Thoughts on today's "balance"?

[Ghos.1326]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@"Ghos.1326" said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @"Thornwolf.9721" is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@"Ghos.1326" said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

[Ragnar.4257]

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Dave.6819 said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

@wevh.2903 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:throw mine + battering ram nerf is lol. baddies call for bad nerfs, and anet gives it to em. big reason why pvp is dead.

Yes like not every top player have asked for deccap scrapper nerf or a simple delete but you yes just dodge mines

are these the same ppl complaining about mirage gutting, guard longbow destruction, war noodlification, rev staff meme, etc. ad infinitum? the ceaseless march of the undead hordes continues.

[mrauls.6519]

@mixxed.5862 said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be wild

[Thornwolf.9721]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @"Thornwolf.9721" is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@mixxed.5862 said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

[mrauls.6519]

@mes.4607 said:

@mixxed.5862 said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

Can't wait

[UNOwen.7132]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

1. Tera went into maintenance mode. And Tera 2 is in development.
2. I was comparing WvW to BDO explicitly because they do it better. Their WvW scene seems way healthier
3. ESO's PvP seems to be booming, the game seems to be doing better than this one? Do I play it? No. I don't like the art style.
4. Ashes will be fine considering they have tons of rich whales backing it; And who will pay for it. Its one of the most anticipated up-coming MMO's on the market and honestly the only one that I continuously hear about. Anything else is a one off and then never mentioned again~

Why am I comparing other MMO's to this one? Because this one despite its free nature is not as popular which is a given considering its presence on both twitch and youtube, if you want to get into it final fantasy (bleh) and ESO (meh) seem more popular with more of a playerbase and a unity in that player base. Like I Said Guild wars 2 to me seems to be on a downward trend, people are leaving and yet these other games aren't have a huge exodus? Their modes seem lively and people are producing content for it (Well not tera because of obvious reasons). Note I love guild wars, I dont really care about any of these other games but as an outsider looking in and from what I see the community is more engaged and numerous on all game modes than they are here. PvP has shrunk, continues to shrink and WvW is only good when the band-wagon goes into your favor. Honestly The game doesn't feel very alive and the "feel" is more important than the numeric value because when it FEELS like no ones there, you leave. Simple as that. I doubt we have 11 million active accounts in the game in general and I HIGHLY DOUBT pvp is in the higher echelon of the community population, I think the only two modes with good pop numbers is open world PvE and WvW because there is little no bar of entry (Even though the bars are completely fabricated).

Other games seem to be doing better, radio silence also doesn't really bring confidence. While I think the other games like you said are hot garbo, I feel like guild wars 2 isn't doing enough and doing fast enough cadence on balance changes/reworks. Im assuming End of dragons will come with new specs and reworks to old specs and the classes, I think and hope it will basically remake/revitalize/fix the game. But my faith is shaken and Im not sure Im able to believe it until they prove it to me; Note I never said guild wars 2 was a bad game based on personal opinion. I said as a competitive player Id never touch it if I were introduced to it today, but im already invested so I stick with it and Im basing my view on how I look at games. And to me right now the game is not as fun as it was~ Its subjective but no more or less real than the reality you see, and the issue Is when I see so many people leaving it just doesn't make me believe things will get better.

[UNOwen.7132]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

1. Tera went into maintenance mode. And Tera 2 is in development.

TERAs PvP hasnt been healthy even back when it was still regularly updated. It was always tiny. TERA 2 is not in development. They pretty explicitely shot that down earlier this year.

2. I was comparing WvW to BDO explicitly because they do it better. Their WvW scene seems way healthier

They dont, its actually got a lot more issues, and its even less healthy than WvW.

3. ESO's PvP seems to be booming, the game seems to be doing better than this one? Do I play it? No. I don't like the art style.

Yeah I cant say that they seem to agree. Lots of stories of matchmaking not even filling up the teams, leading to situations like 4v2. Booming doesnt appear to be the right word.

4. Ashes will be fine considering they have tons of rich whales backing it; And who will pay for it. Its one of the most anticipated up-coming MMO's on the market and honestly the only one that I continuously hear about. Anything else is a one off and then never mentioned again~

So did Wildstar. Not just that, Wildstar had a ton of hype behind it, thanks to its presentation, developers, and so on. On the other hand, Ashes has yet to shake the Scam stigma it got after the whole battle royale thing. It was anticipated once upon a time, before we know much about the game. Now? Most people dont really seem to care. It looks terrible, sub-based model means a lot of people straight up wont even try it, and its development cycle hasnt inspired confidence. It will go F2P quickly and die most likely, just as Wildstar did.

Why am I comparing other MMO's to this one? Because this one despite its free nature is not as popular which is a given considering its presence on both twitch and youtube, if you want to get into it final fantasy (bleh) and ESO (meh) seem more popular with more of a playerbase and a unity in that player base. Like I Said Guild wars 2 to me seems to be on a downward trend, people are leaving and yet these other games aren't have a huge exodus? Their modes seem lively and people are producing content for it (Well not tera because of obvious reasons). Note I love guild wars, I dont really care about any of these other games but as an outsider looking in and from what I see the community is more engaged and numerous on all game modes than they are here. PvP has shrunk, continues to shrink and WvW is only good when the band-wagon goes into your favor. Honestly The game doesn't feel very alive and the "feel" is more important than the numeric value because when it FEELS like no ones there, you leave. Simple as that. I doubt we have 11 million active accounts in the game in general and I HIGHLY DOUBT pvp is in the higher echelon of the community population, I think the only two modes with good pop numbers is open world PvE and WvW because there is little no bar of entry (Even though the bars are completely fabricated).

Of course FFXIV is more popular. Its a bloody final fantasy game. Name recognition matters a lot. Likewise with ESO, though in its case we dont even know if it really is bigger. They dont tend to share numbers. Oh and ESO already had its Exodus. Its just rebounding now. Somewhat. Its PvP is however underpopulated (moreso than GW2 if the stories are to be believed) and continously shrinking. Esodil seems to be at the level of lowest tier WvW at the highest population, and worse below that.

Other games seem to be doing better, radio silence also doesn't really bring confidence. While I think the other games like you said are hot garbo, I feel like guild wars 2 isn't doing enough and doing fast enough cadence on balance changes/reworks. Im assuming End of dragons will come with new specs and reworks to old specs and the classes, I think and hope it will basically remake/revitalize/fix the game. But my faith is shaken and Im not sure Im able to believe it until they prove it to me; Note I never said guild wars 2 was a bad game based on personal opinion. I said as a competitive player Id never touch it if I were introduced to it today, but im already invested so I stick with it and Im basing my view on how I look at games. And to me right now the game is not as fun as it was~ Its subjective but no more or less real than the reality you see, and the issue Is when I see so many people leaving it just doesn't make me believe things will get better.

Lets be real here, if youre a competitive player, youre not likely to play an MMO for that. As far as MMOs are concerned though? GW2 still has the best PvP. ESOs is doing worse, FFXIVs PvP exists purely as a technicality, BDOs is p2w incarnate and thats about it. Granted, yes, GW2s PvP has issue, slow balance patches, the absolute catastrophe that was the february patch.

