Guild Wars 2

Close to 500 responses now.

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=b6hqtkxynle08vr178091

I’ve set up a survey asking a variety of questions relating to perceived class balance within the different elements of game (sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc). Please vote and be honest – I will publish my results after I get at least a thousand votes, ideally more.

SafiMoyo.5130:

Be sure to post this on reddit, OP!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/

Lots of people check there as opposed to here (myself included).

Posted it there. I don’t use reddit much but let’s see how it helps with the responses.

Slightly over 200 responses now, keep it coming.

Close to 200 responses now, think we can get 1000 in a day?

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=b6hqtkxynle08vr178091

I’ve set up a survey asking a variety of questions relating to perceived class balance within the different elements of game (sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc). Please vote and be honest – I will publish my results after I get at least a thousands votes, ideally more.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Thanks for making such survey, but it would have been more useful if you could rank all the 8 professions for each aspect (pve, zerg, WvWvW small scale, pvp). Now to select just one worst profession will surely give twisted results.

Did you look at the survey?

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=b6hqtkxynle08vr178091

I’ve set up a survey asking a variety of questions relating to perceived class balance within the different elements of game (sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc). Please vote and be honest – I will publish my results after I get at least a thousands votes, ideally more.

I have 65 responses so far, but there seem to be strong trends emerging.

http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=b6hqtkxynle08vr178091

I’ve set up a survey asking a variety of questions relating to perceived class balance within the different elements of game (sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc). Please vote and be honest – I will publish my results after ~1000 votes.

Geff.1930:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Why do I say this?

Compare it to League of Legends.

Compare it to StarCraft and StarCraft 2.

Compare it to CounterStrike.

Compare it to Street Fighter.

A much better comparison than all of those would be SMITE, since it has a 3rd person view.

The devs in this game focused a lot on condition damage. This is the only PvP game that I have played where condition damage has a major role.

The problem is that the sources of condition damage far outweigh the means of condition removal/duration reduction/mitigation. You remove some conditions and more are immediately reapplied.

The damage from conditions far outweigh the damage from direct damage in the game as it currently stands. As a result, direct damage builds are marginalized.

That being said, condition damage has to play a major role in this game because it is the only damage source that does any reliable damage considering all the ways direct damage can be avoided. Without condition damage everyone would be immortal and fights would drag out.

We also have a stat, Toughness, that is useless against condition damage.

Condition damage was pretty important in many GW1 builds. For instance, combining burning with poison in GW1 was absolutely deadly and had to be removed very quickly.

The Ranger is hands down the worst class in Dungeons. A significant amount of the ranger’s DPS is tied to the pet, and due to dungeon mechanics (heavy emphasis on evadeable spike-damage attacks) pets suffer heavily – they tend to die in 1 hit. There is almost universal agreement about that. Generally any class is alright in roaming/open world PvE, which you will do much less of once you hit 100% map completion.

In Guild Wars 1, you had the choice of running with a pet. Some builds (such as the Bunny Thumper ranger) relied on a pet combined with weapon skills to deal damage. More often, builds were bow-focused, using skills like Barrage (often combined with Splinter Weapon) or Incendiary Arrows to spread conditions or deal large amounts of AoE damage (combined with Ignite Arrows).

By making the pet a mandatory companion, and tying a substantial amount of ranger’s DPS to the pet, I think GW2 has made a fairly big mistake. The complaining about Ranger’s usefulness in dungeons (and their former OPness in certain PVP formats) is symptomatic of the problems with this design approach.

I think an optional pet would make balancing the ranger much easier.

LumAnth.5124:

I’ve heard guardians got most of the buffs, while having minimal/no nerfs at all

I know for a fact that Mesmers and Rangers got the worst nerfs of all

Sounds right. I’d add necros to the “Buff” pile.

Raine Akrune.8416:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Why do I say this?

Compare it to League of Legends.

Compare it to StarCraft and StarCraft 2.

Compare it to CounterStrike.

