Guild Wars 2

Karazul.2934:

I have every class at lvl 80 and I can attest that the 20 weapon skills the elementalist have has the same effective of the 5 skills from other professions. So, in reality you have to put 4x more effort to play the class just to be on pair with the others.

Before the nerfs ele was a profession with high skill cap / high reward. Not anymore and this is sad.

*Correction: Before the nerf, ele was a low skill cap / high reward. Now it is average skill cap / average reward.

@OP

You need to remember one thing. If they put a focus on WvW, you may end up with changes you do not want. How many people would have wanted mastery skills and orbs as the priorities within WvW?

The problem is the approach that the balance team has. They basically do this:

1. Oh no, this skill is under/overpower. Let’s buff nerf it like crazy.
2. Oh no, we messed up the meta
3. Let’s not just revert what we did before, let’s change a whole series of other skills
4. Oh no, we messed up the meta

Repeat at #1.

Reduce effectiveness of warrior. Too much CC. Heal signet needs a big change. It should be much more closely tied to heal power. If a warrior is in clerics, it should heal for more than today. If they are using some other gear, it should be much less.

Reduce condi spam

Those are the two points they should be focusing on.

warriors are definitely the most OP class. This is in PvP or WvW. The shout heals buff will make them even more OP in WvW.

A boost to defense? You’ve never seen a defensive ele play then. They are insanely hard to kill.

Cruril Darksbane.2318:

Vi Au.8341:

with the upcoming leauge being 3 tiers instead of 2, 3 servers decided to fight for the last spot in gold tier.

I would like to hear everyone,especially current and past opponents, opinion on who they think can PPT their way to Gold League between SoS, Mag, and SBI.

I think this whole league system doesn’t work to begin with because, what actually happens excatly is;

Guild X leaves server Y.
Server Y now gets even worse.
Server Z gets a new guild, and becomes T1.
5 Months later:
Guild X doesn’t like Server Z anymore because they are fighting very tough oppents.
Guild X leaves Z and Rejoins Y who are now T3.
Server Z drops back down to T2.
Server Y goes to T2 and beats Server Z.
Server Z guilds switch to Server Y and Server Y is T1.
Server Z drops to T3

The process repeats.

Honestly I think anyone who transfers between servers should not be allowed entry into WvW for a period of time, say a month?

Because let’s be honest it’s about your server not guilds switch between servers to min/max their wxp. An perfect example is CD afew months back was one of the better wvw servers, then when they started getting matched up with tougher servers the guilds jumped ship and went to lower end ranked places.

The system doesn’t work, without either removing the server transfer tool or slapping on significant disadvantages for doing so. Hence if you was banned from WvW for a month they would be a reason not to transfer because, for all you know that server next month could be in a league you didn’t want to be in.

This was true at one point. Now it is more of bandwagon guild 1 realizes they aren’t as good as they think they are. That guild then transfers to T1. They now think they are good.

That’s more of how things are going.

earendil.1290:

style.6173:

This week just proves that T1 in NA needs its own league. Does anyone really want to go through 7 weeks of uneven matchups?

Seems SBI, SoS, Mag and even FA want to, according to the way they fight. Uneven matchup means that your people on the map are there for the right reason, lower queues and more fights to be had, against powerful enemies.

Why would I want to be elsewhere ?

and you speak for all those servers how? I seriously doubt many people would prefer to take a beat down every week vs having even matchups.

Lord Kuru.3685:

style.6173:

This week just proves that T1 in NA needs its own league. Does anyone really want to go through 7 weeks of uneven matchups?

Hopefully ANET does the right thing here.

Perhaps the right thing is to force uneven matchups so that those who stacked in T1 are encouraged to spread out to other servers — because it sure isn’t happening by itself.

Why does T1 population have to spread out? Because if WvW dies in the lower tiers (which is happening, slowly), there won’t be enough people playing WvW for Anet to bother supporting it.

