Guild Wars 2

Everyone has been saying that since beta.

At this point…. the fact that the game’s population was toast after only half~ a year, with a one-time-fee setup and one of the highest box sales… it kind of speaks for itself.
Anyone with a lick of common sense can see that GW2 flopped in next to every way imaginable

-they tried to remake the que-system, SPvP servers and ‘tournaments’, but it ended up as something that has always been driving away players…. free-paid tournies, the majority of competitive players left as they had 30+ minute ques… just plain old ‘tournaments’ turned into the token ‘hotjoin’ of any other game, with a hurting MMR that forces ‘premade or bust’….
-terribly undertested combat/class-design…
-most people hate conquest…
-the PvP ‘glory’ is useless for anything but getting carpal-tunnel making dyes…
-combo fields, great concept, could have been the missing link between allies, the thing to give the game innate teamwork between players, BUT ended up being a trashy minor rotation->buff source…
-they added in body blocking, but made it worthless short of by masses of minions…

Seriously, next to everything I can think of in this game was shoddily made at best…
Anyways, with that last blarb, I can only speak for myself… and the dozen people I bought the game with.

It’s downright depressing that ques are synced through all NA.
Games have managed respectable que times 4~ years after launch… with ques split between a dozen different servers….

And GW2 is struggling with everyone linked to one…
Downright tragic….

The worst part is that the devs don’t see that, the trash population of a one-time-fee game with millions of copies sold, as a tell-tale sign that they might be doing something wrong…
kittening pathetic is what that is…

ronpierce.2760:

This whole Anet hosted E-Sports stuff has to go, we were wanting more balance updates than 1 per month (Every other bein but fixes, thus 1 every 2 months). Pax put a halt to big changes and left us in the worst meta the game has seen for longer than it should have been showcased. I’m all for pvp events, but don’t let it take away from development. There is far too much to be looked at currently for taking long development breaks just to have month+ long pvp events.

The game has never gotten the development it needed, regardless of PAX.

The devs are incapable, plain and simple, and no game attempting to revamp a genre can manage it with either the funding/manpower/capability that these devs have.
So much potential, such terrible execution.

Little has changes since launch in terms of gameplay, at best there have been balance tweaks… in a game that needs next to every feature seriously revamped…

Not saying the devs are worthless or that they don’t care or anything… just that through some issue (either of resources at hand, timelines, procedure or their own capabilities) they are unable to make a good game.

ensoriki.5789:

I swear next thing people will cry about will be banner warriors holy smokes.

Just because something is underpowered doesn’t mean, if it is brought up to par, it will create good gameplay. Balance is never the issue in that situation… because in the end banners are just a badly made mechanic… just like spirits…. just like AI pets… just like initiative… actually, just like allot of things in GW2…

Jasher.6580:

All the professions are easy to play. I don’t think there are any professions that take “more skill” to play that Ranger.

Most people would disagree with you there.
Explaining how a passive proc based, heavy evade based, AI/condi dmg based profession doesn’t take all that much skill to play… compared to the required skill to play… an engi, to comparable effect… is kind of more than I can do on the forums.

The only thing I really can correct though, is if you are getting effectiveness a lil mixed up with skill…
Like some specs in a class are naturally much stronger than others… for example playing a glass mesmer and thowing out all your phantasms fallowed by a shatter spike, against most specs would be pretty brutal dmg… but against decent players with the viable/tourny-quality specs… would end up with you getting kitten-faced… you end up having to play the mesmer, much, much more strategically to actually manage the kill.
Where in contrast, the spirit ranger, it doesn’t take all that much more skill as you enter higher and higher brackets of competitiveness, to remain effective.

Chopps.5047:

My profession can never, ever win with you people because of Anet.

The main QQ about spirit rangers is that they take little skill to play… yet are TOP TIER QUALITY.

Top tier specs shouldn’t be jokingly easy to play… ESPECIALLY the week before the first esports tourny… its actually kind of funny how that and s/d thieves might discourage more people from taking the game seriously (because how kittenty the depth is) than help… because game-tweaks are not a matter of just making specs ‘top tier quality or not’… but a matter of creating engaging gameplay…
Spirit ranger are not good at that in any sense…

And its all Anet’s fault for being god kitten awful at tweaking a game.
It’s at the point where I can only see ‘new devs or no real progress’
(I AM NOT JOKING IN THE SLIGHTEST, with a new team behind the tweaks, GW2 still has a long-shot, but actually a shot, at coming back from this mess…)
Which sucks… because so many games have gotten by with kittenty dev teams… but anyways, GW2 is kind of in a unique spot with its massive potential, but SO MANY obstacles still in the way of it.
Maybe even sell it, I’m sure some other company would love to get their hands on this game… they can then go through the real beta period GW2 needed, work out the kinks in teamwork/condi/CC… touch up effects on weapons… and voila, the first legitimately Esports quality MMO…

Immoblize shouldn’t stop dodge rolling…
Plain and simple…

Conditions shouldn’t be hard CC… cleansing isn’t even remotely made for that…
The cleansing Anet put into this game seems setup for combat where condition removal isn’t necessary to make a playable spec (the one good condi removal trait in only most classes… sacrificing a utility slot just for one cleanse every 60~ seconds)…

Long duration immobilize… and fear…. both are not necessarily OP, but don’t fallow the game model Anet setup… at all…
Same thing with dps conditions…

The game is a mess.

