edit: changed the title.
When you passed out, your face hit the keyboard. While you slept your warrior won 5 consecutive tPvP tournaments.
Technically it’s supposed to mean that you are better than 81% of the player base, but there are so many people with degraded leaderboard ratings right now that you should take it worth a grain of salt.
And the game is so imbalanced with HS warriors and decap engie that you should take it with a grain of salt.
Hugh, you are getting very sleepy again. Very sleepy.
You are now asleep.
Your keyboard is in front of you.
You are going to make the following changes to Mesmers:
Phantasmal Disenchanter: Increase HP. Reduce cast time to 0.75 seconds
Phantasmal Defender: Reduce cast time to 0.75 seconds
Arcane Thievery: Remove wonky Line of Sight / Cone-angle restriction. Reduce to 30 second cooldown.
Move Traits Around:
Domination:
Dazzling: Move from Master Minor trait to Adept Minor Trait.
Empowered Illusions: Move from Adept Major to Master Minor Trait.
Illusion of Vulnerability: Move from Adept Minor to Adept Master. Increase to 8 stacks of Vulnerability
Dueling:
Blurred Inscriptions: Increase distortion from 1 second to 1.5 seconds. If you can, make it also give all your illusions Distortion as well. That would be great for PVP,WvW, PVE and help to confuse opponents.
Inspiration:
Move Vengeful Images from Adept Minor to Adept Major trait. Increase Phantasm retaliation to 15 seconds
Move Vigorous Revelation From Adept Major to Adept Minor trait. Reduce vigor generated to 4 per Illusion shattered.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
Guys, there’s so many changes coming into the game. Let’s wait for the meta to settle for 6 months first.
6, 5…
Hugh, you will wake up as a ranger instead
4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
Mesmer casts Mesmerize – Success!
Buttercup the Ranger casts Tame Developer – Fizzled!
Instead of changing it from 25% damage to 20% damage, I’d offer a suggestion that keeps the damage levels similar, but makes Hammer a better group weapon:
From:
Hammer damage is increased when a foe is disabled. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
Damage Damage increase: 25%
Recharge reduced: 20%To:
Hammer skills that disable foes also inflict Vulnerability. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
Vulnerability: 7 stacks, 8 second duration
Recharge reduced: 20%Hammer should not be a burst weapon. This reduces its burst damage, but at the same time would increase its group appeal. Hitting an opponent with Hammer 4, Hammer 5 and Hammer burst would slap 21 stacks of Vulnerability on the target for a whopping +21% damage.
At the same time it adds counterplay – the vulnerability can be cleansed.
It’s a good change.
(Also, you should tweak the damage scaling on that weapon)
Hammer trains in WvW would love this :P
They would. Of course then there is diminishing returns since you’d max at 25 stacks of vuln.
The numbers may need to be changed a bit, since the Hammer CC’s are all AoE. So perhaps they’d tweak it down to 6 stacks or something.
At the same time it makes Hammer less of a solo weapon against professions with good condition cleanse.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
Instead of changing it from 25% damage to 20% damage, I’d offer a suggestion that keeps the damage levels similar, but makes Hammer a better group weapon:
From:
Hammer damage is increased when a foe is disabled. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
Damage Damage increase: 25%
Recharge reduced: 20%
To:
Hammer skills that disable foes also inflict Vulnerability. Reduces recharge on hammer skills.
Vulnerability: 6 stacks, 10 second duration
Recharge reduced: 20%
Hammer should not be a burst weapon. This reduces its burst damage, but at the same time would increase its group appeal. Hitting an opponent with Hammer 4, Hammer 5 and Hammer burst would slap 18 stacks of Vulnerability on the target for a whopping +18% damage. Since it’s AoE, that could mean several opponents are now all taking 18% more damage.
At the same time it adds counterplay – the vulnerability can be cleansed.
It’s a good change.
(Also, you should tweak the damage scaling on that weapon)
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
You could actually prevent the stacking just by changing a couple of small things. For example:
- reduce the amount of condition cleanse a Warrior has access to
- reduce the damage scaling on hammer
Honestly, hammer is a great group weapon. It shouldn’t be the go-to weapon for 1v1. The damage scaling is not right. Either that, or Merciless Hammer shouldn’t increase damage. The CC is its reward.
