Guild Wars 2

Sometimes when a field is dropped, the animation/colored ring simply doesn’t show up. Occasionally, it’ll show for a split second before disappearing. This affects all field effects, stationary AoEs as well as moving ones, and happens with both friendly and enemy skills. It happens in instanced 5-man content as well as large scale WvW fights. I haven’t noticed any particular pattern or situation where it can be consistently reproduced.
It seems to have begun with the latest quarterly update which introduced new field visuals. For modes that rely heavily on combo field interactions (stealth opening/water blasting etc..) this is a fairly game breaking bug.

infantrydiv.1620:

Too many boons, too many conditions, too many dodges, too many low cd skills, too much condition removal, too much damage, too much tankiness, etc, etc, etc.

This has all been exacerbated to an extreme degree by HoT.

While I’m not particularly fond of the click-bait title, your point is spot on. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it seemingly has caused a lot of players to quit the game, ArenaNet has yet to acknowledge this problem and likely never will. It seems to be a deliberate design decision.

XGhoul.7426:

Nothing can be toned down pre-expansion, otherwise people that only pvp wouldn’t have a reason to purchase this expansion, with the next expansion (more power-creep) looming and disregard of core skill balance, I think it is time to accept the game for what it is.

Side grades with new play styles (the way the expansion was advertised) would have been plenty incentive for people who enjoyed the game pre-HoT to buy it.

Bad.

Poor balance, overall combat design has suffered greatly in the past year and a half, any fights larger than 2v2 is a chaotic mess to watch, lack of competition..

This is clearly mirrored in player interest as well. The last WTS final had 10k concurrent viewers. Not particularly high but far better than the recent pro league final (s1), which peaked at about 4k. The weekly rounds barely break 2k.
When they held the challenger cup (qualifiers for the pro league), 25 teams were eligible to sign up for 16 spots in each region. They only got 10 in EU and 9 in NA.

Personally, I think HoT killed any chance they had at glorious esportz. Up until early 2015, they’d made good progress. Lots of small steps in the right direction. But HoT (and to a lesser extent the specialization update in June) was a huge leap backwards, and advertising the game through a pro league when it was in its absolute worst state ever probable didn’t do them any favors.

Personally, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m not specifically against any of the proposed changes, but they don’t address the core of the issue. “Night capping” is a direct result of uneven coverage – why not attempt to fix that instead of the secondary problems it creates?
Off the top of my head, a simple solution using existing features would be to vary linking over the course of a day. We have 4 matchups for NA. Boil that down to 1-2 during off hours, and “night capping” largely goes away. The servers with little to no coverage will be carried by their linking partners, the linking can control population balance fairly well, and (most importantly) it would create a much more active environment for the people playing in these timezones.

Somewhere along the way ArenaNet stopped asking themselves if new things would be fun/engaging to fight against.
I get why a lot of people like to play condition heavy builds. They’re typically very efficient, easier to play and far more forgiving then their power counterparts. But I don’t think I know a single person who prefers to play against a condi spec over power (and I suspect that group is a very tiny minority). Power builds simply tend to cause more dynamic fights with more visibility/clarity, better counterplay options and less focus on hard counters.
I can see why, as a designer, you might get caught in this one-sides perspective (especially when such a large portion of the game is PvE) but it’s a trend that’s been going for a while now, and it’s really taken a big toll on the game.

As I recall, the server statuses changed overnight when the update was rolled out. The system has never responded that quickly to a change in population. Considering not all of the host servers are “full” (NS being the only exception), the most likely explanation is that the population cap was reduced.

In any case, though, because there’s no system in place to account for coverage across timezones, there can be plenty of reasons for a guild to want to transfer to a “full” server even if the status is caused by a large population.

Maybe, just maybe, and bear with me here because I know it’s a crazy thought, instead of discouraging people from playing the game they could simply make an effort to ensure that the “night cappers” are placed in the same matchup (yes, I’m aware this wouldn’t be possible with the linking system). If they could collapse all OCX/SEA time to a single matchup, not only would it be more fun for the off hour players, there’d be nothing for the day cappers to complain about.

I voted QoL entirely because of the cross-map chat feature. I think that’s something we really need and I hope it can pave the way for a server-wide chat down the road.

I hope they don’t consider population “fixed” yet, though. The linking system has flaws, especially in regards to non-NA timezones, which are still sparsely populated because the number of matchups is dictated by the much larger NA population.

I think it was fully warranted. It should have been accompanied by 50 other nerfs, though.
For True Shot specifically, it had a 2.5 damage modifier (to put that in perspective, backstab is 2.4). The current 2.0 is much more reasonable, but honestly still quite high by pre-HoT standards.

These new easy-to-land, super high damaging skills on short cooldowns are a disgusting violation of the game (yes, I’m brine-level salty about this).

