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After some thinking, not a lot really….. The problem in Gw2 is that it’s more difficult to balance skills than in Gw1.
Not innately.
But GW2 being in a worse place along with a small staff, meaning there needs to be larger changes that are easier to enact, sways the scale a bit.
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They also don’t seem to play their own game at all if patch notes are any indication.
From what I’ve seen that notion seems pretty common, about MMO dev teams.
I hope its true in this case though because the only other option is that the devs just don’t know what they’re doing or are incapable of doing it… either way that would mean there is literally no chance of anything good coming from GW2.
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They planned for it to be a steady income instead of a subscription fee.
Decently high prices should be fine, people do end up paying obscene amounts of IRL money for stuff in games like LoL.
Imo the rewards are just tooo bad (being a mediocre game doesn’t help), instead of prices being too high.
If most of the cosmetics you get from PvP were much tougher to get (took allot more than like 1~k glory) and also could be bought with gems… and they looked good… I think it would have been a better setup. Of course it would just cause a larger outlet for outrage (less progression, yada, yada) if the game’s PvP blew.
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We really need -1 button to send these treads into oblivion.
If it takes the current dev team with it, I’d be happy to oblige.
(a bit cruel, I know, but its not every year that your hopes and dreams of a game turn out to be crushed, leaving you with nothing but real life to cope…)
but you knew what you buying …
The game was the furthest thing from what was advertised.
They said the thief was supposed to be a mobile harrying support class… pointedly not called an assassin because it was not going to be one.
They flaming said the game was supposed to be nontwitch so latency friendly!!!
This is probably one of the worst games to have a notable ping in.
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Make offensive pets not be the only viable pets.
Make most ‘offensive pets’ buff the ranger or nearby allies… not easily be such a primary source of dmg…
Never been a fan, for slightly deeper reasons than just the balance of downed state abilities.
What this test says to me is to use dogs. Unless you are fighting a stationary target.
If you PvE… or are a simple minded PvP’er.
Honestly i don’t know how ANET puts up with this crap.
To put it frankly…
If ArenaNet didn’t want a massive amount of QQ about a game, they should have made a good game? or at least be working desperately to make GW2 good…
Their updates are consistently slow and pretty ill done so if they posted out exactly where they were at and what they were doing, it would kinda ruin any hope for anyone still clinging on to changes in GW2 instanced PvP…
Those enjoying it as is, great for you, glad it isn’t an utterly wasted AAA MMO, get all you can of it in the next year, there is no saying how much longer instanced PvP will have even a population. Imo, GW2 is in over their heads right now in just bringing the instanced PvP out of its steady decline.
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*Needs to limit its ‘innovations’ by how much alpha time/funding it is willing to go through.
Yes Exedore, most things GW2 has can avoid being a ‘problem’ with the right balancing, they can easily be made to work with something that simple.
But when I think about a game, I don’t try to look for what makes it just work… but what makes it worth playing.
Anyways
Heals——
There are ‘heal skills’ right now that do effect the group… but they are rare.. so very rare. Off the top of my head the only one I can think of is healing spring in the ranger class. It doesn’t provide much raw health though… it isn’t a strong support skill in the sense of any other MMO, and those are what are innately lacking in GW2. The changes to heal skill I suggest would make notable support common, threw the heals and tagged on durations of vigor and sometimes protection to pulses in the heal.
(explained the benefits of on dumping ‘on crit’ vigor traits and sigil endurance, for heal skills pulsing vigor, a few times in the main post)
The main perc of having heal skills typically aoe out roughly half their healing to allies over time, in some way shape or form, (the suggestion I wrote) is that it pulls a group together and provides enough cushion healing to allow tweaks for the downed state.
——Combos——
Right now, combo fields are a situationally nifty parts of gameplay.
They are neither a notable part of spiking or preventing a spike on someone nor reliable/large way to help allies. Retaliation, a few stacks of might and 1.2k~ heals are nice, but not when they are nichely shoved into certain classes/specs and combo’ing isn’t worth any notable sacrifices in positioning… I’m not saying combo fields, right now, are bad, but that there is so much potential in them to fill a role the game desperately needs (a good way for the typical player to really help an ally, and add more focus on positioning)
——Conquest——
Conquest is a terrible map for SPvP, that alone drove away many of the people I played with. It always ends in lobsided zerging in a game not close to setup for it. In competitive play it is decent, nothing great, nothing bad… GW2 needs something great to draw people in (at from how I see it) and the map is a great place to do that.
——Downed State——
Downed state I never wanted to get rid of, its a fine mechanic it just needs some tweaking to be an all around enjoyed one.
——Boons——
Capping boon durations, the point was to make boon timing more important than just stacking it for the long-haul. In my eyes, people should be able to get decent durations out of their boon skills, especially if applied to an ally, so they are useful short of being expertly timed. The easiest way it seems to let that happen, yet stop grotesque stacking of specific boons, is to set a cap on durations, that or just stop stacking in duration (but that seemed a lil too mean).
Swiftness, at least with the tweaks I suggested to cripple and weakness and chill (less movement speed reduction, but not easily cleansed) would be a much more powerful boon in combat.
——Conditions——
I don’t have issue with how dps conditions are applied (the point I made with regards to them was just something to be wary of how to balance them), but how they force other conditions to be mainly just be sidenotes, cover conditions… then that same situation makes non condition-dps specs unable to use cripple and weakness and whatnot very effectively since they get eaten up in the mass condition removal necessary to deal with dps conditions.
——CC——
The point of shifting stuns more towards interrupts was to bring a callback to GW1 (always a good thing when your desperate for population), it frees up specs threw not forcing so many stun breaks/stability abilities short of channel heavy specs, and makes dodge timing/rationing more a factor (since good ‘bonus endurance regen’ is tough to get outside of a group fight) so setting up spikes is more about working threw and around the others person’s defenses than sneaking in a CC.
—-Thieves—-
Thieves… every class needs some level of rebalancing, that’s just part of an MMO. My point was that theives are conceptually in the worst place. Their ideology (unreactable dmg) just doesn’t fit with the sort of defenses GW2 seems to be setup on.
It’s just my opinion though.
I liked what Anet said when they were making the game, about thieves not being spike dps assassins, instead more focused on mobility and debuffing or whatnot… and always thought that they had it right the first time…
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“As an aside…100blades… such a great ability.”
I made one reference to 100-blades?
And that was just a reference to ‘hop into a fight insane spikes’.
Yes it is very counterable in 1v1s, especially after the nerf to warrior frenzy.
