World vs. World Borderlands Stress Test [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: nightwulf.1986
Ok, so what I’m hearing is that, in good faith and so as not to offend anyone, Anet should not have advertised or allowed anyone other than prepurchasers into any form of testing after prepurchase went live. Also, Anet should should have used language that could not in any possible way be misconstrued or misinterpreted so as to avoid bad blood and confusion. Cool. I think perhaps the first point could be addressed in future development, but something about that request comes off as an unreasonable demand. To the second complaint on language, high powered lawyers work to meet this goal and still get challenged in court by their opposition. Again, I think the language and explanation surrounding Beta Weekend Event, coupled with the precedent set by events defined as Stress Tests in the past, should be able to be understood by a reasonable person. They could add language that clarifies what a Beta Weekend event is not in addition to what it is. Honestly, if it helps avoid this sort of issue going forward, they may just want to bite the bullet and do it.
Curious, how is advertising other games in this manner permissible in the forums? In the interest of helping, I highly advise looking for advice on reddit instead of the official forums. There’s a decent chance this will get closed because of the nature of the discussion.
World vs. World Borderlands Stress Test [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: nightwulf.1986
“Beta weekend event” and “Stress test” have separate defining features and characteristics as already outline in this post. I think we need to move beyond trying to redefining accepted terminology and start talking about what I think is the actual issue. That issue being that there are beta events that pre-purchasers are not invited to. If the issue is that Anet should not allowed to do do small scale testing with external testers after pre-purchase then make your case. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t feel slighted or grifted because I think they should have the flexibility to test in this manner if it means having a better finished product. Also, we benefit from the testing being not subject to media NDA since it’s not completely internal. The assumption here is that they won’t get the same results if they invite everyone who pre-ordered. My 2 cents.
I’m actually curious how the topic brought up in the thread I think we’re talking about is not related to Guild Wars 2? This is a common refrain that Tyria is a world uninfluenced by American and other cultural norms. It’s a silly notion frankly and I think people who look at the story and setting uncritically need to open their eyes a bit. Tyria is full of references to the benefits of religion and spirituality (Dwayna’s followers, Norn animal spirits), the potential evil of religion (flame legion, Hylek Zintls), Bad relationships (Caithe & Faolain), good relationships (Kasmeer & Marjory, maaaaybe Logan and Jennah), the fear of losing your position of power and potential opression (Asura and Skritt), and the list goes on.
All of this is tied to real world issues and culture. Anet and their writers are aware of this. I say keep the threads that people are calling “political” but also keep perspective that it takes a lot of effort to completely remove art from personal bias and the surrounding culture. Guild Wars 2 is a reflection of the culture it was made in and calling that out/discussing it is not a problem.
The thread we are probably talking about right now, how is it related to gw2 gameplay?
It’s related in the same way discussion of the pre-order threads were related I guess. Not strictly a discussion on gameplay but how Anet operates Guild Wars 2. I think the thread is relevant, but as it was closed down, it’s a moot point. Honestly, discussions like that get heated way too quickly because of what people bring to it. So, threads like that are likely to get closed anyway. Sort of self regulating. If it’s a civil discussion, it’s fair game.
I’m actually curious how the topic brought up in the thread I think we’re talking about is not related to Guild Wars 2? This is a common refrain that Tyria is a world uninfluenced by American and other cultural norms. It’s a silly notion frankly and I think people who look at the story and setting uncritically need to open their eyes a bit. Tyria is full of references to the benefits of religion and spirituality (Dwayna’s followers, Norn animal spirits), the potential evil of religion (flame legion, Hylek Zintls), Bad relationships (Caithe & Faolain), good relationships (Kasmeer & Marjory, maaaaybe Logan and Jennah), the fear of losing your position of power and potential opression (Asura and Skritt), and the list goes on.
All of this is tied to real world issues and culture. Anet and their writers are aware of this. I say keep the threads that people are calling “political” but also keep perspective that it takes a lot of effort to completely remove art from personal bias and the surrounding culture. Guild Wars 2 is a reflection of the culture it was made in and calling that out/discussing it is not a problem.
I believe the devs do know we are in a bad spot. However, Robert Gee has said in one of the last preview videos that they explicitly do not want to give us a bunch of blast finishers which was a coded way to say they have heard our complaints but they don’t agree on what exactly necros should have. Based on the balance changes and Robert’s followup explanation, it would seem that they want to try to give necro a non meta (blast, block, etc.) and unique means of support and team interaction. It all sounds very experimental and obviously the results look it.
I think with people basically saying give necros what the meta professions have, Anet reacted negatively to re-working them and making them more samey because of that. My reaction to all of this is they have done some interesting things with Necro but they have the meta working against them in terms of player perception of the Necro. They haven’t gone far enough to change the general player opinion of the Necro overall in terms of group play and pvp. But really, they have two options that I can think of to fix this. Either bust up the current meta team comp through balance or include the necro in the current meta balance. They are reluctant to go with option 2 but haven’t moved toward option 1 either. Perhaps there’s an option 3?