Compare it to Street Fighter.

What’s the difference?

None of them are MMOs…compare complete.

Valid point. An MMORPG is going to have a lot of trouble becoming an “esport” because designing it around purely competitive mechanics would be very, very difficult.

These could come in the form of a trait or just some general change.

1. When you evade or dodge an attack, your pet evades as well.

2. Your pet cannot lose more than 15% of its HP from attacks occurring within 1 second of each other.

The main purpose of these changes to is to prevent pets from being 1 shotted by stuff like Subject Alpha or Lupi. I think the first change would be better.

Thoughts?

Dirame.8521:

I wonder what people said about LoL when that first started stepping into esport territory…..

LoL was essentially an offshoot of DotA, which already had a large following. Plus it’s “free to play.”

JunkyardWolf.4126:

GW2 is never going to become a serious esport

Who says it has to?

Not every game that has competitive elements (ie. PvP gameplay) needs to become a “serious esport”, which by that I assume you mean professionally sponsored, livecast from a central location, etc.

There are plenty of other games for that. It’s not needed here.

I’ll agree that it’s not needed here, but ArenaNet is dead-set on investing into it and I think they need to make up their mind.

Latinkuro.9420:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Latinkuro.9420:

sorry but, your point for saying this is totally and utterly mute and nullified.

Guild Wars 2 is actually several completely separate games together.

1 PVE guild wars 2 is one game, for those that want to do PVE only stuff.
2 WvW PVP is the end game PVP for PVE players and again is completely separate from PVE world.
3 SPVP guild wars 2 is completely separate and focused on competition , has nothing to do with PVE at all.

you can play any one game mode w/o ever touching the others.
if you like PVE go do pve only stuff.
if you like PVP go do WvW with your PVE toon.
if you like SPVP go do competitive PVP.

see, your point is totally nullified by how anet designed the game, and the fact that ESL just picked gw2 for tournament play only re-enforces this premise.

to quote you
These are all intrinsically competitive games. The core and only objective is to defeat another player or team. These games were designed with this objective from the beginning.

this is exactly how SPVP works, so what’s your point ?
you wrecked your own argument right there with this line lol

Where is most of Guild Wars 2’s content?

all they need to do is add PVP only skins for sale on the TP, and it would be the same as League of Legends

more PVP maps and game modes wouldn’t hurt either.

but your original point is mute and dead.

Your statement that “Guild Wars 2 is actually several completely separate games together” shows that the game lacks the PvP focus necessary for a big esport.

Also, they need to do a lot more than add PvP only skins. That alone would not make it “the same as LoL.”

Oranisagu.3706:

starcraft 2 has a map editor, what a waste of time, they’ll never become a serious ESL game if they don’t scrap this totally unrelated feature and invest every second of manpower into the pvp aspect.

The core gameplay mechanics between the single player game and multiplayer games in SC/SC2 are not fundamentally different in the way GW2’s PvP and PvE are. Custom games and mapmaking are a staple of strategy games and the rules and gameplay mechanics users create in those are the mapmaker’s moreso than Blizzard’s.

Latinkuro.9420:

sorry but, your point for saying this is totally and utterly mute and nullified.

Guild Wars 2 is actually several completely separate games together.

1 PVE guild wars 2 is one game, for those that want to do PVE only stuff.
2 WvW PVP is the end game PVP for PVE players and again is completely separate from PVE world.
3 SPVP guild wars 2 is completely separate and focused on competition , has nothing to do with PVE at all.

you can play any one game mode w/o ever touching the others.
if you like PVE go do pve only stuff.
if you like PVP go do WvW with your PVE toon.
if you like SPVP go do competitive PVP.

see, your point is totally nullified by how anet designed the game, and the fact that ESL just picked gw2 for tournament play only re-enforces this premise.

to quote you
These are all intrinsically competitive games. The core and only objective is to defeat another player or team. These games were designed with this objective from the beginning.

this is exactly how SPVP works, so what’s your point ?
you wrecked your own argument right there with this line lol

Where is most of Guild Wars 2’s content?