But that wasn’t the point.
100 blades and backstab and mug->basilisk venom do not make good gameplay even if ‘numerically balanced’.
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I actually think spirits are in a reasonable place with their actives and passives, the problem lies within their supporting traits, the mostly do not help so I suggest the following:
Make them less trait dependent, not more.
Kinda pessimistic Xll, on point for some things, but in general a really downtrodden take on it all.
The heal skill innately isn’t such an issue that it forces OP nigh unkillable builds, its’ main issue is detracting from group play (since it replaces healers) in a game with very little of it. At least imo.
Top teams not coordinating CC and whatnot is, yeah partly because there isn’t much to coordinate short of ‘when to throw out your kitten’, and partly because this game’s “top teams” are really mainly friends that would sit around the top 85 to 95% of any other game.
The downed state, at least the main issueswith it in my opinion is that it turns close fights into group wipes (since the winner usually always ends by getting his allies rezzed) and doesn’t replace anything GW2 took out for it (healers/tanks). Competitively, chain rezzing isn’t tooo strong, maybe a lil bit at best, but when pugging… it is REALLY REALLY obnoxious.
Expanding heal skills to pulse out aoe heals from the area cast would do wonders for opening up tweaks to the downed state (I wrote a massive thread on changes GW2 should have had, that was one of the first change I listed).
Anyways, yeah the bad group dynamic seems to be the game’s Achilles heal.
Most even mediocrely setup games can get away with tons of issues since they are based on, larger, group on group fights so things like positioning and coordination make a fairly large skill cap…
But conquest… it just slaughters casual play and doesn’t bring about worthwhile high level play for that sort of sacrifice.
SPvP zerging around a game devoid of near any group formation (front/mid/back) and group synergy ias a kitten choice for the main feature of pug play…
In TPvP, forcing backpoint bunkers to stay on/around node is a terrible deal. To boot the secondary mechanics always seem pretty mediocre…
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If Anet spent as much time contemplating Gw2, we’d have a completely different game.
Hindsight is 20/20, but yeah I would have killed to get into the game’s alpha testing.
As a side note, when it comes to playing a class, I’d like to see more situational CD reduction traits, something to improve gameplay by making every action have a goal, to setup reduced CD times or use the CDs to their fullest.
Like… each hit of your spammable or crit reduces CDs by .25s…
Or… each flanking hit or using a CD while flanking reduces CDs, reduce CDs for each vuln stack on the target you hit with the CD, reduced CD for each skill off CD…
Gear-Stat distribution
Things to be fixed…
-Forces mismatched stats… or spike dps
-Amulet stats don’t fit the weapons Anet made
The game seems based on a split between power and condition dmg, weapons and specs seem like they were never supposed to be entirely dedicated to condition dmg… but the thing is you need 3 stats (power/crit/crit dmg) to do viable physical dmg (short of retal)… its a mess.
The scaling between power/crit/crit-dmg needs a massive shift, you either need all 3 or the stats are useless… it forces glass dps or bust…
That can either be fixed by tweaking amulets to have more of different stats on them, or by re-evaluating the scaling between power/crit/crit dmg…
For Mesmers.
Distortion gives you retaliation and anyone who hits you 1~ stacks of confusion for 5~ seconds(1s internal CD), that could be weakness (for more dmg mitigation) or protection for the time (for more dmg mitigation).
For warriors/engi
Shield stance/toolkit block causes you to have stability and take 60~% of less dmg during the channel.
Example for utilities…
Mist form is on a 35~s CD, causes you to take half dmg, ignore CC/movement impairing conditions and move at 50% bonus speed until clicked again or 3s passes. Removes 2 stack of bleed/poison, 10 stacks of vuln, and 4 seconds of burn.
Armor of Earth is on a 20~s CD, gives 2s of protection and stability. Removes 3s of weakness and chill.
Illusion of Life, 60~s CD, instantly revives an ally from 500~ range gaining you life each time the ally is hit (the normal 10~ seconds till they die).
Ranger spirits.
Innately ground targeted, 800~ buff range, 20k life, 2.5~k toughness, the spirit gets 15 stacks of vulnerability and 1 stack of poison for 8 seconds each time it is hit (3/4 second internal CD), naturally regains 500~ life a second. Makes them kind of single spike/aoe repellant but a lil dedication or consistent well clipped aoes will take them down. Their actives proc after so many hits, work at half~ effect on anyone who isn’t the ranger.
tooltip ‘summon a spirit that buffs you every X hits, it gets weaker as it takes dmg. Allies get —-% diminished returns. Y range. Z active.’
Examples for passives would be something like ‘10 stacks of vulnerability for 1.5 seconds every 5~ hits, 3~ second internal CD.’
An example of a good weapon
(the dagger one)
Aaaaanyways, I found the time pondering this stuff week->months back entertaining.
Figured I might as well throw it out there.
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I’m sure I’ve played in more tournaments than most of the players in this tpvp forum. So no, my kind of competition is not ‘base’ level. I am not talking about friendlies. I am talking about facing people who want to be the best at all costs. Koreans are good, but they don’t rule ever game out there. Maybe stick to your korean fanboy games? Not worth talking to you anymore kid.
But how many with premades?
How many with premades with specific comps?
How many practice sessions and skype talks about other teams have you been in???
That is the essence of playing a game to be an esport.
Slapping ‘tourny’ onto the que system and pugging or working out duo’s with friends is something any game can have without even glancing in that direction. Good mid level gameplay and casual ‘tournaments’ seem to be the focus of everything you say. Don’t confuse that with ‘an esport’.
As a sidenote….
I consistently have been in the top 60~ of NA leaderboards when I ran slapped together premades, and easily could have been in Sataarcoeny’s group if I wanted to dedicate the time (tragically college and work are a bit more important).
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I don’t know why the teams who left are even considered competitive anymore. They aren’t competing in gw2 due to not playing, so they are NOT a competitive team in tpvp anymore and it doesn’t matter why they left or why anyone other than me, myself leaves. I enjoy the game, and I play it competitively. When I see others play it competitively, it makes it even more fun. I don’t need the top team players from the past to come back or even stay to nurture my competitiveness. I just need people to compete with. And there are people compete with no matter how much you want to deny it. And that’s a competition. If that’s not your kind of competition, maybe find a new hobby?
Aaah.
See.
Finally, you talk about what you want from the game…
Just medium level play that can feel pretty competitive.
That has nothing, like at all, to do with an esport.
