Philalive.8654

How come Tempest Fire Overload still only gives might in a 180 radius, while Herald does 25 might at 600 range (1200 radius) while they're still grabbing food from the kitchen? Do you also find it really engaging gameplay to check every 2 seconds to make sure you're standing inside the 180 radius Firebrand mantra's have? (WvW) If Support Tempest can sort-of do comparable healing to a Heal Vindicator while in their Water rotation, why do they then have 20 seconds of downtime where their healing & cleasing goes down to 10% of what it is in Water while the Vindicator swaps stance and gets refueled instead? (WvW) How come we take the (by far) worst performing secondary support in the game and give it a very slight buff and a slight nerf and call that a good 3 months of work? How do you wake up one morning and come across the idea that the mandatory kit, that has been mandatory since launch, should be just a little bit more mandatory now? (WvW) How come Holosmith does 2x more damage than every other DPS? (WvW) Is Dragonhunter a viable DPS spec or are we just stuck on guardian because there's a queue? (WvW) Do you think it's by design that the zerg meta is 4 supports and 1 dps per party? Since we practically had no changes to any Guardian specilizations outside PvE, does that mean they're perfectly balanced? (PvP) Aren't you also happy that we're buffing Condition Mirage in PvP? Does anyone know if Anet buffing Infinite Forge means they've realized that it's probably not healthy for the power build on a spec to be using the condition traits? (PvE) How come when you look at Condition Virtuoso it's an easy to play, ranged, high damage, lifestealing, high CC monster of a DPS build that also scales insanely well with more enemies, as well as having access to the best invulnerability in the game, in addition to easily being able to bring the insane Mesmer utilities; and with this information we decide that the only change we're going make to this build is: Buff it so it's a little bit easier to play? nvm I love it actually, seems fair to me. (PvE) Does anyone know what a Mirage is? I heard they're the same color as Virtuoso but I can't be sure (PvE) How come half of the Alacrity builds can provide me with much loved alacrity while we're standing still waiting for a boss to do something, while the other half complains that they have no target and we're all sad together? Does anyone know why normal food gives me +170 stats while Celestial food gives me +405? Will there ever be a day that Mesmer illusions are less confused by thieves than thieves are by illusions? (PvP/WvW) Was it really necessary to tie Unblockable on Virtuoso to a grandmaster trait just in-case one of them got any ideas of build diversity/experiementation? (WvW) Did someone tell ArenaNet that "Firebrand" and "Primary Support" aren't actually synonyms? Do you think it should be made illegal to make traits like Firebrand's Liberator's Vow without implementing some kind of visual effect and/or timer? How come you can dodge every phantasm, clone and immobilize swap by having auto-run turned on while you're in the kitchen? Does anyone actually know what's in Revenant's Retribution trait-line? If we had a super-computer and a powerful future AI, do you think it could decipher why Soulbeast's Tail Swipe and Wing Buffet are on the balance priority list and not something else? (WvW) Any Ranger main more happy about Tail Swipe rather than being viable outside of druid in GvG, Zergs or Blobs? When MightyTeapot says that the coming balance patch is: "... a little bit underwhelming if I'm being perfectly honest" how charitable would you rate that on a scale from 1-10? What changed now, and not at any point in the last 8 years, that we're allowing MUTLIPLE Condition Thieves in a party? (PvP/WvW) When is Warrior going to recover from CC not doing damage anymore? Does anyone know if the Bladesworn player thinks their specilization is in a good spot? Since it hasn't received any tweaks in the last 6+ months it must be, right? (Raids) Are bosses supposed to have mechanics? They're dying so quickly it's hard to tell sometimes Do you think Fractal players are actually good at Fractals or are they just killing everything in the spawn animation? Isn't it weird that there was a massive bug that made NPCs stuck and frozen if you hit them too fast after they spawned? Wasn't it a thing in fractals and instead of fixing the bug they just made the bosses invulnerable for a short period of time - but didn't do this to NPCs in Core Tyria and the Personal Story? Is there an Illuminati Cult of Evil Casuals plotting the downfall of people that take video games too seriously? Have you ever taken a look at the wiki page for Known Bugs? (PS: I take no responsibility for damaged scroll wheels). (PvE) Is it odd that Power Soulbeast and Power Untamed spike over 80k DPS in their opener while the 2nd closest raid power build spikes about 50k? Do you think we're still balancing PvE around this? Have you played Mesmer with the new rifle, seen a great oppurtunity to use the Skill 5 portal and someone's actually used it? (Doesn't count if you cheat with voice coms) I bet someone's at least accidentally clicked on it once. Does anyone still think it's fun playing with Weave Self and not having a timer for the effects, so you have to mouse over the tiny icon, just in time to realize you're too late and it falls off? Is it time to touch some grass? Serious answers only /s

