Wvw Balance. What needs buffs?

[RisenHowl.2419]

35 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

Adding group stab on tempest and catalyst doesn't fit. they should improve Core earth.

You know they refuse to add group stab to warrior

"Protect me" is too good to change. Adding stab on "Guard" makes more sense. Or a core trait.

 

FB brings 4 (5 traited) aoe stunbreaks and has >2x the stab available on any other class, that's why I'm suggesting they remove a charge from the elite mantra- nothing can compete with that right now.

 

The second problem is groups in wvw really need stab so it's not like they can just nuke FB from orbit without kittening the rest of the game mode up. To that effect I'm suggesting they add multiple stab sources for other classes.

 

Putting the stab in core earth on rock solid helps out eles and makes tempest/cata choose between protection+stab output vs cleanse.

 

They refuse to add meaningful stab to any class but guard, until that changes and scrapper cleanses get reduced the meta will stay stagnant. Adding it to warrior shouts makes bladesworn actually useful for wvw, maybe opening up something with spellbreakers too.

 

It needs to be protect me, currently it's the only aoe stun break on ranger. They could add a stunbreak elsewhere in the kit, but why not use what's already there. Protect me doesn't do anything important with the pet either making it easier to change the code without reducing pet usefulness.

[Thornwolf.9721]

15 hours ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Idea was talk about what need buff. Rev sure need some serious nerffing, but make own what need nerf thread and spam there how to rework rev so average revs can't 1 vs 5 against weaker classes.

Ideally there should be no weaker classes, and as far as Im aware the only 1 v 5 rev would be ren. Anything else outside of maybe vindicator due to its current damage scaling likely wont be able to 1 v 5 unless those five are standing still and not using mitigations of any kind. (Or the rev is outside of their skill level and sitting above them.)

[Za Shaloc.3908]

21 minutes ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

FB brings 4 (5 traited) aoe stunbreaks and has >2x the stab available on any other class, that's why I'm suggesting they remove a charge from the elite mantra- nothing can compete with that right now.

 

The second problem is groups in wvw really need stab so it's not like they can just nuke FB from orbit without kittening the rest of the game mode up. To that effect I'm suggesting they add multiple stab sources for other classes.

 

Putting the stab in core earth on rock solid helps out eles and makes tempest/cata choose between protection+stab output vs cleanse.

 

They refuse to add meaningful stab to any class but guard, until that changes and scrapper cleanses get reduced the meta will stay stagnant. Adding it to warrior shouts makes bladesworn actually useful for wvw, maybe opening up something with spellbreakers too.

 

It needs to be protect me, currently it's the only aoe stun break on ranger. They could add a stunbreak elsewhere in the kit, but why not use what's already there. Protect me doesn't do anything important with the pet either making it easier to change the code without reducing pet usefulness.

 

I've personally always felt that Druid could get stab via the CA side of Glyph of Equality. It's an AoE stunbreak like Protect Me, but has the conditional of having to be in CA so I think it could be justified as GoE is currently generally taken for daze from the non-CA side. Make celestial force more reliable so the skill can also be more reliable to access when needed. 

[Zyreva.1078]

32 minutes ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

The second problem is groups in wvw really need stab so it's not like they can just nuke FB from orbit without kittening the rest of the game mode up. To that effect I'm suggesting they add multiple stab sources for other classes.

 

Except you are kittening the rest of the game mode if you just add stab all over the place. There is more to the gamemode than blob vs blob. CC is in the game for a reason. Perma stab shouldn't be a thing to begin with. Zerglings are just way too used to getting their kitten carried by broken stuff that allows them to ignore important combat mechanics.

Also lets be honest, it is not realistic to have all classes be equally good at everything, so i'd rather focus on making everything good at something. If you focus the entire class balance arround zerging only, you inevitably ruin balance for everything else.

And yes, small scale and solo players are a minority, but that doesn't mean we should be completely disregarded. If the game mode was supposed to be only about blob vs blob, you might as well remove all the structures except sm and let the players run at each other there. Enjoy the lag.

Edited March 24, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Thornwolf.9721]

12 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

 

 

I would be very careful of this, and would advise them to never touch racial abilities or bonuses or keep it to fluff stuff. It's one of the reasons why a lot of players switched from Alliance to Horde in recent years in both pve and pvp in world of warcraft, because they have racial perks that mattered too much in combat. While gw2 doesn't have race restrictions to sides, it would still suck knowing that maybe you're using a race that's not as good as another and feeling a little forced to play specific races for your classes.

