Guild Wars 2

How quickly people forget…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-PvP-Runes-Sigils-Amulets/first

People were already calling Mercenary amulet OP BEFORE it was even released. These last few months just confirmed it.

How does one lose respect for teams/players who never had them in the first place?

BTW they alted in NA games as well.

Pretty sure Sunfish doesn’t need to hack, looks more like a bug.

You can get stuck under the enemy’s spawn door sometimes. Or maybe it’s some weird Straya lag thing where he had you targeted before they got sent back to spawn but the skill went off anyways.

Josh Davis.6015:

To be clear: the PvP team, just like fractals/raids/wvw/etc, does not handle profession balance – there is a separate team for that.

Where is this mythical balance team and what have they been doing? According to Karl from the reddit AMA:

“We do have a team that works on skills. We focus on maintenance and balance of current skills, in addition to the implementation of new player skills down the road (I.E. H.O.T. Elite specializations)…When discussing changes for classes, we look to a variety of areas to determine what should happen. We use metrics from many areas of the game, feedback from a plethora of sources (yourselves included), along with our own spreadsheet comparisons and experiences. In addition, we have meetings with each feature team to discuss the issues in that we then investigate and come up with solutions for. We balance from many different perspectives, top tier pvp is included as well as Raids, Fractals, WvW roaming/group play, casual open world, huge map-wide encounters and a few more that I’m not thinking of at this moment.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0ny67s

It sounds like this team should have their hands full and we should be seeing constant tweaks, but it’s more 2 changes every 3 months.

Please tell me this is an actual team composed of permanent members and not some temporary rotating team of summer interns or something.

Zelulose.8695:

Sinister amulet will rise now along with every other condition power amulet.

Lolwut. Sinister? I think you mean Vipers…

Why?

This game has gone to the dumps ever since they started implementing these rules in ESL. We went from run whatever you want and games were decently balanced. Then DD eles came along and they implemented no more than 2 class rule.

And that was still ok.

And then Pro Leagues came along and suddenly they implemented no class stacking at all.

And now look at balance. When people were running 5 DD eles, look how fast that got nerfed! Sure it took months, but they got to it eventually! Ever since they started implementing these rules to hide their failures, balance has only gotten worse.

Now players want to actively help them hide their mistakes? Are you kidding?

You can hide it in tournaments so it’s not as blatent, but it’s still clear in game. You hide it in game and Anet will NEVER acknowledge these issues at all.

Spartacus.3192:

ANET is trying to make GW2 an Esport. If thats not enough incentive for them to balance the game, i don’t know what is..

Anet’s marketing department is marketing GW2 as a game with esport potential. Clearly, the rest of their company isn’t on board with that as evidenced by their complete apathy towards anything resembling balance, stubborn refusal to publicly display MMR, and a carebare design approach to leagues.

So if I want to play power mesmer and someone is playing condi mesmer, tough luck for me then?

Class stacking only happens when devs don’t balance the game. Balance the game and you won’t have these issues.

The more you implement these coverups and lazy fixes, the less incentive they have to actually do their jobs and balance.

Venomshare thief is viable.

It’s as viable as a weaponless druid!

dominik.9721:

Saying that druid would survive even without weapons is laughable and just proves that you dont even Know how the astral mechanic works. You get astral with attacks and healing so staff is important. Without you will even lose 1v1s against scrappers

I’m sorry, it looks like it’s you who seems to not understand how the astral mechanic works. You get it from healing, attack, and regen. That means Signet of Wild, Dolyak runes, Natrual Healing, regen boon, all contribute to astral force gain. Even weaponless, a druid can still gain tics from regen from shouts, natural healing from the trait, and just plain healing your own pet. Slap on the signet to go overboard if you feel like it too.

You’d have to be a pretty awful druid if you can’t get the full bar every 10 seconds nowadays.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Rofl @ op – you simply will not give up?