Trust in the ArenaNet design/balance team really has hit rock-bottom, huh? I'm not saying you're wrong at all, in fact it's probably justified. Maybe, just maybe though? (I got enough copium to share)

I wholehearedly agree! I think you're pretty justified in having no hope for it to happen, considering Anet's track record and everything. "Hopefully" we'll be proven wrong PS: Glad we could find some common ground in the end.

I think we have enough systems in place to make build mutually exclusive with each other. There's nothing inherently bad with a class having multiple viable specs. The issue only arises when they start blending together (like in the current iteration of Barrier Scourge with Strips and Support Renegade with Strips). Like I said in my suggestions I'm advocating for them to make sure boon supports don't have access to good strips. You don't have to remove all strips, from all classes, that happen to be capable of support though. For example you could make Well of Corruption only do strips with a certain trait, if you're really worried about it you could even tie it to Reaper, I doubt we're going to see many support boon strip Reapers running around anytime soon. But you could also just improve other parts of their kit that isn't available to a Barrier Scourge. We're intelligent enough that we can use a scalpel instead of a chainsaw when approaching these issues. And of course we want a more diversified meta, that's why I gave examples for improvements to Warrior and Virtuoso, to make sure there are alternative to Necromancer. Just because a Class has been (and is) over-represented doesn't mean we need to butcher them now to make up for it.

I appreciate the good will and I have a lot of respect for the good faith you've shown trying to understand my point (I know I can lack that sometimes). I do agree with you that they are small changes. Generally the way I see MOBAs doing their balancing cycle so to speak, is in those games is you have a big shake-up - maybe once a year or so. Just like we've had with Elite Specilizations, and to a lesser degree with SotO weapons. Elite Specs were a much bigger shake-up than any of the DotA/League yearly reworks are so it makes sense that they would be fewer and further between. After the shake-up you balance pretty aggressively at the start since there will be many things out of whack, it's almost impossible to predict exactly what meta players will cook up after so many simultaneous changes so there's bound to be clear issues (even more so in an MMO). Then as the year progresses you keep tweaking things, champions/heroes(/builds) that are clearly under- or overperforming you touch up a bit to make them more in line with the vision you have for the game(-mode). It's hard to say exactly what our "shake-ups" will look like since we don't know exactly what's going to be coming from the new expansions but I think it's safe to assume it'll be around the same impact as weapons from SotO had, with some margin. And I'm quite happy with that for now, hard to say until we know more. What I think is missing from the recipe in Guild Wars 2 is the after-care phase, we don't get enough small tweaks and changes to keep things updated and fresh during an expansion. It feels like specs and builds very often get put in the "forgotten" box and not touched at all. This is something I've felt for a long time and MOBAs just seemed like an apt comparsion since they're generally extremely competitive, which makes balance very important to them. They happen to have a system that I think works quite well and as long as you keep in mind that you can't make a 1 to 1 copy, with some intelligent decisions you may be able to draw some inspiration from what they've learned over the years. I think it would be better if Anet took some inspiration from the comparisons that I made and made more tweaks and small changes throughout the expansion to make sure the game is not spiraling out of control and to keep poor Mirage (just an example because the spec is struggling a lot rn) players actually feel relevant. I'm not saying we should be League of Legends but I think there are things that they do well over there, in this case what I've just outlined and I think it could be beneficial for Anet to draw some inspiration from that. I could've worded this a lot better at the start and it would've probably been more clear but I hope this makes sense. And to be super clear here: I don't think we should 1 to 1 copy the blueprint from DotA or League, just that there are some things that they do well. I understand that the games I'm comparing are very different, in a lot of ways, that doesn't mean that the idea itself is bad. Hopefully we can step away from the comparisons and actually discuss the idea of moving towards more frequent but smaller consistent balance patches. I apologize for the confusion, I hope I've made my point clear.