You know that I made a post about a year ago talking about how the necromancer should have a trait that functioned like the GW1 skill Contagion. You know who got that skill? The revenant. Its not like we’re all talking about blast finishers and fire fields. A few people are but many of us want fixes in a very necroish way. And those ways are either being given to other professions or almost completely ignored.
I feel you on Revenant, Mallyx legend specifically, treading too deep into necro territory. I’m just hoping that Revenant doesn’t get GW1 spiteful spirit with their other legends. They haven’t given anyone any skills that make enemies deal damage to their nearby allies and want to break away from their group. If and when that happens, I do hope Necro gets that.
We really need somebody at anet who understands the class, plays the class, and has the pull to make things happen
Out of the big 3 that have been in an insanely bad state for way too long you have Ranger, Engineer and Necromancer. Currently range is in a really good spot, Engineer is finished. And that just leaves Necromancer who needs major work. Why is the Necromancer last? We’re the least popular. And we’ve also been in the worst state out of all three.
The better question is why are they still trying to nerf us at this point?
Well. I Think it goes back to one of my points earlier. They don’t know how we function in reality in anything. So they don’t think we’re in a bad spot. But the community is breaking apart. Fewer and fewer people are actually interested in having a necromancer main and once the revenant comes out it might put a nail in our coffin and any sense of uniqueness we had will be snuffed out and the community will all but die.
The bad part is I think that’s exactly whats going to have to happen before they start to realize just how bad of a spot we are in. Also, one theory about the Engineer was that their new skill type might be minions. And if that happens you can consider any remnant of the community to be completely gone.
I believe the devs do know we are in a bad spot. However, Robert Gee has said in one of the last preview videos that they explicitly do not want to give us a bunch of blast finishers which was a coded way to say they have heard our complaints but they don’t agree on what exactly necros should have. Based on the balance changes and Robert’s followup explanation, it would seem that they want to try to give necro a non meta (blast, block, etc.) and unique means of support and team interaction. It all sounds very experimental and obviously the results look it.
I think with people basically saying give necros what the meta professions have, Anet reacted negatively to re-working them and making them more samey because of that. My reaction to all of this is they have done some interesting things with Necro but they have the meta working against them in terms of player perception of the Necro. They haven’t gone far enough to change the general player opinion of the Necro overall in terms of group play and pvp. But really, they have two options that I can think of to fix this. Either bust up the current meta team comp through balance or include the necro in the current meta balance. They are reluctant to go with option 2 but haven’t moved toward option 1 either. Perhaps there’s an option 3?
I remember Robert mentioning that when they did internal play testing on certain trait and skill changes, they felt that certain changes were too strong. Meaning, someone somewhere at Anet was in fact playing a necromancer. Let’s get that out of the way first. That aside, I really think any complaints about consume conditions and plague should not be solely about those two skills. It should be about all corruption skills. I’ve seen some people tackle this balance change from that direction, I believe there is a separate thread on the subject, but following the crowd in this thread makes it sound like the other corruption skills are alright but somehow these two don’t make sense. Theoretically, if corruption skills are functional and serve their purpose, then what makes poison cloud, epidemic, corrupt boon, etc. work should work for consume conditions. But, what I’m hearing is that we can’t manipulate conditions sufficiently enough to make use of self inflicted conditions from skills a benefit in combat.
I think, and I may be wrong, Robert was trying to argue the opposite by adding traits that consume conditions (Spiteful Renewal) and transfer them (Plague Sending) (Necromantic Corruption). Are we trying to say that building around transferring conditions is not a viable play style? If so, forget consume conditions and plague, should any of the corruption skills have a condition added ever, even with master of corruption? Alternatively, and this is where you put on your thinking caps, how can we make condition transfer a viable play style with reasonable counterplay if we did decide to make use of self inflicted conditions?
I demand a livestream response on the events
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: nightwulf.1986
wording aside, some sort of statement would go a long way to calming people down and fixing the situation.
Gaile already commented on the situation in the forums and it did very little to calming people down. It’s another situation where some people will be happy with a statement, others won’t, and no matter what is said, some segment of the community will be unhappy still. What Gaile said is true if they’re like another game company I worked for. They are listening to feedback internally and planning what to do if anything. Some complaints about a game are legitimate, some aren’t, and some simply force their hand to respond so they pick and choose their battles.
I like how “team support” also allows people to screw with others to an amazing extent via Transfusion. I can already see kittens using it in the middle of a massive boss AoE to give a group of downed players a one way ticket to defeated.
On the other hand, teleporting to you is a nice counter to that other common annoyance of thieves and mesmers teleporting out of range when you want to res them. So, there’s that. Smart skill use will always be better than stupid skill use. You find the right time to res, not the wrong time. Otherwise, someone somewhere will always be making a mistake in large scale group content, can’t be helped.