Merciless Hammer would be more suitable (and more balanced) if it reduced hammer cooldowns by %20 and inflicted 5 stacks of vulnerability (for, say, 7 seconds) per hammer CC applied.
You are now very sleepy. Very sleepy.
You are now asleep.
Now listen to me as I speak the following words in the voice of Morgan Freeman:
You will no longer main a Warrior. In fact, you will delete your warrior on the live servers now.
You will main a Mesmer.
You will suffer as a Mesmer does.
Mesmers need some fixes before this patch goes live.
Now, repeat these words above.
Very good.
Now count back from 10 slowly. When you awake, you will feel refreshed and full of purpose.
10..9..8..7…
PVP Tenet: Every build should bring benefits and weaknesses to a team. Stacking builds should drastically increase the team weakness and only marginally increase team strength.
Example: Dhuumfire Necromancers. Even prior to the broken Warrior buffs, no team double stacked Necromancers. The reason was simple: Necromancers melted under CC and focus fire. Two Necromancers would increase condition damage, but a team would not have enough support to protect 2.
Warriors violate this tenet. Warriors have high speed, high sustain, high armor, high CC, high damage, ample condition cleansing.
The additional ‘shaves’ don’t address this fundamental problem.
Bout Time! 5 condis->boons! yay!
Now, unfortunately, that will be the nail in the coffin for Mesmers.
Did anyone else notice that they never mentioned HOTJOIN in Ready Up?
They only mentioned Solo, Team, and Custom Arenas.
Can I trade these rewards in for some better PvP balance?
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
^^ This. There are several viable mesmer specs for tPvP.
Pistol Whip
Sword/Dagger
Spirit Ranger
Hambow
Decap
^^ These don’t count as Mesmer specs, BTW.
“I’m bad at this game! Let’s find a scapegoat to blame all of my problems on!”
That seems to be what a pathetically large portion of unskilled mesmers are saying right now.
“I’m not OP. Everyone else is bad at this game” That seems to be what the overwhelming majority of pathetically unskilled thieves are saying right now. Reminds me of the World of Roguecraft days. God there were so many bad rogues who thought they were great. Then the class got balanced and they had kitten-fits because they realized they were actually terrible at PvP.
World of Roguecraft = GW2 today
Dev livestream: Ready Up: March 28 @ 12pm – PvP Rewards: Next phase
in PvP
Posted by: Thedenofsin.7340
Is there any change to Restorative Mantras heal scaling so players can use that healing power the way the developers suggested in the Ready Up?
So, here’s a question (purely for discussion):
If you had to choose one, would you prefer RANKED Solo Arena, or UNRANKED Team Arena? I’d imagine unranked team arena would still allow you to queue up by yourself or with 1-4 friends much like the rated version does now.
Thoughts?
unranked Team Arena, as long as there was no wait.
There are a lot of external factors that could affect Mesmer viability however. Matchups between all classes will change substantially. If a build arose which shut thieves out (which is very possible), Mesmer would immediately be back in a more robust spot.
The only way that would happen is if that ‘new build’ shut down thief stealth. Otherwise, that new build would work doubly well against Mesmers and shut them out as well.
Sensotix – ANet appears to be reluctant to nerf anything. Assuming nothing gets nerfed, what buffs do you think Mesmers need in order to become viable?
Mesmer will be in a really bad spot after the patch so please keep that in mind when you do your balancing anet
No one will take your comments seriously if they are this broad. You need to be more specific.
1v1: Mesmer is currently the best class for this. I don’t see that changing with the patch. At EQUAL skill levels, the mesmer will win.