Cool, that you found what you want, thnks for the complete sidetrack. Anyways… now that you know… don’t go saying ‘people are raining on the esports parade and that is bad’ because you don’t really care.
You just want your base level of competition to stick, not to have super leet korean teams playing the game 24/7 for the sake of prize money.
Good talk…
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Nah, you interpretted me wrong. I am not saying anything about scaring other teams. It’s just a matter of fact that if you don’t play, you don’t get better. And with all the balancing changes, I doubt any returning ‘top team’ will be able to handle a pug group of top tier players. I am just not one to mope about losing top teams. People will get better, teams will form again and then they’ll become the top teams. Just gotta keep the hype up.
Yes, whoever is best make up the top teams, but that doesn’t mean that they are esport level competitive teams…
These teams don’t sprout out of the woodwork, this level of competitive teams typically move from game to game, so finish your train of thought.
Competitive teams won’t be good if they take prolonged breaks from a game…
Then why are they taking a long break from GW2??
If it had great gameplay with esports potential, why aren’t they still keeping up to speed on the game?
Why haven’t they even posted out threads or anything of those likes, talking about the features they need to see before coming back??
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Just because conquest did bad in the past doesn’t mean it’ll always be bad, then we wouldn’t have anyone attempting innovation if we tried to copy what just ‘works’. -shrug-
Innovation is fine.
If it is done well.
Not everyone constantly innovates everything for a reason.
Especially when it comes to something as large as an MMO.
Whichever ‘big team’ left probably couldn’t face our top tier players now.
Seriously?
Are you implying that the few ‘GW2 top teams’, ones that for the most part are just groups of friends (a major one of which has only been together for a few months time), are scaring away highly competitive teams ??
Ugh, I guess, whatever helps you sleep at night?
edit: @gareth like I’m all up about stating what’s bad, but a lot of the things that have been said or just misconceptions or bad perspectives not any gamebreaking things.
It’s forums, nobody really cares about the necessary major changes…
I even made a thread throwing out issues and ways to fix the most janky mechanics of GW2, but tragically everyone decided ‘ENGIES SUXXX’ is a more important topic.
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You may or may not be right. But fact is, there were consistently 300 viewers throughout the whole stream. That means people didn’t stop watching or at least didn’t close the stream window and ideally that means it was interesting to watch for those who tried to watch it. And this is a team game with the game mode ‘capture point’. Of course it’s going to rely heavily on teamplay. I think your view of skill is who can kill one another, but that’s not what the current available game mode is. If you want a deathmatch game mode, sure—I’ll support it for more game modes and that will rely more on your ability to win a 1v1. But this current game mode is fine and works (or is getting better at least) and the way you define skill is MUCH different. It’s not about landing the kill, it’s about securing points and knowing when and where to go; if you can get a kill, wonderful, but it’s your job to make sure you are in the right place in the right time to defend your point if you can or support people who are outnumbered.
Streams tend to go up in count as the game goes on (since more people see the fact its streaming or show up late).
But aaanyways, hardcore (you have to be to stick with the game at this point) dedicated fans watching a match is different than the general gaming population.
Conquest doesn’t seem to do shoutcasting any favors, the combat is decent for it, but the map is terrible.
and that’s why pvp is not popular nor watched by many and we have posts like this daily. you can disagree with me all you want but fact is there are very few who take pvp seriously and very few who enjoy watching streams and vids. the game mode is one of the many reasons this is the case.
Where are your facts lol? I don’t see 300 posts that spvp is failing. Just a handful of people who are trying to kill esports for whatever reason they want. sigh..
The games PvP population tanked after launch and still isn’t going up.
Forum squabbling has nothing to do with whether or not a game will be an Esport, that’s entirely in Anets hands and they lost literally every Esport centric team because of their gameplay!!! if it was a great game for esports only lacking a few features, major teams would have stuck around, practiced and kept teams together for when it had these custom arenas, spectator mode, and leaderboards.
Few if any major teams have come back.
GW2 has a world of issues all its own when it comes to competitive play, saying so isn’t trying to kill its chances at being an esport, but actually, helping (if marginally)
(awareness is the first step to change)
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People who are still playing GW2 come from GW1, they have never experienced a good and polished e-sports game. I dont want to insult anyone, I think its true.
GW1 PvP was miles, leagues, light years ahead of where GW2 PvP is right now. That’s not to say that GW2 cannot reach and surpass what GW1 PvP was, but its not there yet. GW1 PvP was and remains some of the best PvP i’ve experienced in gaming period and I can assure you, I’ve played many PvP games.
Talking generally, we have more than enough threads like this and If you wish to constructively voice your frustrations then please do so in a pre-existing thread.
With the staff they have, GW2 will have to have all the luck in the world to get anywhere.
GW1 at least had a good base system to work off of, a combat and map setup that drew in hundreds of thousands of dedicated players over 10? years… GW2 had a larger population from the getgo… and its gameplay has driven away even more, in a few months time.
aaaanyways, GW2 has allot more to fix than just leaderboards and animation times?… the games gameplay pretty much picks up a stick and beats the vast majority of people away from it… there’s a reason literally no competitive team is sticking around… and it has little to do with achievements and inspecting.
Just cus, I wrote up a large list of tweaks addressing allot of the games terrible issues, stuff that would push it more towards the world of Esport lvl PvP, but I dunno, I think they’re good idea’s but probably just more a bored ramble than anything since the only time to really address stuff of that magnetude was in alpha.
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Crowd Control.
I have never been a fan of hard CC.
GW2 seems to thrive on them, fine if its their style… go for it… but personally I find losing control of your character for extremely prolonged times to be silly… with only speccing to come to the rescue (vigor/stability for prevention, CC breaks for after).
Interrupts, I’d like to see play more based on them since the GW1 fans seemed completely in love with them, meaning the Anet guys have a good amount of knowledge of what interrupts should do and how strong they should be. (it’d draw back old GW1 players and, at very least for me, largely improve gameplay in one foul swoop)
Knockbacks would be more positioning based, with the changes to heal skills and combo fields, knockbacks would be extremely strong in competitive/somewhat-coordinated play because you can knock people out of aoe heal skills and completely screw up combo-spike attempts.
Knockbacks will have only a 1/4 second standup time.
Stuns will generally be 1/4-> 1/2s long on near instant casts.
Dazes will be generally 1/2-1.5s long on slightly delayed casts.
Knockdowns will be generally 1/2->1.5s long on delayed casts.
They are an unavoidable high dmg class in a game based around active defense.