The issue I raised was: Balancing isn't great with the current system. My idea for something better is: More frequent balancing will probably make it easier for the balance team to react to changes in the meta-game. Give them more opportunities to make changes without shaking the whole meta up. Like for example just bringing up PvE Alacrity Mirage slightly this month, along with some other tweaks. Another patch in the same scope the next month. Now, is that going to solve every issue with balancing? No, of course not but I never claimed as much. Just because it's a simple idea doesn't mean it doesn't have merit. The comparisons that I made were just an example on how other games approach the subject. I have said multiple times that I know they're not 1 to 1 comparsions and I'm not pretending they are. Why is it "too simplistic", is the suggestion itself bad? Do you think the cadence of balance patches that we have right now is the perfect one? I know that Guild Wars 2 is more than PvP, I'm not sure what lead you to believe otherwise, if you'd like to point it out to me, I'm all ears. In any case, I still believe it applies to Guild Wars 2. Not only WvW and PvP but PvE as well. Like I said in my earlier response: Again, I must apologize for my tounge in cheek commentary, I don't literally think they should get an intern and have him change random stuff. I would've thought the oversimplification was obvious enough without you pointing it out but obviously it wasn't, my bad. We already have a balance team though and I believe they're capable of better than we've seen historically, now obviously I can't be sure why it's been slow and/or messy but I can still advocate for what I think will help. I don't think anyone here is advocating for "Erratic shaking things up". Balancing shouldn't be random and no one's said it should be. I've been quite clear that the scope of this post is to encourage more frequent, smaller updates. Just so we're clear: I am not saying that they should "Erratically shake things up". I am saying that more frequent, small tweaks to bring up clear under- and overperformers on a monthly basis (for example) seems to me like a more sustainable "system" than big quarterly updates that either "erratically shake things up" or don't fix any of the issues the game is suffering from. My question was: I'd love to hear why they decide not to do more balancing from Anet's perspective. Why in that question was the key-word. I know that they're releasing quarterly updates, I just don't understand why. That's what I'd like to hear the explaination about, not what they're doing right now, that's already clear. I know that there's feedback on the balance changes, what I'm asking with my question is if you have any ideas on how to improve the system for balancing that we currently have. It seems to be the popular opinion that it's been pretty bad, and still is. That's certainly my opinion, not all bad of course but it's not been smooth sailing. So I'm not asking about specific changes here, I'm asking what you think Anet should do differently to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Because I think they should release smaller, more frequent balance patches.