Give up what? Proving the point that you might as well replace the druid profession with a pet and half the players in the game wouldn’t even notice?

Fivedawgs.4267:

What do you mean by that? What does trolling in game have to do with matchmaking?

No one takes unranked seriously because matchmaking is a joke. The skill disparities within a team is so huge that the moment someone decides they don’t feel like carrying, the game turns into a blowout.

Fivedawgs.4267:

And about that fight, i was typing whilst fighting to get my mates off… but i have never had any trouble killing a druid. So don’t use this video as a metric, like everyone else said… if you careful replay the video, you’d noticed that there were some times where i just stood still or aa’ing… i kept on telling my team " he is bunker, i can hold him"…

Sure… At what point did you realize he didn’t have a weapon?

So there are several situations happening here

1. The warrior is skilled, and despite that was brought down very low and stalemated by a weaponless druid (a skilled player but with very few hours on druid) and required a +1 from another ranger to win back the point.

Conclusion: Druid is pretty OP.

2. Warrior was not very skilled and was brought down very low and stalemated by a weaponless druid and required a +1 from another ranger to win back the point.

Conclusion: Druid maybe not as OP as in the first situation, but pretty OP. AND there’s something funky going on with matchmaking.

Imagine a situation where the druid actually had a weapon. Regardless of the warrior and druid’s skill level, the warrior probably would’ve died regardless. Druid is still pretty OP then right?

The only reason the game didn’t end that way because at least 3 out of 5 players on blue team were kittening around on alts. And one of them was trolling with a weaponless build. Which highlights another issue with unranked matchmaking.

Regardless of any of the situation, in what world is it sane to have a weaponless class still be able to almost kill a (skilled?) warrior and stalemate a node indefinitely. How is this balance? How is it healthy for the gamemode to have a class that can basically be carried by pet AI?

Cyanon.1928:

The other guy Fivedawgs is a casual player.

Are you sure? I was under the impression he was a very skilled forum warrior with impeccable knowledge of the matchmaking system trapped in mmr hell.

Are you saying this was an unbalanced match up in unranked?!?

Everything is viable for leveling in PvE, the question is how fast you want to do it. Condi damage takes more time to ramp damage than straight power, so the question is how fast you want to kill things and how much health the mobs have.

But yeah, condi is as viable as anything else.

The fact is, even a weaponless druid poses enough of a challange to the point it needs a +1 to be taken down in a reasonable amount of time.

Geeze, everyone’s complaining about how OP mesmers are, but why is no one talking about druids?

Clearly you can see how unbalanced druids are here.

https://www.twitch.tv/vallunv/v/63531663?t=01h13m50s

It took this very skilled diamond ranked player almost 5 minutes to take down this one druid. How broken is this class when the pet alone can almost stalemate/take out a player and you need to have a +1 just to take out a druid!?

Anet nerf plz!

These are all good points and tips, but you’re not really factoring player skill levels in these situations.

ResJudicator.7916:

- A good druid will quickly gain the point in a 1v1 and will win if the mesmer tries to contest. (See, for example, Eura’s druid vs Phantaram’s mesmer in the last tournament)

Eura mains ranger and has for the last 4 years. He also has plenty of opportunities to dual against Supcutie and Zeromis for practice. Meanwhile Phantaram hasn’t been on mesmer for nearly as long as Eura has been on druid. Yes, a druid can win 1v1 against the mesmer, but they’d better outskill him by a lot.

ResJudicator.7916:

- Necros are great in a teamfight situation vs. mesmer because staff5 and WH4 interrupt the shield, and because plague signet is easier to land in the teamfight. The nerf to moa also helps.

Yes that will work, but mesmers really shouldn’t be in a teamfight situation in the first place. You’re relying on the enemy mesmers messing up on their part, or relying on your team and necro to turn all fights with the mesmer into a teamfight.

