Unfortunately, Anet apparently cannot tell the difference between a genuine DC and a forced one to abuse the system, so genuine DC’s are punished.
What’s almost more annoying than DCing is getting lag suddenly in the middle of an important fight. Then you lose the game because of that and everyone loses a pip. It would have been better to fully DC so only you lose a pip and everyone else stays where they are.
Someone who’s experienced this personally answer this question. Right now, I have 1/4 pvp divisions crossed this season. I’ll likely hit diamond before the season ends making me 2/4. Will that reset at the start of next season? The wording says “in a PvP season,” but someone posts above are saying that this can be spread through multiple seasons.
So will it stay 2/4 divisions crossed when season 4 starts, or will it reset to 0/4? Again, someone who’s personally experienced and seen what happens should answer.
Let’s go through this one at a time. Some suggestions I like, some are terrible, others can be done in different ways. I won’t be going through certain mechanics since I don’t know them well enough. And yes, I know my suggestions might be worse. Too bad.
Ele:
Lightning Flash Your suggestion is too powerful. They have way too much condi cleanse as it is, especially if they ever nerf condition quantity or strength. I agree with a reduced CD. It’s damage is the only thing it has over Mesmer’s Blink. Blink is a 1200 range stunbreak on a 30 second CD. My suggestion for LF is 1200 range, stunbreak, keeping the damage and current CD.
Thief:
Unload This is terrible with all the projectile hate. If you do indeed play rev, I can see it being a problem for you in a 1v1, but if you have any Scrappers or Tempests around, you can get projectile protection. Also, Unload lasts the duration of a dodge. It’s also blockable. P/P thiefs also do terribly up close and have no escape outside shadowstep or SB 5. Revs are extremely good at keeping on a target.
Vault YES PLEASE! That is all for that.
Haste For some reason Anet has all these quickness skills on 60 second CDs. Quickness is really good but 60 seconds is too long IMO. I agree with your change. Superspeed might be too though, unless they keep the 60 second CD.
Guardian:
Dragon’s Maw It’s CD is fine. It’s already below 50 seconds with the trait.
Hunter’s Ward It’s CD is also fine. If you manage to catch a target without evades, it’s extremely powerful.
Ranger:
Search and Rescue I agree with this change. 600 range is stupid small without easy the skill is to counter.
Signet of Stone I think the only reason it’s CD is above 60 seconds is because it also has a passive effect. IMO, the CD should change and the duration should match Endure Pain.
Necromancer:
Scepter AA Yeah seriously, the AA boon corruption is dumb. Just move it over to skill 2 or even 3. There are already enough passive things in this game. We don’t need boon corruption to be as well.
Chill Reapers in general have too much condition application. It’s way too easy to bomb someone. I think the best approach though is not to reduce the quantity of chill and condis, but their duration.
Mesmer:
Illusions Interesting idea! Most mesmers run the superspeed trait, so this would allow players to kite still to a extent. But honestly, I think they just need to replace superspeed with swiftness just to slow them down a little.
Confusion It’s fine as is IMO. The problem comes with torment. In this game, you die when you stop moving. And amazingly, Mesmers and condi Revs both have incredible access to torment for long durations. My solution is again to reduce their duration and, in the case with Rev, reduce the stacks down by 1 on Mace 3 and Axe 5. The rest of the skills require a lot of energy and are easily avoidable. Another idea is to remove torment on the first two AA skills and make AA 3 apply 1-2 torment and 1 poison.
Signet of Illusions This skill is fine as is. If it must be nerfed, increase its CD to 75 or 90 seconds at most.
Phase Retreat NO!
Ether Clone This skill is meant to supply a clone. I would be ok with a slight cast time increase since they decreased how long it takes to reach that skill.
Warrior:
Endure Pain This is your only problem with Warriors? Endure Pain is the least problematic skill with Berserkers. The problems currently is it’s too easy to condi bomb and their healing is almost 100% passive. They just need to hit one target with a full adrenaline bar to get nearly 1k HPS.
Revenant:
You definitely play Rev.
Phase Traversal This skill is fine. There needs to be some way for players to escape from a Rev. The high energy cost of teleporting skills allows that.
