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Let's Talk About PvP Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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I think this is mostly covered, but the issues have much to do with the game systems versus class balance. All of the following need rework (mostly reduction):

  1. Boon generation.
  2. Boon RIP.
  3. HP pools.
  4. AOE CC.
  5. Condi damage (this for most classes needs a buff not a nerf).
  6. Unblockable damage.

Most of these require major redesign (even for PvE).

Then build diversity. I will talk mainly about my main, guardian. About a year ago, guardian had 7-8 sPvP viable builds with viability between S grade and B grade. Now, there are only two builds, FB support and Sage FB. Everything else is mediocre or trash. This has been a trend all across for the last 12-15 month. Sure, the balance between top tier builds is much better now than a year ago. We also have less brazenly out performing builds. But overall, we have less builds across the board.

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good guy cmc, I'm always harsh against anet when it comes to pvp but this is a good start, hopefully this isn't the only time you do this, I'm sure everybody would appreciate these threads for every balance patch so you guys get a word of what's getting out of balance and unhealthy for the game.

builds/specs that need to be toned down for pvp

  • holo (damage wise, boon duration)
  • condi thief (unhealthy gameplay, literally everybody can play this and do well)
  • staff thief (unhealthy gameplay, too much spam, low risk high reward)
  • firebrand (too much heal and boons, makes other support specs unviable)
  • mirage (rework the dodge)

builds/specs that need to be improved for pvp

  • Druid (make ca 10 seconds cd again, remove stealth from celestial shadow)
  • Soulbeast (rework pet's abilities in beastmode there are like 4 pets that are worth to use in this mode, the rest are useless, buff dagger main hand a lot, nerf boon duration)
  • Tempest (doesn't need any buffs, just nerf firebrand boon application)
  • Daredevil/thief (revert all dagger nerfs, give swipe 900 range or give it new stolen abilities, swap havoc specialist with escapist's fortitude, put icd on weakening strikesremove all the vigor from Acrobatics line, replace it with something more creative than a static boon)

General changes:

  • tone down boon duration by a lot in these boons - quickness, protection, might and vigor these should only give you a boost in your dps rotation for a few seconds not minutes.
  • rework amulet stats, demolisher has to go.

i haven't played the game in a while but that would be from what I've seen lately.

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All of these suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt, as they were generated from lots of salt, and......(ignore the commanding tone, I didn't want to say please before each point, so please is implied lol)

Boons/Buffs in PvP:

  • Might should be half as strong so 15/15 instead of 30/30. This will solve a lot of the power creep and save a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to rework every interaction from traits across all professions.
  • Quickness should be very rare, not pulsing and on long CDs especially if gotten from traits.
  • Superspeed probably should not be in traits, and if it is, increase cooldowns to long durations
  • Protection from traits probably need to be increased in CD

Sigils to Probably Remove:

  • Sigil of Intelligence
  • Sigil Of Agility

Runes to Remove:

  • Rune of Speed

Runes to Alter:

  • Rune of Leadership, compare it to Rune of Lyssa

Problematic or Potentially Problematic Classes or Their Skills/Traits:

  • Condi S/D Daredevil, panic strike and lotus need to be looked at; deadly amibition changes kill off condi thieves that don't rely on immobile spam.
  • Holo is big damage, sustain needs to be chopped down significantly without hitting core, the exception being toss elixir s, that needs a reduction in duration.
  • Who competes with firebrand for support?
  • Mirage Cloak should not work if a normal dodge would not work, unless they take EM. EM does not need 6 seconds of exhaustion, maybe 3 seconds of when dodging while knocked down, stunned, or any cc that would not allow dodges, but not for cc that would allow dodges. (still breaks stun), but otherwise don't change how cloak works, such as using while performing other actions.
  • Rampage needs to go back up to 180 seconds, this is "ME WIN" skill type
  • Any traits that stop a burst passively should be 90 seconds across the board.
  • Vigor access should be reduced for classes that have barrier, protection, and stability access. There only needs to be one dodge machine. (the same one that has none of those other things)
  • Renegade, is it THERE yet? (send help quick)
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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

@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.

I will say this one more time. Unless the core builds can compete with elites, this is a facade. And the elites that you tried to do this with, almost all are not sPvP viable, like: chrono and berserker. The concept from a design strategy.. is wrong. And this has been a trend of all these redesigns. So far, the only one that worked is scrapper. And after 2 re-makes, it ended-up kinda where it started...

