Guild Wars 2

Can I have your stuff?

Julius.1094:

Delete conquest as a game mode, specially conquest as poorly designed as GW2. Add something better (most pvp modes I can think of). Then that sort of stupid build is no longer a factor.

Then you’re just substituting decap engies for thieves. Not a solution.

It’s so reliant on stealth that I cannot see this as a good side-bunker build. For mid fights, it lacks group utility. It’s definitely not a roaming build.

If Illusionary Membrane had an 8 second cooldown instead of 15, I’d see this build being a decent side-bunker with staff, rabid amulet, Null Field and forge/undead runes.

Can anyone explain what ANet is trying to achieve with the Mesmer changes?

I’ve reviewed the changes and I cannot understand what direction ANet is trying to take Mesmer.

The vigor nerf reduces Mesmer survivability with no compensation elsewhere. Without the vigor nerf, Mesmers tend to be a liability due to how easily they drop to zerker thieves.

Outside of Power Block, I don’t see any of the new traits creating any new builds. Furthermore, Power Block only seems to open up a build that has, arguably, less survivability in tPvP than the current shatter builds. The other GM traits are either N/A for PvP (Triumphant Distortion), inferior to other GM traits (Bountiful Disillusionment, Maim the Disillusioned) or just bad/non-synergistic with existing Mesmer mechanics (Disruptor’s Sustainment).

These changes don’t make Zerker Mesmer builds more viable against thieves, neither do they give non-zerker Mesmer builds more damage output.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ignorance

Hex Spell. (8…18…20 seconds.) Target foe cannot use signets.

Change to: Interrupting an opponent puts their signets on cooldown.

If you think the other team is running a decap, then send a glass cannon to cross play and intercept the engie. It will slow him down enough to allow you to cap the point. Additionally, you should be able to get him low enough such that your home capper can kill the engie if he arrives.

Assign your roamer to drop the decap every time he spawns.

Place your home bunker far outside your point to intercept the decap early and deal damage.

When I play hambow, I key bind 1 to my toaster.

Another thought that came to mind is the new team death match arena would also greatly benefit from this approach.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

lordkrall.7241:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

This is why they are changes for their own custom arena, and not to the game.

And thus it would be more or less pointless as a method of balancing the game, which I assumed was the whole point of the OP.

PvP community tournaments are hosted in custom arenas.

This provides pathways for the competitive crowd to have a niche balanced scenario, and the more casual crowd have a fun way to mess around in custom arenas, example:

Only Hammer guardian weapon skills deal damage (so high that it oneshots- 100k dmg): while the rest deal 0, can you imagine the outplays? 1 guy dodges the auto backwards, only to riposte back with hammer #2 (small jump), which in turns makes the other guy need to dodge aswell and it goes on and on until 1 guy makes a mistake. This is sounding pretty fun to me.

Hell, I would buy my own custom arena if this was implemented, as Im sure a lot of you would.

That actually sounds like a lot of fun! That would be an arena I’d put on my favorites list.

You could make real man-mode CA’s, where all healing is turned off and only melee auto-attacks do damage.

Someone could make a CA where they fix all the new Healing Skills that currently aren’t useful. Or perhaps create a CA where you experiment on tweaking all the underused weapon sets.

There’s lots of possibilities. Ultimately I think we’d have more kinds of ‘fun’ arenas and have a more balanced game overall.

lordkrall.7241:

Leaving balancing to players is most of the time not a good idea.
Sure the devs can be biased as well, but not even close to on the same level as the players.

Not to mention the whole kneejerk reaction we see on these forums for every single little thing changed. Those kind of people shouldn’t make decisions.

The idea would be to let anyone make their custom arena any way they want. If they want to make a knee jerk change, it would be their prerogative. It woulnt mean that would make it into an official build.

Furthermore, I believe high end players have a good grasp on what the game balance should be like, and those people would be more likely to work together toward a set of balanced changes.

Iason Evan.3806:

Thedenofsin.7340:

a t s e.9614:

Id rather let the devs balance instead of the community. Just fix the ultra broken stuff that everybody knows with no doubt its broken and for the minor things dont listen to the QQ.

