Guild Wars 2

Rupturing Smash: This attack now strikes as a single hit within an arc rather than a cascading damage attack. The effect for this skill has been sped up to better match its new functionality. The radius has been increased to 360. The ground decal size has been increased to match the new radius. The daze duration has been increased to 1 second.

The main benefit of this move is to hit multiple enemies (effectively 15 targets) in one attack. Multi-hit attacks are good in WvW where blobs clump up 10+ players in a tight area. This change reduces it’kitten count to just 5 targets. It also makes this attack vulnerable to blinds. Why was this change necessary?

Josh, thank you for finally saying something after months of silence, but why is a brand manager discussing this all of a sudden? Is the balance team so busy picking their noses that you had to do their job?

Forget what’s “viable” or “meta”.

Play whatever the hell you want. Go ahead and try running a killshot setup build with another warrior in a zerg and try pinsniping with two consecutive unblockable shots. It’s hilarious.

The rules must not keep changing. Similar to how there’s pro basketball, and how successful LoL / Starcraft have become, the rules stay the same and don’t change much (well at least not TOO much to the degree players need to relearn the sport). Unfortunately, as long as AN continue to adopt the absurd “shake up the meta” approach in balancing, while simultaneously changing multiple aspects of game mechanics over the span of 3+ years, GW2 will never be ready for “E-Sports”. The reason being is because it takes time for players to become masters of their art. If the rules keep changing, it breaks the momentum for “pro league” players and ruins everything “E-sport” (god I hate that word. I also hate “baseline”, “meta”, “QoL”, and the other nonsense lip service AN tends to spew out)

@ Daishi, accessibility wise, AN has taken strides to improve this but it’s still at an unacceptable level. (that is, all they did was make it F2P). There is actually quite a large paywall in place- HOT specializations. Without them, you can kiss any chance you have in competitive PvP in GW2. That’s not my definition of accessibility.

GW2 is also a terrible game to spectate. Try asking someone who’s never seen GW2 before to sit down and watch a match. It’s like watching monkeys flinging poo everywhere. No way to anticipate player actions, a kitten load of passive gameplay in the form of conditions, boons, traits etc, and it’s a pain in the kitten to watch a whole match as the camera only focuses on one player. Too much is happening on the screen, yet not enough information is given to the viewer in spectator mode. This problem is exemplified by the terrible announcers that don’t even give play-by-play breakdowns of the “professional” players. Like I said- its just monkeys flinging poo at each other.

Going beyond this- the matches are not intense from the teams perspective. No commands. No communication, or play-by-play requests (like requesting a water field, etc). There is a lot of potential to be had in zerg v zerg fights, yet AN continues to ignore the potential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF1UzimGnvs
Even then though, it’s still an unrefined mess that’s difficult to follow for a spectator. (note to AN: This is not a suggestion to molest WvW fights.)

also

738 Votes collected
Average Score: 1.97 (Bad – Abysmal)

edit/ Forgot to add suggestions.

Really, it just boils down to dropping the negative marketing “gw2 esports” is garnering. It’s a failed venture, and AN jumped on that boat before it was ready. Stop funding “E-Sports” and reallocate the budget to getting the game ready for such a thing, because the game at its current state is not ready.

FAIR AND BALANCED

King Cephalopod.7942:

http://imgur.com/gallery/M4ZScZa

Off topic (brought to mind from above post) Karl really needs to practice speaking while on camera e.g. Guild Chat. Particularly there was the one GC when discussing the first wave of warrior buffs since HoT (rifle changes) where he struggled to find the Crack Shot trait for a solid two minutes and they had to switch camera focus, probably so somebody could point it out.
Given his performance on GC in general, I’d be willing to attribute it to nerves and flustering which falls on the optimistic end of things. He’s a dev, not a presenter/PR, I know that struggle, whatever. But they chose him to present it. Problem is given the state of Daredevil, Dragonhunter, and Berserker on HoT launch people I know were more than willing to assume the pessimistic end of things that he simply didn’t know what he was doing, or much anything about the classes he was in charge of. Not a good look, that could be clarified by practice in public speaking.

But then again, reading the DH blurb on the HoT website even seems confused. It looks to be written to try to justify the design decisions rather than describe a cool new function.

