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Let's Talk About WvW Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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Well, how about actually checking the current meta and playing the game mode for yourselves? with playing i mean, actively playing with the public commanders and understanding what they need for a zerg to work. Only asking people in the forums will result in heavily one-sided opinions, especially if yoiu meet people whose main-class got previously nerfed. Gather some staff and actually go into WvW, follow the public commanders and fight with them together over a period of a few months and you will see the real state of the game with your own eyes. This is the best way to get an opinion to the current state and what especially the public commanders have to deal with, which skills/builds are strong, dominant or completely useless. Anyway, many of the changes that have been made in the past already absolutely destroyed complete builds and their roles in a zerg. just to give a hint:The changes on signet of inspiration and shatter-skills of the chronomancer absolutely DESTROYED the Boonshare-chrono for public zergs, taking away almost all the utility it gave for big scale fights. before the changes, you had the boonshare, that was vital in situations when you were low on firebrands, which you could compensate with the -old- SoI. The changes made to SoI made the Minstrel-Chrono worthless for the zerg. In addition you changed the shatter-skills to require an active illusion, what resulted in literally disabling Continuum-Split (and the resulting double-veil/double-gravity-well) for all chronomancers in the zerg. They have just been degraded to portal/Veil-slaves as the illusions required for all F-Skills just don´t even last a split-second, making it a gamble to get the CS or not. And even the Invisibility is now in almost every situation provided by Scrappers (Stealth-Gyro-Blast). And with chronomancers in this situation, you decided to nerf the mesmer again ?!? Well, it was not a hard nerf (increase of Illusion of Life-CD) but still, you nerfed a class that has already been nerfed far beyond uselessness in Zergfights. Bring back the boonshare and the chronomancer has finally a unique role in WvW (providing Alacrity, Invisibility and sharing boons to compensate lack of other classes)that was my special point to mesmers, as this was the biggest destruction of a whole class in WvW, so i will try to keep my next points more general.First of all: keep in mind, that the choice of classes and the amount of them is based on what they can do and how effective they are with it.example: the everlasting story of rangers in zergfights. as soulbeast, they have absolutely nothing providing in a big scale fight. not even the stances with the stance-share-trait are even close to be worth for a zerg, because of the high cooldown compared to other buffs and the fact, rangers usually shoot with projectiles (pointing at guardian reflects). Now, thinking of how you could possibly make a ranger worth for zergfights: the answer would be -->Druid. the big problem here: everything a druid provides, can be provided by a firebrand, but in better. i don´t know much about druids tbh, but from just checking the skills available and how to play ranger in general, it doesnt look too good for them. the direct heal may seem bigger from just checking the skill values: (same gear same stats) 3k heal on lunar impact (8s cd) vs 500 heal on guard F2s4 sounds stronger, maybe the direct heal amounts even are higher, the rest of druid skills just provide like, nothing. the same amounts of heal also could be provided by a heal tempest, giving way stronger unique buffs if using the auramancer-build with minstrel gear while maintaining even better heals than firebrands or scrappers.coming back to general choices of classes and skills:before making changes, think about what each class/specialization could/should be used for, and how you can give it unique abilities to make it worth taking it with you, especially in large scale fights. The minimum should be, to target at least one elite, that provides enough to a zerg, rather than packing everything onto a low amount of classes. For example: currently you have to setup your zerg with at least 1 Firebrand, 1-2 scourges and 1 Herald per group, while adding a decent amount of scrappers to it and filling the remaining slots (usually ~5-10) with dps-weavers/heal-tempests, heal-scrappers, 2-3 spellbreakers and maybe some renegades. maybe, you could fit in a chronomancer somewhere, but this is not even necessary anymore because of the points i already stated above. In the current state, there is no use (sounds harsh, i know that) for Berserkers, Druids, Soulbeasts, Reapers (kinda), Dragonhunters, Daredevils, Deadeyes, Holosmiths (kinda), Mirages and Chronomancers (in their current state). Summarized: there are 10 out of 18 theoretically playable specializations that are just not worth being played in big-scale WvW. This is one big point (in my opinion) to start.