Two new specializations are re-purposing weapons. This was a unique trait of Mesmer, with the ranged Greatsword.
Er, Necromancer uses an axe like a focus just like Mesmer uses a Greatsword like a focus. Just wanted to scratch this one off your list.
Part of the problem here is that you seem to think that the developers of this game, should ignore/throw away their original game design intent….and remake this game to be more like the game you want instead. NikeEU linked the clear design intent of the developers and you just completely brush it off and continue to argue for what those developers clearly said they did not want. They went to great lengths to make sure that there would be no dedicated tanks, healers, or any other specific role. They clearly stated they did this so that it would be much easier to form groups…and other reasons. They succeeded at that. No matter how much you argue the point, nothing you say is going to change that original design intent and the fact that they successfully implemented it. No its not perfect, but it works. Any departure from this original design intent…introducing forced/dedicated roles…is a betrayal of the customers who did read the game description before purchase.
The devs did create a working system, I agree. You can finish content with any gear, trait setup and party composition because you can mitigate most damage any number of ways. I also agree, like you said, that it’s not perfect. The point of contention is why it’s not perfect and how it can improve. Now clearly, we have a bunch of people differing on how exactly it can improve and in what direction. I know there are people calling for the trinity but, just like mounts, I personally wouldn’t want to see the game head in that direction. I would just like them to innovate and improve on their current design to the point where a clear choice on the best setup is not so obvious. I believe that is the goal to strive for but, much like combating exploits and RMT in the game, it’s a never ending goal that requires vigilance and creativity. I do not believe that the only place they can improve on is challenging content and AI. I find that notion to be silly. And honestly, we don’t really have a good idea on what exactly Anet’s balance philosophy for skills is given their propensity to balance once in a blue moon. At this point, I will wait to see what the devs have in store. I’m curious to see what their intentionally non-meta version of necro support will be and how they choose to shape player expectation for such going forward.
This has been mentioned before but I wanted to go into this a little more so I can better understand people’s positions. So, offensive stats (condi damage, power, ferocity, etc.) are currently allowed to modify active damage skills (weapon skills, trait procs, etc.). That is ok and understandable. Defensive stats (toughness, vitality, healing power, etc.) are currently not allowed to modify active defense skills (Aegis, protection, blind, blocks, evasion, etc.). This is where things seem unbalanced. Some say the purpose is to prevent invincible builds or create primary healers, and I believe that is part of it but certainly they’ve taken other measures to prevent those things as well. I have to wonder if it is the best approach.
Anet does not appear to be working on making more decision points around active defense skills through stats in the same way they allow that choice with offensive skills, but it is something that has bugged me for a long time. Consider in GW1 they allowed pretty much all skills to have a stat allocation decision to make those skills more effective. Different system, I know. But what GW2 aims for in combat balance has always been a work in progress. In GW2, they removed stat allocation as a decision point for the effectiveness of most defensive skills. The result is a highly valued defensive skill like Aegis is universally effective for someone with high damage output and low damage output and block skills absorb an infinite amount of damage for their duration no matter who uses them.
I think we’re a bit deep into the systems we have now, but I believe they would have benefited different play styles more if they gave active defense skills more ways to be effective. Traits can modify the effectiveness of some active defense skills, and that’s a good thing but it’s still not on par with the offensive skills because, again, stats modify active offense but not defense. My opinion at this point is that it was a good stop gap to prevent the return of the trinity, but it wasn’t an optimal solution. And I believe some of what people are criticizing the current meta for is a result of this. It’s tough to wrap your head around the idea that the designers have intentionally hamstrung your defensive build potential for their design goals but that is part of what is at issue here. I believe that even the meta enthusiasts have enough imagination to improve upon our existing design. No system is perfect. If ours were, there would be no need for a balance team or updates.
I just learned Revs get a group consume condition through Purifying Essence on their tablet skill. What in the what? I am terribly confused. Anet understands what players value in group play at the moment. I dearly hope they are aiming to do some serious social engineering through balance and content to change that so that Necros can get a leg up.
And both of those choices are bad. :P
The complaint that it “does it all” is completely unjustified. Anet intended for players to be able to do everything regardless of how they built their characters.
The real reason for the complaint is that people dont like the idea of a single optimum and because they cant turn a blind eye to it because of LFG descriptions. But news flash there is always a single optimum in any game. And thats something you are just going to have to accept and ignore if you dont like it.
Saying you have to accept the meta sounds more like pessimism than realism. I’m always curious what certain players think the devs should balance active/passive defense, skills, and traits around if the meta is immutable. Should Anet be balancing the game for the meta or to counteract/shift it? They know it exists and they understand why it exists. To me, asking to maintain the status quo (such as it is) shows a real lack of imagination and a lack of desire for variety and change. In practice, asking to keep the meta in its current state leads certain players to cringe when non-meta support skills, weapons, and traits are created. The conversation then becomes “why not make them meta?” instead of “why not make them desirable?” which are two very different questions. That is inherently problematic for the devs and players and I don’t really know how to fix that outside of some sort of paradigm shift.