Regardless of presentation ability, it’s all just lip-service. If what he says isn’t reflected in the work he’s performed, then I’m going to stay pessimistic.

Zelulose.8695:

Hopefully they listen to their polls. I would rather not see repeats of other dying games. Vindictus for example added jumping and removed it against many players wishes. They lost allot of people including me. I hope the balance team can rise above their own groupthink and recognize what needs to be done.

This might help you.

http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Disappointment

Here’s a photo of Karl hard at work at Arenanet HQ

JustTrogdor.7892:

If you have not already, maybe you should also post the poll in GW2 reddit. It would increase the sample size.

Could you do me a favor and go ahead and do this? I’ve posted a few times on reddit to garner more responses for my balance suggestions and I think I got blocked lol.

Phaeton.9582:

Exedore.6320:

Sykper.6583:

A year ago, I wager there probably would have been only two responses, bad or abysmal.

A year ago, I would have voted average. It wasn’t amazing, but still interesting to watch for people who played PvP.

Today it’s abysmal. HoT power creep is ridiculous and killed diversity. It’s the same 6 HoT builds over and over, and they practically play themselves. Why bother watching top players?

Everyone knows this, so why discuss it?

AN doesn’t know this, or is trying to ignore the facts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95

Average response: “Bad” – based on 410 responses.

Tumult.2578:

So Gunflame doesn’t make sense to me any more. Doesn’t it seem that the single weapon in the game most likely to pierce to it’s full range is the rifle?
Don’t magical attacks trigger when they hit, like do physical damage, explode, stun, stuff that doesn’t pierce.
Don’t melee weapons do all kinds of attacks, at short range?
So the bows and rifle and pistol should have the ability to pierce at range and the longbow is setup for aoe and the shortbow for quick condition damage, so the pistol should be able to project a bullet that can pierce and a rifle should be able to pierce farther.
Yet we now have a rifle that lost its projectile speed but still has exploding ammo?
I don’t get it. Most rifle skills should pierce first and foremost. With damage and other effects tied to cooldowns and supporting skills.

The problem with gunflame prior to the Q2 2016 patch was that of an identity conflict. It did things that killshot was supposed to do with added benefits. The Q2 patch only nerfed gunflame without addressing the identity issue of the skill, so now it’s a mediocre projectile attack in the shadow of other projectile attacks.

Substance E.4852:

Daishi.6027:

If viability for a Raid or Frac would be affected due to changes to a class in PvP, then you can alter the Raid or Frac to match the nerfs. Then no one could complain… Except the devs.

How is this even supposed to work?

Any change to PvE will affect everyone and do nothing to address any imbalance caused by nerfs/buffs.

Suppose class A does 20% more condition dps than class B in raids. What is Anet supposed to do to fix this? Make the boss take 20% more damage from class B, and only class B, as compensation?

Off topic, but you bring up flaws of PvE. It’s all about DPS and proper rotation of skills. Boss attacks are non-threatening and engagements are boring. “Strategy” boils down to tacked on “stages” in each boss fight to artificially make combat seem interesting. (or exploits)

I dislike players playing PvP as a way to get gear and materials used for PvE and other modes. It should not be a “reward treadmil” and having such a system only leads to low quality matchmaking where players are predominately PvE players and have no interest in competitive play. If anything rewards in sPvP mode should come in something where the player can use only in sPvP. I’d recommend locking all amulets, sigils, and runes, and just reward that.

You shouldn’t be drunk in an interview, but what he said was the raw, plain picture. GW2 “eSports” is a failed venture and he considered it to be a joke, sober or not.

3 way split is ideal. However, I recall an AN staff member dismissing this idea because it introduces too much overhead for AN to manage.

Understandable, but this trend can not continue. I recommend reallocating budget from unsuccessful areas to staff more developers in charge with balance.

• 3 game modes, all of which are heavily dependent on the balance team’s outputs and all have different agendas. Despite this, AN continues to disregard player assertions that there needs to be different balance teams for each game mode.

