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Let's Talk About WvW Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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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!

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

I'm just going to point out to everyone in rose tinted glasses that the TTK is basically the same. You stack 50 people together and someone getting obliterated is going to happen. The two fundamental differences between now and then that give the appearance that TTK was really high is

  1. Everyone rallies. There was no 1 to 1. Both groups contact and drop 3+ players each and shortly after most of them are right back up because someone got finished.
  2. Stability being a stack and corrupt being rarer meant it felt less 'bad' to run into a fight because you wouldn't turn into a bouncing pinball and then drop, which drastically changes how you perceived TTK.
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@"Dahir.4158" said:I want to see Elementalist buffed. That's all.

Ele is in a fine place right now, it has an excellent dps option and by excellent I mean its top dps when played well enough and a support option that provides good healing/boons and great utility that actively sees a lot of use. It can also roam and fight most things in small man and perform well. Really not sure why it would need to be buffed at all when it excels in every area of wvw right now.

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@"Cal Cohen.2358" You muuhst B whon of dem Dev fellerz... We aint see many of U's in deez purts mhmm (spits in a well established jug on the ground)... Whelcome ?

In all seriousness... I hope you enjoy this video B)

In my opinion, there needs to be a higher sense of trade-offs happening. Especially when you have people supporting other allies like with boons for example. Which can, to some degree, negate certain trade-offs. Like say you have low precision, but someone gives you fury outside of you already giving yourself fury... Maybe. Well now you could have just easily pretty much negated what would have been a trade off for you, the player, with low precision. And again, that's just 1 example. Maybe not the best example, but I just chose fury because 20% more crit chance can go a long way.

When you give something... You should take something away at the same time. Whether it be reaching a certain "power-level" or whatever. And I would keep up with that philosophy on a fairly regular basis so that players remain ether "this or that". Or else you have something like this when players can take part in a bit of everything...

Lastly, just be more involved in the community more so. Learn from them, generally speaking. Even learn from experience so you can get a taste first hand. Don't just ask... See. Form your own judgments from there. That would be my honest advice. Enjoy the rest of your day :)

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@God.2708 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!

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

I'm just going to point out to everyone in rose tinted glasses that the TTK is basically the same. You stack 50 people together and someone getting obliterated is going to happen. The two fundamental differences between now and then that give the appearance that TTK was really high is
  1. Everyone rallies. There was no 1 to 1. Both groups contact and drop 3+ players each and shortly after most of them are right back up because someone got finished.
  2. Stability being a stack and corrupt being rarer meant it felt less 'bad' to run into a fight because you wouldn't turn into a bouncing pinball and then drop, which drastically changes how you perceived TTK.

Not sure how you got a TTK discussion out of my point about the availability of boons (how you got them) then vs. now.

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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.

good old time for me just before hot meta was really good

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I only play smallscale and 95+% of that is solo. For solo players I don't think wvw needs balance bc all the same options are available to everyone and you can essentially self-balance with your choice of class and build, etc. Also, trying to balance for solo players will probably break large scale balance, or at least make it much more difficult to achieve. So I basically have nothing helpful to add, except . . :

1) The very fact that we finally have someone focused on competitive balance is a huge step forward, so gratz and ty :)

2) Even achieving 'perfect' competitive skill balance will not improve the game mode until population and coverage are also addressed. I don't want to say rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, but close . . .

3) Get rid of mounted aegis. It's the only profession skill that works while mounted, so it must be an oversight? If it's not an oversight and working as intended just say so, and I can live with that too :)

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@Chaba.5410 said:

@God.2708 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!

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

I'm just going to point out to everyone in rose tinted glasses that the TTK is basically the same. You stack 50 people together and someone getting obliterated is going to happen. The two fundamental differences between now and then that give the appearance that TTK was really high is
  1. Everyone rallies. There was no 1 to 1. Both groups contact and drop 3+ players each and shortly after most of them are right back up because someone got finished.
  2. Stability being a stack and corrupt being rarer meant it felt less 'bad' to run into a fight because you wouldn't turn into a bouncing pinball and then drop, which drastically changes how you perceived TTK.

