Balance Patch Preview - WvW

[MedievalThings.5417]

@primatos.5413 said:Diminishing returns

Diminishing returns means that certain spells and abilities become less effective against a target if used frequently within a short period of time. While diminishing returns mostly applies to player characters, some abilities also have diminishing returns in PvE. The table below contains a list of abilities that are affected by DR, and under what circumstances. In addition, DR categories are listed. Effects within the same category share diminishing returns.

When an ability with diminishing returns is used against a target in PvP, the first effect has full PvP duration. If the same category of effect (e.g. root) is used on that target within 18 seconds, that effect's duration is reduced by 50%. On the third use, the duration is reduced by 75%. After this, the target is immune from all effects in that category for the next 18 seconds. Note that when used against another player, effects will only last for their PvP duration, often far shorter than the duration stated in the ability's tooltip. The maximum PvP duration is 8 seconds.

Spells must be used on the same target within 18 seconds of the end of the duration in order to be diminished. In other words, if a target hasn't had a root spell active on them for more than 18 seconds, this category of diminishing returns will be reset on the target, and the next rooting spell will have full effect.

Getting atomary nuked while perma stunned is not fun

Need plx kkthxbb

Pretty much. Most fights nowadays look like : stunned, stunbreak, stunned, stunbreak, stunned, stunbreak, stunned/dead. That was maybe 1.5 seconds. If only I had brought my 4th stunbreak I would have been fine...oh wait, I only can have 3 on my bar.

[Dralor.3701]

@XenesisII.1540 said:Elite specs should not be better than the rest of the specs for the simple fact that gw2 runs their competitive sections, spvp/wvw, in one giant pool of players (f2p/core/hot/pof), and not tiered by expansions/higher levels like other games do. When other games introduce new spells or class mechanics it's usually closed off to the levels of the expansion it's in and so others lower level or don't own that expansion don't have to deal with that power creep.

It's fine to sell expansions, new classes, new specs, as long as you try to keep balance or some separation between all the class and specs you offer, otherwise the game turns into pay to win if the newest expansion class/spec is always the must have to play. People hate pay to win, and this game rides the line with it, but they've at least made an effort to keep core specs up.

GW2 is not pay to win at all nor would it be pay to win if people were required to buy expansions to be competitive. Game has enough problems with cash flow without ridiculous claims like that.

Who even clings to the core specs so much? Outside of warrior (only because of stupid nerfs to zerker) could I see any reason to want to play a core spec.

Anyway this is just derailing the discussion, not going to post anymore about this enjoy the game and hopefully support it and the hard working devs...

[XenesisII.1540]

@Dralor.3701 said:

@XenesisII.1540 said:Elite specs should not be better than the rest of the specs for the simple fact that gw2 runs their competitive sections, spvp/wvw, in one giant pool of players (f2p/core/hot/pof), and not tiered by expansions/higher levels like other games do. When other games introduce new spells or class mechanics it's usually closed off to the levels of the expansion it's in and so others lower level or don't own that expansion don't have to deal with that power creep.

It's fine to sell expansions, new classes, new specs, as long as you try to keep balance or some separation between all the class and specs you offer, otherwise the game turns into pay to win if the newest expansion class/spec is always the must have to play. People hate pay to win, and this game rides the line with it, but they've at least made an effort to keep core specs up.

GW2 is not pay to win at all nor would it be pay to win if people were required to buy expansions to be competitive. Game has enough problems with cash flow without ridiculous claims like that.

Who even clings to the core specs so much? Outside of warrior (only because of stupid nerfs to zerker) could I see any reason to want to play a core spec.

Anyway this is just derailing the discussion, not going to post anymore about this enjoy the game and hopefully support it and the hard working devs...

I said ride the line pay to win, I didn't say it was pay to win and I explained why. But you can't seriously sit there and think when HoT came out that just about all elite specs were not better than the core specs. Pay to win is paying to get an advantage over others, it's effects are mostly felt in competitive play, if anet had not made any effort to improve core specs to be competitive with elite specs, then yes this game would be pay to win today.

Again other games don't deal with this because everything that comes with an expansion is usually set in it's own areas, like WoW which adds 5-10 levels, and runs their arena only at max level always, battlegrounds are separated by level brackets, no one says WoW expansions are pay to win. GW2 does not have this separation and forces everyone to play in one pool, which I fully understand why because they obviously don't have numbers like WoW, but it becomes a problem when proper balancing isn't done.