I’m not against instant/twitch abilities, just uncounterable actions.
I’d rather they were an extremely tricky class with some anti spike hate and good vulnerability stacking. It’d be coupled with good short range mobility, and decent dmg making the opportunity for spikes if well played.
A nifty idea for a thief ‘gimmick’ is that they gain a boon whenever they deal a condition to an enemy, vuln→protection, bleed→regen, weakness→fury, exc.
MAIN CHANGES TO REACH THAT GOAL:
1——Stealth is more debilitating/positioning based.
Openers from stealth shouldn’t be generally dmg based, but condition/interrupt. They can be strong at it, thanks to a few other tweaks (on smoke fields, C&D and a few stealth utilities) being in stealth isn’t typically near as instant/long duration/unsituational thing as before.
-Smoke fields don’t combo
-No internal CD on stealth.
-The thief moves 50% faster in stealth.
-Stealth durations tends to be an unbuffable 1 to 3 seconds.
2—-Initiative isn’t a necessity to spec for, for next to every thief.
-Steal is scrapped for legitimate F1->4 skills.
-Initiative will be a half mechanic for the class, the #3 skill and the F1->4 will take initiative, everything else is on CDs.
-15->20 initiative base with low regain in combat.
Smoke fields instead periodically give stealth (every 3s~) for 1->1.5s. Tend to cover most the size of shadow refuge and pulse 1/2s of blind every second (if blind is revamped).
F1 – 4 SKILLS
1- teleports you to a spot 300 units away, you can click it again to teleport back. 10s CD. 1/4s cast.
2- kicks up dirt around you blinding anyone in 160~ range for 1.5s. 10s CD. 1/4s cast.
3- Stealth for 3 seconds. 1.5~ second cast, have to be at least 400~ units from an enemy during the 1.5s cast for it to work. 5s CD.
4- An interchangeable while out of combat venom Or 1s of quickness, 1/4s cast. No CD.
OPENERS FROM STEALTH
Backstab should apply 20~ stacks of vulnerability for 2s~ and weakness for 3~; half stacks/duration if it hits from the side.
Tactical strike – teleports you 300 units to behind a target, then stun/dazes.
Pistol, I didn’t get there yet. Something like kill shot could be work, the thing is, this 2~ second cast knocks you out of stealth about half way through, so it gives a chance to be evaded/interrupted.
WEAPONS
DAGGER
Bump up danceing dag’s damage to 80% of what it used to be. It can only hit a target once. Put it on a 10 second CD.
C&D, 20s CD, 70~% current cast time but makes the thief flicker so more obvious, it now cripples for two seconds, stealth for 2s if landed in the side/back and can shift you back to the spot you cast it within 7~ seconds of using the ability.
UTILITES/TRAITS
I really like the ‘blind on stealth’ now, it should be a 25 point minor. A great defense for allies, and yourself if you open from stealth right away.
For smoke fields… shadow refuge instead makes one, of the skills normal size.
Targeted ranged attacks count as being blinded when outside yet fired in, being in the smoke periodically blinds enemies in it for 1/2 second every second~.
(blind was tweaked to reduce dmg while it is up, not cause miss)
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Condi removal
I’d have to put more thought into it… but something like Fifteen point minor traits would give three or four passive condition duration reductions.
Would give every spec a base condition tolerance.
It is passive though so by no means should be the only way to deal with conditions.
The rest I haven’t really worked out how to fix… I’m not a large fan of tagging removal on to utilities, its like trying to make the three slots serve a few too many purposes. It could be fine though.
Condi Tweaks
Vulnerability makes a good spike take prep, if you got hit for over 10~k its because you got wailed on with vulnerability stacks and watched a guy combo a few times seconds before an eviscerate…
To do this, I ’d up the cap on vuln stacks to 50, change a few NON INSTANT vuln abilities to have shorter duration(2-3s)/high stacks(15-20) and make some 25 point minor traits give bonuses… like CD reduction based on vulnerability stacks on the target. That with less ways to remove it (from cleansing fixes) would make it worthwhile.
Weakness to be an anti dps condi. It average 1-3s in duration with a cap at 4~ seconds on a target.
-Weakness reduces movement speed by 10->15%, half dmg on crit, and 1/3 condition dmg.
-Blind doesn’t go away from attacking. It’s durations are also NEVER over 1.5~ seconds. It reduces dmg and condition duration by 30->50% as well as making any tagged on CC fail half the time.
-Vulnerability cap moved up to 50 stacks.
-Poison stacks in intensity, deals 1/3 the current dmg per stack, reduces healing by 20% and an additional 5% for each stack.
-Fear duration reduced by roughly 30~% in a few cases.
-Chill reduces movement speed by 20%, endurance and CD recharge by 33~%.
-Cripple reduces movement speed by 33%.
Either down to roughly 1-3 seconds and minor traits reduce its’ duration (letting certain classes/specs be innately better/worse against it) or make imobs generally be 1s long with the rare 2s~ and keep minor traits only for the other conditions (my preference)
IDEA
making condition removal based on cutting condition duration and number of stacks… not complete removal… it would help gameplay be more dynamic and stop conditions from being so spastic (goes from 10~k dmg stacked on a guy to 0 after he clicks one 30->60s CD). Duration based conditions can have the max duration on a target capped at 4 to 8 seconds to compensate, it would be necessary to stop insanely large durations stacked on someone in a group fight.
Working around endurance (bonus is rare)/dmg mitigating conditions/boons should for the most part fill the gap imob and CC are taking right now
Intelligently preventing dmg instead of intelligently speccing for stun breaks, invulns and outrageous self healing should be the thing. It’s what Anet wanted and tweaked blind/weakness/knockbacks/interupts and more group related protection/vigor along with aoe heal skills can easily take care of it.
shorter caps in duration.
That would make boon timing more important than just stacking it for the long-haul. In my eyes, with some skills people should be able to get decent boon durations out of them, especially if applied to an ally, so they are useful short of being expertly timed, yet not in risk of being stacked for grotesque durations.
Something like…
Swiftness caps at 10 seconds.
Vigor caps at 8 seconds.
Retal caps at 6 seconds.
Stability caps at 4->6 seconds.
Protection caps at 5 seconds.
(Burn/weakness will have 8~ second caps too)
Swiftness affects movement speed in every direction.
Protection includes condition dmg.
Might and Fury will stack in intensity.
Fury now buffs crit chance per stack and crit dmg. Caps at 6~ stacks.
Every low tier ‘vigor’ trait is gone. It is a strong boon that should be treated almost as harshly as protection.
