are you going to recognize the “Apex Predator” problem you have created?
Could you elaborate on what this “Apex Predator” problem is?
Apex predator:Apex predators (also known as alpha, super, top or top-level predators) are predators with few to no predators of their own, residing at the top of their food chain
The “Back cap/roamer” role can be performed by several professions: thief, mesmer, elementalists, and warrior. Thief, however, performs this role far better than any of the others. It has superior damage, superior mobility, and superior survivability. On top of this, thieves dominate their direct competitors in a 1v1 situation (warriors to a lesser degree, but we all know warriors are currently pretty broken).
This results in thieves being the go-to class for that role in the meta, with no competition.
Now that two of the best Mesmer players, Helseth and Sensotix, have quit playing Mesmer in favor of thief, are you going to recognize the “Apex Predator” problem you have created?
For clarification I am not saying Helseth and Sensotix are the best, simply among the best.
The Lyssa Runeset 6 piece bonus is better than most elite skills! That’s a problem!
First things first: Lyssa runes need a minimum 90 second cooldown.
Secondly, removing all conditions and granting all boons is too strong. Converting all conditions into boons is still too powerful.
A better combination would be:
Upon activation of an elite ability, removes all conditions and grants 3 random boons (3 second duration).
You know what I’d want to know – if anything has either been retconned, if there any red herrings or loose ends.
There’s nothing that puts me off more than having some loose, retcon or herring to throw you off base.
For example, I’m expecting to see how this entire storyline ties into the Steam creatures because the portals Scarlet uses are the exact same ones seen with the Steam creatures.
Truly, if this is your idea of balance, my recommendation is to not bother with any additional balance changes to the game and spend that time doing something else.
What would you do? 25%?
How do you know that’d be balanced?
I mean, every time they change something, legions of players complain that the nerf is too serious. Here they are listening, now we’re angry again?
How would I do it? I’d change the signet so that it’s a passive heal for every adrenaline-gaining attack that does damage. Then I’d normalize it to effectively the 400 hp/s (i.e. 392 * average_cast_time) you have today. That would do 4 things:
Burst attacks would not heal. That means a 3 second stun won’t passively heal the warrior for 1200hp while his opponent is stuck. For the sake of completeness, adrenaline-gaining attacks would still heal even if your adrenaline bar was full.
Introduce counter-play – blinds/dodges/misses and LoS suddenly will limit how much a warrior could heal.
Make fight/flight decision meaningful and tactical. Running away means you are not healing, so that decision needs to be made well before you are sitting at 5% health (which is what warriors basically do now)
Make big multi-hit attacks very exciting as they can swing the outcome of a fight. (e.g. 100 blades could heal for several thousand hp!)
So basically a stat that reduces the targets Toughness?
It would be an indirect nerf to Warriors and Guardians, which, depending on your PoV, may or may not be justified.
Personally I’d like to see more “bunker busting” capabilities as Bunkers are currently hurting sPvP.
My concern would be though that it’s hard to find a sweet-spot for such a stat. It’s either going to the “the best DPS stat” or a junk stat. It will be hard to make it exclusively attractive for bunker busting.
But maybe this concept should be explored.
It’s a means of normalizing the damage/survivability.
You reduce the amount of burst damage in the game by some combination of profession nerfs and reduction of critical strike damage. Perhaps the next effect is reducing burst damage by ~20%.
You add a new stat set that is similar to Berserker’s, but instead focuses on armor penetration at the expense of survivability.
This would result in effectively 2 flavors of glass canon builds: one that is especially good at dropping squishy players, but cannot take down bunkers, and one that can take down bunkers but is not especially good and dropping squishy players.
Armor penetration brought about one of the biggest imbalances in WoW history, introducing it here with TTK being incredibly low already will be a catastrophy
If warriors get 360 hp/s for doing NOTHING at all, then you need to really beef up the Mesmer Signet since Mesmers need to keep 3 clones up to get their 1000 every 3 seconds.
I’m curious why the developers did not consider adding armor penetration as a means to control/reduce ‘zerking’ in the game.
Currently there are glass canon builds that need their extreme damage output and burst in order to take down a tank. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making that same build incredibly overpowered against non-tank builds.
