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Let's Talk About PvP Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

For sPvP, have you consider a change in the stat budget through amulets? I know this puts WvW aside (or at least it would requires more work) but capping the main offensive stats to lower numbers while having the defensive ones remains the same would necessarily tone down the global power level but keep the power ranking of individual skills. A skill designed as powerful would remain powerful but would give more reaction time to the defender who could survive a bit longer. I thought it was the original idea of having separate modes : balancing the game mode by adjusting the stats and keeping a global balance for skills.

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@MrSannx.3654 said:

@Widmo.3186 said:Hello new guy, hope you enjoy your stay.

Imo:-Nerf Holo damage and/or sustain-Nerf condi teef (CONDI teef, not whole s/d design)-Nerf staff teef abuse-Nerf DE Malicious Backstab (in which PvP game one-shotting possibility without counterplay is fine?)-Adjust warrior sustain-Think whether letting self-stacking 25 might is healthy (and how can you stack it up to 25, if you spend lots of skills to reach it, its fine, but if it starts working as passive, i dont think its fine).

Main goals to go for at this moment.

Yeah, the holo have a huge damage for a huge sustain ( can refil full HP easily ).

IMO, the problem with Holo has always been that it gets the best damage kit in the game for free with its elite spec. The heat mechanic IS NOT A RISK. It is actually great source of sustain thanks to heat therapy. No player with a modicum of skill ever overheats unless they choose to.

This frees up the entire rest of the build to focus on sustain.

Core engi, by comparison, needs to devote almost all of its build to damage traits and skills in order to compete, and it still doesn't measure up.

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Very short summary of current outliers:

Daredevil: Both the condition variant and the Staff versionStaff is almost impossible to kill, as the near constant dodge windows, combined with additional skills like Bandit's Defense or Roll for Iniative make for near permanent dodges. So in 1v1 it's basically impossible and even if you outnumber hard you still waste a huge amount of time because 95% of the time you only hit the dodge timeframesThe Condition variant is a bit easier to kill, but still has a very high dodge uptime. The problem here is that it does very high pressure on essentialle passive/instant effects like sword 2 and dodge. It basically doesnt ever have to use AA, or other sword skills, just the Sword 2 port, dodge and and occasional steal provide for tons of condition pressure that gets constantly reapplied. Also it has a lot of cover condis and the poison stack, which does the most damage, almost gets cleansed last, making it very hard to ever get a full cleanse on the damaging conditions off

Warrior: Mostly Rampage that is problematic. Huge DPS combined with tons of CC, decent mobility, permanent stability, high HP pool, damage reduction. It has basically everything. Profits a lot from damage modifiers too (Strength Line mostly). Almost no counters except massive spam of hard lifesavers or constant corrupt/condi pressure. The slight nerf on CD was definitely not enough.

Holo: Combination of hard lifesavers like Elixir S with very good resustain. With Elixir S and Photon Wall you have a long stealth period, a decent block that allows to keep fighting and a hard immunity with Eli S itself. This in itself isn't op, but the combination of Healing Turret + it's toolbelt skill on a relatively low CD with a lot of combo finishers, permanent regeneration boon and Heat Therapy means that the holo can basically almost always full resustain after disengaging. This makes it too hard to kill for a class with otherwise offensive build (high DPS/CC). Another issue is the excessive quickness uptime from Tools traitline and Elixir U. There is nothing wrong with the build having quickness in general, but the current duration is too high.

Mirage: Even though it has seen some significant nerfs, Infine Horizon is still a problem, as it means you get a ridiculous amounts of condis from clones, especially when they are using staff, as the Staff Ambush Skill is very strong. It also kind of counters your own shatter mechanic, because just keeping the clones up for AA spam does a lot more than the shatters, so they are usually only used as lifesaver (distortion) or to finish people off

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Aside from the very recent opinions posted in this thread there -> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/90361/state-of-class-conquest-balance-quality-of-life-discussion-10-17-2019 I would like to make a particular quote of one of the posts that I made in that thread, as it heads a perfect opening for this thread concerning your search for outliers within the intra-class dynamic competitively:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:This would be my take on a tier list right now:

