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Let's Talk About WvW Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@L A T I O N.8923 said:Ive always been in favor of giving the Times an x amount of points (20 normal and 30 traited) and every skill you use Cost An x amount of points (skill 1 1 point 2 2 pnts etc)Maybe even bring IT down to 10-20, since IT can spam so easilyORLock the utility bar while in tome to be An actual trade off...instead of 3 extra skillbars

Both of your ideas are good, but are they implementable as a skill split? Usually skill splits just change damage/range/duration/cooldown/targets of the skills.

I mean a Reaper is a transformation but works on same principes

Secondly guards had a tome skill elite as basic they might be able to use in programming?

I mean the elite skills they gave a Guardian at launch

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@"Swagger.1459" said:(...)In this thread I would like the community to come up with a list of your top 5 “ biggest pain points” and how you would tackle them.

Hello,

I won't list 5 points, but here are some thoughts. First point is a question :

What is WvW all about ?

I think that's the core question of all this.

I read here and there that WvW is all about fights, but if it was the case, we'd only need a big flat empty map with 3 TP. So part of what the WvW is about is provided by the map, and it's objectives to fight for, and playstyles. Back when DBL was launched, there was the shrines who provided advantages, or barricades, and people went all "Oh noes, I can't go back to my fight as quick as in ABL plz delete", but this provided new ways of being part of it. Like 1-2 ppl running the shrines to trigger the fire turrets and help with the fight in the lava keep.

There're people who like to zerg, there're people who like to roam, to scout, to escort dollies, to have their beloved tower raise to T3. And I feel like everyone should find a thing to do in WvW, and feel like one belong, and take part of it. And get rewards from it. Reward is not necessarily items or gold, it's also some notion of pride. Right now, material rewards are lame, and most actions aren't rewarding. You take someting ? It'll be taken one hour or less later. You fight and work to your T3 ? It won't prevent it from being flipped soon. You fight intensely a whole evening to protect your T3 keep ? Whatever ! The last one to go to sleep will have it.

In a nutshell : WvW has to provide various playstyles, various roles, that'd be engaging and rewarding.

Right now, it's not. It's only about fights, which leads to...

Fights are underwhelming.

Proof is most people don't want to engage in fights they're not sure to win in a matter of a split second. Gank builds, mounts, zegs, stunlocks. Specific change, but fundamentals stay. It's a matter of balance, and design philosophy.

On the design philosophy, TTK is too short, and most fights boil down to : "just toss your rotation, rinse and repeat." No strategy, no choices, no turning tides. It favours lazy gameplay, and jaded players. I remember GW1 with strategies, intricate build choices. But fights were far slower, you had to aim and select, there was a casting bar, interrupts were significant... No such things in GW2 but I still hope it can be better.

In a nutshell : Fights are boring by design, and design allows bored players to avoid them through mere escape, or one-shot builds.

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Thanks for asking for feedback. I'm skeptical as we've had huge efforts in the past to gather constructive feedback only to have nothing happen with any of it. It felt like massive lip service. I'm speaking of that developer community feedback thing that was maybe 4 or 5 years ago. Will this be different? We'll see. As such:

Specific class stuff changes so much from one balance patch to another, so I'll try to focus on generalities.

The biggest issue is that many class things for PoF were balanced around raids. This is a fundamental flaw that doesn't translate to WvW as it is a completely different beast. The biggest offender here is the expansion of skills that affect more than 5 enemies or allies. This makes things impossible to balance as the foundation of WvW, and GW2 in general, is 5. When we fight enemies that are in groups of 20, 40, 60, having skills that affect 10 doubles their effectiveness. This is what makes scourge so devestating. As such, in order to defend against an attack skill that affects 10, you need 2 players to do a counter (cleanse, heal, buff, etc) at the same time. This is very hard. Either that, or every skill needs to be changed to effect 10. That's power creep. It's better to just make all skills in WvW only affect 5. Period. The only exception might be elite skills, and if they do effect 10 or more, they need to be on a long CD, like warrior bubble (can't remember name off top of my head).