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I do not have many hours in WvW, but this is what I have generally gathered: Firebrand and Scourge are still major outliers in terms of support and damage in large groups, respectively. Scourge was actually made stronger post-patch due to increased targets on shades. The ideal meta, IMO, is one where those outliers are toned down and classes used less often like elementalists, mesmers, and rangers found a more stable place in all aspects of WvW. Currently an ideal group consists mostly of scourges and firebrands to back them up. Other classes are largely seen as a liability. While all classes, for the most part, have a build that has a role in WvW, most classes really only have one role that they play. For example, Rangers are almost always Soulbeasts and almost always roamers. There's no reasonably spot for, say, a Druid healer in a large group.

The problem with saying anything on balance is that a LOT of it is predicated on the current best practice of getting as many people as possible and swarming opponents. Power in GW2 scales incredibly with numbers. In big group fights, everything dies instantly. But you all can't balance based on that because then 1v1s on the roads will literally never reach a conclusion unless one of the people keels over IRL from sitting at the computer for too long. So my ideal world might not be best implemented until we see what fallout comes from the updates to rewards that disincentivizes grouping into huge groups.

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@"Turkeyspit.3965" said:You cannot take a micro approach to this - it is very much a macro problem.

Players are either unkillable or prone to instant deletion - there is very little middle ground, be it in small groups or large.

And why is that? Power levels? Boon stacking? Corrupts? Crit Chance? Condi spam? Invulns? Evades? Attacking while Invuln/Evades? Ascended gear? Food buffs? Objective buffs/bloodlust? Stealth? Reflects? Buggy abilities/traits? Having a Warclaw? Not having a Warclaw? Server coverage? Server lag?

The answer: yes.

The problem is, I don't know what should be considered "normal", so asking me to point out what needs to be fixed is foolhardy. ANET develops the game, it should be ANET to broadcast what their vision is for WvW and how it should work. You show/tell me that, and then I can point to flaws or issues that need addressing.

Until then, people are just going to tell you what they "want" or "would like", which doesn't suggest, in any way, that it would be good for balance, or the game in general.

This...otherwise it's just another smoke screen. We'll see.

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First off I want to say thank you for the communication! Competitive players are frequently starved of any sort of communication so this is a great follow-up to the earlier feedback threads.

My perspective is rather narrow as I am and always have been a Mesmer player in WvW (roaming/zerg, Chrono/Mirage/Core, whatever the situation requires) so I can't/won't contribute majorly to specific class-based discussions, other than Mesmer and the few classes i've experimented with for particular situations and builds.

That being said:

  • Permanent stealth classes aren't fun, especially when the second they drop out of stealth you're instantly dead in one hit with no counter except constant reveals. Backstab is the largest offender of this, or whatever the Thief dagger skill is that's sort of a sideways swinging animation and they always try to stab you in the butt, but I think it's Backstab. Deadeye rifle skills are very well telegraphed on the other hand and you can actually dodge a potential shot coming at you with visual/audio cues, even fresh out of stealth. (Sorry Thieves I have no idea what your skills are called.)
  • Leading on from above, either lowering the duration of some stealth abilities or giving more varied classes reveals would be wonderful. (As a Mesmer I can manipulate stealth magic to cloak myself, but can't remove that cloak from another person?)
  • Recent Chrono changes and the loss of Illusionary Persona are absolutely atrocious in WvW, as clones have a propensity for getting cleaved out of existence by AoE bomb around a second or so after spawning, leaving the spec effectively unplayable outside of niche situations.
  • Phantasms have the same issue as above, but that is a general Mesmer issue rather than something Chrono-specific, although I haven't extensively tested Chronophantasma in a WvW setting. (Still need to investigate if running Protected Phantasms might somewhat alleviate this for Phantasmal Berserker DPS builds.)
  • Chrono wells are stationary, requiring the group you're supporting to remain standing in them for sometimes up to three seconds - standing still in WvW is almost a guaranteed death sentence, and coupled with the recent changes gives almost no reason to bring a Chrono over any other class.
  • Firebrand remains the most dominant support like it's (almost?) always been since the release of PoF. On multiple occasions I've tried to replicate at least some of the stability-giving functionality of a Firebrand on a full Minstrel Chrono/Core Mesmer (ye olde mantra mesmer from way back) along with the healing potential on a Giver's Druid, and it's evident that I'm just way outclassed in both setups - particularly in terms of baseline boon durations from skills and amount of cleanses.
  • However, healing support classes such as Tempest and Scrapper are both incredibly viable and it gives people a choice rather than shoehorning them into just one healer class, which is wonderful.