Lastly, relax.

[wasikovee.2840]

@SehferViega.8725 said:Daredevil, Core Thief and Reaper: completly dead and usefull.

core thief with shadow art is strong.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Dralor.3701 said:Agreed.

They sort of dug themselves into a hole by not balancing things more frequently which got us to where we are today. Instead of taking the time to actually do a thorough balance patch they decided to go with a massive upheaval and hope for the best.

So, basically, if you enjoy pvp currently and don't mind the fast pace, you have every reason to be concerned that this could turn a game you enjoy into one you don't.

[tippolit.3591]

People are excited because it is infact a paradigm shift, as the devs announced. The devs also stated that from now on we will get more frequent hotfixes and balancepatches every 4-6 weeks.

Agree.

We see these chicken little posts all the time. I just attribute it to the fact that people always find something to bitch about. I'm pretty sure, though, that if I felt as pessimistic about the game as some people apparently do I would just move on. Instead, its the status quo sucks, the attempted fix sucks, etc.

[Vayne.8563]

Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

[Swagger.1459]

@Vayne.8563 said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Its not the balance patch idea that I'm worried about. Its the delivery and follow through that I don't have the most confidence in.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Blockhead Magee.3092 said:Its not the balance patch idea that I'm worried about. Its the delivery and follow through that I don't have the most confidence in.

much faith has been lost these last few years.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:Blanket nerf on everything as a 'reset.' they will adjust as needed afterwards, so Engi pistols won't stay nerfed.

In fact everyone needs to remember this and stop QQing on each nerf in this patch.

absolutely nothing to support this. why would you nerf something only to buff it again anyways? doesn't make any sense.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:Blanket nerf on everything as a 'reset.' they will adjust as needed afterwards, so Engi pistols won't stay nerfed.

In fact everyone needs to remember this and stop QQing on each nerf in this patch.

absolutely nothing to support this. why would you nerf something only to buff it again anyways? doesn't make any sense.

Other than their own words.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

Problem is we're not tearing it down. Not even close.The designers are building atop a dilapidated old house but leaving a significant chunk of its crumbling foundation and framing, and then trying to build off that, effectively removing a lot of what is and was good in the process, while still leaving some major problems for the future.

Warclaw is still here. Expansion gearsets are still here. T7 food is still massively OP and based on what basically amounts to a fetch quest dependent on elements of map completion. The DBL still has bad mechanics. Boonballing/AoE spamming is still not beatable with alternative strategies. Condi was barely affected and its burst was literally made stronger for some builds/classes, especially with the cleanse nerfs. Stuff like my off-meta yet hilariously-overpowered (in WvW) 4k+ armor condi ranger that I can already 1v2/1v3 glass burst builds with had almost no changes at all made to it, and its primary "skillset" is to mash 1. Skill expression for a lot of builds based on kit design didn't actually improve or really change much. Any given dominant build is going to just be better than the others by massive margins, but not as powerful by the numbers as today.

ANet addressed one thing: TTK, which wasn't a problem AT ALL with weapon skill coefficients EXCEPT for elite spec weapons. We literally played for years with the same numbers lol. TTK could have been even lower than today at several points in the game's history. And you know what? Nobody cared, because there were only a few mechanics that caused unfair fast deaths. And none of them were based on coefficients and stats EXCEPT for the condi ones, because those cheese builds happened to always be brainless AF.

This isn't starting anew. This is taking a "safe route" to protect elite spec relative powercreep and not make anyone in PvE upset because the strong builds/rotations aren't going to change with skill redesigns, and not make anyone in the PvP modes upset that they actually introduced design changes to kits and trait lines that desperately need it, to ensure people don't get literally outplayed.

Passives are the best example here. They boosted cooldowns to 5 minutes, effectively making the traits dead traits. The mere idea of a potent passive triggered effect being unpredictable and completely throwing calculated play out of whack is not changing. Instead of addressing that issue - combat system visibility and power in passive triggered traits, they're nerfing their frequency to obscurity so they're not longer a no-skill staple in combat and just leaving them, broken mechanics attached.