• Continuing the cycle of high frequency – low quality balance patches in hopes of addressing current issues, these patches are hit or miss. Some work out well, but many are just flat number fixing (e.g. cooldown reductions) while ignoring severe mechanical issues. “Balance” is nonexistent. Arenanet’s ideal “balance” is to “shake up the meta”. These “fixes” mostly miss the target and usually ends up being overpowered or under-powered to the point they’re overshadowed by stronger options. No middle ground exists.

• Balance patches only address a limited scope at a time, changing ~15 items per profession per quarterly patch when there are over 1,000 skills, traits, and stats to balance. To make things worse, AN continues to add new “content” in the form of new sigils, amulets, and runes to further complicate the balancing process.

• AN continues to make past mistakes by failing to address the foundations for game balance. To attempt to balance amulets before profession traits and skills will require them to double their work, as amulets/sigils/runes are influenced by the profession. Not the other way around.

• Balance is not just balance. It comes along with quality of design and diversity of design. Professions, traits, and skills have overlapping diversity issues.

But hey, they’re trying. SQ 2016 patch was huge, and it shows that a lot of work was made. Whether all the work was appropriate, I don’t know about that.

Josh Davis.6015:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

When will anet realize, that amulets are not the (main) issue?

As mentioned in the OP, there will be a few balance changes coming next week as well, but runes/sigils/amulets are one of the things the PvP team can change on our own without impacting the rest of the game. To be clear: the PvP team, just like fractals/raids/wvw/etc, does not handle profession balance – there is a separate team for that.

While runes, sigils, and amulets do need balance, their balance strongly influenced by the foundations they are built upon- the professions. To change runes sigils and amulets first without fixing the profession is like building a house over a broken foundation, then eventually repairing the foundation by rebuilding the house. This is going to take the development team more time than if they were to fix the foundation first.

But as far as I’m aware, this is not your decision to make and you’re just a messenger, so I’m just sharing my thoughts with you.

What does a pro-league player say about the game?

1:18:05

https://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/65479402

Announcers: So, you guys have come in to this week of the pro league with a brand new roster, how do you think this is gonna work out for you? Do you think that going towards the finals that this new roster is able to contest the other teams?

Argi [Vermillion]: Finals?

Announcers: Towards the end of the season

Argi [Vermillion]: Oh yeah, that’s already dead, cuz we got ddos’d so..

Announcers: Ok, so there we go…

Argi [Vermillion]: We pretty much already like don’t take this game seriously anymore and pretty much moved on to other games right now, and as far as WTS, might take this game seriously again. Also it’s like every other game, there would have been a rematch, because things like for example, there are these bugs that are game breaking, and took the whole game to a rematch -and for us it’s like pfft, you know?

Announcer: I think maybe, what we’ll do is, wish you luck and root on for your performance, and move on with the rest with the game I think. Cheers, my friend, see you soon.

edit/

Zelulose.8695:

If this thread is banned make a new thread reporting the results for us to comment on.

Why would they lock this thread when it’s providing constructive criticism for improvements? To lock this thread would be doing arenanet a disfavor by censoring valuable feedback.

@Maelstorm: Why?

Ever since ArenaNet has teamed up with eSports organizer ESL to form a pro league for the game in late 2015, how would you rate ArenaNet’s success in this market?

http://www.strawpoll.me/10175949

Please back up your choice with a brief reason: Why you like it or what you don’t like about it. If you were to help ArenaNet achieve “E-Sports” acclaim, what would you suggest them to do?

phokus.8934:

You took his quote completely out of context.

His post was for cloaking waters but the general idea behind balance is the same when applied to profession balance.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

You can make all the suggestions you want its pretty much a certainty Anet will never use them & pretty much a given at this point that they have no idea WTF they are doing with guardians in PvP.

So if your doing this for fun by all means go ahead but if you expect it to get done I wouldn’t waste my time unless you can abduct & brain wash the entire dev team into doing it.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Nerfs are coming for a number of the problematic guild upgrades like cloaking waters, chilling fog and airship defense.

For cloaking waters, the stealth duration is getting reduced dramatically. We recognize that it’s possible that any amount of stealth is too strong, but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process. As for removing the upgrade entirely, that also isn’t really an option, due to how it’s intertwined with the Scribing and Guild Halls systems.

but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process.

Explains the short shortsightedness of development staff when creating balance meta-shift patches.