[Ghos.1326]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

Yeah this is false. WoW is popular because...1) it's been around for years. Much longer than gw2. It has a solid playerbase that's been around since its inception.2) Believe it or not, WoW balance is actually much better than gw2's current balance because it has....wait you hear that? give and take. Repeat it.3) WoW's marketing team is spot on with their product showcase, aka marketing. Great marketing goes a long way. Anet's marketing likes to linger for a long time on a specific thing (remember griffons? lel) and hammer that onto people when they could linger on something more worthwhile like its unrivaled combat mechanics that no other game could even dream of accomplishing because the original devs who worked on it were plain and simple freaking BOSSES (kudos to you guys for constructing this combat system, seriously it's amazing).

So, basically what you're telling me is that if I was the head of the balance team, introduce healthy balance to the game to help alleviate one of the 3 things that's holding gw2 back from what it could be, and what it used to be, pvp/wvw would be dead? At the same time, I've not seen you come back with what you would do to "fix" the game according to your standards. But I may have a slight clue (ok I lied, it's a big clue it's so obvious). You'd basically undo all the changes from the February patch because you think, keyword THINK, powercreep is "fun". If you were the head of balance, I'd give the game 2-3 months before next expac was cancelled, and the servers shut down for good, both pvp/wvw and pve. We'd have no more game.I'll also squash the statement of "so many classes balance is impossible/unfathomable" yet league of legends has what, close to 100 champions and they seem to be doing quite well with balance. Their playerbase and being able to stay in the competitive scene testifies to this.

Most of the top players who've played in ESL, Worlds, big regional tournaments, etc....they came back when feb patch hit. You know what ultimately drove a lot of them off again recently? The broken promise of more frequent smaller balance passes to address factors that were missed in february and still may be running rampant right now that makes the game unfun because they're way overperforming. Lets take this specific patch as an example. Hot-fix level patch that could have easily been done after a couple weeks of discovering the issues that were causing this imbalance took....3 or 4 months? to implement. That's a big yikes.

However, from what I've just read recently, they're going through another big layoff most likely thanks to Covid and everyone so scared to death for no reason over it that states decided to shut down for so long when it was not necessary. That, unfortunately, affects business so I can see why the hot-fix patch took some time to get here so I won't give them crap for that. Btw folks at anet, I'm truly sorry for the things you guys are going through currently, please try and stay strong.

BDO does not boast a healthy pvp scene. While it's an interesting one, if you max out your gear, you can literally one shot people. Not "one shot" but literally 1 skill depletes the entirety of the enemy's health bar. Do I still like BDO? Yes. But it's definitely not balanced.ESO, we could argue about that one there because I tend to think ESO is not bad in terms of balance. The combat looks and plays pretty cool, very similar to gw2 (but not quite there). IMO gw2 is much smoother and refined, feels more "real time".Tera online, lel. Though fun, yeah that's a meme. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the gunner when it first came out.

I'm also pretty hyped for ashes of creation and new world, they look really cool. I've not played those yet so i can't make a great comparison. Anxious to try both out.

All in all, yeah gw2's balance is not where it should be but I do feel it's slowly working toward it. what killed balance was during the specialization patch before HoT release, one change which1) allowed burn and poison to break one cap, while also keeping their very high damage potential per tick (burn) and great utility by stunting healing power while it's applied (poison). This change did NOT need to happen, as the highest condition damage from burn and the great utility bonus from enemies being poisoned were enough to keep it as is and still function very well for condition style builds.2) overloading too many effects into a single trait after the specialization introduction, which resulted in builds being able to build as a "jack of all trades" build and still outperform builds that solely focused on one role, and then still performed something specific much better than the builds that focused on one major role (more give, little take, see how important give and take is?)3) Single trait choices granting very big benefit bonuses after introducing the specialization changes, making those trait choices the single most important traits to take regardless of build because of how great those benefits were. Which resulted in very boring builds that had "standard" trait line and individual trait choices that would literally make you significantly worse if you didn't take those standards.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

Yeah this is false. WoW is popular because...1) it's been around for years. Much longer than gw2. It has a solid playerbase that's been around since its inception.2) Believe it or not, WoW balance is actually much better than gw2's current balance because it has....wait you hear that? give and take. Repeat it.3) WoW's marketing team is spot on with their product showcase, aka marketing. Great marketing goes a long way. Anet's marketing likes to linger for a long time on a specific thing (remember griffons? lel) and hammer that onto people when they could linger on something more worthwhile like its unrivaled combat mechanics that no other game could even dream of accomplishing because the original devs who worked on it were plain and simple freaking BOSSES (kudos to you guys for constructing this combat system, seriously it's amazing).

So, basically what you're telling me is that if I was the head of the balance team, introduce healthy balance to the game to help alleviate one of the 3 things that's holding gw2 back from what it could be, and what it used to be, pvp/wvw would be dead? At the same time, I've not seen you come back with what you would do to "fix" the game according to your standards. But I may have a slight clue (ok I lied, it's a big clue it's so obvious). You'd basically undo all the changes from the February patch because you think, keyword THINK, powercreep is "fun". If you were the head of balance, I'd give the game 2-3 months before next expac was cancelled, and the servers shut down for good, both pvp/wvw and pve. We'd have no more game.I'll also squash the statement of "so many classes balance is impossible/unfathomable" yet league of legends has what, close to 100 champions and they seem to be doing quite well with balance. Their playerbase and being able to stay in the competitive scene testifies to this.

Most of the top players who've played in ESL, Worlds, big regional tournaments, etc....they came back when feb patch hit. You know what ultimately drove a lot of them off again recently? The broken promise of more frequent smaller balance passes to address factors that were missed in february and still may be running rampant right now that makes the game unfun because they're way overperforming. Lets take this specific patch as an example. Hot-fix level patch that could have easily been done after a couple weeks of discovering the issues that were causing this imbalance took....3 or 4 months? to implement. That's a big yikes.

However, from what I've just read recently, they're going through another big layoff most likely thanks to Covid and everyone so scared to death for no reason over it that states decided to shut down for so long when it was not necessary. That, unfortunately, affects business so I can see why the hot-fix patch took some time to get here so I won't give them kitten for that. Btw folks at anet, I'm truly sorry for the things you guys are going through currently, please try and stay strong.

BDO does not boast a healthy pvp scene. While it's an interesting one, if you max out your gear, you can literally one shot people. Not "one shot" but literally 1 skill depletes the entirety of the enemy's health bar. Do I still like BDO? Yes. But it's definitely not balanced.ESO, we could argue about that one there because I tend to think ESO is not bad in terms of balance. The combat looks and plays pretty cool, very similar to gw2 (but not quite there). IMO gw2 is much smoother and refined, feels more "real time".Tera online, lel. Though fun, yeah that's a meme. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the gunner when it first came out.

I'm also pretty hyped for ashes of creation and new world, they look really cool. I've not played those yet so i can't make a great comparison. Anxious to try both out.

