, stop being rude and selfish.

As to be expected…

The devs do nothing meaningful to improve professions or fix problematic issues. Professions and combat are stale, and it’s not until the xpac that things will get exciting again. GW2 twitch streams hover between the 80-100 mark and these peeps aren’t going to make any money doing it. GW2 pvp and wvw combat is awful to watch, it’s all about stack and spam whatever. The devs wanted esports and wvw in the game, but they built and maintain everything for pve…

I’m sure more tournaments would be run, and more players playing, if anet actually got to business with creating professions 2.0, provided decent roles to play and made the combat more user friendly… but oh well.

Dear OP TP Flipper and Flippers in the thread,

Thank you so much for all your help and noble ways! Without you all I’m sure the in-game economy would crumble and every item would be outside of our purchasing power!

We, the little people, truly appreciate all the TP manipulation solely on our behalf, and are so proud you are rewarded with gold, by chance of course, in the process for all these selfless actions!

I would like to propose the OP TP Flipper create a list of all those in the 1% so we can start mailing you all our daily gold reward. This way we can directly contribute to your valiant efforts!

Sincerely,

Someone who can buy all the gold I want, but would prefer to play the game as opposed to bragging on the forums about virtual gold!

Current mechanics are fine. This would be a pointless change.

There are a lot of tactics to zerging properly, enough with the “mindless k train” comments already.

There are a lot of games that have built-in UI customization options, so could we get UI customization options for GW2 too?

For the folks who may not understand what UI customization options are…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KEUcQCH1sk4

Thank you for reading this question about UI customization options for GW2!

Would be a great feature to be able to customize the color of skill effects, like in city of heroes, so we could have a bit more individuality for our characters.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Power_Customization

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ePujn8yYMcE

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

You personally find it more balanced, I do not. Full zerk is already a thing in sPvP it is used by GS/Ma+Sh warrior. Dire/Settler/Nomad not existing in sPvP is one of the reasons I find the game mode a bore, it is far too centered around burst for my taste, though tanky builds are problematic in a game mode that revolves around standing in a little circle.

3.5k power 220% crit damage zerk or 2k condi 3k tough 24k hp dire is possible in wvw and not in pvp is not a personal opinion, its a fact. well that’s great, you love tanky builds, as do I sometimes, but theres a point where any stat combo becomes broken and unfun to play against. an amulet system would fix that. unless you ask for aa nerfs, builds like these wont go away with a few trait fixes. I hope everyone realizes this.

Swagger.1459:

At this point anet is not going to switch to the amulet system because it would only serve to anger current players who have invested in ascended and Legendary gear sets. The backlash would be enormous, and the devs would be forced to provide refunds to players or compensation for all the gear they invested in over the years.

I doubt they will, honestly, but there is a way to make sure players who invested time into ascended and legendary items don’t get robbed. its simple. give them stronger amulets.
le gasp

“Stronger amulets” are not compensation for time, effort, gold and cash spent on the game.

Swamurabi.7890:

Swagger.1459:

Swamurabi.7890:

Swagger.1459:

Just so everyone understands Spvp amulets.

1. Ease of entry and playability to structured pvp. Key word here is “structured”. WvW is meant to be an “open world” pvp experience.

2. The devs do not devote any meaningful time or resources to improve, update or “balance” professions and skills, so they use the (cheap to use) amulet system to do that.

3. The devs use amulets to force meta changes because they do not do number 2.

Anet generally always uses the easiest way to update and problem solve, and while that may work in some areas, you can’t be cheap when it comes to professions, skills and combat designs.

Dev quote…

“We believe that having distinct meta periods is healthy for the state of PvP, but keeping the meta constantly in flux is frustrating for most players, because things that were effective one day were ineffective the next week.”

We don’t need the devs to force “distinct meta periods” with amulets… This entire game needs a team that constantly improves professions, adds new skill and weapons so the players can create their own meta and counter meta builds… not what the devs force feed down players throats.

Whether Anet considers WvW to not be a structured PvP, the players certainly have made WvW structured.

WvW has had it’s share of metas.

The Culling Meta
The Hammer train
The Pirate ship
The Boonshare/Condi Meta

What is a problem with WvW is that a new player has to grind just to get to be able to be welcome in WvW. We even have a name for them….Rallybot

F2P players have to grind to lvl 60, but we all know that 80 is best.
Then they have to grind to get gear.
Then they enter WvW and find out their class isn’t one of the preferred classes, and go through the grind all over again.

New to GW2 players just can’t play WvW like when we were all noobs.

Adding more xpacs with more specializations with more armor combinations will just make it that much harder for new players to enter WvW and this will eventually turn into EotM.

Yes there are metas, but those have been more created by players with all the “tools” the devs provide, as they should be. Think you are missing the point of what I said…

Players can obtain exotics easily and function well, there are no excuses besides being lazy when it comes to gear.

At this point anet is not going to switch to the amulet system because it would only serve to anger current players who have invested in ascended and Legendary gear sets. The backlash would be enormous, and the devs would be forced to provide refunds to players or compensation for all the gear they invested in over the years.

I think you’re missing my point, as well as points by others on this thread.

While getting 3 stat exotic armor is easy, 4 stat armor as well as ascended armor is more of a grind. Switching runes, “diversifying” armor as well as having multiple sets for multiple characters is also a grind. This is not what WvW should be about. All of this grind is a part of what is killing WvW.