Holosmith = S+ "This build has way too much. It is easily the best conquest build due its wide strengths amongst all parameters."Condi Thieves = S- or B- "These builds are OP vs. certain things but of relatively no impact against others."Staff/Staff DrD = S- or C- "An S in the right team comp, but a useless presence while situated incorrectly in a team."Spellbreaker = A+ "It's a great build overall, and hovers juuuust under the radar of being OP. It does have its counters however."Condi Mirage = A+ "This still usually ends up being the stronger 1v1 side node presence. But it's bad in team fights."Firebrand = A+ to C- "Depending on the team comp, Firebrands are either amazing or they get nothing done at all."Herald = A "No longer OP but it's still a solid player. It can struggle vs. condi heavy comps."Ranger/Soulbeast = A- "They work to viability. But they are not favorable in more competitive play over above mentioned builds."Weaver = A- "They work to viability for a solid A-. They're quite strong lately actually, but still lack a solid job role to capitalize on."Core Tact War = A- "The build is quite strong in a weird flex clunky way."Power Mirage = A- or B+ "This build is still strong with the right player behind it, but mediocre in the hands of most."Core Guard = A- or B- "Depending on how it is team comped and what it is being used for."Deadeye = A- or C "A good player makes it work well, but in the hands of most it's just a poor choice to use."Reaper = B+ "It feels like it works, but then you notice it's just not working as well nowadays."Necro = B+ "It's every bit as effective as a Reaper or Scourge now but in different ways. It may shine to be the better Necro spec in time."Scourge = B+ "It's kind of just not working like it used to work lately in current conquest meta after its nerfs."Core Mesmer/Chrono = B+ "They are still at least as effective as a Core Necromancer in the right hands."Scrapper = B+ or C+ "It's doable in the hands of the right player but not so strong in the hands of the wrong player."Core Condi Rev = B+ or C- "It's doable in the hands of the right player but relatively useless I the hands of the wrong player."Druid = B+ or D- "It's doable in the hands of the right player but absolutely garbage in the hands of the wrong player."Core Ele/Tempest = B "These are in no way as good as a Weaver is right now."Dragonhunter = B- "It's just kind of bad right now, considering it's history of once being useful."Berserker = B- "It just doesn't work out well, aside from positive theory crafting to try and find a use for all of that damage."Core Engineer = C+ "It's actually the worst Core Build right now."Renegade = D+ or worse "This specialization seriously lacks any mechanics to be able to be competitive in any way. It needs real work."

But believe it or not, this is the best balance we've had in a long time. The large majority of the builds in play hover between A+ and B+ balancing. There are a small amount of outliers on the top & the bottom of the list. At the top, there is only one solid S+ and only a couple other S grade that are only S grade in certain situations. Then at the bottom, there are only four specs that lightly stray under B+ rating, and only one spec "Renegade" that is bad enough to be rated D+.

In previous patchings, tiers lists were way more volatile than this. This is somewhat stabile considering the history of GW2 competitive balance, outside of the glaring Holosmith S+ and the Core Engi C+ & Renegade D+.

Although this is my subjective opinion, I know that most players would generally agree with this tier list outside of maybe a change or two that they would make from their own subjective experiences. So there you have it, there are your outliers concerning raw performance value.

But more importantly, I'd like to touch on what you said concerning this: "The goal is to re-establish what the overall power level for competitive modes, and then bring everything down to meet that. Think about what you want the meta to look like from a power-level perspective." To be able to do that, it needs to be identified what players view as "feels good" to play as or against. I would imagine that identifying that, would be a strong indication of how the players want the game to feel. The one class/build that I REALLY feel should be very seriously examined concerning your question, is Warrior/Spellbreaker:

Warrior/Berserker/Spellbreaker, but very specifically Strength Spellbreaker in its current state. No matter how badly someone gets trashed in a 1v1 from a strong player on a Strength Spellbreaker, they don't complain about it as indicated by the zero thread representation of Spellbreaker complaints. The funny thing is, this build is actually really strong balance wise. However, there is plenty of counter play to be had against it. If you lose you a Strength Spellbreaker, you either fumbled, didn't run when you should have, or the player on the Spellbreaker was able to trick you and bait you into a good combo. Even if the Spellbreaker is countering your build statistically, there are still ways to deal with him. And even if the Spellbreaker is being countered, the class has dynamic as such that it is still able to find ways to deal with what is countering it. This is very very important to point out because this is rare nowadays amongst the other classes, and that is what makes Warrior/Spellbreaker still feel good to play as and against, because there is real counter play value on each side of the 1v1. Other classes/builds right now have too strong of a rock/paper/scissors effect to such a degree, that as example, when a Necromancer comes around a corner at the wrong time and sees a Power Ranger or Deadeye, the Necromancer knows he's already dead. Or when a Power Shiro Herald gets caught at the wrong time by a Condi Mirage, the Power Shiro knows he's already dead. <- People are getting tired of that and it is largely due to power creep. When overall DPS was lower, something like a Power Shiro Herald would have time to kite a bit and make it back to his team or wait for a + to help him against the Mirage, but nowadays if your hard counter finds you at the wrong time and has a good 10s - 20s time frame to catch you 1v1, you're dead. POINT BEING: None of that hard counter stuff applies to a Spellbreaker. He may be good at fighting some things and some things may have a bit of an advantage vs. him, but anything can deal with him and he can deal with anything. This is what players want the game to feel like again, regardless of the class they play.