ResJudicator.7916:

- A good ele can hold a point vs. mesmer forever (see proleague vids). Trick is to not waste your condi cleanses while diamond skin is still up, and to stand still for most of the fight (except when dodging). That way, torment and confusion just ticks for the base, reduced damage.

The emphasis is on a good ele. All these are doable, but they require the other guy to basically outskill the mesmer.

In an even fight where both players are at similar skill levels, the mesmer always has an advantage. People that I used to have equal 50/50 duels with, I am now beating soundly after swapping to condi. It’s not that they’re bad, or that my skill level suddenly shot up, but condi mesmer is overtuned.

I disagree with the premise of the moa nerf since I don’t like nerfing core classes to compensate for elites, but I can understand it. I just can’t see a way to nerf the build without negatively affecting the core class.

Maybe a direct nerf to the conditions themseves? I’ve seen suggestions of nerfing confusion tick, and maybe capping torment/confusion at a certain number of stacks like they did with chill.

Diversity in PvP is about the same as before. 1 obviously strong viable builds and a few weaker builds that will work ok in lower ranks. The only difference is the power build swapped with condi so now it’s condi that’s viable and power that’s weak.

Diversity in WvW is the same. Dire condi roamer or veil spam bot for the zerg. No change there.

PvE got a lot better, we’re mandatory in all raids now, so that’s nice.

Unfortunately these are refer to Chrono. Base mesmer is still kind of in the dumps, and I’m not a huge fan of that recent moa nerf. They shouldn’t be nerfing core classes just because the elites are strong.

I don’t know, I quite enjoy the challenge of playing with my monitor off and going by sound alone. I can understand why TCG tried it last pro league.

yeah idk what everyone is talking about. unranked matchmaking is the best. Love farming them noobs.

^ No shame. Not enough viewers from hacking Storm’s channel, eh?

They removed leaderboards halfway through S1. Something about how we now have the legendary leaderboards and that should satisfy us.

Nevermind the fact you can only see like top 3 and maybe the 5 players around you. Can’t even browse it either.

Bring back and revamp leaderboards.

Placings are determined by win rates of players who have over 100 games played.

Have columns that can be filtered and sorted that shows how many games said player played solo, duo, trio and so forth. Then we can see who is the best solo-player and who is the best pre-made.

Include a player profile so that upon clicking player name, we can see how many games they play on each class, and said win rates on each class.

Ideally we’d show MMR like every other competitive game on the planet, but since Anet seems allergic to that concept, we have to go with the next best thing. Win rates and number of games played.

Also, players who haven’t played for more than 1-2 weeks get removed from the leaderboard. Their first game back will reinstate them in their former position. That way we don’t get inactive players cluttering up the top 1000 or whatever number we used to have.

Teutos.8620:

Vicky.4563:

Wasn’t Frostball the one who got DDOSed against TCG? Hmm….

We still need a ruling on the DDOs-case if I’m not mistaken. I personally suggest a rematch.

With or without Frostball?

Either way vM is screwed. Did the team deliberately try to do this to make TCG lose and thus increase their own standing? Or was Frostball just acting on his own?

Wasn’t Frostball the one who got DDOSed against TCG? Hmm….

jcbroe.4329:

Vicky.4563:

Protective Ward never made any sense to me. Just passively gain protection and granting weakness just by getting hit? Sure, it has an ICD, but it’s just so lame.

At least give it some sort of requirement. Maybe it kicks in at x% of health. Or after you successfully block or evade an attack. Or something.

Please don’t, boring doesn’t mean bad, and any of these changes doesn’t even make it GM worthy.

It falls in line with almost every other passive damage reduction any other class has, but because it’s a GM, it’s a protection proc trait instead of a constant passive bonus, and as such, already has better counterplay than any number of those other traits.

True. At least it’s a boon that can be corrupted or stripped and not something scrappers unique boon.

But you realize since druid is becoming meta, it’s going to be a prime target for the next round of nerf batting right? I’d rather try to find something marginal we can nerf than wait for Anet to come up with one.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This —>||<-- close to having this thread closed for going off topic.

