Guild Wars 2

This is my minimal set of changes to try to balance out a few of the more overpowered specs in the current meta, and boost up a few things that need it. I tried to keep it brief and pinpoint-targeted, and also conservative to avoid over-balancing. If you guys have any suggestions or additions, feel free to comment! These are only my own opinions, so disagree or agree as you like. Enjoy.

• Stun breaks now also remove Immobilize.
• Players are now immune to control effects while already under a control effect. This is to prevent chained CC locks where the victim is unable to regain control of their character for extended periods of time if no stun breaker is available. Note: This change does NOT affect Fear and Immobilize, since those are conditions.
• Stability now has a visual cue, similar to Protection.

Warrior

• Healing Signet passive was decreased from 392(0.05) at level 80 to 342(0.08). The active was increased from 3275(0.5) to 4275(0.4).
• A casting time of 1/2s was added to Skull Crack. Damage was increased by 20%.
• Berserker’s Stance was fixed to actually lower incoming condition duration by 100%. It previously granted the user complete immunity to conditions.

Ranger

• Passive spirit procs now have an icd of 12 seconds, up from 10.
• Spirit of Nature now has 20% less health in PvP.

Engineer

• Elixir R can once again break stuns, and was reverted to its previous cooldown of 45 seconds.
• Toss Elixir R now revives by 12% per pulse, down from 17%.
• Rocket Boots now breaks stuns, and its cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds.
• Automated Response was fixed to actually lower incoming condition duration by 100%. It previously granted the user complete immunity to conditions.

Elementalist

• Lightning Flash can once again break stuns, and was reverted to its previous cooldown of 45 seconds.
• Ride the Lightning now has a flat cooldown of 25 seconds, regardless of whether or not it hits an enemy.

Guardian

• Purging Flames is now instant cast and has a radius of 360. The burning application has been changed so that it applies no burning upon casting and then 1s of burning every pulse. Its cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds.
• “Stand Your Ground!” cooldown has been increased to 35 seconds.

Thief

• Infiltrator’s Strike now requires line of sight, otherwise it will fail to teleport the user (Obstructed).
• Shadow Return (from Infiltrator’s Strike) can no longer be used while CCed.

Mesmer
No changes.

Thanks for keeping this going for the pvp community, Aldizi. Glad everything was sorted out.

JonathanSharp.7094:

No, not necessarily. In the future, we could do a combination of game types, in the same way that Call of Duty does multiple game types, or counter strike does multiple (escort or disarm).

We’ll have to see how that pans out, based on fan feedback.

Jon, one thing I thought of that might help queue times (might be difficult to program depending on how things are set up, though). Let’s say you end up having a 1v1 Duel game mode, 3v3 King of the Hill, 5v5 Conquest, and 10v10 Assault. When you queue up, you are given the option to check off ALL of the game modes that you wouldn’t mind being queued into. For example, if you queue alone, you could check off all 4 game modes, and the system will queue you into whichever of those modes that has the first queue pop. If you try to queue with a 2-person group, it will only allow you to queue for the last 3 options, but you can select any or all of them that you and your friend want to play. If you can make this work from a programming standpoint, I think it would greatly address the concerns about splitting up the game population between modes.

Thanks, as you can tell from the video, I totally thought I was dead!

Bye, Allie, and thanks for everything you’ve done for the community! Good luck with your personal endeavours.

I, for one, welcome our new zerker staff ele frost bow wielding overlord.

Supcutie is so good that the game gives him free rating while he’s afk, true story.

You might want to check out Five Gauge’s build:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/tPvP-Five-Gauge-Chaith-s-Power-Control/first

Cool little 2v2 highlight from playing with my team tonight that I thought I would share, featuring some close resses and then a quadruple stomp interrupt from Toker. Hope you enjoy! ggs

http://www.twitch.tv/cymerdown/c/3157696

Nice shoutcasts, BLU, I think your play-by-play has gotten a lot better than from when you first started a few months back. Glad that you keep pushing GW2 PvP forward, keep up the good work!

