Stop the powercreep

It is probably futile at this point but assume that not only i am sick and tired of constantly increasing powercreep. The constant in almost all patches was that Anet's solution for something broken is to add something even more broken.

Prime example is current scourges. Yes they are broken to certain extend but one can also argue they are needed to all the boon spam in this game.

The issue is, that instead of toning down overtuned spells/traits/passives etc. that grant way too many boons way too frequently on certain classes Anet chose to add more boon corruption. So now we have necros rampaging everywhere murdering anything and everyone that dares to get close to the point. Fine. What will happen next? Another buff that prevents your boons from being corrupted like it was with resistance to counter condis? And then some spells ignoring those buffs, preferably with as many sparkles and sprinkles as possible? How far is balancing team willing to go actually? Look at your average fight on point in pvp at the moment. Can anyone even tell wth is going on anymore?

I am sure traits/spells all can be toned down safely without denying average Joe his weekly raid kills.

Wooo-hoooo, give bim beer, or maybe a bear. Quaggan agrees with Sylvari Thief.

sometimes I ask myself why I get banned for saying the balance team is incompetent when the word seems so apt

@choovanski.5462 said:sometimes I ask myself why I get banned for saying the balance team is incompetent when the word seems so apt

Incompetent would be a compliment. Many of us suspect they are actively attempting (and succeeding) to wean people off pvp

At this rate by the time the enxt expansion rolls out PvP will be like a western shootout, whoever fires first wins because everything will oneshot (maybe even through passives as a new mechanic).

Look at PvE, by now if some spec does 1.5 times the damage of the average player health pool IN ONE SECOND it's bad DPS. How insane is that? Haven't seen a single game where damage was so disproportionate to HP, even if PvP operates with somewhat smaller numbers it's way out of control at this point.

But don't even dream about nerfs because the pve bois will cry even if it's 0.1%

Pve players need help of a power creep to look good/confortable/high numbers make people atached to the game lol.., and Anet defenition of action mmo is not in class mechanics that are basicly spam smash buttons, but in power creep while not having thr mechanics of a action mmo....

key bashing, and high damage it is not what makes a mmo a action game.

btw expect more of the same redudancy in next expantion.. more boon spam, more condi, more aoe, more damage...etc, next expantion will have to be better than PoF to selll to pve players.

I wish they would reduce all the spam lower numbers (both damage and stacks(Condi and Boon))and remove all defensive procs Traits that reward Failure. But those are pipe dream requests even though doing those things would solve a plethora of issues plaguing the game in multiple modes.

I agree, boon spam is a big issue, nerf consume plasma.

@apharma.3741 said:I agree, boon spam is a big issue, nerf consume plasma.

Too obvious, try again :P

i hate boons... well here's boon corruption, well i hate that too, ok got it.

it started when they introduced the "remove 2 boons" sigil or necro scepter corrupt on auto. it made me wonder, why not just reduce boons? boon corrupt in vanilla was basically just about removing stability, now it's "i'll take this, this and.. i'll take all".

@Jekkt.6045 said:it started when they introduced the "remove 2 boons" sigil or necro scepter corrupt on auto. it made me wonder, why not just reduce boons? boon corrupt in vanilla was basically just about removing stability, now it's "i'll take this, this and.. i'll take all".

Which is kinda silly, because some Quaggans relly on boons so much!

@Morwath.9817 said:

@Jekkt.6045 said:it started when they introduced the "remove 2 boons" sigil or necro scepter corrupt on auto. it made me wonder, why not just reduce boons? boon corrupt in vanilla was basically just about removing stability, now it's "i'll take this, this and.. i'll take all".

They wouldn’t have to rely on them so much if Damage, Spam, Corruption/Removal, and Condi Spam was toned down to reasonable levels, you know something called meaningful balance, the rewards skillful use vs spam off CD.

@Cynz.9437 said:

@apharma.3741 said:I agree, boon spam is a big issue, nerf consume plasma.

Well it is a bit over the top on the boons, I’m more surprised ANet didn’t add a 5k barrier to it tbh. Boonspam is mostly a HoT issue and many of those have been left unchecked rather than being reduced but it’s also changed the relationship many core traits and skills had with one another. The only PoF class that really got overboard with the boons was firebrand, most others sure added boons but they gained it in proportion to what they lost.