Fix that fundamental issue and you'll have a much easier time balancing the rest.

The rest is the power creep of boons, cleanses, and conditions. There are more and more passives that apply boons, there are more traits that add boons to existing boon skills, there are more traits that add condis to existing condi skills. and on and on. Lots have posted about this. It makes it so there's no active, skill full game play anymore. When PoF came out, instead of addressing the issues with HoT, you just ramped it up and came out with counter classes. Add new condis like torment and boons like resistance. This makes some other classes/ builds useless. The counter classes: scourge, spellbreaker, firebrand, need to be toned way back regarding boon generations, corruption then rebuilt from the ground up with the idea of less boons and condis being applied.

There are just too many condis This makes cleansing less effective. One idea that would help tremendously in this regard is to separate condis into 2 categories (I've been asking for this for years). One being damaging, and one being CC. Obvious, but in case you don't get it, damaging like fire, poison, torment, bleed and cc like chill, cripple, slow, imob. Cleanses would prioritize damaging condis thereby negating the whole cover condi application. Even better is it would make passive traits more meaningful as they can now address specifically damage/cc (many already do, this would just help the issue) and instead of addressing specific condis, they could address the more generalized.

I think that's the most important for now. Again, you can not balance the specifics unless the fundamental issues are addressed.

Edit: I quit the game @ 1.5 years ago as WvW was just completely stagnant and some personal issues. I'm only back temporarally to waste some time with LS. I won't come back to this game unless alliances is well implemented and balance is better. Sick of being Charlie Brown.

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Here is what was posted on Discord before last reset by the guy going to lead, it pretty much sums up large scale WvW and what some people laughably term as "balance":

"For those who are joining me on Blue BL. Please bring your Scourge/Rev/FB please."

18 elites in the game and much of the time approximately 70%+ of a squad (on any tryhard comm) will be made up of 3 elites... So, no real class diversity and zero real changes in meta for years at a time, no one who actually cares about a balanced game plays WvW, at least not anything more than a casual basis.

And no, a few more skill splits which just tweak durations, damage, etc won't make any meaningful difference, the massive disparity between classes/elites in WvW is far more fundamental than that.

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@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"bluberblasen.9684" said:

Iteratively adjust the power levels of known builds. Example:
  • Restore revenant hammer #2 Coalescence of Ruin
  • Increase reaper's boon removal
  • Help revenants remove more boons.

please not :(

Also give players a change to spawn new builds by making large changes to skills/traits that have potential, but are not quite there. Dont be afraid to take risks. Examples:
  • Make engineer rifle stronger. Faster "cast times" to all skills and add evasion for the leap skill.
  • Allow engineer to remove more boons.and core engi is not bad - only holo is way too strong. nerf holo and core engi is great again.

Core engi is one of, if not the weakest core spec in the game, so is basically terrible. Go see thief, warrior, etc for really strong core specs and even most other core specs like necro, ele, ranger, etc are stronger than core engy. Core engy is the poster boy for being left behind by powercreep that has obsoleted most of its design (kits, projectiles, combo fields, etc), it is so pitiful it basically needs a rework.

Problem is holo and scrapper can be built to carry, if u buff core engie, it’s elites will be far more broken than they can reach already.

One of the biggest issues I have with core Engi, especially power, is it's lack of melee pressure. It has decent kiting potential if taking things like Rocket Boots and/or Super Speed traits/skills, but you can't kite forever and your damage potential is quite low while doing so. Flamethrower and Pistols handle close range fights much better, but all the other kits, including Bomb Kit which is a melee kit, struggle to do much when an opponent closes the gap. This means you're so reliant on hard kiting that anything with high mobility like Thief, Revenant or Mesmer can shut you down completely regardless of how well you play.

