A follow up to the 'Status Reset' change introduced on August 31

[Kondor.2904]

Yeah, imo these changes made the game much less intuitive than before. Now you always gotta think about whether you can change a trait/a spec or not. 

And so, like, if aegis is no longer affected by status reset, does that mean guards can still precast aegis on 5 people with F3 before the fight starts, then swap to another spec with no cd on F3 ? Yikes

Edited September 3, 2021 by Kondor.2904

[Adibas.6982]

All of those sound absolutely fair. The backlash looks like a loud minority of players upset about loosing unfair advantage.

I'm on your side Systems Team <3

[Kartky.2409]

I don't really see a clarification in it.

First of all, legendary weapons doesn't work like they should. Reseting their status by removin it from template kill all the flawless of the game-applying stats, sigils, infusions takes times, thus better is to use ascended weapons still since its just 2 clicks to swapout without loosing stats above mentioned. Maybe "block" system would work, when u can save the current sttatus of the legendary weapon in the inventory or make some copies of it straight to the inventory. Same like free skins getting for AP, but this would go the weapons.

What i see more is a problem- resets on trait swap-demand. I would like to manually swap trait after buffing myself/crewmates while i cannot cause i loose all. I dont think so thats an exploit of the game that using hero panel to change the trait being out of combat yet. And people getting punished for this aswell. 

Next thing is precasting

The changes didnt remove ur mentioned problems. The panel u added on the weapon swap (gear/trait swapouts) remains unused for a lot of players. They work in unintended way aswell with the changes u made. 

I personally feel very akward in the current state od the game. I understand stuff such keeping status server in the good shape is important. On the other side theres been told to people that mechanics working in the game for 9years were uninteded and most of em were exploits. 

 

Overall those changes are okey, but not not in the current state are they are now, cause its not working as intended, its been a half product for now

 

 

[Antioche.7034]

Seems perfectly reasonnable, but now you really need to do something about legendary weapons being worse than ascended since you can't swap them to cast boons ... How to make precasting even more of an headache ... Now I need to unequip my leggies on one weapon set so that I can precast correctly - Kind of yikes.

[pooitoi.2039]

So it's back to precasting shenanigans again? I don't care much about the boons but holy do I hate manually swapping in and out weapons before every boss fight to get some more dmg, like Meteor shower precast, which is absolutely mandatory on a Weaver.

Super stupid to revert that back now, you already got the backlash, just give them some time and they find a new thing to exploit for "skill expression". 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

4 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

The Special Forces Training area will now automatically re-apply your selected boons if they are lost, until you have reset them at the console.

Thank you.

[Natsu.4362]

" In the near term, we are adding 'Stealth' to the buffs removed when you change traits or templates, as we believe this will be a positive change to the competitive environment in World vs. World gameplay." 

 

Hello Anet there is a game mode called Guild vs Guild ....I mean the one you dont pay any attention to it whatsoever.... Stop it pls....you destroy the whole GVG Scrapper Reveal gameplay and we didnt even asked for it .....?!

As Engi in GvG you swap like 2-3 templates in the start of the fight....if you 

do that without stealth your an easy snack for the enemy team. Doing manuelly....... yeah sure have fun not able to use the Templates you brought.

Are you even watching then Guild of the Mist Streams ?!

I mean like pay attention to the people who keep that game mode alive even you dont care and your fixes are slow like the flying bug in the eotm arena 

Stealth Gameplay is a huge part of the wvw and gvg  community this update is just nonsense 

 

And every day at 20:03 there is a run at the eotm arena cause the guilds are just not able to play against each other if they are the same colour.....there will be a national gvg tournament soon and it whould be nice if there was an option to use eotm arena without the hustle the one with the longest loading screen wont get it anyway. Cause people wanna train for it . And kinda all Teammates are on different servers and I im done with paying for transfer. How much more do we have to beg ....to get an arena option for guild hall for example with wvw stats 

 

To explain it for none WvW Player You have Diferent Tiers in each Tier are 3 Different Server or server linkings fighting against each other. They get the colours Red, Blue and Green. It can happen that differnt Servers in different Tier get the same colour so you end up in the same Team in Edge of the Mist without EotM Arena unable to fight against each other. There is a difference in skill lvl in the Guild vs Guild community so sometimes you really wanna fight a guild with same colour to improve. But you only can do it with the arena. Cause in the Guild hall you have like the pve settings of the skills that change some a lot so you wont use that, second bastion not everybody has a pass and there can be trolls. The primetime for this fights is around 8 oclock pm CETto 10 o clock pm CET. Cause people have a life and need to work and stuff. So you need enough people on a totally dead map ( cause there are no pips in eotm)  to create an overflow so you have more then 1 arena to fight. The map reset is at 20:03 so you see a lot of guilds rushing to this arena to claim it. even people talk to each other about they really need it cause the enemie isnt same colour and they can run mid eotm whats also a hustle cause if you fall from the map or dc it takes some time to run back. There are also a lot of trolls who just claim it. So you kinda win the arena if most of your guild mates have a fast pc and a short loeading screen whats totally annyoing. Otherwise you cant fight your opponent. 