Sword AA This hits incredibly hard already. If anything, it needs a nerf again.
Staff 2 Meh, it takes some actual skill to use this IMO.
Engineer:
Elixir S If they change the passive trait to prevent stomping, then they need to do it to the slotted skill and to Ele’s Obsidian Flesh, as well as Distortion and every other immunity skill. I am ALL for this change. Stomps should never be free and should always be stoppable in some way. Same thing should probably apply to resurrecting, but that’s not as big of a deal since you only need one person to stomp, but rezzing often requires multiple players in heavy situations. Maybe at least make immunity prevent rezzing.
Also, if Elixir S reveals the Engi, then once again it’ll have to apply to every other profession with immunities.
Function Gyro This needs to exist, or else, as mentioned in one of the above posts, Scrappers won’t have an elite mechanic. The issue comes with it being a free stomp or near free stomp with the stability trait. Though with all the AoE CCs going around, it’s pretty easy to stop it. It takes about 5 seconds to stomp with it. Two players can easily stop that. In a 1v1, you shouldn’t be able to stop it anyway. So there isn’t really a problem with FG itself. The real problem IMO is that the Engi can keep attacking and cleaving and supporting teammates and himself at the same time. If Scrapper sustain and damage was nerfed overall, I don’t think it’ll be much of an issue anymore.
Hammer damage Yes, Hammer hits too hard, and offers too much sustain at the same time. But Hammer scales extremely well with might. First, let’s nerf the power coefficient for hammer skills and maybe flat out remove or significantly reduce the duration of the sustain aspects of hammer skills.
General:
Nightmare Rune Only the fear needs to be changed. Make it active. Let’s say, “chance when struck, your next condition also applies fear for 1 second on your current target.”
Resistance It needs to be corruptable or removable. It’s amazingly powerful and must have some counterplay so that condi Rev doesn’t become God again. If it becomes an effect, then it’s duration cannot be increased by the application of more resistance and it’s duration must be shortened.
No. No. No.
Thief damage (including pulminary impact) needs to drop before you buff their sustain. They already have a low CD block stunbreak, seemingly spammable evades, and incredible mobility. If you play thief well, you can fight in chaotic teamfights. And if not, then you can decap because you can get to a point and back to the fight faster than any profession. Good thieves sit back and support rather than getting into the thick of it. You only go in to finish off a target or once things are less hectic.
Thieves are better against condis than people think. You’ll need to sacrifice pulminary impact (you won’t need it if you’re running staff), but removing a condi when you evade on a 1 second CD is far stronger than it sounds. You can shadowstep to remove 3 condis. You can move all movement impairing condis when you dodge. Staff, has two evading skills. Use them. The amount of dodges you have is astonishing, so you really shouldn’t be getting hit by condi bombs, and if you are, you can cleanse them. Don’t just spam vault for damage if you need those evades.
God, I’m so sick of thieves thinking they still need buffs.
The devs expressly stated that the components from this year WILL expire at the end of the year. The statement was made in a thread I made a few weeks back. This is part of why I’m so stressed about this whole thing.
Anet would be that cruel…
I need to hit diamond next season or else I’m kittened then. Thanks Anet. If you dare change anything to make it impossible for me to hit diamond or not change the division crossing achievement, I’ll have wasted all that time and gold trying to get the legendary. Don’t mess this up Zin…
(edited by Zintrothen.1056)
Is the Lord on the actual Foefire map different than the one in HotM? I know the HotM one doesn’t have a down state, but it does have a condi cleanse with its heal. I thought I saw it heal itself recently on Foefire…
Spend laurels on t6 mats. It’ll significantly reduce the cost of Gift of Fortune for you. Plus, you don’t need anything else that laurels give and they’re easy to get with a little patience.
Interesting idea, but I think unnecessary. Plus, 95% of my games have terrible players on both teams and I would do anything not to play with them again. So nearly every game would be declined by at least one person. Anet should put their effort into balance (read nerfing) elite specs and continuing to fix MMR (This season is better than season 2 imo, but still not good enough).
Alt-tab and do something useful.
How bad are your matches if they’re only lasting 5 minutes? Mine last usually around 10 minutes.