Gunner Morton.8340:

Not sure if I’m wrong but, for some reason there are still issues with stability. A few days ago I ran around in fire keep and used dolyak signet to get 10 stacks of stability that a mesmer was able to strip with just one attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Opr-zbnzQ#t=45s

Mind Stab removes a boon on hit. (edit: ninja’d for slow reply)

@OP:
The stability buff is excellent. It has made fights significantly more enjoyable.
edit: After reading some of the other posts here, I’d just like to emphasize that I think the 0.75s icd (resulting in a minimum stab uptime from “Stand your ground!”x2 of ~30%) is completely reasonable.

I’m not too keen on the new limit on hard CC. It allows large blobs to be very disorganized with no real drop in performance. You can be extremely lax with your group compositions as long as you have enough players. From the perspective of a group that fights outnumbered, that gets very annoying.
I don’t mind hard CC being made negligible in group fights (in fact I quite enjoy the way it indirectly forces aggressive play), but it bothers me that it’s now specifically tailored to favor the larger group, which already has superiority in damage output, damage mitigation and soft CC.

I like to consider “balance” as two separate issues. One is the inter-profession balance – which classes are viable, how do they compare to each other etc. The other is the baseline power level of mechanics – general damage output, healing, boon uptime, accessibility of evade frames..
On this forum, the two are often lazily lumped together, resulting in nonsense arguments where people completely talk past each other.

In terms of inter-profession balance, I get the impression they’ve completely given up trying to keep all professions viable at the same time. Rather, the “balance” updates simply attempt to shift the meta and prevent staleness. I personally think this a terrible decision, but if they’re dead set on only doing quarterly patches, it probably is the only realistic option.

What I consider a much greater issue is the inflation (power creep) of combat mechanics. Everything is much more extreme now than it was a year ago, and I think the game has suffered tremendously – the skill ceiling is now much lower, build diversity is gone, and post-HoT combat is very reliant on gimmicks and hard counters.

While I think (and based on the discussion on this forum, I’m definitely not alone in this) they’ve massively failed with the power creep, the balance between professions (especially in low-mid tier PvP) is objectively not as bad as it has been at certain times in the past.
Even so, the skill changes often seem random and some of the things they do (or don’t do) are downright baffling. I wouldn’t rate them higher than 4/10 when it comes to balance, mainly because I’m incredibly salty about the power creep, which has essentially ruined the game for me, and because I think releasing skill/trait changes on a quarterly schedule is insufficient and lazy.

Not even remotely.
It shows quite clearly that they have no intentions of scaling back the power creep, and are fine with the current gimmicky game play.
This is no longer the game I bought in 2012 and enjoyed through 2014, and it certainly isn’t a game I want to play in any competitive capacity.

Brandon.6194:

What I think needs to change is the cc cap at 10 players. Its a lot harder for a small group to fight a big group when the cc can hit only hit 12.5% of the group with cc. What I was noticing tonight was that these big groups that we were having good fights against before the patch, were rolling over us because we had no way of holding them back. We fight as 20 and we can usually take out 35+ groups and if we had ways of getting separation before they push we could do a lot better but if they pop stability they have at least a full 8 seconds to push. If we had 2 lines from staff 5 on DH we still can only hold back 20 players and only if they don’t have stab. If another a big group was to use the same effect on us we would have our entire team blocked. This change has made it a lot harder for small groups.

I agree. They overdid it with the CC nerf.
In terms of movement (stab vs. CC), stab 2.0 and unlimited CC greatly favored the bigger group because they could strip more stacks.
The benefit of stab 3.0 is that it equalizes two groups of different sizes in this regard by putting a relative low upper limit on the amount of hard CC that can be useful in a given period of time. Unfortunately, the new target limit allows numbers to overwhelm the CC potential of smaller groups, once again shifting the favor back to the blob.

While the changes have made blob v blob fights significantly more enjoyable, they haven’t done as much for zergbusting as many people were hoping. This also has a lot to do with the hyuuge amount of damage in the game, though.

edit: I should probably mention that it’s still a massive improvement overall and I’m very happy with the stability buff.

Ellie.5913:

I think a better explanation is that the people in charge of pvp just don’t know how to make a pvp game (…)

I don’t know. For instance, when it comes to combat design, I think the first round of powercreep (June 23rd update) was an accident, but I don’t see the ridiculousness of the elite specs being unintentional. There’s just no way they’re that out of touch with the game. When such a large portion of the playerbase, including many top players, show a strong preference (mildly put) for the 2014/early 2015 pre-powercreep metagames but nothing is being changed, you have to think the developers are being forced not to act. The alternative is just sad.

Straegen.2938:

The “server” concept is out dated (…)

Yep.
I’m not convinced of the legitimacy of the “leaked” notes, but if they’re true, it’s not a good solution. As someone who primarily plays during the off hours wasteland of OCX and SEA, I’m a bit worried. A static system like the current server structure will never be able to properly accommodate a 24-hour gamemode like WvW due the massive difference in population across timezones.

Cynz.9437:

remember when you had to save dodges for important things and those important things actually had CDs/high costs

aaaaaaaaand I’m sad.
\cry

Note: I make these suggestions primarily from a PvP/WvW perspective. I’m not sure how this would affect PvE.