 

So yeah sometimes we try to get fights with different colours but if your server improves on the last day and you change colours your whole gvg sheldure for the weekend is MEH

Edited September 4, 2021 by Natsu.4362

[tim.4596]

Actually quoting 9 y/o changes is not entirely fair. Wepon swap is indeed a 9 y/o mechanic however gear templates which are really the source of the issue here are not. I don't believe that any kind of boons should be removed for simply swapping a weapon, precasting 25 might with Staff in WvW has been in the game for a very long time and is not an exploit, it's a preparation before zergging and more or less part of the game already. However swapping the entirety of your gear template is a serious issue. I think it would be better to look at restricted scenario/area as to when one can fully swap gear templates, for instance swapping at the beginning of a dungeon or at the beginning Waypoint of a World vs. World area seems fair. That way gear templates would more or less work as intended. Regarding weapon swaping I think similar mechanic to GW1 should be brought back to the game, that could fix Legendary weapons, that way you could just have a hot key to ONLY swap weapons as opposed to entire build template. Those Weapon swapping slot could unlock with how many build templates you have. That way we wouldnt' go back in time with having inventory open, and you could allow us to keep every single boons and not just selected ones.

I don't think "build templates" should have any nerf though. Swaping an entire build is usually linked to armor pieces too. Therefore it has minimal changes impact if you wouldn't be able to swap your entire gear simultaneously. I'm sure that the servers can handle build swapping as opposed to gear swapping.

Edited September 4, 2021 by tim.4596

[Will.9785]

2 hours ago, Kondor.2904 said:

does that mean guards can still precast aegis on 5 people with F3 before the fight starts, then swap to another spec with no cd on F3 ? Yikes

Probably.  And here's the real kicker... the stat reset just effects YOU.  You can still stack boons on others and swap.  You will lose your boons but they won't lose the ones you gave them!

 

So does this really help the server if the boons there were generated are still lingering for 4 or 9 players?

Edited September 4, 2021 by Will.9785

[Asum.4960]

Appreciate the follow up. Especially the Boon removal through even a single Trait swap in the Special Forces Training area turned out to be quite annoying when testing and comparing builds/rotations - glad that is getting addressed. 

[Custodio.6134]

Quote

Removal of buffs and boons on changing your equipped weapon is one element that is more likely to accidentally impact normal play. Likewise, there are specific boons that are not as necessary to clean up, as they generally only increase the joy of movement around the game world.

NO! IT DOES NOT!
In the same way that stealth is one of the most impactful tool in Player vs Player-based combat, it is also one of the harder factors in terms of maximizing it. The ability of utilizing stealth can be seen as one of many factors, that separates a trained group from a not so trained group. It is also not that easy to maximize stealth gained from smoke-field-blasts, as it requires heavy skill- and weapon-rotation in order to stack it high enough. pre-stacking Might (aka Empowering) becomes obsolete in that scenario too. 
It takes away a benefit of actually being "better" in the game and doing better pre-combat preparations, while giving no real benefit to game-performance (let´s be real, stealth has a so extremely specific use, that it nearly never impacts the game-performance at all. 
Also, why does ANet focus on such things, while there is so much other things to fix with a way more negative impact on the game?
like years-old bugs and badly designed mechanics that have been reported for years? Or world-restructuring (aka Alliances), which are about to go beta soon? ANet (or respectively, the game-designers and balance team) are destructively messing up the game, step by step with such types of changes. 

8 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

I dont think traps are removed rn.

they are. It affects everything ground-placed (such as combo-fields, traps,  skill effects like Scrapper toolbelt-bomb and yes, that includes supply-/marker-traps as well)

Also: ANet once again breaks a promise they made in the past. What happened about improving communication with the players? All we get communicated is "here, we will change that because we think it´s good". I thought you wanted to consider player-feedback BEFORE you make such heavy-impact changes in order to NOT screw it up again?!? 
We already know that ANet dislikes WvW in general (all the balance-changes, design-changes, how world-restructuring development and communication went are proof of that). 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Custodio.6134
added quote for context

[Custodio.6134]

  

11 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

As always, these kinds of changes are not made lightly, and we've seen your feedback on all sides about these changes. While we wish we had gotten this one 100% in the right spot from the start, we are listening, and pledge to keep working to make Tyria as a whole a better place for all of us to enjoy together.