A huge majority of problems in the game are design-level and with boons. That's it. The patch before HoT was the best this game's ever been. Why? People were running berserker/valkyrie gear with way less health and sustain on average. People died even faster. But when you got bursted quickly, you almost always deserved it. It's just not the case now, because very little of the gameplay today as far as dealing damage is concerned is active thanks to the mechanics and higher numbers introduced with expansion content.

You can't just build a house on top of a crumbling foundation and the ruins of the previous home that fell apart. It doesn't matter what you do or even how good of a job you do at building another house. You need to inspect why the old one collapsed and address it directly so it doesn't happen again.

So many people have spoken out as to why they quit. The pro PvP players in their last days had a huge thread directly talking about these issues shortly before they all quit and the scene disbanded explaining the same things. The thread got deleted because it was holding people accountable made by actual experts of the PvP scene. I've said my piece speaking for my guild and a few others I've been in since almost everyone just left quietly to other games.

I'm still here because most people want to come back. The other games aren't as good as peak GW2. But they're not going to come back with gimmicks like nerfing base power. If TTK is low because of expansion powercreep, the expansion powercreep needs nerfing/changing/removing and nothing else.

[Swagger.1459]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

Problem is we're not tearing it down. Not even close.The designers are building atop a dilapidated old house but leaving a significant chunk of its crumbling foundation and framing, and then trying to build off that, effectively removing a lot of what is and was good in the process, while still leaving some major problems for the future.

Warclaw is still here. Expansion gearsets are still here. T7 food is still massively OP and based on what basically amounts to a fetch quest dependent on elements of map completion. The DBL still has bad mechanics. Boonballing/AoE spamming is still not beatable with alternative strategies. Condi was barely affected and its burst was literally made stronger for some builds/classes, especially with the cleanse nerfs. Stuff like my off-meta yet hilariously-overpowered (in WvW) 4k+ armor condi ranger that I can already 1v2/1v3 glass burst builds with had almost no changes at all made to it, and its primary "skillset" is to mash 1. Skill expression for a lot of builds based on kit design didn't actually improve or really change much. Any given dominant build is going to just be better than the others by massive margins, but not as powerful by the numbers as today.

ANet addressed one thing: TTK, which wasn't a problem AT ALL with weapon skill coefficients

EXCEPT

for elite spec weapons. We literally played for years with the same numbers lol. TTK

could

have been even lower than today at several points in the game's history. And you know what? Nobody cared, because there were only a few mechanics that caused unfair fast deaths. And none of them were based on coefficients and stats

EXCEPT

for the condi ones, because those cheese builds happened to always be brainless AF.

This isn't starting anew. This is taking a "safe route" to protect elite spec relative powercreep and not make anyone in PvE upset because the strong builds/rotations aren't going to change with skill redesigns, and not make anyone in the PvP modes upset that they actually introduced design changes to kits and trait lines that desperately need it, to ensure people don't get literally outplayed.

Passives are the best example here. They boosted cooldowns to 5 minutes, effectively making the traits dead traits. The mere idea of a potent passive triggered effect being unpredictable and completely throwing calculated play out of whack is not changing. Instead of addressing that issue - combat system visibility and power in passive triggered traits, they're nerfing their frequency to obscurity so they're not longer a no-skill staple in combat and just leaving them, broken mechanics attached.

A huge majority of problems in the game are design-level and with boons. That's it. The patch before HoT was the best this game's ever been. Why? People were running berserker/valkyrie gear with way less health and sustain on average. People died even faster. But when you got bursted quickly, you almost always deserved it. It's just not the case now, because very little of the gameplay today as far as dealing damage is concerned is active thanks to the mechanics and higher numbers introduced with expansion content.

You can't just build a house on top of a crumbling foundation and the ruins of the previous home that fell apart. It doesn't matter what you do or even how good of a job you do at building another house. You need to inspect why the old one collapsed and address it directly so it doesn't happen again.

So many people have spoken out as to why they quit. The pro PvP players in their last days had a huge thread directly talking about these issues shortly before they all quit and the scene disbanded explaining the same things. The thread got deleted because it was holding people accountable made by actual experts of the PvP scene. I've said my piece speaking for my guild and a few others I've been in since almost everyone just left quietly to other games.

