Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Let's Talk About WvW Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

Recommended Posts

@arenta.2953 said:

  1. walls in WvW are NOT valuable to the defender. due to the range and damage of aoe spam, going on the wall is death. the only value a wall provides is slowing the enemy to give you time to get to the structure. compare this to when game came out, where AoE was alot lower dmg wise, and the only concern you had for being on wall was a scorpion wire. back then walls provided defenders with an advantage of seeing the enemy, longer range(bows), and able to back out at any time. making walls have a use to the defender would be nice for actually using them.

    So what, the zerker necro staff did not exist on release? Not to mention you could barely be near walls due to certain pre-balance
    arrowcarts
    .

Walls have a use and you stated it perfectly - its there to delay the enemy. Its there so that scouts can call out and so that players can arrive and fight each other. This is the core gameplay of WvW. When you try to hinder that... Well we already know what happens, because it
DID
happen. It slows WvW to a crawl and it forced Anet to rebalance siege costs and objective strength just to keep the gameplay going. If anything siege is
still lacking
, such as trebs being to costly in supply for their damage and rate of fire compared to catapults.

This thread really makes me fear for the future of WvW but I guess it cant get much worse.

are you really comparing zerker staff, to scourge? thats like comparing a nerf gun to an actual gun in terms of dmg.

even if we ignore the massive dmg difference, staff marks pop on contact, and don't have pulses. so first person to go in gets hit, but no one behind them does. compare that to scourge. Even with wells, zerker staff is of no note compared to condi scourge.

and how often did attackers build arrow carts, defenders did, an they still do. cause you can't exactly go to the edge of a wall now without being nuked.

heres a video, showing how much less AoE spam there was, as back then the only stuff you worried about 1 shotting you was a backstab from a thief. aka positioning.

so you'd have alot more single target skills. and defenders could actually last a while. sieges like this could actually take hours as both sides fought. rather than the absurd scourge zerg wiping you see now.

now, aoe spam can wipe out entire zergs. less skill more spam.....

See. Stuff like this actually pisses me off. You know why fights took hours? Because EWP was up every 3 minutes and the map was full of 80 people (Can literally see some 40 spawn from WP like 10 minutes into video in an actively contested keep). Not because damage was magically way lower (it was by maybe 10-15%) and TTK was way higher. There's multiple instances of pushes there insta dropping 5+ people if not more. Just like they do today when it is a giant blob v blob. Fights don't 'insta wipe' unless there is a serious number difference, and surprise, they insta wiped back then too! Demostrates a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 399
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

There’s to much of everything in low CD, wich creates the massive boonstacking, aoe spam and high damage builds with low risk gameplay... imo a good way to fix this would be shouts becomes shouts like they did on gw1 for example, they can or not have a boon associated with a direct affect and an icon would pop up saying wich shoutbisnafecting the ally, plus some classes ended having huge sustain and damage at same time while having strong cc.Note, equal shouts would not stack...would cancel the last one and apply the new one.This could be aplayed to several tiles of utilities.

Iterate what needs to continue to exist as a boon or some direct effect, what needs to stay condition or made it become an hex or direct effect to target.

In in terms of damage overall imo, if aoe + cleave skills could be reduced in quantity that would be great while maintaining similiar damage output.

Imo I think the reintroduction of some team gameplay spells like we add on gw1 would balance out the damage gameplay like those that would not allow more than 40%health in one it, with the addition of reducing the spam/stack gameplay and make players that want damage not allowing to be tanks at the same time due their classes mechanics.Maybe transform some trait core into elite and add a new one, to balance out what’s makes some elite specs so Strong.

Sorry the bad English :expressionless:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@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.

because it is only 'fine' if you ignore everything else.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Adjust the maximum might stacks from 25 to 20 in WvW/PvP. See how it goes. If still too oppressive, consider 15.

Make a lot more stuff tactical, rather than permanently maintainable/passive. Things I'd toss in this boat: reflects, stability, quickness (IMO this is a huge culprit for power creep when it became a boon instead of an effect).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@God.2708 said:

  1. walls in WvW are NOT valuable to the defender. due to the range and damage of aoe spam, going on the wall is death. the only value a wall provides is slowing the enemy to give you time to get to the structure. compare this to when game came out, where AoE was alot lower dmg wise, and the only concern you had for being on wall was a scorpion wire. back then walls provided defenders with an advantage of seeing the enemy, longer range(bows), and able to back out at any time. making walls have a use to the defender would be nice for actually using them.

    So what, the zerker necro staff did not exist on release? Not to mention you could barely be near walls due to certain pre-balance
    arrowcarts
    .