You need to determine how core builds can be competitive first, before making unnecessary changes to elites, that so far, have been completely off the mark.

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To add to my previous post, I'd also humbly request a visit to class forum sections. Many players have interesting ideas and suggestions and generally treat their own classes with less "lul remove bcuz i die to it" mentality. It already caused a lot of damage across multiple specs and builds, making them either not viable at all or plain unworkable/bad - a little more insightful feedback from those who dumped ungodly hours into the classes in question should potentially be more valuable, imo.

Nobody really wants their class to be fundamentally broken to a point where people hate you for playing it, unsurprisingly (yet a revelation for every mesmer complainer who treats counter-argumentation to their misinformed suggestions as a personal attack, it'd seem) enough. Yes, I did a bit of a sassy callout there. Cuz I play a class with pink butterflies, what do you expect?

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Hey Cal,

This all sounds too good to be true, I do hope it all works out though. I really want the game to have some sense of a balance again. With that being said I'll give my perspective:

  • Alpha striking from stealth needs to go. There is no counter play to it, other than "guessing" which is different than reacting to animations.
  • Warriors elite skill rampage is way too strong, it needs to be tuned down.
  • FB support is still too good. It completely over shadows any potential support specs from other classes.
  • Boons are too abundant, its easy for a single player to gain and sustain 25 stacks of might on their own. It inflates damage by a ton.
  • There needs to be a focus on classes base strength without boons, boons should be a temporary enhancement. Currently, each character relies on them heavily.
  • Mirage is too much, excessive screen clutter, countless clones, evades, dodge, blocks and over all mitigation is too persistent. Its also one of the only classes were the player has to mouse target because cycling through all the clones is a nightmare.
  • Condi thief needs to be reworked. The problem is evade on skills is just way too strong. I've said it since the game launched but in their current form they don't have many abilities to really counter them. If they were either changed to be considered blocks it would be a change for the better since there are unblockable skills in game. Or if you guys increased the vulnerability window/recovery animation so they can actually be hit. With latency, how fast thief evade skills recover and the average casting time for skills, you will never be able to hit them.
  • The amount of time a class can reset a fight needs to be limited. It promotes bad game play. If someone makes a mistake they should not be able to constantly reset the fight to try again. They need to be punished, its that simple. Holo comes to mind.
  • Health tiers should be unique to specializations. It would make more sense than all of them sharing the same health tier.
  • Damage and defense both need to be toned down and a build shouldn't be able to have access to high damage, high defense and healing at once. If you are high damage you should have low defense and support. If you have high defense you should have low damage and healing etc.
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@viquing.8254 said:

@"sinject.4607" said:As a deadeye player this is my perspective:
Condi mirage is the most overpowered build in the game by far.
The core design of multi-casting in mesmer (weapon/utils/shatters/clones) allows for a certain persistent offensive pressure that just works too well with condition damage; this is the same reason people complain about condition thief despite this only being true to a lesser extent with daredevil. This offensive pressure combined with the amount of defensive uptime condition mirage can manage essentially leaves it with no vulnerability windows and no major weaknesses.
  • You can't kite them well if at all because of their mobility in addition to bodyblocking from clones and reflects.
  • You can't offensively pressure them via melee because most of their damage mitigation doesn't occupy their casting queue, leaving them free to weapon attack and use utilities to punish you.
  • You can't reliably CC them because of access to stability/stunbreaks/mirage cloak evade and because
    MOST OF THEIR INVULN ANIMATIONS DONT PROPERLY RENDER. ESPECIALLY OUT OF STEALTH.
    This seems to be partly caused when they clone spam as the rendering engine just seemingly gives up with the sudden visual clutter.
  • You can't really avoid their damage because the core design of condition damage/application when combined with the multi-cast pressure of mirage means that evading even their condi burst you will probably lose half your health from passive clone application followed by autoattacks and AoE. Another issue being the efficacy of AI casters- clones are way too fast and way too persistently perfect in their attacks and I think if anything this speaks to overtly easy design of condition damage as I've never had issue with power mesmer/chrono/mirage clones.Sadly this is not what streams show.Isn't just that your build is hardcountered ? I can see some melee deadeye builds who can manage well against mirage.I mean I don't post an op post everytime a thief kill me on power mesmer/mirage while it hardcounter it since release.About the "CC imune" : just count the 2 evade then CC burst if I can win on a powermirage versus condimirage it's because condimirage have a really slow setup before damage start to hurt and very visible animations on ambush.It's good in a game to have strength and weakness over differents situations.