I'm still here because most people want to come back. The other games aren't as good as peak GW2. But they're not going to come back with gimmicks like nerfing base power. If TTK is low because of expansion powercreep, the expansion powercreep needs nerfing/changing/removing and nothing else.

Umm this is just the beginning.

Cal- “This patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm”

Irenio- “We're planning many changes of this nature, as well as re-works and more.”

You should watch from 57m on…

@Swagger.1459 said:Juicy news starting at 57 minutes! Enjoy!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/533356676?t=57m

[eXruina.4956]

Firstly, I love the direction all this is going, its a step forward for sure.

After assessing the changes it looks like another Dire/Trailblazer condi meta in wvw all over again.., specially since you guys plan to nerf resistance uptime and cleanses.

Obviously this is not a problem in pve and pvp, but in wvw the advantage of having such high frontloaded armor and hp, combined with high damage, easily re-applyable, condition output, really ruins small-mid size encounters, power builds hitting a guy with 3k+ armor, 20k+ hp, and protection, stralth, ports or other defenses is absurdly one sided, and will be moreso post patch changes.

Maybe at the end of the day, applying a cap to certain stats in wvw, or banning certain stat combinations entirely like in pvp, to bring power levels closer, would be a more productive change, as these problems certainly affect your design space greatly in the longterm and will keep recurring.

[Gorilla.4120]

I feel like the devs got lazy when it comes to the passive traits. I'm completely in favor of removing all the passives. However, instead of increasing the cooldowns to a ridiculously long five minutes (300 seconds), why not change the trait completely.

For example, instead of Defy Pain granting Lesser Endure Pain when the player is struck while below 50% health, how about granting protection for 4 seconds.

That would significantly reduce the strength of the trait but wouldn't make it totally useless for five minutes.

[Burnfall.9573]

'problems never go away'

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Mighty Cole.7849 said:I feel like the devs got lazy when it comes to the passive traits. I'm completely in favor of removing all the passives. However, instead of increasing the cooldowns to a ridiculously long five minutes (300 seconds), why not change the trait completely.

For example, instead of Defy Pain granting Lesser Endure Pain when the player is struck while below 50% health, how about granting protection for 4 seconds.

That would significantly reduce the strength of the trait but wouldn't make it totally useless for five minutes.

Because that is outside the scope of the balance team. They made the CD 5 minutes as a place holder until the Dev team replaces the traits.

[Navoe.4283]

I keep seeing posts refering to the later adjustments this is just the start ect. What tells A-net an adjustment is needed? For all the complaining they do true dedicated elite talented WVW players are very bright people. after patch they will spend a day study stats effects of skills weapons and whatever. come up with about 4 combinations they can link during combat. re--stat weapons armor traits ect. They go into battle discover they have an efficient effective zerg. It becomes the new meta every zerg uses it in varying numbers of the 4. They are not on some forum complaining about a certain class not working right they have a scenario that works for them. Solo roamers and scouts don't use those builds. their builds have to be linkable in their own skill bar only. we will spend weeks trying to get our toon to function like we want. eventually probably give up and try a different class and so on. now we are playing a class and combo forced on us by circumstance not the one we really liked. I am one person not a zerg. If I post my sustain hammer warrior is no longer viable as a solo option who's listening ? Is A-net listening to me or the zerg players not complaining. This is a big portion of why there is no true balance now. Balance means you can take any combo of 4 classes or so in a zerg and be competitive with your opponent. who wins is then based on who has the fastest fingers so to speak. ( lag not withstanding ) A-net has to be willing to test every class every weapon every trait every skill combo in game play situations for hrs. and hrs.and hrs................ to know what adjustments need to be made. relying on player feed back doesn't work that info is skewed by the style of the player

[XenesisII.1540]

Forum Knight critically hits you for 20,123 using [A brick of words].

[Strider Pj.2193]

@XenesisII.1540 said:Forum Knight critically hits you for 20,123 using [A brick of words].

Winner

[Burnfall.9573]

'Guild Wars 2 has outlined its upcoming competitive update to hit on February 25'https://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/news/guild-wars-2-competitive-update-touches-on-balance-and-more-2000117269

-Sonic The Hedgehog Movie proves when main concerns are resolved; progress are made, healthy changes are rewarded in return----they listened, fans shows their appreciation--

(by the way, Sonic already being fast (Thief Profession) doesn't need stealth or teleport to perform)

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

Problem is we're not tearing it down. Not even close.The designers are building atop a dilapidated old house but leaving a significant chunk of its crumbling foundation and framing, and then trying to build off that, effectively removing a lot of what is and was good in the process, while still leaving some major problems for the future.