I agree with you. The problem is that the leagues stacked T1 even more. That is the opposite of what we need to happen.

coglin.1867:

Tarinis.6054:

Taking damage brought one out of stealth, unless vanish was just used. Here, we got thieves stealthing, then stealthing right after their first stealth runs out. I guess we all have to spend money to beat a class…

I have no problem destroying thieves all day. Simply because you have not learned how to do so with your preferred profession doesn’t make stealth OP. It just displays a common pattern of how folks like to blame their inabilities on anything but their inabilities.

What might serve you better is to focus on developing a solution instead of complaining about the problem and transferring blame.

Oh and by the way, stealth was not balanced in WoW in the least if you ask me. But again, that is a matter of perception.

The problem though is that new players can’t understand this and so they come to the forums to post.

NSP was put into the last tier for this matchup? This will guarantee them the top spot in the bronze league. Now we wouldn’t have the lead WvW designer on that server or anything would we? :p

Chris.3290:

The problem with 1-3, is that they would be forced to admit that there is no competition from anything less than the top 3; and in admitting the problem they admit their complicity. From there, they have to give a reason for continued inaction; and in the end they have to admit that they are going to take all the money from gem sales and spend it on hookers and blow. (j/k, plz don’t infract me)

Actually putting T1 into its own league could help fix the stacking issue. It all depends on rewards. ANET would need to look at the winner of T1 as first place, the loser of T1 as last place and the middle server in the middle.

Let’s compare it to a 9 server league. The winner of T1 receives the same rewards as the winner of the 9 server league. The loser of T1 receives the same rewards as the 9th place team. Second place in T1 receives the same as the 4th ranked server.

If SoS could get stronger in NA, they would be scary good. Their SEA/Oceanic coverage is beast mode.

A competent person in any class can beat any other class.

qualm like a bomb.6512:

Transfer its what anet wants you to do, may even wanna wait to the last day and stack on the server who will be top of silver or bronze league. You will probably be playing right next to devon on NSP, although from the way he handles the balancing of wvw I don’t think he plays much anyways.

Did you notice how NSP was put into the bottom tier for this matchup? Hmmm. Coincidence or making sure they are in the bronze league?

This week just proves that T1 in NA needs its own league. Does anyone really want to go through 7 weeks of uneven matchups?

Hopefully ANET does the right thing here.

For virtually any weapon set, I’d say the answer is yes. You do mention P/D though. That’s the one exception right now. For a condi spec, torment or perplexity (the first 4) would be more helpful.

This would not work for thieves at all. crit chance without power or crit damage doesn’t do much.

Pete.6037:

Team deathmatch? God no.

In hot join, that will be absolute garbage. Everyone will go full damage.

Capture the flag, though, I could see working out. However, utility skills and weapon skills should be disallowed, as well as any form teleporting (including mesmer portals)

Wow. Everything written here is wrong. Team Deathmatch is fine. The point of the game is to survive. Some people will be dps, some will be support. That works great.

CTF is a horrible idea. The classes are NOT balanced for that. Taking skills away makes things even more unbalanced. You basically want the snowball fight from last years winter update to be the new game mode. Boring.

Gandarel.5091:

So I think it’s official, Zerg vs Zerg is considered GvG. I don’t think 20v20 can be considered GvG or PvP. I think GvG would deserved an own gamemode and a ladder, but with this, the opportunity has gone away. It should be the PvP version of guild mission.

Thoughts?

I will never call that thing GvG.

Stop trying to define GvG yourself. GvG is two guilds who agree how many people should fight and then go and fight. If they want a small number, fine. If they want 20v20, fine. There are no rules on numbers.

You need to wait for team deathmatch or something to come out. 3v3 with the current conquest design would be boring.

You all just want eles to be back to being insanely OP like they were earlier in the year. That won’t happen.

Daecollo.9578:

jportell.2197:

Daecollo.9578:

Kilandros.2098:

Don’t get me wrong, Guardian has access to a lot of heals—if you build and trait for them, that is. But when I go from playing my Warrior with Healing Signet to playing my Guardian I’m still amazed at how superior Warrior regeneration is with so little effort. For example, Healing Signet + Adrenal Health (minor trait) grants a warrior approximately 500 health per second in full Berserker gear and full Berserker trait. Pair that with Warrior’s health pool and I rarely ever pay any attention to my Warrior’s health in PvE gameplay. That’s pretty insane.