1v1 Duels

• Because just about every PvP game has this mode, even if it wouldn’t be the most balanced with the current state of PvP balance, people just want to have it and it should be an option. Smallish arena, immediate respawn, first to X kills wins. Something would probably need to be done about perma-stealth in order for this to work properly, though. Might have to be 1v1 King of the Hill or something. Also, Cleric and Settler amulets would probably have to be banned in order to prevent stalemates.

King of the Hill (3v3 or 5v5)

• A smallish arena with a single capture point in the middle, but holding the capture has a much smaller impact than in Conquest to prevent massive snowballing.
• One or more buffs (commune or NPC) that spawn on regular intervals near the capture point that provide a small benefit to the capturing team (similar to NPC buffs from Forest of Nifhel).

Castle Siege (10v10)

• Assault-style gameplay where one side is the Attackers and the other side are the Defenders
• Attackers have a few sequential objectives in order to win, and a certain amount of time to accomplish those objectives. Completing an objective moves their respawn location farther forward.
• Could involve the use of some static props to help with the siege (trebuchets, rams, etc.)
• Defeating the Defender’s Guild Lord is the final objective

Definitely, I was going to do a sound check before I started, but then forgot to. The sound got adjusted around halfway through, so you can jump forward a bit if you like. I’ll keep it in mind for next time.

The only thing that dodge jumping accomplishes is ensuring you get the full travel distance out of a jump, while also evading. Basically, if you don’t need to jump, then there is no need to dodge jump. How often do you really need to jump in PvP, except wanting to look “cool”? Not that often. Also, the punishment for failing to dodge during your jump is potentially huge (you fail to dodge that big burst coming at you, and cannot attempt to dodge again until your jump is over). So basically, the upside is typically small to non-existent, and the downside is potentially dying, so yeah.

Another point is, you are often watching many things at once while PvPing, and don’t always get a moment to glance down at your endurance bar to see if you have enough endurance for a dodge. If you dodge jump and you have no endurance left, you’re going to only jump, and you can’t do most skills while jumping. Whereas, if you attempt to only regular dodge and you don’t have the endurance, you are still free to control your character afterwards. It’s just another risk vs. reward thing, and most top players don’t bother with the risk unless they need the jump effect of the dodge jump.

Ask your Guardian to carry Hallowed Ground. Also, try to bring them into a teamfight, where there is enough damage to get through Healing Signet.

The roles go like this:

• Mid-point Bunker: Responsible for holding the capture of a point during teamfights. Often the tankiest member of a team, their low damage output is offset by the support and utility they provide. Best classes: Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist.
• Close-point Defender: Responsible for capturing and retaining capture of the team’s close-point. When home is secure, they often either rotate to mid or to far, according to the team’s strategy. Close-point defender builds are usually somewhat selfish, as they are geared towards winning 1v1 fights against enemy far-point assaulters, and will either be aggressively built for getting quick kills, or defensively oriented with knockbacks for getting and retaining capture. Best classes: Warrior, Ranger, Engineer.
• Far-point Assaulter: Similar role to the close-point defender, except the job here is to put continuous pressure on the enemy team’s home. The biggest difference here is that it becomes more important to have a reliable method of disengaging since it is easier for the enemy to collapse on their home point, especially after respawns. Best classes: Thief, Warrior, Engineer.
• Teamfighter: A dps character whose build is set up for doing well in larger-scale fights (3v3 and up). These builds tend to be based at least partly around dealing AoE damage to multiple targets at once, and may run one or more utilities that have little or no effect in duels, such as res utilities or other support effects. Best classes: Necromancer, Ranger, Warrior.
• Roamer: Responsible for moving around the map quickly, getting to wherever is most advantageous for the team. Since their role does not often involve maintaining control of points, roamers are built for high damage, but low defense. Built this way, roamers can enter fights and quickly sway the outcome for their team before they leave again to continue roaming. Possible objectives include: decapping or capturing unattended points, finishing off low-health enemies, and ganking badly positioned or high-priority enemy targets. Best classes: Thief, Warrior, Mesmer.

Keep in mind, this guide is more meant for newer players, and is a bit simplified for ease of understanding. It doesn’t necessarily cover all possibilities, and the “best classes” is a matter of opinion and changes with the class balance and metagame. Teams contain various mixes, and won’t always fill all the roles that I’ve listed.