@ Bennet
Zealots not being the most effective healer doesn’t mean it wasn’t effective (I actually was a top sorc and choppas personal healer for a while), but more importantly, a good example of gameplay…
I didn’t play the game when bomb groups where super, super common. WAR was by no stretch of the imagination wonderful in every match, like pretty much any game, but like a good game, overall, it had engaging enough gameplay that sticking it out through those ugly matches was worth it.

Yes the game was notably different and I incorporated that difference into the transition I made from talking about WAR to GW2… just how they were different (less team based) so what GW2 had to do to make up for it (much deeper and well rounded weapon/util setup, push more for innate synergy between allies).

Anyways…
Conditions, yeah they are just in a kittening bad spot… they basically have to rule the ‘any fight other than burst’ game or be left sub-par… or as possible pieces of flavor for team fights… kind of a kittenty situation…
Did I mention the Anet devs really annoy me?
Because they do…

ensoriki.5789:

garethh.3518:

jcbroe.4329:

I would assume though, that eventually, if you play seriously and take it seriously, you will be matched up with like minded players, and if you don’t player seriously or take it seriously, than you will be matched up with those players. That is the ideal scenario, but I’m also going to assume that the system has to be fed a large enough sample size for that to happen.

And if you ever are in the mind to switch between the two because you don’t want to take a game seriously or cassually always and forever…
You.
Are.
Boned.

Until matchmaking changes your position for your change in dedication.

What happens if you are already skilled but just don’t want to play the few viable specs at the moment, or want to practice a new spec?
What happens if you just want to mess around with some friends?

Should you have to take the few day climb back up the ladder after… just so you can be matched with evenly skilled players again…

jcbroe.4329:

I would assume though, that eventually, if you play seriously and take it seriously, you will be matched up with like minded players, and if you don’t player seriously or take it seriously, than you will be matched up with those players. That is the ideal scenario, but I’m also going to assume that the system has to be fed a large enough sample size for that to happen.

And if you ever are in the mind to switch between the two because you don’t want to take a game seriously or cassually always and forever…
You.
Are.
Boned.

Cogbyrn.7283:

garethh.3518:

Cogbyrn.7283:

What I’m getting the impression of is that people want the ability to remove condis appropriately, tank damage, and be able to break from stuns. All in the same build.

No weaknesses. Is that good design? People love being well-rounded/invincible, and I’m still open to the idea that condi pressure is too high.

But is that really a good idea? To make a bunker build able to bunker down well against any type of intrusion?

I’d like a game where most fights ended with deep engaging gameplay.
GW2 is based around skirmishes with little innate teamwork and teamsupport.

That means in and of your spec, because of the game-style Anet chose, to have the ability to counterplay most enemies and they you…. there has to be allot of things in a spec…

If you don’t mind, can you describe the type of deep/engaging gameplay mechanic you’re looking for? Because I don’t think you’ll find it outside of a Fighting game. I’ve had plenty of interesting GW2 fights where knowing what an opponent would do next gave me an edge, but at the end of the day, it’s an MMO with enough mechanics and freedom to build that odds are you’re going to have a build-based weakness. The design is such that you overlap that with the strength of a teammate or trivialize it with other intense strengths.

Have you played Warhammer Online?
That’s the closest to it in a game I’ve played, I mainly played a single target healing zealot. The entire combat scheme being based on group v group fights, making positioning and how well you could predict allies/enemies, see conditions/inc-heal-debuffs go up on allies give leaps and bounds of an advantage… like after back line healing for a long time, where I had to know where spikes were going to hit when, how to best avoid the nasty inc heal debuffs, how hard classes hit and from what, positioning to discourge being stealth-ganked…. I played a rank 55 choppa (a month or so after the ranks got pushed to 100) and was pulling above even k/d most the time and even topped a few dmg charts….
It was a game where there was a large skill cap relatively independent of what class you played, a fair deal of the time, not always by any means… but often enough to make it a game worth playing.

The skirmishy nature of GW2 puts so much more focus on the actual class abilities themselves, instead of working in and against a group, which means if I critique the game… the ability scheme is where I’ll start since Anet seems utterly intent on conquest. The abilities themselves, on weapons, aren’t any deeper than any MMOs, and I think that’s where most people hit a wall… other MMOs don’t have deeper abilities yet manage just fine so GW2 should be able to… but the thing is, they are based on team fighting so get tons and tons if depth from just positioning and teamwork allone… GW2 needed nearly MOBA depth weapons to pull off this skirmishy conquest. It needed clearly illustrated and generally cohesive abilities (CC/heals/buffs/debuffs) on weapons to get the classes in small fights working together and able to know what is happening, body block and spike/anti-spike buffing/mitigating skills…

Yes GW2 has CC on weapons… no they are not deep.
Landing a CC on a target tends to be a joke in GW2… forcing this stability/CC-break meta which revolves more around how you spec than how you play… the same thing with conditions.
Even deeper… there is little to no innate teamwork short of focus firing… you don’t have any group support from healing/cleansing/buffing of allies from weapon abilities/utilities short of what you can squeeze into a hardcrore premade, or a few long CDs on a bunker spec…

You then may say… well if you want a MOBA, go play one…
Well, actually I have been playing MOBAs lately, but that doesn’t mean the highest potential for GW2 and this conquest doesn’t come from pushing more towards that style of abilities.