I don't think core Engi needs to become as faceroll as all the other specs, it's nice to have something that requires a little more effort and that provides more of a challenge, but a little boost to offensive potential could go a long way. Toolkit for example has a pretty nasty auto attack but it's rarely used due to how slow it is even with Quickness. Increasing it's range a tiny bit and/or it's cast time, same for Bomb Kit and other kits, could provide the necessary means to bring it to a more competitive level without inadvertently over buffing the other specs.

tldr; Small auto attack buffs to cast times and ranges on most of the kits could be all core Engi needs and shouldn't be so significant as to further strengthen it's elite specs. Some niche Holo and Scrapper builds might start taking things like Bomb Kit or Toolkit but I doubt if it'd become meta.

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@Coinhead.7591 said:Is removing come stat combinations from gear a possibility? Personally I wouldn't mind to see minstrel gear gone :)

To be honest, I think they should just put everyone in exotic celestial gear with superior divinity runes, for a 1 week to 1 month long trial. At first, I thought it as a joke, but I'm considering more and more seriously that it could be useful.

You could see whether the stat choice is that impactful or not, and above all, you could see what part of the issues come from the stat, and what part comes from the skills/traits.

Last but not least, you could also see whether a lower DPS/higher sustain actually increases the TTK, to what extent, and whether it's actually better/funnier.

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@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@"bluberblasen.9684" said:

Iteratively adjust the power levels of known builds. Example:
  • Restore revenant hammer #2 Coalescence of Ruin
  • Increase reaper's boon removal
  • Help revenants remove more boons.

please not :(

Also give players a change to spawn new builds by making large changes to skills/traits that have potential, but are not quite there. Dont be afraid to take risks. Examples:
  • Make engineer rifle stronger. Faster "cast times" to all skills and add evasion for the leap skill.
  • Allow engineer to remove more boons.and core engi is not bad - only holo is way too strong. nerf holo and core engi is great again.

Core engi is one of, if not the weakest core spec in the game, so is basically terrible. Go see thief, warrior, etc for really strong core specs and even most other core specs like necro, ele, ranger, etc are stronger than core engy. Core engy is the poster boy for being left behind by powercreep that has obsoleted most of its design (kits, projectiles, combo fields, etc), it is so pitiful it basically needs a rework.

Problem is holo and scrapper can be built to carry, if u buff core engie, it’s elites will be far more broken than they can reach already.

One of the biggest issues I have with core Engi, especially power, is it's lack of melee pressure. It has decent kiting potential if taking things like Rocket Boots and/or Super Speed traits/skills, but you can't kite forever and your damage potential is quite low while doing so. Flamethrower and Pistols handle close range fights much better, but all the other kits, including Bomb Kit which is a melee kit, struggle to do much when an opponent closes the gap. This means you're so reliant on hard kiting that anything with high mobility like Thief, Revenant or Mesmer can shut you down completely regardless of how well you play.

I don't think core Engi needs to become as faceroll as all the other specs, it's nice to have something that requires a little more effort and that provides more of a challenge, but a little boost to offensive potential could go a long way. Toolkit for example has a pretty nasty auto attack but it's rarely used due to how slow it is even with Quickness. Increasing it's range a tiny bit and/or it's cast time, same for Bomb Kit and other kits, could provide the necessary means to bring it to a more competitive level without inadvertently over buffing the other specs.

tldr; Small auto attack buffs to cast times and ranges on most of the kits could be all core Engi needs and shouldn't be so significant as to further strengthen it's elite specs. Some niche Holo and Scrapper builds might start taking things like Bomb Kit or Toolkit but I doubt if it'd become meta.You cant fix this by buffing traits or kits. Its a problem with the primary weapons.
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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

@"bluberblasen.9684" said:

Iteratively adjust the power levels of known builds. Example:
  • Restore revenant hammer #2 Coalescence of Ruin
  • Increase reaper's boon removal
  • Help revenants remove more boons.

please not :(

Also give players a change to spawn new builds by making large changes to skills/traits that have potential, but are not quite there. Dont be afraid to take risks. Examples:
  • Make engineer rifle stronger. Faster "cast times" to all skills and add evasion for the leap skill.
  • Allow engineer to remove more boons.and core engi is not bad - only holo is way too strong. nerf holo and core engi is great again.