You don’t have to PvE or WvW to be good at sPvP,
You don’t have to WvW or sPvP to be good at PvE
but you have to PvE or sPvP to get the gear to play WvW.

A new player can jump into sPvP or PvE and be fine, in WvW they’re not much better than an ambient.

I made points, you responded and missed my points. Don’t mixed it up with anyone else or with your points that were off the mark.

WvW is not switching to the amulet system. Players can get the gear they want if they choose.

Swamurabi.7890:

Swagger.1459:

Just so everyone understands Spvp amulets.

1. Ease of entry and playability to structured pvp. Key word here is “structured”. WvW is meant to be an “open world” pvp experience.

2. The devs do not devote any meaningful time or resources to improve, update or “balance” professions and skills, so they use the (cheap to use) amulet system to do that.

3. The devs use amulets to force meta changes because they do not do number 2.

Anet generally always uses the easiest way to update and problem solve, and while that may work in some areas, you can’t be cheap when it comes to professions, skills and combat designs.

Dev quote…

“We believe that having distinct meta periods is healthy for the state of PvP, but keeping the meta constantly in flux is frustrating for most players, because things that were effective one day were ineffective the next week.”

We don’t need the devs to force “distinct meta periods” with amulets… This entire game needs a team that constantly improves professions, adds new skill and weapons so the players can create their own meta and counter meta builds… not what the devs force feed down players throats.

Whether Anet considers WvW to not be a structured PvP, the players certainly have made WvW structured.

WvW has had it’s share of metas.

The Culling Meta
The Hammer train
The Pirate ship
The Boonshare/Condi Meta

What is a problem with WvW is that a new player has to grind just to get to be able to be welcome in WvW. We even have a name for them….Rallybot

F2P players have to grind to lvl 60, but we all know that 80 is best.
Then they have to grind to get gear.
Then they enter WvW and find out their class isn’t one of the preferred classes, and go through the grind all over again.

New to GW2 players just can’t play WvW like when we were all noobs.

Adding more xpacs with more specializations with more armor combinations will just make it that much harder for new players to enter WvW and this will eventually turn into EotM.

Yes there are metas, but those have been more created by players with all the “tools” the devs provide, as they should be. Think you are missing the point of what I said…

Players can obtain exotics easily and function well, there are no excuses besides being lazy when it comes to gear.

At this point anet is not going to switch to the amulet system because it would only serve to anger current players who have invested in ascended and Legendary gear sets. The backlash would be enormous, and the devs would be forced to provide refunds to players or compensation for all the gear they invested in over the years.

Just so everyone understands Spvp amulets.

1. Ease of entry and playability to structured pvp. Key word here is “structured”. WvW is meant to be an “open world” pvp experience.

2. The devs do not devote any meaningful time or resources to improve, update or “balance” professions and skills, so they use the (cheap to use) amulet system to do that.

3. The devs use amulets to force meta changes because they do not do number 2.

Anet generally always uses the easiest way to update and problem solve, and while that may work in some areas, you can’t be cheap when it comes to professions, skills and combat designs.

Dev quote…

“We believe that having distinct meta periods is healthy for the state of PvP, but keeping the meta constantly in flux is frustrating for most players, because things that were effective one day were ineffective the next week.”

We don’t need the devs to force “distinct meta periods” with amulets… This entire game needs a team that constantly improves professions, adds new skill and weapons so the players can create their own meta and counter meta builds… not what the devs force feed down players throats.

Rangerdeity.5847:

Swagger.1459:

Rangerdeity.5847:

ill pass your commanders are terrible which is why people are leaving your server. the only time your commanders have success is when they have a 7:5+ ratio on zerg scale. thats not being good thats being well manned.

Actually, wvw as a whole is boring as all get out due to lack of major and minor updates. Players are fatigued. There is nothing to “win”. Rewards still suck after 4 years. Professions have been stale for a long time. The devs don’t fix problematic issues. Players come and go on every server. There is only so much repetitiveness any player can take… There are a plethora of issues and circumstances created by the devs, and it’s short sighted of you to talk about “commanders” and niggle about “ratio” when wvw is an unhealthy competitive state…

you take a shot at commanders and rant about WvW’s problems? i take it your a commander.

anyway since im amused the rewards have been buff a lot other than lack of access to ascended armors in WvW short of the insane amount of crafting materials you get from WvW (lol like i want to craft that kitten if i can avoid it) other than dungeon spamming WvW is easily the most profitable in terms of gold and resource pick ups. but your right lack of access to ascended armor is what drags its population down. as far as boring honestly its the most interesting part of the game save people who enjoy 5v5 pvp. seriously what is more entertaining 30v30 team fights or might stacking in a corner then nuking a boss while you hide in that corner so he cant hit you?

You should probably rephrase that first sentence because you seem confused… You took a shot at commanders, not I. You don’t look at the big picture so I laid it out for you.

No, I don’t command btw.

lol at the “WvW is easily the most profitable in terms of gold and resource pick ups”…

Rangerdeity.5847:

ill pass your commanders are terrible which is why people are leaving your server. the only time your commanders have success is when they have a 7:5+ ratio on zerg scale. thats not being good thats being well manned.