Cogbyrn.7283:

What I’m getting the impression of is that people want the ability to remove condis appropriately, tank damage, and be able to break from stuns. All in the same build.

No weaknesses. Is that good design? People love being well-rounded/invincible, and I’m still open to the idea that condi pressure is too high.

But is that really a good idea? To make a bunker build able to bunker down well against any type of intrusion?

I’d like a game where most fights ended with deep engaging gameplay.
GW2 is based around skirmishes with little innate teamwork and teamsupport.

That means in and of your spec, because of the game-style Anet chose, to have the ability to counterplay most enemies and they you…. there has to be allot of things in a spec…

Fenrir.5493:

Obviously bunker owners or condi damage dealers are not going to agree to this, but is the best for the game, other wise there is not going to be balance ever.

No, the only way this game will be good is if it gets new devs.
Within a years time they have barely improved an extremely mediocre game to play.
They haven’t addressed any of the main issues and their ‘fixes’ tend to be kittenty knockoffs of what other games can crank out in a week.

In all fairness though, the game is more balanced (between classes, not specs) than most MMOs.

Anyways… balance isn’t the end goal of ‘patch notes’.
Better gameplay is.

What you are saying will make the game more balanced… BUT, to put it bluntly… no one gives a f@k if the game is even worse to play.

I don’t want to play ro-sham-bo.
If the game wasn’t GW2 conquest, it might work, but kitten no in this game.

GW2 is a skirmish… it is centered around small scale fights with little difference based on what allies are near… what you can do is based on your spec, not so much teamwork (short of sitting down and working out specs with allies) not so much positioning… just your own weapon/utilities….

Cementing down specs to having large advantages or weaknesses against certain other ones, in this game already struggling for pug (and pro) depth, is just asking for it to turn into even kittentier gameplay… BUT MORE BALANCED!!! WOOPEE

Gotta say, nope.

Tenebrous.2451:

power>condi>bunker>power

The GW2 holy trinity, dare I say it.

That’s ro-sham-bo, the classic MMO trinity has no sort of relation like that.

jportell.2197:

Fenrir.5493:

This discussion has to stop, people that are posting here are just defending his hidden agenda:

The Boz – obviously has a necro condition op class and he does not want his lolipop to be stealed from him.

jportell- has a bunker and he wants to tank conditions….

Basically the old bunker meta vs the new condi meta fighting.

This is not going to end until people stops to push their hidden agendas…

The truth is that condition damage has no real counter, there is no stat in the game or a boon that clearly states and does reduce condition damage, that is the issue, and needs to be adressed carefully, because if they dont do that, what is going to happen is that we are going back to the bunker meta, wich is not a good step.

^This. yes I have a bunker and I do want to “tank” conditions. However what you stated at the bottom is what I have been trying to push all along and it is the absolute truth.

The issue isn’t so much an ‘anti-condition’ boon so much as how Anet kittened up when making condition removal.

When making the classes/traits/utilities they set up cleansing as if specs didn’t need condition removal to be viable… it led to not caring about splitting dps v control conditions… it led to tucked away mass condi removals in certain classes… since conditions weren’t thought strong enough to require cleanse based counters, I mean to have a playable spec.

And that was their flaw.
They kittening had no idea how the game they were making played, it led to so many issues, like… a speccing nightmare and extremely awkword condition situation…

Even now that the issue is blatantly obvious, for a years time, and they STILL don’t seem to kittening get it…
They nerfed ele condi removal instead of scattering it out throughout the class…
They have left rangers, since beta, with one great condi removal trait… pigeon-holing the class, since beta…
They seem to think the issue with mesmers is ‘not enough condition removal utilities’… have they even played a mesmer?!?! the class is as utility starved as kitten.
After one year, they gave warriors 1 mediocre->bad condi removal trait… and one ‘hard counter to condition’ utility (BAD BAD GAMEPLAY IDEA, no one kittening likes having, possibly, massive chunks of their spec suddenly be useless)

It’s kind of kittened.

jcbroe.4329:

That person recognizes it, and quits out of the game early, having already been beaten

They are adding in a punishment for quitting in the same patch as SoloQ.

@The Boz.2038
Sorry, you raise a few points I’d legitimately should have clarified, but seem to be too… emotional??… to really read what I wrote a number of times, instead of the silly post you wanted to respond to… I can’t see this going anywhere any time soon…
so anyways, best of luck.

tac.2167:

ThatShortGuy.4672:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Vena.8436:

Now here’s something I haven’t seen answered/asked:

SoloQ does the team that wins continue or have to requeue?
If the above is “continues” do they eventually get through into TeamQ, ala GW1 RA -> TA?

Your roster will disband once the match is over.

Is there a reason why? Seems more appropriate to keep the team together to encourage the feel of success.

If you keep the team together, then you’re not SoloQ-ing anymore, and you then have an unfair advantage over the other actual SoloQ players.