Not sure how you got a TTK discussion out of my point about the availability of boons (how you got them) then vs. now.

Oh whoops, was the quote you had that had TTK in it then linked a video of Redguard taking 5+ people out instantly with well bombs. My fault.

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@GrahamW.5397 said:

@"Dahir.4158" said:I want to see Elementalist buffed. That's all.

Ele is in a fine place right now, it has an excellent dps option and by excellent I mean its top dps when played well enough and a support option that provides good healing/boons and great utility that actively sees a lot of use. It can also roam and fight most things in small man and perform well. Really not sure why it would need to be buffed at all when it excels in every area of wvw right now.

  1. excellent dps but very bad survivability
  2. earth traits need buffing
  3. i want my old lava font and meteor back
  4. i don't care about sword weaver roaming - that can get nerfed
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Not sure how you got a TTK discussion out of my point about the availability of boons (how you got them) then vs. now.

Oh whoops, was the quote you had that had TTK in it then linked a video of Redguard taking 5+ people out instantly with well bombs. My fault.

The Redguard video is a bad example. The top guild on the top server playing against random undergeared zergs. To assess the time-to-kill pre HoT you need to look at guild vs. guild fights with teams of equal strength. Something like this:

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@Sazukikrah.5036 said:Can start by removing aegis when mounting up , make the lances for dismounting unblockable, remove instant finish war claw skill (superiour maul) , add a cooldown on remounting if you were killed and respawned ( to prevent people from coming out from spawn after just dying and contesting capture points infinitely) . Or just remove Warclaw in general. Thats how you can balance WvW right now.

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.

Ok well in that case.. Keep Lords / SMC and EBG in general need a revamp. They're working off old mechanics from a game that is 7 years old. When theres been a massive power creep added to the game since HoT. Lets talk about the rare instance of players being able to rally from Oakheart vines when they attack the vines that immobilize you. Random NPCS that exist in WvW for no reason like boars / deers that you can hit mistakenly and be caught in Combat for ever and a year. What about Sentry's that can mark you for 30 seconds and stealth players can not clear the mark even when they are a considerable distance away from said sentry. Why is it that a Sentry can mark you, but a tower can only mark you if you are in vicinity? Where is the consistency? We talking about balance you have to balance every aspect of WvW not just Class balance. Want to talk about class balance? Sure lets talk. You have gimmick builds like perma stealth condition builds (IE stealth condition build Dead eye) , where these builds aren't really big in zerg fights , they can render new players useless and make them not want to play the game mode because of these broken mechanics that exist. There isn't any fairness / explanation for new players to be introduced to this game mode. If you want to get people engaged in your game you have to at least explain what they're doing. Balancing a game mode is tough , i understand that but also you have to think about the new players coming into the game. Guild wars does not do a good job at explaining skills that do high ticks of damage and encourages people to just stand still and press 12345 with out even utilizing a dodge button. Theres too many builds that exist that are too tanky and do not require people to dodge out for high burst skills from a Berserker stat class. Balancing needs to add counter-play. Not all things need a counter play but some things like perma stealth builds do not need to exist. One thing that does not need counter play for example would be Mesmers Distort. You literally can not CC them or do anything until their Distort is up. This makes sense and does not need counter play, because that is the sole purpose of the class. Warrior at least has Endure pain but even still you can still CC them and apply conditions , theres the counter play. There is no real counter play to perma stealth unless 1, you have reveal.. which not all classes have access to or 2 you get lucky. And playing Dead eye you can remove reveal.. which defeats the whole purpose. So a condi thief can light you up with conditions in a half nano second and you're dead. No reaction time.

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@Azog.6215 said:I think it's better if some of the devs would play WvW intensively for a week... That is, anonymously, without the Anet guild tag.

This is a good idea.

Each class, on different servers and different times, too. Maybe join a guild or 5, see what the guild talks about.

They'd see the cheats, the hacks, the noobs, the experienced -- everything.

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@"Gamander.7269" said:

Not sure how you got a TTK discussion out of my point about the availability of boons (how you got them) then vs. now.

Oh whoops, was the quote you had that had TTK in it then linked a video of Redguard taking 5+ people out instantly with well bombs. My fault.