However, if you introduce armor penetration with an upper limit such that it did not reduce anyone’s armor below, say, light armor, then you’d introduce some interesting dynamics.
You would create ‘bunker buster’ builds that could take down a bunker, but would not necessarily insta-gib other classes. At the same time you would also have insta-gib builds that would break against the defense of a bunker.
Basically this means warriors get double the sigil proc rate of any other profession.
Are you going to address this before it goes live?
the on swap sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s so it means that if you swap weapons if you have sigil of battle and sigil of energy, you gain 50 endurance and might then after 5 seconds when you swap weapons again, you won’t get anything until you swap again after the next 5 seconds because the cooldown fast hands give will not change the fact that your sigil’s internal cooldown is 9s
sorry for bad explanation but i hope you’ll get it
But if you have energy+battle and fire+air, then:
0: energy+battle
5: fire+air
10: energy+battle
15: fire+air
I know this is part of a global adjustment, but it is, without question, a nerf to Mesmers.
1) This is a double-edged sword, as it nerfs Mesmer survivability and damage output.
2) Mesmers are not meta-viable now.
3) Mesmers currently get eaten alive by thieves in tPvP and need all that dodging just to not die to thieves.
Given thieves hard counter Mesmers today, with all the vigor that Mesmers have at their disposal (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3-jm3mCHI&t=6m10s for Helseth, one of the best Mesmers playing today, getting trained 100%-0>0% by Sizer), I think this change is not good unless it is counter-balanced by some kind of survivability buffs for Mesmers.
Decap engi is excellent. If ANet can get their game together and make elementalist viable, I think you’ll see some good play/counterplay between engi and ele.
Thieves have dominated the roamer role for about 8 months now, with no sign of any good buffs for elementalists and only nerfs for mesmers. Again APEX PREDATOR much?
Are you going to fix your PvP in the immediate future, or is GW2 simply another candidate for a post-mortem?
You do realize engineers are frequently used as roamers, they do not beat thieves in terms of mobility but no class necessarily should. Engineers mobility is great with their kite potential, their amount range, and swiftness up time.
Thief is definitely not apex predator in this position, because engineers do just fine at how they are supposed to roam. Thief having the highest mobility is made up for how squishy the class is.
Also forgot to mention, thieves have only been as strong as you say they are if you could play one to its fullest potential, not just spamming 3 playing S/D, or 521 spam D/P, or even being slow on your rotation for a decap
Warriors are also used as roamers. However, there is no question thief is far superior option. Engineers are decent roamers, but far better at node decap.
It’s not just thieves, however.
I’m really pointing out the obvious. Guardian+Thief+Warrior has been the meta now for almost half 2013, and there is no sign of that changing. Guardian+Thief have been in the meta now for almost all of 2013.
That’s bad for the game if Anet wants to promote diverse play.
Warriors are broken, and have been for 5 months now. You refuse to acknowledge the issue except to say you want to buff HS before you nerf it.
Guardians have been in the meta since BETA, with no other profession as a viable alternative. APEX PREDATOR much?
Thieves have dominated the roamer role for about 8 months now, with no sign of any good buffs for elementalists and only nerfs for mesmers. Again APEX PREDATOR much?
Are you going to fix your PvP in the immediate future, or is GW2 simply another candidate for a post-mortem?
You lost all respect when you said mesmers only get nerfs. They are the best 1v1 class in the game.
Perhaps that was worded awkwardly. Mesmers have received buffs in the past (and nerfs). I was referring to what has been previewed in the upcoming patches. Let me rephrase:
Thieves have dominated the roamer role for about 8 months now, with no sign of any good buffs for elementalists and only nerfs upcoming for mesmers. Again APEX PREDATOR much?
As far as 1v1 is concerned: The best specs a Mesmer would use for 1v1 are not remotely viable in tPvP.
….You may think that Guardians and thieves are “acceptable”, but you are likely basing that upon the reason that they can be taken down…
Ummm…Is it a bad thing that they can be beaten?
Answer honestly.
That is not the point. The point is not that the class can be beaten. If that was the only criteria for balance, then necromancers would still be dominating the meta. Condition necromancers could be beaten rather easily. The problem is when a class becomes so dominant at a function that they become a requirement.