A marginal advantage at best…
It’s still the random people from SoloQ so not any more coordinated than… SoloQ’ers…
I guess in the worst case scenario it could group up a number of individually skilled players… but there is ranking to compensate for that. I mean short of a guy letting everyone into his mumble (which is just cool and builds social gameplay), there doesn’t seem to be much of a downside.

It actually, imo, would be a great feature, especially if you started getting matched against other groups that have won roughly as much as you or roughly even teamQs.

teonimesic.1403:

Basically what i mean is that it seems that what currently happens is:

Burst > Burst
Bunker > Burst
Condition > Burst
Condition > Bunker

Your talking about 1 necro spec… and clumping it up as ‘all of condition dmg’
Games go through OP specs and underpowered… surprise!!!
It is irrelevant to whether a whole category of dmg is broken or not…

Laserbolt.6731:

I am taking it seriously. It sounds like they thought this through and are making it fair. That means that if you don’t help your team win, then you will lose more than 50% of your games (and really what fun is that? You have hotjoin for nonsense builds and trolols). Doing it in a fair SoloQ means you will be at the bottom of the leaderboards.

I’m sorry, every expectation of that sort has been crushed by anet time and time again…

They’re not even changing the matchmaking system, so I don’t know why you have your hopes up, I mean they aren’t changing how the game matches people up… it will still be as terribly and spasticly flawed of a process as ever…

That was the core of the issue to begin with… their matchmaking couldn’t tell competitive from non-competitive players… if you want to play an off spec… well woe to anyone matched on your team…

Best of luck… seriously.
You’re going to need it.
;)

d/d necro
;D

/15char

Schlieffen.2054:

For people that want to queue with 1 or 2 friends, all you have to do is both queue solo for a couple matches and identify other good players and then invite them to group.

No other game forces you to play solo for an half->full hour~ just to be able to play a game with a friend… and few people will ever enjoy that hastle.

I mean if GW2 was a generally wonderful game to play with allot going for it… it might be able to get away with that…
But GW2 has a low population with so many people disliking so much about it… I don’t think putting needless complications discouraging social gameplay in a game in is a good idea…

All Anet had to do was create a casual and competitive que… hotjoin matches and tournaments…
In the hotjoin matches you get few rewards, in competitive you get more…
(its not zergy/random-skill SPvP)
Then all they have to do is make glory into a legitimate system where it takes allot of glory to actually get the gear… bam… fine setup.

If you want to mess around with friends.. que casual… sure there will be trolls floating around, but that is nothing new to games, and what a matchmaking-ranking system is for…

Amaterasu.6280:

Necros can tank all day in and out of DS while dishing out nuclear bombs of condis…what exactly can a direct dmg class do that equates to this?

Instagib someone.
Elementalists, from a 900~ range, teleporting in and CC’locking, can instagib next to anyone.
Thieves can backstab from stealth, on a very survivable body, for 5->9k dmg.
Mesmers can shatter-spike with the whole blurred frenzy for 10-15k dmg every 10~ seconds… they can also I-berserker for 6~k.

Necro’s, even deathshroud centric necro’s (which aren’t all that common, since condi-necro’s don’t tend to run spectral armor or have 15 in soul reaping) are terribly susceptible to well timed hard or coordinated spikes.

Death shroud regen from kitten like ‘spectral armor’ gives %DeathShroud on an internal CD, so if you manage to burst him within 2~ seconds he will get jack kitten from it… but if you’re a scrub attempting to burst over 5 or 6 seconds and don’t interrupt the life siphon… your going to see them as nigh unkillable beasts…
Necro’s are strong because of their massive condi output and many 2-3s fears… not so much death shroud’s survivability.

Tenebrous.2451:

I am surprised people are not asking for lower cooldowns on cleanses or a wider array of abilities with some kind of cleansing or condition transfer to them. It avoids having yet another stat you have to juggle in your head.

I’ve always been a fan of splitting dmg conditions and non, when it comes to what a cleanse can get rid of, then allowing dodge rolling while immobilized.

It’d allow cleansing to be much more balanceable, since most condition removals would only focus on bleed/burn/poison/confuse, so you don’t have so many conditions deemed only useful for ‘cover’ and such a need to instantly remove conditions (mainly immobilize). It’d allow crip/chill/exc. to be more easily balanced (since they won’t be easily cleansed) so can be much more strategic (and typically shorter duration) conditions.

It’d let dps conditions exist, and have a meta around them, yet the this stupid ‘spec for the few good condi removals or dont play the game’ deal won’t be going on… I mean… if Anet weren’t the devs… so they would take advantage of how easy conditions are to fix from there… but knowing Anet they would just leave cleansing as is… instead of switching cleanses to be more ‘anti dps condition’ centric, and possibly tweaking weapon abilities and like 15 or 25 point minor traits to have a lil (to give specs innately a bare-bones amount of dps-condi defense, so the specs are playable).
That and it would take them a year to get around to tweaking chill/crip/weakness/blind to be good strategic conditions…

Cogbyrn.7283:

Can anyone prove conditions do too much undodgeable damage without this degrading into a Dhuumfire+Terror discussion? Please do so.

Fight a crit/bleed mesmer or decent engi.
(pretty much the only viable condi specs short of ranger… and rangers isn’t dodgeable but also not amazing condi dmg)

The Boz.2038:

garethh.3518:

it means specs are required to have hard counters to all conditions (just because dps ones and imob) to be playable.