All in all, yeah gw2's balance is not where it should be but I do feel it's slowly working toward it. what killed balance was during the specialization patch before HoT release, one change which1) allowed burn and poison to break one cap, while also keeping their very high damage potential per tick (burn) and great utility by stunting healing power while it's applied (poison). This change did NOT need to happen, as the highest condition damage from burn and the great utility bonus from enemies being poisoned were enough to keep it as is and still function very well for condition style builds.2) overloading too many effects into a single trait after the specialization introduction, which resulted in builds being able to build as a "jack of all trades" build and still outperform builds that solely focused on one role, and then still performed something specific much better than the builds that focused on one major role (more give, little take, see how important give and take is?)3) Single trait choices granting very big benefit bonuses after introducing the specialization changes, making those trait choices the single most important traits to take regardless of build because of how great those benefits were. Which resulted in very boring builds that had "standard" trait line and individual trait choices that would literally make you significantly worse if you didn't take those standards.

Lets agree to disagree and not speak to one another. You go your way and Ill go mine; I had a big long discussion post made to respond but I realize its a waste of time as it will likely be removed due to the safe space this is. You think likely that Im an ignorant Idiot (Judging by what you said in this post and how it came off. Im not sorry, I will put words in your mouth and assume. Too aggressive to care if that puts you in your feels.) And what I think is too colorful for me to put in this thread, or even in the community this game has garnered.

Im tired of offering feedback, let it burn. Dont care. I dont think any of the changes coming or done will save the game; I dont think End of dragons will save the game and Im expecting everything I love to be removed and me be given the bird by the game. So do me a favor and just dont respond because I really dont want to talk to you going forward; Take that as you will because here we can't debate. Pointless. You and I both know it will get heated, and A-net hates passion of any kind on the forums no matter how its worded. Its not that I Care if I get banned before anyone goes there; I dont. But the removal of the post removes the point of posting it and honestly its not worth my effort.

Be safe, Take care and stay healthy. May we NOT meet again.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

1. Tera went into maintenance mode. And Tera 2 is in development.

TERAs PvP hasnt been healthy even back when it was still regularly updated. It was always tiny. TERA 2 is not in development. They pretty explicitely shot that down earlier this year.

2. I was comparing WvW to BDO explicitly because they do it better. Their WvW scene seems way healthier

They dont, its actually got a lot more issues, and its even less healthy than WvW.

3. ESO's PvP seems to be booming, the game seems to be doing better than this one? Do I play it? No. I don't like the art style.

Yeah I cant say that they seem to agree. Lots of stories of matchmaking not even filling up the teams, leading to situations like 4v2. Booming doesnt appear to be the right word.

4. Ashes will be fine considering they have tons of rich whales backing it; And who will pay for it. Its one of the most anticipated up-coming MMO's on the market and honestly the only one that I continuously hear about. Anything else is a one off and then never mentioned again~

So did Wildstar. Not just that, Wildstar had a ton of hype behind it, thanks to its presentation, developers, and so on. On the other hand, Ashes has yet to shake the Scam stigma it got after the whole battle royale thing. It was anticipated once upon a time, before we know much about the game. Now? Most people dont really seem to care. It looks terrible, sub-based model means a lot of people straight up wont even try it, and its development cycle hasnt inspired confidence. It will go F2P quickly and die most likely, just as Wildstar did.

Why am I comparing other MMO's to this one? Because this one despite its free nature is not as popular which is a given considering its presence on both twitch and youtube, if you want to get into it final fantasy (bleh) and ESO (meh) seem more popular with more of a playerbase and a unity in that player base. Like I Said Guild wars 2 to me seems to be on a downward trend, people are leaving and yet these other games aren't have a huge exodus? Their modes seem lively and people are producing content for it (Well not tera because of obvious reasons). Note I love guild wars, I dont really care about any of these other games but as an outsider looking in and from what I see the community is more engaged and numerous on all game modes than they are here. PvP has shrunk, continues to shrink and WvW is only good when the band-wagon goes into your favor. Honestly The game doesn't feel very alive and the "feel" is more important than the numeric value because when it FEELS like no ones there, you leave. Simple as that. I doubt we have 11 million active accounts in the game in general and I HIGHLY DOUBT pvp is in the higher echelon of the community population, I think the only two modes with good pop numbers is open world PvE and WvW because there is little no bar of entry (Even though the bars are completely fabricated).

Of course FFXIV is more popular. Its a bloody final fantasy game. Name recognition matters a lot. Likewise with ESO, though in its case we dont even know if it really is bigger. They dont tend to share numbers. Oh and ESO already had its Exodus. Its just rebounding now. Somewhat. Its PvP is however underpopulated (moreso than GW2 if the stories are to be believed) and continously shrinking. Esodil seems to be at the level of lowest tier WvW at the highest population, and worse below that.

Other games seem to be doing better, radio silence also doesn't really bring confidence. While I think the other games like you said are hot garbo, I feel like guild wars 2 isn't doing enough and doing fast enough cadence on balance changes/reworks. Im assuming End of dragons will come with new specs and reworks to old specs and the classes, I think and hope it will basically remake/revitalize/fix the game. But my faith is shaken and Im not sure Im able to believe it until they prove it to me; Note I never said guild wars 2 was a bad game based on personal opinion. I said as a competitive player Id never touch it if I were introduced to it today, but im already invested so I stick with it and Im basing my view on how I look at games. And to me right now the game is not as fun as it was~ Its subjective but no more or less real than the reality you see, and the issue Is when I see so many people leaving it just doesn't make me believe things will get better.

Lets be real here, if youre a competitive player, youre not likely to play an MMO for that. As far as MMOs are concerned though? GW2 still has the best PvP. ESOs is doing worse, FFXIVs PvP exists purely as a technicality, BDOs is p2w incarnate and thats about it. Granted, yes, GW2s PvP has issue, slow balance patches, the absolute catastrophe that was the february patch.

Goes for you too by the way, second verse same as the first. Done preaching to this choir.

[Ghos.1326]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

Yeah this is false. WoW is popular because...1) it's been around for years. Much longer than gw2. It has a solid playerbase that's been around since its inception.2) Believe it or not, WoW balance is actually much better than gw2's current balance because it has....wait you hear that? give and take. Repeat it.3) WoW's marketing team is spot on with their product showcase, aka marketing. Great marketing goes a long way. Anet's marketing likes to linger for a long time on a specific thing (remember griffons? lel) and hammer that onto people when they could linger on something more worthwhile like its unrivaled combat mechanics that no other game could even dream of accomplishing because the original devs who worked on it were plain and simple freaking BOSSES (kudos to you guys for constructing this combat system, seriously it's amazing).

