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Quick Update on the Skills and Balance Team


Josh Davis.7865

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Please address the horrible state of roaming somehow, its sad to see the only power thing that works be deadeye (or at least properly works), I always meet celestial this, cele that or bunker this and bunker that. Either have to somehow outplay them for good few min or run away to not die as a power spec, unacceptable. (especially cele carapace harbinger)

 

and deadeye does far too much dmg too

Edited by Lyn.7902
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Some people are so negative. I look forward to seeing what the future balance of the game looks like! 
 

edit; I went back and looked through the thread and, I guess at the time I wrote this I disproportionately was focusing on the small number of negative/pessimistic responses. This thread has been actually quite positive. 

Edited by oscuro.9720
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  Make the Ranger great again! I have never seen any Ranger in higher ranked pvp. There are no pvp videos on YT with Ranger playing higher ranked games other that p1. I have never seen a Ranger on any meta team at p3 or Legendary rank. Any class can do anything a Ranger can but much better. Guardian and Rev are better with a bow than the Ranger. Guardians ricochet arrows without specing into it when Rangers need to spec into piercing arrows and Rev gets crit chance without specing for it so they can do a lot more damage than the Ranger. Guardian traps are much better and do so much more damage than the Rangers. Year after year on Metabattle there are no comps at legendary rank with Ranger. There are no comps for ranger at p2.

  Most Rangers are forced to play melee because everyone gets multiple teleports, gap closers, and reflects that don't allow the Ranger to use the bow. Mesmers and Eles cancel Rangers in any arena. Eles have so much reflect, magnetic aura, shields x2, and evades and more that Rangers most times just leave the point or die trying. Mesmers are so BROKEN! Immunes, evades, stealth, reflect, reset, do it again. Mesmers don't even have to target because shatters are an aoe skill. I have played about 7k arenas as Ranger and in total have 10k+ games played and atm I'm level 500 in spvp. I have tried Mesmer and Ele just to learn the class and with little trouble get to p1+ and Rangers are no problem for me and on my Mesmer I have less than 100 games played. All I'm saying is that I would like to play without feeling bullied, or like trash for thing that are out of my control.

  The only thing Ranger is good for is pve. And for the love of Rngesus, fix the afk, boting, win-trading, and top ranked players using alt accounts to throw games. If anyone knows of any legendary Ranger or p3+ Ranger video out there please post it.

Edited by Primalblaze.7983
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Very, very happy to see that the team remains committed on ensuring ALL Professions are viable. Thank you.

 

There is more to the game and balance than playing 2k hours on Firebrand, buffing Dev favorites at the expense of other Professions lagging, or making changes to skills just by reading the wiki (not that, you know, any of that has ever happened).

 

Thumbs up for the updates and look forward to the results. 

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Congrats to cmc for getting the role he deserves. I hope that necro can flourish under his reign. If I could make a few suggestions of things i would like to see changed, my list would be:

- please take a look at the minor traits in Spite. Death’s embrace is probably the worst trait in necro’s entire kit. It would be cool if this provided more vulnerability more regularly.

- a minion rework or rebalancing would be incredibly appreciated. It is currently impossible to get 30 stacks of hardened shroud with only minions and flesh of the master, unless you run reaper with “rise!”

- please give spectral skills some sort of trait.

 That’s it. Again congratulations to cmc for landing a promotion. I’m hopeful for what the future will bring.

Edited by Darth Pooh.5638
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It feels like with every new expansion, the core specs are getting more and more forgotten. The way I understood it, the elite specs are supposed to be alternative to core specs, not deprecate them. Yet, for example it's almost impossible to see anyone playing core Ele or core Revenant in PvP/WvW for obvious reasons. Would be great if that was no longer the case.

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Congrats CMC, eager to see the notes and what direction it'll show the game to move in for the future. Although the Feb 2020 patch soured me a bit to the game balance, I agree with most of the principles behind it. As it has been echoed by many, it was the lack of follow-up that really killed my hope for the future.

My two cents as a primary WvW player:

Moving away from oneshots by doing a general nerf to damage was a positive thing, but not being able to kill players is a residual problem that still remains from the Feb 2020 balance patch. Generally speaking, there is an overabundance of sustain in the game mode, and it is exponential when in groups. In my eyes, it should be approached by bringing down sustain (both self-sustain and group sustain) and not by bringing up damage. I speak on course on a general level as individual skills can always be re-evaluated.