The core desire behind wanting ranked back sounds like expected player behavior is different in the two arenas. If we enabled ranked in the off-season, would players expect to have a separate mmr from league seasons, or the same?

Sorry for letting myself get derailed…

If you enable ranked off season, which matchmaking system will you be using?

If we use leagues MMR and leagues matchmaking, it’d be just the same thing as during leagues right? Would you still be using pip/division in your matchmaking calculations? I’d imagine games would get stale after a while if people could play only against others within their range and pips wouldn’t change…

If we use league MMR and old matchmaking, it’d be interesting to see how player MMR will change when the game attempts to put them at the old 50/50 win rate. There were a lot of complaints that during leagues, matchmaking caused their MMR to tank.

But what will the separate MMR be? Would it be a full reset?

Protective Ward never made any sense to me. Just passively gain protection and granting weakness just by getting hit? Sure, it has an ICD, but it’s just so lame.

At least give it some sort of requirement. Maybe it kicks in at x% of health. Or after you successfully block or evade an attack. Or something.

If you watched Paul’s stream a few days ago, he was talking about how a few PvPers were attending a class balance meeting and he was brainstorming plausible balance passes you could make onto each class while not destroying PvE. I didn’t see his balance ideas for mesmers, but the few he did brainstorm sounded reasonable.

That said, I can think of few ways to balance out mesmers in PvP that hopefully won’t wreck PvE.

1. Delete Mercenary’s amulet. It’s a lazy, easy, hotfix. Force mesmers into more squishy amulets.

2. Change Moa somehow. Reduce Moa’s duration (shouldn’t affect PvE by too much), give Moa form the ability to jump (better kiting in PvP), and maybe keep their access to their heal? Not sure about that, but locking someone out of their utilities for 10 seconds is basically a death sentence. Maybe if duration is reduced it will become less of a problem.

3. Nerf Signet of Illusions somehow. It already has a heavy cooldown and cast time, and it’s a roundabout way to nerf Chronos in general. Make it so clones have half as much health as before? In PvE clones already take reduced damage so people running it shouldn’t see as huge of an issue, but it’d be easier for players to cleave them out in PvP.

Though even if you take these into account, they’re more like shaves than actual nerfs.

Oh, did they actually confirm backpieces are obtainable every year? If that’s the case, I’m fine with division loss in everything.

It just seemed like Anet wanted casuals to be able to grind to ruby each season so they’d all have a chance of crafting it. Which was why they made ruby so easy to get to. If players can craft it eventually by getting to emerald each time, then it seems fair to me.

But this is dependent on how Anet plans on letting people get the backpiece after the season ends. We can’t actually brainstorm good ideas that will make everyone happy until we know what they plan on doing.

<3 frand~ You going to start streaming again sometime?

IDK about losing pips in all divisions though. Anet still wanted the reward tracks to be grindable. I think losing it at ruby would be good enough, and it makes logical sense.

Amber – no pip loss.
Emerald – pip loss, but no tier loss.
Sapphire – pip loss, tier loss, but no division loss
Ruby-Legend – pip loss, tier loss, division loss

Assuming the placements work as intended up to legendary, maybe matchmaking could switch formulas starting at high diamond and legendary. And instead of matching based on closest MMR, it starts attempting to balance it out?

Theoretically no one with bad MMR would be reaching Diamond/Legendary and the games would be evenly divided. This would reduce queue times for the limited pool of legendary players, and the games wouldn’t be too low quality right?

Zenith.7301:

No. PvE has suffered enough at the hands of PvP.

I think you mean PvP has suffered enough at the hands of PvE. There is nothing challenging in PvE that requires fine tuned balance.

I want the old ques back. We used to have ranked and unranked all the time year round for years. Why are they gone?

But I guess asking for them back makes me a troll and an elitist or something.