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Let's Talk About PvP Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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Current State of PvPThe amount of damage being pumped into games made the game much more enjoyable for veteran players who know how to sustain a fight, and utilize the damage within their kit. A class like Holosmith has easy tells to what a knowledgeable player can expect, playfulling countering their abilities can give you advantage in a duel or teamfight. Though certain classes like the current rendition of Condi-thief is something of the opposite.

A conditions are rolled out in a first-in-first out basis, digging out a 20 stack of condi from a layer of Bleed, Cripple and other Conditions is rather hard for classes who don't take an arsenal of cleanses. A single thief and dictate a match by forcing players into taking a particular build that excels against the Thief, but may not or be ineffective against the other players. This does cancel out a few players in a match, but makes the experience for the players an absolute hell.

On the flipside, a well designed Condition class like Burn-weaver is much more manageable in this meta. Not for its lack of mobility or cleaving, but its main damage source coming from a single condition; minus the large layer of conditions on top. Playing against a burn-weaver is possible (For how long varies) without overloading on the defensive while still being able to play against other classes without being deleted on sight.

Mirage fits into the same boat as Condi thief, but in another matter. Its damage is spread out through its various conditions but the rate and application of them can shutdown majority of builds. Arcane Thievery being a thing on Core-mesmer allows for disgusting counters against other condition based classes or be a nuisance to others (Arken screaming in the background).

To summarize, classes like Holosmiths or Soulbeasts should be the general power level of builds. Toning down the condi applications of Mesmer and Thief would bring the game down to a healthier state. Certain classes like Scourge could definitely use another pass after the last set of nerfs removed them from the meta.

On the smaller ScaleComing from someone who only ever plays Engineer, particularly Scrapper (I really hope you have some kind of stats on you end about that) I can give you a good eye to what needs to brought down, and what certain aspects need to be changed. Engineer as a whole has always been the Jack-of-all-trades, and its core abilities generally reflect that aspect.

The first skill that needs to be toned down is Elixir U. The addition of stability on the base skill made it steroids with steroids. A single push of a button can make your Engineer an auto attacking wrecking crew, with some ground to back you up as you dish out damage. The Stability on this skill should be broken up, and replaced somewhere else on the Engineer's traits. As it stands, there's no real passive stability generation on Core Engineer and it's only sources comes from U, Toss B and Thumper Toolbelt (Elixir X if you want to push it)

Rifle has seen a multitude off buffs after the removal of the firearms trait that increased the effectiveness of it, so much that it might be at a tipping point. Rifle 4 is the biggest issue, as its instant cast utility provides little counter play against the Engineer. A point blank shot can easily decimate another player, and its personal knockback can be negated with Elixir U or Toss B. A simple casting animation will bring down this railgun to a more coutnerable level.

Engineer also has a set of completely unusable utilities that have been untouched since launch. Gadgets such as Utility goggles can be bumped up with Resistance application and Slick Shoes could be brought back again with a small Cooldown change. Thought Turrets are another issue, an issue that might be too large to fix without a dedicated rework. Looking into their Cooldowns and Toolbelt skills would give a nice band-aid fix to turrets as the team can look for long-term solutions.

Closing it off with Scrapper, there's still a fundamental flaw with its Barrier application, and that's to do with Barrier itself. A Scrapper would naturally disable and deny damage as its gaining barrier, but as soon as those cooldowns are up, your barrier only has about a 1 second uptime before dissipating. A flavorful fix would be giving the grandmaster traits a way to gain, or effect Barrier as a whole. Impact Savant (An already extremely weak trait) could give longer Barrier Duration (emphasize Passive Play), Kinetic Stabilizers could give barrier on disable (emphasize offensive play) and Applied Force could give barrier on the Might Threshold (emphasize burst).

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From my point of view the biggest upset of Conquest right now comes in the form of Staff/Staff thief. Build that has quite some presence during tournaments, with quite an unpleasant style of gameplay that mostly consist on evading on node without much input or effort from the player. I think this type of builds.Mirage can get nerfed over and over but it won't remove that is affected by having a really passive playstyle that mostly depends on letting clones do most of the work using Infinite Horizon to take advantage of their invulnerability frames and overall damage to control the fight from the distance without having to really use shatters.When it comes to engineer i think stealth lasting 6 seconds is an overkill.Warrior is a class that is Rampage dependant for the most part on all builds. Which talks volume of how strong the elite skill is, Might be a good idea to make it CC focused and cutting the damage or make it damage focus and reducing the amount of CC it brings.For now i've ran out of things i can scratch from the back of my head but always nice to have some communication with Devs showing interests. All of my support for the next patch.

