[No Skills No Brain Willbender main]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Thanks for sharing. No I have not done any LOL gaming myself. I do see an uptick in Willies after these threads and then a decline after they drop off. People asked for a long time for an anti-thief build. To me this was Anet's answer. Set up an alt for one after the various threads and found it to be a good chase/catch toon. Also made me see where I was missing tells for my other toons. To those reading, watch more for Willies running with lockdown battle-buddies or in boon groups. 

Is Willbender an anti-thief spec? My impression was it was one of the few poor match-ups Willbender has.

[No Skills No Brain Willbender main]

You know what's really sad? Even though they buffed Heaven's Palm, it still won't see any play on Willbender because of how broken Renewed Focus is on the spec.

So I propose they roll the two elites into one. When the new Heaven's Focus elite is activated the Willbender becomes invulnerable and also finishes any downs they run over (unlimited number of course). For every down they finish they store an additional charge - on top of the base - to their virtues. They could give it a fancy blue particle effect that trails the zooming sonic death machine so it looks extra flamboyant. Also, kids nowadays don't have time for cooldowns so they should remove the cd and make the new elite togglable.

Probably needs some superpeed as well for extra zooming.

That'd be great 👍 

[Your Top 5 Problems or Concerns of WvW]

1. Balance for large-scale fights is terrible. There is way too much support and easy access to boons. All the meta picks - support or damage - are dull as dishwater to play.  It promotes the lamest playstyle I think I've ever seen in WvW.

2. Celestial stats ruin small-scale. Proffesions that can make use of all the stats celestial offers are way too tanky for the damage they can put out. It is also boring to play. If you can jump on a proffession you do not know, mash buttons, and still get results then something is wrong.  Nuke it from orbit, burn it with fire, get it out of WvW.

3. World Restructuring will not fix population imbalance. At least not the way some people think it will. Some think that after World Restructuring there will be balanced populations, and maybe there will be on paper. But the same issues that cause the actual imbalance we see today will still be present, perhaps even worse. The real reason you won't see enemies when you are steamrolling them or allies when you are being steamrolled isn't because your sever has no players, it is because it isn't fun and the players you do have have logged off. After World Restructuring there will still be a skill imbalance among players and as the system ages- and the worlds are broken and remade - the best guilds will recruit the best players (free from transfer costs) and they'll end up fighting empty towers because everyone else will have logged off.

4. Dune rollers. Not a big problem or a common one, or really a problem at all to be honest, but I dislike them and the smug bastards driving them.

5. The queue bug. It seems to be much better now, so maybe it is fixed. But there's nothing more frustrating than sitting through a lengthy queue, only to be spat back out at the end of it again.

[How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily]

50 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

You asked me this question way earlier, so it's fair to answer:

There's many different ways you can deal with this problem. But "solving" the actual problem is really the key thing. You could just nuke from orbit these two stat combinations right...but does that actually "solve" anything or does it just kick the can down the road. My own perspective is that this just kicks the can down the road...doesn't solve anything, and more than likely just makes everything worse.

If you look at what I wrote in these comments about the theory-craft behind why certain things get picked, for builds that are used, you find that the common thread isn't what stats they pick. Reducing concentration on minstrel gear for instance, will basically do nothing with regards to how hard it is to kill zergs...Because if it wasn't minstrels it would be Clerics, than Magi's then whatever else is going to maximize outgoing healing %, and group support for a healer. Back in the day, pog champ healers would not even run minstrels, because taking any kind of self-survivability when that survivability could have been exchanged for more group support, is basically a crutch or a training wheel. This philosophy is the same when it comes to berserker classes. Taking any kind of sub berserker stat combo with the intention of self-surviability, reduces your damage output and therefor usefulness to the zerg as a whole. Thus going full balls-to-the-wall is the most useful you can be to your group, and then it just becomes L2dodge and follow tag basically.

I should also mention that, concentration was not that big of a deal in zerg back in the day, because it was assumed that your boons would be stripped and converted near immediately. It is the same reasoning why you wouldn't go full expertise in a zerg either...because your Condi's get cleansed near instantly and you are better off straight up stacking damage, as expertise becomes a wasted stat.

With all of the strips and conversions gone, concentration has gained somewhat more value (expertise in contrast has not). But even then, the extra concentration doesn't mean much because if there are no strips to worry about, then your boons are gonna hit duration cap even if you had no concentration. As the mantra goes : Wasted stats is detriment and you need to pile on more useful stats if you can. everything else is just a treat.