Then on the other hand we have those classes that either counter hard or get countered hard. Things like glass cannon rangers & deadeyes. These sorts of designs discourage general skillful play, and encourage the idea of simply targeting the classes that your class is intrinsically designed to nuclear bomb for a hard counter, and to avoid things that are intrinsically designed to nuclear bomb you with no hope of being able to deal with it. This kind of design is what creates several complaint threads about some specific class like a Deadeye, because there are 2 or 3 builds out there that get absolutely trashed by it. The players who play those 2 or 3 builds make it seem like the Deadeye is soooo strong, but in reality the Deadeye is only strong vs. those 2 or 3 builds, and actually loses to everything else in meta. But keep in mind that I am not talking about balance in power right now, I am talking about how the game "feels". Regardless or not of if the Deadeye as example, were actually balanced or not in terms of its weight & worth in a match, players will always still complain about it, even if it is weak and a bad choice for competitive play in the end. This is because they do not like how it feels to get trashed by a hard counter from 1500+ range. This goes for any high damage ranged attacker in Guild Wars 2. Hey, I'm a Ranger main myself and I'm admitting to you that nothing enrages players more, making them want to walk away from the game mode, than nuclear striking them for 1 to 2HKOs at 1500+ range. People hate it. In fact, @"Crab Fear.1624" will remember earlier today in a match, where I was playing a Berserker Soulbeast, and there was a particular player on the opposing team who was so upset at me, that he took the time to stop and complain aloud in the /m chat about how I was hacking my damage and how upset he was in general that my Ranger could deal that damage with a Longbow. He went on for several minutes before the match ended and continued to rage me in whispers after the match had ended. I do not see anyone ever act like this when I play on my Spellbreaker as example, even though Spellbreaker is a stronger build than any Ranger spec right now. And I don't see anyone ever complain at other Spellbreakers in my games either. THE POINT BEING HERE: is that this system of hard rock/paper/scissoring needs to be dowsed a bit. Things should be able to deal with each other. It's ok to have a bit of an advantage over a particular class or build, but it's not ok to be able to counter someone like a waterfall coming down on a campfire. That stuff needs to stop. It's making people leave the game mode. As I said earlier, I feel that power creep in the DPS department is to blame for why this rock/paper/scissoring has become too harsh. Players who are in countered situations have no time to stall or retreat when the build that is countering them can kill them in 2 to 3 shots or less.

So as to your question: "What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?"Rather than tossing a ton of specific suggestions, I'll only say this: Overpowered outliers need to be nerfed in some way, and weak outliers need to be buffed. Stop changing things in the middle that are already balanced that don't need to be changed. I will also say that after accomplishing that, maybe toss some kind of a universal debuff into spvp, oh say -10% off of all damage types. That might actually be a good idea at this point, and a lot easier than creating a ton of skill splits. But most importantly I really want to point out that people are indeed concerned about balance as they always are, but right now the balance isn't actually that bad outside of the outliers. Right now, people are MORE CONCERNED with how the game feels to play in general. They want it to feel good again. Maybe a good question to ask the player base would be: "What was your favorite meta patching over the years and why? Which meta did you have the most fun with?" I would imagine that this would indicate a good & evident direction towards what type of power level the player base seemed to enjoy the most.

~ There is A LOT more I'd like to say, to get much more detailed in terms of discussion & suggestions, but for now I feel this is a good way to stir healthy conversation. I'll get around to my list of direct suggestions a bit later. Kind of pressed for time at the moment.

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I hope for some rebalance of support classes.Things like druid are now pretty useless in PvP but the community clearly would be against another bunker meta.Support classes should have a place to noticably buff teams in 4v4, 3v3 situations. I think it will be really hard task to achieve but I believe in you devs :) .

