Cal Cohen.2358

Here are the worlds for EU: Abaddon's Mouth (DE), Miller's Sound (DE)Augury Rock (FR), Ruins of Surmia (EN)Baruch Bay (SP)Desolation (EN), Blacktide (EN)Drakkar Lake (DE), Ring of Fire (EN)Dzagonur (DE)Elona Reach (DE), Vabbi (EN)Far Shiverpeaks (EN), Underworld (EN)Gandara (EN), Fort Ranik (FR)Jade Sea (FR), Vizunah Square (FR)Kodash (DE), Gunnar's Hold (EN)Piken Square (EN)Riverside (DE), Fissure of Woe (EN)Seafarer's Rest (EN), Aurora Glade (EN)Whiteside Ridge (EN), Arborstone (FR)Here are the worlds for NA: Anvil Rock, Isle of Janthir, Devona's RestBlackgateBorlis Pass, Ferguson's CrossingCrystal Desert, DarkhavenDragonbrand, Sorrow's FurnaceFort Aspenwood, Ehmry BayJade Quarry, Henge of DenraviMaguuma, Stormbluff IsleNorthern Shiverpeaks, Eredon TerraceSea of Sorrows, KainengTarnished Coast, Sanctum of RallYak's Bend, Gate of Madness

I just put in a change to make the Lance unblockable. It won't make it in for the next release, but it's coming in the future.

Hi again, I wanted to swing by with an end-of-day update. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the community’s passion on balance and the overall state of the game. There were other topics that were brought up today, and we will create more specific discussions in the future. I will continue to monitor and gather feedback from the forums so keep posting your thoughts as you have them. Going forward we want to keep our mission statement of being more communicative and including the community. So here are our next steps on the balance front: There will be more posts going into further detail about our balance plans for the next patches. This will include a list of targeted changes for the next balance update as well as our high-level philosophy and vision for the more impactful patch coming later. We will continue to communicate with the community early and often in order to gather feedback on these changes, which will allow us to have a chance to iterate. From the whole systems team, thanks everyone for your passion for competitive gw2 and the feedback you provided today.

Hi again, I wanted to swing by with an end-of-day update. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the community’s passion on balance and the overall state of the game. There were other topics that were brought up today, and we will create more specific discussions in the future. I will continue to monitor and gather feedback from the forums so keep posting your thoughts as you have them. Going forward we want to keep our mission statement of being more communicative and including the community. So here are our next steps on the balance front: There will be more posts going into further detail about our balance plans for the next patches. This will include a list of targeted changes for the next balance update as well as our high-level philosophy and vision for the more impactful patch coming later. We will continue to communicate with the community early and often in order to gather feedback on these changes, which will allow us to have a chance to iterate. From the whole systems team, thanks everyone for your passion for competitive gw2 and the feedback you provided today.

The current plan is to continue adding tradeoffs to elite specs that don't have them.

For sPvP, have you consider a change in the stat budget through amulets? I know this puts WvW aside (or at least it would requires more work) but capping the main offensive stats to lower numbers while having the defensive ones remains the same would necessarily tone down the global power level but keep the power ranking of individual skills. A skill designed as powerful would remain powerful but would give more reaction time to the defender who could survive a bit longer. I thought it was the original idea of having separate modes : balancing the game mode by adjusting the stats and keeping a global balance for skills. Amulet stats are absolutely something we are looking at.

I do want to have a bigger discussion about the current state of the warclaw, but that's a separate topic. For now I'm trying to catch up with this thread, and we will definitely be keeping an eye on other threads moving forward.

I understand the frustration that comes from being super passionate about something and I don't hold it against anyone. As long as we keep it clean (no personal attacks, general forum rules apply, etc) good feedback can always be gathered. Bonus: Here's a video that highlights my thoughts on competitive communities (and really what makes them great)

Boon uptime is definitely something on our radar, and likewise how many corrupts are needed to interact with that amount of boons. In general the thought is that everything needs to come down, including damage, sustain, boons, corrupts, cc, stability, among other things. There's a lot more to it than just blanket nerfing everything by X% but the general direction is definitely downward. Professions are still going to have their strengths and weakness in terms of what boons they can generate, but the overall effectiveness is going to be lower. Instant skills are one of the things that we've started discussing internally since cast time isn't something that can be split. One of our main goals for competitive is making sure that there is adequate counterplay. It's going to vary on a case-by-case basis, but cast time increases and adding delays are part of those discussions. Not as splits, but as changes that may need to happen. There's then opportunity for PvE-only splits to compensate skills for these changes. This falls into the same 'everything is too high' idea. Damage potential is definitely something we will be looking at. How conditions are applied is a big thing that we're looking into. For the future big patch, we are primarily looking at nerfs. The idea is that things that are in a good spot in the current meta are overtuned for what we want the game to be. We still want skills and traits to feel strong, but their current strength is too high. Initially we want to wait and see with a lot of things that aren't considered viable right now. As everything else shifts downward other things may become relevant without any changes. There will certainly be things that are too weak and we will revisit them in the future.

