Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Sepreh.5924:

Or, knowing our population, make the damage you take from Terror based on how attractive her character is….

;)

Terror’s damage now scales inversely with the amount of clothing your character is wearing.

BRING BACK GW1 SCAR ARMOUR! :p
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080926143349/gw/images/f/f7/Necromancer_Elite_Scar_Pattern_Armor_M_gray_front.jpg

So anyone else noticed this? Is there a conspiracy of silence so the devs don’t notice and fix it, or am I just the only player in the whole game using this in pvp? :p

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wont do it for Dec 10. I just wanted to throw out a wacky possible idea for Dhuumfire that we could discuss…

• Life Blast has a 100% chance to cause Burning on hit (2 seconds long). 6 seconds ICD.

Obviously the #s are ballpark and not necessarily final. The % chance, duration, and ICD are all subject to change.

Jon

That would actually work, it would stop it from being ridiculously powerful while still allowing people to condition-burst targets while chain-feared. Were you thinking of keeping it in the same line/tier at that duration and cd?

Well with the much higher condition duration possible in pve/wvw, maybe this would be the first trait that could be split to be STRONGER in pvp than in pve… ;p

I think their recent policy has been to harmonise spells triggered by traits with their normal counterparts, and that’s sensible as it can get really confusing otherwise.

However, they could I suppose completely change the functionality of the trait to something like “inflict pbaoe weakness r240 for 4” (CD15") on DS". That would be fair, considering it would do no damage, no bleeds, and less weakness uptime.

Recently I’ve noticed that people get feared not only when I’m downed, but also when I’ve been stomped! And yes, I’m certain it’s not just some other necro on my team dropping a Reaper’s Mark just a split second too late! :p And I’m pretty sure it’s not my own downed skill 2 fear hitting the person stomping me a nanosecond after I’ve died due to client/server lag either! It happens aoe, just like the original fear on downed. And yes I know it’s supposed to have 90" ICD, it doesn’t make sense.
This happening to anyone else?

And for anyone who doesn’t know I was never one of the moaners on this forum, even when we were near or at the bottom of the pecking order balance-wise, and search as hard as you might I don’t think you’ll find a single post of mine insulting a dev, but baldfaced lying right in our faces like this is insulting and unacceptable.

I’ve always given ANet the benefit of the doubt on everything but this was a massive insult, pretending that this kitten is intentional! I’m truly disgusted, it’s like the whole company simultaneously dropped trou and farted in my face >:(

Yeah I also love your first idea. This is a perfect example of how necros can be made more durable without them giving us the amoutn of stability/invulnerabilities/blocks/vigor that other classes have access to, which they seem to not want to: instead of completely mitigating incoming damage, allows us to SEVERELY PUNISH enemies for hurting us!

Does anyone think people take SoS for the bleeds? They take it because the sheer number of conditions overwhelms opponents’ cleansing abilities (and for target the weak). 1 bleed or 2 it’s just as good.

Thanks for replying here Jon, but your post would have been a little more constructive if it had acknowledged and responded to some of the feedback we’ve already given.
What you guys don’t seem to understand about the condition meta is that it’s not about the number of stacks, but about:
- ease of removal,
- ease of reapplication.
In order words, yes, bleeding does most of the damage. But it’s not the long-duration bleeds from Signet of Spite, or Enfeebling Blood/Weakening Shroud, or BiP, or Mark of Blood that are doing it. It’s good old scepter 1! Why? Because it’s easy to reapply! And the reason bleeds are being allowed to do so much damage isn’t because the necromancer can stack a lot of bleeds easily – in fact compared to a shortbow ranger with Sharpening Stone our ability to stack bleeds is pretty feeble. But the necro’s bleed stacks are HARDER TO REMOVE cause they’re covered by 100% poison uptime from scepter 1, 20-30% burning uptime from dhuumfire, plus weakness, cripple, torment, chill and all the stuff that Signet of Spite does. Moreover, because different cleanses prioritise different conditions instead of going for a simple last-in/first-out system like GW1 used, bleeding is rarely removed even though it SHOULD in theory be the last-applied condition almost 66% of the time (due to 2/3 attacks in the scepter 1 chain applying it).
The former, I believe isn’t a problem: covering conditions (eg fear-chain right after Dhuumfire procs) is a tactical choice and a good example of skilled play and should be rewarded. The latter though, artificial difficulty in removing all those bleed stacks simply because skill X prioritises cripple or removes a condition at random, is a game design flaw.
However, unitl you decide to switch to a last-in/first-out system, the way to effectively nerf necro is not to reduce the amount of bleeds they can output, but to reduce some of their cover conditions. The Weakening Shroud change reduces our Weakness uptime, so htat’s 1 step in the right direction, and I think the other should be removing Dhuumfire.