How the hell do you get to that conclusion? It’s like saying “thanks to warriors, a build needs to have access to perma protection, stability, retaliation, vigor and regeneration to be playable”. Why do people think that pretty much ignoring conditions as a whole is intended gameplay?

garethh.3518:

Don’t even get me into condition removal as a topic though…
That’s a kittening kitten fest that Anet doesn’t even seem to want to touch…

That’s because condition removal exists. You’re supposed to bring some. Making a build with no condition removal and then crying to Anet to fix your build without changing your build does not work.

That is irony.

The Boz.2038:

garethh.3518:

It’s a massive mess of pigeon-holing what specs are viable without improving gameplay in the slightest…

…and your idea is to gut some of those viable builds and force them into some kind of power/condi hybrid?

You should reread that post.
If your too lazy, to sum it up, I said “the best possible outcome for changing only amulets is hybrid power/condi builds, but it is a bad/messy outcome so you are trying to tackle a problem larger than your proposed fix”

Anyways…
You seem to think, “because conditions exist, because they fit an intended role and because they have counters; they are fine” which… if that’s all your thought process behind it… cool… but tragically I expect more from myself… and more from game designers…

The penultimate goal of any change in a game is engagement… for a game to not be engaging is for a game to, forever and always, fail.

Conditions aren’t an unworkable concept, but for them to force builds into cleansing traits/utilities that Anet clearly setup for a game that didn’t require condition removal on every spec… a game that didn’t require a fair deal of condi removal to be able to play a spec…
That is bad game design.

Conditions, when it comes to small fights, tend to be fine. Working around an enemies cleansing and timing your own cleanses right creates pretty interesting gameplay… chills, cripples, exc. are balanced out in it to be worth using, and debatably worth cleansing… but as fights get larger and more miscelaneous conditions bounce around, it completely destroys that dynamic, as any sane amount of cleansing is burned through in a few seconds flat or left useless because of the random cover conditions… even those cover conditions, chill, weakness, crip, exc. tend to stick around for obnoxious amounts of time since it is balanced 1v1… but not at all in larger fights.
That is bad gameplay.

TGSlasher.1458:

@garethh
Did you know, runes of lyssa are the only condition duration runes (+10% all conditions duration)?

Nightmare.

Necro/ranger/mes stack allot of bleed so krait and those lot are solid from time to time.

Malcastus.6240:

I am stating the obvious really. Show me ten other 6th set abilities that are as strong as Lyssa’s.

How much does 1 second cast time mean when you can cast it from stealth?

This is about the insane 6th ability that by no means is in the same league as other runes, which I find amazing – not in a good way, mind you.

---

AND regarding your last post, garethh.
I did suggest that all the offensive boons be stripped of this rune set, so that warriors and thieves would have access to condition cleansing, which is what you are saying is missing from thieves.

Do you not agree that taking the insane component away from the Lyssa set, which would be every boon (which grants you 5+ secs of near god status) would make it properly balanced?

You should see be now, that isn’t the way Anet makes games…
They don’t work to bring everything up to par, they take a group of ‘what is working best’ and try to not make anything too much better than that.

Lyssa is not an outstanding rune set…
Right now GW2 is insanely burst/bunker dominated… and 5 seconds of a ‘good buff on interuptable elite skill’ doesn’t beat many permanent and/or more easily achieved bonuses… like ‘scholar’ and ‘ogre’… and, of course for condi classes, condi duration ones…

If it will make you feel any better, there aren’t 10 6-piece abilities as good as Lyssa when it is activated, but that tragically is irrelevant to how a game should be tweaked and how Anet actually does balance…

Malcastus.6240:

Runes are there to compliment a build, not be the sole reason of its success.

Yes, and devs exist to make a game enjoyable to play…

Just because in an ideal wonderland something is a certain way… doesn’t mean when it flops over to reality it will be best to be that way.

Again… the goal of balance is to make a game more enjoyable to play…
Since Anet kittening blows loads of kitten at actually introducing cleansing and stability like effects to specs that need it yet don’t have the traits to give it… Lyssa exists to fill that gap…

If Anet actually got their kitten together and fixed the core of the problem… then of course Lyssa wouldn’t need to fill that role… so can be changed…

And again… scholar runes are more popular in competitive play than Lyssa… so why aren’t you complaining about them ‘defining a build’ more?

Malcastus.6240:

I
I can understand why thieves especially would love this thing, as it makes you nigh invincible for 5+ seconds. It is ridiculously over the top for the thief profession, and who knows, perhaps the warrior will be OP with this in the future.

Lastly ask yourself: “Would I want to use another set of runes instead of the complete Lyssa set?”. If your answer is “no”, it is too strong.

If you want to QQ about overused…
Most pro dps/roamer run runes of the scholar.

You do have to remember, that it is on a 1→1.5s cast, all elite skills that is.

The Boz.2038:

For the umpteenth time, conditions as a whole aren’t the problem.
I feel like I’m ramming my head against a brick wall here.