Team Fights: Pretty useless. They are good for some burst (depending on their spec), but after the next patch, I’d much rather have an ele handle the AOE burst.
mesmer is probably the only class that cant duel any of the current meta classes on a point (which is the goal in conquest mode)
You must be bad at mesmer, then.
i politely ask you to never visit my forums posts again since you obviously have no understanding of the current meta and or know who the good players atm are
maybe you are from na and thats fine..its a different meta there but you obviously have never stepped a foot into the top 100 pvp competetive scene in euBut all you do is SoloQ. O.o Mesmer playability is much different when you’re part of a TEAM. When you’re in soloQ, you’re probably right… Mesmer seems ponceish and pilloky… It’s a different monster in a team paradigm.
Lol- Sensotix is ranked 22 in European TEAM PVP.
/thread
Justin, out of curiosity what build do you run in PvP?
I usually run a lockdown build, but like to experiment.
It’s because you’re a mesmer that you’re “only” in the 80s, don’t you agree? XD
I think the biggest thing holding me back is keeping track of my illusions and knowing when to shatter. I have really hard time effectively using the diversion and distortion shatters.
I’m a better engineer than mesmer, but I keep coming back to mesmer because it’s more fun to play.
That is definitely hard, and I agree about mesmer being fun! Since you’re one of the most active devs on this forum, would you consider coming on for one of the future Ready Up’s? I think we’ve seen most devs that hang out here except for you!
^^YES Please!
Solo Arena:
- Roy, 272,
- Evan, 428,
- Grouch, 876
Team Arena:
- Grouch, 67
- Roy, 309,
- Allie, 353 (wut?)
- Tyler B, 92%
- Evan, 91%
OK
Can you cull out the ones that are not playing Warrior, decap engie or Thief as their main?
Done. Hugh plays a Hambow, but he played it before it was cool. I’m pretty sure he’s been using that same warrior (Nightmare) since launch.
OK, which one plays a Mesmer? Which one plays an Ele?
I main Mesmer, and I think Evan has a Mesmer alt. Branden plays Ele, and Allie use to play Ele before she went over to the dark side and started playing Necro. I don’t know what Roy and Tyler B run.
Thanks Justin. I wonder if there is a correlation between the state of those professions and the amount of time the developers play them. I know you’re not on the Balance Team, so you’re excused. :-)
Solo Arena:
- Roy, 272,
- Evan, 428,
- Grouch, 876
Team Arena:
- Grouch, 67
- Roy, 309,
- Allie, 353 (wut?)
- Tyler B, 92%
- Evan, 91%
OK
Can you cull out the ones that are not playing Warrior, decap engie or Thief as their main?
Done. Hugh plays a Hambow, but he played it before it was cool. I’m pretty sure he’s been using that same warrior (Nightmare) since launch.
OK, which one plays a Mesmer? Which one plays an Ele?
The fall of the elementalist and the rise of the warrior and necromancers are the DIRECT result of listening to the so called PRO.
That is not true. I recall, during a SotG way back, Chappy distinctly saying they were watching the elementalists because double ele was the meta, and double anything is a sure sign the profession is imbalanced.
I also recall, during a SotG (prior to the HS insanity) many high ranking players saying Warrior was actually in a fairly decent spot, but other professions were imbalanced.
I also recall Zombify stating, prior to the Dhuumfire patch, that Necros were in a decent spot, and could use a couple of small buffs. When the the proposed Necro changes announced, he stated they were out of whack.
Please don’t derail this thread with misinformation. This is about the Mesmer SotG, nothing else.
I was talking about beta slick. Everybody was whining how OP the elementalist was. The bunker ele that was “strong” was the result of the nerf from bwe2, since we had no alternatives.
Anyways, thank you for attempting to play though. It is always nice to see someone attempt to swing and miss.
also just because I don’t agree with the circlejerking doesn’t mean I am derailing, I am simply providing another reason why listening to the crowd on this forum is a bad idea, not always but some times.
Nice try to retcon, but no dice, buddy. You mentioned elementalists and necromancers and warrior in the same sentence. You weren’t talking about BWE2 (in which people were complaining about everything – including p/p thieves and HB warriors), you were talking about the ele nerfs, dhuumfire and HS post-release.
Anyway, back on topic.