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So there is a lot to talk about, which i will probably do in future posts, for now i just want to get some sentiments out of my head:

The overall problem since a long time is summarized in one word: Spam. Spam of boons, Spam of corrupts, Spam of CC, Spam of stab, Spam of mobility, Spam of skills in general, and so on. Since a long time this has been encouraged and rewarded, so that the border between good and bad players became very fuzzy.One of the best examples for this is the Mesmer Phantasm rework from Feb 2018. That day, Mesmer became incredibly spammy, rewarding for low skill levels and a nightmare to balance. Not to mention the increased visual clutter with it. For this reason i am convinced that Mesmer cannot be balanced accordingly through skillsplits, but needs changes designwise to introduce more interactive gameplay with and against it.The overall Spam of everything is also why support Tempest instantly fell out of the meta as soon as PoF got introduced. It couldn't keep up at all with all the damage, CC and corrupts suddenly flying around. Only Firebrand could by providing extreme boon spam paired with strong healing. To this date, despite severe firebrand nerfs and tempest power creeps, nothing has changed for this matter. Again, there have to be some design changes for firebrand to make it balancable so that there can be room for other support specs. While i'm at it, I think the recent changes to Scourge shades have been really really good for the game, although they need further tuning to finally nerf them in WvW. Sand Savant is the big offender here (surprise).

With PoF and the way balance has been handled afterwards, a lot of shit has piled up that needs to be addressed. In this state, i dont admire the balance devs, but i'm glad you are now willing to bring the power level down. Though i'm sure this requires a lot of things to go trough for every class.

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on another note @"Cal Cohen.3527" :I see a lot people writing "[class] is fine" or "meta is almost in a good spot", even calling for buffs meaning that they are ok with playstyle revolving around huge damages, fights ending within 5 seconds, spewing skills endlessly. I would say that this is indeed also the definition of balanced which is topic is about.However, in my eyes we are far from a actual balanced game and lots things need to be brought down - so this might come down to people's preferences of playstyle i guess.

What is your vision on this part (referred as "powercreep" I guess)? How will it be possible to create a fun enviroment for everybody when opinions are so far apart? What direction are we going?Despite it being a relatively old game, the combat system still offers huge potential in my opinion

edit: i guess already partially answered in your post above thnx

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Not going to pretend that this is priority number one, but I figured this is a good place for feedback. I've put this in other threads, but spellbreaker mediations and possibly some traits could use a flavor rework.

Currently, the Spellbreaker elite specialization has very few flavorful abilities and traits.

  1. Magebane combined with Might Makes Right is the number one reason you still run this elite specialization.
  2. Full counter is nice for some AOE cleave, defensive pressure via daze, and procing magebane (though it needs some tuning. For example, FC AOE should not proc magebane on a mesmer clone or a pet if you also hit the player)
  3. Dagger MH is a solid weapon due to its F1 and mobility and interrupt. I definitely miss dagger on core warrior, but it isn't as important as magebane or full counter

My main gripes about the specialization are:

  1. Meditations on spellbreaker are probably the weakest and least used utility skills in the game on any class. The heal has never been very good. Break Enchantments and Featherfoot grace are just outclassed by other options. Sight Beyond Sight and the taunt one were never used.
  2. Very little of the elite spec is focused on boon removal, and the parts that were have been nerfed to the ground over the past few years.

In my opinion, one of the selling points and flavors of this specialization is that it should be extremely difficult to classes that are boon heavy to fight. In the current state, it doesn't really accomplish that. Yeah boon removal on CC and dagger are nice, but the boon spam is so much greater than what is removed by spb.

A few ideas that I came up with recently were:

  1. Trait similar to necro where warrior gains the boons that are removed
  2. Attacker's Insight reduced in effectiveness in PvP, but scales infinitely (aka you have as many stacks as you have boons removed in last 15s)
  3. Possibly trait or skill around removing boons puts a mini Winds of Disenchantment. For example, maybe if you remove the max number of boons removed by Break Enchantments, you put a 1-2s Winds on the enemy where they can no longer gain any boons.