The Redguard video is a bad example. The top guild on the top server playing against random undergeared zergs. To assess the time-to-kill pre HoT you need to look at guild vs. guild fights with teams of equal strength. Something like this:

There is still people dropping near instantly. It is not of the same scale, mostly to the stab changes allowing people to remain moving constantly (that has a very profound impact on TTK, more than anything else in this game given the combat is active), and there's no huge wipes due the rally mechanics. But, you can see pretty clearly when they coordinate the well bomb or meteor bomb (which may I add looks fucking beautiful, been ages since I've seen coordinated spikes of that level) that people die, very very fast, with little to no chance to respond.

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Short-Term Fixes that don't involve changing classes:

  • No stats on mounts, and remove the skills. Then uncap where they can be used. Have them move max OOC character speed. No bonus health, no CC, no nothing. They should be tools to help traverse the map a little without needing permaswiftness or grouping up for boon sharing mobility, and that's all, and maybe to run past gankers. Gliders are finally in a decent spot with bugfixes and work great as QoL for getting past things like leaving red keep in EBG. Mounts should act like this and nothing more. They just provide way too much defensive capability for large blobs and make it totally impossible for smaller groups to gain any kind of attacking presence on the map into a larger one because groups can respond so quickly. This has doomed small group play which is a substantial number of WvW players.

  • Concentration as a stat needs to be removed. It's extreme, but necessary. It's broken more than just WvW and really ruined a lot of nuance to PvP as a whole. We know you have the technology to do this with changes to Magic Find and ascended accessories in the past.It really just has to happen. Boon duration outside of swiftness never has been balanced, and is one of the major underlying issues in that it's responsible for so much damage, CC, and defense creep in the game. With stability on stacks and leveraging permanent and spammed/shared uptime thanks to Concentration, access to CC has become more frequent as a means of removing the stacks. This is a huge issue for when things like boon stripping and corruption gets thrown in the mix, because otherwise playing without boons to deal with the huge issues surrounding corruption and boon removal is just literally not doable when so much of the damage coefficients, buffs, and so on are being released under the assumption everyone has permanent protection/capped might/stability. There are a number of traits and effects which increase damage based on having more boons, which ALREADY offer standalone power. Boons at release were meant to be short-term, but achieving balance with variable duration and cooldowns on such a huge increase in power is basically impossible to achieve, especially when they're so easy to share and take away.

  • T7 food is a problem. Similar to boons, it's just way too strong and gives way too much in terms of stats. Food buffs were traditionally a tiny adjustment, but effects like 100 power+70 ferocity + 10% damage resistance is just absolutely way overkill and just isn't compatible in PvP as a whole. Most traits and pieces of armor are weaker than this. I think food is a valuable part of WvW since it allows for such granular customization, but the T7 stuff is just WAY too strong. Make T6/T7 PvE-only.
    For the later patch, you should disable PvE food in WvW entirely, and then make WvW-only versions available for purchase by the provisioner and mobile provisioner. I REALLY like the stat allocations and general power level of T4 food that already exist on the provisioner, but there are some missing stat combinations that would be nice to see. This also lets you isolate unwanted food buffs and consumables from WvW, and gives you room to make some PvP-specific ones without getting into the mess of needing to make crafting recipes for things you want to add.

Long-term Problems to Address:

  • Boons, blocks, and invuln effects - Again. I can't stress this enough. They shouldn't be permanent from any given class, and need to be cut down in their access pretty dramatically, especially in AoE form. There's just way too much power on them coming from way too many sources, and corruption and boon denial subsequently plays too big a role in group play. Nerfing boons lets you buff Scourge and Spellbreaker and brings huge diversity to the mode, which is a lot cooler in the end for everyone. For blocks and defenses, again, these went from being effects that had to be well-timed and used intelligently while locking you out of doing anything else (OH Shields, Renewed Focus, etc.) to spammed on half the abilities some classes have while they can still nuke several players around them at once. More unblockable isn't a good answer, because all it does it make for rock-paper-scissors gameplay around blocks and unblockable power, which is not compelling gameplay.

