Guild Wars 2

Class balance doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you really want a big team working on. Just imagine 20 people trying to balance a seesaw at the same time: Everyone sees that one side is a little too light and adds their own rock and suddenly the seesaw swings wildly the other way. You just need a few people who are aware of the whole picture and capable of making informed logical decisions. Too many people working at once just makes it more difficult to stay on top of the current state of the game (when other designers are tweaking stuff in their own time).

That said.. They should put a kittenload of people on fixing bugged traits and skills as soon as possible so that the balance people can actually start balancing from a perspective that isn’t skewed by traits and skills that don’t work correctly.

Haku.5068:

I’m glad there are no 100% healers. If there were, then the answer to every situation would be to kill the healer, or at least focus them. Breeds a terrible predictability.

This was not the case in WoW, at least when I played (vanilla/tbc). For a team with a balanced mix of damage dealers (physical/magic, ranged/melee) there were usually multiple viable targets. You could pressure the biggest threat to your team, the target with the least defenses against your team, the person negating your teams damage (usually the healer, but sometimes control), or the person in a bad position. Rarely was it a foregone conclusion who you needed to attack, and your choice would yield very different results at different times in the game. The best target would often change depending on which team currently had the momentum and what cooldowns were up. Choosing when and who to control had similar considerations to take into account.

The thing is, in GW2 you don’t have anyone who can negate your teams damage, so that’s one potential target that’s gone. The people who sort of do some support are tanks, so they aren’t viable targets. Because of the way people can gear to extremes with no inherent penalty (full offense, full defense) the biggest threat to your team is almost always also the most vulnerable target, so there’s another option narrowed down. The fact that conquest is the gametype means standing in a circle often dictates your teams positioning, so there’s another potential reason to pick a different target diminished. On top of that, none of the control breaks on damage, so who you control is always going to be the target you’re DPSing outside of interrupting stomps, revives and guardian books.

Because the targets and the roles are homogenized and CC doesn’t break on damage teamfight strategy boils down to attacking and CCing the glassiest guy on the other team start to finish, or trying to aoe as many people as possible. This game has good 1v1 mechanics, but the group fights are kind of kitten.

Mammoth.1975:

Give rangers shadow trap and watch them become mandatory :P

I was thinking a skill called something like “Stand Guard” that would make their pet hold position, and the second activation would teleport to your pet (“Sound alarm”).

That would give rangers something to compete with mesmer portal, without having identical mechanics.

the best: thief/ele/guardian/mesmer
the rest: necro+/engi/warrior
rangers: ranger

basically you want 2 bunkers, a mesmer, one glass, and one ranged aoe teamfight pressure. Ele and guardian are the best bunkers, plus you need to the ele to kill treb, thief is the best glass mostly because it can also double as a ranged aoe pressure in larger fights, necros and engis are kind of neck and neck for the teamfight pressure spot, but necro wins slightly because it’s more effective at range and has plague form (engi’s main advantage is mobility). Warriors have some advantages over thief, but having to commit to melee to do anything is often a liability in big fights, and the lack of a teleport hurts them on khylo. Mesmers are just much better at being mesmers than rangers are.

Rangers aren’t quite as good at teamfight pressure as the teamfight builds, or spiking as the spike builds. They should be competing with mesmers for the position of back point defender, since mesmer has no competition, and rangers probably have the best semi-tanky 1v1 build of any profession, but they have no portal equivalent to allow them to assist other fights without leaving their node entirely open. The only other place rangers shine is the fact that they have a reliable on demand quickeness on a short cooldown for stomps, but currently that’s not game winning enough to replace one of the people on your team. Maybe if bunkers get a nerf rangers with quickness stomp and some decent damage would make a good semi-bunker.

Healers exist, they just do all their healing by pressing F on downed players and being tanky enough to live while reviving. Other than that they just throw around aoe buffs and condition removal while waiting for people to die.

Ultimately this is a lot less fun and interesting than using a range of targeted support/healing skills to keep allies alive as you would in other games. It also limits the variety of targets in a team fight, since the ‘healer’ is also an unkillable tank and not a viable alternative to attacking the squishy dps.

Sam Pan.3651:

I miss GW1 Arena PvP where there was tension between killing each others’ healers and resing one another in time. This zerg rush play doesn’t have the same tense moments that you can look back on when the game is over and say, “Wow, that was tense” – because in this game type all players are constantly blowing their loads at all times.

Yes there are some moments of anticipation and intensity missing in the combat. 24/7 load blowing is a pretty good way to put it. I’m not saying the game doesn’t take skill, but the way it’s designed it feels like a lot of the build up and back and forth is missing, and everyone is just racing to the finish as fast as they can.