The problem is that will never happen. They don’t pay enough attention to high end pvp. They don’t have the talent available to make timely changes. Additionally, when they do make balance changes, they end up making abominations like Dhuumfire necromancers and hambow warriors.
And with Hambow Hugh working on balance, I doubt we will ever see good balance.

I’d rather see the community balance the game.

Conversely, I would say you are handing constructive criticism poorly and making it personal. I know for me, when someone makes personal statements, I tune out the rest of the criticism. If someone says something constructively like, “Hey, what if we did this? Would this work better?” I am more open to what they are saying. I would try wording it differently, like leaving out statements like the one where you say, “They don’t have the talent available to make timely changes.” or calling Hugh, “Hambow Hugh”. That stuff should just be deleted. It’s comes off as petty and malicious.

If you would like to attack how I handle criticism, that is fine. However, I’d argue it is better handled offline, as it is not germane to the topic at hand. Posting it the way you did is borderline trolling.

Let’s try to keep this on topic. Thank you.

redslion.9675:

Problem is by this way you can only do number tweaking, you can’t redesign anything.

This is true. Redesign would still fall in the domain of the developers.

However, number tweaks could still go a long way. If a skill is overpowered, number tweaks could tone it down (increased cool down, initiative cost, etc) until it’s been properly redesigned.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

So instead of working on balance changes, you want them to work on something that lets someone else do balance changes for them? It’s not going to happen. It’d be cool, but it just won’t happen. They’d have to go through every single skill in the game and create these tweaks and nobs, create the UI for this and change CAs to allow for this functionality. There’s so much involved in this change.

A UI wouldn’t even be strictly necessary. CAs could load a user-side config file, for example. That being said, creating a couple of screens with sliders or entry boxes would not be too hard.

Keep in mind those knobs exist internally, either as a set of parameters in database tables, lines in an input file, or constants in code. I’ve coded many simulations in my day and I always ensure that I add knobs to the code for every equation that may need adjusting. For the stuff I do, it’s typically just a massive config file.

The issue would be tied to what thread performs the damage computations and if that thread is spawned 1 to 1 with the thread that manages CAs.

Asomal.6453:

Kraljevo.2801:

Dee Jay.2460:

Thedenofsin.7340:

.75 seconds is plenty of time to react and avoid Signet of Spite.

Funny because I still don’t know what the actual cast looks like.

That’s half the problem with condition builds. None of their attacks are properly animated or telegraphed.

The necromancer will point at you, I find it very easy to avoid unless I am immobilized or knockdowned..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6BV3dJnUmc

It’s the same animation as the Staff auto attack. Now that’s some good tell! Anyway, no Necro cast it when the target can easily dodge. They generally do it when you are either immobilized, feared or stunned by the golem…

It is not the same as staff autoattack, as demonstrated by the giant animation over the Necromancer’s head.

Chaining SoS with a fear or knockdown is just good gameplay.

No one will care about tdm because this game isn’t close to balanced for it.

Well, people who play thief will probably like it.

I am a little surprised people have not locked onto this idea. It seems to offer a path to balance that many competitive players have been asking for. At the same time, it gets the theorycrafting groups really going.

Think about the kinds of problems this game has had over the past year…

Dhuumfire? No problem. Fix in an hour.
Hambow? Easy. HS and hammer damage fixed in a few hours.
Decap engine? BAM! AR nerf in minutes.
Don’t like Diamond Skin? No problem – fixed in minutes.

Literally the balance problems that have plagued this game, could be solved in mere hours as opposed to years.

I like:

Signet of Chaos

Passive: Increases recharge rate on all shatters by 15%.
Active: Grants Retaliation (12s) and Swiftness (30s). Your next 5 attacks inflict a random condition on your opponent and grant you a random boon. 60 second cooldown

No, you heard correctly. There will be prizes just for watching.

So if you tune in and watch, basically you’re odds are about 1 in 10 of winning a precursor.

I think so. I know the first thing I would do is create a new custom arena where all the coefficients for all spells and all weapon damage are set to 0.

Except for Guardian mace 1, which would deal 100000 damage.

Greetings,

It is my perception many members of the community believe PvP balancing occurs far too infrequently. This is one factor contributing to an unhealthy PvP community. ANet is constrained to the point where they are cannot push out quality balance changes in a timely fashion that the community desires.