Mark of Blood

Like I said, the theory is not supported by the practice. Talk to any necromancer, from the leaderboards top-10 down to the 50th percentile, they’ll tell you that staff is a sub-par weapon for both condition and power builds, and it’s only carried for utility (namely skills 3, 4 and 5). The majority of necro bleed damage doesn’t come from the long bleeds, it comes from the stacks of scepter 1. So this really isn’t an effective nerf, and only hurts the handful of niche builds that rely on staff.

Terror
I can’t tell you how long we debated moving this trait to grandmaster tier last time around, and this time again. The problem is a huge % of Necromancer builds are hinged on this trait.

It’s an excellent trait: it’s not overpowered, as our fears can be blocked, dodged, or simply ignored through stability, it rewards skilled play due to its additional damage design, and it gives us that much-needed burst. However, if you reverse the 17% damage nerf from a few months back it could be a grandmaster-level trait, and it would nerf the terror+dhuumfire build, as it force people to have to choose to leave behind one of either Dhuumfire, Terror, or Master of Terror.

There is a gaping hole at grandmaster here with Withering Precision (barely worthy of adept tier in our opinion)

Yeah, Withering Precision is a tough one to balance. Perhaps if, instead of on-crit, you tied it to another condition? EG. inflict weakness whenever you inflict chill?

Focused Rituals – Really strong adept trait.
Banshee’s Wail – Already pretty good and got a buff this time around.q

Both good traits, but wonder if they really belong in curses considering both wells and warhorn are mostly used in power builds?

Dhuumfire
We know there are problems here, but again this condition helps those conditionmancers get over the top and is really what brought them into play in a lot of parts of the game.

Burning is a very high damage condition (and a difficult condition to balance since it only stacks in duration), and it’s just one condition too many for most professions to cleanse. You’ve been trying to moderate the power of the 30/20/0/0/20 build ever since Dhuumfire was introduced by taking off 1 bleed here, 1 bleed there, a little bit of damage off Terror, but it’s not working: Dhuumfire is the problem. Necros were at their sweet spot after Terror and before Dhuumfire. As many others including me have said before, the ways to fix it are:
a. scrap it completely
b. replace burning with torment
c. change it to proc on inflicting another condition instead of on crit. For instance on immobilise, which would make it handy for dagger and minion necros.

Bhawb.7408:

1) Fix the bug that causes marks to go on full CD.
2) Make Putrid mark transfer conditions off allies, but keep it at 3 conditions per person

Let me add to that:
3. Stop insulting us by pretending those bugs were intentional.

This is why we can’t have nice things… :p

I’;ve only really noticed this happening in PvP, I’m not sure if it’s lag-related or not, but sometimes I’ll activate a skill using my keyboard, I’ll see the relevant icon on my skillbar get “depressed” (you know, the brief little shading effect that shows you it’s been clicked), but nothing will happen – my character won’t go through the casting animation, and the skill won’t activate. I’m definite I wasn’t stunned/dazed/interrupted because the skill doesn’t go on cooldown, in fact nothing is on cooldown so I know I’m not disabled in any way.

It’s not the typical long activation lag I’ll sometimes get (mostly in wvw), where the skill icon STAYS depressed but nothing happens for long seconds at a time, this is much briefer, but I’ve often gotten killed because of it.
It’s really frustrating because I’m not sure what’s causing it. Fairly sure it’s not my keyboard cause I see the skill icon registering that it’s been clicked, I don’t think it’s a client issue for the same reason, so is it lag or some sort of game bug, or just my connection?

I don’t understand the moaning either, we’ve been BEGGING for pvp rewards that can let us earn gold more easily than the mystic toilet dye roulette, and now that we get it someone STILL comes and complains? There’s just no pleasing some people!

Same for me, achievement not completed.

I’m not normally one to make strong statements on the forums, and a review of my past posts will reveal that I’m always one of the first to stick up for the devs, but your treatment of the players has been disgustingly disrespectful on this issue. The stealth-nerf of not cleansing allies is bad enough, as it’s completely unwarranted in a skill with 40" cd which simultaneously got a nerf by the move of Greater Marks to master tier. But to leave us thinking that these 2 issues were bugs for four months without a single word, ignoring umpteenth hundreds of bug reports, is unforgivable!
And as to the claim that the full cd on interrupt is also intentional, I just don’t believe you. If that were the case, why does it apply to puny little mark of blood rather than just Putrid Mark? And why implement a change that makes them work like no other skill in the game?