Core engi is one of, if not the weakest core spec in the game, so is basically terrible. Go see thief, warrior, etc for really strong core specs and even most other core specs like necro, ele, ranger, etc are stronger than core engy. Core engy is the poster boy for being left behind by powercreep that has obsoleted most of its design (kits, projectiles, combo fields, etc), it is so pitiful it basically needs a rework.

Problem is holo and scrapper can be built to carry, if u buff core engie, it’s elites will be far more broken than they can reach already.

One of the biggest issues I have with core Engi, especially power, is it's lack of melee pressure. It has decent kiting potential if taking things like Rocket Boots and/or Super Speed traits/skills, but you can't kite forever and your damage potential is quite low while doing so. Flamethrower and Pistols handle close range fights much better, but all the other kits, including Bomb Kit which is a melee kit, struggle to do much when an opponent closes the gap. This means you're so reliant on hard kiting that anything with high mobility like Thief, Revenant or Mesmer can shut you down completely regardless of how well you play.

I don't think core Engi needs to become as faceroll as all the other specs, it's nice to have something that requires a little more effort and that provides more of a challenge, but a little boost to offensive potential could go a long way. Toolkit for example has a pretty nasty auto attack but it's rarely used due to how slow it is even with Quickness. Increasing it's range a tiny bit and/or it's cast time, same for Bomb Kit and other kits, could provide the necessary means to bring it to a more competitive level without inadvertently over buffing the other specs.

tldr; Small auto attack buffs to cast times and ranges on most of the kits could be all core Engi needs and shouldn't be so significant as to further strengthen it's elite specs. Some niche Holo and Scrapper builds might start taking things like Bomb Kit or Toolkit but I doubt if it'd become meta.You cant fix this by buffing traits or kits. Its a problem with the primary weapons.

Idk, scrapper,holo , beast master can reach quite broken builds and they m8 be the most difficult to balance since they will affect core Classes.

Maybe there should be specializations instead of elites, core could receive its specialization and with that would be far easy to separate what makes some builds low effort highly rewarding.

Imo that’s the easiest way to balance since Anet balance iteration process was never good to start with.

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@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"bluberblasen.9684" said:

Iteratively adjust the power levels of known builds. Example:
  • Restore revenant hammer #2 Coalescence of Ruin
  • Increase reaper's boon removal
  • Help revenants remove more boons.

please not :(

Also give players a change to spawn new builds by making large changes to skills/traits that have potential, but are not quite there. Dont be afraid to take risks. Examples:
  • Make engineer rifle stronger. Faster "cast times" to all skills and add evasion for the leap skill.
  • Allow engineer to remove more boons.and core engi is not bad - only holo is way too strong. nerf holo and core engi is great again.

Core engi is one of, if not the weakest core spec in the game, so is basically terrible. Go see thief, warrior, etc for really strong core specs and even most other core specs like necro, ele, ranger, etc are stronger than core engy. Core engy is the poster boy for being left behind by powercreep that has obsoleted most of its design (kits, projectiles, combo fields, etc), it is so pitiful it basically needs a rework.

Problem is holo and scrapper can be built to carry, if u buff core engie, it’s elites will be far more broken than they can reach already.

It would be a problem if the game were remotely balanced, but it is no different than the rest of the classes with broken elites (in many areas much more broken) who also enjoy much better cores.

As for "carry", you realise you are playing a game that literally aims for you, that has minimal (and braindead) resource management, with largely short easy to manage cooldowns, where the "dodge" is basically just a skill that gives you evade frames rather than being a real dodge, etc. Being carried is built into the combat system of this game, which as a casual MMORPG you would actually expect. The only really skilled bit in this game was conquest with actual teams playing against each other, that added a level of decision making, map awareness, rotations, etc to up the skill cap from the very mediocre level that the combat provides in the first place.