Nope. The only posts here defending mirage are from mesmer players such as yourself, while all three pages have a variety of players mentioning condition mirage as broken and even the Devs themselves have echoed some of my thoughts on the build here in this thread.

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Boon corruption and weakness output on core necro it's a bit too much right now, however the issue is that it depends on that to apply decent pressure, otherwise it would be completely useless. Since it obvious that boon application/duration is going to be toned down, revise boon corruption on core necro wisely. You guys will need to give Death Shroud a better autoattack and a more reliable skill 4 to compensate for the obvious nerf to boon corruption.

I'm not going to ask for to revert on the Scourge last changes, I would like to see how the boon changes will affect scourge first.

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Just wanna get my chrono back tbh. And while we are at it make blinding powder instant cast again.Rework daggerstorm/rampage/IH/staff and condi drd/holo sustain and quickness uptime.Rework passive traits like you did with engi.Rework amulets. berserker/mender amulet.And bring in some diversity in the gamemode/ switch up the meta completely.

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@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

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

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

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

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

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

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

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

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

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:
  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.

Why nerf core traits of Condi Thief when the issue is S/D Condi Thief and the type of playstyle it generates? D/D and P/D Condi Thief are NOT overperforming AT ALL and yet a change like this is also a nerf to those underperforming versions of the build with no compensation for those versions of condi thief.

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@"sinject.4607" said:Nope. The only posts here defending mirage are from mesmer players such as yourself, while all three pages have a variety of players mentioning condition mirage as broken and even the Devs themselves have echoed some of my thoughts on the build here in this thread.

Problem with this is that it's a knee-jerk reaction, and most of this feedback about "overtuned" doesn't come from a place of understanding WHY it happens. Every mesmer jumps to defend Mirage because two reasons - it's all we have left PvP-wise, and all of those suggestions and horridly misinformed. No, in fact, we don't really have infinite dodges. Warrior has more, hilariously enough. So is every Thief ever. Even Holo.

Meanwhile, "remove evasive mirror because it doesn't allow rangers/deadeyes to do much". Should they not have hard-counters while using a low risk/high reward ranged playstyle? This trait was that. Gone now, quite literally. And both of them have weapon swap too, so it's not like they shouldn't/couldn't have used their melee options. Yet, the kneejerk killed the trait, but problem is that it's a core trait. It made all mesmer builds worse with this loss. So did Blinding Dissipation, because now having blind every 25-ish seconds is worthless. "Mirage has too much", so they nerf Bountiful Disillusionment - another core trait.

A reminder: There's now not a single grandmaster in Chaos traitline that isn't nerfed into half or more of it's previous effectiveness. Neither of them feel nor perform influentially whatsoever, and people will use Chaos purely because staff trait still gives protection and minors are decent, at least. And maybe chaos storm on heal, but honestly - many opt to live without it, going for Master of Manipulations instead, for it's not that reliable due to having a super weird invisible casttime (seems to trigger after lengthy aftercasts, which all of our heals actually have, lol).

There are a lot of other changes like that, too. For example, I used to run a build relying on Blurred Inscriptions (yeah don't judge), back when it was in Domination. And surprisingly enough, it made sense to be there - most of the signets are, in fact, not support-oriented at all, with the weird exception of Inspiration one (hoo boy, this button). They're all about making you do more damage or controlling (in other words, dominating) the enemy through stuns, or perception tricks (see Midnight). Yet for the raid crowd, trait was moved to Inspiration, making it unusable in PvP and killing my build off. Bit of a personal example, but what it illustrates is that: When you do a change on a mesmer, you're sticking your fingers into a very intricate web of co-dependencies. Nerfing one trait hits everything else which could've benefit from it.