Sauncho.8076:

Good podcast, but no offense, I feel as though you are little bit of an apologist when it comes to Guardians. I agree with the person who you are talking to 100% though. Great job though, keep up the good work.

Well, my opinions are my own, and others are welcome to disagree with them. I probably just see class balance different than you do, so what you see as anti-Guardian bias is probably just a disagreement with my views. If your answer to the question of, “What is the most powerful spec overall in the game for tPvP?” isn’t Bunker Guardian, then you probably won’t agree with everything that I say, and that’s fine, but that’s where I’m coming from.

Also, I’m kind of glad that Arken and I don’t agree on everything, that would make for a much more boring discussion. :P

Hey guys, Arken and I just did our second Guardian podcast, talking mostly about the October 15th patch. The link to the main thread is here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/State-of-balance-Guardian-perspective-pt-2/

Hope you all enjoy it!

Ok, we just finished! Check here for the VoD:

http://www.twitch.tv/cymerdown/c/3135996

Sorry for game sounds being a bit too high in the first half, I’ll keep em lower next time.

Seperate rewards into two different types: Progression-based rewards and Skill-based rewards

Progression-Based Rewards

Keep the rank system similar to how it is, but change the following:

• Flatten the curve near the high end, so it doesn’t take ages to acquire ranks past rank 40
• Add mild exp, gold and karma gain from doing sPvP (doesn’t need to be competitive with the rewards gained from PvE and WvW, but something to make the player feel as if their character is still progressing while having fun in the Mists)

Skill-Based Rewards

• Change hotjoin to give much more of a bonus by actually playing Conquest correctly (eliminate Skirmisher bonus, always give bonus points for kills within 1200 range of a control point, increase glory gained by communing with secondary objectives, give credit for capping/neuting control point if within 1200 range or if contributed to a kill near that control point in the previous 15 seconds, reduce points gained from using Skyhammer/Trebuchet/Cannon)
• Add tPvP seasons, and have special tiered skins and finishers depending on your leaderboard rank at the end of the season, usable only while you retain the required rating threshold. For example, you could have skins and finishers for the following rating tiers: Top 10, Top 50, Top 200, Top 500, Top 1000. At the end of the season, you get to pick one full set from a few sets of armor according to your placing, and one weapon. You get to wear that armor and weapon during the next season, and any future season where you placed in that same tier or higher in the previous season. The same reward structure would work for both Solo Arena and Team Arena (so if you consistently place highly in both arenas, you will be able to acquire those rare skin sets even faster). For example, let’s say you placed in the Top 10 for Solo Arena at the end of Season 1, and in the Top 50 for Team Arena. You would get to pick one set of Tier 1 gear and one set of Tier 2 gear, and you could wear either of those during all of Season 2. If you only placed in the Top 200 in Solo and Team Arena in Season 2, you would only get to wear your newly acquired Tier 3 armor and weapons during Season 3. Also, all of these skins would of course be sharable among all of your characters, so you could make an obsession of placing well in each season so you could get cool PvP skins for all of your characters. Hope that makes sense.

Warning: Hmans may have been harmed in the making of this video.

Chaith, that staff ele gave me nightmares. 7k meteors hurt so badd

Arken’s a great player and has the potential of creating a top-tier team. Also, he streams and has cookies.

Some really great posts here. Totally agree with your thoughts on Warrior, Doctoris.

Thanks for being honest, I hope it wouldn’t be too tough to refactor the original code and implement the idea. Cool that you’re posting on the weekends during your off time about this stuff, that’s great initiative.

ggs wp to all teams

dafaq
/15chars

hooma.9642:

Oblivion.8307:

cymerdown.4103:

Honestly, the premise behind this topic is pretty offensive and ignorant. It’s fine to not like the direction of balance taken, but to say that 90% of the player base should be ignored is pretentious and also downright wrong. It’s perfectly reasonable to aim for good game balance at ALL skill levels, not just top tier. If there are specs that are oppressively strong at a low skill level (a noob can easily pick it up and crush other noobs with it), then that should be noted and addressed by the devs simply because that spec will discourage new pvpers from learning the game. A perfect example is the old 100b spec before the quickness nerf. That build was a huge problem for new players and extremely easy to play, so it was turning off lots of people from pvp, even though it wasn’t considered great in top tier play.