Why do I say this?

Compare it to League of Legends.

Compare it to StarCraft and StarCraft 2.

Compare it to CounterStrike.

Compare it to Street Fighter.

What’s the difference?

These are all intrinsically competitive games. The core and only objective is to defeat another player or team. These games were designed with this objective from the beginning.

In contrast, Guild Wars 2 was not built from the ground up as a competitive game, compared to the games I just mentioned. Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG with PVP as an “add-on” component. By nature of this fact, the depth of its PVP is just going to be utterly lacking. You cannot have it both ways because that requires an unlimited budget.

I believe that for Guild Wars 2 to have a chance at becoming an esport, the majority of the PvE content would have had to been scrapped from the very beginning, and the game would have to be built as a PvP-centric game. StarCraft/StarCraft 2 do not offer more than 20 hours of the campaign, and the open world/story in Guild Wars 2 would have to similarly offer that amount of content.

I simply believe that if ArenaNet wants to create a game that joins the ranks of the big esports, it is wasting its time on Guild Wars 2 and is better off creating a new IP. If it wanted to make Guild Wars 2 an esport from the very beginning, the plan had some serious strategic missteps.

MakersMark.8420:

Anet is doing their best to try and promote the weakest and least played part of GW2: sPVP.

My only guess is that some analysis shows that sPVP players spend the most money on gems. Seriously, that is the only logical conclusion to their actions.

They’re trying to turn GW2 into an esport, which is never going to be successful because GW2 was not built from the ground up as a competitive game (compared to LoL, SC2, CS, etc.)

Thanks guys, this is all really great stuff. I can’t wait to hit 80 on my engineer and see how all of these work at full strength.

This whole thread has ignited a common topic of discussion in gaming forums: sexism and the portrayal of women in video games.

That there tends to be a lopsided depiction of women in most games has to do with the (traditionally) low participation women have in playing and making hardcore video games (by this I mean your big titles like Call of Duty, Halo, Killzone, StarCraft etc). I think a lot of people would agree that female (and male too) characters in video games tend to be very attractive, and their attractiveness/sexuality is often exaggerated or played up in unrealistic ways. A member of my guild posted this lelzy image advertising some browser/mobile game.

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/971627_492012514204571_2010371868_n.png

She found it amusing, but browsing the rest of the 1600+ comments on the image showed that a great many women found it indecent and offensive.

Addressing this is a somewhat difficult thing to do. Video games are a form of entertainment/art/escapism, and they are an opportunity to experience something that is decidedly unrealistic. The fact that someone can choose to play a sexy cheerleader grinding zombies with a giant chainsaw (a la Lollipop Chainsaw) is part of that experience. Rigidly enforcing standards of realism in every game would detract from the purpose of videogames, which is to entertain.

So ultimately, there is a place for games like DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Even if they gratuitously market female sexuality, there are some people who want that. But what about the women who don’t? I think the solution to this is, rather than limiting/censoring how women are portrayed, developers can try to expand their artistic styles, characters, and the types of games they make. In that regards, Guild Wars 2 has generally done a very good job. At the same time, I don’t think it would be “wrong” for them to include more style options for people who want a bigger dose of fantasy than reality.

Thanks guys. The 10 on tools is definitely very useful – I love being able to run/explore faster.

Hey, I have recently started to level up an engineer and have some questions about the class. Here are a few things about me and what I want to get out of my engineer.

- I have a level 80 Warrior, Thief, Guardian, and Mesmer, and have spent ~1700 hours total.
- I am mostly looking for builds that excel in general PvE (Dungeons and Open World included) and Zerg v. Zerg (50+ players) WvW.

Questions are as follows:

Do engineers have “mandatory” trait investments like the Warrior (15 in Discipline) or Mesmer (5 in Illusions, 5 in Dueling)?