What does the evolution of Guild Wars 2 look like under an immutable meta?
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
The breakbar is only on a limited amount of bosses. Looking at the Wyvern fight it depleted quickly anyways, without putting effort into it.
I like this as a gimmick, but nothing more. It is as difficult to go around as to put stand your ground on your bar (if you haven’t allready) as a guardian for the golem mark II. So minor tweaks to the skillbar might be needed (which can be done when getting ready for the fight, e.g. during the pre-event chain), but it won’t hurt the zerker meta at all.
They did say they were considering adding the break bar to all the old dungeon bosses (if not all champs in old content) but also added that the results of breaking the bar would probably be something simple. Possibly a short stun on the boss. They didn’t commit to anything of course.
Where is promised challenging HOT content?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: nightwulf.1986
Your AI is sad for 2015 era, sorry aNet, i’m with you since GW1 beta, i know you can do better….
So where are all these other MMOs with so much better AI? (And no, the AI in GW1 was not even remotely close).
Do you ever stop trolling?
Despite the intentions (and I don’t think he’s trolling) this should be a serious question. I think AI is a complicated enough aspect of game design that if you asked an average group of players what it is and how it affected them, you would probably get a wide range of responses that are probably not entirely accurate. I don’t know of many mmos that had a combat system that relied solely on mob AI for difficulty. I mean of all the perceived issues with Open World/Instanced encounters, is mob/pet AI really the crux of the problem? I wouldn’t say so. There have been many discussions, the most heated surrounding the zerker meta, about how gw2 encounters are designed and my takeaway has always been that mob AI is only a small part of the overall combat design. Environment design, player skill design, intended win/loss ratio, and other things all play a role in how combat flows. So, for me, harping on AI is akin to not having a better understanding of the issue in question.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
You can’t have a discussion about healing power without discussing the prevalence/value of active defense blocks, dodges, reflect, positioning, etc. If you tried to look at all the tools available to you that you use on a regular basis in order to survive, you’d find that healing power is probably one of the least used tools in your belt. Often, you can avoid/reduce more damage than you can out heal through active mitigation instead. If it were the opposite, which it isn’t right now, you’d find less need for active damage mitigation. The value of active mitigation is interesting, at least, for Necros because right now they don’t make great use of healing power or any of the other tools that other classes leverage in place of healing. So, one has to wonder what value Anet places on those tools from a balance perspective.
I don’t think healing power should be scrapped though. It apparently has some use in PVP as you can’t leverage active mitigation through a prolonged fight. Once those cooldowns are blown, healing power can make a big difference. In WVW, healing is also important for attrition fights for much the same reason. It’s use in PVE is where I feel it is downplayed a bit more. But really, what complicates its value is how different skills scale wildly with healing power and some professions/skills benefit a lot more from it than others. So, I think it has a place and a value, but it’s value is muddied by various design choices.
Thanks. The summary I read of the livestream made no mention of this, so I didn’t know they were even aware that necro has a problem playing in PvE dungeon meta groups. It is good to know that their hearts are in the right place – that they want to make the necro more desirable in the dungeon meta.
However, from what I have been reading (and I could well be wrong about this – I’m trying to educate myself about the new information as much as possible), it sounds like they want to give the necro more of the kinds of support options that are not needed/wanted/desired in the high end PvE dungeon meta. Some of the most important core things that makes a class desirable in that meta are still completely missing.
….snip….
I’m pretty sure, having watched that particular section of the interview twice now, Robert didn’t mention the dungeon meta at all. He just mentioned support in the general sense. Anet is still very much not commenting on exactly what they think of the player meta vs their intended design. Necro may very well still be the shining example of the idea that the meta is not what they are designing for. Add in the FGS nerfs and ferocity changes, it starts to look like they don’t care a whole lot for how players run dungeons.
On the other hand, they also disbanded their dungeon team and have been saving all of their core mechanic updates for the expansion, letting players do what they want in dungeons for the last couple of years and making it seem like the meta was accepted by the devs. Thus, we have people clamoring for design changes based around the dungeon meta. At least, that’s what all this looks like to me.
Reaper I think will be a decently strong Dervish lite specialization. My personal expectations are that Anet designs future boss fights to evolve beyond the dungeon meta. They’ve done a good job at making players feel wanted in the open world, instanced content allows for greater levels of discrimination and the combating the social psychology behind that is difficult.
There is an unused Polymock Arena map near Rata Sum. For those who don’t know, Polymock was a sort of pokemon battle minigame in GW1. There were also those little red arenas with minis facing off against each other on the beaches of Lion’s Arch pre-Scarlet. I’m sure that those are intended to be future features much like the shooting gallery in Divinity’s Reach and elsewhere. With the announcement of “Adventures” coming with this expansion, we don’t quite know what old mini-games or new minigames they are converting, creating, or finishing up for release. Polymock is indeed a cool concept and I think the minis could receive an economic boost from having additional uses.