Apologies for the large and in-no-particular-order text wall, but these are just some of the glaring issues I can think of on-the-spot without planning and writing an essay on the subject (it's very hard to stop typing once you start). Any and all changes are definitely welcome as the current balance is already rather stagnant, along with two of the most egregious offenders (Firebrand/Scourge) retaining their dominance, and I feel targeted changes will be necessary to bring things into line.

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Thank you Cal for your contribution so far, and welcome to your new position. Although I don't know all the other previous competitive team devs' game history, knowing that you are knowledgeable, have experience. and seem to care about these aspects is truly refreshing. I for one am very excited to have you in this position. I am at work right now so cannot make a detailed reply, but I am really grateful for you making this thread and for continuing to reply in it rather than abandoning it right after posting it. I urge you to please keep this up. It is something that I, as a passionate gamer, really find hope in, and I know I am not alone in that. It seems you understand that there are a lot of passionate people, and although some salt may come from a bad place, it is most often expressed frustration at the game mode coming from wanting to see it thrive and succeed. I know that balancing WvW is a daunting task and truly an impossible feat to ever reach perfection on, but you having a real dialogue with us makes a tremendous difference because it makes us feel not just heard, but paid attention to. Having a change like the Scourge change with such little follow-up felt like a punch in the gut because it felt like a decision that honestly wasn't thought through very well, and a decision that negatively impacted the spec in the wrong sort of ways; almost an inverse effect of the intention.

I will write a more detailed response at some point when I have the the time, but again, I really thank you for making this post. Having the devs actually have a conversation with us is really awesome and something that I hope continues.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@"TinkTinkPOOF.9201" said:Would first like to say welcome, it's been a while since we have had any real communication on these matters by anyone with any kind of competitive mindset. With that said, be ready for lots and lots of negative comments... Maybe even from myself, but would like to point out that its not targeted at you or the new team, but years of frustration by many people who might come off as mad, but they are mad because they still care about the game and want to see progress for it.

I understand the frustration that comes from being super passionate about something and I don't hold it against anyone. As long as we keep it clean (no personal attacks, general forum rules apply, etc) good feedback can always be gathered.

Bonus: Here's a video that highlights my thoughts on competitive communities (and really what makes them great)

We need an updated vial of salt, maybe a legendary pvp amulet called saltmine ;)

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@Samug.6512 said:Just a quick and kind reminder, there's a really cool and forgotten system of combo fields + finishers, with tons and tons of ideas popping up from players over the years, regarding priorities of finishers etc.

Ikr? Kind of wish the boon/condi spam wasn't a single action and instead required coordination with said combos...

D:

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Interesting to see a lot of pre-HoT nostalgia. I started playing after PoF but I've watched some old videos. The zerg fights were mostly melee and lasted longer, one side would be lucky to down and kill 1-2 players before regrouping. Today with the Warclaw those killed players would probably be back and fighting before any side gained a decisive numerical advantage.

Careful what you wish for. Nerf the power too much and you may end up with endless fights with no winner. Or maybe these standoffs could be used in a larger strategy?

I think currently ranged classes are too powerful. It's particularly painful when you are outnumbered. Just getting close to the enemy zerg is often suicide. The only class I enjoy playing these days is Spellbreaker with the long invulnerability and the blocks. I can run into the enemy, do some CC and damage and run back out. Everything else is either instant death or staying at full range pretending to do some damage.

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There are three areas I see as primary issues in the current meta that are setting precedent for the future, which will be a trip further into the wrong direction.

  1. Boon spam
  2. Corrupt spam

The focus on boon management and corruption is a poor choice of direction. It removes a lot of the skill aspects of the game that made the gamemode thrilling. Now, if a small, coordinated group goes p against a large, coordinated group, it is, for the most part, a one sided slaughter because there are more scourges then the firebrands can handle. It is no longer a multi tiered approach between health, conditions, boons and outgoing DPS. The fights i've been in recently are mostly waiting until the threshold of FB cooldowns are hit, and then corrupting and killing. It reduces the amount of counterplay and the nuance in group fights that used to be in the game.