Walls have a use and you stated it perfectly - its there to delay the enemy. Its there so that scouts can call out and so that players can arrive and fight each other. This is the core gameplay of WvW. When you try to hinder that... Well we already know what happens, because it
DID
happen. It slows WvW to a crawl and it forced Anet to rebalance siege costs and objective strength just to keep the gameplay going. If anything siege is
still lacking
, such as trebs being to costly in supply for their damage and rate of fire compared to catapults.

This thread really makes me fear for the future of WvW but I guess it cant get much worse.

are you really comparing zerker staff, to scourge? thats like comparing a nerf gun to an actual gun in terms of dmg.

even if we ignore the massive dmg difference, staff marks pop on contact, and don't have pulses. so first person to go in gets hit, but no one behind them does. compare that to scourge. Even with wells, zerker staff is of no note compared to condi scourge.

and how often did attackers build arrow carts, defenders did, an they still do. cause you can't exactly go to the edge of a wall now without being nuked.

heres a video, showing how much less AoE spam there was, as back then the only stuff you worried about 1 shotting you was a backstab from a thief. aka positioning.

so you'd have alot more single target skills. and defenders could actually last a while. sieges like this could actually take hours as both sides fought. rather than the absurd scourge zerg wiping you see now.

now, aoe spam can wipe out entire zergs. less skill more spam.....

See. Stuff like this actually pisses me off. You know why fights took hours? Because EWP was up every 3 minutes and the map was full of 80 people (Can literally see some 40 spawn from WP like 10 minutes into video in an actively contested keep). Not because damage was magically way lower (it was by maybe 10-15%) and TTK was way higher. There's multiple instances of pushes there insta dropping 5+ people if not more. Just like they do today when it is a giant blob v blob. Fights don't 'insta wipe' unless there is a serious number difference, and surprise, they insta wiped back then too! Demostrates a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues.

AgreedAnd I'd like to add that 30 ptv guardians doing the old staff 1 was a fairly common Zerg tactic. Not the same as scourge aoe being attached to their ankles but just as corny... Though a clever player could maneuver inside the enemy group without being instantly obliterated by people who don't even know you're there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main issue is that no one takes you guys seriously anymore. By "you guys" I mean the come-and-go WvW teams.The community memes a few years ago went on about how the WvW team is made up of 2 interns. Then we laughed how it's just the janitor working on WvW. Now we don't even laugh anymore. No offense to the interns and the janitor.

First things first, you'll have to work on gaining some actual credibility in this community. Are you guys even working on alliances? Most WvW vets don't believe you people anymore. What about the WvW lag? Has any of you played enough to notice how three-way fights in SM feel like?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would it be better if the profession balance was decoupled from WvW by making specific Mastery build with special abilities that gives specific roles, like lets say you want to be frontline in a large battle and you take a traitline that gives Shield wall skill which in group becomes stronger and people turtle in, or a traitline that gives Comet skill that drops large aoe that people channel together, or a they summon a monster, or for a scout/ saboteur it gives them way to pillage resource from camps or dolyaks. Something like the PVE masteries which are stronger then professions own skills, since the current ones are little bit on the boring side.Also have you though about special objectives that people fight over, like a world boss where one group can take control over similar to Heroes of the Storm and at the same time the big team that holds lets say Stonemist can build a golem knight statue protector that can't leave the castle and we get kaiju fight of sorts.I know these are over the top but wouldn't a kaiju battle be cool for special event at least, also i think there is a way to implement since the Auric basin meta works in this manner.In a way WvW should probably have its own skills from masteries that are just for WvW, it worked for open world PVE didn't it, in that way there wouldn't be much need to touch and rebalance skills cause something was changed in PVE or sPVP and made it broken in WvW.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@noiwk.2760 said:

@noiwk.2760 said:try play Scourge in any other mode that isnt WvW Scourge right now after last patch is completely useless and trash in all game modes and content aside from WvW where they failed to nerf him and made him even more broken. dont get it wrong tho. i agree Scourge is broken on wvw along with some other classes. but idk why they would only focus on balancing wvw now and pvp.. if Scourge is nerfed on WvW (which it should be) im asking it balanced and buffed in the PVE to be atlkeast use in some mode..

This is a WvW balance discussion. We can talk about Scourge in other areas in other threads. Let's please keep the thread focused

i would.. but there isnt lets talk about PVE balance because apparently the game company decided PVE isnt important.

i main Scourge and with last patch i watched Scourge becoming an only WvW vailble . now you ask it nerfed in WvW which is only mode Scourge is still used.

so i gotta stand up and say nope.. not unless /untill they fix it in other game modes. you are now asking my class being removed from the game ..