Let’s nerf the other runes instead. We don’t need more powercreep. There are runes with powerful active effects on short CDs, like Krait, Lyssa, Soldier, Nightmare, etc. Some are obviously better than others.
Remember Durability?
Runes shouldn’t be making such a big difference in the game. They should be minor enhancements to your spec. But right now, there are runes that are too good, mandatory even. It’s almost like some specs rely on certain runes to be competitive. Some were so mandatory and good that they were removed (Durability). Imagine if Perplexity was in PvP. That kitten would never fly because Berserkers and Chronomancers would abuse their interrupting power and because significantly more OP than they already are.
Yes, it’s a good thing that most professions are in meta, but without diversity, it really means that only 8 specs are meta, and neither of them are actually balanced because of the increasing powercreep each patch. If they don’t nerf those specs to bring them in line with other, weaker specs, diversity will be mostly minimal.
In my opinion, increased diversity will be a sign of better balance.
Today, I played 10 games (6 wins so 60% win rate for those who don’t know math). There are a few things I noticed.
Professions are actually pretty equal…but not balanced. Every single fight was full of AoEs and condi spamming. If I stopped spamming my cleanse (was playing the meta warrior spec, and yes it’s OP, so don’t kittening deny it), I would be loaded with 6+ condis, usually doing what seemed to be 5k (or more in extreme cases) of my hp every second. CC is through the roof. If you didn’t have stability, you’d be CCed from 100-0 or close to. If I had defensive CDs ready, I could stay alive almost no problem. But as soon as they were done, I would be dead seemingly instantly. And Dead or Alive only delayed my death because the condis would tick for 5k, immediately downing me.
Another thing, people still stand in DH traps…and those are no longer the most OP AoEs in the game…and they still hurt like hell.
Most games were blowouts. The 9th game was something like 500-150, and then the one after that was about 500-450. The least fun game followed by the most fun game. Most of the fun game was running around spamming AoEs because we couldn’t see any animations. The screen was so cluttered with animations and downed players. That wasn’t the fun part (though I do have a guilty pleasure for chaotic situations like that, but it’s still not good for the game). The fun was when I stood back and had time to process what was happening and who to target. It felt good to have time to make a decision and see what was going on.
Powercreep is alive and well and it showed today. I urge you anet, nerf everything except amulets. Literally, stop kittening around with amulets. Just stop. Stop. Now. They are not the problem, and they never were (except maybe Cele).
Don’t nerf offensive attacks without nerfing defensive ones. The meta will become tanky and boring again. Season one didn’t work because defensive powercreep interfered. There were too many defensive skills. But then you buffed offensive skills and now there are too many defensive and offensive skills.
You need to nerf both defensive and offensive skills and how quickly they can be used. This will help reduce powercreep and also clutter. The game will still be fast pace, but we’ll be able to see what’s going on and be able to make quick decisions without dying faster than a quick decision can be made.
TL;DR: Nerf every skill and increase CDs. Reduce the amount of boons and boon corruptions/removals, conditions and cleanses, CCs and stability, AoEs, healing, etc. I could go on. Also, stop standing in DH traps.
Sorry if this is really disorganized. It’s midnight, I’m tired and just wanted to get my thoughts out. I know there’ll be disagrees to what I think is the solution, and that’s fine.
Thanks for reading!
OP, you lost that game by about 80 points. That’s really not bad. So you only lost 2 of your 2 games. That’s only 2 games. Start complaining when it’s 8 in a ROW like at the start of last season. Then we’ll know if things have changed or not.
Oh, this isn’t just me then. Are you all also being transported to the front of LA?
Which traps was he running other than the heal? Guardians have many ways to heal. Was the healing a steady flow every second from regen or was it more bursty every few seconds? They can trait to make symbols heal, meditation skills heal etc. The trap heal gives a large amount (nearly 10k with healing power). Was he dealing burst comparable to a thief or power shatter mesmer?
How to win:
Don’t complain about the 3 enemy Reapers. Instead, learn Scrapper, Tempest, Reaper.
In other words, adapt to the enemy comp. Adapting is so difficult for most players unfortunately though.