I propose that ANet place the tools in the players’ hands to change the game balance. The way this could be done is via custom arenas (CAs).

How would this work?

CAs would be modified with new screens containing all the knobs to adjust weapon and spell coefficients and durations for all professions. Modifying a default parameter would, by default, turn off progression on the server. This would avoid “hotjoin heroism”. An icon could be added to each CA that would allow people to view the MOTD text of the CA as well as the list of spell coefficients. Modified parameters could be highlighted via some color.

What would this do?

Primarily, this could effectively result in achieving PvP balance via crowdsourcing. Various players could try tweaking different parameters and seeing how the game changes. Groups such as ESL could gather together top players and create a proposed “balance template” they could use for tournaments. Such an effort could result in a ‘defacto standard’ for tPvP gameplay.

Secondarily, we could see more ‘fun’ servers where some parameters are set to nonsensical values that result in silly, but, fun, games. If some of you remember Team Fortress crowbar servers, you can get the idea of the kind of things that could evolve.

How Would ANet Benefit?

Simply put: More players for less work. Better balance would most likely result in more people playing the game. Additionally ‘fun’ variants could result in more people playing the game. Since many hard-core players really enjoy theorycrafting, this could get many players very excited and invested in trying to make the PvP balance better.
In terms of balancing, this simplifies the job for ANet. They can use the “balance specs” that are most frequently used and/or being used in tournaments and incorporate all, or parts of, that spec into the default builds. It would simplify and expedite the balancing process. This could literally result in balance updates coming out every 2 weeks. I think we could very quickly converge upon a balanced solution.

Potential Issues

Mechanics. It may not be feasible with the current game engine to override coefficients and durations in a CA. It would depend on if/how these parameters are loaded/accessed from data stores, or hard-coded.
Build schisming could be a very real issue, where two “leading” groups evolve with very different balance specs and refuse to compromise or kowtow. This could be detrimental to the community. It would be incumbent upon ArenaNet to provide feedback and guidance periodically to minimize this.

Monetization

CA’s cost money to open and to maintain. I think it’s something like 1 token per day. Monetizing this is a no-brainer. Serious players will all have their own custom arenas. However, the real revenue would come from the ‘fun’ variants all the players will come up with.

style.6173:

One of the biggest issues in solo queue and team queue is that the current leaderboards aren’t very good. I’ll give a couple examples..

1. A person who hasn’t played in a month can jump 40% after one game, win or lose. Decay doesn’t work well.

I don’t think you understand how decay works. A player’s leaderboard rank decays after time. However, playing a game will bring a player close to their previous place.

Also, 40% is nothing. I never play solo queue. The other day I logged in, played a game and my rank jumped over 80%.

.75 seconds is plenty of time to react and avoid Signet of Spite.

It’s fine the way it is. It has an obvious casting animation, and you can tell if a necro is running with Signet of Spite.

It’s a good build. I just posted nearly the same one that I run with in PvP. 30 in dueling does a lot for you. That 20% reduction in pistol makes a substantial difference.

It means that at the end of my typical opening sequence I’m ready to drop another duelist. This is really good because I’m also typically in a very different location than where I started, resulting in my opponent being bombarded by damage from various sources.

All,

Nothing terribly different from what you may have seen before, but this is a build I’ve found to be rather effective.

It’s a hybrid PU build that I’ve used in PvP:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAsaWlknpWtNqxMNcrNiY6RwhcAHpCqWpH4WudhA-TsAg1CqIKSVkrITRyisFNWY5x0DA

The traits are 10/30/30/0/0. This is a hybrid build that does good single target damage, coupled with decent condition damage. Less burst when compared to a 20/20/30, but more condition damage.

Build Highlights

1. Rampager’s Amulet. Why? Because it gives an incredibly high chance to crit. Combined with Phantasmal Fury, your iDuelist will have a 90% crit chance. This duelist is key to your damage output.
2. Duelist’s Discipline. Pumping out a duelist every 16 seconds boosts direct and condition damage substantially. With 2 duelists out, you have a very high likelihood to unload 13-16 stacks of bleeds on your opponent every 7 or so seconds.
3. PU. Like Ragu, it’s in there.
4. Good hybrid of direct and condition damage.
5. Better group fight support than conditon PU – mainly because of the superior burst damage.