Mirage is nigh-unplayable without Deceptive Evasion, which is why it ran and runs Dueling, which is why it also used whatever defensive utility it could provide. Initially we didn't even use pistols or relied on Deadshot, it was Carrion or Sage with axe/torch. (Which was a lot more fun than scepter/pistol, in my biased opinion) - but overnerfing due to not knowing what exactly to change is what brought us to this sad build which people still call overtuned, but in reality it's just "works while nothing else really does".Mirage uses Chaos because it's on-dodge traits that give it small durations of Regen and even smaller dash of Protection (literally 1.5 seconds) is in nice synergy with Chaos minors, plus it elevated staff from "directionless weapon which doesn't know what it's doing" to "defensive tool with condition pressure". The other options Chaos provided were secondary, but nice - having stab gave it a different feel from other mesmer specs, but now it's 1 second of it. Might as well not be there at all, in other words.Mirage is exceptionally bad without Infinite Horizon, and it only works because it literally has the potential to multiply your condition damage of ambushes by four. If anything, it just goes to show that it's base offense is kind of pathetic at this point, if it needs a literal efficiency multiplier to really do anything worthwhile. The "clones dodge too" thing is neat, and is a small way of retaining your shatter/ambush fodder amidst, well, everything, but ultimately it's something we can live without.

As of now, it's like Jenga after 2 hours of intense playing. We're being against it not because "class bias" - we kinda don't like Mirage too, in general, because it's just an upgrade over Core with an IH gimmick, while not really feeling all that new or exciting. This "dodge while CC'd" thing people keep bringing up is neither new to us, nor that gamechanging. Absolutely everything has some other CC to follow up anyway, but I won't be mad about Mirage being unable to dodge when CC'd without EM as GM trait. That's fair. But don't go about claiming that we deal some incredible super-duper damage while totally invulnerable at all times, because it's simply not the case. Individually, our skills tend to do very little. It's always about a sum of it's parts. Deceptive Evasion + IH wombo-combo is what you're against, not "little distortions which, as a concept, isn't even that new to a class or never happened before or that overpowered".

Core issue is IH, of course. While I have few ideas on how to rework it in a fun way while keeping Mirage playable, I think such a discussion is best suited for Mesmer forums, as it's more of a "all gamemodes/general mechanics" thing rather than strictly PvP-oriented number juggling.

But, I'll use the chance to highlight some issues mesmer faces here, to maybe ward off uncalled for decisions. Our class is in a dire state for these gamemodes, despite this one build still making people salty because this one trait makes us playable by doing a literal "x4".

Also, to those who say "mantras r bad", I'll just say this - We'll still 100-0 you even without MoP. It's not that integral to burst rotation. You die to us stacking +damage traits and sigils/runes into Mind Wrack while our Prestige hopefully blasts off and Mirror Blade bounces between us for a hot little tango. If you want to remove that, change functionality of +damage traits so they still offer DPS increases, but not burst increases.

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As someone who has been playing PVP for a long time with ranger, an example that I think you guys should be aware of is trait related, I never understood why beastmaster has traits that benefit the player, whereas the correct one was more to benefit pets while There are traits that have some benefits for pets when it was meant to be just for the player.

Another thing is about amulets, I think they are very limited, it would be nice if we had points to select how much strength, accuracy and so on.

Finally balance so that there is more than one option for each class to choose whether to play either power, condition, bunker or healing.But having the balance so that one is not superior to the other, for example, healing or bunker becomes invincible so that it can not die even taking large amount of damage.

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Taken a long break from spvp, and don't believe there is anything I can say that hasn't already been said. BUT.....

The one thing I would ask for is to stop dropping balance patch mid season. You get 8 weeks of seasonal play to determine balance changes needed. Balance patch should drop immediately at end of season, to allow players time to muck about & familiarise with new builds. It also provides a two-week window to wind back any changes if necessary.

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Long time pvper here.