Even in little things, like the fact that most casters never stop moving to charge up and release a big spell. That’s a quick moment of suspense, and it gives players an opportunity to actually see something coming and counter it, but there are almost no skills like that in GW2. Movement is great, but it loses some of its impact and strategic significance when there’s never any incentive to stop.

Usually areas that are not easily accessible on foot are flagged in a way that blocks teleportation between levels. Except in specific circumstances where the teleport is deemed “especially cool” or strategic without being gamebreaking (or in circumstances where arenanet hasn’t realized the jump is possible yet). This map will probably be the same.

MaXi.3642:

Noctred.6732:

MaXi.3642:

PS: reason why FPS dont use conquest is because in FPS you CANT just stand on point and defend it, in FPS there is NO defense, just attack, they are forced to play deatmatch or ctf or something because any sniper (or anyone else who can aim for headshot) would just 1 shot anyone standing on point and trying to defend it without him having a chance to defend himself

UT domination and its various derivatives want a word with you.

say it to the one who i was replying to

Most FPS games that come to mind have a conquest mode, it’s just not the kind of gametype that people want to watch or play at a high level, hence it doesn’t get used in tournaments.

The spectator mode, ladder, etc. is stuff they can easily add. It may take a while for them to bite the bullet and realize conquest kind of sucks.

Strategically it lacks depth. It only works as a casual mode to get people to run around, because the nodes have no strategic context or result, they just generate points to an arbitrarily specified amount and then the game ends.

There’s a reason FPS that have been successful esports typically don’t use conquest. Once teams get coordinated conquest in any game either involves running around killing people, or taking more than half the points and turtling depending on how much kills are worth/respawn locations/etc. The secondary mechanics do add something to the game, but it’s not enough to save this shallow gametype.

Also, it sucks to watch. The action and the scoring don’t coincide, which often makes it anti-climactic or boring to watch. Two teams can be locked in a super close fight over mid, balanced on a knife edge, but if one team owns 2 of the three points during this nailbiting team fight, that team has probably already won the game.

It just feels like a game type where you’re always playing to take a marginal advantage and run down the clock, not to complete a goal or dominate your opponent.

I’m still trying to take this game seriously, but there are so many classic gametypes (if not new and original ideas) that I’d rather play than conquest.

If rangers had some way to very quickly get back to a side point from mid they’d make very good close point defenders, since they probably have the best semi-tanky 1v1 build of any profession. They just need some sort of skill that lets them leave their pet on a point and then teleport back to it like a flesh worm.

imo thief and warrior compete for the glass/spike role, ele and guardian are the best bunkers, necro and engi (and sort of thief again lol) are the best aoe pressure. Mesmers and rangers should be competing for close point defender/treb user, but rangers have nothing to compete with portal so mesmer wins the spot every time.

mouse.1689:

nurt.5401:

Uh. this is a myth. You probably don’t notice TPvP specific complaints about the thief because there’s nothing really tournament specific about the problems.

I don’t think you’ll find a single top level player who will agree with you. Thieves are actually getting edged out of the metagame in tPvP right now. Sure, they can gib people once in awhile, but that’s not translating to games being won, at least at top levels of play.

hi. meet Cyrkle >

Cyrkle.5814:

Dee Jay.2460:

Yet the only source not complaining about Thieves are people who actually play PvP competitively (aka. tPvPers).

Not true.

dunno where you guys are getting this “thieves don’t win games” thing. like every top team has a thief. if anything the few holdout teams who weren’t running thieves are finally getting around to adding one to their comp. i mean a week ago the top QP team in the US switched to running a thief full time on every map…

Since they added a 5 sec internal cooldown on the bleed on crit sigil precision does very little to increase your condition damage. The bleed on crit minor trait in the curses line applies 1 tick of bleed, so we’re talking an extra 100-115 damage per crit.

Running power instead of precision increases your physical damage significantly without really hurting your condition damage. You can still run the bleed on crit sigil even, since it’s a 60% chance to proc and you’ll still crit fairly often from the precision you get from the curses line.

Condi/power definitely more offensive pressure, but you lose some survivability in sPvP since you’re also giving up toughness in the bargain. If you tend to kite and position yourself out of harms way I would definitely go power/condi. If your playstyle is to run in and go full agression dropping mark of evasion and geomancy sigil in melee range you might prefer the extra survivability from a rabid amulet.

Uh. this is a myth. You probably don’t notice TPvP specific complaints about the thief because there’s nothing really tournament specific about the problems. Thieves still gib people constantly in paid tournaments though.

I think the main difference is that in paid tourney’s people tend to think in terms of “did we win the fight” not “did I win”, and teams res much more reliably. In the mind of a solo pub player getting downed means “I lost”, but in a tourney team people go down and get resed up instantly all the time. A fight isn’t lost until your team gets stomped out and loses the point.