Drawbacks

1. No reliable buff removal. This means this build isn’t very good against bunker guardians. Engineers are less of a problem since their condition removal tends to be rather bad. Picking up Null Field instead of Portal can be useful if you are willing to make the sacrifice.
2. Limited condition removal. Lyssa is all you get. Condition warriors can be a big problem. Picking up iDisenchanter makes handling condition classes rather easy.

Overall I’ve been liking this build more and more. Hotjoin heroes can swap Ether Feast for Signet of the Ether and blow up opponents in seconds. Opening with double iDuelist and a Blurred Frenzy combo can easily drop 17 stacks of bleeds on an opponent in the first few seconds of a fight.

From a raw numbers perspective, this build doesn’t do as much damage as a Zerker 20/20/30. However, I’ve found this build to be very good at applying consistent pressure on opponents. The combination of burst and condition damage is very appealing. With 25 stacks of Corruption and 2 duelists out, your bleeds alone will tick for over 1000 dps. The duelists’ direct damage is about as high.

Are you guys banning Asuras?

How about what DoYourBestBear is doing and allowing Healing Signet only if Cleric’s Amulet is used?

Yunalesca.9850:

What I’m wondering about is that this trait has no internal CD which means if I cast a chaos storm in a bunch of enemies that fight on a point I will approximately interrupt everyone one or two times. So in the best case I put two skills of each on 10sec CD which is extremely strong – so maybe Anet will give it an internal CD of 5sec or 10sec so it’s not that OP.

It’s unlikely you’d interrupt anyone more than once. Even the least competent players know to get out of Chaos Storm right away.

The following is an list of problems with the proposed Mesmer GM Traits. I have tried to be as objective as possible.

Domination: Power Block – Enemy skills that you interrupt have an increased cooldown of 10s
Problem: The most difficult opponents for Mesmers currently are thieves and warriors. All thief weapon skills work off of initiative, so Power Block would not have any discernable impact against thieves. Warriors use Healing Signet almost exclusively, so Power Block would have no impact on Warrior healing.
Overall I believe this trait has a deleterious effect on the game: it will make Mesmers better versus professions they are already good against, and do little to nothing to improve their stance against classes they are weak against.

Dueling: Triumphant Distortion – Gain 3s of distortion upon killing an enemy. No cooldown.
Problem: In small-group PvP, this trait will proc after a player is killed. This is typically the time when distortion is needed the least. In large-group PvP and WvW ‘zergs’, this proc will be somewhat random. This means it cannot be readily relied upon. In PVE, it could be extremely useful, but only in certain key situations where there are a lot of ‘trash mobs’ that can be killed easily.
Overall, I think this new GM trait will not be applicable to PvP, but may see uses in PVE.

Chaos: Bountiful Disillusionment – Gain boons each time a shatter skill is used. Mind wrack – 3s of retaliation. Cry of frusturation – 3 stacks of might for 15s; Diversion – 5s of fury; Distortion – 8 seconds of regeneration

Problem: This is objectively weaker than Prismatic Understanding. The underlying principle is good, but the boons are too short in duration / too little in quantity.

Inspiration: Disruptor’s Sustainment – Gain 1000 healing power for 5s upon interrupting a foe.
Problem: Most Mesmer heals scale extremely poorly. Additionally, this GM trait has to be used in conjunction with something else in order to actually be useful.
Healing coefficients:

• Restorative Mantras: 0.2
• Signet of the Ether: 3x illusions = 0.125
• Mirror: 0.6
• Power Return: 0.4
• Ether Feast: 1.0, 0.1 for each illusion

Illusions: Maim the Disillusioned – Enemies hit by shatter skills are inflicted with torment.
Problem: It is objectively weaker than Illusionary Persona, even on pure condition builds. Simply put – this is as weak as the 5 point illusions adept minor trait. (!!!)

No argument there. That would be the potential drawback against using a Signet for your heal. Keep in mind if you had to use the active on Signet of Restoration, the current proposed Power Block would be even deadlier than the one I suggested: it would kill the heal and put the signet on cooldown for 10 seconds with no ICD.

I think that kind of ability would be incredibly powerful against every profession.