Dual Shot: The damage of this skill has been increased by 33%.

Unneeded. already hits harder than rifle auto

Fan of Fire: Increased the burning duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Physical damage has been increased by 10%.

Also unneeded. More condi spam yay.

Smoldering Arrow: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.

More spam.

Pin Down: The damage of this skill has been increased by 10%.

Acceptable change.

Eviscerate: Updated this skill to not be affected by movement-impeding effects.

Good change.

Gun Flame: The physical damage of this skill has been reduced by 20%. Fixed an issue that allowed this skill to hit enemies twice. This skill no longer pierces but still delivers the area-of-effect attack. Fixed a bug that caused the tool tip to show a decrease in damage when the Burst Mastery trait was in use.

Now it’s garbage.

Dolyak Signet: The cooldown of this signet has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.

Reasonable change.

Balanced Stance: This skill now periodically applies swiftness and two stacks of stability for 3 seconds every 3 seconds that the stance is active.

Reasonable change.

Throw Bolas: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.

Acceptable, but needs more than that for it to have any priority over others.

Kick: The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 20 seconds to 12 seconds.

Acceptable

Bull’s Charge: Increased the knockdown duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

Acceptable

Stomp: This skill is now ground targeted and will move the warrior from a distance of 450 to a target area. This skill now grants 1 stack of stability for 5 seconds per target struck in addition to its own initial stack of stability, which has been increased from 1 second to 5 seconds. The cooldown of this skill has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.

Actually a very good change. Damage still low though.

Thick Skin: The health threshold of this trait has been decreased from 90% to 75%. The toughness this trait applies has been increased from a maximum of 120 to 180.

Change is necessary, but not like this. Requires a rework because it doesn’t compliment the warrior’s “in your face bruiser” gameplay and concept

Dogged March: The regeneration duration applied by this trait has been increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds.

Questionable change. Wasn’t really the change it needed, nor was it even needed.

Cull the Weak: Increased the health threshold for weakness application from 25% to 33%.

Still a garbage trait overshadowed by the likes of shield master and the new dogged march.

Defy Pain: The threshold for activating Endure Pain has been increased from 25% health to 50% health.

Questionable change, doesn’t resolve any sustainability problems of warrior.

Quick Breathing: Increased the number of conditions removed on warhorn-skill use from 1 to 2.

Passable, understandable. Perhaps better than boon conversion to limit the stupid boon spam

Burst Mastery: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from appropriately increasing damage.

ok.

Adrenal Health: This trait has been reworked. For each level of adrenaline spent, the warrior will gain an instance of Adrenal Health that will heal over the course of 15 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Went overboard with this, too strong of a minor trait now. Encourages burst spamming with no repercussions.

emkelly.2371:

not really that many. but i bet TheBravery comes back to the game

No, I quit. I just lurk on forums now.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Nerfs are coming for a number of the problematic guild upgrades like cloaking waters, chilling fog and airship defense.

For cloaking waters, the stealth duration is getting reduced dramatically. We recognize that it’s possible that any amount of stealth is too strong, but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process. As for removing the upgrade entirely, that also isn’t really an option, due to how it’s intertwined with the Scribing and Guild Halls systems.

This is the mantra arenanet follows.

edit/
While I am still critical of arenanet’s balance patches, I do commend them for actually improving this time around, and touching up on things that really do need fixing. (e.g. physical skills, sustainability, gunflame).. so yes. There is a light in the tunnel.

However, this is far from finished and is only the first step of many

Kicker.8203:

…….. The extra sustain is what warrior sought after but it’s too good to be a trait. Perhaps make it baseline ………….

oh god.

This is why we can’t have nice things. Everytime a profession gets a buff, players begin to say that it’s too good that it hinders build variety and suggests that the trait becomes “baseline”. I gag at that word. “Baseline”. UGH

“QoL” my kitten .

This is hardly a “QoL” suggestion. It’s a straight buff.

god this term is almost as obnoxious as “baseline” or “visceral”.

I wouldn’t congratulate arena-net so quickly. This patch finally addresses SOME glaring issues warriors have (after waiting for more than half a year), but it’s still the low quality patch I’ve come to expect.