Go to the professions or necro subsection, that's where all the pve discussions for classes happens and has been for years, unlike wvw which has been ignored for years. You can go back in this forum and see the changes we were asking for scourge aren't even what was done, even in the last patch. Now there will be two teams handling balance for their sections, go to the Professions forums if you have pve concerns.

Lastly, to complain about wvw changing a class, when wvw has always been balanced to pve needs, and very little was changed to cater more to pvp, over 7 years. While pve might enjoy spamming out boons and slapping out massive damage on npcs that have millions of health, it doesn't work so well on other players, things need to change and it needs to be better balanced, for all sides.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@God.2708 said:

  1. walls in WvW are NOT valuable to the defender. due to the range and damage of aoe spam, going on the wall is death. the only value a wall provides is slowing the enemy to give you time to get to the structure. compare this to when game came out, where AoE was alot lower dmg wise, and the only concern you had for being on wall was a scorpion wire. back then walls provided defenders with an advantage of seeing the enemy, longer range(bows), and able to back out at any time. making walls have a use to the defender would be nice for actually using them.

    So what, the zerker necro staff did not exist on release? Not to mention you could barely be near walls due to certain pre-balance
    arrowcarts
    .

Walls have a use and you stated it perfectly - its there to delay the enemy. Its there so that scouts can call out and so that players can arrive and fight each other. This is the core gameplay of WvW. When you try to hinder that... Well we already know what happens, because it
DID
happen. It slows WvW to a crawl and it forced Anet to rebalance siege costs and objective strength just to keep the gameplay going. If anything siege is
still lacking
, such as trebs being to costly in supply for their damage and rate of fire compared to catapults.

This thread really makes me fear for the future of WvW but I guess it cant get much worse.

are you really comparing zerker staff, to scourge? thats like comparing a nerf gun to an actual gun in terms of dmg.

even if we ignore the massive dmg difference, staff marks pop on contact, and don't have pulses. so first person to go in gets hit, but no one behind them does. compare that to scourge. Even with wells, zerker staff is of no note compared to condi scourge.

and how often did attackers build arrow carts, defenders did, an they still do. cause you can't exactly go to the edge of a wall now without being nuked.

heres a video, showing how much less AoE spam there was, as back then the only stuff you worried about 1 shotting you was a backstab from a thief. aka positioning.

so you'd have alot more single target skills. and defenders could actually last a while. sieges like this could actually take hours as both sides fought. rather than the absurd scourge zerg wiping you see now.

now, aoe spam can wipe out entire zergs. less skill more spam.....

See. Stuff like this actually pisses me off. You know why fights took hours? Because EWP was up every 3 minutes and the map was full of 80 people (Can literally see some 40 spawn from WP like 10 minutes into video in an actively contested keep). Not because damage was magically way lower (it was by maybe 10-15%) and TTK was way higher. There's multiple instances of pushes there insta dropping 5+ people if not more. Just like they do today when it is a giant blob v blob. Fights don't 'insta wipe' unless there is a serious number difference, and surprise, they insta wiped back then too! Demostrates a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues.

actually, you can see the same situation now. but the difference is scourge AoEs wipe out the other zerg so fast that there is no holding.

zergs are wiped out faster an more fully now. so theres no regroup.

go ahead, go check out SoS's fight with AR last night. outside garrison, on the bridge over the sentry.

one zerg would be wiped out by AoE. and would reform. to go back. not regorup. reform entirely.

fighting over the garrison itself? using the walls, cannons, mortars? nope. as it would be so one sided to the attacker.

a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues? i've played WvW since launch. so what makes my experience "lacking understanding" and yours so right? huh?

are you saying me playing WvW since launch has counted for nothing? that me running as commander tag for the first 2 YEARS of the game doesn't count for experiencing wvw?

i've looked at my old livestreams, youtube videos.

and compared it to now. your saying that none of that counts. that i lack understanding?

so tell me, why is your opinion on whats wrong and right with WvW "right", and my opinion "a total lack of understanding"

and btw, yes. dmg back then was way lower. why?

well. AoE.

single target hits of 10k dps. is 10k dps

AoE hits of 8k dps on 5 enemies. is 40k dps

the change from single/weapon swing arc dps. to wells, shades, and any AoE. has lead to an increase in dps. add to that the increased range of aoe. as its not longer how far your weapon swings.

plus, condi ignoring armor. and alot of these AoE (scourge mainly) being condi focused. increases dps due to no dmg reduction from armor/toughness at all

meteor and barrage were the only aoe range of note back then. guess what both of them use for dmg. not condi. so having max toughness reduced the dmg by ~33% from the original 2k armor to 3k. oh, and both can be blocked.(they not unblockable)

and condi ignores that initial 2k armor. so dmg scales even more.