What are some commonly used Engineer builds, and what trait lines are most frequently used?

What are some important bugs I need to know about the class?

What utility skills should I prioritize spending points on? Which utility skills are considered the most versatile?

What are the roles of each of the Engineer’s kits?

Nretep.2564:

Ranger is not weak in PvE, nor is warrior.

The weak ones in PvE are Mesmer and Thief. Simply because they’re strong in PvP. Once you buff them for PvE (imagine confusion buff for mesmers), they’d be overpowered in PvP. The developers still fear the distinction of skills/ traits in PvE, WvW and PvP. They try to balance in general and set their limits on PvP. So instead of buffing confusion in PvP and “balancing” it for PvP, they just nerfed it in PvP.

Yes, one of the most desired party constellation is 4 Warrior + 1 Mesmer/ Guardian. That is because Warriors deal most damage and the mesmer can support them (Mainly TimeWarp) or the Guardian buff them and keep them alive. Rangers are good in long range, but melee is always stronger (as it should be).

In most MMORPGs, Thiefs and Rangers are not really party gamers, but loners. But in GW2, rangers are fine. The loners are Necros and Thiefs. And those are the two classes I like the least in my parties. Third least would be (dmg) elementalist. Those three deal average damage with low surviability and about zero party support.

But generally I agree, to “completely” distinct skills and traits in PvE, PvP and WvW and each underwater.

I meant to say that Warrior is weak in PvP.

This is a serious question I’d like to see addressed by the developers, and while it’s been brought up many times in the past, I think it needs to be brought up again in light of the patch leak (which may not be entirely true).

The Ranger is generally considered a solid class in PvP. However, it is considered one of the weakest classes in PvE. Conversely, the Warrior is one of the staple classes of speedrun dungeon groups, but is considered rather weak in PvP.

The latest iteration of patch notes seem to largely be driven by the demands of the PvP community. Balancing for PvP is important. It is arguably more important than balancing for PvE, since PvP is competitive and thus more emotionally salient. However, when changes designed for one type of environment carry over to an entirely different environment, it can cause or contribute to an extremely uneven experience for players.

For months, it has been proven that the ideal group composition for speed clearing most PvE content consists of 2-3 warriors, 1-2 guardians, and 1-2 mesmers. Proven is a strong word, but I think the latest patch notes, if accurate, will not do much to substantially change that. From what I hear, necromancers got some loving, but thieves and rangers will continue to be seen as underperforming kits in a non PvP setting, potentially more so than before.

Travlane.5948:

i think its hard to tell without anet killerangel. can never estimate a silent majority. only speculate.

@mirra only time will tell. but if they do stop stun break it will kill s/d to a nonplayed weaponset agian more than likely.

It is difficult to estimate, but you are welcome to conduct your own research if you want to challenge my findings.

Travlane.5948:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Travlane.5948:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Seven Dreamsong.9802:

Knox.3748:

Really, who cares about pve? How can they nerf or buff something without messing with WvW and spvp?

it may not to you, but a lot of anet’s playerbase actually only cares about pve,
and they keep getting screwed over because of pvp balancing. pve balance
between classes is undeniably unbalanced and biased to a few others right now.
just take a look at dungeon grouping sites/ chat.

anet acknowledged the inherent difference between pve/pvp when they were
forced to split the skills in GW1. some skills scales well on both modes, some
are left unused since they are almost next to useless on the other.
they also started splitting the skills here as well (though very slowly)

as for wvw, there already have been numerous suggestions for it as well:
ranging from it doesn’t matter if they follow the pve skillset, to using the pvp
version of the skill with pve gear, to completely creating another skill split
for wvw for very tricky special skills, ect.
.

I did a survey a while back with 1000+ responses from members of the GW2 community. An overwhelming majority of players are in it for the PvE content and less than 10% are engaged in structured PvP.

so you know for a survery to be legit you need a randomized population of players. did you ask in an unbiased area or were you out in a pve area somewhere?