Now holo is broken for roaming and PvP (but even then to put that in perspective thief has been broken for roaming for 7 years), but scrapper since they reworked it again is basically mediocre at best in all areas of the game other than it has a good spot in large scale WvW and even then if you want to see what is really broken in large scale go see the hordes of FB, Scourge and Herald (the get carried elite of choice for large scale).

As for core engy it is not abouts buffs, that does not solve the issues, its design has been left behind by the powercreep - the over reliance on projectiles in a game where projectile hate has substantially increased, how other classes have acquired more skills (FB, druid, etc), how combo fields have been devalued, how individual skills do more and more which makes a class with only one weapon bar more of a disadvantage (this is indirectly why they struggle with holo, it basically breaks engy by giving it two weapons), etc.

It needs a rework, not buffs.

The general problem in regard to balancing cores/elites is the trait/skill system itself. They tacked on elites to a trait/skill system that was not designed for it, so if they have some elite that is broken OP like say holo they struggle to balance it without effecting the other elite / core. (and vice-versa)

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Honestly the new devs should spend some time and play all builds and than converse with a high tier player or two of each class cuz most suggestions they'll get on these forums are biased and are of little use. Good example is thief shouldn't be able to have burst while being very evasive lol what? That exactly what a rogue class should be. Do to the devs blanket fixing classes and take the wrong people's feedback we have a game with a complete warped sense of archetype identity. This games warrior and jack of all trade specs (hole's, soulbeast) bursting as hard or harder than the rogue class that's glass and if someone's good enough to time active dodges to AVOID damage than it's considered OP compared to those classes with passive sustain thru passives or at a touch of button in form of blocks and invulnerability lol. Each class should form its identity thru its skills but also its playstyle ie bunkers are hard to kill but dont have burst dps, jack of all type classes are good but not great at anything but are versitile, support specs like a healer should be good at healing itself and others but not burst anyone in seconds lol warrior versitile duelers with good sustain but not crazy bursts and rogues with high bursts and evasiveness but if get hit its punishing etc but over years the bursts and sustain are all over the place to where every class is bursty on top of their strengths so ttk is to low no matter what ur playing. Big dps should require set ups or have a counter balance within the class. Ull have players complaining a warrior out meles their bunker or a thief out dps their jack of all spec and out maneuver's it and says why can it disengage and I cant lol come to think of it almost all classes save for a few are highly mobile with multiple disengages lol seriously hope these devs follow their goals and vision even if it doesnt align with mine and are able to pick out good feedback from biased nonsense. Lastly scourge and how its mechanic functions in wvw needs to be looked at along with fb(again to many important boons on one spec) both literally dictate large scale fights on their own. Boons need to be spread across more classes but also in a limited degree as in no one spec can spam all the important ones as well as necro boon corrupt especially scourge needs toned down. Sand servant increase in targets was the opposite of what needed to happen lol.Good luck!

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@Heibi.4251 said:

  1. Thief should not have the ability to port anyone in. Get rid of the portal. Mesmer should be the only one with a portal.
  2. Thief stealth time is way to long. They are now able to nearly perma stealth. And with the addition of the portal you spend way too long chasing after them.
  3. Scourge road of death needs to be addressed and nerfed massively. They apply too many condis way too fast to too many targets. Reduce the range and how many boons they can corrupt as well.
  4. Warrior invulnerability needs a down tick.
  5. Pulls need to be more line of sight based. Too many times have I seen people pulled out of a tower or keep when they are on the stairs down below the wall.
  6. Ranger is not broken. Too many people just don't know how to fight one. The unkillable claim should go to the warrior invuln. Rangers die fast. No one wants rangers in their zerg but for some reason but them claim they are over powered(making you think you would want one in your zerg - go figure). The only ones complaining are the ones who can't fight them.