Good man! Upvoted you.

JonPeters.5630:

Diamond Skin

Agree, I don’t think it’s too powerful for a GM.

Cleansing Wave

It’s a little too powerful for adept tier, but I think elementalists need a good t1 water trait with such low health.
I suggest that instead of moving Cleansing Wave, that you instead modify Soothing Wave as follows:
-Make it also affect all glyphs if cast while in Water attunement (including the elite glyph), and the Whirlpool underwater elite. Considered suggesting Arcane Shielding too but that would be way too much.
-Make it also affect Water Punch (drowning skill 1)
-Insert 8" ICD (to prevent stacking the effect via Water Punch)
-Regeneration is granted to allies at 180 units AoE
-Proc also grants 5" Frost Aura
-Increase aoe damage while in Mist and vapor form by 25%, increase vulnerability stacks to 2 per pulse.
My thinking behind it is as follows: elementalists already have high uptime of regeneration even without going all the way into Water. What they need is damage reduction so they can survive longer for the regeneration to heal them, hence the addition of Frost Aura for the (slight) damage reduction, making its duration slightly longer than Mist Form to give the elementalist a small window to heal themselves after exiting it. I am not concerned with the possibility of double chill-stacking while in mist or vapour form, as Frost Aura shouldn’t proc to chill the attacker if the elementalist is hit while in Mist or vapour form. Furthermore, making the regeneration AoE and adding Frost Aura sets up this trait to synergise with either one of the 2 Water grandmaster traits the elementalist chooses to go for. This is what a good grandmaster should do in my opinion: be good enough on its own to make you invest 20 points into, but make investing 30 points seem even more attractive!

I also suggest changing the name of Cleansing Wave cause there’s a weapon skill by th esame name and it’s confusing! :p Refreshing Wave or something?

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits. I think a good compromise would be to place Renewing Stamina back in the adept tier, placing is where the other professions get this type of trait, and instead move Final Shielding to the master tier where it could live alongside Arcane Retribution as two good choices in arcane builds that take Arcane Mastery in the adept tier. That could leave some interesting builds such as: 0/30/30/0/10 for fresh air, diamond skin, and renewing stamina. It also still leaves builds that put only 10 points in Arcana a chance to gain Protection by going 30 air for Tempest Defense, and 10 Earth for Elemental Shielding and still have 30 points leftover.

While I agree that Elemental Attunement might be the best adept trait in the whole game, it’s a high skill-ceiling trait, it requires a lot of attunement dancing to get the most of it. I think that’s a fair compromise for how powerful it is, and could justify leaving it in the adept tier. I do thoroughly disagree with moving Renewing Vigor to master though, it’s just not that good, and leaves adept with no good defensive options. You could move Final Shielding to Master tier, but only if you upped the threshold to 50% and changed the functionality to “if hit while health is below 50%”. This gives the elementalist a chance to pull a clutch move like Mist Form BEFORE the next hit lands and therefore before Final Shielding procs, so as not to “waste” the proc. Then, if the elementalist is still beneath 50% and gets hit when they exit Mist Form, they’ll get their Final Shielding.

I think it’ll make fights against eles harder, but nowhere near as hard as they were before the Great Cantrip Nerfs of 2012, when they could clear 2 condis just by switching to water, another 1 by dodging, another one with dagger 5, and another one with each cantrip they popped (and that’s before even touchiung their healing skill!) :p

Yeah totally agree with you Bhawb. I made 2 lengthly posts in the preview thread the devs posted, pointing out that even people on the Necromancer forums don’t like Dhuumfire as it is, and nerfing other aspects of the condition necro just hurts build variety even more. I suggest you go over there and chime in as well, they tend to listen more to people with a lot of “likes” on their posts so you might get their attention where i failed.

As for the pve side of things, I don’t understand why they don’t simply increase the bleed cap for champions, legendaries, and world bosses, which, let’s face it, are the only types of mobs with enough health to make more than 25 stacks relevant.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of times, when running standard Necro condie builds, the bleeds actually do a large portion of your damage if they are allowed to stack on a target. Burning is nice, and Torment can be decent, and of course Poison brings down opposing heals. But the Bleeds are where a large amount of the sustained damage comes from.