The real cause of it all is the painfully long time between balance patches with us getting pretty much 6 a year outside of emergency fixes, between 9 August 2016 and 8th August 2017 there were 6 balance patches outside of a very select number of changes because some skills allowed the complete bypassing of content. This means we don’t get a proper tone down of anything or get the redesigning of problem skills and traits that is needed rather than flat nerfs which don’t achieve balance.

I said it before, it’s an arms race and we’re hitting Cold War.

Hrmm I give 4/10 for the bait post and I say that because Cynz.9437 "I am sure traits/spells all can be toned down safely without denying average Joe his weekly raid kills." witcher.3197 "But don't even dream about nerfs because the pve bois will cry even if it's 0.1%" Aeolus.3615*"Pve players need help of a power creep to look good/confortable/high numbers make people atached to the game lol" This rhetoric is getting a bit redundant I realize PvP is angry about how things are going but this concept of PvE is always the reason why its bad is getting kinda old.

The reality is as I have said in a different thread the reason some shit sucks in PvP atm is because of the inconsistency of the PvP player base so called wishes for balance hardly anything can be agreed about besides "PvP sucks atm" Naturally you don't need to believe what I say feel free to dismiss it ...But I wager if you held a public poll regarding why PvP and balance surrounding it is this way youd get some people saying something similar to what I'm saying. While this concept of PvEs play vs scripted content they must all be terrible ..I wont deny imo a lot of them suck from my perspective but as someone who has spent years in PvP and PvE ..A lot of the "Average Joes"

In PvP are about the same when it comes to skill level that I would find in PvE sometimes I cant even tell the difference. This isn't intended to be a pushback from PvE as I linger in both game modes like some players do. It is just every time PvP balance power creep or anything in general that has to do with the sanity of PvP comes up there are almost always replies blaming something PvE related in the most obtuse of ways. If no one decides to hold a Poll Regarding Why PvP is the way it is in the next few days ill likely do it my self I will even list PvE in general as 1 of the options out of fairness just to see how many people actually believe that is why until then can we stick to things that will actually help PvP in the long run an actual list of issues that are accurate that the PvP community will be able to agree on?

.. but you have to admit, there IS powercreep. Take almost any elite spec and face off against the base class (equal skilled players, obviously). You'll destroy them.

@coro.3176 said:.. but you have to admit, there IS powercreep. Take almost any elite spec and face off against the base class (equal skilled players, obviously). You'll destroy them.

Core warrior vs berserker!

Ok putting aside that one, the PoF elites were largely less power creep than HoT. Now I’m not saying there aren’t outliers, there’s plenty of trait and skills that need toning down but remember HoT release? That was all kinds of power creep in every game mode all over.

Not just boon spam, but condi spam is real too, and needs to be toned way down. Right now scourge is one of the worst offenders, but its only because of mass corrupts on the boon spam (and the fact that scourge can corrupt 1 boon into 2 condis). Also hard CC spam is real, and needs to be reduced. Skill effect spam is honestly the worst offender, because its the direct cause of the above. FC is still the prime example (as are some other class mechanics when fully traited). So much crap all loaded into a single fucking skill. The amount of things that skills should be able to do, even when fully traited, should be 3-4. With extremely few skills being outliers in being able to do 5 things when fully traited. Yes, dealing non-trivial damage counts as 1 thing. Each unique condition counts as an additional thing that a skill does. And then finally skill spam itself needs to be toned down, though its really the least of the problems here, and it would be fine if the above were all addressed.

Ya the trend since HoT release was more condi spam, boon spam and AOE CC spam. PoF kept it going and added boon corrupt spam.

It is probably too late to reduce condi spam and boon spam. They are so woven into many elite specs that removing them will require major re-structuring of the game. Though the AOE CC and boon corrupt are easy to reduce, and in scourge case outright remove. Scourge should be a support through barrier, and possibly ally buff. This boon corruption needs to burnt with fire and never to be heard of again. SB can be tolerated, except wind of disenchantment which also needs to be removed.

That plus a slight nerf to Mirage condi application and FB support capacity, sPvP should be in a much better place.

All PvP threads should be posted on the General sub forum (and to reddit) for a chance to be read by a community manager.Otherwise, everything said here is pointless. They don't give a fuck.