Chaith.8256:

Perhaps a bit too specialized. Obviously, this is aimed at healing signet. What if instead of Signet Hate, which by design is kind of weird, Power Block put the enemy’s heal skill on a 4s cooldown when any skill is successfully interrupted?

That’s not a bad idea either.
Signet Hate is not a particularly weird idea. It was something GW1 had for Mesmers: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ignorance

This is not aimed at just Healing Signet. Power Block would also have utility against thieves. Since thieves have no skill cooldown on weapons, the current Power Block is almost useless against them. The proposed version would be somewhat more useful against them.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

also power blaock will kill ele whos already in the lowest tier amongs other class.

That’s possible. However, many of the recent theorycrafted Ele builds I have seen are only using 1 signet. Additionally, ele’s can get quite a bit of healing in water attunement, so I beileve this would impact elementalists to a much lesser degree.

^^

“The Megaserver is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.”
- 2 Samuel (Loretan) 22:33

On the forums there is a clamor to tone down warriors. Additionally there is a clamor to make Mesmers viable in the meta. Most recently there has been a flare-up of protests about how Power Block will be too powerful against certain professions (e.g. Necromancers).

Here’s a solution that will resolve all 3 issues at once.

Change the proposed Power Block to do the following:

Power Block: Interrupting an opponent’s skill places their signets on an X second cooldown. Y second ICD.

This gives a really good reason to bring a Mesmer. At the same time, it will not have as drastic effect against other classes than the currently proposed Power Block. Lastly, it will introduce counterplay against the warrior meta.

Feedback is welcome.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Long term goals aren’t a bad thing. Even after the re-balance, it will take the average player a very long time to reach 80 and will still be the long term goal for most people.

It’s important to have goals for different time commitments. Short term goal could be reward tracks or some skins. Medium term goals could be season rewards and a ladder. Long terms goals could be a legendary, rank 80 (for most people) or possibly multi-season rewards and yearly tournaments.

What kind of long-term rewards would people like to see? Maybe a rank 80 ‘prestige’ system is something to explore.

I think you should just add some new ranks:

R90: Elder Dragon – /rank is an elder dragon, duh
R100: Favored of the Gods – /rank is a random god doing some random thing
R110: Dave – /rank is this: http://davepeck.org/img/davepeck/dave-peck-icon-big-color.jpg

If so, bravo!

This is a terrific idea. Back when I was playing Rift, I asked the developers to do the same thing. They said, ‘no – that would require too much effort’.

And yet, you guys pulled it off here.

How substantial was the effort?

Correct?

Here is what I recommend: 10/30/30 – with Lyssa and Rampager’s

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAsaWlknpRtlpxWNcrNiY6RwhcAHpClWpH4WudhA-TsAg1CqIKSVkrITRyisFNWY5x0DA

Why Rampager’s? Because BLEEDS.

This build gives your iDuelist a 90% crit chance, which is insane for bleed damage.

Hotjoin heroes will enjoy stacking this with a Signet of Ether. I’ve spiked 17 stacks of bleeds on a thief within 4 seconds of opening (~1300 dps in bleed damage).

If I get the initiative, this is my opener:
Pistol 4 → Sword 3 + Swap → Sword 2 → Pistol 5 → Weapon Swap → Staff 5

This opens up with Duelist and a swap-Blurred Frenzy Combo. You follow up with Pistol 5, stunning them. Then swap to Staff, which will proc bleeds from Signet of Geomancy and drop a Chaos Storm on top of them. After a couple of seconds I Phase Retreat out to get Chaos Armor. This sets you up for the rest of the fight.

This opener will cause many opponents to blow their condition cleanse as well and/or their heal.

The build would definitely be powerful, but it really seems to lack defensive characteristics, and very little condition removal.

Why do Scepter/Torch + Sword/Pistol instead of Sword/Torch + Scepter/Pistol? It seems the scepter/pistol combo would work better:
iDuelist → Pistol 5 → Scepter 3 → Swap →Sword 3 + Swap → Sword 2

Also, why Blade Training over Phantasmal Fury? With PF, you’re iDuelist would have 75% crit chance, which would give you lots of bleeds.

Do you think the run speed bonus really beats out having Lyssa runes?