  1. Id like precision to take a bigger part in condition builds' damage
  2. I think invulns/ evades/ blocks should lower self movement speed or be immobile in general while skills that reduce damage taken actively stay not affecting movement speed.
  3. Some way for slow power weapon builds without precision to be viable through attrition (maybe power scaled debuffs like pulmonary impact?) for weapons like warrior mace, hammer, necro greatsword/dagger.
  4. Less passive easy might stacks like rev/warrior/holo passive, i prefer combo field blasting being a better might builder since it can be interrupted/mitigated. Maybe even keep might as a pve/teamfight viable thing but not so crazy free in solo pvp.
  5. Builds with lots of mobility/evades should not have access to weakness
  6. High power damage potential needs practical mitigation or predictable visible ques (i.e. reaper high damage but lacks evade/block/invuln so can be damage pressured to mitigate their damage, but on the other hand mirage can evade and big damage burst on a moving target simultaneously lacks damage mitigation counterplay same as old d/p bound daredevil as well as evade condi thief please avoid concept builds like these)

As for what kind of meta i would like,I think the specs with the most predictable/visible animations for their damage should have the most skill potential/viability. In the current meta i like how both condi and power is viable with more power builds than condi being viable. I also like how anything that tries to be full bunker is still solo killable by many builds in the meta.

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Also many skills feel unbalanced due to bugs, I suggest seriously looking at some of the hitboxes and pathing on many skills such as,Guardians thrown torch skillJumping bulls chargeEarthshakers inability to hit people downhilljumping while using DD staff 3strafing slow moving projectiles causing them to obstruct/out of range/missand many more...

some will make certain class mechanics feel weaker or stronger and may prompt future balancing.

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@coro.3176 said:I think there is (still) a disparity between Elite Specs, and things that have been buffed to Elite Spec levels vs the original Core Specs, and things that are balanced at a Core Spec level.

Eg. things playing at Elite Spec levels of balance:

  • Holosmith
  • Firebrand

Eg. Things playing at Core Spec levels of balance:

  • Core Necro (both condi and power)
  • Core Engineer (both condi and power)

I can only relay my experience trying to play condi engi and get my damaging conditions to stick. I land my skills, but they are always cleansed much faster than I can apply them because the cleanse in the game seems to be tuned for builds that apply many many more conditions + corruptions (scourge, thief/dd, mirage etc). Where does that leave me with my 12s cooldown blowtorch and a few cover conditions to frantically try and get on top of it?

It just seems like a lot of builds didn't keep pace with the power creep that came with the elite specs.

Personally, I'd prefer if everything was nerfed down to ~2015 levels of balance. However, if that's not going to happen, I'd prefer if the older specs (mostly core specs) were brought up to par with the power creep in a way that doesn't make the current OP specs even worse. I get that that is challenging when elite specs can pick and choose from core as they wish.

@Zawn.9647 said:
  • How Conditions WorkI believe that Conditions should be a Damage over Time effect. And by DOT, i mean that it shouldnt kill anyone as fast as power damage. Condi builds playstyle should be to slowly grind the target HP while being tanky/slippery... Not blinking in your face and dealing like 2k+ burn ticks in an instant

I agree with you but there are a few things to consider:

Currently, condi builds don't really have more survivability than power builds thanks to tanky amulets being removed. The ones that do have more survivability (mirage, thief) get it from gimmicky mechanics rather than any innate

What are you talking about ? Condi thief can just spam all condis in the world, back with 2 sword or teleport, stealth, come back, apply condis. Same go with mesmers.Rev condi also have much survivability

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mnGzpPB.jpg

Please observe this graph for everything that is wrong with the feel of fights in GW2.

The top one is what players want.

The bottom one is what players get.

Note: by "Invuln" I mean any mechanic that effectively prevents the player from being hit. So this may be "actual" invuln, but can equally mean evades, blocks, stealth, the ability to kite away forever.

Just, in general, reduce the capacity of builds to stack 25 might and be able to hit for 50%+ HP every few seconds. And on the flip side, reduce the capacity of builds to remain effectively invulnerable for long periods and heal back 80%+ of their HP every ~20s.

The two go hand in hand, you cannot address one without the other.

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this is nice ! and we welcome all the balance changes and the wish to fix things ! game is really unbalanced right now ! but this is something important for me to ask! what about PVE balance? i;ve seen post about WvW balance and PVP balance but the PVE really do need balance aswell.right now theres an awful state of the game that there are hanful of classes that are meta and the rest not worth runing for pve.and as much as i understand the pvp balance and wvw balance are critical cause people are competetive there the pve got some aspect of competetive in the raids and fractals and the balance there is not less important or broken.

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Hello, as long-term thief playing from shadow since release and never posting on forums I would like to use this opportunity to raise a point about STAFF thief.