Everyone should give their own feedback, and then the devs can decide which suggestions are good and which are bad, keeping in mind all skill levels, not just balance at the top 1% (which is still important and has its own requirements). Also, the whole thing is kinda silly in that the gist of the thread is, “Yo devs, you need to listen more to skilled guys like me! Not going to make any suggestions here, though, but I will at some point in the future in a video. But when I do, listen! Other guys listen to me all the time, like <name bomb> because I’m really really good, I promise! Did I mention I’m good? No suggestions though.”

i love you ken, you make the best posts.

here is a new lover too. can we subscribe somewhere?

lol… thanks guys :P follow me on twitch if u like ken rage is da best rage

Thanks for the posts and staying constructive, guys. I’m glad people are taking their time to give well thought out responses and keeping on topic, that’s awesome.

Honestly, the premise behind this topic is pretty offensive and ignorant. It’s fine to not like the direction of balance taken, but to say that 90% of the player base should be ignored is pretentious and also downright wrong. It’s perfectly reasonable to aim for good game balance at ALL skill levels, not just top tier. If there are specs that are oppressively strong at a low skill level (a noob can easily pick it up and crush other noobs with it), then that should be noted and addressed by the devs simply because that spec will discourage new pvpers from learning the game. A perfect example is the old 100b spec before the quickness nerf. That build was a huge problem for new players and extremely easy to play, so it was turning off lots of people from pvp, even though it wasn’t considered great in top tier play.

Everyone should give their own feedback, and then the devs can decide which suggestions are good and which are bad, keeping in mind all skill levels, not just balance at the top 1% (which is still important and has its own requirements). Also, the whole thing is kinda silly in that the gist of the thread is, “Yo devs, you need to listen more to skilled guys like me! Not going to make any suggestions here, though, but I will at some point in the future in a video. But when I do, listen! Other guys listen to me all the time, like <name bomb> because I’m really really good, I promise! Did I mention I’m good? No suggestions though.”

The Good

New Trait and Skill Tooltips: This is a great QoL change that affects all players, and it’s very much appreciated. It’s SO much nicer to be able to see at a glance very easily what every skill and trait does with no little details left out. I understand there are a few small bugs left over with it, but on the whole this is a really excellent change and from what I understand it will make future skill and trait updates take less work from the devs, so that is time well-spent.

UI Improvements: Another change that affects all aspects of the game, and another one that made me smile when I saw the preview. Condition damage is much easier to track now with the new floaters, and the blue timers when chilled was a neat touch. Tab targeting finally got some needed love as well; every player that has to fight a spirit ranger or MM necro thanks you! Really great work from the devs on this.

Love for Underplayed Specs: I’m glad that improvements are continuing to be given to builds that aren’t seeing much play in tpvp, and I’ve had a blast exploring the new options. Consecration Guard, venom share Thief, and turret Engi have all been fun to dust off from the “not good enough” pile and take for a spin. I’m sure the community will find some winners and add them to the meta game.

The Bad

QA: It is a bit concerning that every major patch seems to have some major bugs that go along with it. A few small issues here or there is certainly understandable and simply a matter of course in the software development process, but we are talking several big slips each patch. This one, it was Mesmer fall damage, a lack of internal CD for Leg Specialist on Warrior, and another serious lag and D/C issue with Legacy of the Foefire (this seems to happen every patch), among other issues. Granted, the response time on getting these issues fixed has been quick, but it just seems that fewer problems like this could slip through with better testing before releasing the patch.

Immob Stacking: I see where the reasoning comes from here (trying to push support Thief viability), but this is a really scary buff and hurts classes that rely on only 1 or 2 cleanses to get by. My experience with this game tells me that allowing this buff without allowing stunbreaks to cleanse immob is likely going to prove to be a bad idea in the coming weeks, but time will tell.