how much condi cleanse do you have? cause pulses that apply more and more condi, will likely overcome it. and resistance, provided it isnt removed by a bubble. isnt long duration or a common boon. missing entirely on most.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ScrapperScrapper is still way too powerful. Not my opinion, but I think people have a serious problem with this class being able to kill other players. The intention of the previous balances was to turn Scrapper into a tank. However, the current situation promotes increased damage output, which is something Scrapper should not have. New Scrapper should be a trade-off power for sustain. What we have at the moment: power = sustain. Equipping Scrapper still grants access to damage-multipliers. If you play a power build, equipping Scrapper can significantly increase your damage output. Still horrible compared to any serious class out there, but it does.

Scrapper TANK according to the balance team is barrier-spamming. As far as I noticed, you lack the proper data and features at the moment to adjust the barrier-output correctly. It generates acceptable results in PVE, if you fight the correct enemies (number & strength), but can be penetrated by every serious enemy in all game-modes with ease. Re-purpose object in motion into "Apply Protection to yourself, whenever you receive Superspeed" and get rid of the damage-multipliers. Or boost the barrier-generation while under the effect of Superspeed. That way you could enhance the survivability of the Scrapper, lower its already hated DPS and give Superspeed a proper purpose. Most of the stuff already exists, all we need is a little ... synergy.

Impact Savant? Give us a fixed load of barrier per hit, which scales with our healing-power? So if we want to increase barrier output, we should use defensive stats - as intended for tanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my honest opinion true balance will never occur in this game because there are simply to many variables. Even if you take away letting people create their builds and have presets for players to select from there will always be a yin to a yang. Everything is situational. There is not a balance patch conceivable that will allow a 10 man havok group compete against a 50 man zerg.

So I would focus on the following:Removing permanent/long stealth's and invulnerability.

Reduce boons potency. I believe reducing the number of affected parties for a boon would have a negative effect on groups because it would encourage more commanders to demand specific classes forcing people to play classes that they may not want and make their experience less enjoyable. Just listen to the moans when you ask someone to switch to their firebrand.

All cleave skills and AOE needs to max out at 5 targets.

There should be some protection from constant boon ripping. If a player could only have "X" amount of boons ripped every "X" amount of seconds that may help. If this did happen then you would have to rethink about all traits that do extra damage to people with no boons. Because it would harder for people to get to that point.

Make all specializations and classes viable and bring something truly unique to the table even core specs. Only something that they can do while on that spec. and it needs to be good an not like the elite specializations for races because those are lame and gimmicky. Make it something a zerg commander has to think for a minute if they can do without it or not. I was thinking along the lines of specialized counters. Example a Core Guard have the ability to burst the enemies teams Winds of Disenchantment or a Core Ele the ability to absorb sand shades. Things like that.

I don't think we need to focus on breaking up the meta but making it so that you have so many options to pick from that you redefine the meta every night. There is so much focus on bringing classes down I say we lift the ones that are down up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said: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.

Thank you very much for finally addressing this pressing issue. I want this game to be great but after 7 years of what feels like neglect for the competitive modes I am actually considered quiting. The power levels are absolutely insane it's simply not fun to play but this post gives me at least a bit of hope. You wanted feedback, so here is some:

Boons should be what there were originally designed for: temporal enhancements. Most boons today can have 100% uptime or at least too close to permanent. I think boons should never achieve this (at least not with 1 character and many classes can provide such things, stacking will always enable higher boon uptimes). It takes away the tactical aspects of the competitive modes. Why should you time anything when protection is nearly always up or you just push with tons of stability making CC meaningless. More boon strip isn't the answer, that is something we should know by now. If boons are temporal enhancements again you can adjust boon strip accordingly.

Damage, now that is a tricky topic but I say look at the base health. Do we really need skills (often on short cooldowns) hitting for 10k when base health is not even 20k for any class? I don't think so. Sure equipment can make a huge difference but in WvW you can easily have 50 players using such skills all at once, what difference does equipment make than? Not that much. You just get insta deleted which is no fun and in the case of a new player that one might never get back into the game mode. I think damage has to be more evenly distributed among skills. No "I press skill number 3 and hit for 10k dmg". Burst should still be possible, it is even very important to not let bunker builds run rampant. But achieving high damage should be more complex than pressing 2 buttons and incidentally deleting 2 people which you haven't even targeted in the first place. This alone could raise TTK a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can listen to as many people as you want but at the end of the day you need to have a understanding and grasp of the game mode yourself. We need someone in charge that knows what's going or is willing to put in the time to figure out what's right and wrong with wvw. There's a few fight commanders and players you should listen to (past and present) and that's it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@hunkamania.7561 said:You can listen to as many people as you want but at the end of the day you need to have a understanding and grasp of the game mode yourself. We need someone in charge that knows what's going or is willing to put in the time to figure out what's right and wrong with wvw. There's a few fight commanders and players you should listen to (past and present) and that's it.