Staff thief, deadly arts + trickery + daredevil build utilizing traits such as (but not strictly) bound, improvisation and trickster and marauder stats with rune of daredevil (but not strictly) used to provide an awesome and truly viable deviation from the normal thief play style (while still staying true to the profession core concepts). Utilizing a build such as this would allow a thief to fill very much a more BRUISER type of role instead of a standard ROAMER.

It was powerful, it was fun, it was counter-able.

This type of thief build / play style was in the spotlight for a very short time during very early season 2 and 3 of pvp and never truly took it's place in mainstream player consciousness as one of the prime thief builds.

Myself, playing that build and achieving great results on the Ranked leader boards for shorter or longer time frames, can attest to this builds extended viability throughout a much longer period of time than those couple of seasons when it was fresh and new and still not hit with indirect nerfs such as:

  • Revamping the staff 5 animation (it suddenly became really clunky, which was later corrected)
  • Prohibiting Steal during staff 5 animation
  • Nerfing the range of Steal for daredevil

Of course, it was not just these nerfs that sidelined this type of play style but also the ever changing meta and balance of the game.

BUT this part of the great thief profession truly never left the player consciousness and is getting lesser scale revivals to this day which can be witnessed in recent emerging popularity of staff WvW thief build (using acro) and the freshest Bunker thief double staff build rising to the top of metabattle lists.

Still, I see the current staff thief builds as a shade of what was, so WHAT I WOULD LIKE IS:

  • For Anet team to see how they can expand on thief's potential bruiser role with Staff as the central weapon of such builds.
  • Care not to indirectly nerf existing and functional thief builds (like staff thief was) when balancing the Daredevil trait line.
  • Make the staff weapon the prime weapon for the Daredevil trait line (but not exclusive at all) and again... expand on this part of the thief profession which truly can elevate it out of the presumed roles.

- In other words, let's not ignore it! The potential is great to develop a huge new side of the thief profession that can take it's place among the Deadeyes, the D/Ps and S/Ds and condis, albeit having it's very own role and spot :)

P.S. I know nothing is truly simple and I am giving input just on one specific part of the machine and am far from knowing Anets plans and what future elite specs could bring or not bring and what new roles will they expand on for each class.. I mean who knows... But still I think this is valuable input for a small part that was just, or seemed to be at least, ignored.

Great appreciation for the whole of Anet team, and thanks for everything you've provided us with over the years!

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@"Gogdarth.6741" said:Problem with this is that it's a knee-jerk reaction, and most of this feedback about "overtuned" doesn't come from a place of understanding WHY it happens. Every mesmer jumps to defend Mirage because two reasons - it's all we have left PvP-wise, and all of those suggestions and horridly misinformed. No, in fact, we don't really have infinite dodges. Warrior has more, hilariously enough. So is every Thief ever. Even Holo.

Meanwhile, "remove evasive mirror because it doesn't allow rangers/deadeyes to do much". Should they not have hard-counters while using a low risk/high reward ranged playstyle? This trait was that. Gone now, quite literally. And both of them have weapon swap too, so it's not like they shouldn't/couldn't have used their melee options. Yet, the kneejerk killed the trait, but problem is that it's a core trait. It made all mesmer builds worse with this loss. So did Blinding Dissipation, because now having blind every 25-ish seconds is worthless. "Mirage has too much", so they nerf Bountiful Disillusionment - another core trait.

A reminder: There's now not a single grandmaster in Chaos traitline that isn't nerfed into half or more of it's previous effectiveness. Neither of them feel nor perform influentially whatsoever, and people will use Chaos purely because staff trait still gives protection and minors are decent, at least. And maybe chaos storm on heal, but honestly - many opt to live without it, going for Master of Manipulations instead, for it's not that reliable due to having a super weird invisible casttime (seems to trigger after lengthy aftercasts, which all of our heals actually have, lol).

There are a lot of other changes like that, too. For example, I used to run a build relying on Blurred Inscriptions (yeah don't judge), back when it was in Domination. And surprisingly enough, it made sense to be there - most of the signets are, in fact, not support-oriented at all, with the weird exception of Inspiration one (hoo boy, this button). They're all about making you do more damage or controlling (in other words, dominating) the enemy through stuns, or perception tricks (see Midnight). Yet for the raid crowd, trait was moved to Inspiration, making it unusable in PvP and killing my build off. Bit of a personal example, but what it illustrates is that: When you do a change on a mesmer, you're sticking your fingers into a very intricate web of co-dependencies. Nerfing one trait hits everything else which could've benefit from it.