Anyway...that's what i really think is the problem : The lack of options for true counterplay to certain strategies...and this is a matter of how these game elements are intrinsically designed. It's not hard to just create skills that offer counterplay to such playstyles but Anet has been too busy deleting and nerfing everything in the game, rather than actually designing it, which is why all their problems are just cans they've kicked down the road since 2018. 

 

In my opinion this is a fair post that adresses the topic and after reading it I tend to agree with it for the most part.

 

35 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

No not really the point. It has nothing to do specifically with small or large scales.

The point is cele "having the most stats makes it the best" is not a valid argument, because the games elements interact with each other non-trivially. Scale is one such way in which it is non-trivial...but it applies to builds and how people can choose their skills and traits...and what those skills and traits can do. Taking Celestials makes you a jack of all trades, but master of none. If your weapons only do power damage...then your condi stats that are upped in celestial are basically wasted...if you have to take a whole traitline just to make healing do something for you, than you had to give up a traitline that would have given you more power damage. 

Not all builds in this game, can take advantage of these features. It's just an obvious theory crafting fact that "throwing celestial on it" is not an optimal thing to do in most builds, because builds often can't do all 7 or 8 things that a celestial build demands out of it. 

It's really not that hard to understand that more stats don't always translate into more optimal. The problem that I have really...is that people don't get such a simple topic...how much more simpler can I word it? People are repeating the same exact things I said just a few comments earlier (almost word for word)...which is wild to me ... Just read more carefully is all I can say. Stats don't change behavior when you go from one scale to another (they dont change behaviour at all actually 🤓)....that's just a 12 year old fact that shouldn't even need to be said and yet that is the argument some people want to have about stats in this game its kind of ridiculous to me. 

About this, I just left a comment above, answering a question you asked me yesterday, that basically addresses this point you made as well. 

Minstrel gear is not prevalent due to concentration. If that were the case, everyone would be running Harrier gear in Zerg...obviously thats not the case so you have to think about why that is. the comment i left above, explains pretty much exactly why that is. 

This one not so much. It's rambling and for the most part off topic. However, you do redeem it in the end by referencing the superior comment you made, that I quoted initially.

[How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily]

 

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

That's exactly what my argument is about. You are just confused on what "Independent of something" means. You should perhaps read more carefully all that has been written thus far.

The argument from Zyvera, is that the celestial stat set is optimal just because it has the most total stats (It has 5721 total stats, where others sit around 3000 - 4000)...and can be summarized as "most stats = optimal". If that argument was true, then it would mean that everyone everywhere would be running celestial gear, which we know is not true. People still run 3 stat combinations and 4 stat combinations, which have drastically less stats.

I explain that the reason why, is because trait choices, skill choices, etc...have non-trivial relationships to all the other elements in the game and the "moar stats = better" argument is too trivial of a way to describe the way stats interact with other things.

If you didn't understand this from reading my previous comments then you need to re-read them again and you'll find that your literately agreeing with what i am saying, and that what you are confused on seems to me, just that you don't know what is meant by "independence" that stats or stat distribution don't magically change from one scale to another.  Stats still behave the same way in all of these scenarios whether thats 1v1, small scale or large scale so that argument "moar stats = better" is invalid, since we don't see celestial on every build...optimal build composition in zerg runs 3 stat and 4 stat...and then there's plenty of builds (unrelated to game mode, or playstyle) that simply don't run celestial cause its not useful for them to do so...let alone optimal.

You seem to be getting frustrated that people aren't getting the point you're trying to make. But to be polite your responses so far have been a bit muddled. Please don't take this as a personal attack; like you, I often struggle to make my points clearly.

As far as I can tell the point you are trying to make is: Cele having more stats isn't over powered because it's not the strongest choice in small and large scenarios.

That might be the case, perhaps it would be worthy of a thread of its own to discuss the topic.

This particular thread was about fixing Cele and Ministrel. I can't read minds but I imagine the original poster chose those two because of their relative strengths and prevalence in the respective types of WvW gameplay where many believe they overperfom.

I mean, I can't imagine anybody making the argument that Minstrel should be addressed because of its strengths in 1v1s. However, the argument that Ministrel should be addressed because of its overprevelance in zerg gameplay, is in my opinion a valid one. A similar argument can be made for Cele, although it doesn't see much play in zergs, it's too oppressive in small-scale and should be addressed.

