The Sad Truth why DPS in PvP needs to be high and Why the Feb Patch was nonsense

This is basically a follow up of this : https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/114938/damage-feels-higher-now-than-pre-feb-patch

Okay I did a little comparison with an MMO which had slower PvP and from my perspective better PvP . Before I say this I must say what the other thread says was more or less clear from the beginning they nerfed DPS then seconds later the armor with the amulets changes as well this is a 0 game at best so from experience I know indistinctly what is going on .

So what it is the problem ? Heal or better said self-heal and some other stuff . Every class has a self heal so when you kill them you need to kill them before they can heal themselves at least on the simplest level on an 1:1 that means you have around 30 seconds to kill him or the enemy too tanky. This is not 100% true but it is a lot of time so no problem so far.

Since a lot of DPS skills are aoe in a team fight we need to divide it by 5 so we have 6 sec okay now it seems a bit short but wait we have Protection which gives 33% damage reduction which for an 1:1 need an increase of DPS again = 4 seconds.

With HoT came dedictated healer and PoF even more when you have a healer you also lose 20% of your DPS in 2vs 3 or 2 this gives a big advantage but in a team it comes down to the DPS of the enemy team and how your team doesn't spread too much around but I can't deny it the team who fight an healer also need again a bit more dmg then in the calculation before.

So what wrong with my calculation is you have cc and your first use of your healing skill is 'free' this is the reason the first encounters taking most of the time longer then 4-6s and we are 4vs 4 most of the time. This is basically the reason why so many builds now using berserker amulet otherwise you can't kill your enemy . True using those amulet means also reduce the amount of DPS needed to kill a player ergo resulting in the thread mentioned above.

I can also do the calculations for the current PvP Heal Tempest build with fire-trait as condi enemy you have little chance to do anything this(thanks to the 45 cleanses in fire and 25 in wateroverload) is the other reason we have so many berserker builds in the meta instead of more condi builds but those relay on crit ..... and then the Tempest use earth trait line instead of fire . I'm not sure how Stone of Heart works but I think all attacks become not critical means you need to divide by your crit multiplier for ele this is 3.5 which basically means the whole team need to hit him to get him down-.

You may guessed I don't like this myself but it is so true you could overwork the whole self-heal system but besides the workload it will also make everyone salty.From my perspective what you could do is let the points tick a bit slower and give downed players 2-4 sec invincibility except for stomping

They lowered damage, boon uptime and healing. This was a good start, because if done right this just increases time to kill without creating imbalances at the bunker/sustain end of the spectrum.

There are some imbalances left, but the general direction was good. The problem was not the intention but the fact that we are waiting months for each minor adjustment - like it has always been with anet.

The only thing that is completely stupid to my opinion are the hardnerfed attributes left on celestial and paladin amulet. Using them does not make sense anymore. They should just have deleted them like any amulet that grants vita and tougness at the same time.

The feb patch was bad because they never followed up on it, so they just ended up making builds that are even more broken than before.

@KrHome.1920 said:They lowered damage, boon uptime and healing. This was a good start, because if done right this just increases time to kill without creating imbalances at the bunker/sustain end of the spectrum.

There are some imbalances left, but the general direction was good. The problem was not the intention but the fact that we are waiting months for each minor adjustment - like it has always been with anet.

The only thing that is completely stupid to my opinion are the hardnerfed attributes left on celestial and paladin amulet. Using them does not make sense anymore. They should just have deleted them like any amulet that grants vita and tougness at the same time.

The problem is like I had said when you not only reduce the amount of dmg but also reduce heal , toughness, and vitality the players use you calculating basically 1-1=0 because with the reduction of heal , toughness, and vitality you get easier get killed.

In addition to this on a side note nerfing heal and boons made heal builds obsolete in high level PvP with the exception of the OP^2 Heal Tempest.

The other MMO I missed mention was Perfect World's Neverwinter PvP before it went full p2win even in the beginning it was a bit p2win but still the PvP was so good.What they did your self-heal was potions they basically banned them in PvP with the exception of expensive low heal PvP only potions . So you had to get out of combat to heal which was a bit easier then here and we had mounts. Thiefs were also good you could either go full stealth and lose 2/3 of your DPS or you had a bit of stealth and full dps.

Healer were really good in this game because they could do both DPS and Heal , the DPS wasn't super much but enough to deal with the open world also the stats were like wvw but the amount of choice were stiff because of the set bonus. The main reason I started PvP there was the gear you could farm with pvp coins was the best for healers with power and live leech.

About the value of healer in general I would say well I take a full DPS slot but bascially you can't be on all 3 checkpoint at the same time when people used their brain either attack together with us on or 2 missing or avoiding us and be always on the other side you could still win even without healer.