The racial skills either need to be used practically or remove from the game. They need to stay consistent; They're either all trash or they're all supplemental for skills in your bar. Period. There is no need to be careful if they're all good in their own ways and can be used outside of "meme" builds. Personally I want my norn forms to be a toggleable thing that I stay in and fight in if I want; I want it to function and work with my class and if I desire to say be a warrior of bear, then dangit let me be a warrior of bear. Or if I want to be a charr who uses charr themed stuff in my kit, let me use it and let it be effective.

The simple fact is that racial skills need to have a place in the game; Most of them do not and those who do are outliers and have never been touched. Their current state is not excusable. Im not asking them to add passive modifiers to make some races better for X over Y. Im asking that all of their racial skills be good, and allow those of us who want to utilize the race portion of our characters in combat to be able to do so reliably. 

Otherwise again, remove them. There is no reason to have them in the game if they aren't worth using, but that goes for skills and traits in general at this point. If you have no intention on fixing it; Making it work. Making it fun to use and play and a viable option which would help build diversity then just outright remove it . It's not the same as WoW where there were legit stat advantages to running one race over another; There is however value here. I'd love for example the charrzooka to be something ANY class running a charr could use which would be hilarious if it actually worked well. OR warband support? The norn forms. The sylvari skills in general? I mean some of the human ones are ok but still... And don't get me started on the asuran. A toggleable golem you could climb into as an elite skill would be beastly cool; Especially if it WASN'T poopy.

[Wiggely.7320]

Personally I think it's all overtuned...

For every ranged damage there is projectile hate, blocking or even reflecting.
For every condition there is an insane ammount of cleansing (I play support scrapper, so yes...)
For every hard cc there is stability, for every soft cc there is superspeed (I play support scra... you get it)
etc

There is so much in terms of boons, and cleansing, and projectile hate and whatnot, that in the end we are back to a bunch of cavemen hitting each other with a big stick in melee in wvw zergs 🙂

Builds that bring the most of this are meta, and all other builds are crap in 3 subcategories.

Personally I want diversity back, having more personal builds work in bigger fights, wich can only be done if you can look after yourself a bit.
Dedicated supports are able to carry a bit too many I would say, at least the good ones (I play a noob support scrapper myself, so ymmv)

As for the mechanics: smaller groups vs bigger groups need game mechanics to work in their favor. Scaling based on treshholds of numbers of players present in a fight, enemies and friendly seperate. 

Currently wvw involves decision making on the spot of the commander leading, that still stands, but all the others had all the decision making done by the required meta builds... and that commander knows they need the bigger numbers first, all other factors only after that.

[RisenHowl.2419]

5 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Except you are kittening the rest of the game mode if you just add stab all over the place. There is more to the gamemode than blob vs blob. CC is in the game for a reason. Perma stab shouldn't be a thing to begin with. Zerglings are just way too used to getting their kitten carried by broken stuff that allows them to ignore important combat mechanics.

Your opinions are meaningful and have value

5 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Also lets be honest, it is not realistic to have all classes be equally good at everything, so i'd rather focus on making everything good at something. If you focus the entire class balance arround zerging only, you inevitably ruin balance for everyone else.

It's not realistic to have 2 specs eclipse the other 34 to the point where they make up 40% of every large group and have done so for years. But here we are =D

[Zyreva.1078]

1 minute ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

The simple fact is that racial skills need to have a place in the game;

They do have a place and that's rp. That's their entire purpose and always has been. Making them relevant in combat just adds another layer that would need balance, as if class/spec balance alone wasn't too much to handle for the devs already.

[Wiggely.7320]

On the racial skills: just make them 'fun' without letting them compete for damage a lot. For example that asura golem: give it the ability of a normal elite skill, or a choice, but in a golem suit this time... stuff like that. Give them a seperate skill bar like mounts perhaps, but make them all special and fun to play around with. Without impacting actual performance. Would solve a lot.

[Zyreva.1078]

 

1 minute ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

It's not realistic to have 2 specs eclipse the other 34 to the point where they make up 40% of every large group and have done so for years. But here we are =D

That's an issue with those 2 specs then.

[RisenHowl.2419]

1 minute ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

 

That's an issue with those 2 specs then.