[How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily]

Maybe the simpler solution would be to remove concentration and expertise from the game entirely and then reevaluate boon and condition strengths from there forward.

[How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Stat contribution to builds is non-trivial, and I think this only applies to certain builds that can actually use the stats to bring them up to competitive level (with respect to other stat combinations) Builds with these properties include builds that can utilize boons (specifically Might and Fury), skills that have more than just one damage type (strike, condition and/or healing) and utilize traits that bring them up to a certain barrier of entry. Mainly that barrier of entry is Critical Strike Chance for Strike Damage, and a high enough ferocity that makes use of the critical strike chance to begin with. When you leverage Fury, with some critical strike chance traits, you now make Power stats viable.

Obvious as well, is that the game is designed in such a way where you can't access decent healing without lowering damage coefficients or some other modifiers...so by and large lots of builds can't and wouldn't use celestial because they can't reach some of these criteria. Some of them can and by and large that's who you might see running around in celestials.

Then there are further reasons why you might not see celestials either, like in zerg play... typically it's understood specialization is just better, and actually necessary. (Though, I do suspect that a lower level hybrid zerg composition (a viable one) may exist...but i am doubtful because trait selection is very restrictive.)

In other words...the conclusion is that stat contribution, even with their lopsided stat distribution is non-trivial because of how other elements in the game interact with each other. Yes objectively Celestial has the most total stats, but many builds can't and wouldn't take advantage of it until it passes some threshold, a threshold upheld by certain build/trait/skill choices.

You have to think about why in zerg play people don't play marauders, or some hybrid stat set even though there are sets with way more total stats on them...to this day they still play zerkers. The math that goes into understanding why someone would pick some set that has less stats than another is non-trivial (but intuitively obvious) and that's why you need to do more proper research. Complex Systems is typically how you would talk about and model a game like guild wars 2...and at the start of the video i just linked, it explains exactly why simple addition of two or more things, is not enough to actually describe the output behavior of those set of things...that two or more things can become "more" than the sum of their parts. 

 

So what would you're solution be to builds that can abuse celestial? Go through each build skill by skill and trait by trait trying to balance them for all scales of combat, whilst maintaining their viability with three and four stat combos, but reducing their strength with Celestial?

Seems a convoluted solution to me, when tackling the root cause of the problem - celestial stats - would be much simpler.

[What happened to WvW?]

They nerfed damage and strips too much, whilst at the same time trying to create viable support builds for all proffessions.

The natural consequence of this was a bunker meta.

There is very little skill involved anymore. The results of fights are almost always dictated by numbers. Stack supports, throw in the odd damage dealer, stand on one spot occasionally moving and spamming until one side runs out of cooldowns. 

I've been in boonblobs that lose and boonblobs that win, neither is particularly satisfying.

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

1 hour ago, ZTeamG.4603 said:

In the balance change preview, willbender's elite (the rarely used Heaven's Palm) is getting some significant buffs like evade frames and the Glacial Heart trait is getting a rework to heal on chill application. I think the Heaven's Palm buffs are fine since it's competing against the powerful option of 3s invuln+virtue recharge. But... 

What's the over under on them forgetting to add an internal cooldown to Glacial Heart, and suddenly Willbender gets a full heal on every 20s cooldown elite usage with Relic of the Ice?

Possible. I mean it's going to have to be broken good for Willbenders to swap Absolute Resolve for Glacial Heart, and Renewed Focus for Heaven's Palm.

[Potential March 19th changes to NPC lords]

Fantastic News! This'll make attacking SMC even more fun than it already is against certain circus orientated servers. What a healthy and positive change to be planning to make. 👍

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

8 minutes ago, Korendil.5934 said:

You're forgetting how squishy WB is when they are caught. They flop hard. If you remove a charge from Flowing Resolve, you can't nerf the damage because then how else can it trade. Potentially Relic of Speed is causing issues which makes them able to escape better, so a nerf to that will nerf their survivability.

But if that's the case, why are Thief able to roam and escape with impunity - and that's considered fine by the community - but if WB escapes, it's considered sacrilege?

If Thieves were as tanky, and could produce as high a PBAOE burst as Willbender, we would never hear the end of it on the forums.

And rightfully so.

The balance adjustments I suggested above would still leave Willbender in good shape.

[When will "restructuring" become the norm?]