Not losing a pip from getting a high score promotes competition among your teammates. There should only be competition against the enemy team. As soon as you add a reward to getting a high score, you’ll start seeing pugs sit on points just to get the 10 points in hope of getting that high score, unless they finally change it so that you get the capture points for at least contributing to the cap instead of standing on it till it’s finished. But even then, pugs will probably just run around following other teammates and just standing on the point for a second and then leaving back to the already lost fight because they stupidly followed their teammate to a 2v0.
I’ve flat out stopped playing solo queue or even duo or triple queue. I got to ruby without too much trouble but now most games are dumb donkeys who just go for mid regardless of the current situation. It’s definitely not fun now. I only play with players who I deem are good or I know are good so that I know that when we lose (and we will eventually), it either because the other team was better or we were slacking. But if we were slacking, at least we can work on it as a team. You can’t do that with pugs.
Holy kitten, Anet. You really want to make Scrappers more powerful than Reapers? They’re both easily the top specs right now.
This looks like a combination of decent thieves (they do actually exist) and bad DHs (but good DHs also exist). I bet the third player was a Reaper, so gg. Thieves do well against Reapers (good thieves only) and Tempests. That warrior, I have no comment.
Oh dear God! These bads are extending into Diamond too?
It’s going to be a long road to Legendary >.< Maybe I’ll just get it next season…if they don’t kitten up and make an even worse system.
Most players don’t even know that they’re going to be stealthed. And they can’t just assume that their pug allies will know how to stealth us or will have the stealth off CD. You can try communicating ahead of time (as in before the match starts) that they should prevent AAing in down state because you’ll stealth them. This’ll also show you who reads chat and will actually listen.
You should only ever be queueing ranked with a Reaper, Scrapper, Tempest or Herald. That way you can carry the ones that choose the rest, with little effort!
(And for kitten’s sake, know that I’m joking…sort of)
Pushing far is great if you send the right profession. The best ones are condition Chronomancer and Scrapper as they are the best 1v1ers that can win. Another reason Mesmer and Engi are best is because they are fast. Engis can get perma swiftness and high superspeed uptime so they can get back to mid quickly should it be needed. Condition Mesmers are even better because they can place a portal, and they are by far the most powerful 1v1 spec.
Most other professions are best sent to mid. Tempests, though tanky, don’t do much damage outside of Air and they’re support is too valuable not to have at mid. Druids are also too valuable not to have, plus they are slow. Thieves better for backcapping or picking off low targets. They won’t be able to 1v1 too well at far. Dragonhunters can force someone off a point temporarily, but only until their traps are finished. Reapers are slow and won’t do as well without life force. I suppose a condition Rev could do it because they are quick and powerful.
We better complain about Revs, Scrappers and Druids then or else Reapers will be nerfed into the ground and the rest will be buffed.
Did the team with the necros win? :P
Obsidian Flesh is actually only 33.5 seconds with the Earth trait. And yes, that is way too short.
One Reaper is hard enough with all the CCs going around. All they need is one well timed CC (when you just switched attunements is usually the best time because your only real stunbreak is on CD) and your done without support. 1v1, reaper is difficult if they know how to wait till all your cleanses are on CD before they burst, but against two, they can just faceroll their way to “victory”.
Tempests are also able to take a lot of punishment, but they can’t dish as much out. It would be nice if Anet could change this. Make eles deal a tad more damage (not in such a way that Fresh Air will be insanely OP) while reducing their tankiness.
My suggestions for ele are:
Hardy Conduit made GM. This allows Tempests to chose between more protection and stronger protection, or healing on auras. With Elemental Shielding, it’s way too powerful along with Elemental Bastion. Another option would be to add an ICD of a few seconds, but I strongly suggestion the other route.
Harmonious Conduit made baseline. This will help with damage, while also providing that one stack of stability that Overloads need. It’s way too easy to interrupt Overloads and they’re a very important part to the Tempest spec, especially with the massively long cast time they have till their main effect. This would not be OP in the slightest because one stack of stability is easy to rip through or even corrupt. This would just force the enemy to try a little harder to interrupt the ele.
Do what you want to replace HM’s slot. Nobody’s going to take any other traits over Invigorating Torrents.