Warclaw is still here. Expansion gearsets are still here. T7 food is still massively OP and based on what basically amounts to a fetch quest dependent on elements of map completion. The DBL still has bad mechanics. Boonballing/AoE spamming is still not beatable with alternative strategies. Condi was barely affected and its burst was literally made stronger for some builds/classes, especially with the cleanse nerfs. Stuff like my off-meta yet hilariously-overpowered (in WvW) 4k+ armor condi ranger that I can already 1v2/1v3 glass burst builds with had almost no changes at all made to it, and its primary "skillset" is to mash 1. Skill expression for a lot of builds based on kit design didn't actually improve or really change much. Any given dominant build is going to just be better than the others by massive margins, but not as powerful by the numbers as today.

ANet addressed one thing: TTK, which wasn't a problem AT ALL with weapon skill coefficients

EXCEPT

for elite spec weapons. We literally played for years with the same numbers lol. TTK

could

have been even lower than today at several points in the game's history. And you know what? Nobody cared, because there were only a few mechanics that caused unfair fast deaths. And none of them were based on coefficients and stats

EXCEPT

for the condi ones, because those cheese builds happened to always be brainless AF.

This isn't starting anew. This is taking a "safe route" to protect elite spec relative powercreep and not make anyone in PvE upset because the strong builds/rotations aren't going to change with skill redesigns, and not make anyone in the PvP modes upset that they actually introduced design changes to kits and trait lines that desperately need it, to ensure people don't get literally outplayed.

Passives are the best example here. They boosted cooldowns to 5 minutes, effectively making the traits dead traits. The mere idea of a potent passive triggered effect being unpredictable and completely throwing calculated play out of whack is not changing. Instead of addressing that issue - combat system visibility and power in passive triggered traits, they're nerfing their frequency to obscurity so they're not longer a no-skill staple in combat and just leaving them, broken mechanics attached.

A huge majority of problems in the game are design-level and with boons. That's it. The patch before HoT was the best this game's ever been. Why? People were running berserker/valkyrie gear with way less health and sustain on average. People died even faster. But when you got bursted quickly, you almost always deserved it. It's just not the case now, because very little of the gameplay today as far as dealing damage is concerned is active thanks to the mechanics and higher numbers introduced with expansion content.

You can't just build a house on top of a crumbling foundation and the ruins of the previous home that fell apart. It doesn't matter what you do or even how good of a job you do at building another house. You need to inspect why the old one collapsed and address it directly so it doesn't happen again.

So many people have spoken out as to why they quit. The pro PvP players in their last days had a huge thread directly talking about these issues shortly before they all quit and the scene disbanded explaining the same things. The thread got deleted because it was holding people accountable made by actual experts of the PvP scene. I've said my piece speaking for my guild and a few others I've been in since almost everyone just left quietly to other games.

I'm still here because most people want to come back. The other games aren't as good as peak GW2. But they're not going to come back with gimmicks like nerfing base power. If TTK is low because of expansion powercreep, the expansion powercreep needs nerfing/changing/removing and nothing else.

Umm this is just the beginning.

Cal- “This patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm”

Irenio- “We're planning many changes of this nature, as well as re-works and more.”

You should watch from 57m on…

@Swagger.1459 said:Juicy news starting at 57 minutes! Enjoy!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/533356676?t=57m

Yes, it is the beginning. It's the beginning of a lot of additional maintenance as my post implies.What I said is that they didn't hit the fundamental game-breaking aspects of the mode, and by making all these changes, they're setting themselves up for a huge amount of rework later on.