Actually, wvw as a whole is boring as all get out due to lack of major and minor updates. Players are fatigued. There is nothing to “win”. Rewards still suck after 4 years. Professions have been stale for a long time. The devs don’t fix problematic issues. Players come and go on every server. There is only so much repetitiveness any player can take… There are a plethora of issues and circumstances created by the devs, and it’s short sighted of you to talk about “commanders” and niggle about “ratio” when wvw is an unhealthy competitive state…

Aden Celeste.3650:

Hi all, I am currently suffering from severe carpal tunnel syndrome on both my hands, and I find it almost impossible to select a fellow party member by using the mouse to heal them. I tried using tab, and even went into the configuration menu and tried to select nearest friendly player, instead it selects the nearest NPC, even inanimate objects!

How do you guys deal with using the druid to heal party members? do all of you use the mouse to select a player? I find it IMPOSSIBLE with all the chaos in the battle field, SPECIALLY when the mouse sometimes disappears!

Would be appreciated from your response.

The game design doesn’t have support skills that target friendly players, sorry.

Here is an instructional video that shows the absolutely wonderful Druid support mechanics in the game! Enjoy!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wm2ZK2wrKhU

zealex.9410:

You know a great feature would be if all zone scaled to your lvl instead of you scaling to their lvl or just being outlvled by mobs in a zone. If the map were propperly scaling the all zone at max lvl would be a tiny bit harder so better scaling from core tyria to expac zones ( hot issues wont happen again). This could make the game fel more alive you know, when you explore as you get stronger your foes do so as well its not jsut an icon showing you the zone is higher lvl than you you will get one shotted but it still remains enganging at max lvl .

This would also push you towards exploring further than hat youd normaly explore since you get more option and you are not lvl gated. Also the actual lvling might even be better since you get more option you can go lvl by doing events in zones you enjoy but might have been higher lvl before (for example i really like the south zones( athe ones close to orr and orr it self , as well as the char zones and i’d like to explore them while lvl lets say an asura and lvl through doing events and hearts there).

I think overall that would make you a free player, it would let you pick wahtever path you want explore as much as you like be a free man actually instead of following a set path with story or just spamming tomes of knowledge.

This is not a logical or realistic request for a ton of reasons, and would never be implemented anyway.

Killing build diversity, through amulet restrictions, does nothing to improve wvw.

Amulets are the easier and cheaper way for anet to appear like they are working on balance, but amulets will never replace the need for actual profession development, balancing, skill improvements, additions of new skills… blah blah blah.

Anet is fully aware that a change like this would lead to a huge backlash of criticism and force them into a position of refunding or compensating players for gear purchases.

Einlanzer.1627:

Lalainnia.3598:

lol it hasn’t even been that long and ppl are mouth foaming already good to much of a good thing I guess

People are tired of the incredibly slow pace nearly everything tends to happen in this game. It’s frustrating.

Exactly

HoT was released in October 2015… Yeah I’d say that’s pretty kitten slow.

HardNaming.1695:

Hi,

I know this can not be more odd but is there any ways for me to terminate my own account? My friend is playing my gw2 account but I feel like he has reached a point of addiction that I have to terminate my account to save him…

Any thoughts?

Best

HardNaming.1695:

He knows all my email and password information and so changing them will not solve the problems…
I know I can not make this decisions but he has told me many times he wished he would not play this much games.

Your story sounds fishy.

Edit- And if your story is true, you are irresponsible for sharing any personal information with anyone. Should have learned your lessons with this 5 months ago.

HardNaming.1695:

Hi,
Please help me. My account has been compromised and i sent ticket about 4-5 days ago as well as yesterday and did not get a single reply. Please help. I am so desperate and depressed. All my characters are deleted and gold are gone.

Ticket number: 2318317
Ticket number: 2315851

Please help!

Best

Dusty Moon.4382:

People want to make GW2 into a trinity game and it is not designed to be one.

Umm the devs fancifully named their trinity “damage, control and support”, with more emphasis on non-heal support… The devs realized this created the “unhealthy zerker meta” and started to provide more roles to the game to move away from it…. HoT introduced 3 roles designed around heal support, and those 3 were Druid, Ventari and Tempest…

You should watch the first 2 minutes and understand the new direction that professions and gameplay are going.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ZHhJQn0B8

Edit- And you repeating “no trinity” has nothing to do with poor rewards for playing heal support.

Have a screen pop up and chat window message indicating the name of a player (and obviously basic info like what structure and tactivator) when a tactivator is used. This should help discourage enemy players from trolling tactivators because then we know clearly who to report.

Thanks for reading this awesome suggestion!

Straegen.2938:

DeceiverX.8361:

I don’t agree because additive scaling or simply raw numbers makes optimization and the emergence of overpowered abilities and skills too strict and too confined.

Blowing up players in a second or two creates a very unfriendly environment for new and casual players which are necessary for the long term health of WvW. In most sPvP encounters there is a back and forth that allows a newer player to learn. Most of the time new WvW players are dead before they know a fight started with little time to learn and adapt.

Unfortunately, the damage modifiers have become an escalation race that has limited diversity. Meta builds mostly have to go bunker, condi or push heavy into damage multipliers. Those players not running meta or pre-meta typically come on the forums and complain about how OP XYZ is or quit out of frustration.

Iirc, Deceiver is in the game industry… These bits of wisdom Streagen has brought up should be common knowledge for developers, and also for objective players who take competitive gameplay more seriously.