Currently Virtue of Resolve heals for ~100 with a full Berserker build. Now I’m not suggesting it be anywhere near Healing Signet, but surely increasing it to 150-200 wouldn’t be game breaking considering Guardian was given the lowest HP pool in exchange for “more healing”

So ya want it to be 250, then be able to 1250 hp/s (to 5 group.)

On a non-#6?

Sure, as long as you buff every single passive heal in the game to compensate.

Virtue of resolve coupled with AH coupled with Writ of the merciful and selfless daring… Guard HPS is fine. Warrior HPS is ridiculous because they aren’t sacrificing much to get a ton of healing… guardians sacrifice all damage to get their amazing heals.

Guardians don’t sacrifice as much to get a ton of damage, they don’t sacrifice heavy defense like Warriors have to, to get high DPS. They’re damage is build straight into their tanking tree. 0/0/30/0/0.

Guardians with a ton of damage. This made me lol. Thanks for that.

@OP. I don’t think TC has been recruiting. If anything, the server has gotten a bit weaker recently with a number of bandwagon jumpers heading to T1.

The challenge is that 5 and 6 have also gotten weaker. FA and DB used to be a good battle for TC. They also have gotten hit by the bandwagon jumpers. Now you have a new 5 & 6 that were not as strong as the FA and DB were previously making everything more imbalanced.

The reality is this…. 1-3 are stronger than ever. No other server should be playing against them ever. They belong in their own set of fights. TC is an exception at the moment although I still do not think they were as strong as 3 weeks ago. SoS which is more of a SEA/Oceanic server and DB which is falling apart are not a good fight for them. 5-9 are all decent battles.

This also shows why the whole league concept is going to be a fail. Over the 7 weeks, 5 and 6 will never win even one matchup. 4 will win once when they play against 5 & 6. I’m just hoping that ANET wakes up soon and keeps 1-3 by themselves.

I know a lot of us are tough on ANET, but this is a great idea. I am really glad they listened to the forums. I hope they keep a nice open space for the fight, and then an area above it where spectators can view the action. I’m excited.

It depends on ANET. If they listen to the forums and put the top 3 in their own league, then it will be fun. If they keep the gold league as 1-6, it will fail. It really depends on ANET at this point.

Justin ODell.9517:

So what would you like to see?

A “ready” button that appears before the match is created, and if someone doesn’t hit it within some time-window the match is aborted and both teams are returned to the queue? Perhaps the non-responding players kick out of the team, or kicked out of the entire queue?

One way would be to check your heartbeat every so often with a “are you still here” button, but that would be kind of annoying. It also doesn’t address the players who leave because they don’t like the team they are paired with.

We could just ramp up the dishonor system.

I know the team has their own thoughts on this, but I’d really like to see if someone here can come up with something awesome.

There will also be players that change their mind, need to leave, get disconnected, or get the skyhammer map and refuse to play it. There isn’t much you can do to prevent those from leaving.

What you can do is make the following changes:
1. No changes to the winning team. What they receive today, they still receive.
2. All members of the losing outnumbered team who remain until the end do not receive a loss for the battle
3. The person who left the battle early takes all of the losses. So, if it is a 4v5 at the end, the leaving player takes all 5 losses. If it is a 3v5, they each take 3 losses.

You are talking about the removal of stealth and instead replacing it with a slightly harder to see version. I am not a fan of the idea at all.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our goal is to have less currencies in the game, not more

Yay! Well said!

I think people should be able to earn a “GW2 currency” however they want to play the game,

DanH.5879:

all playing the current OP builds, go figure… d/p and s/d
especially the LS spam for boon stealing, lol

hahahaha. You said OP build. Unfortunately thieves are most good for killing nubs these days. Most others have learned the counters.

Because most people want action and let’s be honest, defense is boring.