Vigor and partly protection should be mainly, caused by short duration pulses out of heal skills.
An idea, with capped boon durations, is that boon hate could be mainly done threw hits to boon duration.
Null field hits all boon durations on an enemy by 1.5~s on each second in it.
A warrior trait could remove 1/2 second of protection and stability on a target each time crit.
Armor runes could be focused on boons (removal and buffing, a lil more on that in the gear section)
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Rezzing.
More a general population issue, and stopping other large improvements (mainly for a new map with more, not complete, focus on group engagements), than immediately competitive one. Rezzing is something that with tweaks could be an enjoyed addition instead of coped with mechanic.
Things to be fixed here…
-ruining progression in fights
-one of the few ways to reverse attrition atm
-causes close fights to be group wipes on one side
-brings little strategically to the table
-frustration of chain rezzes
-grossly punishes 1v2+, further promoting lobsided fights
There is no strong perc in the current rez mechanic any way, at least I, look at it… I mean short of a shoutcaster getting to flip a nut when 2 people get rallied off a kill.
Being ‘rezzed’ just gets you up for a time (Dependent on how much life you had left in the downed state?) 5 to 15 seconds (or until you get killed/click-suicide) before you collapse into a dead rag and have to go back to spawn, and ?it takes longer to respawn after?
It takes 2, possibly 3, seconds to stomp someone
It takes a 1.5~ second channel by an ally, or 3~s channel that is interuptable by dmg by the downed player, to rez
?Cannot do either while in stealth or invulnerable?
There should be no life gain while in the downed state
In terms of being downed, it should consist of crawling and stabbing and trying to stall out your bleed, or just suiciding.
Rezzing would then be able to change the tide of a fight but not the war.
Boons and conditions
Its bad that next to every spec NEEDS hard counters to conditions because of only imob and dps condi’s… making other condis mainly into their cover against cleansing, I mean, that isn’t innately an unworkable situation… if cleansing was well made… if group fights weren’t spews of miscellaneous conditions….
>.<
Things to be fixed here…
-better design the counters to dps conditions, put non dps condi’s on a shortish duration cap (3->6s), you can evade while immobilized (it’s invading on hard CC’s job).
(less anti-condi necessity while speccing, and allows for better strategic condis)
-make vulnerability/weakness and blind much better strategic conditions, shorter duration higher impact.
(adds to skillcap and teamwork)
-make movement impairment involve more finesse
(adds to skillcap)
No offense to anyone at ArenaNet, but boons/condis just seem to be conceptualized as ‘buffs verse not’ then after being thrown blindly into the game were felt out to find out how much general countering through cleansing you need to make them not OP.
—Right now non-dps condi’s have to be balanced under par since being cover for good conditions is a large strength-—-
That along with the mass condi removal necessary to deal with dps conditions, it makes those cover condi’s lose so much worth, they are downright unreliable (weakness, vulnerability, crip, poison) I mean short of in condi dps specs.
—Having the only way to cope be ‘niche heavy any condition removal’ seems to be the core of the problem.-—-
That is a problem that can either be coped with through giving classes, innately (like F1-4 skills), a barebones amount of cleansing, or in general all cleanses should be more sporadic (cleanse triggers 2s after activating) and/or on longer cast times (not CD!!) so cleansing mainly counters longer duration conditions (typically dps ones) since vuln/weakness/blind should be more short duration high impact conditions.
sidenote
That’d let a few nerfs to condition dmg and changes to amulets to not make specs so niche (all phys dmg, all burst, all bunker) you NEED 3 phys dmg stats to do effective phys dmg because they all scale so well off each other, that’s terrible since it pushes any and all phys dmg, not just spike dmg, ANY PHYS DMG towards glass to be viable.
—OR— if condi’s wants to thrive, tragically, as far as I can see it, it can only be done with a few larger changes to cleansing (making condi removal focus on specific conditions instead of all would be a start, but it’s a bit tricky of a situation, I’d have to put more thought into it to come up with an overall great solution).
If Anet aims at making boons fallow suite into that same sort of situation as conditions… extremely strong and cover boon based, but terribly niche to spec against… it won’t be doing the game any favors.
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Combos should be a source of spike dps, it’d add in a possibility for team coordination and help the glass dps situation.
Combo’s and vulnerability should make a great spike take prep, something any MMO can respect since it allows ‘jump into a fight insane spikes’ (100-blades/shatter/BS) to be decent out of the blue, but GREAT if prepped, so the best dps is skill/teamwork related.
(adds a cushion for lower tier play, yet increase the teamwork of competitive)
Combos should be similar in function and given to every spec, that’d create innate synergy between players but still differences for the sake of competitive play. Most classes would be able to pick from one of 3~ common types.
—IN PRACTICE—
To make this work, the easiest way, by far, seems to be adding in an extra skill slot next to utilites, one for a field that after used toggles to a finisher based, weapon style skill
Each kind of field will focus on one boon or condition.
Water applies short duration weakness
(if changed to a good anti-dps/spike condition)
Fire – short duration fury.
(if changed to stackable 7->10% crit chance and 5->7% crit dmg)
Light – mid duration might.
(high stacks should only be for short times + large dedication to the boon and/or a REALLY good premade)
That allows counter play WHILE giving innate synergy between players, since all the combo fields share a simple vital thing… everyone can combo off them and the common ones all make your dmg better than your opponents.
Map Change.
Conquest side objectives being capture points… forces a bunker (bad) to generally hang around it (even worse) with a 15~ seconds cap time (boring) making an all around bad concept. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against breaking off from a group fight or strategizing over secondary objectives, I actually love it, if the ‘why’, ‘when’ and so ‘effects on gameplay’ are well thought out.
Things that need fixing here…
-the focus on bunker/spike
-the focus on skirmishing *
-unsuspenseful score system
-the lack of changing goals/‘dynamic of the group’ as the game goes on (great concepts for a game to play or watch)
*-group combat >>> non-group innately. It is based on working with people [why something like the trinity is such an attractive base concept for a game] bringing a much higher skillcap from positioning and coordination, to boot it makes a game feel much more social.
When it comes to SPvP, GW2 conquest ends up being a lobsided back and forth zerg (bad) in a game not at all set up for group fights (even worse)… it personally drove away the few people I had the highest hopes of playing GW2 with.
That pug based sacrifice, for only a debatably workable competitive map type, is by no means even remotely worth it.
To make the game more shoutcastable and suspenseful for players…
I like the idea of personal points.
