Guild Wars 2

JonathanSharp.7094:

Warriors are pretty strong right now, but will be seeing changes in an upcoming patch.

We like how they can be tanky, and we like how they can do DPS if they want. We also like the CC they can bring. We just don’t like them doing it all with 1 build.

Pretty strong is an understatement. Warriors are worse than the necromancers ever were.

And the CC they bring is too much. wayy too much.
And you forgot to mention better mobility than most classes too.

I don’t believe that. I believe the developers know what they are doing. Perhaps they don’t enough data samples to fully realize the magnitude of the changes they make.

It just seems like it makes sense to make more frequent, smaller changes than infrequent, large changes.

Darnis.4056:

There’s like 8 threads going on about this topic, you don’t think it means something?
Warriors are too high reward for too Little risk at the moment.

Great Damage ; Excellent surviveability; Great team Utility/CC;
Great 1v1 against 7/8 classes
Great at Team fights
Great at point control if Longbow is slotted
What’s the point of bringing a mesmer/thief/ele/ranger when you can just bring 2 warriors?

No one even runs some ridiculous duel build(Which is possible believe me),
the meta warrior is great all around, and it works to great success at extremely low skill levels.

^^This guy gets 100%. OP gets an F.
/thread

Any process that makes you less effective at what you do needs to be replaced.

There are other MMO’s out there that can push out bug fixes with far greater efficiency than GW2.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Phaeton.9582:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Has ANet given up on capture point PvP?

Yeah once they’ve released the new game type they’ll delete the old one

No, not necessarily. In the future, we could do a combination of game types, in the same way that Call of Duty does multiple game types, or counter strike does multiple (escort or disarm).

We’ll have to see how that pans out, based on fan feedback.

Hi Jonathan,

The current game mode is good. Really good, in fact. I believe the problem isn’t the game mode, but the incredibly long turnaround time for fixes and adjustments. It takes 2 months to get sPvP fixes pushed out to the user, and I think that kind of lag is counterproductive to the health of the game.

Outside of a ‘free-for-all, F’ it!’ kind of mode, I have difficulty in seeing how any kind of additional game mode would flourish with a 2 month turnaround time for fixes.

hooma.9642:

Thedenofsin.7340:

FoopOplo.7914:

To answer your question more seriously, it’s to let the meta catch up. Then, I’d imagine to do some testing with changes and make sure everything new they’re about to change is on par with everything else so they don’t accidentally make it worse.

Just from what I’ve read.

If you are a developer and you know you overbuffed a profession, why would you knowingly wait for the ‘meta’ to catch up first? It seems illogical. There may very well be counter-compositions out there that ‘would be’ viable against these warrior comps but are not due the profession being imbalanced.

If you wait for the meta to catch up, are you really letting the meta evolve to where it should be, or are you allowing a skewed meta evolve from the current profession imbalance?

but they changed the trait and skill facts.. isnt that not open a complete new world with a lot of possibilities?

How did you pack so much sarcasm into those electrons?

Has ANet given up on capture point PvP?

FoopOplo.7914:

To answer your question more seriously, it’s to let the meta catch up. Then, I’d imagine to do some testing with changes and make sure everything new they’re about to change is on par with everything else so they don’t accidentally make it worse.

Just from what I’ve read.

If you are a developer and you know you overbuffed a profession, why would you knowingly wait for the ‘meta’ to catch up first? It seems illogical. There may very well be counter-compositions out there that ‘would be’ viable against these warrior comps but are not due the profession being imbalanced.

If you wait for the meta to catch up, are you really letting the meta evolve to where it should be, or are you allowing a skewed meta evolve from the current profession imbalance?

It is beyond me to understand why a balance patch takes months to put together, especially when the developers know they overbuffed a profession.

The lack of a prompt fix makes me believe ANet simply is not serious about making their PvP good.

If so, what builds?

If not, what needs to be done?

I’m hoping the next patch gives us anti-immobilize spray

The Dhuumfire nerf went out because there was a tournament coming.
Maybe ANet should run a big tournament every two weeks. That way we’ll get balance fixes in a reasonable timeframe.

Zanryu.3417:

Enjoyluck.2618:

Here is proof http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhWCwlXX20

You know what I saw? Five members of a team playing the same class, but with builds that were different enough that they could still support each other as a team. Isn’t that how it should be? Shouldn’t every class be able to perform every role to at least some degree? Isn’t that a good model to base other class updates on? I wouldn’t call diversity broken. Sure, it makes it a bit difficult to be prepared for each build you could come across, but diversity is a good thing.