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My number one balance concern (which is relevant to PvP but not specific to it) right now is the philosophy of elite spec tradeoffs.

On paper, giving elite specs tradeoffs so that core builds are viable is a good idea. It opens the door for more build options.Unfortunately, this philosophy was pursued only partway and then dropped. And now we're left with a number of elite specs that have tradeoffs baked into them, and a bunch that do not have any tradeoffs whatsoever.

What are your plans around this philosophy? Are you going to continue it? If you are not, are you going to revert the tradeoffs you've already made to specs like Scrapper and Chronomancer?

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I dont fully agree upon not nerfing for the sake of nerfing, sometimes a certain build or trait or skill is so overpowered or just too easy and strong at the same time it needs a hotnerf (dont have to destroy the certain skill/trait/build but just adjust the numbers a bit) so you can 'tweak' the specific issue in a more 'lasting' way (like condi thief).

Otherwise things that in my opinion need 'adjustment';

  • Rampage (great mobility, pulsing stab, high damage, high health)
  • mirage (I think just nerfing some skills isnt gonna fix mirage, imo it's just the design that needs to change cus no matter what you nerf, something els will be just as overpowered on mirage)
  • FB (kind of the same story as mirage, the design itself is just stupid strong, a huge amount of strong healing skills, cc, stab etc etc which makes FB so strong so maybe redesign the entire spec? :) )
  • holosmith (way too much boonuptime and stab)

Things that need buffs;

  • for the love of god BUFF DRUID
  • core engi
  • the useless revenant spec (it's so bad I cant even remember the name)
  • BUFF DRUID (yes ill say it again)
  • core ele

ye that's pretty much what directly came up into my mind.Keep in mind that this is my own opinion so if you dont agree, well then too bad.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

The effectiveness split sounds like a really great idea.

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Personal wishlist:

  1. Reapproach ranger's elite pets for. I.e. core ranger can use only core pets, HoT ranger can use core+HoT, PoF core+pof. Or at least rebalance Antelope (getting head toss for 12k without cast/animation is somewhat \o/
  2. Condi thief — Deadly ambition can get a stack off shafted, lotus training might get reworked into landing only 2 conditions.
  3. Binding shadow should get a visual cue
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Egregiously good:

Condi daredevil, specifically poison application, sword 2, you guys have been told this, time to take action etc etc etc. In fact, I'd go ahead and say that thief has the most viable builds right now with multiple daredevil specs, a core spec, and deadeye spec all ranging from useful to great to top tier.

Rampage. Please for the love of god lmao. Nerf this.

Egregiously bad:

Dragonhunter and core guardian. Just... everything. They're horrible. Eat a dshot -> ToF -> true shot combo in wvw and I'll be dead. Eat it in pvp and I'll be down 6k health at max on a revenant. What is DH supposed to do? Also core guardian virtues are lame at best, useless at worst.

Renegade has one ok-ish build carried by salvation being op and sanctuary rune. Otherwise it's a garbage spec.

Scourge changes no bueno.

Unfun to play against/bad design:

Condi mirage and clone spam= frustrating and unfun for even the highest tier players to fight.

Deadeye stealth and rifle leading into pistol whip spam= boring to fight.

In addition, too many cover conditions applied by condi mirage and condi daredevil makes it impossible to cycle cleanses enough to cleanse the actual damage source- poison for daredevil, torment for mirage.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@DoritoGod.5817 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:

  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.
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As your team has said before, not what you want to hear, but still as true today as the very first time it was said: Conquest has to be heavily modified, or replaced completely, for any hope of a balanced PvP gamemode.

You cannot equalize the efficacy of mechanics across the professions when the game mode itself provides no outlet for the majority of the games mechanics. Conquest is nothing but bunkering and backdooring; PvP needs a real objective that provides more avenues of play than that.

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Hi Cal and welcome to the hell's kitchen :)I want to keep this as short as possible while still talking about as much as possible about my observations.