Anyway, this was just a stream of thoughts on spellbreaker flavor. Hopefully folks find this interesting/useful.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@"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.

I praise this.

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.

Im going to have some faith that the numbers will align properly with this that some things will inevitably have to be brought down more than others. As if everything just comes down by the same level most things technically (in my head) wont change aside from the fact that combat between a set of players or teams might take slightly more time. I think that will be on the team to gauge based on what the majority of people say here though.

  • 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.
  • 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.

Sounds good to me personally

  • 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.

This actually makes sense if everything is ideally going to be brought down. So I'm content with the idea that some old or underused skills might not change just yet if thats the case.

Thanks for answering ?

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I mostly play DH, Druid and Tempest so i'll talk a bit about those. I think these three are on the low end for PvP and they need changes to be on par with other classes.

Guardian - Dragonhunter

  • Longbow needs to be looked at. LB 5 is a waste to use most of the time, and the cooldown is incredibly long for its effect. Maybe split the CD for some LB skills in PvP to be shorter?
  • LB is pretty much only used for LB 3 to push through traps, but that requires using a grandmaster trait (Heavy Light). LB 3 knockback should be baseline and heavy light should be reworked, or maybe add on decreased LB skill cooldowns to the trait.

Ranger - Druid

  • Druid is in a poor state ever since the pet nerf. I think the -20% pet stats should be reconsidered as the pets die WAY too quickly. If the issue was that Druid can do too much damage thru pets while sustaining, maybe just -20% pet damage? Better yet, i think the -20% should be removed and provide Druid with more interesting interactions with pets w/ celestial avatar?
  • Removing the evade from staff 3 was unjustified and it doesn't make any sense. Why am I activating necro marks when i'm not even touching the floor? The evade should be given back OR decrease the cooldown for the skill
  • Staff 4 is too slow and awkward to use

Ele - Tempest

  • Tempest is outclassed completely by Firebrand for support, and should be addressed
  • Recent changes were welcome, but I think swiftness should be added back to Gathered Focus (or to Hardy Conduit) and removed from Harmonious Conduit. Harmonious Conduit could get quickness after using an overload instead. It is difficult for the ele to keep up with teammates/enemies while overloading.
  • Staff is somewhat underwhelming and should be looked at. Staff ele is not in viable in general.

Nerfs:cThief does too much spammy dmg and its difficult to cleanse, even when playing bunkersMirage's should get nerfs with clone generationFB's viability went down with scrouge nerf, but i think their res trait is too effective and should be nerfedReaper does WAY too much dmg in shroud

Ok those are all my suggestions. I ideally want more diversity with supports in the next few seasons; fb was the only viable one for soo long and it's getting stale. Also staff is a favourite weapon of mine, and useable by a lot of professions, but it's not viable for most of them in pvp which is disheartening, so I hope for changes that allow more weapon diversity as well

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@Ranael.6423 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.

Amulet stats are absolutely something we are looking at.

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Good luck to the dev that has to read and sort this thread out.My biggest problem is how conditions work and clearing. Once you clear a certain Condi it can come right back making clearing overall VERY ineffective. A short 1-3 seconds of immunity from the Condi you just clears should stop excessive Condi spam. If I cant use plasma bean one after another, why does a thf or a Mesmer or a sword ele get to just reapply there damage type over and over and over again even after I cleared it 2+ times?

Mesmers and there clones. It's just to many clone production. Limit there clone production to like 2 at most on the field. If more then 2 is created then one dissapears. When I'm fighting a mesmer I shouldnt keep thinking I'm fighting 4-6 people all the time.

I'll probably add more as time goes on

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@DEATHsCLAW.1978 said:anet your pvp balance has been trash ever since you allowed conditions to be bursty..

  • They have to be bursty right now because there is so much cleanse. A condi application is never going to stick very long, so it needs to do a lot of damage before it is removed.
  • additionally, a condi build is almost as squishy as a power build, so it needs to kill its target quickly. The tanky condi amulets were removed ages ago.
  • also, every second that condi is ticking on an opponent (compared to power, which kills instantly), is a second the condi player is not capping the point. This matters a lot in a pvp game.