Consider Bountiful Disillusionment, which will essentially bring back shatter mesmers. There’s a lot of survivability available through this avenue. If you were to combine that with something like a 1/0/6/0/6 build with Maim the Disillusioned, it could potentially generate a pretty substantial shatter concept. Especially if you utilized Staff as a clone factory and spec’d for condition damage. (Keep in mind staff now gets two sigils.)
10/0/30/0/30 won’t work for shatter for 4 reasons:
- you won’t get vulnerability on diversion (15-20% damage boost)
- you can’t boon strip, which is needed to peel protection
- your clone generation isn’t good enough without DE, which means you won’t be able to shatter much or distort much
- you have no access to vigor, which means you’re dead in the water after 2 dodges
Alternatively, a 6/0/0/1/6 build concentrating on interruption with Power Block and Disruptor’s Sustainment utilizing Halting Strike, Sw/P and Signet of Distraction could be extremely useful.
That build isn’t possible. Disruptor’s sustainment is in the Inspiration line, not Illusions.
People QQ about professions being “in a bad place” when they don’t consider the roles in which those professions are more inclined to excel, and instead attempt to play the profession as another role. Mesmer is a very versatile class. I personally wish there was a little more viability as a support role, but perhaps with Distruptor’s Sustainment a full mantra support build will be more viable. Mantra of distraction for the Healing Power boost coupled with Mantras of Concentration and Resolve, Restorative Mantras, Mantra Mastery and Harmonious Mantras. (6/1/0/6/0) Also, consider Runes of the Monk and Sigil of Benevolence.
I think you need to consider the roles more carefully. It’s clear you haven’t fully thought them through. Disruptor’s Sustainment will increase Restorative Mantra’s heal by a whopping 200hp. It’s completely ineffective. 6/1/0/6/0 won’t work.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
@OP: Change the title to “Too much evade”. Your current title talks about dodges but your post talks about evades. It makes it seem like you don’t know the difference (which I doubt is the case) and so most people won’t take your post seriously.
“Too much dodge” is in reference to the developer statement that there is too much dodging in the game.
For all those things related to stealth you need to trait and not everybody wants to play (against) “perma stealth” thief. If you do not trait for that you will get same stealth engi or mesmer has access to as well.
Also being in stealth all the time doesn’t conquest points neither kill enemies.Lyssa runes? Available to every profession and it is not class specific.
Consume plasma only against mesmers. Both of them has cast time in example mentioned with basilisk venom.
Daggerstorm has stability of course on 90 sec CD, 8sec of stability. It is on par with guardians or warriors stability, isn’kitten Using it to immediately cancel it or being big target shouting kill me with melee in two hits isn’t always the best idea, but that is off topic, so sorry for that.And ele and mesmer both have invulnerabilities, ele can also have quite good uptime of protection (around 90% with specific runeset, 30%+ without). Please read before you decide to release your frustration next time.
I can read. Your argument holds no water. You stated thieves don’t have stability. I cited 3 examples where a thief has access to stability (a good amount of it, too). You tried to argue thieves have to ‘trait’ for stealth, which is not true.
Please play a thief for a while before you make a post trying to rationalize a defense for the profession.
Laquito – the problem was that many thieves were complaining about the Dec 10 nerfs and not paying attention to the substantial passive initiative regen buff they were getting.
Mesmers are in a quite different place. Most mesmers are quite aware of its deficiencies and the problems it has against the apex predator thief, not to mention its lack of burst and sustain against HS warriors.
The balance changes and new traits don’t shore up any of the deficiencies with Mesmer, nor can they provide enough new capability to open Mesmers up to a new role in the meta.
Power Block is nice, but it won’t help take down thieves or warriors. Taking Power Block will make Mesmers even squishier than they currently are.
The other GM traits are not very good for PvP (Maim may be, depending on the #’s).
However, thieves get Resilience of Shadows, which is ridiculously overpowered. It’s an incredible group buff and will all but guarantee a thief can rez a player. It’s better than Illusion of Life.
So, what we see here is that thieves are getting a GM with incredible group utility, while Mesmers are not getting anything to make them viable in the meta.