R70 —> Elder Dragon

DanyK.3842:

Ok so you have 1000 qualified gamers telling you healing signet is terrible, spirit rangers require no skill and do insane damage, decap engineers are the definition of cheese in conquest and mesmers lack built-in escapes while the only survivability option that’s OP for them is useless for conquest – yet your company has no intentions to change any of this for the next 9 months.
Makes no difference. It’s not that they lacked information on it. It’s that they do not care.
Examples: Dhuumfire, Diamond Skin, RTL nerf, Berserker’s Stance.
Things that cried for a nerf since forever: Automated Response, vigor uptime on dps classes, poison on aoe skills such as Choking Gas and Poison Grenade.

Warrior Healing Signet and the new heals in general are great examples to prove your point Zone.

Correct. If you are a home builder and your home is an example of shoddy workmanship and designs that aren’t thought out: you don’t have a PR problem, you have a competency problem.

I believe the community, collectively, can do a better job balancing the game than the developers could.

I think ArenaNet should put all the knobs for adjusting the game (i.e. spell coefficients, durations, cooldowns, initiative, etc.) into custom arenas, and let the community collectively work toward identifying a ‘standard’.

This way the devlopers allocate their energies to doing all the things they find interesting, like making new healing skills, traits, and other stuff that no one will use, and the community can work on making the game balanced and fun.

Amstel Steel.2058:

Unplayable? They finally resized Asurans!

This made me laugh.

In all seriousness, you can’t focus on what your opponent is doing because his giant head is bobbing.

I suppose this isn’t a problem for some professions that don’t have to worry about incoming damage or have attacks that auto-teleport you to your target.

I never know how horrible the PvP experience could be – then you added bobble heads.

Seriously it’s unplayable.

gg anet – well you sure fooled me!

I have watched yours.

After watching several tournaments, it occurred to me.

This meta is absolutely horrible to watch. It’s like watching paint dry. HS warriors, guardians, decap engies, Spirit Rangers – every one of them completely tanky.

Matches frequently time out. Every class is ridiculously hard to kill.

Zzzzzzzz.

But remember, HS warriors is just where ANet wants them to be.

B O R I N G

Uhtameit.2413:

Question : could you display full servers, then repost a screen?

Answer: No. Servers are sorted by number of players in them.

There are so few players left that I often can’t find a 5v5 game with enough players in it.

However, all those 8v8 hotjoin abortions are filled.

Get rid of the 8v8 please

I’ve thought about this a bit. I can only conclude the developers really don’t care about PVP balance.

They just want PVP to be the same as PVE – simple and easy.

Warriors and thieves constitute the vast majority of played professions. So they just make those 2 professions the best.

If you play something else, you’re just fodder to make the other players feel better about themselves.

That’s the only logical conclusion to draw.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Justin had the crux of the reasoning correct – it’s a small tweak to your build that a lot of players could do without. It’s a very small stat change in exchange for another aspect of a PvP build. By removing it, it’s one less thing a new player needs to learn. With runes, sigils, amulets, weapon skills, slotted skills, minor traits and major traits, making a build is a pretty hefty process. Jewels were a very, VERY small % of that overall build.

Trust me, doing focus tests and watching new players play the game, our builds can be very overwhelming. You guys are experts by now, but you have to keep in mind that other players are not as advanced as you are, and removing pieces to the builds allows us to slightly lower the barrier to entry.

If getting overwhelmed, and eventually frustrated, is such a big issue, then why are HS warriors and thieves in such a broken place? Surely anyone playing some other profession will get very frustrated playing against a HS warrior or thief.

Or is it that thieves and warriors constitute the vast majority of players, and you’re just catering to the majority, offering up the minority as fodder so others can feel like they’re doing really well?

Took a look at the PVP leaderboards. It’s all plain text – nothing formatted. What’s going on?

Ostricheggs.3742:

Why?

15 chars

I’d rather see healing signet and thieves out of rotation.

A Whack-a-Mole game, but instead called ‘Whack-an-OP’ class.

Instead of moles, they’d all be warriors.

Instead of a hammer, you get a razor.

But the razor doesn’t actually work – it just breaks in your hand instead. The more you try to whack it, the more you bleed until you die, or quit playing.

…actually, that doesn’t sound like a fun game at all.