I would prefer if condi was harder to remove and lasted longer, but way pvp is played, as well as the cleansing arms race demands that it be bursty.

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@Tulki.1458 said: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?

The current plan is to continue adding tradeoffs to elite specs that don't have them.

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Balance atm isnt the biggest problem, but more of low effort/effective builds that are not fun to play against while being bloated with dmg or/and defensives/CC/mobility and rise of dmg/oneshots (dodging weavers, immuity mirrages, too much evades/rampage/bloated gs warriors, condi/daredevil thieves, overperforming ranger pets .... every proffesion have them).

Since i am playing mostly necromancer PvP (mostly legend in HoT times), these things i think are bloated atm, not fun to play against or use, but necessary because of other powercreep. Also i think there also needs to be splits of traits between elite specialisations since they preform so differently and for one specialisation it can be useless and for other overpowered.:

-GS 4 reaper: blind, cripple, boon corrupt, dmg, dark field, longer lasting; too much of everything.-Spectral walk: too bloated atm, duration too long or removal of condi removal.-reaper onslaught: too bloated, perma quickness with ferocity too much, previous trait was better. Promotes unhealty oneshot builds.-Master of corruption: the trait effect is too strong. For it to be balanced the original cooldowns have to be too long, extra conditions arent fun for anyone (aka nerf to heal from 24 to 30 sec and 2 conditions on heal use)-fear of death: bloated trait. It should give you max 50% fear duration which dont make condi duration less valuable.-dhuumfire: split between reaper-core-scourage.-death perception: should be reverted back to 50% crit (too many dmg modifiers give rise to oneshot builds).-corrupt boon: its not overpowered but as its design atm with many condi cleanses and many boons, its too spamy and low impact (low impact not by itself but from enemies and their cleanses or bloated use of boons)

And things that got undeserved, unfun changes or made them useless/pointless:

-Warhorn 5: rework made it prety useless, pointless and unfun, lower range, shorter duration, no cripple, not working with blood traitline for siphons, killing all synergy. Should be rerolled back.-Parasitic contagion: could be buffed little and working while in shroud or split between scourage and others.-consume condition: shouldnt apply condition on you-Plaguelands: revert to old spell except for scourage, atm its unfun and useless and in vanilla GW2 it was quite interesting spell to use.-Lichform: rework? I dont know whats its purpuse-Blood bond: it feels little weak atm, before bugfix when it also healed it was good, noone was complaining its too strong.-cold shoulder: (for me personaly) less dmg recieved from chilled enemies was better for me than dmg done to chilled enemies, too many +% dmg modifiers makes dmg bloated.-soul eater: unthematic traitline undergone many iteration now it lost its purpose and its too restrictive (like range or not working in shroud) unfun to use.-Axe 2: too clunky if ppl use evade or dodge or something on it. Needs quality of life improvements.-soul spiral: poison duration could be increased back to before nerf, would help with bruiser role little and if someone wants to go back to condi reaper.

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I will just quote all sentences about mesmer from people who don't know what they talk because seeing this amout of bullshit is incredible :

@Zawn.9647 said :Mirage in generalThis spec can dodge while casting skills, stomping, rezzing, etc... The counterplay that exists to mesmer/chrone are almost non existant against this spec because of Mirage CloakThis spec have way less evade uptime than any other metabuild. It has to burn evade to damage and evade but it's not a counterpart at all, thanks for this obvious contradiction.

@Serenity.6304 said :nerf mirage -> sustain and high condi burstIt's been a long time now that mirage kill his target by pressuring during a long time, no more about condi bursting.

@girlwars.5217 said :Mirage - There are too many clones, I don't have time to know which one to attack because there is too much going on elsewhere. The time it takes me to figure out the real person I am dead and the mirage has made more clones. Unless I play furiously offensively on the very start then I will not win. This defeats the point of blocking and using my skills thoughtfully.It's for mesmer in general and it's why people will always complain about mesmer. I can't wait for a spec without illusions thought.