The current conjure skills are largely ignored in every game mode. I’ve always found the most interesting aspects of them to be the utility-focused skills (movement skills, CCs etc.), but due the slow activation of the weapons they’re extremely awkward to use in any high pressure situation where you might need the skills. As a conceptual rework, I suggest the following changes:

• 1. Remove the second weapon that drops on the ground and make the cast instant.
  This would effectively make them similar to engineer kits, giving much better access to the weapon skills.

• 2. Remove cooldowns and charges, and disable the conjures outside of their corresponding attunements (FGS excepted).
  As another move towards better accessibility, I’d like to see the cds either removed or dramatically reduced (remember that the skills on the weapons also have their own cds). To compensate for such a buff, and to force decision making in combat, I think it would be interesting to limit conjure activation to the relevant attunement (e.g. Ice Bow can only be activated in water attunement).
  FGS should probably be excepted from both these changes.

• 3. Focus the conjure skills more on utility functions.
  Damage isn’t particularly interesting, ele already has plenty of options for that. Leaps, pulls, evades, blocks, CCs, on the other hand..
  Some of the skills already have these effects. The shield has a movement skill that dazes, a pull, a (bad) block, and an invuln. Hammer has a leap, a launch and a static field etc. I’d like to see all the skills (except autos) given this type of functionality. In turn, damage should be scaled down or completely removed.

This would offer a way to add better active defense to the class without messing with weapons, which in turn would allow some much needed nerfs to the current face-tank-and-heal iteration of the elementalist (tempest).

QOL changes to go with the above:
- The skill is grayed out while the attunement is on cooldown. When activating a conjure, attunement is automatically switched (to prevent latency making quick switches awkward).

Thoughts?
Perhaps further limitations would be needed so as not to have too many skills available?
My own main concern is that this would cover too many of the inherent weaknesses in the real weapons, and make conjures a bit too dominant. On the other hand it would also open up weapon choices more, which would be great.

kdaddy.5431:

I have to disagree with your spec vs trait comment. All the builds before were the same as well it didnt change with the specs.

Eles were running 0-0-2-6-6 or 2-0-0-6-6. If you wanted fresh air it was 0-6-2-6-4

This went for every class. There was always 1-2 builds, even after this patch it opened up so many more potential builds since they raised the condi pressure. You started seeing burn guardians/ medi dps/bunker guardian. You saw shoutbow/dps rampage, you saw conjure weapons, d/d, fresh air, staff eles.

To be fair, the OP didn’t say the switch to specializations was bad – just that the subsequent balancing was insufficient. The update came with a big overhaul, and it resulted in quite a bit of power creep on its own, what with the combination of traits, new baselines and the 2 additional slots.
I believe what he meant is that when you look at the power creep over the past year, while HoT contributed more, it all started in June.

dubstax.9102:

CC in World vs. World has gotten to a level of complete absurdity.

Yep.
For the past year, it seems like no one at ArenaNet have bothered to ask the question: “Will this be fun to play against?”. Prime examples of this being condi damage and CC.

STIHL.2489:

Not in the mood for gimmicks, and that is exactly what this would bring.

I would like to see a simple system in place where the higher rank you were, the more EXP, Wxp, PPK you were worth, and players got better loot for killing you.

I think that would spice things up nicely in WvW.

This concept would be genuinely hilarious. I don’t think it should be tied to your rank, though. Just a simply effect that increases every time you get credit for a kill, and disappears when you die.

effect: Wanted!
Finishing this player will reward +x points to your world score and a bounty of y silver.
Stacks up to 50 times.
(30 minute recharge)

Each time you get credit for a kill, one stack is added to this effect (maybe with cd of a minute or two so you won’t get +20 from a zerg wipe). Bounty could either go to the player who finishes you (debatable if this should only count actual finishers or just fatal damage), or a random choice among everyone who gets credit for your death.
PPK could be something like 1 point for every 2-3 stacks. Bounty maybe 1 silver per stack. Maximum number of stacks should be set very high, and they should be kept when switching map (only lost when leaving WvW). The recharge would trigger when you die and prevent any stacks being added for its duration to avoid kill-trading.

Silverstone.4539:

NO, the old would be no better than what we have now. the old way was changed because it had its own problems.

The change likely had nothing to do with WvW in the first place.

People tend to vastly exaggerate the strength of old stability, looking at it in a vacuum and ignoring the bigger picture. Yes, it allowed people to walk through CC. Or rather, it allowed CC to be wasted (the onus being on the caster). It did not have permanent uptime, and there was clear counterplay to it through proper timing of both hard and soft CC (even easier now with the nerf to -condi). People act like it made frontlines immortal, yet the pirateship began before the stab nerf. Why? Because players eventually realized that if you just stack damage and immob, a good wellbomb will drop frontlines even if you don’t get a lucky corrupt on their stab.
So why did people used to run full melee hammertrains? Because they didn’t know any better. A 2014 style comp with wells necros would easily rip that apart. Considering the current metagame contains probably more than twice as much damage, expecting a stab buff to create unkillable heavytrains is ludicrous.