Just dps ones and removal…
Which is a very large part of conditions…

Yes dps conditions were intended to have a single stat behind them and lead to mainly ‘only condition dmg’ specs.
No that isn’t necessarily a good thing… it means condition dmg specs innately are forced into a role of ‘survivable pressure’… it means specs are required to have hard counters to all conditions (just because dps ones and imob) to be playable.

It’s a massive mess of pigeon-holing what specs are viable without improving gameplay in the slightest…

Don’t even get me into condition removal as a topic though…
That’s a kittening kitten fest that Anet doesn’t even seem to want to touch…

Baldric.6781:

This split is good, well good, it was the only thing they could do, and solo queue is way way more important than this queue team-competitive. Sure it will make teamqueue a nightmare and we will see the end of a lot of average/bad teams, but the teamqueue was there for the bright future of the ezport, and since there is no future, who cares for teamqueue.

So your basically saying.. ‘kitten anyone who takes this game seriously or has more than 1 friend they want to play with’…

That sort of deal will kill GW2 within the year.
(not that I haven’t been calling it for the last 5~ months, that Anet kittens up hard enough to drive everyone away within the year)

Emapudapus.1307:

garethh.3518:

runes of Lyssa are the only thing holding a number of builds together.

That alone makes those runes too strong compared to others.

The end goal of balance is better gameplay, right?
Destroying builds doesn’t create better gameplay.

If Anet was good at balancing and was actively working out kinks in cleansing so barebones amounts of condi removal was avaiblible to specs that needed it… then we could talk about nerfing Lyssa… but since Anet sucks at balancing and tweaking… all nerfing Lyssa would do is cut specs out of existance.

Amir.1570:

Would be great if we could all stay on topic and answer the following questions:

1.) If the only way to fix condition damage in sPvP is tweaking the amulets, how would you play around the stats (namely the condition damage portion of the amulets) to make it so that conditions are reasonable but not too crazy?

*I’m aware that conditions are necessary but it would be great if it was a little more active than apply > play defensively after.

2.) If tweaking amulets in sPvP isn’t the way to fix condition damage in sPvP, then what will fix conditions in sPvP?

The thing is you all have great ideas but I don’t think ANET even has the time to make new stats such as condition damage or duration reduction. I think tweaking amulets might be a quicker way to fix the problem at hand while preserving PvE balancing.

Also would like to see what a Dev has to say in this matter if possible.

Keep it clean.

Again, your bringing up a much larger issue than something as simple as amulets can fix…

I’ll run through the logic for you…
Ideally you wouldn’t give any amulet max condition dmg, at most make like 300~ power, 500~ precision, 569~ tough or vit, 450~ condi dmg amulet so they still pull viable dmg, yet not an obscene amount of condi dmg.
It’d push condition dmg more into a secondary slot, so it isn’t, short of rarely, a specs sole or by-far-main source of dmg…

That’d ease up the requirements for cleansing on specs, it’d let conditions specs not be so spammy as every other weapon ability opens up to them and becomes a viable option…
Since Anet isn’t big on rebalancing… it’d really kitten up the engineer condi/bomb specs and necromancer condi dmg spec… cutting 20-30% off their condition dmg is a heavy blow to say the least.
It’d further cripple staff-mesmers, but probly won’t effect crit-bleed ones all that much.
Thieves would do much better, exc…

But the biggest issue is that it would solidify the bunker/spike meta pretty much completely… you would either build for dmg (since now being condi dmg involves getting more physical dmg stats, which replaces some defensive stats… so you end up being glassy to pull any sort of good dmg…) or bunker…
I don’t think it’d help the game, and it by far seems the most changes to amulets alone can do…

Cutting back crit dmg to 30~%, cutting crit dmg as a stat and reworking ‘on crit’ sigils a lil to compensate…
Now that would take the game somewhere…

Nabrok.9023:

What do we do if you have 2 players? Or 3? Or 4?

Pray that Anets matchmaking system scews up and creates a somewhat balanced match out of the, soon to be, mediocre->small ‘team arena’ population.

BTW queing with 4 is going to be a que time based nightmare.

Vena.8436:

garethh.3518:

Wow, kitten versions of features every other game has at release… finally are coming out…
1 year late… Anyways, better late than never?

And I hope you guys at Anet don’t do more harm than good to your game through solo que…
You seriously better pray that there are enough ques for ‘team arena’ that casual duos and groups of friends aren’t thrown up against legitimate premades…
or else que times will tank, people will get bored…

That’s kind of been my issue with just straight up splitting ques from the getgo, it doesn’t actually address the issue at hand… a split between competitive and casual play…
The only way to make solo/team split que work is to have a strong matchmaking system, and a decently large, steady, population…
The very issues (their ‘ehh’ matchmaking system and small population) that put GW2 in this awkward situation where they feel they have to create a larger divide between competitive and casual players…
(see the recursion of a problem, and how this ‘fix’ probly won’t fix anything??)

The vast majority of people that MMO do it as a social game, turning ‘group’ que into ‘competitive/dead’ could entirely thrash that aspect of the game… it then would be the final nail in GW2’s coffin. I mean it’d be like paid tournies all over again except it’d end with a situation where you kittening can’t even play the game with friends…

kittening kittened devs.

You seem upset.

With devs like the ones at Anet, its hard not to be.
This game had kittening leaps and bounds of potential, but they kittened it up in next to every way imaginable.