The fall of the elementalist and the rise of the warrior and necromancers are the DIRECT result of listening to the so called PRO.
That is not true. I recall, during a SotG way back, Chappy distinctly saying they were watching the elementalists because double ele was the meta, and double anything is a sure sign the profession is imbalanced.
I also recall, during a SotG (prior to the HS insanity) many high ranking players saying Warrior was actually in a fairly decent spot, but other professions were imbalanced.
I also recall Zombify stating, prior to the Dhuumfire patch, that Necros were in a decent spot, and could use a couple of small buffs. When the the proposed Necro changes announced, he stated they were out of whack.
Please don’t derail this thread with misinformation. This is about the Mesmer SotG, nothing else.
Mesmer will be in a really bad spot after the patch so please keep that in mind when you do your balancing anet
Sensotix – can you elaborate on this a bit?
For example:
What role do Mesmers perform in PvP?
What problems do Mesmers have currently in high end PvP?
How, in your opinion, will the new patch impact the Mesmer’s problems?
What additional roles can a Mesmer perform? If none, what is keeping the Mesmer from taking on a different role?
Because it is their defense mechanism. They don’t have protection, stability, immunity, blocks, invulnerability, high armor and HP or any other damage mitigating ability most other classes have. And their dodging was already nerfed, they were first with engineers and rangers iirc.
Hmm… what’s that thing thieves have lots and lots of access to that allows them to escape, restart fights, gain health, remove conditions… oh yeah – Stealth.
No stability? Lyssa Runes every 45 seconds says, ‘hi’. Consume Plasma says, ‘hi’. Dagger Storm says, ‘hi’.
And armor? Please. Thieves are a medium armor class. Elementalists and Mesmers are light. So no points on that argument, either.
If there is too much dodge in the game, then why is nothing being done to tone down the amount of dodging and evading done by thieves?
- Boosting Initiative Regen
- Withdraw – evades
- Pistol Whip – evades
- Flanking Strike – evades
- Disabling Shot – evades
- Roll for Iniative – evades & grants initiative
- Hastened Replenishment – more initiative when healing.
No to mention the numerous skills that give initiative (which translates directly into more dodges)
No profession, no build has this much access to evading and dodging, and it’s pretty bad.
Elementalist has a gap close on 15 sec cooldown?
Burning Speed.
I said it many times, I’ll say it again. The problem of the spec isn’t the pw skill itself, but the gap closing/pull back abilities. Melee specs by definition can’t stay in all the time and thus need to have higher damage to compensate for pressure downtime. With sword/pistol you have no risk by being melee at all, while having the complete reward. Instant ports in and out at will (you can port from 2000+ range if you want to, withdraw to instantly disengage melee range without any punishement possible and a 21 sec insant stability removal/daze.
Don’t nerf the damage of pistolwhip, nor the evades. You need to deliver your damage at some point. But make it riskier by nerfing steal, infil signet, infil strike, withdraw and lyssa runes.Add an overlapping cast time on steal so that it has an animation but you can still do all the current combos. Steal needs a tell, as it’s a very important skill that you should be able to see coming consistenlty. Put a cast time to infil signet but keep it as stun breaker coz it’s ridiculously overpowered : positionning yourself as any glasscanon doesn’t matter coz the thief will instantly port to you from 10 miles away to train you down. Make infil strike work with line of sight requirement to land the immob and damage, like steal. Make every single thief skill used at least twice in a row cost 1 more initiative everytime. Remove withdraw from the game. Most broken, worst idea ever. Shouldn’t ever have seen daylight. Remove aegis and stability from lyssa proc. Please. Do it.
Yes. However, boosting initiative regen made everything worse. It was a mistake ANet should revert. Gap closing abilities should be expensive, not cheap. An elementalist gets one on a ~15 second cooldown. A Mesmer gets one on a ~12 second cooldown. A thief gets one every 3 seconds.
Hey – you’re on 55hp monks. How about you guys play some tournaments where thieves are banned?
I want to know why ArenaNet thinks it’s OK for Thieves to be SOO much more powerful than any other zerker in the game. It’s ridiculous.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
Disruptor’s Sustainment Will Not Work As Intended
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I guess this merits its own thread.
