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Anet needs to stop taking and start giving. (Balance discussion thread)


Yasai.3549

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There has been a trend going on.

Anet is just solving problems by taking things away from the game.No alteration, no rework, not even nerfs in some cases.

They are just straight up taking things away from the game.

This all started with Daredevil's "Swipe" getting neutered. It wasn't until a long while later did they add the Unblockable to it to make it somewhat competent compared to its other cousins (Steal and Deadeye's Mark)

They removed Illusionary Persona from Chronomancer and took away their Invul Shatter.Replaced it with 3 "new" Shatters.

They took away Chaotic Interruption. Replacing it with something much much weaker.Did it solve the problem? Yes.Did it single handedly ruin a ton of builds? Also yes.

There are definitely a bunch of other stuff Anet straight up REMOVED instead of tackling the problem head on, but I am not gonna dig through months of balance notes to list them all out.

Now with the new balance proposals, they are once again taking from the players.

Mirage getting their Endurance robbed.Damage across the board being reduced.A string of nerfs strictly targetting Stability and Stunbreaks while nerfing CC damage.

I can't even begin to understand who has a thought process which goes :Step 1. Nerf CC damage because CC chaining is obnoxious and bad and big damage also bad bad bad badStep 2. Nerf Stunbreaks across the board and nerf Stability because we must make CC "Strong"Step 3. Watch Forums burn

This sort of backwards balancing is going to destroy the game.

I pray to whatever heathen videogame deity out there that the Dev team can focus on tackling problems instead of just taking stuff from players in an effort to provide balance.

All yur doing is reducing the amount of build options and slowing the game down.

If yu want us to devolve back to the stone age of beating each other over with only 3 skills with long cooldowns, then just cut to the chase and give that to us right now.

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I'm pretty sure their goal is to establish a new baseline and build from there since the current state of things is not ideal to balance. They already said they plan to take feed back and iterate quickly on the changes so if they do like they say then things that are too weak/strong should get balanced out. As far as "taking stuff away" that's just the easier solution right now I would guess. Nerf everything to the ground and start sprinkling stuff back in where it needs it. I can agree though they shouldn't do their "reworks" in a vacuum but hopefully after the growing pains of this update they can go back and take a look at some of these.

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"omgomg powercreep, the whole game is just spamming skills, what is this anet?!"* anet lowers overall dmg/sustain and nerfs cds, so skill use might actually be more meaningful *"omgomg anet only takes away and wants us to devolve back to the stone age of beating each other over with only 3 skills with long cooldowns"

Um, ok. I don't think your complaints are reasonable.

This all started with Daredevil's "Swipe" getting neutered. It wasn't until a long while later did they add the Unblockable to it to make it somewhat competent compared to its other cousins (Steal and Deadeye's Mark)

...wasn't unblockable there pretty much since the moment swipe was introduced?

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@Yasai.3549 said:

@"Sobx.1758" said:

Um, ok. I don't think your complaints are reasonable.

They aren't just nerfing.They are taking the easy way out and removing stuff, replacing them with "placeholders" or just outright wonky traits.

That's degenerative balancing.

But they are mostly nerfing, so why are you pretending they "just keep taking away"?

If some specs can do too much compared to others or simply their core versions, then some things will need to get nerfed (or, as you prefer to call it "taken away").Nothing degenerative about that.

The swipe was more-or-less a correct change. Sure, just nerfing the range was pretty boring, I agree. But it being boring doesn't change anything.Mirage getting their Endurance "robbed" (nerfed), probably because the espec is still pretty much an upgrade over the core, isn't it? (this is an actual question, I don't play mesm)Damage across the board being reduced, which is a nerf and the one we knew about and actually needed. What's the issue here?A string of nerfs strictly targetting Stability and Stunbreaks while nerfing CC damage. Ok -and what's your point here? It's still a nerf partially related to scaling back the dmg.

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People in PvP were asking for less damage across the board, ANet is giving them a significant reduction of the damage and adjust sustain to match the changes that they were asked for. ANet is doing what sPvP players ask them to do, so there is some probabilities that some sPvP players will be pleased by a patch that do their bidding (well, they might sing another tune when the patch hit, thought).

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@"Yasai.3549" said:There has been a trend going on.

Anet is just solving problems by taking things away from the game.No alteration, no rework, not even nerfs in some cases.

They are just straight up taking things away from the game.

This all started with Daredevil's "Swipe" getting neutered. It wasn't until a long while later did they add the Unblockable to it to make it somewhat competent compared to its other cousins (Steal and Deadeye's Mark)

They removed Illusionary Persona from Chronomancer and took away their Invul Shatter.Replaced it with 3 "new" Shatters.