When GW (launched 2005) was around I was a pvper in City of Heroes (launched 2004) for around 5 years. It was a fast paced twitch based game, moment and positioning was a thing (when in GW you couldn’t even jump…), there were a ton of diverse roles to play… and this was before Twitch was around and ESL became popular…

Having played thousands of hours in zone pvp areas and arena matches it’s easy to see things that are off here… By “off” I mean a lot of things, but to give a statement that summarizes… The professions and skills in this game were built for pve and the devs have shoved all of those designs into pvp and wvw modes. Hence why I only spent 200 matches total in Spvp since launch and now taken to wvw more over the past year mostly out of boredom. Some awesome pve and wvw guildies are the main reason why I still play GW2 at all.

The anet devs have created a really great game at the core and have a lot of interesting designs, but their weak points are profession development and maintenance, and response time to problematic issues. Lack of open communication, outside of the super secret testers, is weak too, and that’s another reason why we see these lower quality and out of touch with gameplay profession balancing patch notes.

Last year, when Colin left, MO seemed to show some desire to improve wvw, so I’m hoping that he can start to deliver and not let portions of the gamebase down. The team is way more than capable of improving things, they just have to get organized and take all of their experiences over the past 4 launch years seriously and actually do something…

Edit- and there is not any perfect game, but the differences in effort to take core gameplay development seriously is night and day between anet and other big gaming studios.

OriOri.8724:

Svarty.8019:

Swagger.1459:

2. Stealth is too advantageous and too forgiving and too unbalanced.

• Stealth has never been implemented well in any game ever

• Judging by alterations made since release, I believe it’s far too late for Anet to make alterations to key class mechanics

• Our only option is to hope that future games either have zero stealth or a radically improved version

Its not too late, it would just necessitate that the classes whose mechanics are being changed would get an entire redesign instead of just a few skill numbers being tweaked.

With the tech they can fiddle with some nobs on problematic things quickly. Yes, bigger changes take time, but it’s completely possible. Seeing that other games have redisgned “things”… overhauled their classes… and have been capable of maintaining a more consistent class balancing act, none of what I’m talking about is out of the realm of possibility. Anet is more than capable… In fact, with the level of creativity this team has, I’m 1000% sure gw2 could be one of the top mmos out there for profession, skill and combat designs. I say that because there is talent under the roof and the base foundation of “things” is really good. Just need some tlc. Besides, MO talked about taking balance and such seriously last year, and I have full faith they can deliver.

Svarty.8019:

Swagger.1459:

2. Stealth is too advantageous and too forgiving and too unbalanced.

• Stealth has never been implemented well in any game ever

• Judging by alterations made since release, I believe it’s far too late for Anet to make alterations to key class mechanics

• Our only option is to hope that future games either have zero stealth or a radically improved version

Well, city of heroes had some great stealth and counter stealth designs. You can check those out in a different thread I posted.

It’s never too late. Considering “things” are starting to be fiddled with in Spvp, there is no reason why wvw can’t be placed under the microscope either. In case you missed this recent post by Gaile…

“Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:

Hey all,

We have a number of skill splits (and some global changes) that will be accompanying the launch of Season 5 next week. Read on to see what’s in store for December 13.

Over the past few releases the PvP team has been working closely with the Skills team to implement some PvP-only skill splits. Moving forward the PvP team will have more opportunity to make these skill splits as we see fit. It’s important to understand that skill splits should not change the core functionality of a skill. Players should be able to use a skill in PvE and have it do relatively the same thing in PvP, though it may be more or less effective depending on the game mode. This means that when we are looking to split out a skill, the changes are limited to the following areas:

Recharge
Damage multipliers
Healing multipliers
Number of conditions/boons applied
Duration of conditions/boons applied
Skill cost (energy and initiative)

A lot can be done with these knobs, but there still will be cases where we identify a problem skill or trait that we feel cannot be addressed without a functional change. In these cases, we are continuing to work closely with the Skills team to find a solution that makes the most sense as a global change.

Now on to the changes! Note that all changes listed are global changes except for those that are designated as “PvP only.”

@blaq

Thank you…

Comment on these now… I’ll elaborate more as well so we can have a productive conversation.

“I’ve been taking screens of damage output during fights and noticed a few issues…

1. The amount of critical damage some individual professions can do is off the charts. (No one here denies there are some heavy crit numbers so this makes ttk a bit too fast)

2. Stealth is too advantageous and too forgiving and too unbalanced. (Stealth in this game, compared to a couple others I quoted in another thread, have been poorly thought out. One game studio, I brought up as reference, thought about andimplemented an entire stealth system with checks and balances. Another game company is working on preventing stealth opening, burst and restealth scenarios.)

3. Thief has way too much access to high amounts of damage due to initiative mechanics. The initiative mechanics break from all other profession’s damage “checks and balances” balancing mechanics, and is clearly unbalanced. (No one can deny that initiative mechanics allow for multiples of the same high damage skills to be used in succession. This comment ties in with the final thoughts portion where I mention “break from core” designs.)

4. Mesmer and Thief multi-skill opening burst, from stealth, is problematic. (No player can deny that both these professions can heavily burst open from stealth… Then restealth and get out of need be, but that goes with 2 and I’m sure we get the scenario.)