@"AngelsShadow.7360" said :Mesmer:Too many cover conditions over the primary damage source (torment)Guy, torment isn't the main output of mirage since they destroy it because people can't move (after nerfing confusion because people can't cast.), you are 2,3 seasons late.Too high evade uptimeNo, not really, you have 2 times more vigor on your holo or other metaclass than a mirage will ever have, wake up please.Evade whilst CCed is sillyPassive stab while usual rotation is silly.Clone generation is ridiculous - fights are incredibly clutteredClone generation is needed because actually the only way to put some pressure is by clone ambush.

@Falan.1839 said :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 offStaff ambush = a 1 sec cast lined with average speed projectile, since they removed the immobilize in rupt you can evade it by just running.But yeah actually the gameplay consist of pressure by clone.

That said :@anet :it will be good whatever change you do, to explain in the patchnote why did you do this and how did you thing it will affect the game/gameplay (even which new synergy you have in mind) because often when I read some change I don't get the why aspect.

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every class need to be nerf.war: Greatsword(when was the last good warrior build without GS?), rampageguard: general sustain of fb is too strongthief: condi thief just no commentenge: holo still have too much damage and is a fucking cc bot, has too much stab , still too strongrev: too much damagemesmer: too much condi damage (what a dream to have a mesmer shatter meta)necro: maybe necro is the only balance classele:weaver maybe too much sustain ? i'm not a pro eleranger: pet like gazelle are too strong, sick me even nerf is too cancerous it's need a rework

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One thing I’d like to see is less dominance of skills that just don’t have a counter play for a fixed set of time. Rampage has so much stability that only necro can stop it, Mesmer and thief have invulns stuff like that should be nerfed so that there isn’t a time period of 5+ secs of zero counter play. I want to see these nerfed and I think others would too. It’s just not fun to watch a warrior pop rampage followed by a 5 sec dagger storm just meant to wait it out. This happens a lot and some of these skills need tiny nerfs to change this and yes I think the nerfs could be slight- doesn’t have to delete the skill.

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@"Cal Cohen.2358" said: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.

It's very reassuring to hear! Hopefully we'll be hearing of it soon.

Can we expect Chrono, Scrapper comebacks and another redesign of Deadeye? Current iteration of Deadeye promotes rather toxic gameplay (hey stealth-a-lot while dealing super-duper damage), while not being particularly effective in most of the game or fun. It's basically "more damage on same old ambushes, but with worse steal: the spec". Compared to Daredevil, which opens a whole new venue of gameplay and allows the class to fill new niches, Deadeye just gives you a kind of not very good ranged weapon with an ambush killshot. Btw, rifle on warrior could still use some love. We're OG at sniping, after all - and Gunflame was unjustly overnerfed and basically deals less damage than an axe throw now.

There are also specs that have seen unjust overnerfing, like Druid - Firebrand is this dominant because other support options are extremely subpar, either mechanically (heal rev is straight up cumbersome to play) or in numbers-cleanses-additional boons department (Tempest could be good, but it doesn't provide enough of either).

There's also berserker, who had a great rework which made it fun - but for PvP the "risk vs reward" is extremely... overblown, so to speak. It's basically a one-shot build that also dies in one shot, but lacks the tools those one-shot builds usually have to disengage or survive when pressured back.

The "nerf mirage" complaint is basically "do something to IH", speaking from mesmer main perspective. Yeah, it's the only reason class is even used at this point in PvP. Yes, entire class, not spec - we have a lot of traits and entire traitlines that were simply brought down repeatedly because IH Mirage, like how Bountiful Disillusionment now gives practically nothing and feels like a minor instead of Grandmaster, and it affects the entire class rather than the meta build this change was aimed at, Chaotic Interruption, Blinding Dissipation, Evasive Mirror... It's probably worth looking into giving us other options while putting IH down. You could also look into the fact that Mirage as a spec offers nothing of real value aside from condition DPS, making it just an upgrade over Core - it never feels like a real espec. Yes, even with dodges people seem to despise so, even if realistically these dodges are more or less cosmetic. As if we never shattered during i-frames for years before, or it wasn't our phantasms hitting you while we did sword 2 (bring back 2 secs though, it still pains my muscle memory) or as if Distortion never happened. There are some beginnings of a condition bruiser in there, but those traits aren't allowed to be strong, because then they'll be used with IH and instantly be overpowered in combination. Please remember during mesmer discussions up there - our class is unlike the rest. We build chain-synergies to achieve results, and just nerfing one thing has far more consequences than the initial target.