They took away Chaotic Interruption. Replacing it with something much much weaker.Did it solve the problem? Yes.Did it single handedly ruin a ton of builds? Also yes.

There are definitely a bunch of other stuff Anet straight up REMOVED instead of tackling the problem head on, but I am not gonna dig through months of balance notes to list them all out.

Now with the new balance proposals, they are once again taking from the players.

Mirage getting their Endurance robbed.Damage across the board being reduced.A string of nerfs strictly targetting Stability and Stunbreaks while nerfing CC damage.

I can't even begin to understand who has a thought process which goes :Step 1. Nerf CC damage because CC chaining is obnoxious and bad and big damage also bad bad bad badStep 2. Nerf Stunbreaks across the board and nerf Stability because we must make CC "Strong"Step 3. Watch Forums burn

This sort of backwards balancing is going to destroy the game.

I pray to whatever heathen videogame deity out there that the Dev team can focus on tackling problems instead of just taking stuff from players in an effort to provide balance.

All yur doing is reducing the amount of build options and slowing the game down.

If yu want us to devolve back to the stone age of beating each other over with only 3 skills with long cooldowns, then just cut to the chase and give that to us right now.

Swipe has always been unblockable. And the range was lowered as a trade-off from the thief's steal mechanic, to keep the field a bit more fair instead of just giving DareDevil a flat out buff, which is exactly what it was before the DD rework.

CC skills shouldn't do so much damage that it's way too oppressive to counterplay. By lowering the damage, they're making it to where if you get hit with a cc, you won't die immediately after and still have a chance to come back from it and turn the tides of battle (hence, also, the lowering of damage across the board).

Nerfing access to boons is not a bad thing. Nerfing stunbreaks is not a bad thing either. Though I do think that, maybe nerfing the application of CC should also be nerfed more as well. HOWEVER, the uptimes of cc like immob is being lowered, if not already low. This is because of 2 things: removal of expertise amulets, actual uptime nerfs through the skills directly.

By nerfing things that are currently overpowered, which is nearly everything right now, more build diversity opens up, not closes off. Why? Easy. Because the things that were pushing out everything else will now be pushed down to levels that the other things that were being pushed out can compete with.

Taking some steps back to find the root cause of an issue is not devolving. Sometimes, IT'S NECESSARY. That's part of the process of success. Lumping on bandaids to fix the profusely bleeding laceration will not fix a darn thing, only cover it up until it flows over.

Also, it's not a bad thing to slow the pace of the game down. it's better than forcing every and anything to run overly high damage builds to see who can one shot who first. That is unfun in overabundance.

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@"Yasai.3549" said:This all started with Daredevil's "Swipe" getting neutered. It wasn't until a long while later did they add the Unblockable to it to make it somewhat competent compared to its other cousins (Steal and Deadeye's Mark)

Case close. You just defeated your own argument.

Sure they a take away more than they give, but it's somewhat dishonest to say "stop taking and start giving".

IMO, I am happy that they give Thieves Preparation even though I also wanted Traps to stay.

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The issue is that they gave too much to start with without thinking and thats what broke the game let them take some of it back.AFter the mess that was HoT they tried so hard to recover by upping kill potential on everyone thats when it all started. There were several patches of buffs between that and PoF and PoF only made things considerably worse.

In a nutshellIf you were a mellow/general pvp player before now and didnt potato hop to the new band wagon every few months cause "META / WINNING" you dont have issues with the majority of the notes outside of a few questionable choices on the devs part.

If you just play something you know is bluntly broken and did jump ship every patch even if you would never admit it then you probably take issue with the notes. If you use something thats super safe and does not require you to think about how you play you probably take issue with the notes. Especially considering there is not a wide choice of selections that you can say will be the top dog this time around. Unlike pass attempts to balance the game there is no profession that didnt get something critical taken away or reduced in some aspect or another so there is no "ez re roll" to x profession to be seen just yet.

Gw2 was the fastest pace game i played when it first came out compared to a lot of other games and it only got faster from the core game. Even now in 2020 not too many mmos i would consider playing / still do play would i say have anywhere near the speed of gw2's combat. They could stand to slow it down by a large margin and it would still by all means be one of the fastest combat you can find in most mmo games to date.

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@Zynk.9015 said:

@"Loffels.5934" said:

If yu want us to devolve back to the stone age of beating each other over with only 3 skills with long cooldowns, then just cut to the chase and give that to us right now.

They are.

If I wanted to play LoL, I would kitten play LoL.

I got sick of the current situation on the forum regarding the future patch. If you listen to - so all participants of the forum or the prophets, or work in game development. Yes, playing the game and having the ability to analyze - you can make some conclusions, but this has nothing to do with what is being expressed now in the spirit of "I tell you exactly, it will be so: conditions will kill everyone, and heals will be immortal !!!"