But most importantly, old stab forced movement in a fight. You have to stop thinking about each individual player’s special snowflake skills and look at the fight as a whole. The strategic, and indeed the interesting aspect of WvW fights has always revolved around movement. Given the nature of hard CC, a roughly ~40-50% uptime of stab is required to create decent dynamics in a clash. As long as it’s not viable to push through your enemy, we’re going to be stuck in a boring range meta where positioning and movement take a backseat to skill spamming.

I’ve been a vocal proponent of an icd on stab removal on this forum, but had I thought for a second that a full reversal was in any way possible, I would have been clamoring for that instead.

All that said, I’ll acknowledge that boonstacking, boon duration equipment and the resistance boon would all be way too strong with old stability. However, resistance stacking is already too strong and needs to be reduced (limiting the boon to only allow a single application at a time would work, the same could be done for stab), and stability can be excepted from boon duration effects to omit the duration issue. It really wouldn’t be difficult to fit it into the current game.

verskore.4312:

Imho I think it’s the basic idea of gw2 that is the biggest problem here, with this I mean that Anet didn’t want a holy trinity and by this they tried to give each class sustain and damage and this results in imbalance because it’s just very hard to try to balance every class when they don’t have a ‘fixed’ role.

While I have personally made similar complaints in the past, I’ll have to admit that we have had periods where the metagame was actually quite good. I don’t think focusing on self-sufficiency in classes is inherently problematic. As I see it, the problem is simply that they’ve way overdone it.
The elite specs contain too much self-synergy, and they’ve powercrept mechanics to the point that classes are only functional when taking advantage of their individual gimmicks.

Unfortunately, the only real solution is to strip everything back down to basics. Reducing the availability of everything (boons, damage, dodges, healing etc.) is the only way to give individual mechanics back the value they used to hold.

It has never required less skill and knowledge to play each class to their full potential, but despite this, they seem to be quite happy with the “fast-paced combat” they’ve created.
It’s really a problem that applies to the entirety of the game at this point: at its core, it’s quite bland and shallow, but it’s covered by a nice flashy exterior.

Mind you, I don’t think it’s always been this way. The direction they’ve been taking the game for the past year has just been horrible.

Riveting tale, good sir.
It’s inspirational to see others experience the rush of claiming objectives for their world during reset.

Ogre.3124:

Clearly the business decision would be to buff warriors’ elite specs. There are two choices here, and let’s see if you can pick the right one as a developer:

a) Spend x time buffing warriors’ elite specs to be on par with other elite specs.

b) Spend 8x time nerfing a main sales point in your game.

Let’s put on our thinking caps

You’re assuming the outcome is the same for either approach, but inter-profession balance is only part of the issue. Solution (b) would be an investment aimed at creating a much healthier game in the long run.

Salamander.2504:

Don’t buff anything.

I think I speak for the entire community when I say that the consensus is to nerf the elite specs already. Bring them in line with the core specs. We miss playing a game with good balance, and we miss playing the builds/classes we’ve played for the last 3 years—the core specs.

I’m just here to say +1 because if I try to elaborate on my position I’ll end up droning on in a salty rant that no one wants to read.

You do speak for me <3

Very well thought out and presented, Ragnar.

If I were to add anything it’d be a note that the June 23rd ’15 update also reinforced pirateshipping by increasing overall damage output.

I think this is a very crucial point that bears emphasizing:

October 2013:
“Fights” over-take “Points” as the most popular reason for playing.

You can argue the exact moment it happened, but it’s definitely been reality for a very long time. With the upcoming WvW focused balance patch, they seem to be finally realizing that treating WvW as a PvP mode is a good idea. Though I can’t help but wonder where we could have been if only they’d had that attitude from the beginning.

XGhoul.7426:

HA cant work because there is no such thing as a frontline, midline or backline in this game to have different game modes, everyone is just a hybrid running around. Unfortunately, I think only conquest works based on how they made the classes. (which is fine for pve, sucks for pvp)

It really depends on the number of players involved. I think deathmatch works fine in this game on the 2-3 player scale where every individual skill matters, as well as on a 10+ scale where roles become more dedicated. The 5-8 player region is where it breaks down to a chaotic, uninteresting mess.

A HA structure for 12-15s could be pretty god kitten incredible.

Before the June 23rd patch. This is a defining moment because it changed the game so significantly. Each of the metas before that all had builds that were a bit over the top, but the overall gameplay was much more enjoyable.

DeeSystm.1256:

I must be the only one who thinks various servers/tiers/guilds stacking for ppt or fights just builds another layer of wvw.

Honestly if I had it my way server transfers would be insanely cheap to encourage people to move around and fight various servers and types of play, but that would be exploited probably.

You’re not.

If I had it my way transfers would go back to being free, and the waiting period between transfers would be increased to 1 month.

I agree. It’s been mentioned several times in the “top 5..” thread as well – boonshare compositions will most likely become a problem when stab gets buffed.

