Guild Wars 2

Everything that you associate with “money” is really just a function of time. I still wouldn’t want to group with some one who is AFK or not paying attention, or making terrible choices, because regardless of how that gets quantified, it’s still a waste of my time.

Money, in real life, and in Guild Wars 2, is just a way of exchanging time and effort between individuals. When some one has too little money, what we’re really saying is they have too little control of their own time and effort. When we say that some one has most of the money, we’re really saying that they have control over the time and effort of thousands or millions of people.

Taking money out of the game wouldn’t make people want to magically waste their time any more than they’re already willing to do, and if anything it might make for greater wastes of time and less activity, because there would be less ability to scratch some one’s back in return for getting your own back scratched.

Snow White.9680:

As someone who plays a class that has next to no aoe abilities, and is always struggling for loot because of it, I’m very excited about this change.

Nice job ANet Thanks for listening!

If that’s really the basis of complaint, the real issue is that a single profession lacks AoE abilities, and should probably be given at least one weapon set that’s strong for AoE.

However I’m not aware of any profession like that. Even a thief can use a shortbow for ranged AoE.

It sounds more like a complaint of wanting the entire game catered to the strengths of a particular profession using a particular weapon combo.

I would love to know more specifically though what your situation and experience is.

Fox.3469:

dear god, people can overreact, they said tweeking, not nerf overall. Classes are far from balanced and if you read these reactions you can see why. The sky ain’t falling in for 100 less or more damage, learn to adjust and trust in the team kitten This isn’t their first run, and as far for AOE they are correct, AOE is OP and it’s the biggest imbalance between classes atm.

Can you give some specific examples of how it is “the biggest imbalance between classes?”

I’m not aware of any class which lacks a strong AoE option (even thief, which is very single target centric, has shortbow).

Do you feel there’s imbalance because you can’t tag a lot of mobs during events? Do you feel there’s imbalance because zerg v zerg fights in WvW turn into a mess of red circles on the ground? What specifically do you believe is imbalanced?

Rozbuska.5263:

Quote from stream: “Mesmer portal is giving us problems –giving that tool onto other classes”
Some teleporter device come to us? Hmm more like warrior get some…

I predict Thief.

Engineers aren’t horrible. They just have a lot of bugs and some quality of life issues that need to be addressed. Biggest problem with Engineer IMO is that it doesn’t really match the description. It’s not a very flexible profession at all.

It’s very good at applying conditions, and surprisingly good at removing them as well (assuming you spec for it) but your role is determined by your spec, which ties you to a particular kit or two, rather than being able to fluidly change roles based on kit, and having your spec determine the one(s) that you’re actually good at.

If you don’t go 30 points into explosives and take grenadier, then you shouldn’t use a grenade kit, period, but if you do, then grenade kit should be 80% of what you do.

If you want to be bursty single target, you spec into tools and firearms and use a rifle. You’re not going to swap mid fight to any other kind of role.

Worst to me are ranger (honestly don’t know what their purpose is or what they do that’s valuable and can’t be done better by some one else).

Second worst are Necros. More than one condition based character in a group ends up being overkill often, and minions just have weird and buggy AI, and are hard to control. But if minions could be controlled like ranger pets then that would be a slap in the face to rangers.

I can’t speak for every class but I can relate my experience as an Engineer.

I use a grenade kit (AoE) on everything. Not because grenade kit is so good, but because most of my other options are AoE but worse, or single target, but do pathetic damage. I’d gladly use a single target weapon or kit that gave the same level of control, did 25% more damage, and wasn’t subject to annoying carpal tunnel syndrome inducing ground targeting spam even on the first skill, but ANET has seen fit not to provide such an option.

The only single target weapon or kit I really have is the elixir gun, and while it’s great for applying weakness, heals, curing conditions, etc, it absolutely sucks for doing damage. They’re pretty much have to quadruple the damage to make it a worthwhile single target choice.

My warrior has primarily single target or very small area AoE, and he does spectacular damage. I use the rifle instead of the longbow in spite of the total lack of AoE because ground targeting is easy to dodge out of. I use a greatsword in melee, but that’s because there’s a trait for GS that gives me a stack of might every single time I crit. If my rifle,axe, or one hand sword could do that, I’d never put it away.

My engineer’s so bad I dropped a Big ol’ Bomb and Mel Gibson jumped out.

morrolan.9608:

They also said they want to discourage zerging in WvW, well making aoe less effective will only lead to more zergs.

Absolutely. If anything, strong AoE encourages players to find less defended objectives or sneakier ways to attack. If you put a stronger emphasis on single target, or weaken AoE, there’s no incentive at all to avoid the zerg, because it’s really difficult if not impossible to coordinate people onto the same target for single target damage.

If every one is doing single target damage with more or less the same level of skill, the winner is the side with more people, which makes zerging even more important a strategy. If AoE is a big enough threat then there’s an incentive to spread out and attack along multiple vectors so AoE has to be spread.

As well, without AoE, choke points become much less valuable, which makes any kind of defense less useful. Why bother trying to control terrain if channeling the enemy into a narrow kill zone doesn’t make them any easier to kill, and why bother trying to flank or surprise some one when you can just run straight up into their face and win simply you’re a bigger zerg?

ANET devs talked in the chat/stream today (and in the recent past in blog posts) about nerfing Area of Effect abilities, which they see as a problem because there’s not a high enough opportunity cost to bring AoE, and it leads to weird things like players ignoring single target abilities even on single targets, choosing to use heavy AoE instead of stomping players in PvP, etc.

This doesn’t match my experience at all, except possibly in WvW. And I don’t see why any one should be able to safely rez a downed player in the midst of a massive zerg vs zerg, unless they take exceptional measures like popping invincibility and quickness, or having an “insta rez” utility equipped.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t really see this supposed problem at all. I see that the game has an incredibly large number of AoE abilities, and so they are basically unavoidable to use, but I don’t see people deferring on single target damage, because at the end of the day, 1v1 or killing bosses is really important to a lot of players, and even small damage advantages for single target abilities make them very attractive to use.

Am I alone on this? Are other people running into this problem of not feeling that single target abilities are not presenting a reasonable advantage in certain situations, and if so, can you provide some examples?