That doesn’t change the fact that thieves are probably the best glass cannon right now. Not only are thieves competitive with warriors for single target spike damage, they can also sit back with shortbow, stay safely out of range if anyone tries to get on them, and put out some of the highest ranged aoe pressure in the game PLUS perma aoe poison. Being able to do both safe ranged aoe pressure and amazing single target spike with a single build is what really makes thieves amazing in high level tourney PvP.

I hope someone organizes something like this in the US.

I think a team dueling tournament would be awesome. Each team sends in 1 player at a time, the winner keeps fighting until they lose, teams send in players until they run out. The team with players left at the end wins.

If people took it seriously it would be interesting to see what professions/builds people bring to a duel that might not work in a conquest map. I noticed a condition warrior in the video. Also I’m guessing there’d be a lot more rangers. Also the strategy of what player to send in 1st, who to save to counter what they’ve got etc. would be interesting to see as well.

Dejh.5971:

There is an occasional bug where the daggers will bounce off the air above capture points, allowing it to hit multiple times, even on single targets. Besides that, it’s just what everyone has said: DD rips through groups of exactly 2. This also makes it fairly deadly against rangers, and anyone using Ogre runes, as your pet or rock dog is an easy bounce target.

That bug with the capture point bounces happens any time the CP is owned by the other team. If it’s neutral or friendly it doesn’t work, but when it’s an enemy node the floating circle doodad above the point is treated as an enemy target for bouncing skills.

Schwahrheit.4203:

Might be similar to Blade Trail bug but more reliable. Unless my eyes were deceiving me.

This wouldn’t surprise me. When we were messing around with it it seemed to be critting for really disparate numbers. Like some crits would be more than twice as high as others on the same target during a single dancing dagger.

nurt.5401

Name: Creecher
Class: Necro
Guild: Win[Win]

I just hate seeing the red numbers pop up constantly while it bleeds out. That little bit of red in my peripheral vision often makes me go “ENEMIES? wait no”. Plus there are too many NPCs in PvP already.

chuiu.4985:

But when it is this slow it makes it very unreliable and misses a great deal more, making it less useful overall. As with deathly swarm, these skills have a lot of problem in regular use because they are so easy to dodge/avoid.

My dark path never misses unless it gets dodged or blinded or something; I never see it whiff for no reason. The only thing I find annoying is the abundance of NPCs in PvP and the fact that dark path will often collide with a random mesmer clone or pet or thieves guild or whatever. That’s not really a dark path problem though, it’s a game problem, I just notice it with dark path because it’s one of the only projectile skills I have.

I agree with the OP. Most of the support skills in this game are terrible. The only ones that are really useful are the ones that happen automatically, or have no cast/cooldown and don’t cut into your time spent dealing damage. Heals are marginally useful when they’re used on a target that has extremely high toughness, but that means a support is only really good at keeping themselves alive. The healing from a support build isn’t going to do anything to keep your thief or warrior buddy alive.

Pretty much the only supporting action that actually requires player awareness/input/positioning and is also not a complete waste of time, is reviving downed players by pressing F. This basically means “support” is actually just building tanky and keeping yourself topped off so that you can live long enough to sit there and channel a revive when your DPS goes down. Maybe you also throw some incidental condition removal or small heals on your allies, but it’s not really something that has a big impact on how you play since it kind of just happens as you hit people.

I much preferred the healers seen in most MMOs to the GW2 support builds that consist of being hard to kill, accidentally buffing people around you, and pressing F to revive.

The main problem is how do the arenanet devs allow the possibility for builds that can effectively keep allies alive without those builds becoming unkillable when using all their support skills on themselves? With the SPvP capture mechanics a tanky healer doesn’t work, and with the flexibility of GW2’s profession system anyone who makes a healer can also make it tanky. It’s not a problem with an easy answer. I have some ideas, but I don’t see how to do it without making pretty significant changes to trait trees, itemization, scaling etc. Other than possibly just increasing the healing done by support skills in WvW/PvE and leaving SPvP alone.

everything i’ve heard about LoL balance is that they release a new hero, it’s way overtuned, it becomes super popular (everyone buys it, riot wins), and then they smash it down out of popularity just in time for the next new OP hero to come out.

that… sounds like whack-a-mole balance. a-net’s approach is the opposite. i think maybe they should hurry up and remove some of the stuff that’s not fun to play against, and then worry about balance, but in terms of creating a balanced game they are going about it the right way: slow and steady.

they need to give people time to adjust their strategies before they nerf something that’s considered too powerful (things that are considered “unfun” regardless of power are a slightly different matter).

Klinch.2964:

I found this thread, so I’m trying to avoid creating a new thread about team compositions.