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:They lowered damage, boon uptime and healing. This was a good start, because if done right this just increases time to kill without creating imbalances at the bunker/sustain end of the spectrum.

There are some imbalances left, but the general direction was good. The problem was not the intention but the fact that we are waiting months for each minor adjustment - like it has always been with anet.

The only thing that is completely stupid to my opinion are the hardnerfed attributes left on celestial and paladin amulet. Using them does not make sense anymore. They should just have deleted them like any amulet that grants vita and tougness at the same time.

@KrHome.1920 said:You are not meant to come back to full health during a fight if there is constant pressure on you. That's an attrition mechanic. If you can heal to full health over and over again with a specific build, then that's a good candidate for a nerf.

That's debatable, because in the same token, if you can deal damage over and over again to keep pressure, both should technically be the same no matter how much healing or damage is done.

Also in the same token, you can specifically be talking about scenario's that are just 1 person vs 1 person...rather than 5 people vs 5 people where a focus of at least 2 will out Damage the healing of 1.

So it's not just about numbers...it's about how certain mechanics actually scale with the number of people in a fight.

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:The feb patch was bad because they never followed up on it, so they just ended up making builds that are even more broken than before.

Yet those builds were hiden by other more broken builds.... not more broken than before, condi rev is actually WEAKER than before as well, the other gimcisk were just overshadowing other now strong builds.

The sustain on condi rev under certain stats was the double of what it is now...

What needs to be adressed IMO in 1st place are the CC skills need: Damage back or part of it with more interection on its effects like Gw1 CC skills did, this for starter would improve the gameplay.IF some classes end with to much CC skills ofc dont expect to make it macro able CC burst with a ton of damage, casting time need to be adressed to avoid skills being macroed ofc in wich would kill the bots as well in pvp, theres alot of rules and iterations that need to be done when one wants a decent PVP gameplay that can safeguard player trying for abuse.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:So it's not just about numbers...I never said that it is.

The actual sad truth is that just number changes will not cut it ever. They nicked and dimed boon durations on certain skills to a point of having practically no uptimes ever, which only forces us to - shockingly - spam more skills, sending us on a spiral where every build has a whole rainbow of boons, making it kind of impossible to balance in the first place. What should actually happen is reduction, and not duration one - that 1s stability isn't helpful, if we're taking Chaos in Mesmer as a live example of weird boon cutting tactic they've employed.

Make skills and traits apply less types of boons at once, not shorter durations.Bring back certain boon durations so that pressing those skills can be meaningful again.

Another thing is that certain skills simply do too much, while other skills don't do enough neither in PvE nor in PvP. Let's compare Warrior's Bull's Charge - which is evade, mobility, combo finisher, damage buff and a strong CC all rolled into one low-ish CD button, while Berserker's Wild Blow in PvP just kinda launches people, except it's way less reliable to connect, and-d-d that's pretty much it aside from prolonging berserk mode - which in itself is a questionable rework for the mechanic, to rely on it's own utilities so hard. Not even damage anymore. We can't ever have balance when we have skills so bluntly inferior while seemingly having similar functions. A lot of core skills need a serious look at for both gamemodes, because if you'll take a casual stroll across most meta sections you'll discover that only a fraction of skills ever gets used at all on all classes. There's simply way too much imbalance within the very foundation of every class with the exception of Revenant, maybe. Mostly due to not actually having slottable skills.

Make a sweeping pass over skills - some things require aggressive reworks, vast improvements or reductions in function. Provide actual choices, rather than make everything equally terrible - I don't want kits as bad as turrets, I want turrets to be as valuable as kits in their own regards.

Amulets have to go. The restrictive nature of amulets will never lead to true diversity, and changes need to be made based on performance of skills and traits in context of function/class it's on, rather than "having access to amulet with healing power and concentration", removal of which made many other possible builds just dead on arrival. While this one I won't claim as objective, I simply believe that if we had freedom to form our own amulets by picking 3-stat or 4-stat combos ourselves, many more builds would become possible. Would that require work? Absolutely, it'd need attention to tune capabilities of certain classes down or up in areas.

Lastly, many of Feb's patch coeff. changes seem misguided. For example, Reaper's Greatsword - Gravedigger atm is barely worth pressing, because it's damage just too low for the damage it can bring in this particular timespan, also considering it's huge and oh-so-nicely-telegraphed windup with literal metal-esque horror screeching every time you press it. You're better off just spamming auto practically always, and Gravedigger is just used for style points, kinda. We have a bunch of those skills now. To not anger people on Reaper hatetrain, I'll also point out that Death's Charge shouldn't have so much damage attached to it, because it's a mobility skill slash projectile hate slash blind application already.