I think engineers are in a decent place. Once they nerf warriors, engineers may need a slight tweak or 2, but otherwise will be a perfectly viable option in a meta.
Last Refuge is something we’ve been talking about quite a bit internally, and we certainly don’t like the way it can occasionally unintentionally punish players.
We’d like to keep the minor traits in Shadow Arts thematically the same (stealth based) rather than simply providing boons or something similar. Keep that in mind when you’re suggestions changes for Last Refuge.
RM
Thanks for the feedback!
And you are giving Desperate Decoy the same treatment, right?
I’ve never in my entire year of playing GW2 felt that Gaurdians weren’t balanced. They aren’t so much a requirement as they are awesome to have due to the nature of the class being support for the group regardless how the gaurd is build.
Thieves have also been brought down to a pretty acceptable level, and honestly could probably use a little love since they’ve been losing so much of their mobility yet not getting much in return.
Warriors are a disease on the game and need to be looked at with a flamethrower.
Have you ever seen a meta without Guardian? If so, can you please point it out? I have not yet seen a viable team that does not have a Guardian. That means they are a necessity.
Have you seen a meta in the past 8 months without thief?
Answer honestly.
You may think that Guardians and thieves are “acceptable”, but you are likely basing that upon the reason that they can be taken down.
Look at it from the point of view of the role they perform. What other profession can reasonably compete for the same role they perform?
The answer is ‘none’. That means, no matter how beatable they are, there are no other professions that can compete for the same role. APEX PREDATOR. That means there is no balance.
Look at all the tournaments over the past 8 months. Every team has Guardian+Warrior+Thief. That means you have 5 professions vying for 2 slots.
Warriors and their power level are being dwindled down bit by bit, as to not completely make them free kills like their previous incarnation. Stop trying so hard to be as destructive to the warrior profession and GW2 in general as you have been in your posts. It’s getting old.
The fact that Guardians have been a part of the meta throughout various significant patches just proves just how BALANCED they are, where their power level has not sharply fallen or risen. This is a GOOD thing.
Thieves were completely broken before, they are ‘managable’ although some slight tuning could work. Elementalists are in the reverse situation of Warriors in the fact that over various patches they are receiving one or two significant changes to their builds to help them survive. The next one to come up would definitely bring DD eles to an even more powerful role than before. Mesmers overall are a tricky class, but still completely viable in all aspects with specilized builds capable of 1v1s (Mesmers are the duelist profession in this game), roaming, small group and some utility in zergs. However they definitely need more outstanding damage in ZvZ.
Also stop being so negative, vague and unconstructive in your posts. Provide alternatives and look at every single angle of a skill you think is likely broken and don’t stop spouting random nerfs that won’t ever take off.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Count the number of professions. Is it 5? No. It’s 8. If Guardian is a must-have in ALL teams that means it’s an APEX PREDATOR. Same with warrior. Same with thief.
That means there are 5 professions left vying for 2 slots. That is not balance.
Warriors are broken, and have been for 5 months now. You refuse to acknowledge the issue except to say you want to buff HS before you nerf it.
Guardians have been in the meta since BETA, with no other profession as a viable alternative. APEX PREDATOR much?
Thieves have dominated the roamer role for about 8 months now, with no sign of any good buffs for elementalists and only nerfs for mesmers. Again APEX PREDATOR much?
Are you going to fix your PvP in the immediate future, or is GW2 simply another candidate for a post-mortem?
I’ve come to the conclusion that arena-net just doesn’t give a kitten anymore. There isn’t any excuse. Something should have been done over a month ago. Instead we have red posts talking about buffing the active on healing signet before nerfing the passive. There are so many reasons why heal sig is the best heal in the game by far and there’s talk of a buff before a nerf can happen?
Guys, your game is dying. Players are quitting left and right. People are kittening sick of this and you need to get it through your head that we’ve been dealing with healing signet and it’s meta-destroying effects for months. Further inactivity only makes us lose more faith in this game.
I’m at my wits end
No. whats happening is people got used to warrior being a giant pinata that they nuked from 1200-1500 range or loaded up with conditions to get a player kill and win easy matches. Now you have to DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!! – PLAY AND USE ALL OF YOUR SKILLS AND UTILITIES TO WIN AGAINST SOME ONE!!!