Talk is cheap, and they lack any information as to how successful they're going to be, which is why I don't care what they say in a stream. They've been saying it's been a priority for years and when it comes to ideas for necessary changes, the whole "ANet's Table" meme comes to mind. The "borderlands improvements" via DBL come to mind. The reveal for alliances comes to mind. The reveal and announcements for improved infrastructure for GvG comes to mind. Fixing consumables comes to mind. Fixing lag comes to mind. Improving gameplay visibility comes to mind. And here we still are, years later, with none of those actually resolved or even substantially improved except maybe for lag (but they threw more hardware at the problems instead of fixing the cause as was mentioned in a previous dev statement: It's conditions/tick effects), and a number of them exacerbated; We still have a DBL that nobody plays or enjoys, which was only because ANet dug their heels in about needing to keep one of said maps and reverting two of the ABL's. GvG-oriented gameplay is dead thanks to class balance that people said was why it started dying in the first place, the consumable disparity is bigger than ever, the profession design keeps inflating lag, and we have two elite specs that were released which were based on non-interaction and hiding gameplay visibility.

PoF launched what, like two and a half years ago? If major balance patches come three times a year, we're like 7-8 patches deep and the game's still tremendously broken. At a four to six week cadence, we're looking at between eight months and a year just to make that level of progress, and that's discounting that the warclaw and T7 food are only recent additions which are almost unanimously disliked by people who want to actually play WvW as a capture and hold mode instead of a ktrain.

They could have reduced the scope by 90% and almost fixed WvW by listening to the experienced community. The choice to ignore the outlier problems nullifies everything else they're going to do irrespective of the number and severity of changes they make until those outlier problems are addressed in some capacity.

[Swagger.1459]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

Problem is we're not tearing it down. Not even close.The designers are building atop a dilapidated old house but leaving a significant chunk of its crumbling foundation and framing, and then trying to build off that, effectively removing a lot of what is and was good in the process, while still leaving some major problems for the future.

Warclaw is still here. Expansion gearsets are still here. T7 food is still massively OP and based on what basically amounts to a fetch quest dependent on elements of map completion. The DBL still has bad mechanics. Boonballing/AoE spamming is still not beatable with alternative strategies. Condi was barely affected and its burst was literally made stronger for some builds/classes, especially with the cleanse nerfs. Stuff like my off-meta yet hilariously-overpowered (in WvW) 4k+ armor condi ranger that I can already 1v2/1v3 glass burst builds with had almost no changes at all made to it, and its primary "skillset" is to mash 1. Skill expression for a lot of builds based on kit design didn't actually improve or really change much. Any given dominant build is going to just be better than the others by massive margins, but not as powerful by the numbers as today.

ANet addressed one thing: TTK, which wasn't a problem AT ALL with weapon skill coefficients

EXCEPT

for elite spec weapons. We literally played for years with the same numbers lol. TTK

could

have been even lower than today at several points in the game's history. And you know what? Nobody cared, because there were only a few mechanics that caused unfair fast deaths. And none of them were based on coefficients and stats

EXCEPT

for the condi ones, because those cheese builds happened to always be brainless AF.

This isn't starting anew. This is taking a "safe route" to protect elite spec relative powercreep and not make anyone in PvE upset because the strong builds/rotations aren't going to change with skill redesigns, and not make anyone in the PvP modes upset that they actually introduced design changes to kits and trait lines that desperately need it, to ensure people don't get literally outplayed.

Passives are the best example here. They boosted cooldowns to 5 minutes, effectively making the traits dead traits. The mere idea of a potent passive triggered effect being unpredictable and completely throwing calculated play out of whack is not changing. Instead of addressing that issue - combat system visibility and power in passive triggered traits, they're nerfing their frequency to obscurity so they're not longer a no-skill staple in combat and just leaving them, broken mechanics attached.

A huge majority of problems in the game are design-level and with boons. That's it. The patch before HoT was the best this game's ever been. Why? People were running berserker/valkyrie gear with way less health and sustain on average. People died even faster. But when you got bursted quickly, you almost always deserved it. It's just not the case now, because very little of the gameplay today as far as dealing damage is concerned is active thanks to the mechanics and higher numbers introduced with expansion content.

You can't just build a house on top of a crumbling foundation and the ruins of the previous home that fell apart. It doesn't matter what you do or even how good of a job you do at building another house. You need to inspect why the old one collapsed and address it directly so it doesn't happen again.

So many people have spoken out as to why they quit. The pro PvP players in their last days had a huge thread directly talking about these issues shortly before they all quit and the scene disbanded explaining the same things. The thread got deleted because it was holding people accountable made by actual experts of the PvP scene. I've said my piece speaking for my guild and a few others I've been in since almost everyone just left quietly to other games.