Dirame.8521:

ensoriki.5789:

Chase.8415:

It’s going to be full of Bunkers.

This is what I am thinking.
It’s like playing a Monk in Random Arena’s.

Guys, you’re overestimating the level of which people care. No one cares enough to play bunker. All they want to do is see big numbers and nuke things down. Most of what you’ll see is DPS everything and the rare bunker here and there.

It will be the exact same thing as the que right now… just with the occasional person who occasionally cares about rank.

Rank is largely influenced by luck so no one will take it all that seriously for all that much time. It’ll be mildly less luck based than YOLO queing… and next to no one gives half a rats left testi about rank when solo queing…

If rank took into account a meaningful ‘in match score’… like k/d/a ratio in a MOBA… the ranking would be taken a bit more seriously because it pulls out the luck for, even in a losing match, the ability to even, if not increase, your rank… if you really played well enough to earn it.

GW2 is just a crapshoot in comparison.
Glory means jack kitten about how well you played.
I’ve back point bunkered the hell out of a few matches, easily saving us the game by winning/pushing off 1v2s~ and stalling out 1v3s… yet had like the lowest score…
Glory is useless, plain and simple.

Make conditions not a primary source of dmg for most any class that wants it to be…

Then you can kitten with Lyssa…
Untill then conditions are way too powerful, and cleansing is so kittening necessary that runes of Lyssa are the only thing holding a number of builds together.

Runes of Lyssa already has a 60s internal CD btw.

Wow, kitten versions of features every other game has at release… finally are coming out…
1 year late… Anyways, better late than never?

And I hope you guys at Anet don’t do more harm than good to your game through solo que…
You seriously better pray that there are enough ques for ‘team arena’ that casual duos and groups of friends aren’t thrown up against legitimate premades…
or else que times will tank, people will get bored…

That’s kind of been my issue with just straight up splitting ques from the getgo, it doesn’t actually address the issue at hand… a split between competitive and casual play…
The only way to make solo/team split que work is to have a strong matchmaking system, and a decently large, steady, population…
The very issues (their ‘ehh’ matchmaking system and small population) that put GW2 in this awkward situation where they feel they have to create a larger divide between competitive and casual players…
(see the recursion of a problem, and how this ‘fix’ probly won’t fix anything??)

The vast majority of people that MMO do it as a social game, turning ‘group’ que into ‘competitive/dead’ could entirely thrash that aspect of the game… it then would be the final nail in GW2’s coffin. I mean it’d be like paid tournies all over again except it’d end with a situation where you kittening can’t even play the game with friends…

kittening kittened devs.

Wow.
A thread talking about condition amulets… leads to a massive necro QQ fest…
As if the other dozen threads made specifically for that… or even the necro forums… weren’t place enough…

Amir.1570:

You’re kinda re-working the whole game with those suggestion. Lets try to find “realistic” fixes though.

And your suggestion about moving condi to crit dmg would just offhandedly nerf condi specs that use rabid amulet… nothing more, nothing less… The amulet probably won’t even improve an HgH engi build (the only thing that can make good use of the precision/crit dmg since they stack up tons of might) since it doesn’t give literally any power or even any healing.

Amir.1570:

Sorry if I seem persistent but I need a few people’s insight on possible changes. I’m not saying that these changes should happen but I think its about time that the community brain storms on things that can be tweaked without hurting PvE balancing.

If you seriously are aiming for a fix to the amulet chaos…
Drop crit damage.
From everything.

To have viable physical damage at the moment a spec needs to have high power, crit allot and have high crit dmg… those three attributes scale so well together that they turn things like, just high power specs… into ‘barely notable physical dmg’. Messing up that power/crit/crit-dmg scaling by turning crits into like only bonus 30~% dmg would balance out PvP wonderfully…

At the moment conquest promotes burst builds… the best kind of roamer is one that can kill an enemy in a seconds time flat. That with the only way to deal viable dmg to go glass cannon… that’s a complete push for glass deeps, having stats at least not give out dmg stats that scale insanely well together, would be a good place to start.
It’d let power/crit stacking lead to some good dmg, but nothing insane enough to be the only viable source of physical dmg short of cheese (like retal).

I’d also add in more ‘on crit’ effects to the game… ones that don’t scale off of power or condition dmg. It’d let precision alone give decent dmg with some odd buffs/debuffs from the critting, power alone gives better damage, while power and crit gives strong damage (but not insane).

For specific amulets, I’d turn berserkers into ‘+600~ power, +500~ crit, +400~ healing, +500~ condi dmg’ It’d be glass cannon well rounded dmg, with the only survivability in self healing well.

I’d also vi more for healing power to not effect regen or any other healing skill, instead just the main heal skill, like it reduces the main heal skills CD and/or notably increases its healing.

Oh Anet… while making this poorly telegraphed game its like they never stopped to think… but wait, we want people to actually watch this game and know what’s happening…

Oh lordy.

Kind of reminds me of when they said “but we have to work out kinks for 1/2 a year after release, to get observer mode to work in this game engine we entirely remade specifically for an esport based game”

You need 1 stat to have viable condition dmg.
You need 2->3 stats to have viable power dmg.