First i want to talk about the current meta builds:

Demolisher elixir holo:this build has too much sustain for the amount of damage it puts out. the damage should be brought down, or the sustain. either should be fine.

d/sh + gs spellbreaker:basically the same as holo. one problem skill i see is bull's charge. this skill is too good. it's an evade, it's a gap closer, a 3s knockdown and deals up to 6k damage on a quite low cooldown. rework rampage to something else that isn't a transform. shake it off is too unbalanced. it's too much condi cleanse on one button while warrior doesn't have enough sustained condi cleanse elsewhere.

tactics a/sh + gs core warrior:damage output is even higher than spellbreaker for the price of a lack of anti pressure tools (full counter) but with higher sustained healing through for great justice and tactics. the anti barrier trait should be reworked, this trait is an unfun hardcounter to weaver and scrapper. some counters are fine, but this is too much.

s/p + staff mirage:this one is quite difficult. on the one hand, it's very oppressive in a 1v1 and on the other hand quite useless in teamfights. i think both is unhealthy and should be changed. in a 1v1 the problem is the ability to deal a high amount of condi pressure while being invulnerable and in teamfights the problem is that it's hard to apply condis to a target because it's single target and because projectiles hit targets between you and your actual target.

s/d + sb condi daredevil:many people dislike this build quite a lot but i actually think its power level is fine. what i don't like about this build is that it operates with way less skills than power s/d and d/p that have to use multiple skills to deal damage while condi mainly uses infiltrator's strike. what i would do is move the condition application to skills that come after infiltrator's strike. an example would be: instead of applying poison on immob, apply poison with attacks to immobilized (can even include crowd control effects like stun etc) targets.

healer firebrand:i think support firebrand is mostly fine. it's possible that its healing output needs to be lowered a bit if it's too much after the power level has been decreased.

shiro power herald:this build is mostly fine in my opinion. what i'd like to see (and that's my personal opinion) is a very light damage nerf and a bit more condi cleanse.

weaver:weaver is probably fine the way it currently is. maybe burning duration on skills, or cooldowns on priordial stance could be reduced/increased a bit. i have my personal problem with the design of the whole build though. i dislike the way its defense works, mostly relying on evades, a bit of healing and the invul. i think weaver's defense is no fun.

those are the builds i consider to be on a meta power level.

now i will talk about other things that need some attention.

"stall builds" or tanks, however you want to call them.Some people might dislike them, but i find them quite interesting. they can change the dynamic of a match which is a healthy addition in my opinion.with the reduction of power in the game a close eye needs to be put on such stall builds that they don't become completely unviable. they should still keep their worth as a build that punishes the enemy team if they take too long to kill it with 2 players, but should also be balanced in a way that keeps them from being unkillable at all. their balance should be handled very delicately.

healer builds:i would very much appreciate it if other healer builds could be made viable. currently, the only viable healer is firebrand. tempest for example just falls short in terms of healing output and condition cleanse. tempest has slow sustained healing with not so great condition cleanse which makes it very hard to sustain against heavy condition pressure for an adequate amount of time and struggles in general to heal low hp allies. druid suffers from similar problems. the problem with support ventari revenant are of a different nature. one problem being the tablet. it's quite hard to send it to moving players and heal them. you need to pre cast the heal skill and move the tablet, hoping your ally will not use a teleport. imo the radius around the tablet should be increased to 600 from 240. another problem is the ventari elite. currently, you can use it to decap nodes whichs is kinda fine because rev as a healer is basically unviable (because of the radius). this skill should be changed from a knockback to a stun or knockdown.

there are some other builds that i would like to see buffed and some changes i'd like to see:

core d/d ele (damage output too low to be viable)

shoutbow warrior (longbow pressure is too low. f1 burning needs to be buffed, other longbow skills could use a buff too)

warrior traits: weaponswap cooldown trait should be made baseline. either completely, or at least 7.5s with the trait reducing it to 5s. hammer trait should be moved somewhere else. it's quite difficult to make a hammer build because you need more than you can take.

berserker without burst skills when not in berserk mode feels terrible. also, berserker hammer burst cone hitbox is bad compared to the circle of normal hammer burst.

buff celestial amulet, its stats are currently too low, making it too weak to even consider.

scourge nerf was wrong. the skills should have been tuned down, not its defense/offense taken away.

bring back geomancy sigil but reduce the hit damage it used to deal (the spikes if anyone remembers)

more amulet options, example, thoughness version of vitality combinations and vice versa (example, avatar variation with toughness instead of vit).

reduce boonspam and reduce boon corrupt

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I'd like you to consider using Off-seasons to do some experimentation.

For example, "Ranked" could be renamed "Experimental" during off seasons, and queuing there instead Unranked during off-season would lead to matches with experimental changes without affecting unranked.The experiments would bring some tweaks to mechanics, some drastic, some just for fun, in a similar way to GW1's Flux.
The kind of stuff that would be insane to do during a season, or even for unranked and hotjoin, but that may give interesting data.