During the Ready-Up, the balance team mentioned the new Mesmer GM, “Distruptors Sustainment – gain 1000 Healing Power when interrupting an enemy”. They then mentioned how that is a good opportunity to charge a Mantra to proc Restorative Mantras.
Linky to quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k29k0AvnjvM&t=1h25m28s
However, what they may not realize is the healing on Restorative Mantras scales absolutely horribly. +1000 healing power will increase the heal by about 200hp, tops.
If the intent of this GM is to use as mentioned on the live cast, it will not have any discernible effect.
Restorative Mantras with 200 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxJFAw5A (2640 hp).
Restorative Mantras with 1388 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxpHAw5PH-TgAgzCmI6R1jrHTPyes9A (2878 hp)
There was a bit of discussion on the Mesmer forums. Several players indicated that this GM trait will actually be pretty bad for many of the Mesmer heals. Here is a link to that thread:
I think the question we need an answer to is: What is the intent of this new Grandmaster trait?
Is the real intent to improve group healing, self-healing, or both?
Thanks!
PS Guys – Thread titles are limited to 45 characters. This should be increased, given that traits such as this one already occupy 23 of those 45 characters.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
Thief is in an awesome place. Truly awesome. It’s the only profession that can solo warriors. It’s needed to stop decap engies. It annihilates the other zerker/roamer classes.
Pistol Whip has some issues, and I think spamming it is truly unfair. It’s actually more powerful than a Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy, both in terms of damage, evasion, and CC. And it’s spammable.
I think PW needs an increased initiative cost, and they should consider either removing the stun or perhaps reducing the number of evade frames in the attack.
Not to derail this thread, but I also think the change should be coupled with a decrease in auto-attack damage. The increased initiative regeneration is good in that it lets thieves press more buttons.
However, thief auto-attack damage is incredibly strong, and requires no initiative. Good thieves will know to pool their initiative because it’s quite easy for them to soften up a target using auto-attack damage.
Here is a comparison:
Sword #1 auto-attack chain on Thief with Zerker amulet with no traits: 540, 540, 876
Sword #1 auto-attack chain on Mesmer with Zerker amulet with no traits: 406, 406, 606
I really believe the developers overlooked this ‘free’ damage when passively boosting thief initiative generation.
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
The OP is correct. Overall this grandmaster trait has great potential, but it is hindered by the other mechanics in the game. I think there are many ways to make this work, but it won’t work in its current form.
I think the question we need an answer to is: What is the intent of this new Grandmaster trait?
Is the real intent to improve group healing, self-healing, or both?
I would change AR to make you immune to cripple, poison, bleeds, burns, weakness and stuns.
I would change Air Blast to a knockdown.
I would also increase the cast time of healing turret by 0.25 seconds.
I think that would keep bunker engi viable while toning down decap engi.
Ok, so I don’t post of these forums, but I came here just for one topic… the GC meteor shower ele. This skill is fine is PvE. It is fine in WvW. It will be fine in team deathmatch. It is not fine in a conquest game mode where the objective is to stand on a point.
The issue is when there is a group fight on a point. The meteor storm ele can come into the fight, sit back, and just unload. There should not be an AOE skill that does this much damage. Either reduce the damage, make it single target, reduce the duration, or increase the recharge. It is just out of balance right now.
Just get out of the way. It’s easy to avoid. The only issue is that I can never figure out where the AoE begins and ends.
It would be nice for it to have an outline on the ground like the other AoE spells.
Allie,
During the Ready-Up, they mentioned the new Mesmer GM, “Distruptors Sustainment – gain 1000 Healing Power when interrupting an enemy”. They then mentioned how that is a good opportunity to charge a Mantra to proc Restorative Mantras.
Linky to quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k29k0AvnjvM&t=1h25m28s
However, what they may not realize is the healing on Restorative Mantras scales absolutely horribly. +1000 healing power will increase the heal by about 200hp, tops.