No, you are not. That´s a straight up lie. Because if you would listen to the players, it wouldn´t have taken years to fix common issues in WvW (like all the bugs with lootbags on stairs, falling through the map on the red keep´s doors, players jumping into towers with warclaws which is still possible btw, and many many more)

[Alecu.4786]

WHY go complete 180 like this?

 

I have been playing Dungeons, Fotms and Raids since the game launched - I have 2 sets of legendary raid armor and 10k Fractals KP. I have been doing dungeon speed clears and everything and pushing the game to the max but this has NEVER been "FUN" - it was just working within the constraints that were given to me by the game! The change was GOOD!!!

 

 

Why do you consider that swapping weapons by opening your inventory or hero pannel is more "fun" than changing equipment templates to your sword/warhorn set or w/e? It is extremely FIDDLY gameplay having to open INTERFACE PANELS just to improve your COMBAT ability!
 

Think about this please!! the change was good!! Why roll it back?

[Carcharoth Lucian.1378]

12 hours ago, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

In last Tuesday's patch, we added a game mechanic to clean up various aspects of the player state when certain events occur. These events are:

• - Changing an equipped weapon with your inventory or the hero panel
• - Changing selected traits or specialization
• - Changing build or equipment templates
• - Respawning after death

On these events, many boons and profession-specific buffs are removed, and persistent elements of skills such as traps are removed. This change is necessary for positive improvements to the stability of the game, and to safeguard against exploits in PvE and WvW where the benefits from some skills or traits could be used without being a part of the player’s current build or skill loadout.

Every effect on a player or in the game world comes at an overall cost to server performance, and over the past year we've individually addressed numerous cases involving certain persistent skill effects that could be duplicated or deployed multiple times simultaneously, which is not only an unintended advantage in combat, but has an outsized impact on game server performance.

This isn't only about addressing lag, although every bit helps. When game systems operate under clear and transparent rules, and when those rules are as intuitive as possible, the game is more approachable and learnable for everyone

However, like any change of this nature, there's a balance to strike. As the creators of the game, we need to always evaluate the changes we make not only in how they protect the intent and integrity of game systems, but also in how they impact you, our players. GW2's combat is fast and fluid, as is the experience of exploring and traversing the game world. The last thing we want to do is introduce extra friction that diminishes the fun spots where GW2 really shines. We think it's safe to say that with these changes, while there's a whole lot of essential good, some of it is a step too far, providing less improvement than it does risk of negative impact.

Removal of buffs and boons on changing your equipped weapon is one element that is more likely to accidentally impact normal play. Likewise, there are specific boons that are not as necessary to clean up, as they generally only increase the joy of movement around the game world.

As a result, for our next scheduled update on 9/21, we're looking at the following refinements related to this:

• - Status Reset will no longer occur when changing an equipped weapon from your inventory or the hero panel.
• - Status Reset will no longer remove the Swiftness boon.
• - Status Reset will no longer remove the Aegis boon.
• - The Special Forces Training area will now automatically re-apply your selected boons if they are lost, until you have reset them at the console.

We will continue to evaluate the boons and buffs that are removed by this reset and update as necessary in future patches. In the near term, we are adding 'Stealth' to the buffs removed when you change traits or templates, as we believe this will be a positive change to the competitive environment in World vs. World gameplay.

As always, these kinds of changes are not made lightly, and we've seen your feedback on all sides about these changes. While we wish we had gotten this one 100% in the right spot from the start, we are listening, and pledge to keep working to make Tyria as a whole a better place for all of us to enjoy together.

Thank you,
-The Guild Wars 2 Systems Team

Edited September 4, 2021 by Carcharoth Lucian.1378

[shrew.3059]

16 minutes ago, Carcharoth Lucian.1378 said:

 

“Reading patch notes” is a buff removed on weapon swap, I guess? 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Math.5123]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:54 PM, Maliel.8362 said:

Unlike boons stealth is not affected by stats

Oh, but it kind of is. You can trait shadow arts / Prismatic understanding for prolonged stealth. 

[Xilicks.9547]

Thank you for not only communicating on this matter but reverting probably the most vile offenders of Swiftness and Aegis!

[daninumbers.4036]

Alacrity would have been nice too but I'll take swiftness and aegis so my guardian doesn't have to wait 40 seconds to get it back switching from healer to dps. It's something. Thank you.