2 hours ago, Scolix.4879 said:

Can't be soon enough because even with its problems it actually was fun compared to playing against these gigantic blobs

 

Well I hope you like gigantic blobs because as far as I can tell that is exactly what World Restructuring will encourage.

If the system is implemented my prediction is that as time progresses what we will end up with is massive community guild blobs.

Instead of being limited by available players on their server, guilds will be free to recruit players each time worlds are reshuffled, free from the burden of transfer costs. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain until they become an avalanche.

Enjoy!

 

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

A charitable interpretation of why the balance team aren't addressing Willbender could be that they're finding it hard to think of solutions that make the spec more reasonable without hurting all other Guardian specs. Or that they are unwilling to nerf the mobility because mobility was the unique factor in mind when designing the spec.

However, the combination of damage, mitigation and disengage ability Willbender has make it obnoxious to fight it in WvW, where it is far too easy for Willbenders to hit and run.

In my opinion this stems from the bloaded nature of Willbender's virtues and their interaction with Renewed Focus, the difficulty in balancing them comes from not wanting to inadvertently nerf other Guardian specs by nerfing traits or the elite.

I can appreciate what the balance team are trying to do with Heaven' Palm, trying to make a competitive alternative to Renewed Focus. However, outside of a handful of good Willbenders who can manage fine without refreshing their virtues, none of the vast majority of Willbenders will take Heaven's Palm because refreshing their virtues is a get out of jail free card that provides way too much value.

The most obvious way to balance Willbender, without hurting other Guardian specs, is to address Willbender virtues. Here is what I would do:

Flowing Resolve reduced to one charge. I could never understand why this was a pvp exclusive change.

Crashing Courage should have the damage reduced to a negligible amount. This way it could still be used to clear blind on yourself and aegis on the enemy but it would no longer do meaningful damage. It should be defensive in nature.

Rushing Justice should require a target. They could even increase the distance travelled slightly. This way it would still give Willbenders mobility through a gap close, but it wouldn't be abused as part of the evade and mobility string Willbenders currently use to escape.

[when did boonball become THE meta for wvw?]

There's always been blob content in WvW. I enjoy blob fights. However, like all balance, large-scale fights exist on a spectrum. For instance during the pirates ship meta blobs had to keep a distance because strips and damage were so abundant that blobs would explode on contact. Now we are in a bunker meta where boons and heals are so abundant that blobs can stand still 600-900 units away from one another spamming skills waiting for the other side to run out of support. Just like the pirate ship meta was boring this current bunker meta is boring, in my opinion.

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

https://youtu.be/ZG15oP7q4fI?feature=shared

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

12 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

Why this thread not merge with the rest of the willbender nerf thread?

The previous threads were about why willbender should be balanced, this thread is about why Anet aren't balancing Willbender.

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

19 hours ago, Korendil.5934 said:

Two issues:

• Relic of Ice is broken. Genuinely broken. Doesn't need nerfing, it needs fixing.
• Celestial stats need tuning

Otherwise, Willbender is squishy and will die. Celestial is just broken, but that's not class specific.

Totally agree about the relic and celestial. Willbender being squishy? Not so much. I mean if he decided not to use any skills and stand still, sure. Otherwise he has plenty options to mitigate, evade and prevent damage. He'll be fine until he chooses to leave or his opponent is in downstate.

Edit: be confused all you want. I've changed my mind anyway. Rather than wait for Anet to balance willbender, I think it'd be quicker if everyone just rerolls one for small-scale content. Boring as crackers with a side order of room temperature tap water, but it is what it is.

[Why ANET doesn't nerf willbenders?]

They're not going to balance it because they don't actually want balanced, engaging gameplay in WvW. Look at the current meta from the largest to the smallest scales in WvW. It's all braindead, spamable cheese. This is what the player base wants and the majority don't even realise they are being hard carried by broken game design.

Just embrace the cheese. Run willbender, see a willbender swap to harbinger, see a harbinger swap to deadeye. Abuse stats like cele wherever you can. When we all run the most degenerate builds possible the game will finally be balanced without any intervention required.

[The disaster of the "alliances" and the end of wvw. FOR ARENANET]

10 hours ago, rthgw.4901 said:

 

Writing one more time, hopefully the last; people continued to harass trying to ridicule me along the lines of most other messages.  Nugatory, is fun to disrespect another person, right?  Look yourself in a mirror. You are portraying yourselves and with each message you show your toxicity and that indeed my complaint is more than true.  You read and interpret whatever you want in order to attack me and without prejudice to stating things that I have not said but of course this is not bullying, it is simply a meeting of friends wanting to joke and have a good time;  The miserable thing is that your jokes and fun are at someone else's expense, it is sad and embarrassing that people follows this path.