  1. 1 shotting to open a fight

The other issue is 1 shotting, particularly to begin a fight. This used to be mostly LB ranger, now is predominantly thief/DE, and the occasional FA ele. Again, this decreases the amount of counterplay available, thereby decreasing the diversity of builds. It's a trend that is moving the game to escalating DPS as much as possible to kill faster, resulting in quicker fights that are dependant more on numbers then they are on individual player skill. Classes like revenant and spell have high damage as well, but atleast have to build up might, time dodges, setup CC or bursts, and then pull off a combo. They also have higher risk/reward levels then classes like thief, who can stealth away, or ranger, who can bird away.

Short term, the strength of firebrand and scourge (which has been documented well enough on this thread already) is a problem, as well as the ability to essentially instadown people are what I would consider primary pain points.

Long term, the trend of maximizing damage at the cost of everything else is the most troubling. It reduces the amount of counter play, build diversity and importance of skill in the game.

Also, as a warrior main, I am sincerely asking you remove Endure Pain from the game. Okay thanks <3

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@God.2708 said:So to address the broad spectrum of your inquiry in one big post.

Background: Two year commander of a 15-30 man guild group on NA. Day one player. Play every class proficiently (though not necessarily expertly) in a zerg setting. My approach will be directed at group fighting as defined as 10+v10+ in all situations (open field, assaulting keeps, GvGs), but will attempt to accommodate roaming. If the balance team wants I will DM them unsanitized clips of my play to provide context to my statements.

The following will be divided up into a short term look at classes then a longer term play style analysis. I will try my best to define problems, but leave solutions up to the balance team to make

Short Term: The biggest pain points are the overbearing control scourges have over both melee and ranged. Basically how it's been since the release of PoF. Everything below will be looking through that lense.

Basically all the problems of current WvW balance are encapsulated in this post.

With that being said I just want to raise another glaring issue for WvW beyond balance and the population disparities, which are I acknowledge the 2 most pressing problems with the mode. Completing the triumverate of major WvW issues is there being nothing to play for, no real reason to play the mode as designed, ie winning the matchup. I'm unsure whether this is the right thread for this but as I feel the balance problems have been succinctly summarised in the post above and by others I just wanted to raise it.

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Too many classes have access to perma boons (25 might and prot are the culprits here - see soulbeast and Holo) boons should create windows of opportunity for opponent players to go on the offensive or defensive when they are able to create a small boon advantage, not allow them to be unkillable AND dealing huge damage with no vulnerable windows.

Corrupts create too much cover condos, requiring huge amounts of condo clear, making builds that focus on a single condi useless or builds that lack consistent condi clear deadweight. Each class (or elite spec) should be tied to 2-3 condos only and should focus primarily on applying those condos. Corrupts should not work on a direct boon -> condo conversation but rather convert any number of boons into a specific condi. Eg a scourge boon corrupt will always strip x boons and then apply always y torment and y cripple (as those are it's class condos). Then mass condi clear can be reduced.Bonus idea - condos are split into two groups damage and debuffs. Condi cleanses are split into two groups, mass and singular. Mass cleanses remove all debuffs but never damaging condos, allowing windows of opportunity. Singular cleanses remove the current highest dps condi on you. This prevents damage condos to be covered by debuffs and allows more decesion making during fights.

Dodge spam - the +30/40% endurance foods are much to strong, now that classes can use Dodge to remain invulnerable AND apply pressure (thrift warrior Holo mirage) remove them. Also look at sigil of energy. Dodges should be a fight changer that is well timed, not something that is spammed constantly.

Heal spam - too many traits provide massive health regeneration over time for no cost -especially when paired with perma protection and infinite Dodges creates way too much sustain for little investment.

Permastealth - remove the 'marked debuff' remove cd on missed theif stealth attacks. After 3/4 seconds in stealth characters now start to fade back into visibility while they continue to remain in stealth. Basically after a short while in stealth they should start to look to enemy players like the translucent version of themselves that you see on your own screen when stealthed. This give you short stealth windows while in combat and 'semi stealth' over your long permastealths that a vigilant enemy could still track you in.

Buff backstab damage but make it apply a short stun/imobilize, and then the damage after a delay. The skill itself is still then a surprise from stealth with big damage, but has counterplay because if the enemy can stun break/condicleanse they are spared the backstab damage.