5. Too many disparities between attack speeds and skill tells/animations between professions… Warrior, for example, has huge tells/animations for skills that provide a realistic amount of time to react. Most other professions and skills have an appropriate (some just too kitten slow to be useful) amount of skill tells/animations… Some professions and skills, though, break from this norm and have such quick skill tells/animations, that is makes for this unbalanced amount of ultra quick multi-skill bursts to occur… This is not good because it causes the scenarios in the screens I have provided. (Skill tells are important to have, and there are some very large disparities with that, and skill cast speeds too, between certain profession skills. Any player can see the differences between certain skills… No one can argue that some skills are highly telegraphed and some not right?)

…There are a number of “break from base” designs that may have been interesting profession and skill design concepts at launch, but certain “things” that break from core designs are doing harm to your competitive players vs other players game modes. (No one can deny that a lot of these pve designed professions are neat in ways, but some of these neat “things” throw balanced competitive play off. This ties in with the final comment about the brand new Spvp numbers balancing act of… “Recharge Damage multipliers, Healing multipliers, Number of conditions/boons applied, Duration of conditions/boons applied and Skill cost (energy and initiative)”.)

It’s time to tackle some problematic issues, like these, that are constantly brought up over the course of 4 years. Start changing some values, like you are starting to do for spvp, then give your balance team the proper person power and resources to take a fresh look at professions, skills and combat designs. (It should be clear what I’m saying here.)

WvW deserves, and needs, to have professions and skills balanced according to players against other players combat, not mirrored balance according to AI pve raids and pve content. (I think any rational player doesn’t want professsions in wvw balanced according to the profession balance of raids and pve content right?)"

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Swagger.1459:

A few things….

The mods were fully aware that the thread devolved into non-constructive discussion.

Instead of making a bunch of reports (sent a few, though), I chose to remake the thread…

It’s very clear that some commenters are not fully absorbing the entire post. It’s probably a good idea to let the words sink in a bit before y’all jump the gun and lay out assumptions.

I’m fully aware how to play, let’s not assume issues do not exist in wvw or the game in general. And let’s not pretend there has been a ton a proper review and balancing throughout the game… We need not look farther than the recent (after 4 years) skill splits happening in spvp to understand how far behind the dev team is on these matters.

Some additional critical thinking and rational posting will be best for the thread, so keep it on topic and clean.

Thanks!

Again your OP lack relevant data either from you wanting to keep it obscure or for other reasons so I had to use “data” from the other post. I laid out the facts to achieve the numbers in one of your screenshots regarding the thief damage.

It seems like you just want Berserker geared builds to do similar damage to bunker builds, the one measly defensive stat Armor at a relatively low number like 2700 vs Base Power of 2806 being 106 more and having 7 other damage modifiers increasing the disparity even further, so again if you want an Objective discussion go for it.

I have laid out how the Thief was able to achieve that damage against your reaper now try to find out why a Build that has no Defensive stats and has every stat and boost go into increasing damage shouldn’t do damage vs someone with only 2700 armor?

Time for you to take an objective stance lay out the numbers, and your reasoning.

The “facts” as of right now as per Swagger.
Reaper with 25.5k HP, 1700 Toughness and 2700 Armor.
Was dealt 10,386 damage by a Thief back stab followed up by other attacks.

These below inferred facts are from reverse engineering Swaggers provide “facts”(10,386 damage vs 2700 armor)

Full Berserker Thief with 12k HP, 1000 Toughness, 2118 Armor, 2806 Power(using full Bloodlust stack), 228.07% Crit Damage and 58.33% Crit Chance. Maximizing on 5 non stat damage modifiers Seaweed Salad, Exposed Weakness, Lead Attacks, Bounding Dodger and Havoc Mastery.

Remember objectivity is key here and so is context.

Also note the screenshots posted by other players so far highlight that multiple classes have ways to do high burst damage like DeceiverX’ reaper dealing 12k in a single hit.

If need be I will collect other relevant screenshots per class to highlight such, if need be will upload them in similar style as the OP to stick with spirit of the thread!

Read my previous post.

Focus on the words of the post because you are hung up on the screens. Some posters before were able to do that so I was hoping by now you would have caught on.

Also, you seem to forget I already addressed this stuff… “Also note the screenshots posted by other players”… My number 1 covered that and applies to all professions. The word individual also means like solo, without like team buffs and stuff.

Would it be more helpful if I were to remove the screens so things are more understandable?

Edit… This thread was not about “maths”, it was about larger “stuffs”, so save your numbers for an appropriate thread… You’ll clearly know a math related discussion thread if I brought one up, but this is not that type of thread.

KrHome.1920:

DeceiverX.8361:

Since OP plays necro, here’s a < 2s 20k burst from my reaper as well. This isn’t even anything substantial, but just a vanilla GS 4 -> 1 -> 2 combo, which mind you, could have easily proc’ed CoD for another 5k instantaneously.

Soul Spiral often hits between 15 and 20k on its own. The dodge button is pretty magical and shuts down most combo builds, particularly high-burst ones running core.

If you’re struggling, asking for help first is usually better than complaining and then deleting the many arguments posed by other people who disagree with you. Now you just look like a fool.

Cheers.

Just play the Power Boonstrip Conquest Build @ Full Zerk Gear in WvW. Enabling Reaper Shroud deals 10K damage, strips boons and can be easily combined with any other burst. E.g.:
Grasping Darkness (3K) -> enter Shroud (10K)
Gravedigger (10K) -> enter Shroud (10K) or
Chilled to the Bone (3K + stun) -> enter Shroud (10K) -> Soul Spiral (10K) or
Dagger 3 Immob -> Well of Suffering (6 to 12K) -> enter Shroud (10K)

If a part the burst is dodged: weapon swap to Axe -> Ghasly claws (5 to 10K) right after the dodge

Every class can burst when going full zerk.