So, basically what you're telling me is that if I was the head of the balance team, introduce healthy balance to the game to help alleviate one of the 3 things that's holding gw2 back from what it could be, and what it used to be, pvp/wvw would be dead? At the same time, I've not seen you come back with what you would do to "fix" the game according to your standards. But I may have a slight clue (ok I lied, it's a big clue it's so obvious). You'd basically undo all the changes from the February patch because you think, keyword THINK, powercreep is "fun". If you were the head of balance, I'd give the game 2-3 months before next expac was cancelled, and the servers shut down for good, both pvp/wvw and pve. We'd have no more game.I'll also squash the statement of "so many classes balance is impossible/unfathomable" yet league of legends has what, close to 100 champions and they seem to be doing quite well with balance. Their playerbase and being able to stay in the competitive scene testifies to this.

Most of the top players who've played in ESL, Worlds, big regional tournaments, etc....they came back when feb patch hit. You know what ultimately drove a lot of them off again recently? The broken promise of more frequent smaller balance passes to address factors that were missed in february and still may be running rampant right now that makes the game unfun because they're way overperforming. Lets take this specific patch as an example. Hot-fix level patch that could have easily been done after a couple weeks of discovering the issues that were causing this imbalance took....3 or 4 months? to implement. That's a big yikes.

However, from what I've just read recently, they're going through another big layoff most likely thanks to Covid and everyone so scared to death for no reason over it that states decided to shut down for so long when it was not necessary. That, unfortunately, affects business so I can see why the hot-fix patch took some time to get here so I won't give them kitten for that. Btw folks at anet, I'm truly sorry for the things you guys are going through currently, please try and stay strong.

BDO does not boast a healthy pvp scene. While it's an interesting one, if you max out your gear, you can literally one shot people. Not "one shot" but literally 1 skill depletes the entirety of the enemy's health bar. Do I still like BDO? Yes. But it's definitely not balanced.ESO, we could argue about that one there because I tend to think ESO is not bad in terms of balance. The combat looks and plays pretty cool, very similar to gw2 (but not quite there). IMO gw2 is much smoother and refined, feels more "real time".Tera online, lel. Though fun, yeah that's a meme. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the gunner when it first came out.

I'm also pretty hyped for ashes of creation and new world, they look really cool. I've not played those yet so i can't make a great comparison. Anxious to try both out.

All in all, yeah gw2's balance is not where it should be but I do feel it's slowly working toward it. what killed balance was during the specialization patch before HoT release, one change which1) allowed burn and poison to break one cap, while also keeping their very high damage potential per tick (burn) and great utility by stunting healing power while it's applied (poison). This change did NOT need to happen, as the highest condition damage from burn and the great utility bonus from enemies being poisoned were enough to keep it as is and still function very well for condition style builds.2) overloading too many effects into a single trait after the specialization introduction, which resulted in builds being able to build as a "jack of all trades" build and still outperform builds that solely focused on one role, and then still performed something specific much better than the builds that focused on one major role (more give, little take, see how important give and take is?)3) Single trait choices granting very big benefit bonuses after introducing the specialization changes, making those trait choices the single most important traits to take regardless of build because of how great those benefits were. Which resulted in very boring builds that had "standard" trait line and individual trait choices that would literally make you significantly worse if you didn't take those standards.

Lets agree to disagree and not speak to one another. You go your way and Ill go mine; I had a big long discussion post made to respond but I realize its a waste of time as it will likely be removed due to the safe space this is. You think likely that Im an ignorant Idiot (Judging by what you said in this post and how it came off. Im not sorry, I will put words in your mouth and assume. Too aggressive to care if that puts you in your feels.) And what I think is too colorful for me to put in this thread, or even in the community this game has garnered.

Im tired of offering feedback, let it burn. Dont care. I dont think any of the changes coming or done will save the game; I dont think End of dragons will save the game and Im expecting everything I love to be removed and me be given the bird by the game. So do me a favor and just dont respond because I really dont want to talk to you going forward; Take that as you will because here we can't debate. Pointless. You and I both know it will get heated, and A-net hates passion of any kind on the forums no matter how its worded. Its not that I Care if I get banned before anyone goes there; I dont. But the removal of the post removes the point of posting it and honestly its not worth my effort.

Be safe, Take care and stay healthy. May we NOT meet again.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

1. Tera went into maintenance mode. And Tera 2 is in development.

TERAs PvP hasnt been healthy even back when it was still regularly updated. It was always tiny. TERA 2 is not in development. They pretty explicitely shot that down earlier this year.

2. I was comparing WvW to BDO explicitly because they do it better. Their WvW scene seems way healthier

They dont, its actually got a lot more issues, and its even less healthy than WvW.

3. ESO's PvP seems to be booming, the game seems to be doing better than this one? Do I play it? No. I don't like the art style.

Yeah I cant say that they seem to agree. Lots of stories of matchmaking not even filling up the teams, leading to situations like 4v2. Booming doesnt appear to be the right word.

4. Ashes will be fine considering they have tons of rich whales backing it; And who will pay for it. Its one of the most anticipated up-coming MMO's on the market and honestly the only one that I continuously hear about. Anything else is a one off and then never mentioned again~

So did Wildstar. Not just that, Wildstar had a ton of hype behind it, thanks to its presentation, developers, and so on. On the other hand, Ashes has yet to shake the Scam stigma it got after the whole battle royale thing. It was anticipated once upon a time, before we know much about the game. Now? Most people dont really seem to care. It looks terrible, sub-based model means a lot of people straight up wont even try it, and its development cycle hasnt inspired confidence. It will go F2P quickly and die most likely, just as Wildstar did.

Why am I comparing other MMO's to this one? Because this one despite its free nature is not as popular which is a given considering its presence on both twitch and youtube, if you want to get into it final fantasy (bleh) and ESO (meh) seem more popular with more of a playerbase and a unity in that player base. Like I Said Guild wars 2 to me seems to be on a downward trend, people are leaving and yet these other games aren't have a huge exodus? Their modes seem lively and people are producing content for it (Well not tera because of obvious reasons). Note I love guild wars, I dont really care about any of these other games but as an outsider looking in and from what I see the community is more engaged and numerous on all game modes than they are here. PvP has shrunk, continues to shrink and WvW is only good when the band-wagon goes into your favor. Honestly The game doesn't feel very alive and the "feel" is more important than the numeric value because when it FEELS like no ones there, you leave. Simple as that. I doubt we have 11 million active accounts in the game in general and I HIGHLY DOUBT pvp is in the higher echelon of the community population, I think the only two modes with good pop numbers is open world PvE and WvW because there is little no bar of entry (Even though the bars are completely fabricated).

Of course FFXIV is more popular. Its a bloody final fantasy game. Name recognition matters a lot. Likewise with ESO, though in its case we dont even know if it really is bigger. They dont tend to share numbers. Oh and ESO already had its Exodus. Its just rebounding now. Somewhat. Its PvP is however underpopulated (moreso than GW2 if the stories are to be believed) and continously shrinking. Esodil seems to be at the level of lowest tier WvW at the highest population, and worse below that.