True problems are far deeper than just numbers on skill coeffs or boon durations. Many things need a touch up and attention of balance teams, PvE meta suffers from staleness and rigidity too, and things really need to change to ensure healthy future. With third set of especs on the horizon, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that anything will ever get done balance-wise if asking for changes within our gamemode falls on deaf ears for more than half a year, or entire specs remain unplayable for a year or more.

Because they failed to follow the original plan to work on the OP skills and then fix the CC skills.

Update was needed as mesmer could even one shot nercos, both toughness and hp was pointless.

After that they could have restore some of the functions that was removed before the big patch.

So instead of doing what they suppose to be doing they just messed around with stupid things that didnt need any changes like the nerco's wells and shades.

Stupid things are being ignored like gaurd farting out stacks of burns just by poking and pp coni theif melting players within secound using one simple skill.

PVP was dying back then, people came back with hope from the update and yet anet managed to trash it again now we are here with longer pvp ques.

New players are in and out never again... and the old players had enough with same trashy dumb gameplay just like before the update.

Anet had the tools and the asset to create something big in the gaming world.

The team sucks and keeps on letting many players down.

Btw, the game was slow in the beginning of HoT era. When Anet wanted to make spvp am esport thing, the overwhelming advice was the game needs to be faster. We started to see damage go up the end of HoT era and even further with PoF.

After the spvp failed to pick up as an esport, Anet started to slow spvp down. Honestly, we spent few month in 2018 with nearly every single build was a variant of one shot. By end of 2018 damage began to stabilise a bit, but Anet went further in damage nerfs. Early 2020 things began to shore up. Some builds needs a damage buff. Some needs a slight damage nerf. Might stacking and quickness stacking needed to go down a bit, and we would have been on probably the best position in spvp history. Then the Feb patch.

The new spvp devs learned nothing from all previous experience. Decided to do a hard reset on spvp, I still do not understand why. Beside that the vision was mostly wrong, the changes were also half assed. No learning from previous mistakes, poor vision and mediocre execution. Failure on every level. I guess it slightly better now, 7 month in?

DPS is still pretty high? I really dont see what the issue is here. Half of everyone complains about too much damage while the other half complains about too much bunker. The 1 shot meta before the feb patch was fun for vets and a terrible experience for new players. It shut down a ton of build possibilities and wasnt good for the longevity of pvp. Imagine the meta we have now. Now tone down holo/scrapper and renegade. LR weaver becomes relevent. FA tempest becomes relevent. Core/SB becomes relevent. Power herald will find its way back in the meta. Warrior needs buffs still, but will stand a chance. And anet sits on these outliers for 6 months and leave 300icd traits in the game for 10 months. At the end of the day, these type of forum posts are a waste of our time and energy. The real question is how can we as a community hold anet accountable for their empty promises?

So, no one ever mentions this but most classes if not every single of 'em now have to play as Berserker to do relevant damage instead of getting away with Marauder. How's that a bad thing? It was one of the main issue.

Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

@KrHome.1920 said:They lowered damage, boon uptime and healing. This was a good start, because if done right this just increases time to kill without creating imbalances at the bunker/sustain end of the spectrum.

There are some imbalances left, but the general direction was good. The problem was not the intention but the fact that we are waiting months for each minor adjustment - like it has always been with anet.

The only thing that is completely stupid to my opinion are the hardnerfed attributes left on celestial and paladin amulet. Using them does not make sense anymore. They should just have deleted them like any amulet that grants vita and tougness at the same time.

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:The feb patch was bad because they never followed up on it, so they just ended up making builds that are even more broken than before.

These two guys pretty much summed it all up. Good direction in the beginning but then lack of follow up and general not giving a kitten anymore. It's a shame they're so lazy because game still has potential but well. Let's make another cape or something.

@Shao.7236 said:So, no one ever mentions this but most classes if not every single of 'em now have to play as Berserker to do relevant damage instead of getting away with Marauder. How's that a bad thing? It was one of the main issue.

Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

The problem is you die quicker which means for people the DPS feels higher . People don't like that because it boils down to who can smash the buttons faster in general there is so much to care about in a PvP round like boons and condis . Tactical gameplay is nearly impossible or better said the higher you in the rank the worse it gets. Also the UI is a mess stabi & resistance need a bigger icon on the enemy and be listed first also I miss optical indicator on/off for 'bound to ground' and 'auto target'

About Bunker builds I have the feeling they existed only because of some design flaws Heal Tempest I already mentioned it traits , the others are all condi build at least on metabattle they can do that because condi build don't need crit. They can put into place in multiply ways and I think they will.