I'm still here because most people want to come back. The other games aren't as good as peak GW2. But they're not going to come back with gimmicks like nerfing base power. If TTK is low because of expansion powercreep, the expansion powercreep needs nerfing/changing/removing and nothing else.

Umm this is just the beginning.

Cal- “This patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm”

Irenio- “We're planning many changes of this nature, as well as re-works and more.”

You should watch from 57m on…

@Swagger.1459 said:Juicy news starting at 57 minutes! Enjoy!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/533356676?t=57m

Yes, it is the beginning. It's the beginning of a lot of additional maintenance as my post implies.What I said is that they didn't hit the fundamental game-breaking aspects of the mode, and by making all these changes, they're setting themselves up for a huge amount of rework later on.

Talk is cheap, and they lack any information as to how successful they're going to be, which is why I don't care what they say in a stream. They've been saying it's been a priority for years and when it comes to ideas for necessary changes, the whole "ANet's Table" meme comes to mind. The "borderlands improvements" via DBL come to mind. The reveal for alliances comes to mind. The reveal and announcements for improved infrastructure for GvG comes to mind. Fixing consumables comes to mind. Fixing lag comes to mind. Improving gameplay visibility comes to mind. And here we still are, years later, with none of those actually resolved or even substantially improved except maybe for lag (but they threw more hardware at the problems instead of fixing the cause as was mentioned in a previous dev statement: It's conditions/tick effects), and a number of them exacerbated; We still have a DBL that nobody plays or enjoys, which was only because ANet dug their heels in about needing to keep one of said maps and reverting two of the ABL's. GvG-oriented gameplay is dead thanks to class balance that people said was why it started dying in the first place, the consumable disparity is bigger than ever, the profession design keeps inflating lag, and we have two elite specs that were released which were based on non-interaction and hiding gameplay visibility.

PoF launched what, like two and a half years ago? If major balance patches come three times a year, we're like 7-8 patches deep and the game's still tremendously broken. At a four to six week cadence, we're looking at between eight months and a year just to make that level of progress, and that's discounting that the warclaw and T7 food are only recent additions which are almost unanimously disliked by people who want to actually play WvW as a capture and hold mode instead of a ktrain.

They could have reduced the scope by 90% and almost fixed WvW by listening to the experienced community. The choice to ignore the outlier problems nullifies everything else they're going to do irrespective of the number and severity of changes they make until those outlier problems are addressed in some capacity.

They have to start somewhere.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Almost feels more like a reboot than a balance patch. I'm okay with that. Sometimes if the house needs enough work, tearing it down and starting over is more efficient.

^^ Words of wisdom folks!

Problem is we're not tearing it down. Not even close.The designers are building atop a dilapidated old house but leaving a significant chunk of its crumbling foundation and framing, and then trying to build off that, effectively removing a lot of what is and was good in the process, while still leaving some major problems for the future.

Warclaw is still here. Expansion gearsets are still here. T7 food is still massively OP and based on what basically amounts to a fetch quest dependent on elements of map completion. The DBL still has bad mechanics. Boonballing/AoE spamming is still not beatable with alternative strategies. Condi was barely affected and its burst was literally made stronger for some builds/classes, especially with the cleanse nerfs. Stuff like my off-meta yet hilariously-overpowered (in WvW) 4k+ armor condi ranger that I can already 1v2/1v3 glass burst builds with had almost no changes at all made to it, and its primary "skillset" is to mash 1. Skill expression for a lot of builds based on kit design didn't actually improve or really change much. Any given dominant build is going to just be better than the others by massive margins, but not as powerful by the numbers as today.

ANet addressed one thing: TTK, which wasn't a problem AT ALL with weapon skill coefficients

EXCEPT

for elite spec weapons. We literally played for years with the same numbers lol. TTK

could

have been even lower than today at several points in the game's history. And you know what? Nobody cared, because there were only a few mechanics that caused unfair fast deaths. And none of them were based on coefficients and stats

EXCEPT

for the condi ones, because those cheese builds happened to always be brainless AF.