Yeah, I agree that there are more issues than just boon stripping in the game. My logic of this being able to fix more than it would first seem is basically this: You can't really kill anyone in a decent-ish group without Strips & CC. Protection, Stability, Barrier, damage mitigation through stacking and so on are way to strong to crack no matter how many Holosmiths/Berserkers you have in your party. In my experience people start dropping when 1. Holosmith greeds slightly of stack and gets deleted or 2. Supports start falling behind after a few people down, they get CCd, etc. I'd say I'm a heal Vindicator main atm and at least I feel like as long as I'm not CCd I can basically keep my group alive through anything. When I get pulled or CCd things go south very fast (assuming the teams are fairly balanced). So we definetly need boon strips to be able to kill anything (within reason). That's why we have Renegades and Necromancers - for boon strips. Now this role used to be filled with offensive Necromancer builds eg. Power Reaper or Power Scourge. Those builds didn't really provide much support and were quite good targets to kill, and they did alright damage but not enough to out-compete actual DPS builds. But instead of that, we now have 2 full minstrel supports that spam boons, barriers and transfuses - as well as boon strip. This makes every squad way tankier than it has any right to be. However, if we make (somewhat) intelligent changes to the builds that are the biggest issue; the overperforming Supports with boon strip capabilities and the underperforming DPS boon strip builds. We should see that squads lean back towards at least 3 Supports, 1 DPS boon strip and 1 DPS instead of 2 supports, 2 supports with boon strip and 1 DPS that we have now. That would DOUBLE the amount of Berserker (other flavors available) gear users in blobs at the moment which I think we can all agree is a step in the right direction. I also don't think you could really justify Celestial Support Renegade if they didn't provide boon strip so hopefully the meta that would emerge after fixing the support builds and bringing up some DPS strips would be healthier than the one we have now. As I see it atm, the WvW meta is on fire and we need a fix with some haste. There are a lot of issues to tackle after this but imo, this is the best place to start. Shared defenses - especially reflects, really do need some looking at in the future too. They're a scary topic to mess with though because the game is so heavily balanced towards projectiles basically not working at all.

Like I've said in the other responses, there are levels to "shaking things up". I'm not advocating for massive changes, rather more frequent and smaller patches. As for the title I'll bundle it in with my response to Cyninja below. I see what you mean about the title, sure it's obviously not a infinite content glitch, but I don't think that's what people actually expected either? If you were, well, I'm sorry I mislead you, it was merely meant as a bit of tongue in cheek (but I do stand my the fact that it will provide content for a specific subset of players, also known as "a playerbase", poor choice of words in the title by me probably). To clarify what I mean and bring the discussion back on topic (if I may): I think balance patches do provide content, especially for WvW and PvP, it's the most meaningful content that those modes get. As a WvW and PvP enjoyer (along with PvE) the balance patches are the most exciting announcements there are, short of things like new Elite Specilizations or new Weapons. Playing the game against new builds is extremely important for the longevity of the game. It's obviously not comparable to something like a new map or a new raid but in some ways it's just as important. I find that for me personally at least playing a new build in PvE can improve my enjoyment of the content a ton. Considering the effort it would take for 1 intern to make a few (small) adjustments here and there more often I feel like it would give the game more longevity even though it might not be in the conventional way that "real" content will. Now I will admit that it's more of an issue in WvW and PvP, PvE balancing is actually quite good at the moment (in the grand scheme of things) in my opinion so I recognise why a lot of people are cautious (esp. considering Anet's track record). So I think I should've preficed and explained what I actually was advocating for in my original post rather than focus too much on the comparisons with other games? I think I've been much too combative and defensive in my responses in this thread so I'm trying to be more grounded, but I hope so far (in what I just wrote) we can agree, right? Edit: To clarify by what I mean by content here: Balancing > New Possible Builds > Theorycrafting / Buildcrafting > New ways of playing and enjoying the game (but in old content). So different kind of content but in my opinion, still content, if that makes more sense?