Enough for now.

ranger is extremely broken. the amount of mobility combined with its high amount of defense while still being able to drop someone with one ability is ridiculously unhealthy for the game. i really don't expect a guy with a soulbeast icon to agree but try playing a class other than ranger and fight against another ranger. guarantee you'll understand then.

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@Forty Keks.9620 said:

  1. Thief should not have the ability to port anyone in. Get rid of the portal. Mesmer should be the only one with a portal.
  2. Thief stealth time is way to long. They are now able to nearly perma stealth. And with the addition of the portal you spend way too long chasing after them.
  3. Scourge road of death needs to be addressed and nerfed massively. They apply too many condis way too fast to too many targets. Reduce the range and how many boons they can corrupt as well.
  4. Warrior invulnerability needs a down tick.
  5. Pulls need to be more line of sight based. Too many times have I seen people pulled out of a tower or keep when they are on the stairs down below the wall.
  6. Ranger is not broken. Too many people just don't know how to fight one. The unkillable claim should go to the warrior invuln. Rangers die fast. No one wants rangers in their zerg but for some reason but them claim they are over powered(making you think you would want one in your zerg - go figure). The only ones complaining are the ones who can't fight them.

Enough for now.

ranger is extremely broken. the amount of mobility combined with its high amount of defense while still being able to drop someone with one ability is ridiculously unhealthy for the game. i really don't expect a guy with a soulbeast icon to agree but try playing a class other than ranger and fight against another ranger. guarantee you'll understand then.

I do know plenty about the soulbeast and what they are doing. Maybe you should listen to someone who plays one. People claim they are broken and don't try to figure out what the players doing to defeat them. They aren't broken. I play Rev in WvW most of the time these days(and lead on a Rev) and easily defeat soulbeasts. Too many people get frustrated because they used to walk all over rangers and now they can't. They ostracized rangers from zergs and now claim they're OP. Kind of the opposite of what should be done.

If anything the mobility of thieves, mesmers and warriors are out of whack. Warriors are ridiculous on the invulns and blocks.

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@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Ragnarox.9601" said:yea nerf guardian/dh/ and especially FB cause if you play roamer you die 1v1 cause you killed those spec because FB is good in groups and garbage in solo situations. Aegis which is guardian exclusive you gave to other professions. Thats why I am not logging anymore into this game cause you killed my class with every balance update, and I would rather pay for other games cause you lack ppl who actual can balance things out. If you think guard/DH/Fb is good you should do some 1v1 tournaments inside your balance team and you will realize(finally) which class needs shaving in pure dmg but i think I would beat your game balance team with my thief which was never created nor played even with wrong traits and skills.

Any other Chrono fans wanna chime in and let him know what having your class destroyed really feels like?

Side note, I roam on DH and FB all the time and it’s faceroll easy to be successful. This is a you problem, not a design problem sorry.

Not fooling anyone acting as if Chronomancer, or the Mesmer profession, didn’t need adjusting... Or pretending this class isn’t still powerful.

Not bothering to look back and see if anyone pointed this out. But that person using an f5 should be clear indication how out of date that gameplay is. All of the chronomancer traits and shatters he used have been replaced. No one is pretending anything about how powerful the profession currently is.

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@Heibi.4251 said:

  1. Thief should not have the ability to port anyone in. Get rid of the portal. Mesmer should be the only one with a portal.
  2. Thief stealth time is way to long. They are now able to nearly perma stealth. And with the addition of the portal you spend way too long chasing after them.
  3. Scourge road of death needs to be addressed and nerfed massively. They apply too many condis way too fast to too many targets. Reduce the range and how many boons they can corrupt as well.
  4. Warrior invulnerability needs a down tick.
  5. Pulls need to be more line of sight based. Too many times have I seen people pulled out of a tower or keep when they are on the stairs down below the wall.
  6. Ranger is not broken. Too many people just don't know how to fight one. The unkillable claim should go to the warrior invuln. Rangers die fast. No one wants rangers in their zerg but for some reason but them claim they are over powered(making you think you would want one in your zerg - go figure). The only ones complaining are the ones who can't fight them.