Restorative Mantras with 200 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxJFAw5A
2640 HP
Restorative Mantras with 1388 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxpHAw5PH-TgAgzCmI6R1jrHTPyes9A
2878 HP
I don’t think this new Grandmaster is going to work the way they are intending.
Cheese Mode ran double warrior – won nearly every tournament.
/thread
Just wanted a throw out a shout to Allie. She was just now laying the smack down regarding warriors being an issue.
#allieisourchampion
Hey Justin -
Wanna take a stroll over to the balance team guys and mention the following regarding Mesmers?
During the Ready-Up, they mentioned the new Mesmer GM, “Distruptors Sustainment – gain 1000 Healing Power when interrupting an enemy”. They then mentioned how that is a good opportunity to charge a Mantra to proc Restorative Mantras.
Linky to quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k29k0AvnjvM&t=1h25m28s
However, what they may not realize is the healing on Restorative Mantras scales absolutely horribly. +1000 healing power will increase the heal by about 200hp, tops.
Restorative Mantras with 200 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxJFAw5A (2640 hp).
Restorative Mantras with 1388 healing power: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQBRUjWIxpHAw5PH-TgAgzCmI6R1jrHTPyes9A (2878 hp)
Or should I make a separate thread? Do you think the developers would read it?
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
More smack is required. Toot sweet. If they need some evidence, Justin can get on a Zerker Mesmer and I’ll get on a bunker warrior and let his iZerker smack me while my passive regen heals that damage 100%.
Didn’t anyone watch Blu’s streams over the past 3+ months? Every week you’d watch Cheese Mode beat the other teams with double warrior comps. It was sickening.
Also, decap engie. Oh goodness is that bad. This morning I decided to try it. Never played engie before (well, played it for about an hour in PVE once). In one hour I was winning tPvP matches – carrying them.
The only thing that can stop a decap engie from winning matches is an act of God. Literally in my case – power went out this morning just as our team was about to win. All because I kept their near contested for 50% of the match.
…and I have no idea what half these buttons do still!
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
Also, this system is designed for horizontal progression. Unlocking traits, or what have you, won’t (at least shouldn’t, barring any balance issues) make you more powerful, they simply give you a wider range of builds and allow you to better tune your character to your play style.
Predicating that statement on the assumption balance issues won’t exist is faulty. It’s kind of a recipe for disaster. Sure the Skills and Combat guys can point the finger at the Balance Team and say, ‘Well it’d work fine if these guys didn’t make these broken traits’, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.
Here’s a story: At my company we have a software team. These guys are responsible for putting our requirements and design ideas into code. They’ve developed this ‘software process’ that is predicated on the notion that all the requirements are 100% perfect when they get them. If they aren’t, then it’s not their fault that things get delayed – it’s the guys who did the requirements and design. I cannot count how many times we have had delays and issues with the product, and the biggest problem is that this process is fundamentally flawed. Requirements are never perfect – never. Traits are never perfectly balanced – never.
We know that some Grandmaster traits are directly tied to imbalanced builds: Dhuumfire, Automated Response, Prismatic Understanding are just a few that come to mind. I’m sure there are others.
What if Dhuumfire was an locked trait? What if Automated Response was?
(edited by Thedenofsin.7340)
The new traits can be unlock from playing PvP only because gold.
That’s good to know. I hope it’s not too much gold, because PvP earns less gold / hour than PVE.
So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced.
This would be an interesting topic. Perfect balance is impossible, for any game… so what exactly is required for balance to be considered good? I know many people have many opinions on what needs changed, but what are the core requirements? (Forgive me if this seems obvious, I’m not a designer and haven’t given it much thought before.)
Perfect balance is impossible, agreed. I think balance, in the context of 5v5 conquest, is probably best defined by achieving a set of tenets. I’m not a game developer, so I cannot list them all, but I think I could guess at a few:
- Power, mobility, durability, utility – pick 2
- Roam, bunker, group DPS, group utility – no one should be best-of-breed for more than 1 of these at a time
- No apex predators
- Every one should bring a strength and a weakness to their team. Build stacking should marginally increase team strength and drastically increase team weakness.