OP: You should not have any problem killing Power Shatter Mesmers when you’re running 2,7K armor. You can shroudtank at least 2 of their bursts until you get some trouble wigh you health. Clearly a l2p issue here.

Classes you fear on Necro are the ones that can deal damage while negating your damage (Dragonhunter Blocks, Endure Pain, Unrelenting Assault, D/D thieves) as they have an easy time to outsustain you… but not squishy burst builds like Power Shatters.

Thank you, but that’s not what the topic is about. Let’s mentally separate the screens from 1-5 because that’s what most of you are hung up on…. The screens were to mostly highlight the global issues that opened up for points 1-5…. Reread 1-5 and understand.

Thanks again!

A few things….

The mods were fully aware that the thread devolved into non-constructive discussion.

Instead of making a bunch of reports (sent a few, though), I chose to remake the thread…

It’s very clear that some commenters are not fully absorbing the entire post. It’s probably a good idea to let the words sink in a bit before y’all jump the gun and lay out assumptions.

I’m fully aware how to play, let’s not assume issues do not exist in wvw or the game in general. And let’s not pretend there has been a ton a proper review and balancing throughout the game… We need not look farther than the recent (after 4 years) skill splits happening in spvp to understand how far behind the dev team is on these matters.

Some additional critical thinking and rational posting will be best for the thread, so keep it on topic and clean.

Thanks!

I have deleted the previous thread due to off topic and disruptive replies.

I promised to provide screen shots on this matter, so here we go…

Screen 1- Standing near keep and a Mesmer appears out of stealth and drops 22,829k worth of damage in seconds. Thankfully I was getting keep health buffs and was able to dodge some of the damage. Had it not been for the keep buff or quick dodges, I would have been multi-skill burst killed in seconds…

Screen 2- In a group fight, out of nowhere, a Thief appears and drops 27,089K multi-skill burst damage in seconds. This round I did not survive.

I’ve been taking screens of damage output during fights and noticed a few issues…

1. The amount of critical damage some individual professions can do is off the charts.

2. Stealth is too advantageous and too forgiving and too unbalanced.

3. Thief has way too much access to high amounts of damage due to initiative mechanics. The initiative mechanics break from all other profession’s damage “checks and balances” balancing mechanics, and is clearly unbalanced.

4. Mesmer and Thief multi-skill opening burst, from stealth, is problematic.

5. Too many disparities between attack speeds and skill tells/animations between professions… Warrior, for example, has huge tells/animations for skills that provide a realistic amount of time to react. Most other professions and skills have an appropriate (some just too kitten slow to be useful) amount of skill tells/animations… Some professions and skills, though, break from this norm and have such quick skill tells/animations, that is makes for this unbalanced amount of ultra quick multi-skill bursts to occur… This is not good because it causes the scenarios in the screens I have provided.

…There are a number of “break from base” designs that may have been interesting profession and skill design concepts at launch, but certain “things” that break from core designs are doing harm to your competitive players vs other players game modes.

It’s time to tackle some problematic issues, like these, that are constantly brought up over the course of 4 years. Start changing some values, like you are starting to do for spvp, then give your balance team the proper person power and resources to take a fresh look at professions, skills and combat designs.

WvW deserves, and needs, to have professions and skills balanced according to players against other players combat, not mirrored balance according to AI pve raids and pve content.

Thank you!

WvW Issues

Stealth spam and poor stealth counter mechanics for pvp modes.

CC spam and poor CC counter mechanics for pvp modes.

Burst damage and Multi-skill hit damage (in seconds) is off the charts.

WvW (realm pvp) skills not being changed to mirror spvp skill splits.

Lack of optional secondary weapon choices for ele and engineer.

Unequal access to movement and position skills for each profession.

Limited viable build variety per profession.

Heal and non-heal support are designed poorly for movement based team play. Overall lack of decent support roles.

Low quality UI, with lots of visually disruptive elements, that lacks proper customization options. No option to display player health on character either.

Messy and too restrictive trait system.

Despite being factored into the ranger damage equation… ranger pets still suck, are dead often and struggle to hit moving targets.

1 person can contest any objective to prevent portal use.

Lag.

Still no decent rewards that are comparable to what is provided in pve.

… will update when I think of more issues.

OriOri.8724:

I do think that the stealth, CC, and boon/condi system in this game need to be looked at by ANet and redesigned. Stealth is mostly ok imo, just needs a few small tweaks like applying damaging conditions should break stealth the same as applying power damage does.

I appreciate that you link resources to what other games do with these mechanics, but I think we shouldn’t try to emulate them too much. GW2 combat is pretty unique, even if it has its problems, and I would rather keep it that way.

But back to stealth, I think one of the biggest things ANet could do is give every class a reveal skill that doesn’t have to have an enemy target. Medium sized AoE effect either based around the player or a targetted skill. The CD doesn’t have to be great, the skill doesn’t have to be all that great (and ideally it won’t be, it should be a decision to be able to reveal players at the expense of losing a more valuable skill on your bar), but every class should at least have the ability to reveal other players if they wanted to take that skill.