Mirage is nigh-unplayable without Deceptive Evasion, which is why it ran and runs Dueling, which is why it also used whatever defensive utility it could provide. Initially we didn't even use pistols or relied on Deadshot, it was Carrion or Sage with axe/torch. (Which was a lot more fun than scepter/pistol, in my biased opinion) - but overnerfing due to not knowing what exactly to change is what brought us to this sad build which people still call overtuned, but in reality it's just "works while nothing else really does".Mirage uses Chaos because it's on-dodge traits that give it small durations of Regen and even smaller dash of Protection (literally 1.5 seconds) is in nice synergy with Chaos minors, plus it elevated staff from "directionless weapon which doesn't know what it's doing" to "defensive tool with condition pressure". The other options Chaos provided were secondary, but nice - having stab gave it a different feel from other mesmer specs, but now it's 1 second of it. Might as well not be there at all, in other words.Mirage is exceptionally bad without Infinite Horizon, and it only works because it literally has the potential to multiply your condition damage of ambushes by four. If anything, it just goes to show that it's base offense is kind of pathetic at this point, if it needs a literal efficiency multiplier to really do anything worthwhile. The "clones dodge too" thing is neat, and is a small way of retaining your shatter/ambush fodder amidst, well, everything, but ultimately it's something we can live without.

As of now, it's like Jenga after 2 hours of intense playing. We're being against it not because "class bias" - we kinda don't like Mirage too, in general, because it's just an upgrade over Core with an IH gimmick, while not really feeling all that new or exciting. This "dodge while CC'd" thing people keep bringing up is neither new to us, nor that gamechanging. Absolutely everything has some other CC to follow up anyway, but I won't be mad about Mirage being unable to dodge when CC'd without EM as GM trait. That's fair. But don't go about claiming that we deal some incredible super-duper damage while totally invulnerable at all times, because it's simply not the case. Individually, our skills tend to do very little. It's always about a sum of it's parts. Deceptive Evasion + IH wombo-combo is what you're against, not "little distortions which, as a concept, isn't even that new to a class or never happened before or that overpowered".

Core issue is IH, of course. While I have few ideas on how to rework it in a fun way while keeping Mirage playable, I think such a discussion is best suited for Mesmer forums, as it's more of a "all gamemodes/general mechanics" thing rather than strictly PvP-oriented number juggling.

But, I'll use the chance to highlight some issues mesmer faces here, to maybe ward off uncalled for decisions. Our class is in a dire state for these gamemodes, despite this one build still making people salty because this one trait makes us playable by doing a literal "x4".

Also, to those who say "mantras r bad", I'll just say this - We'll still 100-0 you even without MoP. It's not that integral to burst rotation. You die to us stacking +damage traits and sigils/runes into Mind Wrack while our Prestige hopefully blasts off and Mirror Blade bounces between us for a hot little tango. If you want to remove that, change functionality of +damage traits so they still offer DPS increases, but not burst increases.

Well written, you get it. I like that analogy to Jenga - in a nutshell that is pretty much how it is right now.

A side note regarding reflect - there should be zero complaining about reflects after the have been largely deleted a few patches ago. Random unpredictable 2s on evade with 10s ICD (laughably bad rng and still passive - ie brainless, but now it's a complete afterthought) and only 2s on mirror heal since master of manipulation got changed to superspeed...

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We have identified the overall power of the game has become an issue and we wish to address this in the competitive game modes.

I am not a pvp player but sometimes, if stuff gets complicated, it takes a simple approach from someone who doesnt overcomplicate things to find an easy solution.

It seems all the new elite specs and resulting builds and party combos have led to a power creep. Instead of micromanaging nerfing all of it again individually, how about just raising base vitality toughness of all classes in pvp and see where this gets us.

And even though i dont play pvp (never really have in 7 years and 14k hours), I am still a competitive player, as I enjoy wvw (rank 3.5k). In wvw I often felt that some balance changes that were designed to adress balance in instanced pve or pvp had a negative impact on wvw balance, so I appreciate your approach of splitting skill balance more between those 3 game modes.