The Missing

Proper Balance Adjustment: The community waited a long time for this patch, on the premise that heavier balance changes would be delayed until after the PAX tournament, which was on August 30th. Because of that, many were let down by the patch that otherwise had a lot of cool features in it. Here are some of the changes I personally felt were obvious and needed in order to increase the viability of other classes and builds:

Warrior: Decrease Healing Signet passive, add brief cast time to Skull Crack OR slightly decrease its stun duration. Fixing para sigil is clearly not going to be enough, the sustain on Warriors is much too high especially 1v1. Also, Berserker stance should lower condi duration, not give full immunity, no?

Thief: Slightly decrease evasion on S/D build OR remove ability to shadow return (sword 2) while CCed. Just reducing boons stolen from 2 to 1 wasn’t the right angle: they still give Mesmer a very hard time and they don’t even run a ton of boons in the first place, it’s mostly the evade spam that’s a huge problem.

Engi: I expected some improvement regarding stun breaks considering they have very few competitive options at the moment, and buffing bomb radius was probably not for the best for pvp (team fights go KABOOM).

In general, I felt the direction of the balance patch was a bit out of touch with what the community has been asking for (example: improvements to AI specs like MM necro and AoE specs like bomb Engi and staff Ele, when the PvP community has been asking for less AI clutter and lower AoE spam).

Solo Queue Matchmaking: It still doesn’t have it’s own matchmaking system. It needs to pool together 10 players and then split them into roughly even teams from there, and this needed to happen a while ago because it’s turning off a lot of pvpers. A confirm box when the queue pops to reduce 4v5s would have been great as well.

New Map or Game Mode: I’m guessing there’s something coming soon, but we haven’t gotten any new toys since Skyhammer and Solo Queue. PvP seasons would have been cool, just something new and fun would have been a nice treat for us. :)

Hey, guys. Many of us still care about the pvp in this game, and we want to see it get better. Now that we’ve had a few days of playing with the patch, I want to make a thread here for the devs to read about what we think of the patch, what went great, and what went not so great, so they have something to base their future efforts on. One thing I will ask, though, is let’s keep the responses in this thread constructive (no flaming or negative ranting). To aid in doing so, I’m going to use the following categories for my own feedback:

The Good (what you liked about the patch)
The Bad (things about the patch you disliked)
The Missing (things you expected from the patch that weren’t there)

My own thoughts to follow shortly!

Great initiative, looking forward to a good discussion.

1. Balance Philosophy (how to keep PvP enjoyable for high-tier players)
2. Reward System (how to make PvP more appealing for newer players)
3. New Game Modes (freshen up the PvP experience)

Keep in mind, the fix to PoV returns Guardian to how it was as of the June 25th patch. As in, Necro Summer. And we were still perfectly viable (necessary, even) then. Right now, condis are getting shut down pretty hard by condi immune stun Warriors, so it’s not even really a big deal.

Seems that this is only happening on Legacy as far as I can tell.

Just played a match of Team Arena where both teams had members that were constantly getting lag spikes and d/cs. The map was Legacy of the Foefire. Please fix ASAP!

tichorum.2415:

Nah Ken. I thought this patch was a step in the right direction; and in the midst of all the anger posts, I thought I’d post about what I think it did well.

The weakest links (ele and mesmer) are still needing a fixing IMO.

Understandable. I was hoping for at least an adjustment to Healing Sig and a cast time added for Skull Crack, since those seemed kinda obviously needed. But hey, next patch maybe.

Unless you can convince me that there are solid team comps that aren’t Guardian Warrior Ranger Thief X (where Warrior is a good choice for X), I don’t think balance is in a good spot just yet.

Here, try this build for hotjoin. You’ll be dang near unkillable, do tons of damage, and probably annoy the crap out of people. LOL

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ss-Bx;0NKkP0g4cL-60;9;59T-T;13;0189;157AU-k6W;1KJG4KJG46BN
http://www.twitch.tv/cymerdown/b/468917479

This is what it should do (same as what most games with a queuing system do):

When the queue pops, each player gets a popup before they enter the match:

“The match is about to begin. Are you ready? (Y/N) 30 sec remaining…”

If not all players click “Yes”, the players who didn’t are removed from queue, and it re-queues the players that did. Not clicking “Yes” has no penalty associated with it. Also, it would be nice to have some way of alerting players that their queue as popped if they are alt-tabbed at the moment (ex.: SMITE has a little notification window that pops up in the bottom-right of your screen and there is a notable “clang” sound accompanying it).