Other games seem to be doing better, radio silence also doesn't really bring confidence. While I think the other games like you said are hot garbo, I feel like guild wars 2 isn't doing enough and doing fast enough cadence on balance changes/reworks. Im assuming End of dragons will come with new specs and reworks to old specs and the classes, I think and hope it will basically remake/revitalize/fix the game. But my faith is shaken and Im not sure Im able to believe it until they prove it to me; Note I never said guild wars 2 was a bad game based on personal opinion. I said as a competitive player Id never touch it if I were introduced to it today, but im already invested so I stick with it and Im basing my view on how I look at games. And to me right now the game is not as fun as it was~ Its subjective but no more or less real than the reality you see, and the issue Is when I see so many people leaving it just doesn't make me believe things will get better.

Lets be real here, if youre a competitive player, youre not likely to play an MMO for that. As far as MMOs are concerned though? GW2 still has the best PvP. ESOs is doing worse, FFXIVs PvP exists purely as a technicality, BDOs is p2w incarnate and thats about it. Granted, yes, GW2s PvP has issue, slow balance patches, the absolute catastrophe that was the february patch.

Goes for you too by the way, second verse same as the first. Done preaching to this choir.

Oh I only responded the way I did because of how standoff-ish you responded. Not sorry you can't take your own heat, sprinkled with a little bit of structured feedback. Yes retreat to your safe space. I agree that anet will be quick to flag things that hurts others feelings but I can dish whatever you dish out back to me, so personally I feel a little bad that you can't let loose so that I can just let loose on you too. :smiley:

Thanks for the chats though, and I wish you the best in all of your endeavors.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

Yeah this is false. WoW is popular because...1) it's been around for years. Much longer than gw2. It has a solid playerbase that's been around since its inception.2) Believe it or not, WoW balance is actually much better than gw2's current balance because it has....wait you hear that? give and take. Repeat it.3) WoW's marketing team is spot on with their product showcase, aka marketing. Great marketing goes a long way. Anet's marketing likes to linger for a long time on a specific thing (remember griffons? lel) and hammer that onto people when they could linger on something more worthwhile like its unrivaled combat mechanics that no other game could even dream of accomplishing because the original devs who worked on it were plain and simple freaking BOSSES (kudos to you guys for constructing this combat system, seriously it's amazing).

So, basically what you're telling me is that if I was the head of the balance team, introduce healthy balance to the game to help alleviate one of the 3 things that's holding gw2 back from what it could be, and what it used to be, pvp/wvw would be dead? At the same time, I've not seen you come back with what you would do to "fix" the game according to your standards. But I may have a slight clue (ok I lied, it's a big clue it's so obvious). You'd basically undo all the changes from the February patch because you think, keyword THINK, powercreep is "fun". If you were the head of balance, I'd give the game 2-3 months before next expac was cancelled, and the servers shut down for good, both pvp/wvw and pve. We'd have no more game.I'll also squash the statement of "so many classes balance is impossible/unfathomable" yet league of legends has what, close to 100 champions and they seem to be doing quite well with balance. Their playerbase and being able to stay in the competitive scene testifies to this.

Most of the top players who've played in ESL, Worlds, big regional tournaments, etc....they came back when feb patch hit. You know what ultimately drove a lot of them off again recently? The broken promise of more frequent smaller balance passes to address factors that were missed in february and still may be running rampant right now that makes the game unfun because they're way overperforming. Lets take this specific patch as an example. Hot-fix level patch that could have easily been done after a couple weeks of discovering the issues that were causing this imbalance took....3 or 4 months? to implement. That's a big yikes.

However, from what I've just read recently, they're going through another big layoff most likely thanks to Covid and everyone so scared to death for no reason over it that states decided to shut down for so long when it was not necessary. That, unfortunately, affects business so I can see why the hot-fix patch took some time to get here so I won't give them kitten for that. Btw folks at anet, I'm truly sorry for the things you guys are going through currently, please try and stay strong.

BDO does not boast a healthy pvp scene. While it's an interesting one, if you max out your gear, you can literally one shot people. Not "one shot" but literally 1 skill depletes the entirety of the enemy's health bar. Do I still like BDO? Yes. But it's definitely not balanced.ESO, we could argue about that one there because I tend to think ESO is not bad in terms of balance. The combat looks and plays pretty cool, very similar to gw2 (but not quite there). IMO gw2 is much smoother and refined, feels more "real time".Tera online, lel. Though fun, yeah that's a meme. This is coming from someone who really enjoyed the gunner when it first came out.

I'm also pretty hyped for ashes of creation and new world, they look really cool. I've not played those yet so i can't make a great comparison. Anxious to try both out.

All in all, yeah gw2's balance is not where it should be but I do feel it's slowly working toward it. what killed balance was during the specialization patch before HoT release, one change which1) allowed burn and poison to break one cap, while also keeping their very high damage potential per tick (burn) and great utility by stunting healing power while it's applied (poison). This change did NOT need to happen, as the highest condition damage from burn and the great utility bonus from enemies being poisoned were enough to keep it as is and still function very well for condition style builds.2) overloading too many effects into a single trait after the specialization introduction, which resulted in builds being able to build as a "jack of all trades" build and still outperform builds that solely focused on one role, and then still performed something specific much better than the builds that focused on one major role (more give, little take, see how important give and take is?)3) Single trait choices granting very big benefit bonuses after introducing the specialization changes, making those trait choices the single most important traits to take regardless of build because of how great those benefits were. Which resulted in very boring builds that had "standard" trait line and individual trait choices that would literally make you significantly worse if you didn't take those standards.

Lets agree to disagree and not speak to one another. You go your way and Ill go mine; I had a big long discussion post made to respond but I realize its a waste of time as it will likely be removed due to the safe space this is. You think likely that Im an ignorant Idiot (Judging by what you said in this post and how it came off. Im not sorry, I will put words in your mouth and assume. Too aggressive to care if that puts you in your feels.) And what I think is too colorful for me to put in this thread, or even in the community this game has garnered.

Im tired of offering feedback, let it burn. Dont care. I dont think any of the changes coming or done will save the game; I dont think End of dragons will save the game and Im expecting everything I love to be removed and me be given the bird by the game. So do me a favor and just dont respond because I really dont want to talk to you going forward; Take that as you will because here we can't debate. Pointless. You and I both know it will get heated, and A-net hates passion of any kind on the forums no matter how its worded. Its not that I Care if I get banned before anyone goes there; I dont. But the removal of the post removes the point of posting it and honestly its not worth my effort.

Be safe, Take care and stay healthy. May we NOT meet again.

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Ghos.1326 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

@Math.5123 said:Honestly, good job on the guardian changes. Destroying lazy symbol builds let's them build guardian from the ground up without buffing this awful playstyle.

A guardian main undertanding spam aoe at node is not a healthy playstyle what is this

AOE spam is fine if the game had healers or builds that deal with AOE spam. Of course there are no healers in spvp, but that's why it works in WvW, and without aoe, the zergs would never die to anything.

This thread right now, in which there's too many messages to reply to, manifests the problem. Endless bickering about "this is stronger than that", "this is weaker than this..."ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE. There is and can be NO standard so long as you want player choices...

The current understanding of balance is completely artificial, and it doesn't work. And we will be here forever until we realize that.