  • Direct support and coordination - Skill in WvW used to feature the need for working together, and aside from running as a blob and mashing buttons at the same time, this really isn't the case anymore. Take this as an opportunity to start cutting "press button for support" style gameplay and bring back the use of combo fields and finishers to help reward player organization. I know this wasn't viewed happily in PvE, but frankly, if raids are going to be a factor in balance decision-making and class design, then the population similarly needs to be willing to work together just as the PvP communities need to, and this can maybe establish more common-ground between the modes.

  • CC. Because of removing boons, CC needs toning down. Remember that Earthshaker used to be the premier AoE CC skill. Bring that kind of gameplay back. Being stunlocked to death by a scrapper or holo and then just getting killed isn't fun, and is again, not compelling gameplay.

  • Like the above, effect visualization. Right now there are a LOT of things, especially CC effects and damage mitigation sources (particularly so on PoF specs) that are just way too difficult to see. A fundamental pillar of GW2's combat system at launch was visual clarity and knowing what hit you and when it was going to hit you (stealth attacks aside). There's a big highly-upvoted thread by @Trevor Boyer.6524 in the sPvP subsection right now about visual clarity on firebrand which even in 5v5 PvP, high-tier players struggle to discern which firebrand is casting which abilities to the point where they can't even tell the builds being played. Look back to Earthshaker. Potent effects like AoE CC should come with big tells that are easy to discern, and things with long animations shouldn't be easily-hidden with stealth or huge visual blur. Move the character models around more rather than adding more particle effects.

  • Damage - Elite specs just do too much as a whole. There's merit to having a few select builds that can burst down single targets very quickly by burning all its resources at the start of a fight and then having nothing left in the tank, but coefficients are too high, damage modifier access has become too easy for a lot of professions not originally designed around having them, and sources of free stats are too common and easy to get access to. Boons are half the battle, but for example, the thief has always dealt high damage because of access to damage modifiers rather than any access to might. If you want a class to be balanced around its boons, it needs hits either to damage modifier access or coefficients.

  • A Divergence from the Manifesto - GW2 enraptured a huge playerbase early on before the game even released thanks to this idea. Please, before making changes which can affect PvP/WvW gameplay, ask yourselves if the design breaks one of the rules. It's sometimes a good thing to bend them, but an example here is the fact that I need to look at a status bar to determine if a mirage is still evading (thanks to what is usually a cloud of other particle effects going on t any given point in time - again with that visual clarity thing) directly contradicts the notion of not needing to look at status bars, and is a huge turn-off from even wanting to PvP or play the game at all, and ultimately makes the customer feel betrayed. Remind us why GW2 was and still is great, and adopt those ideas while making the necessary changes to address these kinds of issues going forward.

These are kind of the essentials. There's a lot more nuanced balance discussion to be had going forward in respects to specific classes and builds, but all of the above really are quite game-breaking and fun-ruining from the PvP-minded perspective.

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If you want to change the meta in a way they wont just blow up the whole thing you need to understand they meta. With that being said i have watched the anet dev stream and when i watch them get 3v1ed by some keke dude on red bl i can tell you these dudes dont understand the game. Ill be interested to see if you can prove me wrong and bring the powercreep to a good level but it isnt all just as easy as nerfing something because it is strong.

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Current meta outliers

Scourge (and to a lesser extent, 10-man target abilities). Sand Savant especially has completely warped the entire metagame around itself; every comping and gearing decision in group play has to account for how to deal with this class, how to not die to it, how to attempt to kill it, so on and so forth. And ultimately, since the introduction of PoF only 2 solutions have come up to fighting a heavy scourge based composition; either 1. Don't fight it - stack revenants and weavers and never push into 1000 range and just run; or 2. Just bring more people than your opponent has (self explanatory, and a poor solution).

No other class or weapon has the raw stopping power to compete with necromancers in any capability; the berserker rework was the closest thing we had to being able to stand toe to toe with necros for all of one week before it was immediately gutted. Almost every weapon skill in the game (I believe all actually but this may not be completely exhaustive) is limited to 3-5 targets with abilities and as a result is outmuscled in every instance trying to trade blows with scourge, leaving us as players to just simply comp adding more and more scourges just to break even with other groups.