The game would greatly benefit from a reduction in the number of times duration-based boons can stack. Honestly, I’d like it to be a very low number like 2, maybe 3 at the most. The obvious benefit of this is that it forces more active play – instead of prebuffing, you’d have to run proper rotations during the fight, which requires much more communication and teamwork. This would make boons like resistance much less of a crutch.

I’m not entirely sure on the mechanics of Signet of Inspiration. If a share is considered a single boon application, we’d need a change to that at the same time (i.e. you share 6s of resistance that comes from 3 separate applications, it should count as 3 stacks on the ally you share to).

Mike O Brien.4613:

1. Stability & skill balance

I believe I speak for the entirety of my guild (which is on an indefinite break) when I say that this is very much appreciated.
There’s already been a lot of good posts about balance. I’d just like to draw attention to three issues in particular:

1. Boon removal, and how it now rips random boons. This gives you the same problem as the excessive CC. Your stability will be ripped off with no warning and you’ll die before you can possibly react. Boons need to be stripped in order – the most recently applied first – so you can use cover boons to protect stab.

2. Resistance uptime. With a buff to stab, boonshare compositions will potentially become a problem. It’s largely considered a gimmicky crutch in the community already, and with better stability it may end up too strong. I don’t think the resistance boon itself will pose significant problems as long as it requires good rotations (i.e. each application has a short duration and it’s not possible to keep it up 100% of the time), but the ability to pre-stack >1 minute of it will probably need to be addressed.

3. If, as I’m very much hoping, you take measures to reduce the overall level of damage (which was massively inflated by the June patch and HoT), protection uptime may also end up being a bit high, mainly due to tempest. Perhaps lowering the number of times it can stack in duration (in order to encourage good prot rotation) would be a good idea.

So what does SEA time coverage look like in T2 at the moment?
DB: big blob
TC: ND + ?
FA: ?

T1 SEA has been absolute garbage for a while now and I’m considering transferring down..

EremiteAngel.9765:

TC ‘gained’ numbers because Never Die (ND) guild joined us and showed us that they can lead and win outnumbered fights during SEA time. With every win, our smaller blob against DB’s large blob, the number of players willing to raid during SEA time in TC stays and grows. Even then, DB outnumbers us easily but well, with ND around to lead TC, TC is more than a match for DB now.

Hasan just got hard.

Because it causes me physical pain to look at the formatting in the OP.

16: Cc reduction/ stability buff
14: Bring back alpine maps untouched
12: Population balance/ alliances
12: More rewards/ reward track like pvp/wvw currency buys pve stuff
10: Tone down pve content/ banners, lava,tactivators, laser, airships on smc
9:   Autoloot/ new masteries
9:   Merge servers
9:   Reduce ppt/nightcap
8:   Rotate dbl/ abl/ eotm weekly
7:   Make desert maps smaller/less verticality/remove gimmicks/smaller keeps
6:   Less siege/ nerf trebs
6:   Separate profession balance for wvw
5:   Reduce lag, bugs, glitches, hackers
5:   Reduce guild bonus cost/ pre hot rewards
5:   Scouting, dolyaks, mesmer sweeps
5:   Waypoints for fully upgraded keep/old waypoint system/ waypoints flip with structure
5:   WvW self sustained/ gathering, gear, food
4:   No gliding 
4:   WvW maps designed for pvp/ fun fights 
4:   Buff defense on walls/buff outnumbered
4:   Change scoring system
3:   Communicate players desires
3:   Dynamic map capacity
2:   Dead must wp
2:   Make all structures t3/ dont autorepair
2:   Improved commander capability
2:   Fix keep/tower lord scaling 
1:   Gliding
1:   Improve ppk
1:   Reward non essential tasks/ smaller groups,buff camps/dolyaks 
1:   Make player stronger in siege
1:   More anti zerg mechanics
1:   No alliance/ server merge
1:   No open field siege/ stronger structures/improved gvg arena/add spectator option

I think the current prices are a pretty pointless constraint. I’d very much like to visit other servers for a few weeks to a month at a time, but no way I’m paying 35$ for a return trip like that (→high →very high).

What I’d really like to see is the guesting feature instated for WvW.

Allow people to guest to a server outside of their own matchup. They’ll be able to play on both servers interchangeably. On the weekly reset, the guesting privileges are removed at which point they can choose a new (or the same) server for the next week.

Either that or a monthly/bimonthly free transfer.

1. Balance / Power creep:
HoT caused a massive devaluation of almost all individual effects by introducing too much of everything. Much more damage, much more healing, many more boons and condis flying around, more CC, more dodges. This has resulted in a big shift in the fundamental way the game is played – from tactical cooldown and endurance management, and reacting to key animations, to lots of spam. Team fights are now a bigger mess than ever, and often end up decided by semi-random factors such as sigil/trait procs and excessive cleave. Individual gameplay has never had as low a skill ceiling as the post-HoT metas. To improve the potential for skillful play, you need to dial all of this back (looking back as far as the June 23 patch) and pull everything down to a baseline closer to that of the WTS last year.