"Only if Anet wants to revive this mode will there be a chance of a good solution." I agree that PvP has a lot more issues that need to be dealt with other than balancing changes, there are however still people that enjoy that gamemode and the small investment to balance it more frequently is a step in the right direction. "The solution is seemingly simple. Anet needs to do better balancing. The fact that Anet seems to be trying, but there are far more "misses" than "hits", shows that it's not that easy after all for Anet. Which is why I don't think things will suddenly and unexpectedly change for the better." I agree that "Anet needs to do better balancing" but saying that isn't really offering much of a solution for the problem than just being a statement about the problem itself. I believe their job would be easier if they did smaller and more frequent changes, and therefore bring more positive changes. The idea of the balance team being wrong and having misses will be prevalent in both systems are there is no good solution to that. Maybe its' naive to expect things to magically become better, personally I just feel I could offer my perspective on how to improve for the future. "You agreed with me that it was a “cheap statement” from you. What should I provide arguments for on this point?" I just meant that as much of a pointless state that I made, criticising that statement is just as pointless. Your point of the statement itself was fine, I was referring to countering my actual arguments and not the fluff, if that makes sense. "In summary: I agree with you that good and better balancing is important for all game modes in GW2. But to believe that it is a good suggestion that no one else has thought of before and that it will suddenly get better now that you have made the suggestion is ignoring the past and what Anet has provided so far. Which is why I think this is unrealistic and naive." This is a fair point, might very well be naive to think a forum post will change anything, but I like to remain hopeful. I'd love to hear why they decide not to do more balancing from Anet's perspective. "I think you misread the/most answers. I haven't read anywhere here that a better class balance as such was rejected from others in the discussion. It's more your conclusions and comparisons. And if someone thinks a suggestion is bad or impractical (for whatever reason), one is not obliged to make a better suggestion. " One is not obliged to do anything about a forum post about a game. My comparisons and conclusions are the following: Other games have more frequent balancing and it seems to me they also have better balancing. I think Anet should do more frequent balancing. Now some have criticized that saying that it's not an apt comparison because of X and Y reasons, which I have refuted. I don't think I misread any of the responses. While I will admit that I can be defensive I feel like statements like: "I personally don't think this improves or fixes anything in GW2. Most of the player base does not seem to like when things are "shaken up" or having to re-do their build every patch or being subjectively forced to play a different profession after spending many, many hours on one you love." "The entire problem with this conversation is that Arena Net probably knows what content the community interacts with most, and which is worth putting resources into. Guild Wars 2 is one of those games where the development team, regardless of its size, will never make every group of players happy." "A new balance team, changes by the existing balance team. None of it is going to make a difference at this point." Clearly goes against my suggested solution? I think my arguments on the other points have been directed towards why I don't think the criticism is warranted and not just that no one is offering an alternative solution. I'm glad we can agree that balance has been bad and it would be beneficial for most if it was better. Do you have any ideas on how to make it better?

I want more frequent balancing for all modes. WvW, PvP and PvE. What's misleading about the thread title?

This is a very good point too, it hasn't really been a massive issue until the Barrier-heavy supports (like Scourge and Scrapper) became strong again. At least I didn't think it was a big issue a year ago.

I will apologize for my combativeness, you're right that I come across as aggressive. It feels like people have lots of things to say about my comparisons, my arguments and suggestions but no one is actually offering an alternative solution or even arguing against more balance. It doesn't seem like anyone is giving me reasons for why we shouldn't have more consistent/more focus on balance. It seems to not really matter much if they do balance or not which is fair enough, it doesn't have to be for everyone, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad idea itself. The point of your first post seems to be that it doesn't really matter much, since the majority of the playerbase is more interested in exploring the open world, doing the story and things like Fashion Wars (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't mean to misrepresent what your point was). And I completely agree that those things are very important for the game and nothing I'm suggesting is in opposition of that. But is it that hard a pill to swallow that it would also be beneficial to make the players in competitive modes happy with a small investment in time to adjust some numbers? My title is referring to a playerbase, as in a specific subset of players. I'm not saying it's the biggest issue for all of Guild Wars 2 or that it should take priority over other things that Anet needs to work on, I just feel like it's a cheap and easy start to make (at least) the WvW and PvP community happier. I'm sure there are also a lot of casual open world players that would love to see a build that they love see the light of day? I hope this response doesn't come off as quite as aggressive, it really isn't my intention and if you have reasons for why it'd be a bad idea to invest more into balance I'd love to hear them.

1. So, PvP is dead? Solution is to... what? 2. I agree that Anet haven't done balancing well historically, but again, the solution to that is... what? Less balance? Don't touch anything again? Not to try and fix it? 3. I will concede that it's a cheap statement to make. But attacking that statement and then proceeding to attack my arguments with "[they] do not seem strong or good enough on their own." without any sort of counter argument or criticism of the arguments themselves, does seem hypocritical to me. So I'll concede that it was a cheap statement but at least come with your own counter arguments if you want to disagree as well.