I agree obviously.

I posted those for two reasons. One was to show how much more effort was put toward creating healthier and more enjoyable pvp modes, and the other was to show the philosophy behind the thought processes.

I personally believe more reveal is not the answer. I think stealth should be in limited doses (like stealth openers, emergency use elite skills and specialized skills that fit the build) during combat, and that professions need to be studier without stealth in the equation.

We have pve designed classes, skills and combat designs shoved into pvp modes, and that doesn’t work. Finally spvp will get bits of balancing, but that still means wvw will be a big spam fest of stealth, condi, boons, 10k+ bursts… with huge disparities between professions.

Edit- It also makes zero sense to me that structured pvp is starting to be balanced differently than realm pvp. Realm pvp is not pve, but it’s being treated as such.

The Game Slayer.7632:

But, in my opinion, stealth mechanics are fine and nicely balanced now… So… /thread?

This is a l2p issue. If you don’t like adapting, go play another game.

Besides, even if stealth is nerfed/redone/whatever, you and all the other newer players are just going to complain about the unlimited dodges from acro thieves or the superior mobility from shortbow.

I’m going to quote myself as a response…

Swagger.1459:

I’ve been checking out some comments in this thread and will have some replies soon, but I just wanted to make some players aware that the reason wvw and spvp have been such a mess since launch is because… (and I will paraphrase a developer here)… “balancing for all the game modes will add a lot of overhead to balance patches”…

So, all the funky and silly stuff we see happening in competitive games modes is not because that’s what the devs intended, it’s because the top is not giving the devs a green light to properly work on professions and combat for pvp modes…

Some of y’all might just keep defending away after reading this, but realize you are defending game designs that have been intentionally ignored and neglected.

Edit- and to be fair… only after 4 years have the devs started to make separate skill balances for spvp only, not wvw.

This was posted by Gaile 1 month ago… only 1 month ago. GW2 was released August 28th 2012 btw…

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the PvP Team:

Hey all,

We have a number of skill splits (and some global changes) that will be accompanying the launch of Season 5 next week. Read on to see what’s in store for December 13.

Over the past few releases the PvP team has been working closely with the Skills team to implement some PvP-only skill splits. Moving forward the PvP team will have more opportunity to make these skill splits as we see fit. It’s important to understand that skill splits should not change the core functionality of a skill. Players should be able to use a skill in PvE and have it do relatively the same thing in PvP, though it may be more or less effective depending on the game mode. This means that when we are looking to split out a skill, the changes are limited to the following areas:

• Recharge
• Damage multipliers
• Healing multipliers
• Number of conditions/boons applied
• Duration of conditions/boons applied
• Skill cost (energy and initiative)

A lot can be done with these knobs, but there still will be cases where we identify a problem skill or trait that we feel cannot be addressed without a functional change. In these cases, we are continuing to work closely with the Skills team to find a solution that makes the most sense as a global change.

Now on to the changes! Note that all changes listed are global changes except for those that are designated as “PvP only.”

Spvp only, but not a care about wvw…

From an AMA

Question from DarkNecrid…

“Can you provide a succinct statement on why ArenaNet is against splitting skills between PvE/W3/PvP because I’m glad you guys are not doing it due to what happened in GW1 when ArenaNet did this (PvE become more wildly imbalanced with massive power creep on skills that became completely different from their former counterpart like Signet of Spirits, PvP was balanced about the same prior to it, class mechanics changed between both formats, added another huge barrier of entry into PvP which is a format that already has a huge barrier of entry which killed off the PvP population pretty fast etc) but a lot of people still seem to want it even though the Guild Wars 2 ArenaNet has spent time these past few years actually reverting the splits you guys did do around launch so you seem to be against it as well with little statement as to why?”

Answer from Isaiah Cartwright…

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nxtz4?context=10000

“We are not fully against it but it adds a lot of overhead to every balance and design decisions as you move forward. While it does give you another tool box it does lead to optimizing skills heavily for each game type which does make power creep. like Mike Z always says and Colin gets blamed for its on the table and it’s something we may use in the future but we do often find most issues are global issues that are just highlighted in one area.”

“Overhead” means money and time… While it’s nice to finally see spvp get some effort put in, that still leaves wvw a complete mess.

Other version of stealth mechanics…

http://camelot.gamepedia.com/Stealth

“Stealth is made of several mechanics that the allow players to hide or sneak up on opposing players. All classes can make use of some of these mechanics, but the Archers, Scouts and Stealthers specialize in using them.”

Concept and philosophy of stealth…

“Goal #1 – Design a fun, interesting stealth mechanic, and classes that are not seen as “Easy Mode” by non-stealthers.

Goal #2 – Do not design a class that is centered around a strong opener, stun, and vanish with long/unlimited stealth, nor a class that can hide, one-shot, vanish again.

Goal #3 – Design a class that has the ability to be very active and sought-after, either in RvR groups or as roamers.

Goal #4 – Design a class that some non-traditional Stealthers want to play.

Goal #5 – Design a class that requires skill to play well, and not just unlimited patience.

Goal #6 – Design a system where a gank group of Stealthers is not possible."

Stealth mechanics…

“Camouflage

Camouflage is useable by all classes.

Archer classes get “magically enhanced” camouflage. Camouflage effectiveness is determined by the garb and environment. Camouflage works by drastically increasing your concealment stat while in use.