With all due respect, this is one instance where the numbers don’t tell the whole story and it’s short-sighted to rely on them alone. Yes, over the course of a 1v1 fight most of the damage comes from bleeding. But Fear, Burning, and Torment are great cover conditions which make it harder to cleanse that bleed. Moreover, burning is a great condition to draw out that cleanse they’ve been saving up, because let’s face it, at the equivalent of roughly 6 stacks of bleed at ~1300 condition damage its power is FAR from negligible! So people will panic and use their cleanse, removing fear but not the 10 stacks of bleeding underneath it. Furthermore, if locked down by a 2" fear during a Dhuumfire proc (a lot of good necros will save up their fear for when they get the proc, to ensure the damage lasts its full potential), the target will suffer roughly 3k damage from those 2 conditions alone (plus bleeds and poisons). That sort of burst during lockdown is exactly what an attrition class needs to secure a kill, where otherwise their target will inevitably receive a full cleanse from somewhere and outheal their damage.

By gradually shaving the power of the main necro condition weapons and trait lines, you’ve done very little to hurt Dhuumfire necros. First it was the 17% Terror nerf, then Grasping Dead, now Weakening Shroud and Mark of Blood. I’m playing a Terror/Dhuumfire necro as well and I can confidently tell you that those changes will do nothing to make me weaker! What they WILL do is hurt necro build diversity even more, because any build that doesn’t rely on Dhuumfire for its burst WILL be hurt by those 1-2 bleeds less they can put out, so it makes even less sense to run anything but Dhuumfire! I’m sure you’ve tested things internally and are satisfied that Dhuumfire necros aren’t as powerful with these changes, but tell me: are 0/30/10/0/30 (terror and foot in the grave) necros viable? Are 0/30/20/0/20 (terror and greater marks) ok? They were already much less effective than Dhuumfire necros, how will they fare after Dec 10? Which build do your proposed changes hurt the most?

In my last post I suggested 2 ways in which you could balance the Dhuumfire/Terror build. I hope that, by the time that inevitable balancing occurs, you will not have already nerfed all other possible condition builds into unviability.

JonathanSharp.7094:

I think 5 is the biggest team size we’d want for organized play, and we could try smaller teams, but due to multiple reasons, teams greater than 5 would probably be too large for GW2.

It’s definitely easier to get together, but frankly team size should be determined by the game mode and map sizes, not by an arbitrary consideration of “ok, how many friends does the average GW2 player have?” 5 is good for Conquest, but for GvG it wouldn’t be. Why? Well, you want to make the base NPCs numerous and strong enough that they’re not too easy to gank, and so that the team that has the most NPCs alive at VoD has a distinct advantage. But if you do that, teams that employ a split strategy would need to send at least 2 people as a gank squad. This would leave the fight at the flagstand as 2v4 (assuming a flagrunner on each team as well), which because there’s just so much more damage in GW2, would be over in SECONDS! If the team size were, for example, 6 instead, the flagstand fight would be 3v5, which is a lot more manageable.
So please don’t put an arbitrary team size in your minds while designing new game modes: be prepared to be flexible, and trust your players that if then game is fun enough people will get together!
Think of it this way: in GW1’s heyday, even though the game had a lot fewer players in total, and even though PvPers were divided between tournament (Tombs), GvG, random and team arenas, the scene was thriving, it was pretty easy to get a pug team in Heroes Ascent, and there was even an IRC channel doing pug GvGs! I’m sorry you didn’t find it so easy but once I joined a big enough alliance I never had a problem (particularly after you dropped the minimum number of native guild members required for a GvG to 4 so people from the rest of the alliance could guest). I’m having A LOT more trouble getting 5 people together for GW2 even though I’m once again in a large guild and there are literally MILLIONS more players around – and the reason for that is simply that Conquest is less fun! Just make the game more fun, and trust us for the rest, don’t try to babysit us!

@ King of the hill: We’ve actually tried it a few times internally. It usually devolves into a stalemate in the middle of the map, or one big cluster of bodies. Imagine: the middle point is the only point on the map, and both teams just run right to it…..10 people pop their elites….. there’s a 5on5, and then the game is over. Are there things you’d like to add in order to spice it up a little? IT SOUNDS GREAT…and then you play it…and it leaves a little to be desired.

You could try the GW1 method of having a Ghostly Hero commune with an “altar” on the hill in order to capture it. And the hill is neutralised either by killing the enemy’s Ghostly Hero or having your own complete a commune. That way it doesn’t depend on a pile-on of bodies on the hill and rampant knockbacks to get them off.

For the GAME TYPE, people seem to be asking for:

• 2 lords. If you kill their lord you win.
• There are obstacles in the way (a lot of people use the MOBA analogies of having NPC’s or towers in the way…you defeat these in order to get to the opposing guild lord).
• I assume there’s a time limit?
• Do we do VoD again to stop people from turtling?