Chrono also super-duper needs the IP back, because there was a reason overwhelming praise was given at the decision of making it baseline for the class during that new traitline design patch. It did nothing positive for the spec whatsoever, especially PvP-wise.

Thank you for communication, hopefully it'll happen more often from this point on. Our beloved modes need more attention.

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Each class should have a role in the respective mode (sPvP, WvW). So more and better class specialization against the dubious 'diversity' we have been getting so far.Each class design should have at least one hard counter and in general all play styles should have a way of being countered.No cheesy builds (one shot, perma stealth, tons of condition stacks in seconds, etc.) so that the mode becomes more friendly and attractive to beginners.No cheesy skills and utilities you can just spam - make people think twice before using them. I would go even further increasing all cds by a % of time.No to the absurd boon self stacking and less boon generation in general. Make boons mean really something.Classes' balance around mobility, sustain, dps. You can't have it all.Bring classes' dps output closer between expansion like core, HoT, PoF.Promote and think around team effort when designing classes, skills, utilities, etc.

Finally more attention to the PvP mode from a developer's point of view. It's really surprising maybe the best thing in gw2 being neglected and priority given to PvE content when all the top MMO games are PvP orientated for the past few years. And GW2 has the best PvP design by far among all MMORPGs (IMHO).

PS - it was about time a specialized team with PvP knowledge getting into things. Hoping for the best.

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IMHO, a big point that has been annoying in pvp over the last few years (since HoT), is the dominance of CC. Everyone is loaded with a bunch of CC. It's just not fun. However, it's probably not possible to simply nerf cc access as it would require quite big changes across all specs, seriously limit build options, and badly conflict with pve balance (afaik you don't want skills to have a different behavior in different modes, so simply removing cc from pvp would lower cc access in pve - an area of the game that is now full of breakbars that are balanced around easy cc access - even in most solo content).

I think there are 2 ways to make it better in pvp, though I doubt any of them would be consensual

First one : bring Stability back, in place of the boon that currently usurps the name and icon of stability.Second one : change cc mechanics slightly so that they behave like they did in gw1 : it was not possible to stun someone who was already stunned. You can chain the cc's but it requires more skill, it requires actually timing your actions instead of spamming it on target until it's out of dodges/stunbreaks. I was disappointed in 2012 when I realized that this clever mechanic was not kept in gw2.

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I know it has already been mentioned and you seem aware, but I hope the goal is near-Pre-HoT fight duration.

I say duration specifically because it is the core of my feeling towards the current state of sPvP rather than "survivability", which is more vague.

Frankly, I don't like present sPvP very much. However, it used to be my primary gamemode to play (before HoT (sure there weren't raids yet...)).These days, it's just Nuke someone done or get nuked. Hope you press all those buttons fast enough, almost irrespective of order.Casted tournaments in recent years are impossible to follow, everything just explodes and is over and you're like 'boy I hope these casters actually understood what happened'. If you're a returning player (i.e. me) or someone new, this is a terrible experience. It is horrible for learning anything. Not good for learning = not good for fun.I long for a possibility of fights actually taking more than 10 seconds, where there is a push-shove back-and-forth, some uncertainty, some surface area in which to get the upper edge by playing well in a continued way, not just that upfront burst every single time. Actual fights of some notable length.

I'm hopeful. We know folks over at Anet have the capacity to make things very fun. Do us proud, please.

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@Cal Cohen.3527

Short Term:Condition Daredevil isn't fun to deal with when it can dump 6 conditions on you in a single action. Then it spends the rest of the fight stacking poison on you and dodging to apply cover conditions. Reducing the poison stacks but increasing the duration from the Deadly Arts line would help

Core Necromancer currently fears for quite a long time, I'd like to see fear of death reduced, either 50% or to +1s extra duration should take the edge off for many people, maybe increase the life force granted by 5%.

Holosmith is a tad over tuned at the moment but I don't think there's a short term fix for it, it's a synergy and sum of it's parts problem. Maybe reduce the healing of heat therapy by 33%-50% to temper their health regen a little.

Mirage at the moment is alright in power but still not fun to fight. I don't think there's an easy fix so no short term changes I would like to see but I am putting it here to show it's still not fun to fight.