For example:

  • Cutting by half the stats in all amulets, or even disabling amulets altogether.
  • Giving players an effect that cuts down all damage and barriers to 1/3, all healing down to 1/5, reduces attack and skill activation speed by 20% and disables out of combat healing.
  • Critical damage no longer increases Base damage, it is instead applied as a separate additive damage boost, and it's only affected by effect that increase critical damage. All other damage boosts affect only base damage.
  • Damage proration: Successive hits within a short time received while disabled or immobilized deal less and less damage, down to 1% of one's maximum health.
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@"AngelsShadow.7360" said:Targeted issues:

BUILDS REFERENCED HERE: https://www.godsofpvp.net/

Engineer:Quickness uptime (Elixir U and Kinetic Battery)Stability from Elixir U (eliminates need to hit corona burst - taking away skill)Overcharged Shot - little-to-no tell, hard to predictFunction Gyro is far too ineffective compared to other revive utilities (Blood Well, traited Geyser, etc.)

Lots of players here are talking about damage output, this is best adjusted by limiting quickness uptime (therefore allowing the actual dodging of the skills) rather than adjusting the skills themselves.

Ideally there is just not enough risk with the spec at least with holo.As you said fuction gyro is too ineffective i agree with

Elementalist:Evade uptime is too highEvade animations are inconsistent with actual evade frames (beginning and end)*Lots of passive damage output - quite unfun to deal withI would argue the evade up time is fine just the condition dps is instantly melting. Considering its almost on par with its pve split and its pve split when built to condi can out ramp power dps in the first 5 seconds with burning alone is saying something. Ideally it needs to be checked so that its not applying instant melting levels of conditions. The evades should stay no reason to take those.

Mesmer:Too many cover conditions over the primary damage source (torment)Too high evade uptimeEvade whilst CCed is sillyClone generation is ridiculous - fights are incredibly clutteredI pretty much agree on all of this and staff autos / ambush do way too much.

Guardian:*No specific issues, firebrand has reduced effectiveness due to Scourge nerfThis is not true imo its effectiveness has increased due to the fact that its easier to upkeep boons at least when looking at its offensive variation which is becoming more popular. There is also less risk for firebrands in general no longer having nearly as many aoes that will pop up under them attempting to support or fight.

Necromancer:Corrupts in general are far too common and allow for far too many cover conditions (not enough cleanses in the game!) - swap some corrupts for boon rips.I agree with this but simply swapping them for rips wont solve anything the issue is alos that boon generation and application is too high across the board and necor should not be acting as the main counter to this being 1 profession having to manage 8 others boons.Blood well is far too effectiveTo be honest this has already been nerfed a few times its fine as is.*Honestly, too many teleports on necromancer in general at this pointSeriously? What teleports? Wurm? Spectral walk with a fix'ed distance? You know this is a light armored profession with limited boons, no blocks, and extra evades right?

Ranger:*Longbow is still silly burst, and far too effective at lower tiers of playYou forgot to talk about how strong some pets become with beast mastery, several pets also need to rebalanced. Far too much use of smoke scale and not enough of every other pet. Pets need more obvious tells on when they are going to use AI cc attacks such as knockdowns.

Revenant:Too high sustained damage outputToo high Quickness uptimeI feel like the quickness bit is a bit of stretch but you are correct on the damage department its burst is insane atm.

Thief:Deadeye - too much stealth uptime from stealth on dodge trait - very unfun gameplay - impossible for lower tier players to trackI agreeDaggerstorm should not be an evadeThis is fine as is imo

Warrior:Too much might uptimeToo much sustain from might makes right - health and endurance regenI agree with this but might makes right is not the problem its other sources of might one of the main offenders being magebane and its rapid might applicationBull's Charge evade forces dodge, when there are at least 6 other high damage skills on warrior that require a dodge tooThis is honestly fine Bulls has a obvious tellRampage - too much damage and CC1000% agree its top tier elite in most cases its a free kill when pressed.*Warrior's Cunning - 50% damage increase vs barriered foes is too high especially vs classes with perma barrier like scrapper and weaver^ The trait overall is too strong on both fronts not just the barrier damage increase.

Pretty much anything i didnt call out in your list means I already agree with it to some extent but i feel you are missing some points in some places or just completely incorrect.