This isn't starting anew. This is taking a "safe route" to protect elite spec relative powercreep and not make anyone in PvE upset because the strong builds/rotations aren't going to change with skill redesigns, and not make anyone in the PvP modes upset that they actually introduced design changes to kits and trait lines that desperately need it, to ensure people don't get literally outplayed.

Passives are the best example here. They boosted cooldowns to 5 minutes, effectively making the traits dead traits. The mere idea of a potent passive triggered effect being unpredictable and completely throwing calculated play out of whack is not changing. Instead of addressing that issue - combat system visibility and power in passive triggered traits, they're nerfing their frequency to obscurity so they're not longer a no-skill staple in combat and just leaving them, broken mechanics attached.

A huge majority of problems in the game are design-level and with boons. That's it. The patch before HoT was the best this game's ever been. Why? People were running berserker/valkyrie gear with way less health and sustain on average. People died even faster. But when you got bursted quickly, you almost always deserved it. It's just not the case now, because very little of the gameplay today as far as dealing damage is concerned is active thanks to the mechanics and higher numbers introduced with expansion content.

You can't just build a house on top of a crumbling foundation and the ruins of the previous home that fell apart. It doesn't matter what you do or even how good of a job you do at building another house. You need to inspect why the old one collapsed and address it directly so it doesn't happen again.

So many people have spoken out as to why they quit. The pro PvP players in their last days had a huge thread directly talking about these issues shortly before they all quit and the scene disbanded explaining the same things. The thread got deleted because it was holding people accountable made by actual experts of the PvP scene. I've said my piece speaking for my guild and a few others I've been in since almost everyone just left quietly to other games.

I'm still here because most people want to come back. The other games aren't as good as peak GW2. But they're not going to come back with gimmicks like nerfing base power. If TTK is low because of expansion powercreep, the expansion powercreep needs nerfing/changing/removing and nothing else.

Umm this is just the beginning.

Cal- “This patch is unusual in that it’s more about establishing a new paradigm”

Irenio- “We're planning many changes of this nature, as well as re-works and more.”

You should watch from 57m on…

@Swagger.1459 said:Juicy news starting at 57 minutes! Enjoy!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/533356676?t=57m

Yes, it is the beginning. It's the beginning of a lot of additional maintenance as my post implies.What I said is that they didn't hit the fundamental game-breaking aspects of the mode, and by making all these changes, they're setting themselves up for a huge amount of rework later on.

Talk is cheap, and they lack any information as to how successful they're going to be, which is why I don't care what they say in a stream. They've been saying it's been a priority for years and when it comes to ideas for necessary changes, the whole "ANet's Table" meme comes to mind. The "borderlands improvements" via DBL come to mind. The reveal for alliances comes to mind. The reveal and announcements for improved infrastructure for GvG comes to mind. Fixing consumables comes to mind. Fixing lag comes to mind. Improving gameplay visibility comes to mind. And here we still are, years later, with none of those actually resolved or even substantially improved except maybe for lag (but they threw more hardware at the problems instead of fixing the cause as was mentioned in a previous dev statement: It's conditions/tick effects), and a number of them exacerbated; We still have a DBL that nobody plays or enjoys, which was only because ANet dug their heels in about needing to keep one of said maps and reverting two of the ABL's. GvG-oriented gameplay is dead thanks to class balance that people said was why it started dying in the first place, the consumable disparity is bigger than ever, the profession design keeps inflating lag, and we have two elite specs that were released which were based on non-interaction and hiding gameplay visibility.

PoF launched what, like two and a half years ago? If major balance patches come three times a year, we're like 7-8 patches deep and the game's still tremendously broken. At a four to six week cadence, we're looking at between eight months and a year just to make that level of progress, and that's discounting that the warclaw and T7 food are only recent additions which are almost unanimously disliked by people who want to actually play WvW as a capture and hold mode instead of a ktrain.

They could have reduced the scope by 90% and almost fixed WvW by listening to the experienced community. The choice to ignore the outlier problems nullifies everything else they're going to do irrespective of the number and severity of changes they make until those outlier problems are addressed in some capacity.

They have to start somewhere.

A puppy pooping on the floor does not deserve a treat when pooping on the floor because of the mere fact it pooped.

ANet is not entitled to any of my praises because of the mere fact they're changing the game.

Like the dog, when those changes aren't **** on the floor, I'll dole them out.