It was in general discussion, which is as general as you can get.

general discussion where? on forums? in game? even so how can you be sure its an equal ratio of pve/pvp players to online if its in forum. you would literally have to get a list of all players and randomly pick 1000 of them to make it unbiased. i am on the forums alot and i can tell you that 80% at the very minimum here play PVP and thats being EXTREMELY conservative. id guess around 90% play pvp at least on a regular to occaisonal basis here. hence why skill changes are much more important as they reflect changes to and from other classes. i do get what you mean tho. a very large portion of people do play pve but generally pve is pretty kitten ed easy as a thief can 2 hit most mobs that are non bosses. i mean if its 5-6 people obv a warrior/guardian will make easy work of them much easier but thenagain people dont realize how hard the shortcomings of thief really are.

The class forums get a lot more PvP discussion on average, but my research, which is sourced not only from general discussion on this site, but reddit and gw2g, indicates that the “silent majority” is an overwhelmingly PvE oriented bunch.

http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-81A39396E4194D20BF9C7B1C9A693707.pdf

Travlane.5948:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Seven Dreamsong.9802:

Knox.3748:

Really, who cares about pve? How can they nerf or buff something without messing with WvW and spvp?

it may not to you, but a lot of anet’s playerbase actually only cares about pve,
and they keep getting screwed over because of pvp balancing. pve balance
between classes is undeniably unbalanced and biased to a few others right now.
just take a look at dungeon grouping sites/ chat.

anet acknowledged the inherent difference between pve/pvp when they were
forced to split the skills in GW1. some skills scales well on both modes, some
are left unused since they are almost next to useless on the other.
they also started splitting the skills here as well (though very slowly)

as for wvw, there already have been numerous suggestions for it as well:
ranging from it doesn’t matter if they follow the pve skillset, to using the pvp
version of the skill with pve gear, to completely creating another skill split
for wvw for very tricky special skills, ect.
.

I did a survey a while back with 1000+ responses from members of the GW2 community. An overwhelming majority of players are in it for the PvE content and less than 10% are engaged in structured PvP.

so you know for a survery to be legit you need a randomized population of players. did you ask in an unbiased area or were you out in a pve area somewhere?

It was in general discussion, which is as general as you can get.

Seven Dreamsong.9802:

Knox.3748:

Really, who cares about pve? How can they nerf or buff something without messing with WvW and spvp?

it may not to you, but a lot of anet’s playerbase actually only cares about pve,
and they keep getting screwed over because of pvp balancing. pve balance
between classes is undeniably unbalanced and biased to a few others right now.
just take a look at dungeon grouping sites/ chat.

anet acknowledged the inherent difference between pve/pvp when they were
forced to split the skills in GW1. some skills scales well on both modes, some
are left unused since they are almost next to useless on the other.
they also started splitting the skills here as well (though very slowly)

as for wvw, there already have been numerous suggestions for it as well:
ranging from it doesn’t matter if they follow the pve skillset, to using the pvp
version of the skill with pve gear, to completely creating another skill split
for wvw for very tricky special skills, ect.
.

I did a survey a while back with 1000+ responses from members of the GW2 community. An overwhelming majority of players are in it for the PvE content and less than 10% are engaged in structured PvP.

I think the shield is fine. The 5 skill is incredibly useful against projectile-heavy enemies and bosses (e.g. Lupicus) and can be used to push enemies away.

Sword/focus is a pretty common combination used to stack vulnerability on an enemy through blinds.

Here are two possible templates for how it could look:

1/6: Stat increase
2/6: Stat increase
3/6: Stat increase
4/6: Special effect
5/6: Stat increase
6/6: Special effect on activating signet

1/6: Stat increase
2/6: Stat increase
3/6: Stat increase
4/6: Stat increase
5/6: Stat increase
6/6: Special effect on activating signet

Here’s my personal idea:

Superior rune of Signets

1/6: +25 Power
2/6: +15% Boon Duration
3/6: +50 power
4/6: Activating a Signet grants swiftness for 5 seconds.
5/6: +90 power
6/6: Lose a condition when activating a Signet

Yeah. Who knows – I’m guessing it might be added in future releases.