Not exactly, we only mentioned small things that could help the underplayed specs like AH DPS and Meditations. We did say that on the whole, DPS Guardian’s in a pretty good spot (and bunker is in a great spot), so long as some of the more broken specs in the current meta are brought into line.

As for Warriors, I did state my opinion that they’re still underpowered as mid bunkers in team arena due to not providing enough support. And we mentioned that other classes need some help in terms of support so that other classes can compete with Guardians as bunkers. The only things that we asked to have looked at for Warrior are things that a lot of others agree are on the broken side, like Healing Signet and stun duration.

For thief, we only really talked about their most powerful spec and Shadow Trap, and we’re certainly not the first to bring those items up. It’s not their damage that’s too strong, it’s the evasion and mobility of the spec that’s making it oppressively good at the moment, and again, there are many who agree with those points.

So yeah, I’d say your post reeks of gross exaggeration.

Ranger

• Currently relies a bit too much on passive traits
• Access to a lot of protection and capable of being offensive with pets + spirits while having a lot of defensive utility to fall back on (evades/fears/blinds)
• Spirit build currently has too much flexibility (good 1v1er, good teamfighter) compared to other classes
• Currently very locked into Wilderness Survival tree since the passives + traits in the tree are too good and they lack good stunbreaks and condi removal

Necro

• No tells on their marks; can’t tell which mark is being cast
• Set up perfectly to deal with DPS Guardians with good ranged damage, snares, and Corrupt Boon
• Able to take down a Bunker Guard relatively quickly
• Still very strong, only class keeping them in line currently is CC Warrior

Engi

• One of the toughest matchups for DPS and Bunker Guardian due to kiting + grenades and bombs
• Good ability to kite and play defensively when needed and can close to melee and drop bombs/nades at their feet when winning
• Elixir R can be used to sometimes win a losing duel
• Grenades could have a minimum range in PvP (240?) so they can’t be thrown at feet and have every nade hit
• Bomb damage is a bit high in PvP, could see a slight reduction
• Lacks good stunbreakers but otherwise still a very strong class with high skill cap in PvP

AoE cleave too strong in PvP, lowers the viability of single-target damage builds when AoE is so effective at winning teamfights, also AoE needed in the meta to counter AI

Mesmer

• Currently has a tough time in the meta due to the strength of s/d thief and AoE condi damage
• Toughest matchup 1v1 is the Countless “on clone death” build
• Against shatter, AH DPS Guard has a lot of ways of cleansing immob and blocking shatters

Elementalist

• D/D has seen too many nerfs and fallen out of the meta especially with S/D Thief boon stealing
• Best option in the meta is 0/30/20/0/20 build with Rock Solid to cover Ether Renewal and deal with CC Warrior
• S/D build is great burst but a bit too narrow to deal with the various threats in the meta including S/D Thief
• Bunker Ele needs more group support options to compete with Bunker Guard

Power meta more fun to play and watch than the current condi/attrition meta

Here’s a summary of what was discussed in the video for those that don’t have time to watch it:

Guardian

• Altruistic Healing DPS

1. Few different ways to build it, most involve staff
2. Good build with some good and some bad matchups 1v1
3. Could lower CD on “Retreat!” to enhance viability of non-staff versions
4. Works well on double guard teams in combination with a bunker guard for additional suppport
5. Symbols promote static gameplay, perhaps make them traitable to become auras

• Meditations

1. Lacks ability to stick to targets (no swiftness, few snares)
2. Lacks a good way to escape bad fights
3. Upcoming fury trait is ok but doesn’t help above weaknesses, swiftness or chill would help more
4. Could add ground-target to either of the 2 teleport meditations to help above
5. Chill-on-blind trait would be another option
6. Zeal should have a good GM trait to pair with Meditaions instead of being forced into Radiance and one-handers