[tim.4596]

I'm sorry but the reverts mentioned in the main posts are not enough.

 

A lot of people here argue that having to play with open inventory was unfun, but this argument is invalid. Because the people who "actually" do speedruns here, are well aware that you'll still play with open inventory in order to change food & utility for each encounter as well as use feather, stealth kit, spykit, hylek poison, CC consumables. NPC's in GW2 litterally sells you consumables to use as part of the game. If you truly think this is an exploit then you might as well wait for GW3 to come out. Like those are NOT exploits, they are CORE mechanism of the game.

 

Arena Net approach to tackling the issue is sloppy. It's an easy fix, and the reasoning behind it goes against what the core game has been like since the launch of the game. I don't think people are actually realizing right now, but this is NOT a small change, it's a MASSIVE change. It's as if a class is getting deleted from the game. Go do open world right now and check what each vendor sells you. A lot of them sells you countless consumables to use while fighting. 

 

It's true that gear template pushed it too far, and that this subject addressing, but boons are not the way. I don't like enumerating solutions here, because Arena Net has a entire balance team dedicated to finding solution, whom given the time, will surely think this through better. But it would make more sense to look at profession utility and restriction to gear swapping in specific PvE and PvP game mode rather than broad changes across the entire game.
 

On top of that the current PvE meta shifted to condi. So there are already not many precasting abuse that one can do anymore, or rather worth doing. Some class (mostly weaver) almost cannot be played without precast.

Please do reconsider.

 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by tim.4596

[Skyroar.2974]

Inventory rotations should not be part of the combat system, and go completely against GW2's design philosophy of opportunity costs/horizontal progression by removing the former and turning the later into vertical progression.

 

What's the point of having an intentionally restricting system that force players to only have 1 or 2 weapon sets and having to strategically choose which one they want, when players can use their buff/support weapons to buff themselves AND still have their 2 dps weapon sets available for combat?

 

And now that exceptions exist, the system will only become less intuitive, not more. So boons remain if we swap weapons, but they disappear if we swap armor sets or a single trait? Why? Seems completely arbitrary, and it will create unneedless confusion among most uninformed players.

 

Anet, the best way to fix the game design problems this creates is not through build templates with unintuitive exceptions, but by adding a new mechanic into instanced content that strips players out of all effects at the beginning of each boss fight. Simple. Some other games already do that. If players want to go through buff-rotations, they would need to do it mid-combat, not through clumsy, unintuitive pre-combat inventory rotations that go against the logic of GW2's combat philosophy or against its "fight the enemy, not the UI" design. Sure, some additional restrictions are still needed to prevent unintended abuse of skills like traps (so any skill-specific effects being removed if the skills are swapped out should definitely stay as it is) or lag, but purely from a game philosophy point of view, effect-stripping at the beginning of instanced fights is the most intuitive, simple, systemic mechanic you can add, instead of having a convoluted list of restrictions and exceptions to said restrictions through build-swapping.

[Loboling.5293]

First of, thank you for these changes. It shows you guys are listening to feedback and it's both felt and appreciated. 

 

The changes you've proposed seem to help al lot with the main issues brought forward by these changes. However, I do agree with some others that changing a trait, if that trait does not in any way contribute to the status effect, object or boon, that it shouldn't reset it either. I think with this last change, you'd have a working system without much cumbrance.

Even better would be if changing builds and gear templates could recognize how much is being changed, so as to not reset, again, if it doesn't affect the status effect, object or boon. However, I could live with the one change.

Again, thank you for your efforts communicating with the gw2 community, and to the devs that worked on improving this update. It's already a lot better! 

[Woop S.7851]

On 9/3/2021 at 12:48 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

We will continue to evaluate the boons and buffs that are removed by this reset and update as necessary in future patches. In the near term, we are adding 'Stealth' to the buffs removed when you change traits or templates, as we believe this will be a positive change to the competitive environment in World vs. World gameplay.

 

Good fix, invisibility/stealth with template swaps over the years spawned many 1-shot builds using macro-tools pushing the math over the moon, especially in WvW

 

• To all the past PvE players trying WvW for the first time only to be 1-shotted repeatedly at spawn 24/7, your prayers have finally been answered..🙏
• To all future PvE players who've never visited the forums nor have tried WvW yet, without realizing it, you've been given a great gift today! 🤣

 

GW1 have always locked build templates + equipment before players entered PvP + Alliance Battles; on another note, a 1-shot Lightning Surge (glitch?) topic finally popped up again & might need further investigation...thanks again!