Time Will Tell but to be fairHe's here now to ask thisSo there's a start

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kind of a crazy idea but what if everyone got a breaker bar? Stability could then heal your breaker bar if it was chucked down. CC skills could then be balanced around everyone having one and it could also be a “trade off” for more powerful classes such as Holo (ie pick Holo and you get ½ sized bar).

Other random thoughts, I also like the idea of might capping at 15 or 20 a stack. If a skill shares a boon it should be on a longer cd. Skills should only do one thing; they shouldn’t damage and then apply a condition and then provide a boon all in one go.

Maybe a little off topic, but in order to give the meta more diversity, create thematic class roles outside regular combat roles as well. Such as engineer kits do more damage to walls and gates (demolition experts). Guardians could heal lords or supervisors for more during combat while defending. Mesmers could create zerg illusions making your numbers look larger from a distance. Thieves could steal supply from enemy camps. Rangers could tame local wildlife to attack enemies. Eles could call forth a fog of war making the battlefield harder to see. After a battle Necros could summon the bones of the fallen to create stationary allies for the next battle. Revenants could call legends of the mists to provide blessings for buildings or lords. Warriors could train non-lord npcs to be more effective in battle. Something cool, useful, and unique to foster roles and comp diversity.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by, communication is always appreciated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@arenta.2953 said:

@God.2708 said:

  1. walls in WvW are NOT valuable to the defender. due to the range and damage of aoe spam, going on the wall is death. the only value a wall provides is slowing the enemy to give you time to get to the structure. compare this to when game came out, where AoE was alot lower dmg wise, and the only concern you had for being on wall was a scorpion wire. back then walls provided defenders with an advantage of seeing the enemy, longer range(bows), and able to back out at any time. making walls have a use to the defender would be nice for actually using them.

    So what, the zerker necro staff did not exist on release? Not to mention you could barely be near walls due to certain pre-balance
    arrowcarts
    .

Walls have a use and you stated it perfectly - its there to delay the enemy. Its there so that scouts can call out and so that players can arrive and fight each other. This is the core gameplay of WvW. When you try to hinder that... Well we already know what happens, because it
DID
happen. It slows WvW to a crawl and it forced Anet to rebalance siege costs and objective strength just to keep the gameplay going. If anything siege is
still lacking
, such as trebs being to costly in supply for their damage and rate of fire compared to catapults.

This thread really makes me fear for the future of WvW but I guess it cant get much worse.

are you really comparing zerker staff, to scourge? thats like comparing a nerf gun to an actual gun in terms of dmg.

even if we ignore the massive dmg difference, staff marks pop on contact, and don't have pulses. so first person to go in gets hit, but no one behind them does. compare that to scourge. Even with wells, zerker staff is of no note compared to condi scourge.

and how often did attackers build arrow carts, defenders did, an they still do. cause you can't exactly go to the edge of a wall now without being nuked.

heres a video, showing how much less AoE spam there was, as back then the only stuff you worried about 1 shotting you was a backstab from a thief. aka positioning.

so you'd have alot more single target skills. and defenders could actually last a while. sieges like this could actually take hours as both sides fought. rather than the absurd scourge zerg wiping you see now.

now, aoe spam can wipe out entire zergs. less skill more spam.....

See. Stuff like this actually pisses me off. You know why fights took hours? Because EWP was up every 3 minutes and the map was full of 80 people (Can literally see some 40 spawn from WP like 10 minutes into video in an actively contested keep). Not because damage was magically way lower (it was by maybe 10-15%) and TTK was way higher. There's multiple instances of pushes there insta dropping 5+ people if not more. Just like they do today when it is a giant blob v blob. Fights don't 'insta wipe' unless there is a serious number difference, and surprise, they insta wiped back then too! Demostrates a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues.

actually, you can see the same situation now. but the difference is scourge AoEs wipe out the other zerg so fast that there is no holding.

zergs are wiped out faster an more fully now. so theres no regroup.

go ahead, go check out SoS's fight with AR last night. outside garrison, on the bridge over the sentry.

one zerg would be wiped out by AoE. and would reform. to go back. not regorup. reform entirely.

fighting over the garrison itself? using the walls, cannons, mortars? nope. as it would be so one sided to the attacker.