In general, increasing the power of individual classes and granting individuals mass-cleaving abilities (see banners too) indirectly hurts teamplay and discourages smart coordination (expanded on later in this post).

Fundamental issues I see in wvw:

Stability - I feel that we still don't have a good plan for this boon right now and it feels bad from the poor interactions it has as a consequence of just being a boon. There must exist over a hundred hard CC effects in the game but by FAR the most effective way to get through a players stability is to just bypass it with a strip or corrupt, which feels awful, and is unintuitive for new players. Including the internal cooldown to removal and ability to constantly get over 20+ stacks with all the firebrands running around, it's just not feasible to even attempt to control groups with hard control effects. My suggestion would be to move stability to its own effect, remove the internal cooldown for stack removal, and adjust every control effect in the game to remove certain number of stacks per strike on targets with stability, based on how powerful the skills should be (i.e. headshot removes 1 stack, full adrenaline earthshaker removes 3 stacks, etc). Long-term I believe this gives more flexibility to tune skills power individually with regards to control effects too.

Combo System - "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts" I feel like we went away from this philosophy in HoT and PoF. Great guilds could separate themselves from the average ones due to their coordination, ability to combo with each other (either via intentional game-meant combos like group water field healing or simple ones like warrior earthshakers/flurries to lock down enemies to be caught in their elementalists meteor showers or necromancer wells). Individual classes did not really have much solo killing power or it came at a great cost (i.e. killshot warrior having zero support to offer, or gank/pick like thief/mesmer being completely unable to enter melee cleaves). Today, dps classes are judge jury and executioner all at once, capable of ripping boons, dealing incredible damage, and controlling their enemies simultaneously, which leads to the 'coordination' of guilds and zergs these days just boil down to simply all pressing those kill buttons at the same time.

The combo system also did another thing I greatly appreciate which was allow for support at long range. Simpler combat mechanics less unique effects existing meant classes did not need to be within 300 range or be aiming a 120-radius cone at teammates to offer support; Elementalists could be 1200+ range away and offer healing and frost aura that melee could take advantage of, whereas now much more powerful abilities exist via simple utilities or traits/skills that only require you to be in a certain aoe. This has been a primary reason zergballs have just become more and more optimal due to the power of pbaoe-only type support being so powerful.

A possible suggestion to reign in powercreep and make combos relevant again (and just one suggestion) - Rework dark fields so they play around the boon corruption aspect; blasting removes 1x5 boons, leaps remove 2 from one target, etc, then favor necromancer access to dark fields but heavily remove their raw stripping power. This will keep theme of boon corruption to the necromancer but allow for guilds and synchronized groups to elevate their play with combo interaction rather than just making the game easy and stripping boons via the click of one button

A final note with regards to the teamplay aspect of WvW - I feel that the powercreep of professions also directly harmed guild membership as the creep grew out of control. Solos had lots of incentive to join guilds in vanilla due to it being one of the only ways to crack large pug groups, but could consistently do so once practiced as good groups were well rewarded and would very consistently win, which I believe is healthy for the state of the game. These days, solo players are just as capable as anyone in the guilds to dish out massive amounts of damage or run around with banners and be wildly effective or even delete commanders with oneshot builds so they have less incentive to join guilds, practice, or even learn teamwork. I'm sure many on here can sympathize with perma-queued EBG maps filled to the brim of pugs who never join comms, don't have zerg builds, and always have a longbow equipped with whatever class they are on.

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Retaliation in WvW needs a tone down. Maybe an internal cooldown on how many times it can hit a target?

For example.. an Ele can drop a meteor shower on a group of people, and if they have retaliation on them, that Ele will basically kill themselves. I get that retaliation is supposed to damage people hitting you, but at the rate it comes in is a bit much.

Berserker's Arc Divider (Greatsword F1 while in Berserk Mode) still needs damage reduction, and I believe the 3rd radius is a bit too far out. Meteor shower doesn't even extend that far.Perhaps with range it could start at 180, then 2nd strike would be 240, then 3rd strike would be 360 to keep it in line with meteor shower distance. As it stands Arc Divider is the largest radius skill in WvW.