Sounds good to me, VOD at the 20’ mark (or even 15’), with all the NPCs leavign the base at once. I didn’t favour the original GW1 system of having them come out in waves. It made for a few exciting matches by creating a window in which lord ganks were a lot easier, but otoh it devalued the NPC advantage too much. Tiebreaker 5’ later in case both lords are still alive (for example team with the most player kills wins, or team whose lord has the highest HP). Obstacles in the way can be of various forms, from locked gates you have to carry an item to to open (like in the Warriors/Wizards/Hunters Isle maps), to NPCs you have to fight past (eg Burning Isle) to simply a long distance to run (eg Isle of the Dead).

I don’t see why you’re feeling the need to reinvent the wheel when you have such an awesome template to base yourselves on!

First of all, thanks for doing this, I don’t think you’ve ever asked for feedback BEFORE a balance patch before and I think it’s a great step forwards!

Very much like the elementalist, ranger, and mesmer changes. Necro changes are a little confusing though. You focus on little things while ignoring the single overriding issue: Dhuumfire. I think when even people on the necro forums are asking for this to be changed then you have to take notice, and there’s generally a great deal of consensus on a simple and easy way this could be balanced. Either:
a. remove Dhuumfire, or make it do some other condition than burning (torment would be nice, and because it’s stackable you can adjust its balance very easily by being able to play with both duration and intensity), or
b. restore Terror to its pre-nerfed status (when you decreased its damage by 17%) and move it to Grandmaster, so that you can’t get both Dhuumfire, Terror,and Master of Terror. It’s the combination of these three that really hurts.

Hugs.1856:

Pvp never really took off because of:

- combat system itself – pace of the game mainly

<snip>

- does the pace of the game allow for clutch moments along with some more """""quiet"""" ones?
<snip>

Probably slightly OT for this thread but I’d love for you to elaborate a bit more on what you mean by that. Are you saying the game is too fast or too slow? Personally I’ve found it’s a lot harder to execute team plays in combat than it was in GW1, but I’m not sure if this is because of the faster pace of the combat or because of the different RPG system (classes being less specialised and more self-sustaining, eg. you can no longer ensure a kill by putting Diversion on the enemy’s monks, because your target will have their own heals as well).

I think if you’re discussing game modes it should be hand-in-hand with a discussion of the pace of the combat, as the action mechanics determine the scale of the fights. I’ve long suspected that then reason the devs chose Conquest as the main game mode is because they realised that the game is great for smallish fights, but full-on team fights are so fast-paced, chaotic, and drowned out in particle effects, that they become an indecipherable flustrecluck. I even remember Helseth streaming and saying something along the lines of “even top-level players have no idea what’s going on in big fights”, so clearly team fights in this game are a serious problem.

Nonetheless, the community has clearly expressed the wish for bigger team fights rather than a game mode that forces teams to split up. This is apparent not only from the numerous calls for TDM and GvG in this thread, but from the various 10v10, 15v15, and 25v25 “GvGs” (inverted commas so as not to mix them up with GW1 GvG game mode) happening on the borderlands in WvW every week. Even though the game is fundamentally unsuited for them, a heckuva lot of people are into that sort of thing, and have found ways to make it interesting, competitive, and enjoyable.

So, while this is a much bigger discussion beyond the scope of this thread, I put it to the developers that new game modes won’t be enough. Ways must also be found to slow down the pace of the game and encourage more team plays. There are some interesting mechanics in the game that are great for team fights (combo fields, the rally system etc), which don’t really live up to their full potential in the 1v1s and 2v2s that form the majority of fights in Conquest. Let us help you find ways to put them to use! Surely you didn’t invent a combo system purely so people can lay down water fields at the feet of a dungeon boss and heal the melee damagers piling on him?

Agree with the last 2 posters, there’s too much cc AND too much stability around – and to make matters worse some of the builds with the highest stability uptime also have the largest amounts of CCs!

I’m gonna wax lyrical about GW1 GvG. It was perfect in so many ways! You had your big group fights, you had your secondary objectives, you had multiple paths to the enemy base and the central flagpost area, it was basically as sophisticated and open-ended as chess, but fast-paced and brutal too! The multiple routes to victory (DP-out the enemy, gank the guild lord, VOD) encouraged a huge amount of build variety, and meant for an active, constantly changing game with a lot of activity and fighting (as opposed to sitting on a point like in conquest…), where even if you won the initial fight you had to constantly stay on your guard in case the enemy changed their game up.