Enough for now.

ranger is extremely broken. the amount of mobility combined with its high amount of defense while still being able to drop someone with one ability is ridiculously unhealthy for the game. i really don't expect a guy with a soulbeast icon to agree but try playing a class other than ranger and fight against another ranger. guarantee you'll understand then.

I do know plenty about the soulbeast and what they are doing. Maybe you should listen to someone who plays one. People claim they are broken and don't try to figure out what the players doing to defeat them. They aren't broken. I play Rev in WvW most of the time these days(and lead on a Rev) and easily defeat soulbeasts. Too many people get frustrated because they used to walk all over rangers and now they can't. They ostracized rangers from zergs and now claim they're OP. Kind of the opposite of what should be done.

If anything the mobility of thieves, mesmers and warriors are out of whack. Warriors are ridiculous on the invulns and blocks.

Issue with beastmaster isn’t the LB, and beastmaster has blocky build as well, u can build it with a sustain of a scrapper and the damage of a holo, I guess u are fighting pve players...

Problem is some classes can have a very low effort build that get broken quite easily beastmaster is one of those, LB damage is fine...

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Inclusiveness is a big problem in WvW right now. What I would like to see is Core Class specific mastery's and/or skills exclusive to WvW that bring tactical advantages to the group and not having them would be a tactical disadvantage to the group.For example an engineer could have an exclusive mastery that makes the engi able to assemble siege faster and better and able to dissemble siege. The more engi's in the group , the better the siege is .Base siege would need to have a reduction in power and range .Get rid of the radars and have a Tracking mastery for Ranger that will do the same thing but also be mobile. The more rangers in the group the farther the tracking can be. Mesmers are masters of deception and mental ism. They could charm enemy NPCs to attack each other ,the opponents and structures . Thieves could be masters at sabotage or stealing supplies .These are just ideas I have thrown out there .Maybe other people might have other ideas . The point is that having a variety of classes gives a better advantage than a group that only has 2 or 3 classes.Maybe in addition 1 or 2 Exclusive WvW skills for each class that brings something very special to the table .

PvE and WvW are like apples and oranges. The NPCs and monsters in PvE are predictable where as opponents in WvW are unpredictable so the balancing of skills for WvW need to reflect that.A serious reduction in boon share needs to happen. Players need to become more self reliant . Toughness , vitality , and self healing need to mean something again.This would promote skill in play style and not the carry all ,over lapping boon share we have now.

A reason to play WvW. Like exclusive wardrobe skins ,legendary weapons , mounts/and or mount skins . Special things you can only get in WvW playing WvW for an extended period of time.Not just something that be acquired over a weekend but something to really work for.Soloing a tower lord or a camp should be a big achievements .Ardent WvWers should have some gloating rights.

Special events exclusive to WvW like Ogre day ,Everyone is an ogre and given a club nothing more. It's silly I know but it's just an idea.

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@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

Okay I will talk about balance but I will make a short reminder of the problems I see in Wvw before.1.) Server population imbalance2.) Lacking reward system for defence and general because karma has not much uses these days and in general you make more gold or progress/h in pvp and pve

3.) Yes balance or the problem of not too much choices or otherwise said people want to play their build which they know and can play.

Think I know which are a problem:

A) Summoned creatures , I mean Rev /Kalla has its ghost , core Ranger has its pet and Chrononeed so far I know its clones /illusion to use skills all this will get annihilated in a zerg fight. I think each of them need a need a different solution

Kalla ghosts could be for 5 sec invulnerable when summed in wvw(only) , pets could hide or bunker themselves in under a reflection bubble per command, Chrono need to changed again.

B) Rangers are hated at least on my server for not really good reasons. Yes as enemies they make too much phew phew but this is much more a topic in the pvp thread.I mean even a core ranger can take spotter and spirits . I think you could give them an increases effectiveness on the ranger itself like giving spotter additional to the 100 precession it shares 50 ferocity for the ranger its and giving the spirits 20%(can change from spirit to spirit e.g frost spirit has 5% dmg increase so 40% more a just 2% more dmg) more effectiveness on the ranger itself. Basically as compensation when you take support abilities.