(example: new adrenal health- just spam your burst to heal yourself, a bunch of cooldown reductions and more lazy number fixes)

Granted, it’s not AS low quality as arenanet’s previous patches, but that’s a pretty low bar to jump over. This patch continues the trend ArenaNet has come to develop: limited scope balance patches with heavily volatile meta shifts and lazy number fixes.

What is your overall sentiment of this patch?

Compared to the Q1 patch, is this an improvement or decline in quality?

Overall quality of this patch is much better than the Q1 2016 patch, that’s for sure.

However, it’s still narrow in scope and nature and fails to address everything else not fixed.

It’s good to see ArenaNet finally taking these patches more seriously.

Expecting a whole lot of disappointment and unnecessary changes that does nothing to help balance. Also expecting changes to be very narrow in scope and further increase intraprofessional imbalance (e.g. only change meta skills and traits, ignoring non-meta skills and traits).

I hope I am wrong in every aspect here. Please. Prove me wrong.

nicknamenick.2437:

+1 to traits

Can you explain this one:
Defy pain – Activate endure pain for 1 second when you are hit for more than 10% of your maximum health. Does not break stun

I dont understand the use of this.

And about weapon skills:

-Brutal shot should be faster so you can really use it as an evade (its too slow now so the rollback is often too late)

-I prefer a 15sec rifle butt over a 25sec launch, but again also this skill should be faster.

-Gunflame/killshot/arcing slice not sure if i really like the DoT it does.. i prefer a 1 big hit over DoT that can be cleansed also (even when its not a real condition)

In regards with the defy pain change:
Current defy pain activates the stance at a dangerously low HP threshold (25%). At this time, you’ve done all you could and you are forced to retreat because taking further damage after the stance is up would mean the death of you. Furthermore, it’s on a 60 second cooldown so now your ability on the frontline is diminished in the event that your HP drops below 25% during the cooldown.

The change strives to enhance warrior’s tankiness on the battlefield by negating large spikes, even for just a second. (E.g. someone tries to spike you with a high damage move- you negate the damage and any subsequent damage for 1 second and the trait goes on a 15 second cooldown). The removal of the stun breaker is due to the consideration that a stun break every 15 seconds would be marginally over powered.

Ogre.3124:

Regarding WvWvW:

Vigorous shouts – Removed adrenaline gain

Shouts do not give enough adrenaline to pop them for said adrenaline instead of timing for their effects. This should be buffed, not nerfed. The heal should be increased if anything. Otherwise every warrior will still be picking Phalanx Strength.

Quick breathing – Converts conditions into boons

Not to do with the trait but bring back max targets = 10. In WvW the counter to venom share bombs were warriors using warhorn 4 skill. Now you have to have a competent warrior in every single party-of-5. Let’s be real, not every group has organization and/or enough competent warriors to combat just one guy pressing 7-8-9-10 to force their guardians to pop Renewed Focus or die.

The skill requirement difference is absurd when warhorn skills were nerfed for warrior. Right now using warhorn instead of shield makes you individually much, much weaker. Warhorn needs to have enough use in a group to warrant people to use the off-hand. People only use this for personal condi removal, blast finishers, and keeping up swiftness out of fights. Warhorn is a death wish running solo or in an unskilled PUG group atm.

Merciless hammer – Hammer reach is increased and hammer skills are given special effects based on adrenaline level.

This is interesting

Resistant Concentration- Increase boon duration. Attempts to steal, rip, or corrupt your boons are reversed.

Good change. Just negating the boon strip is fine

You raise an interesting point about the warhorn, but on the flipside, increasing number of targets to 10 just diminishes the value and need of a warrior in your team. 5 is an acceptable spot (in my opinion) because it allows for better diversified team compositions (as opposed to something like 2 guardians and 2 necromancers and 1 revenant in each party with a token warrior for every 2 parties)

It’s a tacked on crafting profession that game designers at Arenanet implemented without considering its ramifications on WvW.

This applies to pretty much everything

To blindly accept any pitch without exercising any kind of skepticism would be a foolish mistake.

Crovax.7854:

Bandini.6185:

DoctorDing.5890:

Good comms from the man I think.
I’m sure they will release it when it is ready™.

So, he mentioned hints. Have we seen any yet?