I also dont play pvp because I think its unbalanced in general. The biggest problem pvp seems to have from an outsiders point of view seems to be all the bots, hacking/afkers that seem to be all present in that game mode. So it doesnt matter to me, how balanced classes/skills will be in the future, I wouldnt consider trying pvp again before I dont think that the problem of hackers/bots/afkers is taken care of first.

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Specs that in my feeling needs some nerfing or tweak in power:

  • Fire Weaver - It is hard to learn spec, cannot deny that. But when you got the muscle memory right, it can evade 3/4 of time. Remaining 1/4 is spent on burst combos, which are really strong. One good combo can stack like 20 Burns in 2.5 sec. It's sudden, it hurts.
  • Tactic Warrior - Dmg increase on target with barrier is INSANE. Easy might stacking is also quite disturbing.
  • Condi DD Thief - Whilst Weaver evades 3/4 of time, this guy here is evading 90% of time, constantly applying condis in the meantime. Quite impossible to track his dodges and all the evasion skills to look to the window. I agree that dmg is not top notch, but it is simply cancer to play against.
  • DE - It does not seem to be extremely op to me. It is simply very obnoxious to play against. So many stealths, so hard hitting. Fits the sniper fantasy i guess, is it healthy though?
  • Rifle Tools Holo - It feels too oppressive to play against, whilst being really persistent. I see sustain is much built-in the Core Engi and any nerfs to Core Engi will cause havoc to every remaining Engi builds. Therefore, I see it better to nerf some Holo part (and fix the unused traits). Heat therapy seems to be the best thing to nerf. Perhaps make Pristine Light Beam turn stealth off whilst using?
  • Mirage Condi - I do not feel it is op by any means (it is very nerfed tbh). Although, it is annoying. Also, mechanics of Mirage does not seem to compliment shatters, which is kind of a anti-synergy to Mirage's kit itself. I see necessity of big rework/tweaks to how clones are behaving with Mirror Cloak.
  • Soulbeast - For me it feels more overall consistent than Holo. Nice sustain, nice dmg. It has everything. I guess it would be good to align some numbers. Not much work necessary here.
  • Firebrand - Uh ah. Feels too strong. Feels completely broken if more than 1 in the team. I believe some non-stacking mechanic between FBs abilities should be considered.

Specs that I feel needs some love:

  • Revenant - Energy mechanics should be revised. Pretty much everything costs it, but nothing is recovering. Decision making is good, but in Revenant's case I feel like it is too much.
  • Reaper - a slight numbers alignment.

In below's topic we agreed that it is very hard to balance specs one by one, because one fixed is influencing whole balance. Therefore, you can plan perfect balance cahnges to current game state. However after you start to implement these on one spec per X weeks, game balance gets disrupted until all planned changes are loaded.The best way to fix the balance is to make a huge one-time patch after many tests with good players.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1071716#Comment_1071716

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Just a list of things I dislike in gw2 pvp which evolved even worse with each expansion:

1. too much passives: Traitlines offering too much passive effects that carries bad players too much and made gameplay less interactive and intuitive.2. skills that offers too much: doing damage while evading, doing damage while blocking, or skills that CC+power damage+conditions+self gain boons... some skills are just overloaded with effects, but the worst are doing damage while negating damage.3. instant skills: offensive skills with no activation time are just bad, this let the enemy no time to react. defensive abilities like stun breaks wich are instant are ok.4. too much boons: perma 25 might, perma fury, perma stab, even near perma quickness are a problem, there are too many skills that offer boons (see no.2) boons should be used tactically at the right time to get the best result and not spamming boons like 24/75. too much conditions: same as no.4, there is also too much condition spam and spike damage for conditions. using the condtion application should be tactical at the right time. But the game seems to develop like "too much conditions? here you have more cleanses". the answer to condition creep is cleasing creep.6. too much defensives: evade, evade, block, evade, invuln, block yeah everybody who see this in combat is just frustrated, especially when the ememy is able to deal damage to you while negating all damage. like no.4 and 5 defensives should be used tactically and not spammable.7. too much burst damage/one shots: dead in less then 2 sec? seems pretty common these days, when eating crits over 10k and more out of nowhere. this is just frustrating

I am not crying class X is too strong or too weak, this extreme creep of everything is a problem of every class especially of some elite specs.

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