@Ghos.1326 said:There are some things I agree with you on, but I disagree with you on your statement of "MMOs can never be balanced". This is false.

and continuing on the above thought, @Thornwolf.9721 is right here and his statement is not false... it is mathematically impossible to make an mmo like gw2 "perfectly balanced" without removing player choice. Ive proved this before, in fact directly to you in a different thread.

@Ghos.1326 said:Balance is about the gives and the takes. The amount of give vs the amount of take is what makes something balanced. when something flows too much in one direction via too much give or take, or the thing being given far outweighs the thing being taken or vice versa, then is when you are presented with the dilemma of imbalance.Fixing that imbalance requires data from many sources, including but not limited to: amount of attacks within 1 skill, cooldown, casting time, casting speed, after/precast, damage coefficients, speed of flow from one attack to another, supporting damage outliers, etc etc. The list goes on.

and even though this is more on track...but it's still a misunderstanding about balance mechanisms, cause real balance mechanisms DO exist that you can learn from elsewhere. It's not about requiring infinite amount of data at all...which ive pointed out before is a fallacy. It's about just changing your perspective about what balance actually is (really only requiring you to doing some basic research on understanding balance mechanisms and how they work elsewhere in the world). "Gives and Takes" is an oversimplification...an unfinished way of trying to explain balance, when it has a proper real world applicable definition.

no.

Yes, he is completly correct. If you were head of the balance team the game mode for both PvP and WvW would be dead; Perfect balance is impossible and honestly with as many classes/specs as we have its nearly even unfathomable. And we HAVE MORE ON THE WAY? Honestly Id rather the game be fun, than some dumb version of balance when pre-febuary was more balanced in the fun department then we have now. You needed to be skilled to do anything sure; But at least learning and being better was fun and finally getting to where you WERE able to overcome the hurdles that led you there was fun. Competitive play isn't meant to be easy, its not meant to hold your hand and honestly guild wars 2 is more like a MoBa in its competitive modes than it is a MMO-RPG and Id wager there is NOTHING rpg about this game. Smite, Leauge, DoTa and even WoW and ESO all have unbalanced match-ups and unbalanced aspects of their classes. BUT all of those games are more popular than guild wars 2 in the competitive market, and in the words of joko "Did you ever stop to wonder what that says about you?"

This game is a joke, it isn't even well known and isn't even applicable in the sphere of mmo's right now despite an expansion being on the horrizon; If you're not invested already then you wont be interested as they do nothing to get you into the game or invested into it. And I as a competitive player if I looked at the game right now, and hadn't been here since launch would turn my back and never look back. Because its hot garbage. THE ONLY REASON Im here is because I was invested already, and I remember the fun I used to have and am seeking to find it again. Ashes of Creation is fast approaching, WvW and PvP will get murdered if they dont do something because ashes has even FASTER and more FLUID gameplay with it being one of the primary focus's of the game (Given it comes out.) And even crowfall has made huge strides in ensuring that their game is getting better and better. Sure amazons new world might screw the pooch, but you have that lord of the rings mmo they are working on who will have a pretty big emphases from what I've seen and heard on faction based warfare. So no this version of balance is clearly unhealthy for the game, most of the people I've known have quit. People who were solely here for the PvP and WvW and from what I've heard; Unless end of dragons completely changes the game and gives big content for both modes (It wont, we know it wont..) They aren't coming back. And thats only within my circle; But those friends had guilds and those guilds have quit? One of which was a pretty sizeable guild able to fill out a map zerg if they put their mind to it. CLEARLY not the best state of the game.

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Ragnar.4257 said:

@"Dave.6819" said:I'm lookin at a profession balance/build variety in general. Not only FB vs. Daredevil.

So, you're legitimately trying to argue that if a class is strong in PvE, it should be nerfed in PvP?

Wow talk about completely distorting his argument.

He's clearly talking about how Firebrand, and guardian for that matter in general, has more variety of viable builds to pick from in multiple games modes, than thief, which has essentially only 1 build that's used in just 1 game mode.

Like he said earlier, remove conquest and turn it into 3v3, and thief goes out the window in terms of viability because thief has no viable team-fighting builds (None that can at least be considered meta)

My position on this is that all the classes are like thief, but each with varying levels of viability in the number of viable build choices....some have more than others, and that's his point. Thief so happens to be one of the worst ones. Like i mentioned earlier, remove DP/Daredevil from the game and thief will not exist...all the weapons and choices they have are dogpile.

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Because WvW and PvP often share balance despite being different modes; These changes might make it into WvW so the WvW playerbase is like "We dont want this, dont you do it." As for PvE I have no clue considering they aren't even applicable to these changes and will never be? Entitlement maybe. But WvW and PvP are lumped together and I honestly for a moment thought these were coming to wvw too because Im used to them just blanketing the changes into both modes. That is squarely laid on A-net shoulders, because the norm is not what they did here.

@mes.4607 said:

@"mixxed.5862" said:Wow, this forum is so salty, I'm having a blast reading this. Everyone seems so emotionally invested in this game. It is pure insanity on here.

GW2 has a fairly balanced PvP as is. I mean it sucks that they often don't adress the big issues in a timely manner, that there still are some mechanics so obviously flawed you'd think they must have realized by now (Explosive entrance, Grenade kit). But it's what it is. The next patch will come and hopefully bring in the necessary mechanical changes.

If they stick to the regular balance cadence the next real balance patch should come in about a month. If it doesn't they're probably too busy designing new elite specs. I hope the steam release will bring in a lot of new players and put a bit of spotlight on the PvP as well. Until then I think it's more reasonable to be happy that PvP balance is being run as a side project by one dev (who luckily knows what he's doing most of the time).

It's releasing on Steam? Comment section is going to be

wild

Its gonna get horrible reviews and get murdered. Thats whats gonna happen because steam players are inherently more confrontational, lack patience and above all a TON of competitive players exist within the medium. A-net has put competitive/PvP on their tags and its being compared to smite, ESO, BDO and Tera all of which boast a healthy PVP scene with tons of players. (At least for me its saying they are similar, based on whats in my libary.) Guild wars 2's PvP right now doesn't hold up to any of those games in terms of fun. So you can expect a hate mob will form eventually when they get to the pvp and really sink their teeth in, considering they aren't going to be selling the expansions through steam judging by what that_shaman has stated its likely that they will have to buy it through the Black lion in game. THAT will already be a huge issue of contention if it turns out to be true.

ESO, BDO and TERA have "healthy" PvP scenes? TERAs is practically non-existent, BDO is like WvW except considerably more unbalanced gear-wise, and ESO is split between a worse WvW and a PvP scene hardly anyone plays. Also why do you think a sub-based MMO will even scratch GW2? Sub-based MMOs have failed over and over, and will keep failing. Ashes of Creation will launch like Wildstar and try to salvage itself like wildstar. Its also fully tab targetted with global cooldowns, so its less fast and a whole lot less fluid.

1. Tera went into maintenance mode. And Tera 2 is in development.

TERAs PvP hasnt been healthy even back when it was still regularly updated. It was always tiny. TERA 2 is not in development. They pretty explicitely shot that down earlier this year.