A lot of hints :

• scribe costs will be reduced
• daily fractals will be changed
• beta testing new rewards in WvW (update day)
• beta testing population solutions in WvW (reset following update day)
• rewards in HoT maps / events : reduce grind and improve rewards
• a new legendary shortbow
• improvements on obtaining the new HoT gear

Things we won’t have in April

• no LS 3 (have to wait until July)
• no new fractal
• no other lengendary weapon
• no change on how Agony and Agony Resistance works
• No plans for graphics engine update
• no keyrings

Sources :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-changes-in-Spring-Quarterly-Update/6072393
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Legendary-weapons-6/6061605
http://dulfy.net/2016/03/05/gw2-reddit-developer-ama-summary/

So basically no new content. Well, that makes the decision whether to return or not really easy – thanks!

On the flipside, If arenanet isn’t releasing new content, I’m expecting them to fix, refine, and balance what we already have. The game needs a lot of work, and to keep releasing shoddy content while there’s a lot needed to be fixed would be a mistake.

I’m at the stage (stage 4) where I’ve already quit the game and im watching how the game is updated while lurking on forums. If anet makes a satisfactory balance patch, I’ll return. Otherwise I might get bored of the forums and quit everything.

• Stage1 denial: upset at game’s direction but believes there’s hope in future patches
• Stage 2 anger: upset becomes anger, becomes more vocal; starts ranting in chat and forums
• Stage 3 bargaining: plays game less, starts to make suggestions to arenanet
• Stage 4 depression: quits the game but lurks on forum. Stops making suggestions and waits.
• Stage 5 acceptance: accepts the game is flawed and is headed in the wrong direction. Gives up, quit everything.

So quarterly balance patch is coming up pretty soon.
What are the chances this will make it?
If this makes it, it'd motivate me to make the other professions

Also hi @ emkelly

@ADTempys
I appreciate your reddit commentary. This proposal draft hopefully brings more roles and functions to warrior than that.

Excuse me earlier comment, I misread. Assumed that number of guards on ABL was getting reduced

warriors are the worst profession in the game in a way that you can’t roll your face on the keyboard and win the game. (That’s how bad balance has become)

It’s gotten to a point where you (with effort) could play warrior proficiently, and carry your team, yet despite this you will still get called out and scapegoat’d for any and every downfall your team will experience. The balance environment for GW2 is worse now than it’s ever been.

here’s a video for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtZFok_D_TI

Jana.6831:

Come on guys, Tyler made a joke.

With all due respect, they’ve been “joking” for 3 years.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Tactivators-alphine-BL-Yes-or-No/6079378

And here in this thread, you have 3 pages full of users groaning at your decision to have tactivators in the alpine borderlands, yet you persist that they stay.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

It would be easy enough to move all the camp guards closer to the center, so you’d always have to fight all of them to flip a camp. But to be clear, you guys are arguing that you want to do ‘more PvE’, which seems to go against the forum’s current agenda of ‘less PvE.’

With all due respect, your response shows how disconnected the developers are with design needs of the game.

The following is based on my perspective and my perspective only

If you haven’t noticed, the cries of having less PVE came about when HoT and the desert borderlands were released. Prior to this, there were NO complaints that veteran guards in WvW objectives were a major problem that needs addressed.

The complaints stem from the artificial bloat created from HoT’s new content-

• the Oasis event
• Gimmick shrines and environmental effects
• Various scribe impact on WvW
• Complex map structures and verticallity
• Miscellaneous things like mass invisibility in WvW (Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? It’s as if ArenaNet perceived that everyone wants to bring back culling)

In the end, while it’s true that there needs to be less PvE, it doesn’t mean that guards at a camp should remain buggy and not defend the objective under attack.

To reiterate:

• YES, less PVE is needed- but it’s not what you think
• Guards at camps/towers/keeps should defend their objective when under attack and not just stand there staring at the air like a bunch of idiots. They need to SCRAMBLE and DEFEND.
• WvW does not need the mindless complexity to artificially make combat interesting. (Talking about airship attacks, shrines, wvw banners, and all other NEW stuff introduced in HoT). Combat is interesting in it’s own way. Please consider the asuran mantra- “Embrace simplicity”.
• Think of reasons why simple map designs are so popular in competitive games like league of legends (summoner’s rift), halo (blood gulch / coagulation), and super smash brothers (final destination). Maps don’t need all these “gimmicks” to artificially make combat “interesting”. Desert borderlands is unsuccessful for the same reason skyhammer is unsuccessful- it’s too complicated when really, all you needed was a simple hilly area to duke it out.