Right, but fixing one can negate the other.This was the mess created by ANET in which boon share was too OP so they had to counter that by making corruption easily accessible.Look at the biggest 'needs' in wvw. FB (must have), scourge to be carried by and counter opposing FB, bubbles? See where this is going?You have to start somewhere. This is really the crux of a lot of things we want to address. Boons vs corrupts, damage vs healing, stability vs cc, among so many other things. These are all in the state of being extremely powerful as a way to counter the other side being extremely powerful, and are all things that we want to address moving forward. It's important to keep these balanced against each other, but we want the power level to come down.

This is very much what I was talking about for the long-term, and one of the things we want to gather feedback on through this discussion. It's less about the 25% or the 15% for any given skill and more about defining what the power level should be, then adjusting all skills and traits to fit into that paradigm.

Hey there and Thank you for the Update. I have to ask, are the sentences in bold ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting? Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks? Would for example, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board? For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates. I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes. Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

Hi Everyone, I wanted to clarify something from today’s blog post while also kicking off a discussion on a topic that’s near and dear to most competitive players: balance. It’s important to understand that as competitive handles competitive balance, we will continue to primarily use skill splits in order to minimize the impact on the rest of the game. It’s certainly true that not all issues can be addressed through splits, and we will continue to work with the skills team to make sure we are making the right changes for the entire game when splitting is not a viable option. Mini Balance RoadmapWe have identified the overall power of the game has become an issue and we wish to address this in the competitive game modes. The next balance update is going to be smaller than usual. We want to make a handful of very targeted changes to address the biggest pain points in the current meta, but we also want to bank some time for bigger plans moving forward. For a future balance update, we are looking at major adjustments across the board. The goal is to re-establish what the overall power level for competitive modes, and then bring everything down to meet that. In true gw2 fashion, everything is on the table. With that said, we’re not going to nerf just for the sake of nerfing. Every change should make sense, and every change should be working toward a bigger goal. This patch is still super early in development, so I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s definitely something we want to talk about more moving forward. As mentioned in the blog post, we want to keep the community involved early and often when it comes to balance. So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term: What outliers do you see in the current meta? Then think about the big picture: What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed? Think outside of the current meta and instead about what you want the meta to look like from a power-level perspective. Keep in mind that a majority of changes should be splits, but feel free to also call out issues that you feel cannot be addressed by splits. This post is intentionally starting a broad discussion as a jumping off point into the new communication of the Systems team, but keep in mind that in the future our posts are generally going to be more targeted at specific issues as we won’t have as much time to handle giant discussions. I wanted to keep this initial post fairly short, so please ask questions about anything that is unclear. Otherwise, let’s talk balance. cmc

Hi Everyone, I wanted to clarify something from today’s blog post while also kicking off a discussion on a topic that’s near and dear to most competitive players: balance. It’s important to understand that as competitive handles competitive balance, we will continue to primarily use skill splits in order to minimize the impact on the rest of the game. It’s certainly true that not all issues can be addressed through splits, and we will continue to work with the skills team to make sure we are making the right changes for the entire game when splitting is not a viable option. Mini Balance RoadmapWe have identified the overall power of the game has become an issue and we wish to address this in the competitive game modes. The next balance update is going to be smaller than usual. We want to make a handful of very targeted changes to address the biggest pain points in the current meta, but we also want to bank some time for bigger plans moving forward. For a future balance update, we are looking at major adjustments across the board. The goal is to re-establish what the overall power level for competitive modes, and then bring everything down to meet that. In true gw2 fashion, everything is on the table. With that said, we’re not going to nerf just for the sake of nerfing. Every change should make sense, and every change should be working toward a bigger goal. This patch is still super early in development, so I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s definitely something we want to talk about more moving forward. As mentioned in the blog post, we want to keep the community involved early and often when it comes to balance. So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term: What outliers do you see in the current meta? Then think about the big picture: What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed? Think outside of the current meta and instead about what you want the meta to look like from a power-level perspective. Keep in mind that a majority of changes should be splits, but feel free to also call out issues that you feel cannot be addressed by splits. This post is intentionally starting a broad discussion as a jumping off point into the new communication of the Systems team, but keep in mind that in the future our posts are generally going to be more targeted at specific issues as we won’t have as much time to handle giant discussions. I wanted to keep this initial post fairly short, so please ask questions about anything that is unclear. Otherwise, let’s talk balance. cmc