2. Passive gameplay:
The game contains lots of passive triggers, both offensive and defensive in nature. All of them need to be somehow visible when available. This could be an icon next to a players boons or some kind of visual effect on the character itself. Players need to be able to play around them. If this results in “overcrowding” (either of the boon bar or the character model), that’s a sign that there’s way too many passive procs.

3. More frequent balance passes:
If you stick to the “big” patches every 3 months (quotation marks because the last one wasn’t very big at all), you need to at least do monthly shaves in between. Small incremental adjustments to numbers for anything that’s disproportionately strong or weak. Realize that it’s okay to make a buff that doesn’t quite make a skill/trait viable and then give it another little nugde the next month.
Players would be far less upset about balance issues if they knew that the relevant skills would be addressed soon.

4. Enable standard models in unranked:
This is especially necessary if you shutdown ranked again after this season.

5. Queueing from outside HotM:
You can limit it to public and private hotjoin maps if you need to. People just need something to do while waiting.

I have only one. I want the gamemode to actually be considered in balance patches.
A reversion or buff (icd) to stability.
A damage reduction across the board and functional changes to certain skills that give too much benefit for their required effort.
A significant nerf to boon uptime (might, fury, protection in particular).
A rework of damage reducing effect so they no longer stack (e.g. frost aura + protection would only give -33%).
A hard-cap of 3000 for any one stat (including boons and sigils).

Why? Because from a fight perspective, the game is in a disastrous state. There’s an abundance of extremely high damage which is also very easy to land. In a group setting, this is the kind of damage you realistically cannot outplay, either because the cds are too short to bait (e.g. CoR) or because the skills themselves don’t require much timing (e.g. Test of Faith).
Because so much of this damage is unavoidable, you’re forced to design your composition in such a way that you’re able to ignore a large part of it. This is done by stacking damage reduction effects. At this point, when glass and bunker are pushed so far away from each other, your success depends more on your builds and composition than your ability to outplay your opponent. This is bad. This is boring. This makes players quit.

By pulling the two extremes closer together, you’ll get a much healthier gamemode with more dynamic fights. Any work they put into “fixing” population imbalance and rewards is going to be pointless if no one enjoys the actual fighting.
_

But also, the new BL sucks. So does the new upgrade system. Of all the things they could have reworked, they picked ones that were already working fine. When you think about it, it’s actually impressive that they managed to alienate the entire playerbase of this gamemode (which encompasses players with many different priorities) at the same time.

So I guess:
Balance
Maps
Upgrade system

This is Anet: http://i.imgur.com/eL7LxoS.gifv
The plant represents the plan to reduce visual noise.

Deniara Devious.3948:

The June 23 trait rework patch + HoT expansion completely wrecked the balance and lead to massive power creep.

I would pay to be able to play a pre-June 2015 version of the game again. I would pay more for a 2014 version.

Pretty much.
The power creep of HoT messed up all the gamemodes.
A lot of PvE content (dungeons in particular) has been completely trivialized by the absurd new heights of damage. While I don’t know the particulars of the maximum attainable DPS, I wouldn’t be surprised if it currently approaches twice what was possible when dungeons were designed.
The PvP meta is garbage with way too much (way too strong) AoE cleave and far too much damage efficiency, causing the skill ceiling for every meta build to be excruciatingly low.
But neither of those modes was hit anywhere near as hard as WvW. I’d even go so far as to suggest that the impact HoT had on WvW fights has driven more people away from the game than the horrendous new map. Due to the shear number of players involved, the balance between group-wide sustain and damage in WvW is quite delicate, and this was quite obviously not considered for a second during development of the expansion (or the specialization update in June, while we’re at it).

A lot (and I do mean a lot) of formerly dedicated WvW players who are still playing the game are only doing so because they haven’t found a replacement yet. Many have high hopes for BDO. Personally, I do not think it will fill the hole left by what GW2 WvW once was (from what I hear it doesn’t have anywhere near the same teamwork requirements). However, eventually a new solid RvR game will come out and this game will suffer immensely.

I’ve been heavily advocating a 0.5s icd because it makes the minimum stab duration from “SYG!” short enough that you still get punished for blindly ramming through CC bombs. It retains the current interaction of stab and hard CC being each other’s primary counterplays and I really like that. Since SYG is the main stab skill in WvW, 1 second would effectively be almost equivalent to a full reversion.

I strongly disagree with your second suggestion, though. As long as this interaction exists, it’s very important to have the no-limit CCs so as not to favor the larger group too much.
We currently have 3 main aspects of a fight that are affected by the group size: damage mitigation (because of the target cap on damage skills), damage output (of course), and freedom of movement (stab vs hard and soft CC).

If you put a limitation on stab removal by CC and retain the no-limit CCs, you effectively make groups of different sizes almost equal in the movement aspect. The bigger group will still have more soft CC, but since there’s now a limit on how much hard CC you can make use of, as long as the small group can reach this limit they’re close to equal (e.g. 20 v 30-40).
If you impose a target limit on hard CC, the bigger group gets a big advantage because they’ll be able to overwhelm the CC potential of the small group.
Additionally, it would make it too easy for backlines without stab to push because the frontline clears all the CC just by running through it.