With all due respect, “easy” balancing is what Arenanet has been doing all along. Lazy number fixes (cooldown modification, damage % changes) with a limited scope, and we can all see how that turned out. The problem with your “easy” fix is that it’s low quality and achieves nothing for balance (interprofessional and intraprofessional) and contributes to powercreep- which in itself is an elephant in the room that needs to be shot.

Take a look at the links in my signature for examples of a warrior balance proposal and guardian balance proposal. Balance is not an easy task and does not justify “easy” fixes. It’s too complicated for that.

On the other hand, balance is a controversial and subjective idea in that there are different approaches to it, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to achieve a full consensus on every idea.

With that said, I strongly oppose your suggestion(s) on the basis that it’s blatant powercreep with the cooldown reductions, damage increases, and overabundance in addition of control effects and boons/conditions.

If I had a suggestion for your suggestions, it would be this:

• Create a credo or framework for balance to follow. (examples in my warrior/guardian proposal)
• Conduct surveys and listen to constructive feedback from the community, and mold suggestions as you see fit (assume perspectives of other players, while at the same time, be objective of suggestions to your suggestions)
• Provide REASONS why you think the changes are good.

Anari.2137:

TheBravery.9615:

With all due respect, your suggested changes are all buffs and I fear what ideas you would bring to other professions when you start creating reworks of them. I am strongly against power creep and these changes will buff guardians to high heaven (and other professions if you decide to do them too)

example:

Shelter: Cast: Instant, Heals 6500 Hp, and blocks attack to you and allies for 3 seconds.

Why is this change even necessary in the first place? It’s meta in WvW.

food for thought: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Poll-Power-creep-vs-nerf-bat-vs/6019508

If a Elementalist and druid do 800k to 1.5m Heals a game, Is it power creep to bring a guardians healing in line? No. Its “Equalizing”.

Yes, it is powercreep because you’re using elementalists and druids as the benchmark for healing.

edit/ Also, it’s difficult to achieve balance relative to other professions (inter-profession perspective). When I made that poll, I was talking out of an intra-profession perspective (e.g. traits/skills within a profession).

Inter-profession balance is much more difficult to achieve because the professions have different mechanics. You can’t simply equalize maximum healing per minute to 800k for every profession and say you’re done-no. You have to account for every variable in the equation. Do elementalists and druids have high healing? yes. Do they need changes? yes. Should every other professions be upped to match them? Hell no.

With all due respect, your suggested changes are all buffs and I fear what ideas you would bring to other professions when you start creating reworks of them. I am strongly against power creep and these changes will buff guardians to high heaven (and other professions if you decide to do them too)

example:

Shelter: Cast: Instant, Heals 6500 Hp, and blocks attack to you and allies for 3 seconds.

Why is this change even necessary in the first place? It’s meta in WvW.

food for thought: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Poll-Power-creep-vs-nerf-bat-vs/6019508

I’ll get to necromancers/reapers and the other “meta” professions as soon as I can, but I’ve been busy with “real life matters”. I’ll get to it eventually…

Keep the bug, duplicate the weapon but make it separate and fix it

I don’t understand peoples argument that warriors had their turn in the limelight and it’s time for other professions to shine.

Are we endorsing the meta-shift balance approach?

because that’s a kitten approach to take. Achieve true balance and stop with the nonsense meta-shift that requires players to relearn their profession. It’s bleeding the momentum out of “E-SPURTS” players.

StormageddonBK.9842:

TheBravery.9615:

Yeah! Raise your voice and complain! that will make the problem go away for sure!

So you do acknowledge there is a problem?

Of course there’s problems. My point is, I’m tired of seeing these kitten-post complaints on the board. You see a problem, give ArenaNet something to work with. To sit and cry, and to think that arenanet will suddenly realize the true fix to the problem(s) is a chance slim to none.