You know what I saw? A profession that needs to be nerfed into the ground. Jonathan Sharp said that if you saw team compositions that were running double of a particular profession it was a clear indicator that profession was out of line and needed to be nerfed.

5 Warriors = mega-nerf.

YAY! I hope this works to mend solo queue. The number of times you see people mindlessly zerging is disappointing at best.

This is as-intended.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey PvPers!

I just wanted to let you all know that I will be AFK for a few months to handle some personal things. It’s been an absolute blast (I mean it!) promoting all of your awesome content and feedback, and I’m positive that I will miss these forums and all other aspects of my job until I come back.

Congratulations Allie!

How about just upping iMage’s damage by about 50%?

The videos are really nice. Your commentary is good and, frankly kind of endearing. You sound like a really nice guy. :-)

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

Hey,

thought some time about UF and i have to say all your points are reasonable. The only issue is the following: at the moment, almost no class have to trade defense for offense, mainly for the fact, that condi dmg is poorly designed.

Necros, NGs, Rangers can pull of good dmg with vit/tough/cond gear, warriors can, too, with power instead of condi dmg. Mesmers and thieves have working condi builds too, but also can go with glass builds and have other free class mechanics, not limiting thier def while going for more offense. Even Guards, can have some free dmg, while in ptv, because Retaliation scales only of power.

There is no vit/tough/cond gear in sPvP. The reason why condition damage goes well with toughness is that condition damage is over time and can be cleansed, unlike direct damage. So condition builds need to endure.

I really like your casting man. Good job. If ANet slows the pace down a little and tones down the AoE, you’ll be in a good position.

I think it is blatantly obvious now that ‘anti-toxin spray’ is an example of the new skills being introduced.

So don’t get your hopes up, folks.

Is this discussion about the idea of new game modes, or how to better support the existing ones?

I don’t like the idea of supporting more game modes than we currently have. As it stands today, the developers are loathe do perform any kind of balancing around the game modes of open world PVE/dungeons or WvW. Adding more game modes seems like a recipe for disaster.

Signet of Spite is undervalued. I think it has some good potential in WvW. AoE poison+blind+weakness is very powerful. I use it + well of darkness when soloing camps, and I find it very effective.
In zergs, I think spreading bleeds is more effectively accomplished by other means, and AoE poison+weakness is better accomplished by using Corrosive Poison cloud.

Bawi.9541:

While answering a different topic I found a term that pretty much describes the problem I see with the concept of necro attrition at the moment:
Necros damage mitigation is largely focused around
a) conditions like snares and weakness to reduce incoming damage
b) soaking damage with the lifeforce hp bar
c) limited teleports
and that’s about it. The scaling with player numbers in a fight is HEAVILY stacked against the necro:
<snip>
I don’t have a solution for this that fits the necro theme (and so does anet if im concerned). Would you agree with my assessment of the situation?

I agree 100% with this assessment. It’s the correct conclusion to draw.

For a condition necromancer, it definitely appears to be a problem. However, as others, including the developers have mentioned (indirectly), it’s an intentional design limitation for the profession.
Necromancer survivability simply does not scale as well as the survivability of most other professions, but the developers believe it is in a good spot for sPvP. This may be the case for condition necromancers, but I question if power necromancer survivability is in a good place in sPvP.

Necro survivability definitely is not in a good spot for WvWvW or PVE.

Explain. They really do nothing to keep you alive longer.

Thieves have better stealth. Elementalists have better movement. Guardians have an aoe knockback. Engineers get one as well. Warriors get a temporary rez. Necros get a fear and a poison well. Those are all better than a very short lived vanish (with a giant icon over your head) and a hard hitting phantasm that doesn’t show up for 9 seconds and attacks once every 3-4 seconds.

Compared to the other professions, doesn’t it seem like Mesmer down abilities are pretty lousy?

The vanish only lasts for a couple of seconds, and you need to be down for around 8 seconds before you can even use the phantasm.

Seems really meh to me.

it’s been around for a while. Costume swaps can proc all kinds of stuff, like the scavenging runes and what-not.

A spell that allows me, once a day for 10 minutes, to transform the Mystic forge into an actual toilet, complete with flushing sounds.

Rewards should be proportionate to the achievements.

Big tournament winners get the rarest items: something equivalent to a legendary (if not a legendary) or unique armor skin or custom aura or special emote, laurels/gold and a title. Maybe a little companion pet that follows you around and whenever you stop he plants a standard in the ground which lists your name and accomplishment on it.