Obviously a large part of GvG relied on the DP and morale mechanics: if you killed them enough times, they stayed dead. Most games were won by killing the guild lord instead, but this was still a valid form of winning, it’s what made the game “team deathmatch” in its most essential form. GW2 actually features something similar in rudimentary form: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Downed_penalty
However, it rarely comes into play in pvp, as it’s unlikely for anyone to be downed 3 times in the same fight and manage to avoid getting stomped every single time. So a GW1-style death penalty that persists throughout the whole match unless mitigated by morale boosts would have to be introduced. Let me be clear that it’s not essential to start off with less health as you accumulate DP like you did in GW1 (although I think it’s a good idea): the essential thing about it is that after you die enough times you stop coming back. The respawn mechanics would therefore have to be implemented in one of the following ways:

1. Instead of the original resurrection counter, where all the dead respawned at 2’ intervals, you could retain GW2’s individual respawn timer, but have the respawn interval get longer as DP gets accumulated and stop completely if you have too much DP, at which point you just lie there unless someone revives you the slow and painful way. Morale boosts would reduce your respawn counter back to normal as in GW1.

2. Alternatively, you could keep GW1’s wave-revive system (though you don’t have to keep the 2’ interval, it could be shorter if you wanted), where everyone on the team who hasn’t reached maximum DP respawns. In that case, however, you would need to introduce a faster way to revive people who can’t respawn automatically, as the manual way is too slow, and because GW2 is so much faster-paced than GW1 the first full wipe would be game over. Therefore a rez signet-style skill would have to be introduced (3" cast time, automatically revives an ally even if they are completely defeated, does not recharge except with a morale boost) to give teams the chance to make a tactical choice: do we wait for them to come back or do we res them now to avoid getting completely wiped in this fight? This would make a good elite skill, in fact, as the long recharge serves a similar role.

Morale boosts could be accomplished the same way as in GW1 (carrying a flag/orb/whatever to a flagstand and keeping it for 1-2’) to encourage big group fights in the centre. If that’s the case, for the love of Balthazar please make it so you drop the flag when you teleport or stealth! OK possibly not stealth, as thieves would make natural flag runners, but at least put in a short commune time to capping so thieves can’t just always cap the flag while stealthed with complete impunity. Alternatively you could have a conquest-type point instead of a flagstand (holding it for X’ gives you a morale boost) but I think that would be a mistake, as we’d end up with the same bunker abuse we have now.

Having said that, there’#s something to be said for variety too, and I admit I used to also love Heroes Ascent back in GW1 (though it was still called Tombs of the Primeval Kings when I got into it… ), and I think the format of multiple different game modes strung together would work really well for GW2. There’s something really exciting about each game being slightly different (there were CTF and TDM and king of the hill and even 6-way TDMs!), and something really satisfying when you finally reached the final map – it felt like a real achievement to fight all the way to Hall of Heroes, and it fell perfectly in between the very casual kind of pvp (arenas) and the properly hardcore (gvg), because it was both difficult rewarding without having a ranking table attached to it, so you could try silly things without worrying about your rating.

Nah DS exit is exactly the same: 1" lockout if your LF runs out on its own before you exit ds.

Aww…
15chars

Posting here in case someone can replicate and confirm: was interrupted casting staff 4 in pvp earlier, and it went into full cooldown rather than 5". Anyone else?

KrisHQ.4719:

Well. The problem with the current state of the game, is that most builds are without weaknesses (general condition problem). This means that pretty much all of the current meta builds excel at all the roles described, at least a lot of them. The biggest difference is mobility.

Well that’s why those builds are in the meta. But if you were playing something other than conquest they wouldn’t be. How many spirit rangers do you see in wvw for instance?

That’s why in my earlier post I said that the problem with pvp isn’t balance but a dearth of different game modes. It’s all conquest, all the time. Tournament in GW1 (Tombs/Heroes’ Ascent) had something like 8 different maps you had to go through, each of them a slightly different game mode, from CTF to TDM to king of the hill etc. While there were plenty of gimmicky team builds that aimed to exploit the mechanics of one or more of those maps, they rarely made it all the way to the top. How many IWAY teams did you see in HoH? I guarantee that if the tournament map rotation included a TDM or a CTF mode we’d see a lot fewer teams with 2 bunkers designed to just knock people off points!

jmatb.6307:

The meta builds generally accomplish a bunch of these roles at the same time. Obviously the top players don’t sit there and theorycraft, but they naturally gravitate toward these types of builds because they bring so much to the table.

Any objective analysis of the game is going to be more beneficial than just taking some dude’s word for it.

I think the OP knows this – he didn’t mean that people go and make builds that specialise in fulfilling only ONE of those roles (well, some might). He wasn’t saying “these are all the knids of builds we have” he was saying “these are all the different jobs you can do in a match.” He did specify that he knows that a lot of builds can fulfil more than one of those role.s

Shulkor.3670:

Yes, quite annoying indeed. Strange how targeting works so nicely in GW1 yet totally fails in GW2.