It’s all in the stat setup, you need to have high power, crit allot and have high crit dmg to deal viable physical dmg… you need nothing but condition dmg to do viable condtion dmg…
It gives condi specs sooo much more leeway.

Anyways, differences in how specs work is cool, but allowing conditions to commonly and easily be your only source of dmg…
That’s where Anet kittened up.
They should have just made condition dmg, for the vast majority of classes/specs, 1/2 your outgoing dmg, at best, and readjusted jewelry to compensate.

In general when it comes to jewelry…
They should have 5~ stats, a mix between condi and physical dmg. Crit dmg should not exist anymore (to lower the scaling on physical dmg, so high power/crit/critdmg isn’t the only viable way to deal physical dmg, like it is right now). Anet should add more procs for precision (that don’t scale off power/condi), and make healing power a USABLE stat for more than like 3~ classes.
It shouldn’t bump up regen or anything… only the primary heal… but not be a 700~ stat on an amulet, ever, like jump up between 0->500~ as a side stat on an ammy.

Evan Lesh.3295:

1) The benefit of splitting Solo Arena and Team Arena is that each can have its own rotation.

Just pray your game has the population to survive that.
There were other ways around the premade smashing pug situation… but I guess you wanted to live life on the edge by using the most possibly destructive one…

If not enough teams end up queing for team arena, casual groups of friends just looking to mess around will get matched with legitimate premades…
and roflestomped…
driving them off and leaving only legitimate premades left…
all dozen of them…
killing que times and shutting off any new player from wanting to stick this siht-whole out.

It’d be like paid tournies, but worse.

ensoriki.5789:

This.
Solo Q is ranked, it won’t be casual. Won’t be surprised if players become more demanding. Still it is progress regardless.

With group que being spastic about what skill level of players you fight and typically be against the same people (there aren’t that many premades that que up in this game) solo que will end up being the go to place for quick and easy play (I just hope group que doesn’t end up like paid tournies).
And as a sidenote, SPvP is garbage when it comes to gameplay.

Yes players will QQ, just like every game, when people suck.

A mode being ‘ranked’ doesnt make it competitive.
The ranking doesn’t give anything and is volatile as kitten since glory means jack kitten about how well you played… and winning is heavily reliant on the random team you have… meaning people won’t take it all that seriously because ranking is very influenced by luck. It is hard to take a system that is notably out of your control seriously and competitively. I can only see it being taken even less seriously than rankings are right now...

The Primary.6371:

Ultima.8673:

Drek Thalon.5490:

There are so many things wrong with that pyramid it quite literally made me lol. If you think thieves are near the top and guardians /elementalist are near the bottom you need some more experience under your belt before you qq.

s/d thief … i have lots of tourneyexperience (top 30 eu 3 accounts..) :’D
but thats my personal opinion

Which therefore means you are biased.

hahahahahahah…
If he is low rank people say, “not enough experience, gtfo QQ’er” and if he has kittentons of it… you say he is baised… that’s utterly hilarious.

Legitimate rankings are impossible with the materials at hand.

Glory-score means jack kitten in terms of how well you played.
Winning is heavily reliant on the other people in your team, a few lucky group will jump or plummet your ‘effectiveness’ as far as the game can tell, a few hundred ranks if not more.

Amaterasu.6280:

uberkingkong.8041:

Don’t matter if good players are in solo que, they don’t have there cronies with them to make them a better team. Its all about skill now AND a lot of luck, there’ll be 4v5 still but no more solo que vs premade bullkitten. My win % will go up more because of this and I wont have 18.18% win chance anymore, should be 50% or someplace near that.

Ironically it doesn’t matter about skill. As I said, you can put the most skillful player in a solo Q and the second they get matched with inexperienced players, it’s over. You can’t cap 3 points by yourself unfortunately.

The system will have a rough ranking for everyone, and know that that ‘the most skilled player’ is matched with a bunch of bads… so ideally take that into consideration.

It’s not impossible to get a ballpart estimate of how good someone is in a soloQ setup, but it does seem impossible to narrow it down to any sort of actual rankings.

Arganthium.5638:

JonPeters.5630:

Look at that! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/

:)

Which says

PvP Solo Queue
Solo Arena matches allow you to get right into the action of PvP matches in a competitive environment without gathering a full team or finding yourself fighting against a pre-formed group. Solo Arena has its own leaderboard so players can earn rank without affecting their Team Arena standings.

Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m incredibly happy about this. SoloQ needed to be separated from Team queuing for a long time, and we finally got the change we wanted. Personally, I think that this is going to be a better indicator of how good a player is, not how good his/her team is. It’s also going to be a lot easier to just go join Solo Queue, without having to worry about ratings dropping off a cliff.

Ty Anetttttt <3

There needed to be a casual verse hardcore sort of queing.
That’s the core of the issue.

Solo queing being the casual probably wasn’t the best idea, but whatever… its not like mediocre ideas are new to this game.
Random groups of friends looking to mess around weren’t the issue and never will be… now they get punished… just what a game desperate for population needs…

Mammoth.1975:

You must be dominating on the leaderboards, stompin them pugs with your easy to play fotm specs.

Right?

You do know this is GW2 you are talking about, right?
Leaderboards are a sign of nothing more than ‘how much you premade’.

But, just for kittens, I was rank 50~ back when i did more than yolo que.