Base HP - since the game came out it has become much more spammy with classes having access to more and more skills on lower CDs with high damage. This leaves low hp classes like theif and ele more vulnerable than ever as a single mistake can outright kill them. HP is your blanket against burst but with such low values these classes are forced to invest into it to get any semblance of survivability. When you consider it also takes 3 other attributes to do any considerable power damage you can see why thief is always shoehorned into marauder as their only stay option. This contributes to the prevalence of the current condo theif build as it needs only 2 offensive attributes opening more opportunities to shore up it's low survivability and creating a low skillcap build

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Ok here goes..

Glad to hear that anet is aware of things that have been plaguing combat for some time, maybe with the discussions here we can finally narrow down some problems and get combat into a more fun enjoyable state as it was many years ago. Now I personally don't like the way anet has tried to counter balance certain aspect of combat by just adding another layer to the other side to the point that combat damage and defense has gotten out of hand and needs to be toned down, I hope this is sincerely the time anet sits down and starts to pull things back on both sides of the balance line.

I know there will be a ton of personal opinions of what areas needs fixing, but here's a small list of my suggestions that could be looked at. For a lot of the problem areas it would be great to know what anets stance is on them, so that players could get a better understanding and perhaps provide better feedback.

  1. StealthOver the years classes have been given more personal stealth, I personally think stealth should be used as openers and escape, not on for entire fights, but I don't believe that will change. I do think stealth applications should be given longer cooldowns for longer durations. Examples of this are mass invis gives 6s but 60s cooldown, signet of midnight 2s but 30s cooldown, decoy 3s but 40s cooldown, but then you go to ranger longbow 3s duration on 12s cooldown, why? sneak gyro 3s stealth pulsing 6 times on a 45s cooldown? that put mesmers out of stealth business, deadeye stealth from dodge? If there's going to be stealth in game there should be proper cooldowns applied and reasonable counters or detection for it.

  2. Boons vs CorruptionsCombat started going down hill when the game was switched from basically a field blasting game to a spam boons and conditions and corruptions and high damage game. Ever since HoT there has been a fight to find a reasonable balance between boons and corruption, even then at the end of HoT cycle a good balance had been brought about, until PoF when it was completely blown overboard again with two classes specifically being built to do so. I've seen entire guild zergs operating with boons of 2+mins on them, I've seen guild zergs sit under aoes and ac fire and not be phased by the damage because of how much boons and healing was being done, a lot of times you strip boons from a target and not even a second later they've back to full boons, it's to the point you need huge bombs of corruption hence why scourges are needed so badly. I think at this point boons need some sort of cap, shorter durations, stack cap, max duration cap, something, anything to deal with this. Back in the day players would have to use boons and defense abilities at the right times in order to survive, these days it's just spam and keep the 12 boons up through the entire fight.

  3. High spike damage and TTKAlong with the boon system it seems like new skills were balanced against having protection up all the time, maybe skills were built to make players pay for whenever they didn't have protection or aegis or damage immunity and they would pay instantly with spike damage. But what happens when you take this back down to the roamer or small random group numbers? It tends to get out of hand with some roaming classes able to one shot/one combo players, while not everyone has access to protection or aegis. Personally I don't think any skill itself should hit for more than the lowest base hitpoints in the game, and as for damage boosters, I think boost amounts should be carefully looked at, especially in situations when multiple boost can be active whether triggered from skills or traits. Just take the recent nerf to sic'em to bring it back down in line with most other boost from 40-25%, yet just last patch warriors got a trait to boost damage against shields by 50%. One class gets that much of a boost in damage against those with shields, which is practically everyone in a zerg.

  4. Damage immunity and shieldsConsidering the amount of damage that has come into the game in that last 4 years I can see why these are needed, only problem is they tend to be given only to certain classes. My biggest beef with damage immunity skills is the lack of trade offs. I think guardians Renewed focus is a perfectly good example of being able to negate damage while channeling and not able to deal damage, but some skills don't have this trade off, and I think any skill that you need to use for damage immunity in the middle of a fight should require a trade off of some sort or after effect penalty, whether that be heavy cooldowns, prevented from doing damage, or negative effects such as conditions, especially if they're just auto proc from traits.