Allison The Strange.4519:

Things have gone down hill since the since june or july patch (idr date exactly).

June 23. The beginning of the end. Always remember.

Pretty much.

There’s a mismatch between the relative strength of CC and stability. They’re implemented in a way that suggests they should be equal (1 stab for 1 CC), but the difference in target limit (none for many CCs, 5 for primary stab) means that stability scales horribly with fight size.

While certain cases (e.g. Hunter’s Ward) are problematic in small scales as well, this is mainly an issue that effects 25+ fights.

So what can you do? It’s important to retain the functionality of hard CC (lines, static etc..) because it benefits outnumbered players. That leaves stab to be tweaked. It has to be done in a way that doesn’t strengthen the unorganized blob more than the guild group. I can not think of a better way to meet this requirement than with the icd idea. It effectively caps the amount of CC that’s useful, equalizing that aspect of a fight between groups of different sizes. The larger group is now only superior in damage mitigation and damage output. Since WvW fights revolve a lot around good movement, this produces a much more favorable environment for the more skilled group.

Arcan Soulstorm.4356:

pop your stability for 2 seconds of running through every CC the enemy has thrown?

It would. But the basic idea is that hitting the minimum stab duration (due to plowing through CC) is a big enough punishment to encourage people to juke/veil/avoid the CC.
If we assume a 0.5s icd, with 2 guards you’d have between 6 seconds (utility + courage) and 20 seconds of stability depending on how well you and your enemy play. That’s a very wide range, and you can’t get much done with the lower end of it.

That’s essentially how it already works except that the minimum duration is currently 0 seconds.

Arcan Soulstorm.4356:

Asking about the icd-thought so I get the idea in the community right. One stack of Stability with duration x would be applied by a skill or something else. It would be required to trigger the CC immunity with a stun while that stack of stability is still active. When it is triggered, one stack per CC is “removed” or rather converted to the 0.5/1 sec immunity to CC.

That would basically revert stability back to the old state with the changes that the stacks from Stand your Ground cant be removed/corrupted/whatever at once. Doesn’t sound like a way to the sweet spot at first glance, so please elaborate.

I don’t quite follow your explanation here.
It would simply be a cooldown on stab removal. For instance: you use “Stand Your Ground!”, giving you 5 stacks of stability for 5 seconds. The first time you get hit by CC, you lose 1 stack. For the next x seconds (that’s the icd) you will not be able to lose another stack no matter how much CC hits you. After those x seconds have passed, the next CC removes yet another stack.
Once all your stacks are gone, you’re vulnerable (i.e. there’s no lingering immunity after the last stack goes) and it can still be corrupted.

It would be akin to a reversal in the sense that it would guarantee CC immunity for at least [(number of stacks-1) * icd]. However, this duration would be much shorter than the full duration (if 0.5s icd, Stand Your Ground would give you 2s guaranteed stab).

This offers several benefits:
(1) You don’t get your stab insta-stripped by CC bombs like you do right now.
(2) Frontlines are rewarded for avoiding as much CC as possible. The reward is a longer stab duration, allowing a deeper push/easier pull out.
(3) Good stability rotation retains its current awareness requirement while making the margin for error a bit larger. Old stab you could rotate like clockwork, current (and this proposition) require you to pay attention to your party’s stab situation all the time.
(4) CC would require more thought to use. Instead of simply dropping massive CC bombs, you’d need to space it out and run proper CC rotations to get the optimal effect.

Basically, it would strengthen heavy trains and raise the skill ceiling on pirateshipping a bit, while leaving room for both in the meta.

Malchior.5732:

Because most hard-hitting skills already do ~8k (and apparently that’s too high). In fact, I rarely hit over that in WvW with Rev Hammer, let alone PvP.

They do indeed. And that’s a very recent trend. How often did you see 8K ranged hits from anything other than Lich Form pre-HoT? What about 8 months ago (before the June update)?
That is the development I’m arguing against, and I am definitely not alone in being thoroughly turned off by the current damage going around.

Malchior.5732:

So, no single skill should deal more than ~5k?
Well, assuming the balance is split between PvE and PvP, then sure. Although you would also need to drop the sustain and tanking potential considerably.
Otherwise, there are tons of skills that do way above 5k, of which, almost every class has access to.

Speaking of which, if we’re speaking about ranged damage, Revenant Hammer actually has pretty poor DPS. Not that anything even comes close to Ele Staff anyway. Although you said “damage-focused” ranged weapons, so even then, all Rev Hammer has is CoR spam. Ranger Longbow has more utility, better kiting, and still has decent damage. Considering that, why does Revenant Hammer have no kiting potential and a really bad CC? The only upside is the damage (I would gladly trade some of that damage for improvements on the other skills, but the DPS is still terrible).

I don’t see why there’d be a specific cut-off at 5K damage, but to be honest, that seems like a pretty decent number. And yes, this is of course from a WvW perspective.