So what are some “general role” compositions. So far I’ve really only heard of the “bunker” and “roamer”. What are some other roles that go with a team?

Which combinations of them seem work well (not looking for the “perfect team”)?

You should have 2 bunkers, or a bunker and a half-bunker so you have 2 players who are responsible for making sure you can hold 2 points without getting back capped. A ‘half-bunker’ would be a strong 1v1er with decent survivability, like a ranger or mesmer, or any necro build with plague form. Half bunkers can’t 1v1 forever or hold out as long 1v2 as a full bunker but they bring more damage to a fight. Usually your full bunker holds the point that requires the most babysitting, and your half bunker holds the off point and has some freedom to solo forest creatures or assist mid on guild.

After that most good teams hold two points and run 3 roaming team fight builds with high mobility, damage and teamfight presence to assist whichever of your two points gets attacked. The idea of “roamer” as it was envisioned during the early beta weekends is pretty much dead. It’s a waste of time to try to 1v1 a full bunker, or even a half bunker, to go for a 3 cap. In serious matches good teams only go for back caps if the point is completely open, and once they take it they usually either abandon it, or abandon the other side point and commit to holding the enemy’s point and mid.

The only other positions are basically specialty roles on khylo, which are treb user and treb shutdown. Every team needs an answer to portal repair mesmer on the enemy treb. Currently that’s either a tank staff ele that can kill the treb quickly without dying, or a thief that plays smart (hint: shortbow). For your treb you can either run portal mesmer (which stomps pubs, but good teams will still shut down most of the time) or you can have your roamers use the treb situationally, which has no ‘hard counter’ but requires your team to be in the right place at the right time to shut down the enemy treb while simultaneously winning team fights without auto-win treb support.

there is a competitive scene, but i can see how it would be very hard to get into if you don’t already know people. there’s a guild that highly competitive teams use for sync queuing tournaments against each other. we queue nightly into tournaments that usually include between 4 and 7 of the top teams in the game right now, and making it to the end in a tournament like that, where your round 1 matchup could be the 5th best team right now and if you make it past them you’re up against the 3rd best team etc., is an accomplishment.

just for reference my character on live is Creecher Zzzzzzzzzz[Win] (10 z’s, or use nurt.5401). if you have a serious team and want an invite to the Sync queue/scrim guild feel free to hit me up. i don’t think i have invite powers but i’ll see what i can do.

Yes, I think they’re ruining PvP because they don’t produce fun fights. They aren’t really overpowered, they just aren’t fun to fight against.

To me BWE1/2 were much more fun than live, mostly because ele and warrior were the go to classes for burst. Ele and warrior burst requires set up, there are big tells and windup time to react to, stun breaks are an effective counter because their burst has a decent cooldown and it requires the target to be stunned in order to land it, and the professions were left vulnerable if their burst failed.

That’s how high burst classes should be; thieves and mesmers just aren’t as well designed. They don’t have obvious tells, they don’t have effective counters designed into the game, and they aren’t vulnerable like a burst profession should be, because of the abundance of stealth and invulnerability at their disposal (often simultaneously built into their spike skills).

Plus I think the core design of mesmers ruins games. Clones cloud your field vision and make big plays/smart play less common by reducing all players and spectators ability to read what’s happening in a fight. it clutters and muddles what should be a clean, streamlined combat experience. Any build that brings 2-4 pets to PvP is just as guilty, but unfortunately there’s no alternative for mesmers.

I agree with Mesker. Basically just a poor design choice that’s difficult to retract now.

They talked a lot about wanting animations to be distinct and clearly visible in combat so people don’t have to watch the ui, and pet spam really holds the game back in this regard.

Fights without pets are a cleaner, more enjoyable experience, unfortunately many professions are capable of bringing not just one, but 3-6 npcs. With the right professions/builds a 3v3 fight can become as chaotic as a 12v12.

Imo PvP should have been designed from the ground up with a maximum of 1 npc per player, but it’s really too late to change now.

i’m waiting patiently, but it scares me that so many people i know seem to be quitting or losing interest in the game already and the number of viewers on twitch has dropped rapidly over the last week or two.

spvp really needs a ladder/ranking system and some polish/sparkle to the tournament/reward experience to keep people playing.

nah, if any profession gets an overhaul to their fundamental mechanics it’ll be thief or mesmer, because theirs are the most kitten up. the root design of those professions will continue to cause problems until changed.

necros are solid, they just need very minor tweaks to be viable in a few roles in PvP. actually if just the top tier of profession/builds were nerfed slightly necros would be on par. some significant trait shuffling/changing could yield positive results in the long run, but it’s not really a pressing issue imo. nothing about the core of the class is flawed.