  5. FirebrandsI think this class has been given way too many of the main tools to be the glue of a party. They're able to run as a tank, healer, condi clearer, boon spammer, main stability. Some of these roles should have been given out to other specs to help broaden the range of optional classes to bring to a party. Warriors should be the main front tank with stability, guards should be in the middle boons aegis protection stability, druids healer condi clearer, tempest healer boons, revs dps boosting concentration, engineer/scrapper healing shields, scourges aoe dps corruption/strip, chrono utility cc boons, mirage utility cc corruption/strip, thieves dps corruption/strip stealth. Things should have been spread out better, while the game gives a good amount of options to build characters your way with stats and traits and especs, it should have an under line role of what every class should be doing overall.

  6. ScourgesAs with Firebrands, this class was given too much, the front load for major corrupting when it should have also been given to some other classes to lighten that load, yes warriors had this with winds, but that had too much going on with it as well, that turned fights into pirating shipping instead, group barriers should have gone to engineers, personal barriers should have been given to scourge to help with defense. If it had been developed this way then engineers would be given a legit spot in groups for barrier support, but instead we have it on necros where it could be spammed out to 10 targets by the player and shades, while also still being the main aoe bombing corrupter. Their aoe pressuring also doubled, when wells use to be their main aoe, now they have access to 3 shades(less than half the cooldown of a regular well) and wells at the same time, an ability like shades would typically be used/limited as a utility skill.

  7. WarriorsWarriors are also a problem having access to too much damage and defense and mobility at the same time, I've seen god like base warriors running around, most other classes have trade offs to run full damage, this class seems to skip that. I've seen the god like tempest around too but they're not able to put out the same damage to do anything.

  8. TraitsToo much bloat being added to traits, as can be seen with the latest trait line revamps. It's continuing to add more layers to things.

I think anet needs to have a general set of guidelines for certain things especially when you start to cross the skills or traits over to other classes, what are the limits to certain things like damage boost, times on immunity and stealth, what are the trade offs for maxing out an area, if you go full damage you shouldn't be able to tank, if you go full tank you shouldn't be able to do much damage.

There's more I could write up, but I really just feel like it'll be a waste anyways.

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@"Ferelwing.8463" said:Honestly, I think it starts with boon share first and how many boons/stacks of boons can be pumped out and then it moves to boon corruption. I can understand in the PVE zones the need for boon and boon corruptions to be used on mobs but in WvW, I think the problem is widespread. Going down to the basics on how many boons should be shared and how much corruption to give would be an excellent start. Basically, there's too much power creep and while that is fine in PVE because the base-line mobs are kinda over-tuned in some places, it's not fine when playing PvP or WvW.

Pretty much this to be honest however in relation to pve zones meets boon corrupts.

if he were to ask this question about pve i would say that boon corruption should be extremely minimal at mostMost pve mobs dont generate boons and the majority of the ones that do are usually within fractals under certain instabilities only and in some raid instances.

ideally in both situations wvw and pvp boon share, generation, and application need to come way way down. Then adjust boon corrupts like you said to be roughly minimal so that its still a key feature of necromancer but not a blockade tool where 1 profession is built around managing the other 8. This is bad design for the health of the game and general and the necromancer class as it cannot be built or adjusted higher potential in areas necromancer players have been asking for because "well you have boon corruption in super generous amounts" but it only has that because its being forced to pretty much solo manage the other 8 professions who splatter boons allover themselves. The fact that it had a whole elite designed around this where every single one of its utilities even its heal corrupts boons says something is wrong.

I would 100% support the reduction of boon corrupts only if first boons in general return to pretty much what they were pre HoT where classes that could self generate high might count were limited in other boons much like the necromancer still is while other classes who can generate a wide range of boons generally cant generate much might at all or are suck at a much lower self might cap.

The moment you look at pve the boon corrupts become nearly pointless and useless as a mechanic wasting necromancer potential. I hope they open a pve thread so I can discuss the idea of most boon corrupts replaced or getting additional effects against boon-less foes in pve only.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:I do want to have a bigger discussion about the current state of the warclaw, but that's a separate topic. For now I'm trying to catch up with this thread, and we will definitely be keeping an eye on other threads moving forward.

I got constructive feedback waiting for it.