You get so many over time and when you kill someone or a monster, the more you have the more you get (by up to 75~%), but have to turn them in at a third party place to turn them into team score.
It creates an IRL sportlike suspense, something the audience can really sit on the edge of their seat for.
Another thing I really liked was two citadel like capture points in a jungle of a map. You get more points the longer you hold a capture point, creating a larger need over time to uncap the opponents. The point would have something like scattered buildings and some confining walls near the middle that people inside can possibly stand on, making safely pewing into the flag area impossible, yet you could beat down walls with some time, to change up the situation.
Everything is destroyable.
Capping/uncapping could use tweaking.
To keep on the ‘constant action’ take, there has to be a secondary objective. Basically in the majority of the maps monsters would work fine, most notably one or two in between the fastest way between the two points (survivable CC heavy beasts), that gives you points based on most dmg dealt to it (killing blow can count for a 1/5~ of the lifebar bonus), it’d give players something to do in between larger scale fights, and fighting mobs mixed with players does tend to be pretty entertaining.
You get only personal points for killing monsters, ones you lose most if not all of if you die.
Stealth changes (I list later in thief) would make running in personal points more balanced.
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I’m more or less done with GW2 but always loved what the game could be, so decided to compile all the thoughts I had on different mechanics in GW2, how a number of tweaks could really change them, seemingly, for the obscenely better.
I bolded/ital important parts and put fixes in spoilers so any sane person could just skim threw it.
Complaints lately seem focused on leaderboards, queing and balance. Not that there aren’t problems in those parts of the game, but I’ve seen, many games thrive with worse, if any of those aspects.
With people who left GW2, the main issues seem to always come back to pug playing and bunker/spike conquest, instead of trinity/team-based.
The map and combat scheme is where great games define themselves. A few stellar ideas there will hold a population for ages.
When it comes to combat scheme, the trinity is a staples of the genre for a reason, it brings groups together and create innate, game carrying combat. It should never be tossed without just compensation.
The core of GW2 combat…
-lacks team dynamic in combat
-forces bunker/burst/condi
-rezzes
-awkward boon/condi situation
-mediocre weapon setups
-bad amulet-stat distributions
How well power/crit/crit-dmg scale together forces anyone interested in physical dmg to have to play as glass or cheese. Just power or crit will lead to negligible physical dmg… you have to run berserker or valkyrie w/ fury to do notable physical dmg.
Raw stats/traits/PassiveMight being the only source of hitdmg causes glass dps to be the only way to have notable dmg. Glass dps should be a perc (less situational necessities in dmg) instead of outright necessity (2~ in EVERY premade) to pull off the dmg GW2’s combat revolves around.To help that…
-other factors should be involved in hitdmg (spike debuffs/boons)
-crit damage should be dropped.
-power scales differently for dif abilities? (spike attacks have high base dmg but don’t scale well, auto attacks have low base but scale well)
The game should stray a bit away from trait-based passive dmgs bonuses, burning, exc. and more towards ‘active’ percs. Like gain fury and might for 2s along with 10 stacks of vuln for 2s on axe skill use.
Anyways, I’ll start where seems best, tweaks to heal skills and combo fields. That can improve the team dynamic, vigor spamming, make spike boon/condi’s, it’d make teamwork matter and spike dmg more ‘noob friendly’ and ‘skill dependent’.
The typical heal skill would pulse aoe heals and a short duration boon.
If you take the 25s CD heal and make it aoe heals at the area you cast it for 8~ seconds, healing allies for half it healed you, a group dynamic will form as people now have reason to group up…
Different classes, different heals
necros – a 10s~ Troll Ungent like heal, but it aoes out healing while in death shroud
Ranger – a 5~s spring that bursts an aoe heal at the start and end.
Most heals should, over time, pulse out 8s~ of vigor, sometimes a lil protection. ‘Easy access vigor’ traits have to be dumped though.
That’d kill two birds with one stone, create more need for good positioning and make vigor uptime scale mainly with fight size (get ally heal-vigor pulses) so dodges can always be a viable first layer of mitigation, instead of continually less effective as fights get larger.
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Ugh, in tPvP….
Warrior banners are bad…
No one runs them ever, I mean that I have ever seen in the past 2~ months.
Spirits are worse utilities, ranger is just a better base class so can get away with throwing away utilities.
Spirit buffs are mildly better than the banner ones* but spirits have about 8~k health… and eat up a number of traits just to be mediocre…
That’s not worthwhile.
Like most anything OP, you can make a spec work in pug PvP.
There is just a matter of how much of a handicap you have to play through…
In competitive play, such extreme handicaps (like from a spirit build) isn’t acceptable short of being pretty much the best player this game has right now.
———————————————-
*-a traited frost spirit is pretty much always a lil worse than the precision banner though, the guy doing math on the front page is just bad at math.
Annoyingly, even the guy two posts above me…. is doing it wrong.
A 10% dmg bump from spirits, makes your attack do 10% more dmg…
A 10% more crit dmg bump on a spec with 100% crit chance IS NOT A 10% DMG BUMP.
Crits do a base of 50% bonus dmg so doing 10% more crit dmg makes you do 60% bonus dmg on crit, which is actually just a 6.6% dmg bump.
At near any crit chance and dmg, the banner ends up giving roughly 9-11% more dmg.
For anyone interested, you have to calculate the total before dmg (crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) then divide the total after buff (new crit chance*crit dmg + noncrit chance) by it to get the real % dmg buff.
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I’d rather see them focus on a few other things first.
The map.
Combo fields/heal skills.
Boons/conditions.
Evading/invuln.
Decent queing in a game with mediocre PvP still tends to be mediocre PvP.
People will stick around threw, and enjoy!, mediocre (its not even terrible) queing (after at least a deserter debuff) if a game has worthwhile PvP.
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Same can go for blurred frenzy. People stand in it, then cry that it needs to be nerfed.
Please don’t say that.
You don’t see people complaining about pistol whip even though it is the same attack with a 1/4s stun at the start.
It’s all about the class around the ability.
Being forced to have an instant imob break or invuln/on weapon evade for a 10s CD!! or of course praying the mesmer sucks at timing the swap… isn’t a really the same thing as facetanking a bull’s charge after watching the warrior cast frenzy which makes him take 50% more dmg…
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With the meta the kitten it is (invuln/evade verse condi+CC→spike wars)…
Distortion is fine.
Doesn’t change the fact that the game has many, many, many issues though.
There are custom arens now; you guys NEED TO come back and show us how to really play this game!