Ok, that makes sense to lose 3 games deliberately in order to gain 2 pips from a win, but if you can honestly control matches enough that you will deliberately lose, why not just win? I suppose bad players can just get lucky and win after so many losses but then they’ll just lose those two pips. Any decent player will just try to win and gain a win streak, which will progress you to the next tier much faster.
If there should be any change, the losing streak bonus should only apply in Ruby and above.
The problem with double moa is that it’s 20 seconds of being useless. That’s way too long, but at the same time, nerfing the duration without buffing the CD will just continue to put mesmers in a bad place. So I propose they cut the duration in half and make it a 90 second CD. That’ll make it easier to deal with double moa but also not totally nerf the skill. It’ll help make the passive effect a bit more accessible as well. Agree or disagree, 20 seconds is too long, 10 seconds is enough as long as the CD is cut in half as well.
Hey, at least they made SOME changes to an actual OP skill and trait!
Now to rework Scrapper hammer, nerf their sustain and/or damage output (sustain preferably); reduce Herald sustain and/or damage output (damage preferably) etc.
Or you could actually revert most of the ridiculous power creep that came with the xpac. Too much boon spam, too much condi spam, too much CC spam, too much of too much. I’m so glad they actually NERFED some things today.
I played 9 games last night and won all 9 of them (the minimum to reach Emerald). I was queued with someone who reached Legendary last season. We also picked up another guild member later on. Only the later games gave us the slightest bit of trouble when one party member reached Emerald.
This is show you that you are fighting players who do not belong in Amber. Anet added the win streak feature so that players who are suppose to be in higher divisions get out of the lower ones sooner.
Now, not every player who isn’t suppose to be in Amber got out of it last night. They have lives too and may not be able to play enough to get out for the next few days. Also, some players might deliberately wait, either to troll or to try and keep behind the other higher tier players so they can advance without as much trouble. (Can someone confirm whether that could work?)
Give it a few more days for the highest level players to get out of your way. Things should change by then, and you’ll hopefully be back to fair fights.
Anything condition based or anything that stuns/interrupts a lot. Reapers, condi Chronomancers, Scrappers, Daredevils (either power or condi) Dragonhunters.
Professions with lots of passive play are also not fun to fight. This includes condi specs and Druids with HoT pets.
The more condi you can do and the more passive your spec, the more trollish it’ll get. If you really want to kitten people over while doing almost nothing, DH is your best bet. But be aware that you’ll have to make an effort to kill good players.
No no no no! All of this is wrong! If they nerf anything with Reaper, Druid or Scrapper, they’ll buff another area of those professions. What they’ll flat out nerf are warriors, mesmers, eles and visual noise.
Druid staff AA does more damage than people think. Plus ele staff AA damage is kitten poor. Fire AA damage isn’t nearly high enough for being a literally fireball that applies no burning. Try it with earth and see if the added weakness makes any difference.
We don’t complain anymore because this happens so often that we’ve accepted the reality. Unfortunately, it’s a long way for the rest of the professions to accept this reality.
So far we have complaints about Ancient Seeds, Search and Rescue (which actually does need a CD increase imo), pet damage (again, does need a nerf), Protect Me…what am I missing? I’m sure there’s more.
The roots have low hp (as mentioned above, it’s easily cleaved), and you cannot knock the target in the roots around anymore until they’re out.
What the ability does is summon roots on the already CCed target. Anyone in the roots will be immobilized. So if the target is knocked back farther or pulled from the roots, they will no be affected by the pulsing immobilize.
Does anyone know if you can dodge the pulse, and then cleanse a condi after a pulse and dodge out?
I can’t imagine how insanely OP condi Reapers would become with power, vit, condi and exp.
I had a whole write up but “something went wrong” and I didn’t copy it like a kitten. So, what other people said will be my response.
First or second teleport?
This community can complain about anything. But personally, healing Druids, Scrapper sustain in combination with high damage, and Reaper condi damage.
Druids are able to spec for strong defence and choose Cleric Amulet, all while having no negative impact on their pet’s damage. In fact, the NM and BM trees together with Guard and We Heal As One allow for high uptime of 25 might stacks on both you and the pet.