I think some posters here didn't understand the idea. I took boonspam and corruption as an example but they are not the actual problem. The problem is much bigger: instead of toning down spells/traits and balance new skills accordingly Anet chose way of addressing issues by adding even more broken/overloaded mechanics/spells/traits to the game to the point where gw2 combat is nothing but spamfest with a lot of visual clutter. This really needs to change otherwise as witcher said at this rate the game will turn into western shootout.

As far as pve goes, assuming Anet will change their politics regarding class balance and start to use common sense, it might indeed make some pve'ers not so happy as it will obviously make some raid encounters tiny bit harder since spells may not be overloaded/strong as much anymore. I don't see how it could be a problem however, since it has been proven many times that with correct play you can kill the boss with less than 10 players under the time limit.This is not bashing on pve'ers (i could be considered one myself since i spent countless hours doing LS and raids/fractals) however i AM afraid that their opinion on class balance matter has more weight than fact whether combat in pvp is balanced or not in case Anet does chose to change their class balance philosophy.

Yes, don't fixate on the corruption, the problem is much bigger.Remember what they did with Stealth? On release the number of skills that caused the Revealed debuff were very few, now they've given them to a lot more builds.Remember what they did to "counter" condi spam? Light Fields when blasted now remove conditions was their answer, as if that would help anyone.

Instead of fixing the problems, they add counters to the problems, then they need counters for the counters and the list goes on.

@Cynz.9437 said:As far as pve goes, assuming Anet will change their politics regarding class balance and start to use common sense, it might indeed make some pve'ers not so happy as it will obviously make some raid encounters tiny bit harder since spells may not be overloaded/strong as much anymore. I don't see how it could be a problem however, since it has been proven many times that with correct play you can kill the boss with less than 10 players under the time limit.

There is no build in PVE that deals way too much damage, the numbers you see on the benchmarks are achieved using all the buffs available, which triples the damage output. Divide the damage by a factor of 3, or 2 based on build, to find the real damage those builds deal, because in PVP you won't have perma Alacrity, banners, spirits, 25 stacks of Might and Fury all at the same time. In solo instances and in regular PVE you won't achieve those numbers either.So it's perfectly fine to nerf the damage of certain skills, the damage buffs will make up for the difference anyway.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:As far as pve goes, assuming Anet will change their politics regarding class balance and start to use common sense, it might indeed make some pve'ers not so happy as it will obviously make some raid encounters tiny bit harder since spells may not be overloaded/strong as much anymore. I don't see how it could be a problem however, since it has been proven many times that with correct play you can kill the boss with less than 10 players under the time limit.

This is not entirely correct. Some classes can self blast and maintain perma fury and might solo, some classes can get perma fury from a single trait and stack might too in PvP which is the biggest part of the damage. Also the benchmarks are generally not done with all the buffs, they’re done with the buffs that are realistically expected in a raid group, back when raids weren’t quite mirror comp GotL was set at 4 stacks not 5, now it will be tested without if anyone cares to do so just as power builds may not include empower allies anymore as there’s no guarantee you will have it anymore but will have both banners.

It’s also not true that no build in PvE does too much damage, most raid builds at launch of raids were in the 30k mark, most damage builds have been pushed up to 37k, that’s a very substantial increase and given older raids were not too hard with 30k potential dps from 4 dps classes now we are in a 6 dps class each having a potential of 37k they are all objectively too strong.

The best way to tone down damage is to flat nerf every single skill by a percentage across every single class but that would be a huge undertaking. It would however be much more balanced and slow the game down a little bit. You’ll still get people crying and saying it’s an unjust specific nerf to their class though.

@apharma.3741 said:It’s also not true that no build in PvE does too much damage, most raid builds at launch of raids were in the 30k mark, most damage builds have been pushed up to 37k, that’s a very substantial increase and given older raids were not too hard with 30k potential dps from 4 dps classes now we are in a 6 dps class each having a potential of 37k they are all objectively too strong.

30k with buffs that triple your damage means 10k without them, or at very best 15k-20k with good self buffs. Benchmarks use buffs that triple your damage, and apply only one stationary dumb targets. Honestly the dps potential of a Staff Weaver is abysmal low in PVP even if you go full damage.