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I was pleasantly surprised to see this thread, maybe it is ok to have more hope for this game mode once again. Balancing is the most important aspect for WvW as well as frequent balancing to keep us on our toes for build ideas and changes to tactics. It is great that you are communicating with the community and i hope that you keep us in the loop often and ask for our opinions throughout the process. It is better to keep hearing thoughts from experienced people that have played the game mode a lot in comparison to a closed environment where you ponder what you think we would like!Here are my thoughts from the top of my head from a player that has been player WvW almost all the time since vanilla (i was more hardcore competitive in vanilla and early HoT but not so much atm but i have been in gvg guilds since all the way to this very day)

sorry if i repeated stuff people have said, it's too late for me to read everyone's comments before i go to bed, but my problems with the game mode:Small scale died with cheesy builds and people running around in parties with OP support so you can't solo roam. Mounts ruined roaming even more because you needed a build that could burst a mount, which hasn't changed because lance is easily evaded and can be blocked by aegis. Hence, i only play zerging/ blobbing nowadays.WvW is now numbers game, having more numbers gives you the upper hand due to more power creep, boon application, corrupts etc. Back in vanilla, competitive guilds believed that 25 was way too big, guilds aimed for 15-20 players, where skill mattered and guilds were able to tackle groups much larger than themselves through skill and most importantly team work.My next problem is too much damage in the game, which is balanced by high heals. Too many boons which are balanced by high boon corrupts. Tone down everything, reduce dmg, heals, boon application and corrupts.Because of these factors, indisputable party compositions were made. You need to have FBs pumping out the support, you need scourges for dmg and corrupts, you need warriors for boon removal and dps, you need revs for high dmg and boons, you need scrappers for support and stealth, you need tempests support, resses and CCs .If say less boon removal was needed and slots in parties were given for pure dps and the dps classes were balanced, then people can pick different classes they like to play without people getting angry at them not playing the meta classes, Yes there will always be a meta comp but i they are all somewhat similarly balanced then skill comes into play, people can excel in any of the classes if they have mastered it.10 target support reduced build diversity even more, since certain classes pump out support that goes beyond parties, i would never take onboard other healers because tempests and scrappers are too OP. Similarly, you need scourge for its 10 target dmg.I want to reduce the need of people going full minstrel somehow, not saying that we should go back to water blasting (i loved that though <3 ) but make it a team effort to stay alive and it was a team effort to make downs by cleaving together. I miss the old core guard feeling, and having all melee players making sure to cleave together with auto attack since it played a big role in dps.A bit of a contradiction to my last point (since i want minstrel to not be as effective, or dire for condis on small scale i guess?) but i want gear choices to have more of an impact. In vanilla you felt the difference between having too much PVT (power toughness vitality) gear compared to a good mix of PVT, knights, whatever. Since, like i said, it was a team effort to make downs by cleaving together, so you needed enough dmg but at the same time enough tankiness to survive. Finding that right balance for classes based on if they could wear heavy/medium/ light armour and how high their base health pool was, that was super fun as a build theorycrafter! Shout out to the ele mains that knew the pain of having light armour and lowest health pool! ?Anyway it's way too late now and i'm super tired, if i have anymore points that comes to mind i'll be sure to post it at some point. I eagerly look forward to any more posts from anet in this thread!P.s. unrelated to the thread: how's alliances going? Will we be getting new elite specs (were the rumours about dual class system true? hehe) ?