Side Note:C) One of the reason I mentioned the above is most people in wvw running with the wrong food with power instead of precession food which brings 2-3k more dps for berserker/zerker builds when you don't have spotter and banner and yes I haven't found ascended precession food yet^^(100 precession 70 ferocity -10% damage)(This is also true for PvE Raids who don't have a ranger/Druid)

D) Sure I don't know most of the builds but I know my Ele and the last Tempest changes screwed with a lot of wvw/pvp built by moving traits around. For me it is stabi for some others swiftness , so my idea is moving it to a lesser trait point and making the current share it while overloading . If you want to over do it you could make it so that every few pulses or 0.5 sec a new stabi will be generated this would also make a hard choice. For me stabi as Tempest is important for pvp and wvw because otherwise I will drop out of the overload even a tower/keep champion can do that with the current self generated stabi.

For Weaver I wished 'Primodial Stance' is a stun break for similar reasons

E) Okay there is also a lot to say about how rev, FB and scourge dominate wvw but I let others talk about it ATM

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Solo roamer here, both as a Firebrand and as a Mirage. Even when I try to worship the tag, I end up doing things for team points, not chasing bags, which costs me levels and coin. You have lots of feedback already, and this thread is now buried in the current tracker, which is sad. While I did not read all the posts, I got a general feel. I just wanted to add a few things.

Your outliers are the guys who can run around with mobile red fields, which stack on their teammates damage, and perma stealth builds that have indefensible damage. Those AOE fields need to stay in one place, not move with them, or give other classes access to long term, one-cast mobile damage. Stealth damage still needs a counter, since day 1 of wvw.

Right now, what is really stupid is.. there is no reason to put any defense (Vit/toughness) into your build gear. No matter how much you have, the damage output of the enemy negates it. Vit/toughness slows down your killing, but you melt just as fast. (And dont even get me started on how STUPID it is that, when I build to defend against condi spam, I am a mob aggro magnet.) Which leads to what I am currently running on both classes. Glass cannon Grieving builds, as no one has to choose between condi or power builds. Most builds/skills use both.

ANEt needs to look at making the counters what they should be.. You only have power OR condi for DPS, not both. You build a counter to condi with toughness, or you build a counter to power with Vit. Same with other stats. Make counters actually count. Dragonhunter and Chronomancer appear to be designed around power, while Firebrand and Mirage around Condi. Yet, both FB and Mirage use power as well. DH and Mirage appear to be more for solo play, while Firebrand and Chrono are more about buffs. Yet, I can do insane damage plus buff on my FB, yet my Chrono is so useless that on PVE boss trains, I cannot get above a silver for the bosses. I can solo better on a core burn guard build with my FB gear, than I can on a power DH build. It amazes me how many metabattle builds use DH without using the bow. DH bow is THAT useless. Choices dont seem to matter, beyond being the uber builds that everyone runs with deadeye, rev and scourge.

Also, really? (on the siege front.) Rev fire fields can go not only thru walls but half way across towers and destroy seige? No, just No.. If there is a wall, let the damage stop at it, or count the distance to go up it at least. Its still pretty pointless to put seige on walls, as it seems everyone and their brother can pull you off the wall. How about giving people on siege stability, since, you know, you are hanging onto a heavy object.

Oh, and my chrono is useless for anything atm. And not having a trait to decrease the recast time of the glamour skill line just emphasizes how little ANet wants it used.

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@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Blind.4162 said:So, anet, explain why a warrior can do 12 - 25k kill shots and a deadeye can't?

Did you know?Wars can make IT unblockable as well?

Yes, we all knew.You're literally the last player in wvw to get killshot

Im glad everyone pointed on you as representatieve lol

It's only been a thing for 5 years.This is why devs ignore forum advice

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