GW2 is still the exactly the same game…
I’d wait another number of months if not over a year before you really try to pull competitive players back again.
A few more things need to be fixed before it really can hold on to a legitimately competitive scene.
(bad maps, bad balancing, bad meta)
When its kitten gets even just mostly cleared up, I’ll be the first to jump on the bandwagon and shout the kitten out of people to get back to this game.
Till then I’d work on getting a better casual playerbase if I were you.
(rebuilding the game from the ground up if you know what I mean)
Oh, and I get bored allot during class so am compiling a massive list of changes that would make GW2 into actually a GREAT game (having a better group dynamic, especially innately; better to shoutcast/play map; fixing condi/boon situation; rezzing; exc.) even if Anet did just decide to jump on the things… with how slow they go for even the most minor of changes… it would take them years to enact…
Personally, I think Anet is over their heads with just making TPvP survive threw the year…
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Made about four or five hundred dyes in my TPvP lifetime.
Totaled about 16 to 20 gold.
The odds are not with you in this one….
instead of giving them
I don’t think this is here for Anet’s sake.
I always find it curious why people say Axe isn’t a good BM weapon… Axe/Dagger may be -the- best BM weapon set out there because you can keep them permanently snared…
In somewhat competitive play…
Splitblade is extremely situational to land with a beastmaster build.
Snares are nice, being able to bunker with BM is better.
Its a nice concept your aiming for, just not terribly effective.
@Zenith
A 3s chill isn’t typically very devastating.
I’d be more worried if splitblade had a much more obvious animation.
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@Sebrent.3625
The worst bad math uses correct math to imply something that isn’t entirely spot on.
You may not have intended it? but what you wrote heavily over-implied what a vigor trait can do for the ranger.
As for Axe vs Shortbow, I have no power or precision, trust me when I say that it doesn’t matter which weapon i have…My damage is going to be god awful.
Remember, this BM Bunker is Condition Based, not Power based… You’ll have about the same luck as landing Splitblade on a thief as you do landing a Bow attack from the Side or Behind the target.
Axe isn’t a beastmaster esque weapon, sword and shortbow tend to be much more favorable as they let you kite more since pets are your main source of dmg.
As a sidenote,
Landing splitblades is easiest against thieves, blind only eats one hit so even blackpowder can’t stop it.
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I seriously question the effectiveness of axe/offhand vs. shortbow now that I’ve played so many tpvp games. The shortbow just sustains a lot more damage, and for how situational splitblade is and how generous the flanking arc is on shortbow, it’s really a matter of bringing an offhand to make up for that terrible axe mainhand sustained.
I run axe/dagger shortbow with traps in TPvP.
It works fine, I land 3-5 stack splitblades pretty much every time.
Just have to work with the canine pet and spike traps imob.
Its a pretty cool weapon along with geomancy sigils to easily throw out a hell of allot of bleeding while falling back from a melee enemy.
It’s not the tippy top tier spec, but it can take you very high if you play it well.
Few if any thieves run C&D specs anymore in TPvP, at least that I had noticed.
(haven’t logged in in 2~ weeks though)
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Oh, you mean that phantasm that can be completely mitigated through blocking, blind, evade, line of site, or interrupt? That if they actually -do- get summoned can simply be walked away from? Oh yup, sure am jealous about that!
And I’m quite happy I don’t have the option of traiting my WD skill to reflect because that’d mean it got nerfed! Not to mention there’s this amazing thing to make it tanky called “Gear”, and the fact we -could- do as much damage as it but we’d have to actually stand there and use the skill in glassy armor, and -still- be tanker than the phantasm can be.
So… your trying to put down the phantasmal defender… in comparison to WD…
Ok, if you seriously think those two are even remotely comparable in effect, I can’t really see a discussion being possible…
>.<
The only thing I can think of to say to you that could go somewhere is… think how many mesmers you’ve seen use focus offhand in PvP… now think how many rangers you’ve seen use axe offhand.
(personally its somewhere around 80+ to 2~)
I think just removing the rooting would be the best thing for it if everything else remained in its current state. It doesn’t do enough damage to justify not being able to move, and it doesn’t have enough of an effect/radius to make it an area deterrent.
It doesn’t do enough dmg to justify a channeled attack that requires melee range.
The axe spammable does as much if not more dps if I am not mistaken.
I personally don’t mind the root, if it had redeeming features, like very high dps, a decent aoe range, some movement impairment or at least a decent amount on the weapon set, the dmg strikes passively after a 1~s cast… tragically it has none of that.
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I realize what I’m about to mention is a pvp environment, but I’ve been watching Battosai use Drakes to an effect. I find their ability to hit moving players questionable, but I’m guessing the drake f2s are a tad easier to land now, and the river drake breath has the potential to do a ton of damage if you can set it up (I’m assuming through axe chill/dagger cripple, making sure the dodges are spent).
I’ve tried using them.
They are no better.
Easily the worst F2 response time I’ve tried and I couldn’t get it to trigger during the swap quickness no matter how I worked the F2 key.
It has potential just a few too many bugs to pull off reliably enough to be worthwhile, at least imo.
(limited cone range, stepping out of the area stops the F2 mid cast and puts it on CD. That combined with bad response time and little->no ability to set up the pet’s positioning make it hell.).
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If anything, please Anet, let us gain stability while channeling axe 5. With that change alone, I wouldn’t mind the fact that this skill roots you in place.
Upping the abilities dmg and making it channel the same many bolts over a shorter time wouldn’t really change that, just make it more generally viable…
You know… usable for more than an allright buff while redoing a specific dungeon for the kicks…
Unless, of course, your feel that’s everything a weapon needs to be…
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Eviscerate doesnt miss moving targets. It will change direction actually if a person teleports. It is an amazing skill.
If they teleport…. within a 300~ range… while you have swiftness up….
I’d say that Vigor is most definitely useful.
When you look at this in a prolonged fight, it’s even better.
Math is fun … and useful.
Ugh, bad math is bad though….
I don’t really like nitpicking but you guys just seem to live on being slightly wrong…
100% vigor uptime from a trait would definitely be useful.
30~% vigor uptime is much short of that…
What your numbers didn’t show is that you net one dodge roll every minute from something like that… which seems a lil less impressive…
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I went and checked, Now i may be blind, but i’m pretty sure it stacks…It looks much faster with Vigor up then without.
With ‘natural vigor’ passive, endurance recharges 50% faster.
With vigor up, endurance recharges 100% faster.