Scrappers are like Druids, but weaker. By that, I mean that they’re less extreme than Druids. They have too much sustain for their damage, but that sustain doesn’t help their teammates either and if you CC the Scrapper, they can’t do damage. Whereas if you CC a Druid, their pet can still do damage (unless using an AoE CC). That’s just one example. Anyway, Scrapper’s hammer damage is far too strong. This is mainly due to the high power coefficient of those skills. Might is huge for them. And if that’s not bad enough, three of the hammer skills, all on pretty short CDs for weapon skills, have a defensive mechanic attached.
Part of the problem with Reaper is that conditions do too much damage, not just their own conditions. If they nerfed chill, Reaper damage would still be too high because they can also apply bleeding, burning, torment, and even confusion by corrupting retaliation.
The other day I let the AA climp up to 1,060,966. It took about 20 minutes. 1 mil damage per 20 min Anet! Nerf staff!
I was wondering what happened too…It’s awful like this. Target signs are suppose to be VERY VISIBLE. This one just gets lost in the the mess of visual effects that didn’t get reduced to invisibility in the last patch for some reason.
Elite specs are incidental aids, but they aren’t good just because they don’t take up skill slots. That’s just one reason why FG is good. And yes, they should change how you play, but they don’t to the extent that we may have expected. They end up just adding something extra instead of changing what you already have. We all know that Anet failed on elite specs by just making them way too powerful, and now they want to buff the base specs instead of nerfing elite specs and changing their mechanics around a bit. It might be why they made S&R so powerful.
And I already said this: FG can help revive in PvE. You make it sound totally useless in PvE. And who cares if it was useless? It’s there and it doesn’t take up a slot!
What I want to know is what point you are trying to make. Mine is that FG is good, and S&R is good. One does two things, and the other does one of those things better.
I’m in game on my Scrapper and see the 20 second CD now. Good to know about it.
FG range is 900.
So you lose FG when you don’t spec for Scrapper. But it also doesn’t take up a utility slot. Both FG and S&R have tradeoffs.
The Ranger cannot select who to res. It’s completely random, though if only one ally is down, that’s the ally who will be teleported.
It can stomp those mobs in Kessex Hills around that poison factory thingy, or whatever that is. :P Also, it can res in PvE.
Nothing that was changed with the last patch was promoted as a “Game Changing Mechanic” as far as I know. FG can be a game changer, as can many other abilities when used carefully, including S&R.
Not sure what you mean that “visual impact” but it does help give the Druid the identity of a highly valuable reviver and healer in both PvP and PvE.
It is a spec mechanic. You only get it as Scrapper, along with other gyros and powerful traits that help define the spec.
Acid Bomb giving an evade is a good idea if they boost the CD a bit. But Hammer 3’s evade does not need a buff. The 2 second CD increase did absolutely nothing to nerf Scrapper’s sustain, neither did Stealth Gyros 20 second CD increase. The issue imo with Scrapper sustain on hammer is that 3 of the skills have defensive capabilities and hit hard.
Let’s look at Mesmer’s sword 2 skill (maybe not the best example, but someone can search for others) Blurred Frenzy as a comparison to these three hammer skills. Hammer 2 reflects projectiles for 1 second and hits 3 targets around the Scrapper for two strong hits, and is a whirl finisher. Hammer 3 is a leap finisher, hits 3 targets in front of the Scrapper for heavy damage on all three 3 impacts and it evades for a very short period during each leap. Hammer 4 blocks all attacks for 2 seconds, applies 2 stacks of 5 seconds of vulnerability on each of the 5 powerful hits to 5 targets in front of the Scrapper. Blurred Frenzy locks the mesmer in place while you evade for its 2.5 second duration, and do kitten damage compared to the Scrapper attacks. It’s not a finisher of any kind either, and it only hits targets in front of the Mesmer.
Hammer skills would be fine being that hard hitting if they would just reduce the defensive capabilities of them or even remove them from one of the skills. Hell, you could even change hammer 4 to only block in front of the Scrapper, instead of all around. It would even force the Scrapper to actually use the skill more carefully to get the full effect of it. But increasing the CD of one of them by a whole two seconds isn’t going to solve the problem.
(edited by Zintrothen.1056)