What also a problem is the amount of 'viable' builds have been drastically reduced with this I mean builds which are not gimmick and can overcome said bunker builds even when I look on metabattle under 'good' build I find several builds which I have my doubt they work

In the next patch, they probably nerf warrior's hammer and ranger's war-horn while buffing guardian's scepter. lol

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:

@"Shao.7236" said:So, no one ever mentions this but most classes if not every single of 'em now have to play as Berserker to do relevant damage instead of getting away with Marauder. How's that a bad thing? It was one of the main issue.

Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAgilFwaYesOGKWSTWtNA-z5IWGZWA9mA2NA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAEdflFw8YdsQ2JWsPpr9Ss7cA-zZALkGTgMLhejATGA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POAFcEG7TZEsHGELkhiJ31/zsEROH-z5AfEZKEE4A

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAgilZwuYZMP2JOyPvLNA-zZxMEcGA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgAgilZwwYZMPGKeeT7LNA-z5APCeHA

All viable builds and thats just on ele and ranger

now you have RANGED ( which was always against the design idea of pvp) powercrept shrotbow and grenades dominating everything brute forcing with raw damage beacuse everything else is nerfed. sevenshot/barrage can take half your health. what happened to the design principles in this game?

@Shao.7236 said:Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

A lot of bunkers could already do that before the patch anyway. Plus with a bunch of power coefficients, vuln, and might generation getting nerfed hard; taking zerkers, and going maximum glass now is about the same damage as Marauders/Demolishers was pre-patch. Maybe even lower to be completely honest.

The only real difference is that the DPS is way squishier and has fewer stunbreaks, so its easier for the bunker to pressure the DPS off a point or kill them outright. Since the damage coming from the DPS is about the same, the Bunker is at the advantage.

I speak as the offender; I play a bunker build right now, and you can feel it. There's 2 classes that might be able to threaten me in a 1v1, and that's operating on minimum brain power. I could have a terrible hangover, or be busy fishing Sharks in Runescape on another monitor, and I could still probably survive against them for an entire match's length. The only threat is being 2v1'd, and even then I usually end up feeling like I survived way longer than I probably should have.

Also don't agree with the patch though. Even though it's helped me win a lot of games, its also made PvP really boring as a whole. Would rather have fun than have my cheesy bunker build boost my winrate.

What did I just read? What calculations? I'm a little confused on how you arrive at the conclusion of making points tick slower or invincibility on downed fixing whatever it is that you're critizing.

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@Shao.7236 said:Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

To me there's a clear difference in between Berserker and the rest, about 2k to 3k damage tops per skill. People choose to play Bunker and have nothing going for themselves, even match ups are sign of balance and should there be any conclusion? They'd come from very good plays, even if you had the ability to bring back the old sustain of Tetherbreaker then it would be the same potent immortal gameplay of evade spam, simply with less damage therefor even more boring because no one could kill while it still have the same damage as running old demolisher/marauder except with Berserkers because of the damage co-efficient changes.

DPS can hold off a bunker for sometime if not kill, depending what it is and in that regard most bunkers that have lots of AoE's don't have the mobility to get around, therefor it's in the DPS favor to have better rotation power so that the Bunker time is ultimately wasted.

To me it's obvious people aren't getting their dopamine shots from the new pace of gameplay and want it back, the added complexity really makes the game more in depth to me and should the braindead stuff get nerfed too if it really is, however bunkers are here to stay while big bursts are too. I have yet to see something immortal or broken burst, even a combination of both.

There's too much elitism and bias in the game right now, as a MMO specifically. Those sentences saying that nothing would work in this rating and kind of player need to stop, I've seen it contradicted many times and the word meta is slowly becoming a slang to state /easy mode/ and not /only playable/. Feels like everyone is in denial and want something for themselves rather than the community to improve by thinking through for once.

@"Shao.7236" said:DPS can hold off a bunker for sometime if not kill, depending what it is and in that regard most bunkers that have lots of AoE's don't have the mobility to get around, therefor it's in the DPS favor to have better rotation power so that the Bunker time is ultimately wasted.

That's like... exactly what we want, as bunkers. Not talking support, i'm talking side-node bunkers. Basically building for the explicit purpose of wasting time and pulling attention away from your teammates.

The mobility and 'rotation power' of most DPS hardly even matters at all because if they full-cap a point before the bunker gets there, they're likely to lose it just as quickly. Some Scrapper and Spellbreaker bunker builds have a ton of knockback + launch so... decapped that silly DPS and their single 75s CD(or longer) stunbreak immediately. Some Guardian + Rev bunkers have enough AOE pressure that the DPS is just going to die if they were to contest it because zerks.