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:This is really the crux of a lot of things we want to address. Boons vs corrupts, damage vs healing, stability vs cc, among so many other things. These are all in the state of being extremely powerful as a way to counter the other side being extremely powerful, and are all things that we want to address moving forward. It's important to keep these balanced against each other, but we want the power level to come down.

Just be sure to tweak them in pairs. Don't lower (example) corruptions without lowering some boon spam in the same patch to kind of keep things level. Unless one is drastically weighted favorable already. Otherwise the balance will tilt one way or the other way to hard.

I think if you want to make outlier classes like ranger/ thief ect feel like they matter more for larger scale combat you should look into downstate. You can pick someone at 1k+ range/port in and burst them but finishing them before their 49 buddies pick them up is nigh impossible. Making your effort wasted. Downstate is something I've disliked about guildwars2 since day one. That could be a discussion thread on its own most likely.

In regards to cc and stab......this one is tricky. I think the only classes that have a surplus is really warrior and holosmith (to a lesser extent ele? but its heavily wep load-out reliant.) Its when it gets blobby that it gets out of control and the lack of a CC DR or immunity that isn't removable makes the issue rise to the surface. Stuns should feel powerful but shouldn't be spammy and oppressive. Not sure if making stability an effect like superspeed would be a good or bad thing but its a thought that crossed my mind. Obviously it would need re-balancing duration and application. Maybe tied to stun breaks so more classes that lack stab get a little love. By tied to stun breaks I mean set it so that IF you break a stun THEN you get say 2 seconds(random number for example) of un-stripable cc immunity so you can do something. If you don't break a stun then you get nada. Just thinking outloud.

The salt video made me laugh +1

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Thanks for the update and new focus on communicating with us through the forums. I have been extremely frustrated with Class balance in WvW for a long time and it has made me want to stop playing WvW altogether out of sheer disgust and impatience. I am tired of waiting months for a balance change hoping it fixes issues only to be disappointed time after time.

Here are some core issues with balance in WvW in my opinion:-Boon spam and sharing-Over the top healing and instant resurrection of players-Stealth spam and sharing-CC spam-META builds narrow the scope and ability of a class, for example Minstrel Firebrand. Tired of seeing everyone running the same build.

Boon spam and share carries bad players and guilds, it is nothing more but a crutch. I see guilds stack up, spam boons together and stand in tons of aoe fire, soak up all the damage, keep their hp at full, and if anyone goes down they get rezzed instantly. Meanwhile I need to burn through all my skills just to make a dent and down anyone just to see them get right back up. There were few counters spread across classes to boon spam. With PoF we had two especs that were designed to fulfill this role but saw continuous nerfs to their ability to counter boon spam. If I am on a Necromancer, I need to use a skill with a long cd to remove boons that can be instantly reapplied and shared by enemy players, is that balanced? Just to clarify I am not against the concept of boons or sharing them because it is important especially in a large scale PvP environment, but the current state is unacceptable. TLDR too many boons, not enough counters.

Stealth....hands down the absolute worst mechanic ever. I will never understand why this garbage was allowed into any type of competitive game mode. We have complained about how imbalanced this was since the beginning. And you guys give it to more classes, make it easier to spam and share it and allow it to continue to be broken. What is the purpose of stealth? Is it offensive? Is it defensive? The problem is that its used for both, it does too much, why should you have damage buffs along with defensive buffs at the same time when stealth itself is a strong effect for the player. While I appreciate the recent counters to it, the effect remains broken. There needs to be less of it, less spam, less sharing. This is not a mechanic that is productive for a competitive game mode.

Healing and invuln skills/traits need to looked at, even reworked. There should not be invuln traits allowed in WvW, they should provide damage mitigation when activated, this would force players to actually play more strategically instead of running blindly like idiots. Take Warriors for example, pretty much every one runs double invuln builds, run into a zerg, pop bubble, and run through an entire zerg because they are carried by that 8 or 10 seconds of invuln. In small scale its even more annoying. Healing/bunker builds are important, but they are taking it to an extreme level, there needs to be some tweaking done here to the healing you do to allies.

CC spam...game wide issue. Every fight, you get tossed around all over the place. It is not fun, it is extremely annoying. Not every class has access to reliable stability, and stun breaks with long cd's dont help much if you just get cc'ed right away.