Yeah, I miss how crisp and instant it was! This was because it cycled through all targets in range, not just those onscreen, and you had a high and wide fov so you could see things outside your direct line of sight too!

Yeah, that’s my only problem with them either, having to constantly re-target them It’s not that I have trouble finding the real one but those tiny 1-2 seconds of delay between them cloaking and me retargeting just about give them the edge. Also, it really annoys me when I cast my Deathly Swarm and they disappear midway through my cast so it hits nothing! :p

I like how detailed Icetrinity’s breakdown is. The main problem with “balance”, as I see it, is that some professions are able to fulfil any of those roles by speccing into different builds, while otehrs only one or two (contrast thieves and warriors as an extreme example). Furthermore, within each profession, there are certain individual builds which can pack in so much utility that they can fulfil multiple roles (eg spirit rangers can bunker a point solo, but also provide great group support with their spirits; or for another example condition necros, who were always awesome in team fights, getting dhuumfire and thus became a lot more viable in 1v1 situations as well).
So it isn’t a matter of “why is X overpowered?”, but more a matter of “why is X decent and capable at so many more roles than me?” This problem is obviously exacerbated if you mostly play solo queue, as you don’t have control of what roles your other teammates can fulfil and you’re often forced to play a certain role not because you’re the best at it because you’re the least incapable of it. This means the playerbase 0tends to gravitate towards either selfish builds, so they can be sure of winning 1v1s, or these few supremely flexible builds that can fulfil multiple roles.

To my mind, this imbalance isn’t solely due to the game mechanics: for the most part, it’s actually due to the game mode! Conquest needs a lot of running around between points, it splits up the team excessively, and punishes group-support builds by limiting them to only one role. In other words, many of the roles Icetrinity outlined exist exclusively in the Conquest gametype, and would be out of place in any other environment! In a pure TDM game, for instance, I suspect people would gravitate towards only 3 roles:
a. damage
b. defence/group support
c. utility and shutdown
Some people would specialise in one of the above, and a lot more would come up with builds that would fulfil 2 or all 3 of the above in different proportions. Suddenly, but limiting the number of “roles”, you open up the number of build variety tremendously, allowing for things that aren’t really optimal in conquest to have their day, even in solo queue with random teammates.

Not that I’m advocating TDM as a competitive tournament game mode tbh. It would be fun to have for casual play but I don’t think it would work for gw2. Instead, a return to GW1-style GvG (TDM with secondary objectives) would do wonders for the competitive scene in this game!

Flowerpower.6795:

manveruppd.7601:

I think anything that incentivises PvE and WvW players to come and have a match would be good! The tpvp player pool is just too small right now, queues are really long and we get massive mismatches in the relative skill and ranking of the players in the same match. We need new blood!

Yes and no. The pvp playerbase is small and need more people. Thats true. But to force people who are interested in PvE and WvW to play PvP, just because there are some rewards they want, is not the way to go in my opinion.

That’s not really what I meant: I wasn’t talking about pvp-exclusive rewards, I just meant being able to get other rewards through pvp. There’s currently only one extremely inefficient way to turn glory into gold, no way to earn karma, and there are still several weapon skins that are completely unobtainable in pvp.

Having said that your idea was cool too, a pvp-only free trial with a tournament at the end of it might be cool! Though if you do that FOR HEAVENS SAKE make tournaments rank-gated (rank 20 I think) and put in a better explanation on how the queue system works so we don’t get complete scrubs joining Team Arenas for their first ever pvp game again and spend the whole match trying to leave!

I think anything that incentivises PvE and WvW players to come and have a match would be good! The tpvp player pool is just too small right now, queues are really long and we get massive mismatches in the relative skill and ranking of the players in the same match. We need new blood!

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Wurm MUST be instant cast.

The teleport is, I don’t see why the summon needs to be – you’ll obviously cast it before you get stuck in so you can get out of trouble by teleporting

Knote.2904:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Don’t be so quick to judge. Basilisk venom + lyssa runes are probably the single best elite skill in the game. Warrior signet is close with a 48 second traited cooldown.

Just because an elite skill doesn’t have particle effects and a huge, awesome animation doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Those are the kinds of elites that are more like the original GW1.

And I wish they were all like that.

Not these wannabe long cooldown IWIN buttons, where you pop it and become super ultra mega overpowered for a few seconds.

I prefer short cooldown elites. Aside from Lyssa Runes being insane.

Me too, I prefer elites you structure your whole skillbar around and are regularly used rather than ones that make you awesome for 20" every 3 minutes, it makes for more interesting buildcrafting. The worst of these is Moa tbh, it’s incredibly overpowered 1v1 but once you’ve used it you might as well not have an elite slot!