a total lack of understanding of WvW history and its issues? i've played WvW since launch. so what makes my experience "lacking understanding" and yours so right? huh?

are you saying me playing WvW since launch has counted for nothing? that me running as commander tag for the first 2 YEARS of the game doesn't count for experiencing wvw?

i've looked at my old livestreams, youtube videos.

and compared it to now. your saying that none of that counts. that i lack understanding?

so tell me, why is your opinion on whats wrong and right with WvW "right", and my opinion "a total lack of understanding"

and btw, yes. dmg back then was way lower. why?

well. AoE.

single target hits of 10k dps. is 10k dps

AoE hits of 8k dps on 5 enemies. is 40k dps

the change from single/weapon swing arc dps. to wells, shades, and any AoE. has lead to an increase in dps. add to that the increased range of aoe. as its not longer how far your weapon swings.

plus, condi ignoring armor. and alot of these AoE (scourge mainly) being condi focused. increases dps due to no dmg reduction from armor/toughness at all

meteor and barrage were the only aoe range of note back then. guess what both of them use for dmg. not condi. so having max toughness reduced the dmg by ~33% from the original 2k armor to 3k. oh, and both can be blocked.(they not unblockable)

and condi ignores that initial 2k armor. so dmg scales even more.

how much condi cleanse do you have? cause pulses that apply more and more condi, will likely overcome it. and resistance, provided it isnt removed by a bubble. isnt long duration or a common boon. missing entirely on most.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wave_of_WrathSo what's this kitten about things back then being single target? Wells. Meteor Showers. Lava Font. Hammer Trains. You're also forgetting about the one person dying would rally an entire group back then. That seriously dragged fights out. (Unless there was a large number differential then the smaller group couldn't ever finish the larger one.) I say you don't understand WvW because you are actively pretending a huge portion of the game never existed and are completely missing the mark on why things were the way they were. Not to say scourges hitting 10 targets isn't power creep. You can definitely kill more players at a time now, but it isn't nearly as excessive of a difference you are making it out to be, and you are pinning rose tinted dreams (hour long keep fights) on totally the wrong things (it was the fact you could waypoint every 3 minutes, not damage being drastically lower).

And I'm glad you brought up AR vs SoS. I was there! ARs side following SF. We had ~30 people to SoS's ~45. Number differentials. I addressed that. Even with that all of those fights had multiple strikes and regroups, I have a couple of them recorded. They weren't of the same form, but that's to be expected because the reason for them is gone.

Pre-HoT groups would run around in all soldiers frontlines with semi-tanky backlines because healing was generally lacking except in the form of coordinated blasts. When dedicated healers were introduced it allowed the backlines to get glassier and glassier, which eventually outpaced the natural defenses of the frontline (made worse by the stab change), and so pirateship was born. HoT shifted this back towards melee slowly via damage reduction and nerfs on problem skills (baby gates) until condi took a huge hold and fights became giant toilet bowls of reapers shouting. PoF threw a wrench into everything because now your strongest melee DPS was also your strongest ranged DPS. Only remotely held at bay by firebrands performing every support role possible. This is definite power creep. I agree. It has been toned down drastically and basically the only thing that remains is FBs healing being a bit to high, which is countered by the fact scourges still hit to many targets. You get rid of those two things and fights will 'last' in a very similar manner to back then when WPs or Rallywars weren't involved.

I mean honestly. If you look at fights now compared to back then they are near identical. There is simply more to them. Scourges have shade bombs on top of their usual kit, and can support while doing it. Warriors have boon strip/winds on top of their usual kit and get to be glassier. Guardians have tomes on top of their usual kit and gained the ability to heal. Engineers actually get to get used in a zerg. That is power creep, yes, but it's evenly spread power creep. A general slow nerf would help, but realistically that means the issue is getting rid of entire abilities because it's not that they deal to much damage or support to much, but that they have more abilities to use. If your only goal is 'longer fights' just give everyone a +750 vitality increase when they enter WvW. Problem solved with 1/100th of the work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One major issue in competitive modes is the allowance of over performing mitigation of a weakness gained through a trade off. The armor balance is good where if I want max strike damage I need to go berserker, however, if I want more mitigation/recovery/health, I need to trade some DPS for that. THe issue happens with specific professions/builds where I can be as tanky or even more tanky than max toughness armor specs simply by rotating protects and invulns. This negates the weakness aspect of going max DPS (negates the "min" in "min-maxing, so it becomes more like max-maxing)

My suggestion would be to disallow any invuln which lets the player attack. Im fine with invulns like elementalist and engineer have, which disallow any action other than movement, but the ones some other specs have let you attack when they are up - allowing the player to build for max DPS and have a 12 second invuln + ~20 second protection window to inflict max strike damage while not having to deal with the negatives of playing a max DPS build.