Concealment

Concealment prevents you from being detected and is different the Stealth. Whether or not you will be seen is based off an unknown formula that pits the users concealment value against the enemies detection rating.

Scouts enjoy a large boost to their concealment stat while in their scouting form with no duration to limit the effect, although the effectiveness may be diminished based on time of day.

Veil Walking

Veilwalking is distinct from camouflage and concealment. Veilwalking is the Camelot Unchained term that best translates to traditional MMO “stealth”, and is the primary mechanism for the Stealther trio. It involves the practitioner going into the Veil, and it is their presence in the Veil which provides these classes their stealth status. All in attempt to gain surprise, and/or build up resources in order to gain an advantage versus an opponent.

Veilwalking duration is not permanent, but instead lasts a “long” time (further specifics have not been given as of yet).

Stealthers will be able to see other stealth classes while within the veil (the distances are unknown).

Stealthers will be able to see other player characters outside the veil. (the distances are unknown).

Stealthers will be immune to abilities from characters outside the veil unless they are specifically intended to target those within.

The longer the stealth classes remain within the Veil, the more damage they take when they emerge from the Veil. Estimates of damage are unknown. This is considered to be a balancing factor that allows CSE to give stealthers “strong openers”, and not force the stealthers to stand still to recover as was originally planned while unstealthing. This mechanic may or may not prove necessary and may not be kept (needs citation).

The more Stealthers within an area, the more Veil disturbance is created. Veil disturbance increases the damage taken while within the veil, and makes those inside easier to detect by creating more “noise” vs. the Detection statfromn their opponents. This noise is partially countered when many players help create background noise. This background noise will act as a mask to reduce the ease at which Stealthers are detected around larger fights. The results should be:

Stealther vs a single target : the Stealthers has normal stealth effectiveness.

Multiple Stealthers vs fewer targets: the Stealthers have reduced stealth effectiveness.

Multiple Stealthers in an area where multiple people are fighting: the Stealthers has normal stealth effectiveness."

All players in city of heroes had access to stealth skills.

All players had access to counter stealth skills.

All players could manage cc effects through special pvp rules, personal skills, outside player buffs and inspirations…

All players had access to movement skills, not leaving any player sol on the battle field because they were simply out maneuvered.

All players had access to self-healing skills and tools…

…Almost every power set, for each class, could hold their own in pvp because the devs cared to create a more balanced professions and combat system.

…Teamwork was far superior by skill design too…

I could go on and on with things that made the city of heroes class and combat system better balanced, more fair and sensible, but the main point is that the team who created that game actually put a ton of thought into their classes, skill and combat designs… They didn’t intentionally leave major design issues to fester like we have here.

…Sorry for the long posts, but y’all devs have let a potentially great class and combat system go to crap because nothing substantial has been done. GW2 requires more than just a couple of value changes to skills and tool tip corrections to make a more balanced and enjoyable game.. but if y’all are content with the overall designs or aren’t willing to properly invest in making substantial improvements, then at least communicate that to players so we know what to expect and so we can stop wasting time posting.

Related to stealth and cc systems…

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inspirations

“Accuracy Inspirations

Inspiration Accuracy Lvl 1 Insight: +7.5% ToHit, +Perception
Increases your to-hit by 7.5% and increases your perception by 125 ft for 60 seconds.

Inspiration Accuracy Lvl 2 Keen Insight: +18.75% ToHit, +Perception
Increases your to-hit by 18.75% and increases your perception by 166 ft for 60 seconds.

Inspiration Accuracy Lvl 3 Uncanny Insight: +37.5% ToHit, +Perception
Increases your to-hit by 37.5% and increases your perception by 250 ft for 60 seconds.

Inspiration Accuracy Lvl 4 Sight Beyond Sight:+75% ToHit, +Perception
Increases your to-hit by 75% and increases your Perception by 250 ft for 60 seconds."

“Resist Effects Inspirations

Inspiration Lvl 1 Break Free: Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear, confuse, and knockback effects and boosts your resistance to repel, taunt, and placate effects for 30 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects.

-10 Magnitude protection against Hold, Sleep, Stun, and Immobilize; -5 Magnitude protection against Knockback, Knockup, Fear, and Confuse; 50% resistance to Taunt and Placate; 25% resistance to Repel

Inspiration Lvl 2 Emerge: Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear, confuse, and knockback effects and boosts your resistance to repel, taunt, and placate effects for 60 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects.

-15 Magnitude protection against Hold, Sleep, Stun, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse; -7.5 Magnitude protection against Knockback and Knockup; 50% resistance to Taunt, Placate, and Repel

Inspiration Lvl 3 Escape: Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear, confuse, and knockback effects and boosts your resistance to repel, taunt, and placate effects for 90 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects.

-20 Magnitude protection against Hold, Sleep, Stun, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse; -10 Magnitude protection against Knockback and Knockup; 100% resistance to Repel; 50% resistance to Taunt and Placate

Inspiration Lvl 4 Liberate: Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear, confuse, and knockback effects and boosts your resistance to repel, taunt and placate effects for 90 seconds. This Inspiration can be used even while under such effects.

-40 Magnitude protection against Hold, Sleep, Stun, Immobilize, Fear, and Confuse; -20 Magnitude protection against Knockback and Knockup; 100% resistance to Repel; 75% resistance to Taunt and Placate"