Here’s some skill info that might have flown under the radar. It’s from ten ton hammer and I think they are the only ones to label all of the PR assest images they received. You can reference http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/meet-reaper-necromancer-elite-specialization for images. So, for skill names and types we have:
Nothing Can Save You (Utility)
Your Soul Is Mine (Heal)
Greatsword skills:
Death Spiral (Skill 3)
Nightfall (Skill 4)
The trailer technically showed only 2 greatsword skills and neither of them were the ones shown in the tentonhammer article. Although, it’s hard to tell what the skill effects were based on the images, it would appear that the skills aren’t completely physical. Happy speculating!
I’m feelin’ it. Definitely gave off an Avatar of Grenth feel to it. I’m looking forward to the stream tomorrow. It’s clear at this point that with class balance, Anet isn’t designing for the Dungeon meta but also aren’t digging in too deep to change it. I’m ok with that on some level. Hopefully, we’ll see exactly where this new spec fits in to the larger balance scheme tomorrow.
P.S. Also, did anyone catch the shout out to Shang Tsung in the intro?
Hey another think I want to point out, is that IF (big IF) the RNG is rigged for flagged accounts, Anet likely wouldnt tell us anyway. would you agree?
You mean if you asked someone “Are you cheating?” and they answer “No.”, how would you know if they are telling the truth? It’s often pointless to ask someone a question you don’t expect them to answer. You should approach the issue from another direction.
It was mentioned that the trait changes are getting released before HOT. But that is all we know at the moment. No ETA. However, they likely won’t implement the changes before introducing each elite spec. So at least 7 more weeks? Maybe.
And if you were not chosen from any of those pools? Would you feel better about RNG, then?
If fate has it that you will not be privy to this particular Beta Test, then what difference the method of chance?
Good luck.
Pretty sure the answer to the first question would be, “No!” It is truly interesting to see the mental gymnastics people go through with stuff like this. I mean, it’s in part because Anet hasn’t explicitly said how many invitations are being sent out. That’s a big part of it. But people like the OP assume that Anet is/should be inviting around 3/4 of the people farming Silverwastes and Drytop. That’s, at least drawing on past experience, an unreasonable assertion and it leads to this level of disappointment.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
The real question is this: Is it more efficient to use the scrolls now and have them converted to this new currency, or save the scrolls for after the update to use them in whatever manner they’ll end up getting used in?
I think that’s a hard question to answer because we don’t know what if anything will be added, removed, changed about mystic forge items post expansion. Basically, what we are being told now is that the new currency skill points/scrolls will be converted to is used to purchase mystic forge materials. So, based on that, nothing that you can obtain now will change if you use scrolls now versus later. But that’s not the whole picture and the in-game economy is expected to shift post expansion so if you are looking to make money, you might be able to lose big or win big using forge materials post expansion by looking at market trends.
Drop rates are abysmal…on top of which you add RNG…on top of which you add DR.
Standard ANet stuff..i have no clue why everyone seems so kittened off and surprised at a this..you’ve been playing this game for so much time and you don’t know ANet supports the lottery system for everything they do, with no guaranteed reward?
Ok, why do you think the drop rates are abysmal? What number of drops, or chance were you expecting? Remember this is a closed beta invitation. The only reason I can think of for why you would think it’s an abysmal drop rate is because you want to have them let a whole bunch of people into this closed beta. Is that what you want? I’m honestly curious because you aren’t the only one who thinks this. But at the same time, I don’t think you’ve quite put the drop rate into the context of what it is that’s dropping or simply have different expectations than I do for a closed beta.
Yea trust me i put it into perspective as you just did but i’ll admit when i first started farming it was originally with the drive of a fanboys heart that kept me going and then as people made fun of me farming so much i simply did it out of principal just to get the kitten item because i had put so much work into it.
That last part is where I think most people appear to get disappointed by the portal stone lottery. It’s random. You have two things really working against you. You can’t appreciably affect your chances of receiving it. And this is a limited access, closed beta where one can assume that most people playing the game will not be invited. I guess it’s like trying to work your butt off to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and not winning. You wonder why so many people, not just you, are disappointed.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Necro's losing a place with Specilizations?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: nightwulf.1986
Im not sure how you can lose a place you dont have. ;>
I kind of have to agree with this sentiment. We don’t have a place in the current pve or pvp meta. I also do want to stress that we are still making some speculations about relative effectiveness or access to certain skills when there is still a lot up in the air. With Anet changing a bunch of mechanics including bleed stacks, burn, poison, detaching stats from traits, etc. it’s possible they will announce more things which will shift the desire for certain classes and builds. That being said, it’s safe to assume necro doesn’t have a place in the meta until we find out otherwise, so worrying about being displaced is rather moot.