Power strike damage was buffed when players asked for more "high risk high reward" build possibilities. This over performing mitigation issue negates the "high risk" portion of that build. Minimizing the risk of counterplay through the push of one button and through passives, has resulted in some of the highest strike damage builds having some of the lowest skill floors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@noiwk.2760 said:

@noiwk.2760 said:try play Scourge in any other mode that isnt WvW Scourge right now after last patch is completely useless and trash in all game modes and content aside from WvW where they failed to nerf him and made him even more broken. dont get it wrong tho. i agree Scourge is broken on wvw along with some other classes. but idk why they would only focus on balancing wvw now and pvp.. if Scourge is nerfed on WvW (which it should be) im asking it balanced and buffed in the PVE to be atlkeast use in some mode..

This is a WvW balance discussion. We can talk about Scourge in other areas in other threads. Let's please keep the thread focused

i would.. but there isnt lets talk about PVE balance because apparently the game company decided PVE isnt important.

i main Scourge and with last patch i watched Scourge becoming an only WvW vailble . now you ask it nerfed in WvW which is only mode Scourge is still used.

so i gotta stand up and say nope.. not unless /untill they fix it in other game modes. you are now asking my class being removed from the game ..

They decided PVE isnt important? Ironic, as historically in WvW threads the majority of the moaning is too many changes made for PVE disregarding how it affects the competitive modes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@hunkamania.7561 said:You can listen to as many people as you want but at the end of the day you need to have a understanding and grasp of the game mode yourself. We need someone in charge that knows what's going or is willing to put in the time to figure out what's right and wrong with wvw. There's a few fight commanders and players you should listen to (past and present) and that's it.

Agreed.

My thread asking for this was removed.

I hope there is little focus on what is said on the forums specifically because it is a jaded mess, and more from actually playing, incognito with large groups, small groups, big servers, smaller servers, PPT focused guilds and fight focused guilds so maybe, just maybe, the real problems of WvW can be looked into.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

okay, you got lots of feedback, and from the players that understand current issues more than me. I stopped playing WvW shortly after the PoF release because it was just unbearable to me.I am a player since the beta release, and back in Vanilla days, WvW was just so much more tactful. Fights lasted longer, stability was something we had to time in the right moment - if we didn't time it right, the probability of our squad losing the encounter was high. When I played in the WvW guild as a Guardian, and when I didn't use stability in time, they knew it - and that was a good feeling because I personally felt that I was important - my play, my skill, my gamesense.The same thing was about placing water fields in the correct place and then blasting it as a way to sustain throughout the fight.Mesmers using portals and veils as a way to bait opposing team's static fields etc.

The game had more clarity, and we were more dependent on each other.I am all about making ranger, thieves, and mesmers into professions that have more impact and are useful in zerg vs. zerg scenarios.But some things now are just...too much.

Guild Wars 2 is the only game that I've ever played that has such an easy way to gain 100% or very close to X resource. Critical chance, boon uptime, condition uptime. And also, the game with insanely low cooldowns on impactful skills.Guild Wars 2 has too many ways to avoid the damage - dodge, as it is, is already very strong, but combined with defensive boons and evades on skills it is even stronger - and frankly, it became just too frustrating to play against.Guild Wars 2 is Wonder. Because it is so much broken game and yet people are still playing both WvW and PvP. The trait system, as we have it, is the number one reason. It is filled with % dmg or defense increases. That is not how it should have been. The trait system should have altered the way your professions was played, but not just make it stronger and stronger. And yet, there are also might boon and vulnerability to even further buff damage output.Another thing which makes it all even worse is cleave. Everything cleaves. Skills can hit up to 10 players, and almost always hit 5, rarely 3 or 1. The same thing is with boons which buff basically the whole squad with just a few players.

Guild Wars 2 would have been perfect if skills didn't have such a cleave. 80% of skills to affect 1-3 players, 20% to affect 3+ it should have been, but as it is now it is more like 10% and 90% scenario which is just crazy.That argument of before which said that cleaving (or AoE) is better to have because then a small number of players have a chance to win against a higher number of opposite players does not hold water to me. Not in the current state of the game.More damage = more need for defense = more need to penetrate that defense = everything is overbuffed = skill spam becomes the king - or, the shorter cooldown is the way to win = game becomes horrible spam without any finesse and you yourself do not even matter at that point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi Everyone,

I wanted to clarify something from today’s blog post while also kicking off a discussion on a topic that’s near and dear to most competitive players: balance.