Next tier would be: a precursor or ascended gear or skins and laurels/gold and a title.

Next tier would be: an exotic or two, a skin, laurels/gold and a title.

That kind of thing.

What do bunker engineers bring to the table to counter this?

Dardamaniac.1295:

Its not the stun, animations with hammer are SO obvious..Its the healing signet that needs nerf, they wont, they prefer putting in every class a huge amount of poison than nerfing what they buffed

Animations are totally obvious, I agree. However, coming out of a stealth zerg, you never see it coming and bam you’re stunned/mezzed and dead in like 3-4 seconds.

The healing signet does seem powerful. But this is all nerf talk. I’m curious about what to do with the professions/abilities we have today to counter it.

Or is there no counter?

Being 100% serious. I’m trying to figure out what a counter comp would be to the stun warrior meta.

Stun/immob assist trains require you to stack your players with lots (i.e. 2 at a minimum, 3 is better) stun breakers with lots of condition removal. I’ve only played a few different professions, but I don’t see any specs that would provide a hard counter to this build.

I remember when ANet was buffing necro’s they released several changes to mesmers to buff lockdowns and mes/stuns . In my head I was thinking, ‘ok, maybe they’re saying the way to counter a necro is stuns/dazes and immobilizes’.

Then warriors got buffed into the stratosphere, making them not only a far superior counter than a lockdown mesmer, but basically a 1-man lockdown team. Not only are they are hard counter for condition necromancers, they are a hard counter to pretty much every condition build AND the ultimate assist train point man.

How do you counter it, besides carrying 2+ stun breaks + condi clears (an over-the-top requirement, in my opinion)?

Not a bad troll post. I give it a 6.

Lordryux.9785:

Ashanor.5319:

I don’t know. I wonder when bads will stop trolling forums. Solo queue is disorganized trash and matchmaking is incredibly broken btw.

tbh ive seen some bad warriors smash some high ranking players so im not really suprised. Anyway have u ever faced a 4 or 5 man warrior team its nothing but Hammer/LB all day long the CC u have to endure is hell itself so like i said i wouldnt be suprised 4 or 5 man warrior team facing a mix match team 90% chance that warrior team will win for sure. People got to understand the class isnt OP but there is little to no risk vs reward in the current warrior state that its in now its literally a braindead easy class to pick up and play and wreck with Now im not saying anyone can do that because not everyone likes pvp or can get used to it but majority of the players who do well numbers speak for themselves lately ive been getting matched up against atleast 3 warriors to a team sometimes 4 like every single match so yea…. lets just think about this.

Run-on sentence crits you for 239k. You die instantly, alone and in the dark. The nearby grue was immobilized.

But seriously warriors need to be hotfixed.

Good Evening,

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not denying that disconnects feel bad, but other players are being punished by people leaving these matches. If this is one step in the direction of reducing the amount of leavers, should it not be taken?

I think there are so many other aspects of the game to be focusing on which are more important than hot-join currently. That being said, I’d like to start with some questions.

Is Hot Join (HJ) ANet’s method of introducing new players to sPvP? Is it the right means of introduction? HJ is nearly always a zerg-fest. New players will not learn about profession tactics, map/team strategies or about counter-play.
They will learn:
1) how to spam buttons mindlessly
2) how to get insta-gibbed by zerker thieves
3) how to get immobi-stomped by warriors

Will changing time of the point awards make a significant impact on reducing the number of people who leave HJ? Or will it simply change when they leave the HJ match? It has been my experience that most HJ matches are decided after the first big team fight. Will this change simply mean players on the losing team will leave within the first 2 minutes of the match now, thus accentuating the problem?

Lastly, what is the problem in HJ? Are you trying to remedy the ailment or suppress the symptoms?

The more stuff like this I see, the more I think ANet suffers from organization / tasking problems.

It appears to me that this is how ANet handles bug submissions:

1) All of the bugs are submitted to a central forum.
2) One or two people periodically slog through all the posts to see if the bugs are new.
3) New bugs are opened in their bug tracker, then allocated to the responsible groups (game engine, LW, dungeon, professions, etc.).
4) Then likely some pow-wow meeting once a week is held on what bugs are the new ‘highest priority’ bugs.

Seems to me it would be easier to create a new thread in each subforum titled, “Bugs in patch XYZ”, then make each group responsible for patrolling their appropriate subforum and self-prioritizing. Each group then only reports new ‘high priority’ bugs when they run across them and begins a mini-pow wow with whomever the lead is. This results in fewer, focused meetings that are more push vs pull and a better distribution of load.