P.S. I love necros. I get that they’re neglected, but one can hope for change.
If you don’t want to use the three grandmaster traits, you would be in the same position as those people who put points in trait lines without actually reaching the next major or minor trait in the old system. That was a thing. Degenerate builds I think they called them. It was allowed, sure, but it wasn’t elegant or ideal to allow people to do that. I’m pretty sure that’s the same conclusion they reached when considering all the people mixing only adept or major traits in a line and avoiding grandmasters. I’ve done it and I imagine a lot of builds do. This is where the question of design, intent and balance comes in. The devs have an intent for how they expect you to interact with the trait system and that’s why they are shifting the paradigm to make build choices clearer, redefining trait lines to include specializations, and changing up some of the grandmaster traits. If the loss of the sheer number of potential trait combinations is a problem, consider they intend to add new lines of elite specializations and the number will continue to rise with time. And some of those potential trait combinations really were a non-option for a lot of players as evidenced by how many took them anyway. So, not a real loss outside of looking at the total number of combinations.
people do that because in many lines the grandmaster traits were weak or useless for your build so you didnt take them.
That’s been established. But the changes coming up mean you either have to make the choice to select a grandmaster, or not select one at all and end up with unused points, much like how they changed the number of points in a trait line from 30 points to 6. Seeing how many people didn’t take grandmasters at all meant that grandmasters were too weak, unwanted, and being circumvented by players too easily. It’s speculation based on their recent design choices, but it seems Anet really wants players to use grandmasters instead of using only adepts and majors. They’ve made them semi-required now, the balance portion of this scheme is what it takes to make them desired.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Totally disagree.
They want us to make bigger decisions, to actually think.
People have to stop seeing the new system as restriction. Quite the contrary!
-> Traits got merged, you save space for other useful traits
-> Ability to use 3 grandmaster traits
-> You can trait into defensive traitlines without losing damage statsWhat? We don’t save space for other “useful” traits. We’re stuck with whatever garbage or blessing the developers gave us, and what if I don’t want to use 3 grandmaster traits? That’s also a decision I would be making. And we don’t care about the fact that we can go into traitlines without losing damage, we don’t want to be locking into a traitline we only want a part of!
If you don’t want to use the three grandmaster traits, you would be in the same position as those people who put points in trait lines without actually reaching the next major or minor trait in the old system. That was a thing. Degenerate builds I think they called them. It was allowed, sure, but it wasn’t elegant or ideal to allow people to do that. I’m pretty sure that’s the same conclusion they reached when considering all the people mixing only adept or major traits in a line and avoiding grandmasters. I’ve done it and I imagine a lot of builds do. This is where the question of design, intent and balance comes in. The devs have an intent for how they expect you to interact with the trait system and that’s why they are shifting the paradigm to make build choices clearer, redefining trait lines to include specializations, and changing up some of the grandmaster traits. If the loss of the sheer number of potential trait combinations is a problem, consider they intend to add new lines of elite specializations and the number will continue to rise with time. And some of those potential trait combinations really were a non-option for a lot of players as evidenced by how many took them anyway. So, not a real loss outside of looking at the total number of combinations.
Waiting for the devs to do something about necro has me like https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/15215449/Waiting-Skeleton
Welcome to MMOs! Where changes can take a few hours, days, months, or even years*!
*this particular length of time not specific to GW2.
Has Anet acknowledged that they are balancing for the meta? Serious question. I can’t remember a time where they said they wanted to make changes for any class in accordance with the player recognized meta. Any allusions to that? Anything? Cause if they haven’t, that might explain a lot about why the other classes are still operating within the meta parameters and why necro has stayed largely in the same place as well. And if there is concrete evidence otherwise, it might provide some context to their balance methodologies.
the “meta” is formed as a result of the balance that ANet institutes, if the players cannot see any reason to bring a Necro into group play due to lackluster balance from ANet then the onus is on ANet to address that issue. so whether ANet explicitly states they are balancing for the player formed “meta” they are because the players have seen due to extensive testing that the goal for Necros of ANet does not meet with the reality of it in use by the players.
It’s always up to Anet to address balance. If that is what you were getting at, I agree. However, I have to disagree that they are balancing for the meta. The more I’ve been reading responses in the various profession forums and looking at their trait redesigns and the choices they are forcing on us, the more it seems there is dissenting opinion from Anet devs on the importance of the current PVP meta and PVE dungeon meta. I think that they are trying to build the game still in accordance with their vision and that vision appears not to run completely parallel to what we know as the meta. I’m just surprised that they actually buffed corrosive poison cloud by making poison stack in intensity in general. That’s saying something. We don’t really know what they have in their testing environments.