2. I was comparing WvW to BDO explicitly because they do it better. Their WvW scene seems way healthier

They dont, its actually got a lot more issues, and its even less healthy than WvW.

3. ESO's PvP seems to be booming, the game seems to be doing better than this one? Do I play it? No. I don't like the art style.

Yeah I cant say that they seem to agree. Lots of stories of matchmaking not even filling up the teams, leading to situations like 4v2. Booming doesnt appear to be the right word.

4. Ashes will be fine considering they have tons of rich whales backing it; And who will pay for it. Its one of the most anticipated up-coming MMO's on the market and honestly the only one that I continuously hear about. Anything else is a one off and then never mentioned again~

So did Wildstar. Not just that, Wildstar had a ton of hype behind it, thanks to its presentation, developers, and so on. On the other hand, Ashes has yet to shake the Scam stigma it got after the whole battle royale thing. It was anticipated once upon a time, before we know much about the game. Now? Most people dont really seem to care. It looks terrible, sub-based model means a lot of people straight up wont even try it, and its development cycle hasnt inspired confidence. It will go F2P quickly and die most likely, just as Wildstar did.

Why am I comparing other MMO's to this one? Because this one despite its free nature is not as popular which is a given considering its presence on both twitch and youtube, if you want to get into it final fantasy (bleh) and ESO (meh) seem more popular with more of a playerbase and a unity in that player base. Like I Said Guild wars 2 to me seems to be on a downward trend, people are leaving and yet these other games aren't have a huge exodus? Their modes seem lively and people are producing content for it (Well not tera because of obvious reasons). Note I love guild wars, I dont really care about any of these other games but as an outsider looking in and from what I see the community is more engaged and numerous on all game modes than they are here. PvP has shrunk, continues to shrink and WvW is only good when the band-wagon goes into your favor. Honestly The game doesn't feel very alive and the "feel" is more important than the numeric value because when it FEELS like no ones there, you leave. Simple as that. I doubt we have 11 million active accounts in the game in general and I HIGHLY DOUBT pvp is in the higher echelon of the community population, I think the only two modes with good pop numbers is open world PvE and WvW because there is little no bar of entry (Even though the bars are completely fabricated).

Of course FFXIV is more popular. Its a bloody final fantasy game. Name recognition matters a lot. Likewise with ESO, though in its case we dont even know if it really is bigger. They dont tend to share numbers. Oh and ESO already had its Exodus. Its just rebounding now. Somewhat. Its PvP is however underpopulated (moreso than GW2 if the stories are to be believed) and continously shrinking. Esodil seems to be at the level of lowest tier WvW at the highest population, and worse below that.

Other games seem to be doing better, radio silence also doesn't really bring confidence. While I think the other games like you said are hot garbo, I feel like guild wars 2 isn't doing enough and doing fast enough cadence on balance changes/reworks. Im assuming End of dragons will come with new specs and reworks to old specs and the classes, I think and hope it will basically remake/revitalize/fix the game. But my faith is shaken and Im not sure Im able to believe it until they prove it to me; Note I never said guild wars 2 was a bad game based on personal opinion. I said as a competitive player Id never touch it if I were introduced to it today, but im already invested so I stick with it and Im basing my view on how I look at games. And to me right now the game is not as fun as it was~ Its subjective but no more or less real than the reality you see, and the issue Is when I see so many people leaving it just doesn't make me believe things will get better.

Lets be real here, if youre a competitive player, youre not likely to play an MMO for that. As far as MMOs are concerned though? GW2 still has the best PvP. ESOs is doing worse, FFXIVs PvP exists purely as a technicality, BDOs is p2w incarnate and thats about it. Granted, yes, GW2s PvP has issue, slow balance patches, the absolute catastrophe that was the february patch.

Goes for you too by the way, second verse same as the first. Done preaching to this choir.

Oh I only responded the way I did because of how standoff-ish you responded. Not sorry you can't take your own heat, sprinkled with a little bit of structured feedback. Yes retreat to your safe space. I agree that anet will be quick to flag things that hurts others feelings but I can dish whatever you dish out back to me, so personally I feel a little bad that you can't let loose so that I can just let loose on you too. :smiley:

Thanks for the chats though, and I wish you the best in all of your endeavors.

Don't got a safes-space mate, I just know A-net loathes my existence and look for any reason to flag my forum account. If the post is removed and you cant read it then whats the point? If your response to my response is removed then whats the point? The discussion is censored and removed therefor it doesn't need to exist. Im not retreating or giving up; I just know we literally can't have the debate here because it will get heated. And yea I am stand-offish as I dont like most human beings; Your post didn't bug me I just assume you think the same thing I think of you. Thats all. Its not about loosing its about two opposing views meeting, and in reality we agree on more than either of us likely care to admit. I just think its funny you use the "give and take" argument when A-net never gives when they take, its not how they work or function and the reason WoW's balance is as good as it is comes down to that ideal. IF they did that likely most of us wouldn't be so mad... but they dont and never will.

Anyhow, again be safe. And something something, vulgar goodbye inserted here I guess~

[Eddbopkins.2630]

@Sifu.9745 said:I would expect some new Amulets with HoT and PoF stats such as Viper or Trailblaizer ...

Trailblazers was in the game but was removed becuase of it unfair advantage of having to much tankyness and to much condi in one ammy. It was a bad idea to have it in pvp anyway.

[Shiyo.3578]

@Tayga.3192 said:@Dave.6819 what you are missing is this, anet will almost never remove sb5 so you are stuck to that for your class. Go roll a mesmer, right now it's just thief without sb5.

Thief doesn't give other thieves plasma.

[phokus.8934]

I can’t wait for the Steamers come to this forum.

[Aeolus.3615]

Where can i find this magical update listed?

[Oakendale.2849]

Cliff note version of most of the replies:

"Hey, You didn't nerf the class or spec I don't like or have problem with"

"Useless Patch"

Pretty much sums it up....

[darren.1064]

@Salt Mode.3780 said:I have no idea why people are defending thieves so hard when they literally can reset at will and re-engage at will. There is no running away from thieves nor is there anyway to catch a thief. If you are complaining about your damage then I guess you would need to stop running SA and go for some damage traits. You cannot expect to run a super defensive trait and do insane amount of damage. STOP BEING ENTITLEDThe very reason why shortbow is being brought to light is because of how SA got changed. Its quite funny how thieves don't understand that at this current era of the game they literally do have everything.

Also SA trait itself is both Inspiration AND Chaos traitline for mesmer, its like a mesmer running both of those and expect to one shot lel.

I run Trickery and Deadly Arts and still don't do any damage. What are you going to tell me? The problem isn't our trait lines, it is thief itself.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Ragnar.4257 said:

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Strawman. The point wasn't about the strength or variety of builds in those game modes. It was about pointing out the disparity in options from one class to another.

Also, attacking the strawman anyway, PVE and WvW are relevant to PVP balance because changes made in PVE effect PVP...and changes in PVP effect WvW and ViceVersa. Why do you think Scourge's went from a 10 target ability to a 2 target ability....and my personal favorite one to point out...why do you think Rune of Altruism was nerfed?