How to achieve balance is a different discussion. However, if you look at a game such as League of Legends, you’ll see many small updates every two (or so) weeks. Observation, iteration, adjustment.
To quote Eric S Raymond, “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.” He was talking about open source, but I think it applies here.
History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.
We are actually very open and accepting of players that wish to express their opinions, even negative ones, we just have a hard line when it comes to our forum code of conduct. Stick to that and I can guarantee your posts will not be removed.
That would be refreshing. I’ve seen the crackdown in Rift, City of Heroes, FF, etc. It would be good to see that not happen here.
I’m not going to defend Pistol Whip but I will point out that Pistol Whip has been largely unchanged since release. Only recently, and briefly during the first months, has it been considered overpowered.
Ask yourself why? If the ability hasn’t really changed (they did clean up the aftercast a bit, but also fixed the stun-sigil scaling to 1.0 seconds) then what has?
Substantial boost to passive initiative regeneration.
Solo Arena:
- Hugh, 178
- Roy, 272,
- Evan, 428,
- Grouch, 876
Team Arena:
- Grouch, 67
- Roy, 309,
- Allie, 353 (wut?)
- Tyler B, 92%
- Hugh, 91%,
- Evan, 91%
OK
Can you cull out the ones that are not playing Warrior, decap engie or Thief as their main?
- 40 new Grandmaster Traits, unlockable from PVE only
- Team Deathmatch – (map only)
- (Presumably) common skins across PVE/PVP
- (Presumably) leveling through PVP
- No changes to the current meta
- No/insufficient changes to broken PvP builds
While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.
This is causing a disconnect, resulting in the players becoming disheartened and angry.
This has happened in many MMO’s over the years. Some MMO’s degrade in customer satisfaction until they reach a knee in the curve where the dissatisfaction increases asymptotically after some perceived degradation in services provided. Naturally, something needs to be done to rectify the situation.
Typically what I see at a junction such as this is the company cracks down on negative PR, resulting in numerous players getting banned from the forums and/or the game. This is the most common course of action I have seen from MMOs. Most recently Rift did this same thing. When players get on the forums to express their dislike with the direction the game is going they get perma-banned from the forums. From the company’s perspective, this appears to make the most sense. Forums get cleaned up and all the negativity is removed. Players no longer complain on the forums for fear of being banned and everything seems fine. Of course, the end result is more people silently leave and the game continues to diminish in its player base and, consequently, its revenue stream.
…and I believe that is what will happen here.
However, I still find myself asking – where is this going? From an objective perspective, I can see that a few classes are completely dominant in PvP: decap engies (solo queue), HS warriors (Cheese Mode winning nearly every tournament with double warrior until they quit), and PW thieves/thieves in general (no zerker ele’s, zerker mesmers all rerolled thief).
Yet, I see no changes to the game to correct this situation. In fact, the most recent Ready-Up had a developer saying they believe warriors are right where they want them to be. For the moment, let’s assume the developer is not ignorant of the state of the game and not incompetent. Warriors are the most played profession in the game, and completely dominate PVE and WvW. Now they dominate PvP.
So, the developers want warriors to dominate PvP. This means they want the game to have an explicit pecking order: Warriors >> all other professions
What about thieves? Well, thieves are also a heavily played profession. I’m not sure exactly where they fall, but I’d guess either second or third-most played.
It seems the team wants to retain players by making their preferred professions the most dominant and powerful ones. This makes no sense, but it is the only conclusion I can come to, barring ignorance or incompetence.
So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced. And balance is a crucial element for interesting gameplay, and even moreso when team sizes are fixed.
If ArenaNet were to listen, perhaps they would make an all-stop and perform emergency triage to correct the problems with the game.
However, I don’t see that happening. History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.
As an altoholic, I feel your pain. I’ll need to take a look at the data tomorrow, find out just how common re-rolling is for PvPers.
I’m sure high-end competitive players have their ‘main’ toon, then alts they use to test out various builds.
But you’re no longer gearing sPvP for those people, instead gearing it for people that play all game modes equally (i.e. your typical player who rolls warrior). So why should it matter?