Which profession needs changes?

Considering both nerf and buff, which profession, and its specializations, should be the priority to balance in WvW? (explain why)

We need negative changes at this point lol...

I'm pretty sure the two most common classes that are going to be brought up are Engineers and Guardians because clouders don't like people running support and as organisation in the mode falls low, more players end up as clouders.

The two classes I think needs to be looked at the most are Thieves and Rangers. Thieves have a very odd balance at being underrepresented at large scale and overrepresented at small scale. Two wrongs do not make a right as the saying goes. The whole picking fights at will, committing and quitting, issue is not well designed. Just look at all those Thief meta builds running the same utilities etc., regardless of spec. Deadeye was also always a concept-design problem that goes deeper than just simple balance. A sneaky ranged dude is going to have nightmare balance and alot of built-in anti-fun. It's a typical example of where something that looks cool in concept is not very good design in gameplay. Rangers just have general representation issues and most of the things that get brought up when people complain about them are rather destructive but not particularily powerful niches (like tower pew and imob).

I would rather that these classes got some stuff that made them appealing in groups, fit into broader conventional play, covered some holes in their design and made sure their concepts actually panned out well in gameplay.

@subversiontwo.7501 said:clouding [...] thievs and rangersThief and ranger are the most powerful clouding professions.

I absolutely don't see clouding a something negative. It requires far more individual skill from the players than boonballing.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@subversiontwo.7501 said:clouding [...] thievs and rangersI absolutely don't see clouding a something negative. It requires far more individual skill from the players than boonballing.Sure it does bud, that is why all the good players do it.

I do agree with you that clouding isn't necessarily something negative though. I think it has a place in the mode same as any other approaches. I merely pointed out that we see more and more rather unorganized groups and as a result you are going to see more complaints about such builds and classes.

Your post kind of underlines that.

Ele by far.

Since I can't vote for 2....

Mesmers: Double our Mass Invis timer plz. 12 seconds isn't long enough as a Chrono!Elementalists: Give us back our fall damage reduction and boost Tempest healing power.

Everyone already knows what the correct answer is. The question is completely irrelevant.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Everyone already knows what the correct answer is. The question is completely irrelevant.

Sooooooo, if I asked you which profession needs buffs? :P

I think ele needs buff in a way that make it not need to run practically full defensive stats in order to actually accomplish anything. I mean, the class's main utility is that it's a pain to kill and it just wears you down, It'd be fun to see more damage oriented specs be useful again.

Option 10: All of the above.

rework stealth first. have a hard limit on duration, like when a sentry marks you, but permanent. cap it at like 5 seconds , then you get 8s reveal debuff. 6s reveal if you stealth for 3seconds, etc.

make it so that if you’re in stealth and hit someone and they dodge or block your attack, you lose stealth. it makes NOOO SENSE to stay stealth after someone predicts your attack successfully by blocking or dodging, it wastes resources and thief for example can just keep stacking their stealth wheras you just wasted dodge or bloxk. this doesn’t apply as much to other classes.

the whole idea of thief just staying stealth 60-75% of the time is just awful. can’t target them, they only come out to burst and wear down your cooldowns 1 by 1, playing cautiously and defensively until 30~ 60s into the fight your utility bar is mostly on cooldown and they can take care of your last application of stab with an instant interrupt that rips your boons.

at higher level gameplay thief completely obliterates all other specs in the game if they play SA-DP. it. literally wins every matchup. and they have stupid mobility. not to mention applications of weakness, being literally 100% immune to chill, cripple, immobs etc.

Daredevil was supposed to be a spec that didn’t rely on stealth, so they gave them a survival kit that didn’t need it. Well, they forgot to add ANY tradeoff, so daredevil can have both all the stealth AND all the perma dodging and sustain without stealth.

I don’t see a “none of the above” option. Because that’s my pick.

but since I have to pick one to see results I’ll pick on thief.

Honestly may as well had thief as only option in this community.