I think need is a bit of a strong word as well. Necros could use a lot of work outside of including a Taunt but it couldn’t hurt either. I think Taunt would be very useful for keeping people inside wells as well and help control spacing a bit more for dagger builds. That being said, Anet hasn’t revealed weapon skill and utility changes yet and more classes are likely getting Taunt than Revenant as was the case with Necros and Torment. So, it’s in the realm of possibility I think
snip just consolidation of some crappy traits, nothing new, nothing impactful enough to bring us into the meta, just lackluster traits being put together and then they make traits that should synergize well with themselves compete? i mean wtf is that crap? if Necros we in a good position, then hey a few tweaks here and there may be all we needed to keep us competitive, but at this rate all ANet is concerned with is just keeping us from drowning because they sure as hell do not want us to swim on our own.snip
Has Anet acknowledged that they are balancing for the meta? Serious question. I can’t remember a time where they said they wanted to make changes for any class in accordance with the player recognized meta. Any allusions to that? Anything? Cause if they haven’t, that might explain a lot about why the other classes are still operating within the meta parameters and why necro has stayed largely in the same place as well. And if there is concrete evidence otherwise, it might provide some context to their balance methodologies.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
To me, at least, it seems pretty clear that Anet disagrees that every class needs “meta approved” team support and access to at least either block, evasion, and/or invulnerability. It’s hard to make a case that they think otherwise. All the other classes already had access to these things so it’s hard to say what level of importance Anet places on them in general terms of class balance. However, it is also clear that players do place a lot of emphasis on these things.
My concern is that they are going to continue with the concept of base necro using deathshroud as a primary form of damage mitigation and leave the elite specialization to use meta approved damage mitigation in the form of blocks and evasion. This wouldn’t really help balance the elite spec against the core spec if they don’t address the player psychology around the issue at the very least.
So, in the end, what I’m hearing is Blood Magic and Death Magic are the two trees in particular that still need looking at because these trees don’t mesh with the current meta. Keep in mind we haven’t seen the full extent of the skill and utility overhauls yet and what that means for these changes overall. Still, Anet seems like they’ve already decided that the Necro’s survivability is where they want it, not necessarily where players want it. I do hope they reconsider or at least clarify their position.
Dhuumfire is exciting.
Blood magic still sucks. Much more conflicting with DS now since deathly invigoration heals when you enter so you receive no benefit from it.
I think they messed up with the skill fact, because currently how Deathly Invigoration works is you heal when you leave DS. Though new Dhuumfire looks really good imo.
They didn’t mess up the skill fact. They are toying with changing Deathly Invigoration to heal on entering death shroud instead of exit and buffing the heal amount to compensate for the fact that it doesn’t heal the necro anymore.
Aside from that, I would like Blood Magic to be cooler but it seems as though Anet has never officially acknowledged this issue with every class needing active defense skills, more specifically block, invulnerability, evasion of some sort. I think that is what is tying up the changes we’ve suggested for Blood Magic and beyond. I’m not sure what that logic is but they’ve just been real quiet about their balancing around, against, or for the current metas for their three game modes. No real official answer I’ve seen outside of Colin mentioning in an Angry Joe interview that they don’t want to hit zerker builds specifically.
It’s perplexing because it’s partly a social engineering issue regarding why players value active defense over death shroud and developed the current metas, which I’m sure they’ve considered and discussed to some degree when looking at what skills are used and not used, and actual balance issues such as getting focus fired (necro issue) in pvp. I just wanted to throw my vote into the hat once again to balance blood magic to allow for a much greater level of sustain.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Does this mean that we will be getting more actual new informations…and less recaps of recaps of recaps? … ^^
Nope, it just means you are currently interested in what they just posted. Nothing they have done or said indicates that they are shifting away from their current press release schedule. This thread was started close to a month ago. If Anet was listening, they certainly didn’t seem to drop everything and give what the OP requested. This specialization post was coming sooner or later, and that day just happened to be yesterday.
I believe what they said is that you can lose out on certain tools. You may not lose access to anything except the changes to profession mechanic. For example, if the Necro specialization just has worse death shroud skills, it may not lose out on anything else the profession has.
At the same time, you could lose quite a bit. They left that intentionally open for both the release specializations and future ones.
Well, it’s only a matter of time before we find out what they mean. They’ve already talked about the Revenant, Stronghold, Masteries, Defiant changes and now the new WVW borderlands and precursor crafting. Specializations may be next on the info list. I hope. There has been much debate about what Anet should do to keep specializations from being a form of power creep or even whether or not they should be allowed to be a straight upgrade. I personally think that the flexibility of freely switching between the base profession and specializations may muddy their use of the term specialization. But, we’ll see.
Nice, I thought they only added new weapons with specializations.
Specializations include:
- 1 new weapon.
- New traits.
- 1 new healing skill.
- New utility skills.
- 1 new elite skill.
- ‘changed profession mechanics’
Don’t forget that specializations also lock you out of certain tools the base profession has so it doesn’t amount to a straight upgrade. So, in addition to gaining what you mentioned, you also lose something by specializing. They just haven’t elaborated on what those limitations are exactly.