[Exile.8160]

@ollbirtan.2915 said:

@Paarthurnax.8931 said:Guys, stop being so negative, we have a new balance patch coming next year! Have some patience will ya? It's just around the corner, probably by Easter or something!

Yes! My bad! I should ve known better. Patience is key! Loving those frequent pvp balance cadences.

Patience? Would you say waiting about 4 to 5 years enough? No matter what thye do/promise its almost always a let down arpund year 2 to 4 pvp was at its best after that it was nothing but down hill.

(Sourec: played since beta and in launch pvp was my main mode)

Ps. Im somewhat sure yours was sarcastic but could not find the other post hehe im lazy that way.

[ollbirtan.2915]

@Exile.8160 said:

@ollbirtan.2915 said:

@Paarthurnax.8931 said:Guys, stop being so negative, we have a new balance patch coming next year! Have some patience will ya? It's just around the corner, probably by Easter or something!

Yes! My bad! I should ve known better. Patience is key! Loving those frequent pvp balance cadences.

Patience? Would you say waiting about 4 to 5 years enough? No matter what thye do/promise its almost always a let down arpund year 2 to 4 pvp was at its best after that it was nothing but down hill.

(Sourec: played since beta and in launch pvp was my main mode)

Ps. Im somewhat sure yours was sarcastic but could not find the other post hehe im lazy that way.

I'm just quoting you for quoting me for being sarcastic =)

[Ragnar.4257]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:@Ragnar.4257 said:

I'm still waiting to hear why the variety or strength of builds that a class has in PvE/WvW is relevant to a discussion on PvP balance.

Still waiting.

Strawman. The point wasn't about the strength or variety of builds in those game modes. It was about pointing out the disparity in options from one class to another.

Also, attacking the strawman anyway, PVE and WvW are relevant to PVP balance because changes made in PVE effect PVP...and changes in PVP effect WvW and ViceVersa. Why do you think Scourge's went from a 10 target ability to a 2 target ability....and my personal favorite one to point out...why do you think Rune of Altruism was nerfed?

No, that's a completely separate point that you're trying to argue.

It is not the point that I originally challenged. You are moving the goalposts.

Let me quote it again to remind you:

@"Dave.6819" said:We all can agree that FB was and probably still is the king of the castle right? Well let's do the opposite. Instead of asking a nerf of FB why not buff other classes that are left behind? I'm sure FB mains wouldnt be happy if we just nerf em to the ground. It's not a healthy solution for overall PvP population. But we all know what will happen. Eventually FB/Holo nerf will happen and those professions will be even less enjoyable to play.

Please read the above quote, carefully, in full.

The point he is making here is that "FB is king of the castle" and that there are 2 possible routes to resolve this "problem". One is to nerf FB, the other is to buff other professions, and that this is in reference to which would be the best option for a "healthy solution for overall PvP population" (i.e. we are specifically talking about PvP here, not anything else).

I was challenging that FB is not "king of the castle" and that if you think so you are clearly wildly dis-connected from the current state of PvP balance, and really shouldn't be going around making suggestions. As a reminder, again, he specifically stated "a healthy solution for overall PvP population" and therefore the claim of "king of the castle" is in reference to PvP. Moreover, we are on the PvP forum, talking about a balance patch which was exclusively for PvP, therefore it is reasonable to assume we are talking about PvP unless it is explicitly stated otherwise (which, at the time of Dave's original post, it was not).

I don't care about your point about disparity of options. That's an argument that you're having by yourself. I mean, you have fun with that, but it is not relevant to the point I originally challenged.

Let me spell this out nice and simply for you:

Do you think that, in PvP, FB is "king of the castle" and is in need of nerfs (or, buffs to every other class) ?

If you answer "yes" to this question, then I am disagreeing with you. That is what every single one of my posts in this thread has been about.If you answer "no" to this question, then we have no argument, and I have not been arguing anything else in this thread.

Why is it so difficult to grasp this very very simple point that I am making? It could not be more simple. Is FB strongest PvP class, yes or no? Answer: no. That's it. That's all there is to it. If you want to talk about build options and disparity, that's great, you go to town, but it's not relevant to this incredibly simple and basic point I am making. Why it takes 20+ posts to debate this, I have no idea, you're trying to make it way more complicated than it is.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Ragnar.4257" said:The point he is making here is that "FB is king of the castle"

Okay...firstly, this is not his point. His point is this

"Instead of asking a nerf of FB why not buff other classes that are left behind?"

Secondly, You misquoted his post anyway, because he said WAS and PROBABLY (Both of which, are technically true, because FB was the most dominant build in the meta game for 2 years in nearly all game modes, and has a number of viable builds currently, one of which was nerfed in this patch btw.)

Thirdly, this whole King of the Castle business your trying to argue about, is you setting up a strawman, and the fact is that FB was just an example to illustrate his point, which you can read his point above. You can in fact based on what he said, replace FB with any class or spec instead of FB...which he in fact did and used Holo as another example....that's why he wrote FB/Holo.

I was challenging that FB is not "king of the castle"Why is it so difficult to grasp this very very simple point that I am making?

Because you challenging that FB is king of the castle or not is a non-sequitur and strawmen. In doing so, you moved the discussion away from what the initial argument was originally about, which was about the consequences of constant nerfs every patch.

[Carnifex.3275]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Ragnar.4257" said:The point he is making here is that "FB is king of the castle"

Okay...firstly, this is not his point. His point is this

"Instead of asking a nerf of FB why not buff other classes that are left behind?"

Secondly, You misquoted his post anyway, because he said

WAS

and

PROBABLY

(Both of which, are technically true, because FB was the most dominant build in the meta game for 2 years in nearly all game modes, and has a number of viable builds currently, one of which was nerfed in this patch btw.)

Thirdly, this whole King of the Castle business your trying to argue about, is you setting up a strawman, and the fact is that FB was just an example to illustrate his point, which you can read his point above. You can in fact based on what he said, replace FB with any class or spec instead of FB...which he in fact did and used Holo as another example....that's why he wrote FB/Holo.

I was challenging that FB is not "king of the castle"Why is it so difficult to grasp this very very simple point that I am making?

Because you challenging that FB is king of the castle or not is a non-sequitur and strawmen. In doing so, you moved the discussion away from what the initial argument was originally about, which was about the consequences of constant nerfs every patch.

Haha you're still on this subject lol. I gave up on it. My point was simple: let's stop nerfs and focus on some other methods or even buffs to make this game more fun for all of us. Constantly nerfing things won't be healthy for this game anymore. It suffered alot already. Somehow the whole subject turned into "No Fb Is NoT ThE KiNg Of tHe CaStLe". Whatever man. If Ragnar is so focused on the "FB" thing.. just add any class that's dominant now. Holo as another example. I used FB as an example too cuz Guard is quite a strong class overall over a decent amount of time and over all game modes too. If it's so hard to grasp such an idea.. then as i said.. just replace it with Holo and forget about FB. Nothing to add here.. it's just a waste of "air" at this point to argue about this topic.