1. The current balance of power (not just one, but as the main reason) has killed any variety of builds mentioned above. Any support builds (in current PvP) other than FB are too "slow" for the current meta and cannot be different without a completely destroyed balance. In WvW it's little more optimistic, but not much.Any build that needs time to unleash its power is virtually useless. Any support for the team is almost always useless, since the team dies faster than your help can play a role in fightI played GW2 before the start of the first season of "living history", then there was a long break, and when I recently returned - the situation in PvP became just terrible. Similar gameplay, which is now PvP, were called in LoL as "League of one-shots". This is NOT good. And this is NOT what GW2 intended. Any PvP in MMORPGs, based on a "League of one-shots" - a failure. Exceptions? I don't know about them.This meta of one-shots is present in many projects and the opinion about it is always the same: the lack of skill, the lack of progress, and uselessness of any builds that do not have one of the two qualities.. Either the possibility of the fastest burst, or the ability to survive such a burst and kill the attacker.2. Popular opinion about the future of the balance: condi-meta and all will be bad, end of the world and etc. With all due respect to the breadth of opinions... You are either prophets or you are just talking nonsense.As far as I remember, all expertise amulets are removed from PvP.At the same time: "...reducing the damage from conditions is a little less mathematical, but we continue to push conditions to a lower explosion potential, reducing the number of stacks and increasing the duration where it makes sense. Some of them are handled at the skill level, and we also make significant cuts to traits that apply conditions to hit, to crit, or to other applicable conditions." ... So I don't see any potential problem with condi-damage.Together with the condi-cleaning nerf, this has at least some chance of returning the condi-builds to playability. Now, if I play as a condi-Berserker or Mirage, and I meet FB or water weaver - I can't even do damage to them. All my condi-spells will be completely neutralized. You can treat condi-builds as you like, but this is NOT a normal situation.3. Balance of the core professions and their elite specializations. A logical view of elite specializations is to improve the gameplay by either changing it or making it more complex. They should not completely replace standard professions. Because instead of the variety of builds - that we want to see from this, we get something like this: one new specialization appears and one or two previous ones become irrelevant.An interesting build system is when you can not only be a Chrono-support, but also make an effective (!) support build from core-Mesmer and even Mirage. Yes, they may not be as good as chrono-supports, but they could, for example, compensate for this with increased damage or other features. Just like intended with all GW2 role-system without holy-trinity.

4. Variety of builds. What do we have as a result? One or two "meta" builds, zero variety among them. Yes, "meta" will always exist, but meta is the best option - now it looks more like the "only possible" option.

Chronomansers, Druids, and Berserkers are just a few of those who are completely unplayable in PvP (And now Chrono and Druid not so good even at PvE). And when I say unplayable: you become a useless ballast for the team and can't do anything (really) useful. Yes, many games have builds that are better suited for PvE and those that are better suited for PvP. But when the spec becomes "unplayable" in some mode - this is not a feature of specialization, but a complete failure of the balance.

As a result, the decrease in the TTK has chances to correct the balance problems, although it is difficult to predict what will happen. One-shot meta is insane, and kills any counterplay and possible skill-improvement of the players.Why there is opinion that condi-builds will be immortal, divine and steal free cookies from the players - I don't know. Condi-damage duration is reduced. The number of stacks is reduced. Although condi-builds in PvP are still on their last breath, perhaps the nerf of condi-cleaning will allow you to play not only on the power build.I'm not saying that the patch is perfect - there are many issues that I consider "not quite right", but the general message of this - is correct.

The battle in PvP should not rest on the comparison of who has more bursts or more ways to survive it. CC in PvP should work (even if it should be on a larger CD) - stability, from a characteristic for smart avoidance of CC, has turned into a "passive characteristic" that makes ALL your CC useless. So why do we need this CC, if it doesn't work in almost all situations?Yes, playing without CC and with oneshot-build, when you can nullify your previous mistakes with one burst - can be fun for someone, but don't associate it with a skill. This is roughly like turning on the easiest difficulty-level in the game, where you can completely avoid the game's special mechanics.Skill gameplay, as a small example:

  • Use stability when you are most vulnerable to control, rather than running with it constantly, when even one control skill may not work for you during the entire battle.
  • Fight and try to outplay your opponent, interrupting their abilities and making them make more mistakes than you will. And not run into the crowd shouting "ololo" and throwing all the abilities at the first target, while remaining invulnerable; because the CD for most defensive abilities is less than time to revive + time to reach the place of battle.
  • Think about what abilities to take with you and what they can give you in battle: a strong one-time advantage or a stable, but weak effect. And not situations like: a weak but passive effect or a strong but slightly less passive effect.
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