@subversiontwo.7501 said:I'm pretty sure the two most common classes that are going to be brought up are Engineers and Guardians because clouders don't like people running support and as organisation in the mode falls low, more players end up as clouders.

The two classes I think needs to be looked at the most are Thieves and Rangers. Thieves have a very odd balance at being underrepresented at large scale and overrepresented at small scale. Two wrongs do not make a right as the saying goes. The whole picking fights at will, committing and quitting, issue is not well designed. Just look at all those Thief meta builds running the same utilities etc., regardless of spec. Deadeye was also always a concept-design problem that goes deeper than just simple balance. A sneaky ranged dude is going to have nightmare balance and alot of built-in anti-fun. It's a typical example of where something that looks cool in concept is not very good design in gameplay. Rangers just have general representation issues and most of the things that get brought up when people complain about them are rather destructive but not particularily powerful niches (like tower pew and imob).

I would rather that these classes got some stuff that made them appealing in groups, fit into broader conventional play, covered some holes in their design and made sure their concepts actually panned out well in gameplay.

Thief and Deadeye are fine in large scale though. There's no need to try to balance for an issue that mostly involves player preference, that approach would cause problems and probably just brake the class.

Also clouding has been a thing since the beginning and no one has cared until recently for some reason. It's not unorganized, it's just more people know what to do with their class at this point and can stretch a little while still moving as a team.

@"kash.9213" said:Also clouding has been a thing since the beginning and no one has cared until recently for some reason. It's not unorganized, it's just more people know what to do with their class at this point and can stretch a little while still moving as a team.Logic would suggest that you are right, but alot of what we witness on many servers suggests that people have become incredibly poor at forming focus parties and coordinating damage. Quite alot of highly mediocre guild groups seems to be quite successful at just tanking through cloud damage and these forums with all their whines about guilds and "boonballs" would also suggest the opposite. Just take a look at this thread.

That doesn't mean that there aren't still good havoc players who cloud who can bring their 8-year experience to bear. If we're talking common behaviour though every piece of observation I can gather says that is an exception. You do not see the forums rife with tears about clouds or how clouds are too strong or too oppressive.

Thief is the worst. Its both too good and too bad at many things, so it feels awful to play sometimes. It essentially needs some sandpaper taken to it to smooth out all the rough edges and make it more balanced and viable in any situation.

@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"kash.9213" said:Also clouding has been a thing since the beginning and no one has cared until recently for some reason. It's not unorganized, it's just more people know what to do with their class at this point and can stretch a little while still moving as a team.Logic would suggest that you are right, but alot of what we witness on many servers suggests that people have become incredibly poor at forming focus parties and coordinating damage. Quite alot of highly mediocre guild groups seems to be quite successful at just tanking through cloud damage and these forums with all their whines about guilds and "boonballs" would also suggest the opposite. Just take a look at this thread.

That said:For a while now we have the situation that the more overstacked server wins. I got away from organized zerging, when my server was outnumbered every single week thanks to bandwagoning - this was years ago. At some point you just stop playing the lootbag and either leave the game or begin to create your own gaming experience, which includes clouding as this doesn't require you to play a certain build and to be at a certain position, where you just die in your 30v50 fight.

People don't change magically within 5 years. It's the game that changed and the people adapted.

Thief would be the obligatory choice but Irenio's starting to catch up with Karl's antics.

... I'm the only one that picked warrior?

O.K. hear me out. The rate at which I see warriors doing anything is nill. The dreaded February patch that split damage and CC killed a lot of the roaming builds, so whenever I fight one their primary tactic is to spam Full Counter and hope for the best. I don't see them in zergs often, either. Their main benefit is Winds of Disenchantment, because the rest of their group buffs are either done better by other players (shouts) or they're too immobile (banners). I did get burst down by a berserker once, but lately it just seems like warriors are in dire need of... just about everything. I don't play warrior in WvW, but I've seen every other profession on this list do something well, with but one exception.