It’s important to understand that as competitive handles competitive balance, we will continue to primarily use skill splits in order to minimize the impact on the rest of the game. It’s certainly true that not all issues can be addressed through splits, and we will continue to work with the skills team to make sure we are making the right changes for the entire game when splitting is not a viable option.

Mini Balance Roadmap

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

The next balance update is going to be smaller than usual. We want to make a handful of very targeted changes to address the biggest pain points in the current meta, but we also want to bank some time for bigger plans moving forward. For a future balance update, we are looking at major adjustments across the board. The goal is to re-establish what the overall power level for competitive modes, and then bring everything down to meet that. In true gw2 fashion, everything is on the table.

With that said, we’re not going to nerf just for the sake of nerfing. Every change should make sense, and every change should be working toward a bigger goal. This patch is still super early in development, so I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s definitely something we want to talk about more moving forward. As mentioned in the blog post, we want to keep the community involved early and often when it comes to balance.

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? Think outside of the current meta and instead about what you want the meta to look like from a power-level perspective. Keep in mind that a majority of changes should be splits, but feel free to also call out issues that you feel cannot be addressed by splits.

This post is intentionally starting a broad discussion as a jumping off point into the new communication of the Systems team, but keep in mind that in the future our posts are generally going to be more targeted at specific issues as we won’t have as much time to handle giant discussions.

I wanted to keep this initial post fairly short, so please ask questions about anything that is unclear. Otherwise, let’s talk balance.

cmc

the MAIN problem in WvW is the fact that some builds are completely game breaking such as rangers with the ability to stack boons and become unkillable and bunker builds that are focused on having near infinite regen with no real way to kill them unless you bring multiple people and sometimes they still escape. i feel like the POWER stat isn't the issue, it's the boons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I greatly appreciate the renewed focus on balance and communication. That's great news!

Sadly, in the last year, I have felt so much disappointment and dissolution over the state of WvW, that I just can't bring myself to play anymore. Here's a few reasons why I quit playing WvW after many many years (since late 2013):

  1. Blobbing is an epidemic. Large scale fights have become about who can blob better, and thus annihilate the enemy faster. They've lost the feeling of early WvW where it was a large group vs large group, fighting a wonderful battle for an objective, over more than just a few minutes. By blobbing I don't mean zerging. I mean how boon and combo mechanics forced commanders to require people to "stack on me" and push forward as one blob. As condi bombs and aoe power bombs grew in strength and popularity, we have arrived at today -- where whoever can blob and bomb a single location the fastest and best, wins. There is NO competition. No fight. It's steamrolling at it's finest. And the worst form of zerging I have ever seen in a game.
  2. As the blobbing "meta" has grown, the needs of the smaller roaming and havoc groups seem to have either been forgotten or ignored. Or maybe developers just don't know how to include them in this mode. (My primary play style). It's NO FUN to cap a camp with 5 people and suddenly be steamrolled by a blob.
  3. Conditions were best when they were icing on the cake -- not the whole meal. That said, some condition builds have been super fun to play. But only because there is NO way anyone could ever have enough clear to make a fight last more than a few seconds. I remember back to my 30k in 10 sec burn engineer build of a few years ago. Super fun, but way too OP.
  4. Most objectives -- other than Stonemist -- are pushovers for a large well-supplied group. Tier 3 keeps are a joke for large groups and blobs. Undefended, a large group can cap a keep in 5 minutes. That's just a ridiculous. A keep should be a worthy capture -- an accomplishment that defines the map and directly effects strategy. A 5 minute cap does NONE of that. It means nothing. It lead to karma training and encourages blobbing.
  5. The addition of rewards and reward tracks were wonderful -- for a time. But it's overtaken the mode. I've seen players worry more about their pips and participation than actually playing WvW for WvW sake. Folks used to play for PPT or PPK or strategic capping or whatever their content focus was. Now people are playing PPP -- Pips, Progress and Participation. It's diluted the content mode and added unneeded pressure which detracts from simply playing the game mode.
  6. Get rid of downed-state completely. It's an outdated mechanic in WvW. It still has value in PvE and I can see the upside in sPvP. But in large scale mode like WvW, it's lost it's place and has become a crutch that favors the blobs.
  7. The swords mechanic -- flagging an objective as contested -- needs to evolve if other mechanics evolve. For example: If keeps become more difficult to take, require more time to get in and cap it, then flagging an objective at like 50% wall or gate health (like in ESO), creates a fresh feel and gives the attackers time to make a significant dent, while allowing defenders time to get inside and repel the attack. The current meta doesn't do that.

I don't claim any of this is right or correct or even good ideas. For all I know, I'm the only one who thinks and feels this way. Hopefully, it gives CMC and the team something to chew on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...