With ‘natural vigor’ and vigor up, endurance recharges 100% faster.
(from everything I’ve seen)
Meaning, vigor is only a 33% endurance regen bump for rangers (if you know how to math) not the full 100% other classes get.
PS: I’m pretty sure ‘natural vigor’ only works while in combat and you don’t need 10 points in skirmishing to get a jaguar.
PSS: My initial post was ironic. The guardians were some of the worst anyone here has probably seen, yet I was critiquing you… guess its a bit too long for me to keep acting like I’m serious, since you seemingly aren’t going to catch the flavor of it all.
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One reason to use birds over cats is the X trait in beastmastery. Vigorous training. It grants 5 sec of aoe vigor on pet swap when running birds or moas. Not sure if you noticed but Xsorus was running that in this video.
The 5 point ranger trait ‘natural vigor’ doesn’t stack with vigor making ranger, easily, the worst class on which to knock parts of your spec off for inconsistent vigor buffs.
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Clearly you’re not a very good ranger if you can’t manage to get your pet to hit the enemy, i’m pretty sure ranger has the most snares/roots in the game, you should have NO issue getting your pet to hit them.
Please don’t.
No beastmaster runs axe and dagger.
Few if any competitive beastmasters run axe or dagger.
Landing pet hits is spastic in the best of times, only done consistently in a generally immobile on point fight or, if using a bird, against non-stealth crazed thieves or good mesmers or gnade happy engi’s or in the shortrun, eles.
The main perk to the beastmaster setup is their survivability and pet F2 skills.
Both are good, don’t get me wrong. Just pet pokes… at least against decent players… don’t tend to amount to much.
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First off…
The #4 had half~ the CD and did 20~% less dmg.
The #5 did the same dmg, just over 2~seconds instead of 5.5s (atm does notably less dmg than axe spammable) along with a bump to 200->250 radius… then offhand axe would be a usable weapon and it would bring a big bump for build variety.
When it comes to a new mainhand weapon…
Not only classy but seems like it could play well.
#-1 : 300~ range spammable.
Med dmg->Med dmg-> 1s~ of quickness.
A high enough skill floor and is a cool enough reward that noobs would love it (god knows Anet gets a kick in the pants from building things around that), yet it opens up a high skill cap from landing the quickness to getting the most out of it while it is up.
It is pretty easy to screw up a spammable chain, especially a short range one. Breaking up a chain can happen threw a lil kiting/pressure/dodging on the other side (since it is only 300 range), since forcing you to use a weapon skill resets the spammable chain, like it always has, but in this case it would shut up the attempt at chaining quickness for dps. Because of that it seems pretty sporadic when you can dedicate a decent chunk of time to a short range spammable on a ranger… without neglecting survivability… yet it gives a worthwhile reward when you do manage to pull it off.
#-2 ‘wear and tear’ : kinda like a signet, while off CD, every 4th Dagger/X-offhand skill hit by you imobilizes for 1/3~ second. The active has 500~ range, hits hard, dazes for 1/4 second and cripples for a time. 15s~ CD.
Rewards good aware play, the passive adds a sense of gambling to scrubs (gambling is addicting after all) and balanced? gimmicks to builds (bonfire for more/aoe procs, pretty constant immobing while channeling whirling defense, which is extremely counterable, more so without the buffs I listed earlier for it)
possibly a 3~s duration poison tagged on to the active, and/or the attack does more dmg/effect while flanking.
#-3 ‘thorn in the side’ : a melee ranged stab, click again to pull yourself to the target you hit, evading attacks. 7s~ CD, 5 seconds to use the pull.
Rangers thrive on on weapon evades. It’s a bit of an innate drawback in setup to make up for the weapons other strengths.
If it misses it sets up the ‘pull point’ on the ground where the ranger is standing.
After using the melee ranged stab, either…
-your pet intercepts a third of the dmg you take, receiving triple?, until the skill goes on CD (punishes felines, makes more defensive pets more favorable).
-the dagger periodically aoes out a good deal of dmg from the ground or target until the skill goes on CD (pet unreliant and more strategic)
-if the melee stab hits an enemy the skill gives you 10~ stacks of might and fury? until you use the pull or for 5s (that’d work well with the ranger/pet boonshare)
TADA!!
A greatly entertaining power setup weapon that would innately work well with both axe and dagger, and probably warhorn (unlike anything else, hunter’s call would have to count as 1 hit when it comes to the imob proc) offhands; allong with melee/ranged offsets.
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The owl chill is actually very good. Long duration and low cooldown…Not everybody has to run the same ranger spec.
Sure, chill is good.
Jaguars are great.
People have preferences for certain setups, not really sure how that changes their gaps in effectiveness.
You have to tell them to attack someone then F2.
I think.
It’s a new bug feature (yay!!!) where a pet will not take your target when you swap it in, ending in allot of failed/floundering F2s and waisted quickness.
Drake F2 is buggy as kitten.
It has the worst response time in combat and least chance of actually landing, from what I’ve seen out of any F2 skill.
REALLY wanted to use a drake in PvP for protect me and barkskin since it is just a well of free life then… but the pet just sucks. It brings FAAAR too little dmg to the table with a broken F2 to be even considerably worth the loss in traps or a feline/canine.
For PvP….
Should do roughly the same dmg but over 1.5s with a lil improved aoe range.
Possibly cut down the CD a lil and bump down the overall channel dmg by a bit.
A weapon skill with little other benefit but dmg shouldn’t be doing less dmg than the spammable… while rooting you… for 5 seconds… with a terrible aoe range…
That’s just all bad.
Oh and the axe #4 skill should be on half the CD, and do 25~% less dmg, for the sake of better gameplay.
And for your phantasms to be tanky that means you gave up a utility slot and quite a few utility slots for it, which again, we don’t need to do for WD, not to mention the CD on your phantasm I believe is 20s, not 10s, I’m not talking about their activation time, because phantasms are balanced around not doing anything else until their skill is off CD.
Don’t need to?
You mean can’t?
If there were traits and a utility that would make WD wrack up anywhere near as much dmg as a phantasm… a phantasm on a 1s cast… people might actually consider using axe offhand…
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It took 15 people 10 games to figure out how to abuse stuff the Devs hadn’t thought of.
The Devs then ignored the critical input of these people.
So basically, the Devs don’t PvP, they don’t understand PvP, and they don’t listen to people that do.
Thusly, if Blu isn’t dumb, the devs won’t listen to him. So The odds of them endorsing him in any way are pretty slim.
A lil harsh but to the point.