Long Term:

Firstly I think @girlwars.5217 made a good post about how it feels for a new player and less experienced players.

Long term goals I would like to see the pace of the game slowed down, this would probably have to be through increasing cool downs on weapon skills and utilities by and large to be closer to core.

Traits: I would like to see is Adept and Master tier traits only doing 1 thing and staying core to it's purpose without extra frills here's 2 examples:Master of Manipulation: Reduces cool down on manipulations and gives superspeed - It could stand to go back to only a CD reduction (as with many traits)Prismatic Converter: Converts conditions to boons based on heat threshold - Turning this into a straight cleanse instead would reduce holosmith boons without afecting the playstyle too much.

Elite specialisations: need an identity and purpose, the work on chronomancer has not gone unnoticed by me and it's becoming more about speeding you or your allies up and slowing your enemies down and has been streamlined more or less in traits how I'd love to see the game however continuum split is in my opinion too good to leave in the game as it bypasses balancing by cool down instead of flirting with it like alacrity does. However holosmith has good self sustain and AoE damage, it's actual use is more of a 1v1 up to team fight, a bruiser/roamer as people would call it while scrapper isn't much of anything but a worse version of that. The idea of scrappers doing damage to self sustain has only made it try to compete in the same role as holosmith when in my opinion it should be competing against support specs for support roles gaining benefits for being with allies and being vulnerable alone.

Firebrand: this specialisation gave guardian more support tools and baseline tomes with incredibly strong abilities. More so it further increased guardians monopoly on stability, allied stunbreaks, cleanses, resistance and aegis and it's in tomes that basically give too much baseline. I loved the idea of tomes from core and I was sad to see them go but adding them back this way has only pushed the already very strong core support class into absolute and total dominance in the support role, nothing can compete with it unless this specialisation was rendered completely unusable by insane cool downs. I am not good enough to come up with any genuinely good, well thought out suggestions but I would say it may need to go back to the drawing board the aspect of tomes. The mantras function fine mechanically and can be numbers tweaked in my opinion.

Mesmer: I think this class needs a very serious rework from core to elite specialisations. I love the idea of an illusionist and confusing enemies in the way it does but I don't feel it can stay in the state it currently is. As Girlwars said for new players the clones are a nightmare to target through, many players have likewise expressed frustration about entity spam when there's 2 phantasms, 3 clones travelling to be shattered and 2 active clones hanging around, this then compounds with more mesmers and can trip culling effects so you can't even see people depending on your settings. Additionally quite often they are killing in 1 attack and scale incredibly poorly when more people are around, like in WvW where Chrono is now unable to function at all because Illusionary Persona was removed from the specialisation.

So I propose removing illusions and phantasms entirely from mesmer, maybe bring it back as an elite spec if you like but right now I don't see a way forward in any future of Guild Wars 2 where the above problems are in a tolerable state without mesmer being on the weak side of things and keeping illusions. Going back to it's core values of boon/condition manipulation, interrupting casts (low CC durations) in order to control a situation as well as general controlling style and dropping target to confuse enemies would be lovely.

Chronomancer: I already said I don't think continuum split should be in the game in it's current iteration as it bypasses balancing by cool down and actively encourages you to use as many skills as you want. You could make it like improvisation resetting a certain skill or a random utility to keep theme. By and large I like the overall work the team has done here making it more about speeding up allies and slowing enemies while stripping down the bloat. Some of the wells I feel could do with work.

Mirage: The ability to perform any action while dodging is at first not spooktacular until you realise that it allows you to always avoid damage while performing a crucial action or while casting. This essentially lets you bypass balancing by cast time as your defence is always available to use while remaining unpunished for using an ability and while others may have to cancel to avoid damage you don't. Additionally many of the ambush skills are over loaded in effects or conditions and I believe that torment and confusion should never be allowed to be applied in any substantial measure at the same time as the counter play is to stand there and do nothing if hit.

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I don't think quickness traits and other passive quickness gains are healthy and should be rained in.

Mob mentality balance needs to go. Justification for balance should be based on hard facts and numbers not what the most people are complaining about.

Burst builds should be reliably punishable. Burst combos should require resources (be it lengthy utility cool downs, or mechanics, or whatever) but the cooldowns spent to land such attacks should also be the same used to escape. eg. If a deadeye fails to kill you, they shouldn't be allowed to safely and endlessly retreat into stealth. This should run out by the second wiff.