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spamming skills is rewarded in this game so i'd like to see big increase in cooldownssome autoattacks are ridiculously high, i'd like to them brought down to chip damageif you wasted your skills, you should lose the fight - maybe also reduce/nerf mobility skills in general

short term:condi daredevil, support firebrand, holosmith are specs that prevent other classes from being viableif you nerf those however other powerhouses will still remain e.g. condi mirage, herald, spellbreaker, fire weaver, deadeye, any boonspammerthe moment core engineer or the current chronomancer becomes even slighty competitive (without it being a silly 1 shot grenade build), you have indication you are on the right track

furthermore i'd like you to reach out to some top players who have been around since launch - who have played good and bad metas - i'm sure they are more than willing to assist into creating a better, more balanced and competitive environment

good luck and have fun with the work

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The problem with condi builds isn't their power level, it's the fact that they can spam cover conditions so condition clears can't remove the 1 condition they're doing damage with. We need more skills that are guaranteed to remove damaging conditions (ie Thief's Hide in Shadows heal). That would provide counterplay to condi builds without nerfing them out of existence.

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I tend to notice a few things dominantly in the WvW and the PvP sphere :

Scourge is the main offensive force in WvW, and has no equal. It's a staple of zerg tactics. Battles are often won on whom have the largest amount of scourges. While it is hard to get away from what seems to be a quintessential part of WvW, it kills squad variety. And to be fair, it just is not fun. There is no counterplay to it, because the range of their ability is such that most ranged classes cannot bring them down before they're overrun with condi damage.

Warrior is the opposite. It is virtually unkillable on 1v1 because of the amount of blocks and invulnerability it can put in, while retaining a very respectable amount of raw damage through weapon skills alone. Contrary to classes who tank the damage and repair it through Healing, regen, barriers or such, Warriors outright negate that damage, it doesn't rely on stats, therefore warriors can mitigate their damage while being built with stats for damage. There is no exchange. This is not to say that it should change. What should change, is adding a counterplay to these skills. Similar for evasions. There are skills that are unblockable, but they're far and few between, and often have no consequence (you deal a bit of damage, and that's it, skill is on cooldown). A skill that is unblockable and from which the CC cannot be avoided (with a serious cooldown to prevent abuse) would provide that counterplay.Edit : I feel I haven't expressed myself properly on the subject of Unblockable CCs : They do exist, the problem is when the unblockable skill is Soft CC (doesn't prevent skill usage, and so doesn't prevent the chain of blocks/invulnerability) or they're not CC, so it encounters the same problem.

I join my fellow engineers once more on the topic of core engineer lacking any sort of place anywhere in the game. I also believe that sustain on Holosmith should be axed. Holosmith is made for damage, not tanking. If anything I'd rather they transfer the vitality debuff from scrapper over to Holosmith, as this would make much more sense. Scrapper being made to tank but taking a vitality handicap is nonsensical. Core engineer ultimates are -never- used for serious fights. One is completely unreliable, the other is nothing more than an overly long cooldown area CC skill, due to turrets being so weak. Of course, what has been said so frequently about core engineer turrets, need'nt be said again here.

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We're in a pretty good spot in the meta, there are only a couple of major outliers.Condi Daredevil outshines its brother S/D Core by alot right now, they should be brought in line with the latter.Staff Daredevil breaks conquest entirely right now, to the point where most comps will run 1 or even 2, resembles the meta shifting power Power Chrono had a while back.Fire Weaver is very spammy right now with Glyph of Elemental Power being ran, it'd be in a much better spot nerfing that skill.Tactics Core War's insane modifier should either be slightly toned down, or changed to where the 50% extra damage is only put on the actual barrier, rather than normal HP as well. Bull's Charge could stand to be changed.For ranked Tools Holosmith is still as dominant as always.Condi Mirage is in a pretty good spot, I think it should be left as is (i understand its not fun to fight against, but its not OP right now)I think slight buffs to Soulbeast should be done, the Axe/Axe Sword/WH build got hit really hard, and Ranger is easily the worst class in all of sPvP right now.

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The issue with Condi thief is the S/D part of the build, not with any other part of it. D/D or P/D condi thief is not overperforming in any way and has been continuously hit with nerfs targeted at S/D Condi Thief. If you blanket nerf “Condi thief” then you’ll continue to damage other underperforming playstyles as well. My suggestion is to remove the immobilize on Sword 2 and replace it with a 2s to 3s Chill. This would result in more counterplay against S/D condi and also not really nerf Power S/D at all; more likely break even.