To answer your initial question, you can expect more balance ahead. With the Revenant and specializations in addition to rebalancing the base professions, there is a lot of balancing coming up. What that means for pvp in terms of the meta is anyone’s guess. Anet knows what the current pvp meta is, it’s up to them which direction they want to take it. My guess is they’ve been holding out on the bigger changes to class balance since they are packaging a lot of things for the expansion. Though, your opening statement makes me think you were expecting something specific out of build diversity. Mind elaborating?
I think the biggest thing we are missing from the discussion here is that Jon Peters said that the cap being raised isn’t even the whole picture for the changes being made. So, while it doesn’t make any promises, it also doesn’t confirm that damage potential for condition and direct damage will remain the same. So, there’s hope in that fuzziness! Before we take the glass half empty route, just remember that there were many who didn’t believe Anet would ever take a stab at condition damage. So, fear not! We may be able to raise ourselves from the dead soon enough.
Hey Everyone,
As you may have noticed bleeding stacks go above 25 stacks when playing in the demo map. This is not a mistake, rather as we have said for a while now, we know that the current stack cap creates problems for condition players who want to work together. What you saw today was the first test in solving some of these problems. Keep in mind, it is not necessarily final and absolutely not the entire plan. I see many questions about how this will work and how it impacts other conditions, balance, etc. Rest assured that as soon as we have a final plan we will be revealing it and letting you all know exactly how it will work.
Jon
Could this be a breakaway from berserker only meta?
I sure hope so
Unfortunately no.
Optimal group zerker builds at maxxed at ~13k dps
Optimal condition builds with no stat cap are at ~9k dps
Additionally they have a longer build up time, frequently have their damage cleansed off bosses, and most importantly only scale off of 1 stat instead of 4.
Upgrading from exotic to ascended zerker gives you a ~20% dmg increase. Upgrading from exotic to ascended rampagers is ~7% dmg increase.
If you use a hybrid build with sinister you can get ~12-15% increase, but still not the scaling of zerker and at that point you are no longer using a condition build anyway.
However I will say that this change is very exciting. It makes condition builds at least viable for open world content, and gives them a chance to actually use their potential instead of being less than useless.
I would argue that the answer is probably a yes and no. If only because the devs have publicly conceded the need for “something” to change about the pve meta ever since the first stream where they discussed the Ferocity changes and why they made those changes. At the same time though, Colin has stated that they don’t want to make glassy builds irrelevant either. With no other information beyond what Jon mentioned and what we’ve seen in the beta, we can’t assume that all the calculations you referenced, Zudet, will remain relevant beyond whatever changes they implement. What we do have confirmation of is what Anet has been saying for years, that they have heard us and have been working on the condition damage issue. Everything else until we get more is speculation. I too look forward to positive changes this might bring to class balance overall and raising the cap, while not a complete solution to the issues raised in the past, is a step in the right direction.
It isn’t until everything about Rev is released and fully played. There are other legends, weapons and specialisations yet, plus Rev isn’t eleased and is subject to further changes,
Post-release you can critique it properly. Doesn’t mean feedback on what you have played wont be welcome.
Betas are a time to offer feedback during development that can affect the finished product, i.e. Revenant on HOT release. Even after release, Rev is going to get re-balanced. I’m raising this question of perspective because you can hear in the tone of some posts that there is serious concern that Revenant is going to unbalance the game already. I’m hoping to level the discourse a bit and see how people are approaching giving feedback on Beta balance.
A question that keeps coming up, in my head at least, when I’ve seen reactions to the Revenant skills is whether or not it’s fair to critique Revenant at this point. Right now, we are only able to judge Revenant skills against the base professions and their effectiveness. A potential issue that I see with judging Revenants now is what happens if we collectively decide to nerf or buff something about Revenant and then we later find that a Druid has sufficient counterplay to what was just nerfed? I mean, we know specializations are coming, and they are supposedly going to be integral to class balance overall. Are we jumping the gun here, or should we just continue to offer suggestions within the scope of the current meta/class balance?
There is some crazy hyperbole being thrown around here. Remove necros from the game? That’s insane. No one will take that seriously. The better idea would be to remove all the other classes from the game. “Necro Wars 2” Boom. Everyone is happy.
You forgot the crippling lag in wvw and desync issues (invisible players, dying from nothing).
Also, the new camera mode is allowed in wvw. Fairly sure thats a bug.
As for the camera in wvw, the devs when previewing the camera feature on a stream made a point that adding the camera features to wvw was leveling the playing field for something that other players were doing already. So, I’m pretty sure that’s a feature.
That’s actually an awesome way to see the models in greater detail. Thanks for the head’s up. Eating a dark chocolate candy from the valentine’s day toy is an easy way to do this. I like looking at the character models without having them try to bite my face off.
Isn’t any assessment of synergy at this point moot? There’s vanilla profession balance coming, player based defiance, stability changes, resistance boon, specializations, etc. How can you possibly discuss synergy for a pvp environment we practically have no info on?