Less double standards. If one build similar to the example above is safe and can get away with bursting and escaping, builds that cannot do so yet occupy a similar, or same archetype/role/slot should either be buffed to match it in some reasonable way by giving it a substantial strength that is compatible (for example DE vs DD, one can stealth a lot more and the other can evade a lot more, this is a substantial on par strength). Or the well performing build be nerfed to match the other standard. Not saying all builds need to be the same, but there needs to be some level of equivalency of "effectiveness"

Sustain on a whole needs to eventually run out. I get that may be antithetical to their job, but it is unhealthy for conquest for this to exist. No build should reliably, passively, and easily sustain a point 1v1 or 2v1. I don't mind stalemates, but there should be a standard where through skill based play people should reliably be pushed off a point.

Condi damage needs more active skills. so that means one big 3/4 - 1 sec cast to condi bomb, not just autos with mirage clones and infinite horizon.Damage should always come from major cooldowns, that are reasonably avoidable, and have a solid cooldown duration.

Speaking of Condi mirage, the damage should return to the shatters or weapon skills that aren't the auto attack + infinite horizion.On that note Power Mirage needs to be buffed, and it's burst (if you were to minus quickness, and maybe rein in mantras) is a shining example of fair burst, without a ton of options after whiffing.

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While I can't give thoughts on high level team play (I don't do tournies) I can share my experiences with SoloQ. For deciding what is really powerful in the current meta for SoloQ I try to look at it through the lens of how well any given build can kite when you have players of even mechanical skill fighting each other. Then, how much influence does the build have on the outcome of any given scenario (either a 1v1, 2v1 or a mid fight ect.) and then on the match overall, when it is played at an apex level. And then, how much effort needs to be exerted to reach this "apex" level of play with the build.

A build that requires more effort to reach the "apex" tends to reward continuous, active, efficient play and encourages the player to conserve resources until clutch opportunities arise. This effectiveness tends to come with the trade-off of punishing players for just spamming and being lazy. These kinds of builds are excellent because they offer a path for players to get invested in the build and allow you to practice to get better with it over time. Some builds that share these traits come to mind: Strength Spellbreaker, Longbow/GS Soulbeast, D/P Thief, Support Firebrand, Holosmith, Power Rev just to name a few. All of these builds have tools to help carry a SoloQ ranked match when played correctly. Yet, they severely punish players if they get too lazy or too aggressive at any given time. You have to walk a fine, skillful line to make them work.

I can't say the same for a majority of the condi builds that are a part of the meta right now. Most of them are very oppressive offensively (in any given scenario, whatever matchup) for not much effort or setup. They offer little room (still some but not much) to catch them out. Most opportunities to seize upon player mistakes are washed away by the sheer influence that these builds have on the fight. And for new players, the incoming bursts aren't apparent at all. A popular example would probably be condi Mirage. Condi Firebrand is another. After a while you will start to feel how they are rotating through their bursts - because you have to or you'll get caught out - but clearly visible queues would be handy, especially in messy mid-fights.

That said, I personally have no problem with condition builds having a viable spot in competitive play. I appreciate having that condi on my team to hardcounter a rev on the other team. I wouldn't wish for condi Mirage to ever be nuked out of the meta. I just wish these builds weren't so oppressive or so easy to reach the "apex" of the build to the point where it is the build itself that had the most impact on the outcome of the fight, rather than player skill swinging the fight.

If you watch videos of GW2 PvP from 2012, and then you go watch a monthly tourny match from 2019 you can clearly see how much the pace of the game has changed. The combat right now is an insane, edge-of-your-seat experience when you fight alongside and against people of equal skill. It's very addicting. I would beg you guys to use caution when deciding how much you are going trim things back in competitive play. If the pacing must change and slow down a bit, please allow us to make clutch plays via other means than just damage, mechanical or otherwise!

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Heavy focus on skill splitting Engi, Ele, Revenant, Druid support skills until they're JUST good enough to where you can build around them in PvP and be part of a balanced metagame.

Nerf personal long-term sustain across the board until 1v1s when played optimally will end within 60 seconds of continuous brawling.

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