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Personally, I feel Competitive WvW is about being the most prepared with the proper classes and gear/ comp / skills, obviously you want to make every class viable in a sense, but the idea that nerfing boons / condis negates any point of solid cooperation and skilled play, if you have 10 people AoE on the same area someone should probably die, its the point of rewarding those who put the time in to make the best of the meta. There will never be an ideal, "all classes can be played with equal amount of utility and purpose" but the need is to ensure there is a spread of classes that enable different aspects of group fighting. I believe many people enjoyed Core WvW fights because they had different aspects, frontline tanks/dps, ranged healers/ glass cannons, a gank squad, it had multiple aspects of play that allowed nearly all classes to have some sort of identity. Current WvW is a mess of Group buffing and tanking that creates either an unkillable dps machine, why would you want anymore than Firebrands Scourges and when Firebrand provides heals buffs, support cc, Scourges provide, Barrier, res, dps ,boon strip AoE Ranged cleave. I believe it is the multi purposeful fact that enables a, who has more players generally wins style of fighting, because it is easy to faceroll your scourge buttons, but when the game is more complex with multiple classes that build off each other is when you find the competitive scene booming and a better fight scene. Core meta was a great example where, Warriors provided CC, immob and some condi clear, while guards provided melee cleave, tank. Backline Eles had to drop waters for Guards to blast and the melee had to protect the necros from being run over by the enemy melee, while now there is next to no necessary interaction between classes because each one can do basically everything by itself. Fixes would start by forcing classes to fill a role they gear for, maybe FB needs to have less overall healing and more boon/condi removal. Making scourge barrier weak unless specifically geared for. Spreading away from the MegaBlob of Heals/Corrupts/DPS allows a more intricate and fun WvW which will allow more classes to fill the hopefully more roles given to players to stay competitive

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hi again,

I wanted to swing by with an end-of-day update. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the community’s passion on balance and the overall state of the game. There were other topics that were brought up today, and we will create more specific discussions in the future. I will continue to monitor and gather feedback from the forums so keep posting your thoughts as you have them.

Going forward we want to keep our mission statement of being more communicative and including the community. So here are our next steps on the balance front:

There will be more posts going into further detail about our balance plans for the next patches. This will include a list of targeted changes for the next balance update as well as our high-level philosophy and vision for the more impactful patch coming later. We will continue to communicate with the community early and often in order to gather feedback on these changes, which will allow us to have a chance to iterate.

From the whole systems team, thanks everyone for your passion for competitive gw2 and the feedback you provided today.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

I wanted to swing by with an end-of-day update. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the community’s passion on balance and the overall state of the game. There were other topics that were brought up today, and we will create more specific discussions in the future. I will continue to monitor and gather feedback from the forums so keep posting your thoughts as you have them.

Going forward we want to keep our mission statement of being more communicative and including the community. So here are our next steps on the balance front:

There will be more posts going into further detail about our balance plans for the next patches. This will include a list of targeted changes for the next balance update as well as our high-level philosophy and vision for the more impactful patch coming later. We will continue to communicate with the community early and often in order to gather feedback on these changes, which will allow us to have a chance to iterate.

From the whole systems team, thanks everyone for your passion for competitive gw2 and the feedback you provided today.

Thanks for the communication!

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you lost alot players when you changed the passive defense into active defense.

back in the days armor stats choosal meant something, a full soldier guard could not be taken down in a 1vs1 but as well did so small damage that he could not kill anyone either.so armor did a huge part of defense in the past and because of the armor damage reduction players where allowed to make more errors than today because they could be corrected in a fight.

today it doesnt matter what defense stats you choose. in a zerg fight you dodge too slow and splatter die away. if a game allows for almost no human errors players will stay more and more away cause the game turns from entertainment and fun to stress.

bring back relevance of armor and move the game away from dodgefest+block+boon only defense and it will do. we have so many different armor stats available. basic survivability must come back.


Ranger is not a zerg class.im tired of the years long argueing between players and commanders on teamspeak if ranger can be brought into zerg or not and yes and no and whatever.every class got 3 specializations so please finally turn one of them for rangers to have an integrated function in zerg. there are alot ranger class fans being neglected for like what 7 years... again im tired of the discussion, the frust and anger. and no ranger is not a roaming class its just designed like that atm but players want something else with this class. druid has no function at all, make something out of it or soulbeast if you want to keep arguments for people to buy more than register a F2P Account.


unequal lootgain between supporters and dds

make it everyone get equal loot amount.


7 years passed and we still have no unlimited ascalon mage potion!!!


for more wvw ideas ask Mr. Z to call O Brien on the phone and ask where they put all the feedback "Sacrx" gave them in the past. it was tossed in some drawer or paperbin he should remember.


Good Luck!

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