It's all one ecosystem, without reliable access to stability large scale fights can't happen. Then the people who are here for those fights leave for another game. Right now there's little diversity, but that could be changed very easily.

 

Small scale and roaming would adjust to favor strips/corrupts, if it would adjust at all. They would need to add stability in places that incur a cost to other builds. Elementalists should have to choose between cleansing and stability, rangers would need to give up a dps or immob traitline for nature magic, forcing certain types of utilities for the stability role, etc.

 

That's how to balance correctly, a roaming ele isn't going to give up water for earth just to get the stability. A dps soulbeast isn't going to take nature magic to get a reduced CD on their shouts. The only change I suggested that would have an impact on roaming is maybe tempest and druid, both of which aren't particularly popular right now anyways.

[Zyreva.1078]

23 minutes ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

It's all one ecosystem, without reliable access to stability large scale fights can't happen. Then the people who are here for those fights leave for another game. Right now there's little diversity, but that could be changed very easily.

Large scale fights need nothing but a lot of players and players are always going to look for safety in numbers, no matter the class balance. You could completely gut every single zerg meta build and it wouldn't stop players from zerging. (I'm not asking for that to happen, mind you).

Quote

That's how to balance correctly, a roaming ele isn't going to give up water for earth just to get the stability. A dps soulbeast isn't going to take nature magic to get a reduced CD on their shouts. The only change I suggested that would have an impact on roaming is maybe tempest and druid, both of which aren't particularly popular right now anyways.

Condi earth tempests are already quite obnoxious (+ tempest is overall a great small scale support/hybrid spec, probably better than fb there) and ranger would have to give up absolutely nothing for the shout trait/Protect Me, because it is located in BM and both trait and skill are already used by many common builds. Also slb has already access to aoe stab and giving duid aoe stab wouldn't fix the multitude of other issues that's holding the spec back as competitive support. (btw i would love to have on demand access to stab on untamed, because playing a slow kitten melee build without is a pain - but i'd rather keep getting cced to death than have it added to PM for free).

That doesn't mean adding stab to those or other specs is a no go, but your suggestions are just way too op. Trying to bring everything up to the same lvl of the most op stuff is not how balance should work. Powercreep is not healthy in the long run, We have been there already.

I'd also rather have different classes bring different useful stuff to the table instead of trying to make everyone do the same (they are already trying to do that in PvE with quickness/alac) which simply does not work because classes are too different at their core (as they should be!).

Edited March 24, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

 

 

 

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[Zyreva.1078]

17 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

That's not really the reason. There are more CCs than counters in the game. In solo you can dodge or breakstun. In groups you face too many people with CCs at disposal to survive without stab...

Offense should always surpass defense. At any scale.

Quote

Sorry but you can't balance for roaming and large scale. Gotta use different specs

That's my point, no?

Quote

Untamed has access to stab on heal + elite, otherwise use Enhancing impact and every time you disable an opponent you can get stab (axe 4, LB 4, GS 4/5, hammer, etc).

Nothing of that is "on demand".

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671

[Thornwolf.9721]

2 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

They do have a place and that's rp. That's their entire purpose and always has been. Making them relevant in combat just adds another layer that would need balance, as if class/spec balance alone wasn't too much to handle for the devs already.

Then get new dev's. We're heading into a decade for this franchise, this thing is coming up on nine years. If they can't figure it out by now then they never will. Might be time for fresh blood with more expierence when it comes to that aspect of games as a whole 

~There is no excuse, only a willingness to do or do not. A-net's stance has always been to nerf heavy, gut features and ruin gameplay outside of PvE it seems. Im tired of defending them and Im tired of all the cool parts of not only our characters races but the potential basically being squandered for the sake of whatever fever dream that they're calling "balance"

[solemn.9608]

19 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Might as well remove cc from the game ...

No thanks.

Hey, that's actually a great idea.

Can we do that instead?

[Zyreva.1078]

13 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

Not if without it a fight lasts 30s. I don't think you realize what a single Chrono can do to a group without stab with just gravity well. Being stunlocked in large scale mean instant death.

I never said, remove stab from the game. But there should be some need for proper timing instead of spamming buttons on cd and expecting to be able to ignore and facetank everything.