Personally, I am just really sad to see how the game has strayed away from the original manifesto. What drew me to this game originally was that I could get the best gear playing the game however I wanted. That was a great perk. I didn’t need to do dungeons and could spend all my time working on map completions or WvW which I enjoyed. The best gear was obtained naturally. If I wanted a specific look for a weapon or gear, then I could grind for that.

Instead now, it takes a grind to get the best gear. The means I have to take time away from actually having fun in the game to doing certain tasks ANET wants me to do. It’s totally in opposition to the original spirit of the game.

My other issue is with new content. Changing Teq was a bad idea. It was a suitable and accessible dragon for casual players. Instead of changing existing content, add new. A lot of players do enjoy Teq. The whole mechanic for that dragon should have been added to a new dragon somewhere in the world. In other words, the game needs to cater to both casuals and hardcores. GW2 has lost that ability.

Alt friendly? no. If ANET wants to make the game alt friendly, they need to eliminate the entire concept of soul bound.

Because zerker builds are high risk, high reward. That’s how it should be. They do not need any changes.

This also proves a very important point…. stop messing with existing content. You had a dragon that was fun as a random pug. Leave it as it was. The game needs to be accessible to more casual players as well.

You also have a lot of hardcore types. Introduce a new dragon and give it all the mechanics of the new teq. That gives those players something exciting to do.

I just really question a lot of the design decisions that are being made by ANET.

ViRuE.3612:

There should be a name for the syndrome that Arenanet seem to be suffering (like Stockholm Syndrome for example) where a business dealing with the public begins to suffer resentment and anger towards its (paying) customer base. This syndrome is much more common in the gaming industry.

The relationship starts “all smiles” during the development process, begins to deteriorate at beta, further deteriorates at launch (mainly because some paying customers do not appreciate what was delivered, which is probably no-ones fault).

Then you have a major change in a largely settled game, e.g. ascended items, bloodlust buff, leagues or whatever which inflames a large section of the customer base. The customer has invested time and money in to the game (albeit less than the dev team has, but the customers time is their own and their money can be spent on whatever they like). During the initial period the customer develops a great deal of passion for the game and this change, well it feels like a betrayal.

The dev team, like the customers, are not perfect. They make mistakes, they pay too much attention to what the metrics tell them and largely ignore even the constructive posts on the forum. They fall back on the fact that the forum, reddit or whatever else is really just a small part of the community out there and most of that is full of jerks. Entirely missing the point that, by and large, happy gamers spend more time in game and unhappy gamers take to the forums to complain.

So when you see anger and disrespect it should tell you that you inflamed a great passion in these players but you let them down somehow. Those with the greatest investment (time, money, past games with Anet) will shout the loudest.

I’m a good example. I’m SO angry at the continuing WvWvW changes (siegewars, bloodlust, ill thought out leagues, ignoring GvG, giving PvE players everything on a plate, how long till we got ascended and when, if ever, can we get all ascended there etc). This is because I spent 3 – 4 hours playing WvWvW every day, bought three accounts and spent upwards of $1500 in the gem store.

I have no personal animosity to anyone at ArenaNet, even Devon Carver (I’m sure he is a reallly nice guy, I probably have more animosity to whoever decided he should be appointed to that job as it speaks volumes relating to the impotance Anet gives WvWvW in the grand scheme of things). But I reserve the right to speak my mind and get angry when so many of us have been beating our heads bloody against the Anet wall making constructive posts for over a year that are almost always ignored. Often there are good reasons, most of the time it comes across as it doesn’t suit “your vision” of WvWvW or you just don’t care enough.

So to all ArenaNet developers and staff – you really shouldn’t take it personally. Listen MUCH more to your paying customers, take metrics with a pinch of salt (hey check out Warhammer for how metrics went down for them?) and start putting real decision makers in the firing line instead of PR bots.

This community interaction thing is, after all, a two way street.

wow. +1. If ANET only pays attention to one message in this entire thread, I hope it is this one.

Zumy.6318:

Listen to your PvP/WvW playerbase and stop releasing things that go in a completely different direction.

We want less zerging, less passive effects (do not support skilled play), less broken/abusable mechanics (perplexity spam/stunspam/fearchain/stealthspam), less matchup imbalance, less orbbuffs V2.0, more entertaining/durable/thrilling sieges with actual fights and not groundtargetted spam, less siegeweapon overload and more rewards for skilled play.