• Bunker

1. Still strong, EU altruistic healing bunker build just as hard to kill as warrior bunker
2. Virtues bunker still offers the best mid support in the game
3. Would like to see more support options added for other classes to compete with bunker guard

Dodge Spam

• Some classes have too many dodges
• Classes with Vigor traits (like “Vigor on crit”) should see a lowering in the amount of Vigor given since these classes typically have near 100% Vigor uptime
• Sigil of Energy should change to 25% endurance return in PvP
• A slight damage nerf across the board may be needed to compensate for the lower number of dodges

Warrior

• Bunker build strong in solo queue, doesn’t offer enough support compared to guard to compete in team queue
• Healing signet overbuffed, very strong in combination with soldier/cleric amulet and CC
• Berserker Stance is very strong, maybe it should match the tooltip rather than complete immunity
• Skull Crack is a very long stun for an instant-cast skill — should either have a short (1/4-1/2 sec) casting time or have lower stun duration
• Sigil of Paralyzation is currently bugged to round up to the nearest second, going to change on Oct 15th but perhaps they should be removed from PvP entirely if current stun durations remain as long as they are

Thief

• Sword/Dagger bulid currently has too much evasion and is hard to punish when overextending
• Its ability to pressure and stick on other glass cannons is currently keeping Mesmer and Ele out of the meta
• Sword #2’s Shadow Return perhaps should not be usable while CCed
• Stealing 2 boons may be a bit too strong (instead steal 1 boon or remove 2)
• Slightly decrease the evades in addition to lowering Vigor access (maybe reduce the effect of Feline’s Grace)
• Shadow Trap offers too much map mobility and has no good counterplay other than running your own thief/mesmer

Fair enough; we didn’t really have a list of talking points, we more or less just winged it for this one. In future videos we’ll have to set a list of items to hit and try to stick to a time limit so we don’t end up going overboard. Also, I’ll make some cliff notes tomorrow for those that can’t or don’t want to watch the whole thing. Thanks for the comment.

Hey, guys. Today, Arken Elric and I did a webcast (perhaps the first of several), discussing the game from a Guardian perspective in sPvP. We first talked about the different specs available to Guardians, the things these specs do well, and things they may be lacking to be more effective. Later we moved on to the various other classes and how the Guardian stacks up to the different builds we encounter in sPvP. We started off the discussion just the two of us, but later on we were joined by various other members of the NA sPvP community (including Bear, Countless, Blinx, Cruuk, and Wakkey), and got their valuable input as well. If you’re interested in sPvP balance discussion, you won’t want to miss it! Link below:

http://www.twitch.tv/arken_elric/b/466823707

As should be obvious, the contents of the webcast are only our opinions, and shouldn’t be taken as anything other than that. If you have your own opinions, feel free to share! If you like what we’ve done, feel free to follow Arken to show your support and to be part of future podcasts, as we always try to include the viewers in the discussion.

Didn’t get to play with him, but played against him a few times tonight. Good games, kinda jelly I didn’t get to play on his team

I like streamers tht interact a ton with the viewers, so streamers like Countless, Arken and Ostrich top my list. Plus, Arken is a Guardian so he gets bonus points!

We’ll see what happens, but personally I’m doubtful that balance has really been achieved yet. A lot of the top competition in NA is mostly gone from Team Arena queues, so testing things there isn’t really a rigorous test of what’s viable or not atm. If you’re testing these things in scrims against top NA teams, or against top EU TA LB and having success, lemme know.

Mrbig.8019:

We have enough power creep already.

As i said it, shelter gives guardians the chance to survive even against 3 enemies for a good shot ( i’ve seen countless time them surviving a combined burst then just using shelter and surviving again for another minute if not more) and , as you may understand, shelter is REALLY vital for them.

This is all packed up with the best team support this game has, SYG in primis.

It’s time to bring it down, and it’s the only way to make other bunkers possible.

Not only, it would led to the needed buffs in damage/mobility department since a guard has always been a bunker a nothing else, totally neglecting all other possible builds.

It would only led benefits for both guardians and the game.