OK that does sound excessively imbalanced. Games like that aren’t really fun for anyone. But I think the main reason it’s happening is low population tbh, and splitting the game between team and solo queues didn’t help with that…

Am I to understand that the OP is complaining that he is losing to teams of higher rank than his own?

Working as intended surely? Low priority problem, I agree that slightly more even matchups would make solo queue a tiny bit more enjoyable but I don’t think this is something that resources should be allocated to…

Oh, dude, don’t tell them, you’ll crash the dye market! :p

Thanks for responding Allie. You folks have been very active on the forums lately!

In my experience the majority of 4v5s are instances of people never showing up or staying afk at the base.

I do get other kinds (people quitting partway through the game etc), but they’re in the minority. It was particularly bad during the free trial, I’m guessing cause newbies didn’t understand how the queue system works.

Aeranima.2853:

What were you thinking? Now I cannot progress at all sometimes. I have a pregnant wife with twins and there are several times I have to leave a game to assist her so that means my glory I have earned goes to waste. Or if I DC 20.000 times which my guildies has started to do much recently. Thanks…………………………………

EDIT: AND WE HAVE ALREADY ASKED YOU TO BAN GLORY FARM SERVERS AND REVOKE THEIR CUSTOM ARENA PRIVILEGES! SO THIS ACTION IS WAY TO DESPERATE AND STUPID!

OK this dude is SERIOUSLY overreacting, but I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm in rank/glory points being earned immediately rather than at the end of the match IN HOTJOIN ONLY. It is “hotjoin” after all, you should be able to drop-in/drop-out freely. You’d just lose out on end-of-match bonuses. That would allow the very very casual players, who don’t have enough free time to play even one match without interruption, to still progress.

Absolutely shouldn’t be allowed in tournaments though, as it’ll only encourage leechers.

I confess I don’t know exactly how the dishonor system works: does it only punish you if you click the “leave pvp button”? Because I think the biggest problem is people who just quit the game mid-match. Do they get a dishonor stack as well?

Kentrey.3251:

And you know what it isn’t just you. It so many people on this forum, every class forum ever made, hell even the living world forum.

I know forums are made for people to complain (which they aren’t really), and we are on the internet but my god why not try to show some decency and maybe even a bit of respect not just because Anet is full of people. But because youre ASKING THEM FOR STUFF, i swear if i was in charge i would go bankrupt and just turn the entire game off and asked you how you like it now since it was so bad.

Well said dude, the atmosphere on these forums is toxic. Some devs have admitted that they’re demotivated by all the kitten they’re catching here and I can totally understand why.

I’m starting to think they had the right idea when they decided not to have official forums back in GW1. I questioned it at the time but now I get why.

Dahkeus.8243:

It means unranked/casual. It doesn’t mean you have to throw all semblance of a team vs team match out the door.

No it doesn’t, it means drop-in/drop-out. The term “hotjoin” LITERALLY means that you can join at any time. If one side is disadvantaged the game autobalances. I think it’s an awesome way to play casually because there’s no waiting time between matches and if something comes up irl you can leave at any time without screwing over your team. And I think it’s a great way for beginners to learn. I play tournaments 90% of the time, but I love hotjoin the way it is and would be disappointed if they changed it.

yeah that’s what i said, that he can’t take it with 10 points

Ah I see, thanks. I suspected that might be the case but it sounded far too convoluted to be real, I thought maybe it was simply bugged instead! :p

Can’t complain I guess, at least I get the cleanse even if they block…

style.6173:

It is really 3 areas:

1. People never showing up to the match
2. People disconnecting during the match
3. People standing at the spawn point the whole match

Most common is #1. Least common is #3.

Exactly the same for me.

It was much worse during the recent free trial. I assume that’s because newbies didn’t understand how the queue system worked. On several occasions I met people who were in a team arena match and it was their first time ever in pvp, and they spent the entire match trying to quit by force-closing the game only to be dragged in again when they logged back in!

I was over the moon when you allowed people to queue up for pvp from anywhere, but it’s proving a disaster for new players! PLEASE disable all the other tabs in the pvp window until new accounts have been forced to travel to the mists and complete the tutorials! And PLEASE put some explanatory text in the tpvp tab to explain how the queue system works, that unlike hotjoin you don’t get replaced if you leave a match, and that there’s a penalty for leaving. And, ideally, I’d like new accounts to be locked out of tournaments unmtil they’ve played a few games of hotjoin. Even rank 5 would be better than throwing them straight into the deep end!