People who play WvW and PvP dont need to get all the skill taken out of their hands. This game is getting easier and easier and classes get pushed into few OP builds more and more. Even when there is an issue with a mechanic being broken (e.g. warriors durability) the class gets buffed even more in the same direction (shouts/lungcapacity buff inc).
Yes 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, 10v10 and 20vs20 do matter! Because the players want it! And condition/cc spam are a big issue right here. They support the thoughtless game of numbers.
Players in WvW are in fact players that either like PvP in an open world environment or even siegebased or on the other hand dont care for the gamemode and just follow the loot train, no matter where they get it. Orr, Frostgorge trainframing, Queensdale or for Karma in WvW.

Why do we see more and more support for skillfree gameplay and none at all for people that actually play WvW for what we all took it? The open PvP heritage of DAoC and WAR? Move the PvE/Lootfocussed players back to the Living/Open world and please start enhancing the PvP experience the real group of interest for WvW wants.

How can it be that the needs of players that do not mind blindfolding aoe overload, huge fps-drops, insane skilllag and teleporting/warping during primetime in the mid&upper tiers as long as they get bags, currency and XP of any kind (blue, yellow, purple), are put above the needs/wishes of players that actually care about player versus player and guild/world versus guild/world interaction? Please stop protecting grinders from PvP-focussed “predators”. Give people the tools to kill the “blob” without counterblobbing or siegeoverloading the zone. Give us a laggfree game during primetime. Carebearing the “casuals” does no single favour to the gamemode and rewarding stacking in monozonetrains is killing the PvP in WvW.

Let sieges take hours to be finished for the people who love that. Siegeweapons deal way to much damage to structures and golemrushes are just overkill.
Once you give us the tools to bust the blob and make sieges of a reasonable length for the people who actually play WvW for what it was intended (massive sieges and massive !PvP!), the blobning problem will solve itself as the players that are abusing this gamemode for the simple fact of grinding will move on back to what they usually even like better. Grinding in the open world PvE.

Make WvW a better place for the people who came from WAR, Aion, Rift, SWOTOR, etc. hoping to finally find a gamemode full of epic fights between worlds and got rewarded with a zergfest with just and only epic and massive performance issues.

Do this for WvW. The people who dont like it will stick to the other modes of the game anyway. Afterall there is loot too.

And please please pretty please separate WvW from tPvP and PvE. So many gamebreaking changes to classmechanics that vastly have affected the PvP experience in WvW only happened to either balance PvE or a PvP oriented capture mode.

Great article. Agree with everything you said except for two things: 1. that people want less zergs. I think you have a split. Some people want to roam. Some people like to zerg. Some people like middle sizes groups. Maps should cater to all types.

2. I’m a bit worried about breaking balancing between PvP and WvW and PvE. I think that just gets confusing for players to remember the differences. In general, the main issues that you mention CC and conditions are a problem across all game modes.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

style.6173:

Actually I think ANET for the most part does listen when it comes to PvE. The problem is that the PvP team is stubborn and won’t increase game modes (hello team deathmatch) and the WvW team is completely out of touch. The WvW team in particular is a problem.

This is just disrespectful towards the PvP devs, the teams have clearly stated why they don’t want too many modes. They also mentioned that they are testing a lot of other modes as well. I’m happy that they don’t listen to knee-jerk reactions, maybe it would help to watch a few of the older released PvP-state of the game videos to get a bit of insight. It’s quite complicated.

WvW team out of touch? Because they don’t open WvW to the GvG-crowd which isn’t playing the mode as intended? You don’t play basketball in the last minutes of a soccermatch which is already decided, because soccer fans would hate this. I love the implementation of the new map-centres of the borderland maps. I’ve played quite a bit WvW since the implementation of the buff and it is half as bad because of the nature of it’s implementation: it changes quite fast and often.