 

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10 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

Im concerned. The February 2020 megapatch that CMC brought us was an unmitigated disaster, and the damage its done is felt to this day. Its nice that the 300 seconds traits will be reworked, but what about all the now useless skills as a result of CC skills not doing any damage?

Maybe one traitline gives Warrior the dmg on CC, Like more Versions of lightning rod for Other classes

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12 hours ago, Hanakocz.5697 said:

Really hope that the mech toning down will really make it into even this "mostly competitive update". Otherwise 2 more months of this unhinged imposters in every group will make so many people to quit.

By this metric EVERYONE needs to be nerfed. What differs with the Mechanist is that's it's a marathon runner in a field of sprinters. Everyone can output more burst than it, however, when everyone else have used their burst the Mechanist can still keep on trucking.

When I do sPVvP and WvW I do so as a Quick Scrapper with a rifle and I can mow down targets a lot more efficiently than I ever could on Mechanist since I can blow CD and actually has burst damage.

And IMO there are far more unbalanciung things in the general state of PvP environments than just the usual suspects.

Reaper is a joke, Shroud is so good that it can never be balanced since that would make it OP. Change Shroud in PvP-modes so it absorbs 50% of damage taken instead of 100% and then buff everything else to be viable to compensate.

Using a mobility skill when facing away from a target or when no target is used should have half range so people would be unable to run away consequence free if things go wrong as they currently can. The amount of Slows and similar effect are extremely limited in GW2, mobility skills that can be used without a target to yeet you away are fairly common.

Skills like Stealth and Specter Wells should have a Grace period that while it lasts no other Stealth or Teleport effect can be invoked.

All passive effects that comes with no tradeoff that makes you immune to damage or reflects/destroys projectiles should have half duration. Anyone with a fire-and-forget Block can use it, run in, and enjoy a full duration of invulnerability while hacking away, while certain shield skills that block or reflects in a channel where the person can do nothing else except moving while channeling. Dodging breaks it, attacking breaks it, and this is a deeply unfair case where one is clearly massively superior to the other.

Edited by Malus.2184
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12 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Cal and team will share the updated balance philosophy with you prior to that release’s balance preview.

Each delay further proves that there was no balance philosophy for years. Just individuals changing things according to their own personal preferences and whims.

I'll believe the positive changes to PvP/WvW when I see them. Not a matter of negativity, but of past experience with ArenaNet's announcements and failure to deliver.

Regarding PvE, will you let it be in its current state until the end of November? Maybe when Mechanist represents around 35 or 40% of each squad in endgame content? https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity

Edited by Cait Sith.4650
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12 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

😐

 

11 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

Glad there is finally some movement on this. Good luck! If I could communicate one thing, it would be this:

  • a month is a long time
  • 4 months is a really really long time
  • a year is an eternity
  • 2 years is the entire lifespan of many popular games

Please for the love of this game, don't let things languish for that long

Don't emote Josh, deliver.
Infusion.7149 made a very valid remark, and one that merits your respect and attention.
Like coro.3176 stated it's been a long time for most of us.

   

Edited by Cait Sith.4650
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We had a lot of famous names on important positions, yet we are where we are right now. You have shown us a special understanding of consistency over the years. What makes believing in your promises kind of difficult. Two and a half years are a very long time for a brb. I would also like to mention the other place-holders, e. g. the Engineer Mortar Kit skin. Or the entire stacks of discontinued/paused content.

Your announcements are always fancy and you really know how to hype the crowd. Congratulations to CmC for their new job, may they have an awesome time and a lot of fun with it. About the rest, time will tell. 

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14 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

Hi all,

Since the June 28 professions update, we’ve been making changes to how we approach balancing Guild Wars 2 combat with the goal of better serving our community. We have a few updates to share with you today.

Please join us in congratulating Game Designer Cal "cmc' Cohen for taking on the role of Skills and Balance Team Lead. Before joining ArenaNet, Cal was a hardcore Guild Wars 2 player (10K+ hours played) and livestreamer. His deep understanding of the game’s combat system was clear to us when he joined the team in 2016. Since then, he’s grown considerably as a game and balance designer, and he’s really stepped up as a leader on the team since late June. He’s ready for this new role, and we’re looking forward to seeing him fully unleashed!

Due to the recency of the leadership change mentioned above, we’re making some adjustments to our balance update timeline to give Cal and the team more time to finalize their plans and balance approach. The biggest change is that the October 4 balance update will mostly focus on addressing issues in PvP/WvW. These modes haven’t seen many significant updates over the past months, and they could use a bit of love. As a small teaser, you can expect to see reworks to the “300 second cooldown” traits. You’ll learn more about that update next week – stay tuned!