Once the point is neutral or friendly, the Bunker has done its duty and every second, minute, and person it takes to deal with them is burning resources from the enemy team, and all i'm saying is that effect is much more palpable now that damage has gone down across the board than it was before. It's just my word though. If you find it fun, that's great for you. ?

To me it's obvious people aren't getting their dopamine shots from the new pace of gameplay and want it back, the added complexity really makes the game more in depth to me and should the braindead stuff get nerfed too if it really is, however bunkers are here to stay while big bursts are too. I have yet to see something immortal or broken burst, even a combination of both.

There's too much elitism and bias in the game right now, as a MMO specifically. Those sentences saying that nothing would work in this rating and kind of player need to stop, I've seen it contradicted many times and the word meta is slowly becoming a slang to state /easy mode/ and not /only playable/. Feels like everyone is in denial and want something for themselves rather than the community to improve by thinking through for once.

If you've got a solution to get rid of bias when talking about balancing a game, you should go ahead and post that for the mad upvotes. You'd be an esports(or really anything remotely competitive with more than 1 option) legend for the rest of time.If not; welcome to Bias Town, population: everyone. What you find fun; someone else might not, that's just the way it is.

And when it comes to elitism and people pushing the meta as biblical text, I don't think shrinking the meta down to 4/27 subclasses really helped anything.Or better yet having 2/3rds of the subclasses in the game being labeled worse than everything else, or just nonviable.The "nerf everything" patch-culture brought with it that Overwatch-like mentality where "X stinks, you better swap! If you play X, i'm reporting you for throwing!" Not a problem I ever encountered in GW2; at least not enough to ever take seriously, until the Feb 25th patch that is. It is an entirely new dimension of elitism.

This is not just for me either. This is for all my fellow players that threatened to quit after /sit or /sleep ing on the point after upwards of 10 minutes trying to kill me. For the streamers that didn't want to fight something "so boring and trolly" and risk their viewer-count plummeting. This is for them, the ones that didn't make it.But yes, I also want this for me obviously. I want my dopamine points back because playing BINGO at the local nursing home; while about 10x more fun and rewarding than PvP right now, provides about 1/8th the satisfaction as PvP did before. If my brain were to start producing dopamine regularly on its own again, I fear I might even become self-aware. Thank you for understanding.

@Shao.7236 said:So, no one ever mentions this but most classes if not every single of 'em now have to play as Berserker to do relevant damage instead of getting away with Marauder. How's that a bad thing? It was one of the main issue.

Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

You mean bunker builds press literally 2 buttons while standing on the node, automatically winning the node, and can never lose 1v1 to a zerker? Yeah, that's the reality of the situation.

Source: Hellio couldn't beat me 1v1 on his holo when I was playing symbol base guard and the gap in our skill levels is GIGANTIC.

It was conceptually a bad patch, yes. Were in a state of massive power dip (which like power creep, except reversed and worse). Damage needs to be increased by 20-30% accross the board with some minor exceptions. Instead of the current meta where no one should ever die in a 1v1. The entire direction of the february patch was just wrong, and at this point the game is better off if you just undo the whole thing.

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Shao.7236 said:So, no one ever mentions this but most classes if not every single of 'em now have to play as Berserker to do relevant damage instead of getting away with Marauder. How's that a bad thing? It was one of the main issue.

Now bunker classes can actually make many offensive builds crack under elaborated pressure which is not a bad thing? Said offensive builds can also dismantle bunker builds given the right plays.

Acting like it's surprising that a /guardian/ can guard a node better against something that's not even ranged in the slightest then want it absolutely deleted from the game because apparently NOTHING can ever counter that? Nah. Now that's being picky and being forever unsatisfied. It's almost as if free casting from afar has never been an option? You're going all the way up against the design of guardian here like it should have never existed, going somewhere else while the only profession without 25% movement speed will have to move around afterwards.

@Multicolorhipster.9751

Don't play Bunker? Warrior has options.

Personally, no matter the level I always find a way around things regardless of what I play for what I meant it for in Xv1's. (Revenant 1st, Warrior 2nd, Guardian 3rd, Elementalist 4th)

In conquest there's too many variables, I can't base any opinion on it but based on my 1v1 performance that I can get in there, it's fine.

I'm avoiding the big sentence here because I don't have to act like I can teach anyone what they can do with their class to vary and synergy with, either they quit and let the game die or innovate the scale. That's what they want people to do anyway.

Said it before, Meta is just the 10% less effort right now, Holo might be busted in a way with EE but it's far from immortal.