I do have some general comments on the other professions in no particular order:

Revenant: Way too overnerfed. Hammer is extremely inconsistent and unresponsive, the boons have all been reduced to the point of tragedy, and energy costs are so overinflated that you get, at most, one utility skill every 10 seconds. This is my second place for the most overnerfed class, because boon builds still have a place in Zergs.

Guardian: Largely fine, though I do hate retaliation with a fiery passion. Quite frankly, I'm not sure there should be any skill that gives group retaliation.

Engineer: It isn't good to have one profession render condi builds irrelevant in zerg vs. zerg.

Ranger: Don't have much of an opinion on them. They're fine in small scale, though they don't have much to offer zergs outside of Barrage. I've heard word of the legendary immobilize-build, but haven't faced one yet.

Thief: In spite of my terrible matchup with them, I think they're mostly fine.

Mesmer: Another over-nerfed profession. The phantasms are too inconsistent for power builds to function, and the condi damage has been reduced so much that most of their damage comes from down state. They have no adequate zerg weapon, for either sustained ranged damage or for pushes/melee balls, and all of their utilities are mostly niche and largely unnecessary.

Elementalist: The weaver is fine. It is core and tempest which are way too weak.

Necromancer: Hard to put my finger on this one.

Please nerf teeef! Thanks!

i say thief portals and stealth, so the keep-camping just stops without needing to chase em for days inside

and rangers sheer sustain, attack speed, and dps is too much. class is amongst the worst possible that u can bring into Wvw, yet way too common for this fact. i mean yeah, sounds simply too attractive to just press pew pew and down single players from mounted state even, from any angle with absurd range.ofc u may argue "but it doesn't matter largescale"... while that is true, the class just farms single kills and lets 5-10 teammates die in tradeoff. and ur server loses in the end.

technically, also ele is a canidate, but it is so very squishy either way, while potentially providing great dmg, which most ppl won't bring on the board ever tho. so it is actually a pretty balanced class. and it's not meta in most formats, guess it's role to be good aoe ranged support dmg class is good. maybe the barriers can be tuned down a bit like been done in spvp and the regular healing reduced a small bit, but again: it's not broken, so needs no real touch i guess.

Are some of you actually serious about these Thief and Ranger votes? Lmao.

priority to balance in WvW

As frustrating as some roamer builds can be to deal with, I don't think it's a matter of opinion to say that they shouldn't be the priority for balance. I'm both hoping and assuming that at least some of you are joking, but I also don't doubt some of you are serious.

Everything needs adjustments, but priority should be; Firebrand, Scrapper, Scourge, Reaper, Herald, and Spellbreaker. And I don't say those things meaning I think they should all be nerfed, but that they should be prioritized for WvW balance due to the impact they have at every scale, be it small or large.

Don't let the wall Rangers and gank Thieves distract you from the real problems.And I say this as a Necro main that often gets trolled by these things. I want to see roaming become something more than trolling like it used to be before passive upgrades and sustain comps took over.

nerf teef.

AoE superspeed upkeep is too high. Either tune down the potency or duration. You can however keep it as it is for engineers themselves with like minor trait or something.

Warrior: the class I've played the most. My first char, my main. Playing it years now. It is sad to see warriors being restricted to 3 builds. Warriors have so much potential as "weapon masters" and yet our choices fall short. SKilled warriors do exist and they can make a build work, I'm more of an average warrior with a lot of experience from fighting.

The changes (nerfs and buffs) are too many to list. But anything, anything, that would allow for more build diversity (ideally on top of the current choices). Basically, I would like to have a roamer other than Strength Magebane Spellbreaker, Core Tactics Warrior or Power Berserker (the most difficult option to roam out of the 3).

Which is why I want to see reworks in Rage skills, Banners, CC skills have some of thei dmg returned to them (maybe dazes?), some minor changes to the Elites and a rather detailed research on those traits in Strength/Tactics/Discipline would be good. And of course re-purposing Arms into a more defined dmg role, Defense in an actual Defense line and Berseker is a more viable spec. Spellbreaker looks ok to me right now.