First of all, if all you’re buffing is unplayable specs (and almost all bunker specs that aren’t Guardian are unplayable), then it’s not really power creep. Power creep is where you keep increasing the power of all the top playable builds across the board over time, and that’s not what’s happening. It’s actually the opposite, the overall power of playable builds has gone down since release (and for good reason, the age of insta burst is almost behind us outside of the long cd scepter/dagger burst combo, and good riddance).

This scenario you speak of, with 3 people beating on a guardian, him blocking all the burst with shelter, and then living “for a minute or more” afterward, I can’t say I’ve ever had happen to me in a top tier tourney match in my thousands of hours of pvp experience. A good bunker guard vs 3 good dps will not live more than 20 seconds, and that’s if the guard starts that 20 seconds with full CDs. They’ll live less than that usually if any aggressive elite gets used.

Lastly, nerfing bunker guard in some way won’t suddenly increase the viability of all the unplayable mid bunker builds. People will just roll with 5 dps and a bunch of res utils and enough personal stab/invulns. There’s no mid bunker build that’s barely on the edge of playable if only bunker guard wouldn’t be so darn good, with recently the possible exception of war after the latest changes but I haven’t gotten much chance to test it since then. The other remotely close candidate is engi, but they weren’t there yet before the elixir r nerf and certainly aren’t there after it.

On a full cleric bunker guard with Soldier runes, it heals for about 1/3 of my HP.

A healing skill like this which is hard to interrupt is pretty vital on a bunker with such a small HP pool. If we didn’t have Shelter, we’d need the next tier up of base HP in order to survive sufficiently in 1vX situations. Honestly, it’s not just a Guardian’s survivability that makes them strong in comparison to bunker builds of other classes. It’s that we can survive well against physical damage, condition damage, burst, and we give good boon support and condi clears in a teamfight while also having the Stability to get stomps/resses and keep ourselves on point. Other bunker builds are lacking in one or more of these aspects, and should be buffed to have some more of these tools, because so far Guardian is the only class that achieves a critical mass of them.

tl;dr: Guardians aren’t overpowered and in need of a nerf, bunker builds for other classes just need a buff!

Roy Cronacher.1576:

I agree with the “spirit” of these changes, and time will tell if this was enough of an adjustment to the build. People complaining over much at such an early point before anyone has had a chance to properly test these adjustments in high level games are simply overreacting.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Agreed on the shaving + making sure we don’t overdo it with big hits to the classes.

Also good points about making sure that we don’t take away the things “holding down” some of the strong builds. I think Mes and Ele are probably ok for the most part, as long as we tone down the conditions output from some classes, and bring the S/D Thief in line.

Yeah, you’re definitely right about that and I think most of the top level community agrees. Mesmer and Ele are by no means weak, they are just being oppressed by the current condition-heavy meta in that they don’t bring enough to a team to support a Necro’s and Ranger’s condi pressure, and you would be crazy to not run either of those in their current state. They both also run face-first into weakness and protection, both of which there are metric tons of in the current meta.

By the way, I don’t agree with others that are saying tht the game needs to be slowed down more. Coordinated bursts and fast kills are more fun to watch for a lot of people than slow, bunkery attrition matches. Look at MOBAs, people love watching those and team fights in those games rarely go beyond 10 to 15 seconds. I think the pace of the game is in the right spot, the things mainly needing toning down to make the game more watchable are some culling for particle effects in spec mode, less res utilities, and less AI in the meta.

I’m not sure why exactly spectating a recording would be too hard. I know the way MMOs keep track of where all the other players are that are near you is it keeps relaying the timestamp, their x, y, z position, the skill they’re currently using, and the timestamp of when they began channeling that skill. Those are the things your client constantly needs to know from the server in order to keep up to date on what’s going on and thus replicate the correct gamestate. So, to create a recording, you just need to record this “action timeline” to a table, and then when a user wants to watch the recording, it’s just like displaying a real time match, except it reads the data from the table and sends it to you as if it’s a real-time match. The only issue that I could see is that the size of the table might get huge since you’re recording this data many times a second per player in the match, but if you’re only looking to record this data only for games being spectated and have it die after all the spectators leave, it shouldn’t be too big of a problem.