With the most recent update, the mad king’s clock tower no longer gives any reward after running it once.

^^^Disagree 100%

They should be available whenever the content is available.

That song may very well be older than Mad King Thorn himself!

That song has to be pushing 60 years old.

Timed jumping puzzles could be it’s own ‘thing’ in GW2. I generally like the jumping puzzles in this game, and the element of impending doom really made the jumping puzzle exciting!

Plus, the music is great too. Once I completed it I ran it through about 6 more times because of how much I really liked it. Look & feel were spot on.

I kind of wish there were more paths for the clock tower so I could go through the challenge again!

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hey Felivear, thanks for the post!

We knew for a while that Warriors were stronger than the meta seemed to indicate at one point, and we knew a fix for the sigil was coming.

Sometimes it just takes a while ( IN ANY GAME ) for people to try all builds, all combinations of strategies, all options, etc.

That’s why we want to see what today’s improvements do to the game, especially to support meta. I ran into a VERY strong staff Elementalist earlier on live, and was excited to see it when I did.

It normally takes a few days/weeks for builds to assimilate new changes into their kitten nals.

<snip>

We have to make sure we aren’t making you guys download new clients all the time for fixes. We knew the sigil of paralyzation was strong, but we also knew our fix was coming in today’s update.

Hi Jonathan!

This is something that I find to be a head scratcher. I understand that your SW development process dictates it will take weeks to push a bug fix out. However, hasn’t anyone internally questioned if that really needs to be the modus operandi? I work in software development all day, and I know that certain development processes (integration, regression & quality testing) can take some time. However, you have processes that let you push out a critical bug-fix in hours (mesmer exploit, just to name one).

Before I played Guild Wars 2, I played Rift. While these games are very different, one of things I found unique and commendable about Rift was the rate at which they could push out bug fixes. Here, take a look at the announcements page: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-discussions/news-announcements/

If Rift can routinely push out bug fixes on a near-daily basis (with in-game downtime of approximately 10 minutes), why is it so hard to imagine the GW2 team is not capable of pushing out bug fixes on, at least, a weekly basis?

Are there any plans to increase the frequency at which bug fixes are pushed out?

Swamurabi.7890:

3. Use siegecrusher as a decoy while your main force hits another tower/keep

This one is quite effective.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Is it just me, or is everyone you know and respect using this word/prefix wrong.

Meta (Prefix) – to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

Examples (traditional)

From D&D: Your character has never seen a troll. You know Trolls are weak to fire from previous games. Your character, now, intrinsically, knows that trolls are weak to fire (cheating).

What Meta means in GW2 (near as I can tell) – The current prevailing strategy in both theory and practice.
for late joiners to this discussion)*

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

[/spoiler]

It is commonly misused. However, meta-gaming can take be realized as a strategy, or a tactic.

In GW2 it stemmed from the sPvP side, where I believed it was used correctly. To rephrase your definition, ‘meta-’ something is the abstraction of that thing.

Meta-gaming, would be the game of gaming. In sPvP that would refer to the game of team compositions and counter-compositions: in other words, the game of how to put together and optimal team to play the sPvP game. The meta-gaming in sPvP is a kind of strategy, but once removed from in-game play (i.e. sPvP map).

Referring to golem-zerging as the ‘meta’ in WvW would be incorrect: golem-zerging is a strategy, not meta-gaming.

In your example of D&D meta-gaming, you state that a player who has never encountered an undead character before, and presumably has 0 points in religion and arcane lore, knows to burn an undead creature. This is meta-gaming that has manifested as a tactic.

BTW, OP, my biggest nit-pick is when people improperly use the term strategy or use tactics and strategy interchangeably. Kudos for using it properly.

Very exciting stuff – looking forward to seeing how it pans out.

Just ran the Mad King’s clock tower today for the first time.

Big Kudo’s to the developer that made it. It’s a totally awesome time!

A++

1) Rewards / Progression: Specifically in regards to how it ties into individual contributions vs group contributions, WvWvW skill points, account vs character bound rewards, financial/gear gains and WvWvW league rewards.

2) Content Development: Specifically here referring to the generation of new maps and/or refactoring of existing maps

3) Tactics/Strategy: Specifically referring to gameplay that encourages/discourages aggregation of players (i.e. roaming zerg vs solo vs small group play).

Was working fine on Yak’s Bend.

It’s a lot of fun! A+

Hobo-tron will be the end boss in the Thaumanova dungeon.

I love the change. I also really love the clock tower – it’s awesome!