DanH.5879:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

People with adequately paying jobs will get more value out of their time by paying for one with money than by spending the same time ingame.

they are paying with their IRL working time =))))))
alas the ratios of time are not the same for everyone
some earn 30k$/month+, others 3k$ in a year :P

The guy who posted that video has a 7+ figure income. It is not worth his time to spend 300+ hours working on a legendary.

I think it might be better to say that many thief utilities, in comparison to utilites from other classes, just aren’t very good. Traps aren’t very good (Ambush is so-so, Shadow Trakitten ituationally useful, the rest suck kitten. Venoms are kitten weak unless you invest all your points into them., in which case they become passable but not exceptional.

This leaves half (or slightly less) of the thief’s skills which are useful without heavily investing into them.

That sounds great for PVP and all but the gap between the thieve’s effectiveness in PVP and PVE environments is just growing bigger.

Working as intended.

ilr.9675:

Ask this question again in the Crafters forum and brace for Glares.

Everything should be this cheap…. it makes dust cheaper too by keeping Ectos low.

I think there’s a problem when people are crafting something only to salvage it.

GW1 has the perfect salvage kit. You can use it to remove runes and insignias/inscriptions/mods on armor and weapons without breaking the weapon itself. I feel GW2 would benefit from an equivalent. If I want to change out an expensive runeset on an armor set I like, it means I have to lose those runes if I don’t want to break the armor.

ShoeMoney.5249:

my time is much more valuable then grinding to get legandaries.

This is a very important thing for people to keep in mind. Getting a legendary ingame costs hundreds of hours. People with adequately paying jobs will get more value out of their time by paying for one with money than by spending the same time ingame.

hedix.1986:

In the pre-Sounthsun interviews, one of the devs hinted that the new Personal Nemesis might be a she.

Though I personally think the conspicuous Mia healer character from the Effigy ceremony is a better candidate than Kasmeer. Or the announced “mysterious Delaqua” person.

Based on the character design of both Kasmeer and Delaqua I don’t think either one of them is going to be a villain. Both their armors are decorated with a lot of feathers, and as a pair/duo, they complement each other well in terms of appearance (one light the other dark).

Macee.8015:

Lady Kasmeer is a spy for the sky pirates

Where’s the proof of that? All I’ve seen is speculation that she’s a villian.

Khisanth.2948:

Besides the lack of use for these things there seems to be an over abundance of them when opening things like Heavy Moldy Bags.

Very true. I see a solution doing 2 things:

1. Reducing their incidence from bags.
2. Adding in some month-long mystic forge sink that allows players to toss in silk/leather and get things out.

It might be useful to see if this has anything to do with location. I am connecting from California.

There are over 5 million listings of silk and nearly 9 million listings of leather on the TP, and the MF output, on average, needs to exceed a value of 70 silver or else there is no point in using the recipe (70 silver is the benchmark because this can be obtained by vendoring 4 stacks of T5 common crafting materials). I think mass buying of silk and leather, with the huge surplus there is, would take a substantial amount of time to have a noticeable effect.

I don’t think ArenaNet’s monetization lead is going to let that happen, unfortunately. It might take the proverbial stick to get them to change that.

Khisanth.2948:

I wouldn’t mind another Mystic Forge Conduit but as much as I would love to have one I think that was not a good solution. There needs to be a long term solution that will naturally use up these things.

I agree. I’m still thinking about what might work. Perhaps throwing in 4 stacks of T5 crafting materials results in a chance at making one or more random cores/lodestones?

Something needs to be done about these two commodities right now. Currently, they are so abundant that they are nearly worthless. Perhaps users should be allowed to transmute them into other more desirable materials? Reinstate the mystic chests? Whatever the solution, something good needs to be done with them.