Point being, no one should be getting one-shot by a single hit (I realize I didn’t specify that earlier, I thought it was implied). AoEs and channeled skills are entirely different because they’ll rarely connect for their full damage/leaves you plenty of room for counterplay.

Personally, I think Hammer (and indeed Herald in general) is quite poorly designed. My suggestions come entirely from a WvW perspective, I’ve made no attempt to hide that, and I’m simply offering a straightforward solution (i.e. avoiding a total rework) to what is currently one of the big issues plaguing the gamemode.
I believe that even if those nerfs were implemented, there’d still be room for hammer revenants in your general core WvW composition – whether that be as supplement to necro bombs or as part-time pick players.

Burtnik.5218:

Nice armor value. I shall start complain too about getting one shoted in full glass.

If you’re getting one-shot by a single skill at 1200 range then I will fully support your complaint. Regardless of armor level, any skill being able to hit a target for substantially more than their base health is absurd. How anyone could argue against that is beyond me (and yes, that extends to True Shot, Kill Shot and Gun Flame as well, although they’re substantially less problematic by virtue of being reflectable).

Burtnik.5218:

Do you even understand balance and what would happen if these changes made it live?

I understand that it would put revenant hammer in line with the damage-focused ranged weapons that predate HoT.

Your changes would make hammer rev the weakest weapon in game.

See above.

The only reason anyone would take rev to raid now is f2. The hate is real.. might as well just remove hammer from revenant and leave them with no range option – were not that far away from it already.

I’m glad you’re being so rational about this discussion.

While I did enjoy the consequence of this “bug”, I will reluctantly admit that it wouldn’t have been a good way to nerf a skill. So kudos on the fix.

However, I would strongly urge you to have a thorough look at what Herald is doing to WvW in general.

edit:
To make this post just a little constructive, I’ll reiterate some of the suggestions I’ve made before regarding Herald and hammer:

1. Make the herald utilities share the facet instead of the boons, change facets to only apply boons to the target itself, and slightly reduce uptime.
Reason: stacking multiple revenants in one party allows for way too much boon uptime. By sharing the facets instead, two revs would be able to provide 2 different boons to the party but not double the amount of the same boon.
A revenant can currently pre-stack 25seconds of fury (40s with F2 active). That’s too much. They should be able to stack a bit for themselves using F2, but party-wide ticks of the facet should not overlap.
The same goes for might. Reduce the might from facet of strength so that the rev can keep up ~10 stack on himself and ~6-7 on the party.

2. Make Facet of Nature private and reduce the upkeep to -1. Once again, the potential for party-wide boon stacking is simply way too high right now.

3. Reduce Hammer Bolt damage modifier to 0.85, CoR to 1.25/1.5/1.75, Phase Smash to 1.5, and Drop the Hammer to 1.25. Reduce the casting time of Drop the Hammer to 1s to improve its utility function.

4. Rework Cruel Repercussion. It needs a completely different functionality.

5. Make barriers and lines (Line of Warding etc.) stop CoR. Given how the skill works and looks, making it reflectable would seem a bit odd. I propose a new mechanic where barrier skills simply stop its progression.

Honestly, I’m finding it really hard to come up with a good solution for the Herald utilities. Passive boon stacking is extremely difficult to balance because it will inevitably either be required or useless, depending on its strength (because skills will have to be balanced around it). The reductions I propose may seem dramatic. They are. The current ability of revenant parties to maintain full offensive boon stacks with no active effort or skill use is just beyond ridiculous.

Cyninja.2954:

Good point. My bad. Let’s compare more 40 second aoe field skills with the most seldom combo field (lightning) to a ranged non combomechnic attack skill. Remeber how combo fields allow for interaction from players? Yeah even if the damage component of static field is caped, the combo field still has tremendous use.

Great, so they had that mechnic already in place for combo fields because people stand in them. Doesn’t excuse implementing this on a ranged attack skill which essentially now is useless with more than 2 revenants in no matter how big a zerg.

Then again, going by your earlier comments, you are not out for balance but simply for braindead lazy fixes.

You’re the only one comparing the two.
The fact that the tech was already in the game strongly suggests that it was taken directly from static field and that the functionality is fully intentional (as opposed to a new piece of code which might have unforeseen bugs).
That was my point, which you probably would have realized if you didn’t get so emotional about the issue.

Cyninja.2954:

Then again, going by your earlier comments, you are not out for balance but simply for braindead lazy fixes.

Oh my.. what gave me away?

Cyninja.2954:

Everyone who thinks the current state of CoR is okay, is delusional (this change also affects beserker longbow F1).
As is, all the damage from every class currently summs up, except for these 2 attacks. That is a gross nerf since it involves a completely new mechanic which so far was nefver part of the game design.
Sure, maybe arenanet are intending to roll this change out to other attacks and this is just a testballoon, then this would be fine. But ask yourself, how would you feel if suddenly your most powerful ranged skills were mutually exlusive with other wvw players?

Static field works the same way. It’s not a new mechanic.