The October 4 balance update was originally planned to be our final ‘major’ balance update of the year.  However, we’re changing course a bit now that its focus has shifted to addressing issues in competitive play. We’ve added an additional balance update to our schedule for November 29, and with this update we’re aiming to get back to having our major balance updates include changes for all game modes, rather than a focus on a single area. Cal and team will share the updated balance philosophy with you prior to that release’s balance preview.

That’s it for today! Your professions are in great hands with Cal at the helm. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week.

Josh “Grouch” Davis
Game Director

 

Absolutely fantastic to hear 🙂

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Congratulations
Many of us have passed the bar of 20,000 games all contained in guilds wars 2, and yet contrary to the time of path of fire I have not heard that beta play tester was solicited to give its feelings on future changes 

It is good to communicate, but if it is for you to nerve the mecha/hfb to replace it with another special that will become cheater in turn and will rhyme all this in circles 

I like the ghost for my part, especially the heal quickness, 
just yesterday during a training on kaineng cm I realized that where an hfb can without any loss give stack boon heal remotely ect, a rev quick heal who wants to give stab will have to remove ventari to keep the Herald and the tablet or we do not treat remotely, or then remove the quickness? .... 
it’s still strong, but the feeling of having to *nerve* myself to take on the same job as a hfb that will do everything* at the same time and without any loss

Frankly, I’m out of hope, I’ve got the Broken guard up, who’s gonna keep doing everything, and when he gets nervous again, we can all play the mecha, or are you gonna put him back on the timer like he did in the early heat and he’ll be able to do everything better than the others?  

 
You only have to look at the roles that are the most demanded on hl pve content that requires more work, we see systematically the same things for years

I don’t care, I’ve been playing long enough to be able to do fractal cm solo and the people who know me know that I do my job very well although I play as a specialist in raids and strikes I have my own guilds  

to make a balance, you should either put all other specifications at the current level of the kitten and that would make no sense 

either directly nerve the benefits responsible for this *force* to make them much less indispensable, 
 

rethink the basic functioning of specializations 

At least I doubt it will ever happen 


currently all I see is that for example necro - rev - war - can give the quick it’s good 
Except that for me I never meet him and on all the content, why? Well, that’s bad compared to the quickbrand that gives everything and the scrapper that comments to get to the front of the personal scene

I want to be clear, I am not asking to *destroy* these two classes this is not the solution as it would just be replaced by a special one that would become the strongest 
we have to rethink the windfall brought by these classes or put everyone on the same level ...... as long as there are these diffs there will be no balance pve that will hold in the lengths there will always be a special or two above all the others 

You are fortunate to have a community that remains invested after years of waiting and disappointment, 

They talk to you and give you tons of ideas for remodeling specifications, as they have an impressive variety of experiences. 

To conclude, for the moment many people will take this position as words in the air, to you to prove to the community that you will take matters in hand 

Let guilds wars 2, occupy a place of expetion, the game deserves it and many players continue to hope  

that’s all, 

Thank you 

Edited by dreamin.5102
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14 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

😐

Sorry, but I also will believe when I see it, like the poster you reacted to in such a manner. You have not built any reliability and trustworthiness capital just yet. You have promised a lot and have delivered only part so far. We appreciate the effort, but in the end we need the results as well.

And honestly, the changes to cc skills were also done the same unconscionable and incredibly lazy way as the 300s cds. Not all those skills are the same and lowering damage coefficients from 3 to 0.01 or 0.1 is exactly like slapping a 5 minute cd on skills: it's the same as admitting you are not able to do your job. So I expect both to be addressed in October.

Edited by Karagee.6830
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2 hours ago, Cait Sith.4650 said:

Each delay further proves that there was no balance philosophy for years. Just individuals changing things according to their own personal preferences and whims.

I'll believe the positive changes to PvP/WvW when I see them. Not a matter of negativity, but of past experience with ArenaNet's announcements and failure to deliver.

Regarding PvE, will you let it be in its current state until the end of November? Maybe when Mechanist represents around 35 or 40% of each squad in endgame content? https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity

yeah I wonder what happened to that balance philosophy write-down they promised. They said they had one, they just needed to formalise it. In the last 3 posts from @Josh Davis.7865 there has been no mention of this and when we can expect it.

I think even the more hardcore defenders of Anet dev team at this point have to admit there was no balance philosophy in any form or shape and they now have to think and come up with one.

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