Nugatory.8920

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

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 👍

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 👍

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?