This response is expected from a typical warrior player. They don’t realize how incredibly ez-mode that class is. Playing warrior requires perhaps 20% the skill required to play anything else in this game. You literally need to be like 5x better than the person playing warrior in order to down him/her.
Yeah, Ostricheggs! You need to lrn2play! What do you think you are, one of the best engies in the game!?!?
We are just about at the 2 month mark, meaning there is not much time for feedback for the proposed balance changes slated for the March Feature Patch.
Healing Signet is really over the top by somewhere between 15-20%. Conservatively, say 15%.
Even if you change HS, the other problem you are left with is that warriors still don’t have any particular weaknesses. When you look at other classes, they all possess weaknesses that make class-stacking on a team undesirable. Thieves cannot hold a point, mesmers are too squishy and susceptible to conditions, necromancers are easily trained down, guardians and spirit rangers don’t do enough damage, etc. Warriors have high stability uptime, lots of condi clears, high armor, blocks, Endure Pain, can deal out good damage as well as incredibly high (70%+) uptime for AoE fire fields entirely covering almost any node.
A while back Chap said that if they saw the meta shifting to carrying 2x of a profession, it was a sign the class was OP (i.e. back when we saw 2xele teams).
kitten son. The warrior you described There must have 4 arms and 9 utilities.
Thieves can easly hold points with stealth
Mesmers are squishy due to clones with on thier own can protect the mesmer from damage.(by confusing your target
Necros with there current kinion builds eat spvp alive
Gaurdians have insane sustainability My zerker gaurd out live even some bunker build
Spirit rangers dps my not be in the zerker range it is by no means weak.
Not really, the warrior I describe can achieve all of those with longbow,shield, Endure Pain, Balanced Stance, Beserker Stance and Cleansing Ire. It’s a pretty typical configuration.
As far as your points about the other classes are concerned, they are all right, but do nothing to invalidate my statements about them. There is a reason why double warrior teams are viable, yet double “X” teams aren’t. That reason is that warriors are in a state where they bring no weaknesses to the table that are compounded, unlike other classes. Look at the previous condition meta where Necromancer was the undisputed top profession. Yet, you never saw double necro teams. This was because the Necromancer needed protection and peeling to be viable. Double necro teams were too easily countered.
You all are right, it was too fast, shouldve thought of all you slow thinkers.
Here is another FACT:
Game is balanced by devs as warriors have base HP of 18k.
if you are saying the ‘return to full health’ is not a good measure because warrior (and necros) has the most HP its basically saying that before a fight even began:
warrior >> others classes if no ones uses heals.
Now this may be true or not but it’s a whole different issue and not related to HS.
If say game was balanced for warriors with 15K hp, then HS would heal to full at 37sec which sounds definitely stronger and might have been OP compared to others,
but again it isn’t.
This hurt to read. I would like to kindly ask you to stop posting such biased (and generally offensive – like the first sentence of your post) arguments.
Healing per second is calculated by taking the healing skill’s cool-down and activation time into account. Time to full health is completely biased because different professions have different base HP. Dismissing this as a different issue does not work with a balance discussion, because the HP is still there so it needs to be taken into account.
Having said that, the profession’s defensive mechanics need to be taken into account as well when balancing. This means the higher base armor of the Warrior needs to be taken into account, as do the defensive utility skills and traits. But most of all its’ weaknesses.
The Warrior profession is currently not punished for taking defensive traits and still does a lot of damage. Their healing skill of choice allows for going all-out offense as it is not required to activate it. To some extend the Warrior looks to be the embodiment of ArenaNet’s “Every class can fit every role.” mentality. This is certainly not a bad thing…
…However, comparing the Warrior to the rest of the professions in the game is like comparing a working class mechanic to the Ranger’s pet. Both need to be brought up to par, but in order to get there the entire game needs an overhaul. Before we get anywhere near that point the only logical course of action is toning down the currently overpowering profession.
I agree with you that a Warrior when specing for tanking doesn’t lose enough damage. On the flip side, when a Warrior actually does spec for doing damage they simply lose too much defense to remain viable. So something needs to be done about this.