Personally I would have gone with something different than a statistical boon, but it’s not easy to come up with something which gives people reason enough to capture these points. I would have enjoyed more breakout events / npcs who bring along siege when 3 of 5 points are capped instead of the buff, but I guess the crowd which is stubbornly against any npc-interaction in WvW would have been against such a thing.

You think adding a team deathmatch mode is difficult? I bet it would be more popular out of the gate than conquest. Thanks though you did make my point for me. The PvP team is stubborn around the game modes.

As for the WvW team, there is a lot bigger issues than GvG. Ranks, siege, failed bloodlust model, an upcoming fail league model, glitch bugs that have been open for months, zoom hacks, bad matchups, no new maps, a broken commander system…. Do I need to go on? They are out of touch. Instead if implementing valuable features we get new siege mastery skills.

@op. Completely disagree. It is better the way it is.

earendil.1290:

SBI is not ready for the gold league. Not yet – but we’re working on it.

And we would really love to get in Gold, even if it meant staying on 6th all the time – so much fun to be had and stuff to learn.

Any sort of reliable prediction should however be postponed till Saturday, when we’ll know the last matchup. I hope we get SoS.

SoS is an interesting server. Their strength is in oceanic/sea. If your strength is NA or EU, you won’t have as fun of a matchup even though you are similar in rank.

Actually I think ANET for the most part does listen when it comes to PvE. The problem is that the PvP team is stubborn and won’t increase game modes (hello team deathmatch) and the WvW team is completely out of touch. The WvW team in particular is a problem.

If you think warriors are OP now, wait for the shout heal buff.

@OP. Your issue is that you think PvP rank means something. It doesn’t. Once you understand that, you will not care what levels other people are. Just have fun.

Agree with all except for the GvG. That needs to be in WvW. The armor/gear options are too basic in PvP. The beauty of GvG is all the slight variations on armor/gear/food choices. PvP is too dumbed down to do the game mode justice.

Not to mention that attacks slow your run and jump speed. An interesting idea, but not one that should be implemented.

I really hope it is coming back! It was actually my favorite dungeon in the game. It was fun watching people try to jump and it was short and sweet. Not everyone wants an hour long dungeon.

This is my favorite event from the last year. I hope a lot of it is the same with a few tweaks.

Luvpie.8350:

Khalic.3561:

Here’s an idea folks. Maybe if we ask questions with some measure of civility instead of just trying to bash him about our complaints , we MIGHT get some answers?

And maybe, just maybe if we aren’t openly hostile all the time he might continue posting in this forum with the regularity that he used to?

C’mon people. This is an opportunity. Don’t blow it.

Here are the answers.

Please deal with Server pop?
We know server pop is a issue we are thinking about some ideas. When we have something concrete we will let people know.

Are you open to taking out Orbs?
Our metrics indicate that orbs are a great mechanic and people love fighting for orbs and it adds a fun aspect to wvw. Orbs are staying.

WvW rewards?
Leagues will increase rewards in wvw with new achievements. Rewards will be tied to whichever server you start the season with.

Season 1 please stop leagues.
We are open to suggestions and feedback during season 1 and will adjust season 2 if needed. We need season 1 to give us data.

This class is op that class is op.
We are balancing classes in the upcoming match and wvw is a priority for us.

Orbs have ruined GvG and open field fighting, do you agree?
GvG did violate my game mode so I violated the game mode back. Now we are even.

This is scary good.

and roaming is NOT the same as on lower tiers. You have some roamers, but no where near the numbers as on lower tiers.

As for T1, I like that it is stacked. I’d just like to see more competition there. For example, I want to see the top 3 in their own league. I’d like the winner of that league to receive some great prizes and the loser to receive virtually nothing. That would be exciting and bring the competition out.

Regarding queues, I think the big unknown right now is how leagues will affect queues. They might increase if the matchup is close and the PvE achievement hunters decide to play or they might decrease if the matchups are bad.

Sneak Peak:

The vision for WvW is:
1. More siege – moooaar
2. Less balanced fights – More orbs!
3. Less balanced match ups – Welcome to leagues!
4. Server stacking – More gems!

@op. Go play war hammer. Some of us actually enjoy large scale fights