I appreicate your reply! Well made points and with arguments and everything! So, 1. The games I compared to in my original post are indeed PvP games. I don't think it's fair to just ignore the fact that 2/3 gamemodes in Guild Wars 2 are also PvP though (even if they're comparatively smaller). As you've correctly pointed out at the end of your point here, it is indeed comparable to WvW (and PvP). I completely agree with: "Balance patches in those games merely change the tools the other player uses, thus shaking up the encounter on a design level, but the other player is still the one creating the content with this tool in hand." which is a great argument for why we should also have more balance in WvW and PvP, like you said it is comparable. As for PvE I concede that the 2 mobas I chose to compare with isn't a great 1 to 1 comparison which is why I brought up Retail WoW and Season of Discovery as well (in response to other comments), they're much better comparisons to make when you're looking at the PvE side of things. The same argument I made from the comparsion with the mobas I can make with WoW and SoD. 2. I agree that it's much easier to change build/character in a MOBA and the comparison does indeed fall flat when considering the difficulty in changing your playstyle. It does feel worse when your main class in an MMO falls off compared to your favorite character in a MOBA. But how does it logically follow after that, that the solution is less balance? Anyway, let's say, for argument's sake that it does logically follow that less balance is the solution to players not feeling like their class gets worse with patches, couldn't I make the same argument you're making comparing the difficulty changing builds/character with Guild Wars 2 compared to MOBAs, in the same direction with things like WoW and SoD? They're even harder to reroll in than Guild Wars 2 and they have way more frequent balance and "shake-ups" but still manage to make it work? All of their competitive gamemodes both in PvE and PvP are way more popular and seem to have a lot more staying power than our current system of very rare balance, fewer and even smaller "shake-ups". 3. League and Dota may be easier to balance compared to Guild Wars 2, does that mean we should focus less on balance then? Not more? Same thing with being able to deny overly powerful builds and playstyles, doesn't that just mean that they have more lee-way to be less focused on balance, since the playerbase can auto-balance to some degree while we're completely reliant on the developers to "do the bans for us"? "Sorry but your comparison falls very flat. You are essentially talking about content while attributing this to balance patches and cycles not realizing that the main difference you should be looking at is actual content development, which is vastly different between PvE and PvP. Thus balance patches will have a very different impact on either type of game." I completely disagree with you here. The comparison I made is only useful as far as it seems to work for other games, why not for this one too? Obviously no other game is going to be a 1 to 1 comparsion but I don't think that invalidates the argument that we should have a stronger focus on balance. I'm not saying that balance should, can or will replace "real" content like new stories, new maps, new raids, new fractals, and so on for PvE. I'm saying that it's a cost effective way of keeping old content fresh for PvE and it is, as you've said yourself: "WvW in this game, a mode which has run for 12 years by now with nearly no content patches." basically the only content that WvW (and PvP) gets. So while I agree that you can't say balance patches will replace content in PvE, I don't think anything you've brought up speaks for the current system of balance we have right now being superior to what I'm suggesting, in fact your post mostly just confirms that we indeed should have more MOBA-like balance in WvW and PvP. TL;DR: A balance change in LoL (WvW/PvP) to a champion (class) does not change the content. It changes how a player will play that champion (class), making the interaction with that player change (this player can be someone else or ones self, thus changing the interaction for the enemy player). That still leaves the PLAYER as the main factor in content development. I'll end with a question: Is there a good reason we're deciding to not make changes to clear underperformers, like for example Alacrity Mirage in PvE? It's clearly not in a good spot, what are we waiting for? Is there an argument you can make for why a change to that build needs to take 6+ months?

"Competitive game modes attracts competitive people and one of competition's unfortunate after effect is toxicity. Even you cannot dispute that. " I didn't know that I had, actually, I'm pretty certain that I never disputed that, but alright? "Nobody is out here to get you." Right, thanks? "Accept that GW2 is mostly composed of non competitive and probably never will be interested in competitive game modes playerbase." Again I'm so confused, I've never disputed the fact that the majority of the Guild Wars 2 playerbase is very casual and uninterested in competitive gamemodes, have I? Are we still talking about the frequency and size of balance patches in Guild Wars 2?