WvW is built around group synergy. Some classes work better than others, this has always been the case. Guardian and Necro has always been the meta in WvW. I would like to see more build diversity so not everyone is running the same build.

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There's been a ton of comments, so i'm going to make mine short.

Credibility: Roaming in WvW since 2013, solo roaming exclusively since HoT killed the scene. Come back for 1-2 months/yr. Exclusively play power shatter. Big ol Charr in a hat.

I would heavily council that you ignore roaming when it comes to balancing WvW. Roaming is a very delicate thing and exceptionally difficult to balance as, historically, it has relied upon a healthy WvW population and healthy sPvP balance. Roaming is a result of a healthy environment, it's not going to cause one. Similarly, I would ignore people discussing 1v1 (perma-stealth thief/boonbeast/etc) as WvW really shouldn't care about those builds. They'll either die to 10 people or run away and not be effective. Even at their most effective (inside keeps trolling with perma stealth), they are simply support and won't get anything done without a zerg to back 'em up.

I love roaming and would love to see groups of 3-10 zooming around the map again, causing problems for zergs and being actual havoc squads. The current meta and health doesn't support that. But I wouldn't concern myself with it, roaming is one of the most organic things in the game, it's health relies on external factors. Focus on ZvZ and overall map health first!

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Remove retaliation from wvw, or give it an internal cooldown so it ticks once per second or so.
Give thief skills a cooldown between use of 0.5 seconds so their 'muscle memory' (read macros) will have to be adjusted so instead of 6 skills in 0.1 of a second you might have a chance of reacting before he's disappeared again.
Scourge needs a general kicking or you need to work on how several scourge effects pile up.Boons and boon strips in general need a rework. Boons need to be spread over more classes with lower maximum stacks and/or lower duration and targeting less people.Rapid fire should be changed to one fast unblockable arrow IF other changes to maximum damage per skill is also changed, as below:

No skill should remove more than 20-25% of a player's maximum HP. the actual figure is up for debate.

A cap is needed to maximum damage received and/or maximum damage output per target per second. You could still instantly die but it will be damage from multiple sources.

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@"Tuchanka.5148" said:Combofields -a great thing in "core" Guild Wars 2About the TTK- Take a look at gameplay from 2012/13,it wasn't a perfect meta but it felt very very good to play compared to now.

Someone gets it!

It used to take coordinated teamwork to get that 25 stack of might and other boons on everyone. Now it is just forehead and combo fields are almost an afterthought, except for stealth though.

Make Combo Fields Great Again

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@Chaba.5410 said:

@"Tuchanka.5148" said:Combofields -a great thing in "core" Guild Wars 2About the TTK- Take a look at gameplay from 2012/13,it wasn't a perfect meta but it felt very very good to play compared to now.

Someone gets it!

There was certainly a feeling of more teamwork during the combo era. Even if nobody cared about anything but blasts.

But, group action was also much easier then. Guardian shouts and virtues for example had 1200 range. The much smaller contemporary buff radius makes interaction by movement the new group challenge. Though many defeat that by standing still and relying on a chokepoint.

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@AllNightPlayer.1286 said:WvW balance needs a limit on boons and conditions.It shouldn’t be possible for player character to get 25+ stacks of bleeding or 10+ stacks of burning for example. Or conditions, which lasts longer than 20 sec.It shouldn’t also be possible, to get or stack boons up to a duration beyond 1 min. It should only be possible for skills/traits to provide a boon or boons with 30 sec max. by 100 % boon duration.

You bring up an excellent point. I suggest diminishing returns on conditions and boons. Condition / boon application 1 through X (where X is an amount to be determined fair, such as 5 stacks of stability or 5-10 stacks of bleed) will be at 100% duration, effect Y application of the same effect will be at decreased duration.

Example : Subject applies 5 stacks of Stability through Stand Your Ground. This Subject then stands on a stability road from a Revenant using the Dwarf Legend. The pulsing stability has its duration reduced by say 10%. Subject then has 6 stacks of stability and is effected by another Stand Your Ground, bringing the stability count up to 11. The third application of Stability is reduced in duration by 50% or more.

I suggest including a checksum to ensure that each condition / boon has a duration of at least 1 second if it has a duration over 1 second.

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