Would like to see slight nerfs to Holo damage.

Also to echo some other posters “bringing support builds up to be equal to FB instead of tearing FB down” would be good.

As for damage power level, slightly lower than current would be fine. Let’s not end up in another bunker meta; those are never fun

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Hopefully the team can aim ensure each class has no less than 2-4 counter options, For example a massive outlier is the fact that under no such reason should mirages main and mostly only counter mostly be thieves.

That said my main questions/statements are

  • One of the biggest things i hope will be considered is toning down boon generation and application in pvp so that necromancer is not acting as mostly the main and only counter against them, the class suffers too much design wise having a lot of its skills and tools cut short in terms of damage, effectiveness, or other mechanics for the simple sake of having to boon manage the other 8 professions in the game. It honestly feels like over the years its unique mechanic to corrupt boons has gone from a key feature to a gate keeping tool. How ever to "balance" this out its other areas suffer greatly for example (how people are now noticing how much more crazy fire brand is which is partly due to the fact that it was already strong and now their are less scourges and necros around to help manage its boons)

Boon uptime is definitely something on our radar, and likewise how many corrupts are needed to interact with that amount of boons. In general the thought is that everything needs to come down, including damage, sustain, boons, corrupts, cc, stability, among other things. There's a lot more to it than just blanket nerfing everything by X% but the general direction is definitely downward.

In terms of boon balance i see that you wrote who a single spec self stacking 25 might would be looked at but how would this fair for classes like say warrior or soulbeats which can quickly stack 25 might on its own as well as a generous number of other boons vs necormancer which can also self stack 25 might but is pretty limited on the boon department to just hand full like might, swiftness, (perhaps some protection)

Professions are still going to have their strengths and weakness in terms of what boons they can generate, but the overall effectiveness is going to be lower.

  • Will the team reconsider how effective instant cast skills like mantras should be or entertain the idea of adding a delay to project some kind of warning or tell before they fire off along side other skills.

Instant skills are one of the things that we've started discussing internally since cast time isn't something that can be split. One of our main goals for competitive is making sure that there is adequate counterplay. It's going to vary on a case-by-case basis, but cast time increases and adding delays are part of those discussions. Not as splits, but as changes that may need to happen. There's then opportunity for PvE-only splits to compensate skills for these changes.

  • Is the team going to consider toning down burst quick or be killed meta to a reasonable level. Ever since HoT which was known as a very tanky/busier meta initially the game has headed in a direction that constantly pushes a kill quick to survive playstyle which works for some professions or elite specs but not for others. It also some what negates the idea of building defensively on some professions as building offensive tends to be the best defensive measure.?

This falls into the same 'everything is too high' idea. Damage potential is definitely something we will be looking at.

  • Will you plan to look at toning down overly rewarding safe rapid condition application? For example conditions that are applied constantly from say mirage (and its staff auto and ambush) or super safe application practices like the more recent dare devil thief which can apply its main damaging condition by simply using skills that evade.

How conditions are applied is a big thing that we're looking into.

  • Are you going to consider can looking at spicing up skills, traits, utilities that are heavily under used not just in this meta but in the past several metas without smashing the ones that are already in a good spot and used to make the same outdated traits/skills etc appear as a better option. In short keep the good as is (for the most part) just spice up the non used stuff.

For the future big patch, we are primarily looking at nerfs. The idea is that things that are in a good spot in the current meta are overtuned for what we want the game to be. We still want skills and traits to feel strong, but their current strength is too high. Initially we want to wait and see with a lot of things that aren't considered viable right now. As everything else shifts downward other things may become relevant without any changes. There will certainly be things that are too weak and we will revisit them in the future.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

  • Will you plan to look at
    toning down overly rewarding safe rapid condition application?
    For example conditions that are applied constantly from say mirage (and its staff auto and ambush) or super safe application practices like the more recent dare devil thief which can apply its main damaging condition by simply using skills that evade.

How conditions are applied is a big thing that we're looking into.

That's good! Please remember though, that if rapid condi application is nerfed, then condi cleanse options should also be nerfed to match. It is really frustrating trying to apply my 12s cooldown blowtorch burn when my opponents have ample cleanse on a shorter cooldown via traits and other build options. I imagine if mesmer or thief are nerfed to be more like condi engi, they will face the same frustration.

Thanks

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