There also need to be trade offs. No comp should get everything like now, because that's exactly why there is only one optimal comp. There are just no downsides. So maybe if you want perma stab, fine, but you shouldn't get aoe stealth and superspeed,  perma *insert any other boon, healing, cleansing, boon rip, dmg, barrier, etc, just from 4-5 different specs. Comps need to have weaknesses, that can be taken advantage of by different comps and so on.

Btw since i'm often playing in a small grp against much larger numbers and we never have perma stab, i know very well how that feels.

13 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

Well you talked about tempest which is more of a team oriented spec than roaming. For roaming weaver should be the primary choice, it excells at it and you don't need Rock Solid.

Tempest shines in grp, but even solo it isn't really worse than weaver i think (mainly because weaver isn't really that great).

13 minutes ago, Acyk.9671 said:

I don't know what you mean by "on demand". Forest's fortification is maybe the best utility ranger has.

On demand means if i need stab i press a button and i get stab no matter what. But all stab sources of Untamed have a rather lengthy cast time, which means you can't use them when you get cc spammed and need them the most. The trait also requires you to actually hit an enemy, which can get prevented by any random blind, aegis, dodge, block, ... so not reliable at all.

 

23 minutes ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

~There is no excuse, only a willingness to do or do not. A-net's stance has always been to nerf heavy, gut features and ruin gameplay outside of PvE it seems. Im tired of defending them and Im tired of all the cool parts of not only our characters races but the potential basically being squandered for the sake of whatever fever dream that they're calling "balance"

Every race is supposed to be able to do everything equally well. That's why racial skills are deliberately weak. And i agree with this approach. This has nothing to do with defending anet and their overall approach on balance. There is just no reason to create more issues in an attempt to fix something that is not broken.

[Zyreva.1078]

21 minutes ago, solemn.9608 said:

Hey, that's actually a great idea.

Can we do that instead?

Is LR ele really that much of a problem that it needs to be deleted from the game?

[Thornwolf.9721]

13 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

 

 

Every race is supposed to be able to do everything equally well. That's why racial skills are deliberately weak. And i agree with this approach. This has nothing to do with defending anet and their overall approach on balance. There is just no reason to create more issues in an attempt to fix something that is not broken.

then remove the racials. Shouldn't exist if they're weak; RP is no excuse considering they've closed off places roleplayers used to go. Cull the worthless skills and just make it so you don't even have the option. Because as of now; It's worthless clutter.

[Za Shaloc.3908]

6 minutes ago, Thornwolf.9721 said:

then remove the racials. Shouldn't exist if they're weak; RP is no excuse considering they've closed off places roleplayers used to go. Cull the worthless skills and just make it so you don't even have the option. Because as of now; It's worthless clutter.

 

Why does it matter if they are weak? It's not like they are considering them for any sort of balance reason. Them existing as they have existed does no harm to the game. Removing "clutter" as you call it doesn't solve anything when the developers have already spent the time making the skills. Personally I get a laugh out of any time I see someone pop the nornbear in WvW, or someone use leopard stealth to disengage. Just let the people that enjoy the skills enjoy them rather than removing them from the game because they don't fit your criteria of proper strength.

[solemn.9608]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Is LR ele really that much of a problem that it needs to be deleted from the game?

I don't think so, but CC in this game in general feelsbadman in pvp. All CCs over 2seconds should have their durations halved down to 2. Anything above 2 just encourages braindead gameplay - me spam cc then faceroll keyboard me win (I am aware that stability and stunbreaks exist..doesn't change the fact that 4s CC is still way too long for any competitive game)

[Infusion.7149]

@DanAlcedo
Tempest never had 10 man shouts in WVW untraited (even with the trait tempestuous aria which you give up stab/regen for lasted from March 2019 to December 2020 only). It was 10 man overload water in PVE, sand squall (it was cut in Feb 2020 PVP patch to 5), and that's about it.
You're confusing 10 man draconic echo on herald with tempest.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Infusion.7149
fix wording

[God.2708]

16 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

@DanAlcedo
Tempest never had 10 man shouts in WVW. It was 10 man overload water in PVE, sand squall (it was cut in Feb 2020 PVP patch to 5), and that's about it.
You're confusing 10 man draconic echo on herald with tempest.

Man, this topic would be more effective if 50% of the people in it weren't just dead wrong.

Version history:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tempestuous_Aria

[Acyk.9671]

deleted

Edited April 3, 2022 by Acyk.9671