What I have a problem with is the remainder of your point. Most would agree that the Warrior is currently over the top, but most can’t agree by how much. I think the easiest way to figure this out is ask yourself if you feel the Warrior is standing above the other classes. And try to be honest with this unlike earlier posts that claim the Warrior > * in every mode, forever.
Sure, when compared against a Ranger the Warrior is horrendously overpowered. Nearly every class is.
But when compared to Guardians, Necromancers, Thieves, or Engineers, are Warriors still seen as some unstoppable juggernaut? Or would you say they’re fairly well balanced when you look at these sets of classes?
That’s the problem I have with the overwhelming majority of posts in this thread. They don’t look at this problem objectively. The problem is the Warrior is overpowered and needs to be nerfed. We all can agree. the issue is most of you don’t want it to remain competetive like Guardians, Thieves, Necromancers, and Engineers. You want it evisceerated so no one would ever play the class again.
Slight tweaks is all that’s required for the Warrior because it’s really no better or worse than half of the classes in the game. The few ‘real’ problems the class actually has aren’t even directly related to healing signet and trying to nerf healing signet first instead of at least acknowledging the real problems with the class will end up with Warriors being worthless in this game once again.
If I run double Guardian, I know my team will suffer from a lack of damage output.
If I run double Thief, I know my team will be very squishy and easily burst down.
If I run double Necromancer, I know my team will be very susceptible to CC and focus fire.
If I run double warrior, I know I will probably win.
Healing Signet is really over the top by somewhere between 15-20%. Conservatively, say 15%.
Even if you change HS, the other problem you are left with is that warriors still don’t have any particular weaknesses. When you look at other classes, they all possess weaknesses that make class-stacking on a team undesirable. Thieves cannot hold a point, mesmers are too squishy and susceptible to conditions, necromancers are easily trained down, guardians and spirit rangers don’t do enough damage, etc. Warriors have high stability uptime, lots of condi clears, high armor, blocks, Endure Pain, can deal out good damage as well as incredibly high (70%+) uptime for AoE fire fields entirely covering almost any node.
A while back Chap said that if they saw the meta shifting to carrying 2x of a profession, it was a sign the class was OP (i.e. back when we saw 2xele teams).
All this aside, I’d really like to know what role ANet has in mind for Mesmers.
Mesmer used to be very good at a roaming/decap/group support, but has not been viable since ANet buffed condition damage and buffed thieves almost a full year ago.
The condition meta has changed somewhat, but I still see thieves as just better for that role. In fact, if you watch any tPvP games with Helseth, you’ll see the current meta in action: the opposing team’s thief simply chases Helseth down the entire game and stomps him with impunity.
Since Mesmers really can’t run Zerker due to thieves, what should they run?
Sensotix have some great new builds (10/30/20/10/0 on youtube), give those a shot, they don’t have weakness against anything and give you great confidence on taking portal while not losing in fight survivability.
I can vouch for this. 10/30/20/10 can out-bunker just about anything 1v1, but it has so little team support that Portal becomes marginally useful. Played right, it’s crazy. The other night I had a condi-mancer repeatedly come to try to drop me on a side-node and couldn’t do it (I had Disenchanter instead of Portal).
I’d qualify that. Shatter mesmers counter warriors. Phantasm mesmers don’t really do enough damage before they are killed to threaten warriors.
I mean…are you talking in a group fight or if a warrior comes to try and knock you off a treb or point or something? In a group fight, sure, the phantasms squish. In a 1v1 situation, the warrior will be eating dirt practically before he gets close.
If it’s zerker v zerker, a phantasm Mesmer can definitely take down a warrior.
Against a tanky warrior build, I have not had good luck. I’ve run many trebs as a phantasm (20/20/0/30/0) zerker Mesmer and simply cannot do enough damage to stop a tanky warrior from running up, killing the treb and leaving.
Literally, a tank warrior can fully heal the damage of an iZerker in between its attacks.
We’ve seen multiple reports of this scaling issue on the Wurm’s, and we’re actively investigating the cause. Please continue to post any details or repro steps you can think of. Links to videos with timestamps are also appreciated.
Yeah, I logged in this morning and there were 4 people doing the wurm event. Couldn’t even finish the escort quests. Needs better downscaling!