 

My intention was not to disrespect you. If that's the way you perceived it, I apologise. You clearly care about what you wrote.

What I wrote was more of a quip at the state of WvW in general and wasn't meant to be directed at you personally.

Casual players like myself have always gravitated toward EBG. Without the day-to-day rythmn of the traditional WvW server system, an unaffiliated players best bet to find action is on EBG. This has led to queues. Perhaps, when players have become more familiar with their new teammates playing habits and when the novelty of the new system wears off queues will subside. 

But I can understand that you care about what you wrote and when it appears others are taking the subject lightly that could upset you.

[The disaster of the "alliances" and the end of wvw. FOR ARENANET]

An easy fix really, scrap all borderlands and replace them with EBG copies.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

5 hours ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Willbender is a spec where the gear attribute combination you wear makes a huge difference. In WvW you can pick attribute combinations that will greatly increase your outcome against willbender, which you can't in sPvP.

WvW has a lot more variety. In WvW roaming a build is OP when you have the same skill level as its user and you get killed by it no matter whether you wear marauder, cele, trailblazer or soldier gear, no matter which weapons you pick, no matter which utility skills you pick and no matter which traitlines you pick.

Willbender is NOT one of these builds.

But:

That is indeed a problem. Willbender is designed in a way that it is to hard for new players to understand what is going on and develop counter strategies.

Is willbender hard to understand? I've never seen that as a complaint. Seems easy to understand to me: they port on you from range, dump a load of damage, and then if they miss their burst they hop, skip and jump over the horizon.

The complexity of willbender isn't a complaint I've seen. In fact the main complaint I've seen is their ease of use for the results they can get. 

It's a very welcoming class for newer players as they have great access to mobility, utility, damage, and if it all goes wrong disengage.

That's the issue I have with willbender, it has too much of everything. This stems from It's bloated virtues, which when traited are even stronger, and then doubled by the elite.

To address willbender's imbalance it is the virtues that need to be looked at.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

27 minutes ago, Itachi.3610 said:

In line with what? Vague. 

 

Personal opinion about making the wvw mode the same as the other mode. The problem is there are 3 distinctly different modes that need to be balanced differently. Spvp is 5v5, broadly saying a change for a small scale would be necessary in the MASS PLAYER war mode opens the door to silly "balance" changes that we've seen over and over again. 

 

And before you say I'm a willbender defender, I play every class and I main one that gets rock paper scissors pretty hard by willbender. I'm just tired of uninsightful suggestions purely based on "tHeY cHanGeD iT iN pVp"

You've used a whole bunch of words to say the same thing you wrote in your previous three posts and to be honest you've still failed to make a cogent point.

"tHeY'rE DiFfERNt..."

Just because two things are different doesn't mean they can't share common requirements. Pigeons and aeroplanes are different yet they both have wings, and pigeons and aeroplanes have a lot less in common than spvp and wvw.

So specifically why were the adjustments made to WB in spvp appropriate but would not be appropriate in wvw. 

And please don't type a variation of "tHeY'Re DiFfeRenT..." again, please.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

14 minutes ago, Itachi.3610 said:

The point I'm making is if we balanced wvw the same way we balanced pvp the gamemode wouldn't make sense. 

Well that's kind of a broad point to make. If you narrow it down to the topic we are addressing perhaps we could have a discussion.

The change made in spvp I'm thinking of is when they made flowing resolve a single use skill. Personally I think it should be the same in wvw and although more changes would be needed to bring willbender into line, that would be a good start.

Why do you think making flowing resolve a single use skill isn't necessary in wvw?

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

1 minute ago, Itachi.3610 said:

 

Yeah, that's what I thought. I've never seen a person defending willbender actually make a reasonable point why the changes made in spvp weren't also applied in wvw.

[Willbender still needs a nerf [Merged]]

8 minutes ago, Itachi.3610 said:

Because spvp isn't wvw.

Obviously they are not the same. I even pointed out an example in my comment of how they are different. That DH is stronger in spvp because of gameplay requirements not present in wvw.

So would you care to try again and actually make a useful comment explaining why you think the changes made to willbender in spvp weren't also necessary in wvw?