What is Anet's data so far on the WvW meta?

[Grand Marshal.4098]

2 years now, well since June ig due to the uproar of THAT ONE patch, Anet been trying to fix something and make the mode more diverse. Who? What? Lmfao

Aight, let's say their efforts simply just got shifted towards improving the zerg meta.

Firebrand got weird, still key in each party.

Scrapper got nuked from support, DPS engi def usable but very niche and unimpactful if you don't play it well.

Tempest definitely superior to Druid in all aspects even if Druids can keep up with cleanses, tho this might be the single decent approach to the meta.

Herald/Vindicator a 100% unmatched role in a party.

Even more so Scourge right now, Zerg Reapers are like a fever dream.

Good ol' Guardians can choose between DH and Willbender and Core for viable Zerg options.

Spellbreaker was about to enter an age of usefulness with DPS from Defense, but nah, boonrip got nerfed and we are back to the idiotic role that is not warrior's, Minstrel boon-huggers with the OVERLOADED Banner of Tactics.

Chrono, king of control.

So like even tho anet be updating and whatnot, why are there no changes? I understand the idea is to have 2 blobs with permaboons that clash forever, but at least make a couple of stuff viable to play as.

Berserker, Holosmith, Virtuoso, Soulbeast are excellent spec candidates for non-niche DPS/Support (via banners), DPS, DPS/Boonrip and DPS/Boonshare (stances) roles respectively, Psionics are literally the one thing you can omega buff for Virtuoso without making it a menace in smallscale and roaming. Berserker still nerfed for no reason over 3 measly seconds of Resistance and without real utility, Holosmith big pp damage and that's all, kit doesn't allow you to slot a single useful skill for your party ourside of throwing an elixir for 3 sec of Superspeed.

Point I'm getting at is: Why not try to make some new builds surface to compete is roles with current holders?

You kinda did it with Druid and Tempest. That's the correct path. Holo has the potential to rival DH with it's unwanted aegis and stab share utility via other means, while doing respectful damage. Berserker and Reaper can also function similarly with one being a hefty damage dealer and support allies with Banners and the other being what it is meant to be.

Virtuoso being a ranged spec with some boonrip makes it a wonderful candidate for rivalling the spot of a Rev, with sizeable boonrip available to them at the highest ranges. Soulbeast stanceshare is a very interesting concept and surprisingly one of the sole decent stability providers outside of Banner of Tactics and any Guardian form (they always take SYG). 

Tempest Earth overload sharing stab would be a pleasant change, druid's with their avatar 5 (while moving) as well (ideally baseline but give where that could lead, a safe healing trait option doing it for either could work better).

So essay aside, I don't remember reading a plan for all this. Just some confused and convoluted opinions on "roles" for WvW which is a restricting thing on it's own. 

Anyway, at this point I'm not into WvW and GW2 much anymore, but this gamemode will never cease to have a spot in my heart and zerg talk always gets me excited. Thanks for reading.

[Dawdler.8521]

As I've said before: Anet has balanced themselves into a corner. 

There is no way to "fix" anything anymore due to Anet octopling down on boons and overcomplicated skills that should do 1 thing but does 3 things and can be traited to do 6 things and then geared to do 9 things.

Any "fix" for WvW would cause an uproar for PvE folks and Anet will never, ever do that. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Grand Marshal.4098]

19 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

As I've said before: Anet has balanced themselves into a corner. 

There is no way to "fix" anything anymore due to Anet octopling down on boons and overcomplicated skills that should do 1 thing but does 3 things and can be traited to do 6 things and then geared to do 9 things.

Any "fix" for WvW would cause an uproar for PvE folks and Anet will never, ever do that. 

It's quite funny though, cause you see, the past week I've been forced to play more GW2 again (on my laptop I oly got gw2 rn and can't be bothered to download much else lol) and I've been tinkering with Virtuoso, Holosmith, Warrior (as always)..

There is so much untapped potential. Literally, Virtuoso just needs a 300% dmg increase on elite and rain of swords and decimation  to do decent dps.

Holosmith is quite fun but literally needs all its utilities for damage, spectral wall would be something decent for your group, but you'd lose either the elixir or the flamethrower for more dps. 

Overall, small changes that they are not willing to do will end this gamemode for good.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Overall, small changes that they are not willing to do will end this gamemode for good.

Anet doesnt do small changes.

If you say virtuosi need 300% dmg increase on any skill, Anet does 900% dmg increase and make it do AoE alacrity and AoE bleeding and also changes one of the grandmaster traits so that if you do bleeding on an enemy you also chill them and the same trait also do AoE quickness and generate a reflect bubble that pulse damage and also heals friends. 

Then there's 3 years of continous nerfs of that skill and trait because Anet kittened up.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

9 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Anet doesnt do small changes.

If you say virtuosi need 300% dmg increase on any skill, Anet does 900% dmg increase and make it do AoE alacrity and AoE bleeding and also changes one of the grandmaster traits so that if you do bleeding on an enemy you also chill them and the same trait also do AoE quickness and generate a reflect bubble that pulse damage and also heals friends. 

Then there's 3 years of continous nerfs of that skill and trait because Anet kittened up.

Unironically, going the long way around and through the problem, only to skip it, forget it, make your own thing and then create a set of new problems that will be dealt with in the same way.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

druid can heal cleanse give boons. berserker can dps give boons immob/ cc. holo can dps cleanse. if you don't theory craft and only stick to what metabattle tells you, ofc the meta will be restrictive.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

30 minutes ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

druid can heal cleanse give boons. berserker can dps give boons immob/ cc. holo can dps cleanse. if you don't theory craft and only stick to what metabattle tells you, ofc the meta will be restrictive.

Who said anything about metabattle?

You do realize that Druid is meta and I went over how that is healthy for Tempest.

Berserker is DPS only, no boons. Elite is used for rez, there is 0 incentive in building a boonzerker since that's a DPS loss, immobs only with Hammer which is a DPS loss compared to Sw/A.

Holo does not cleanse anything? Without AED Holo is in grave danger going for medkit and it's other utilities are pretty difficult to swap.

I am not arguing that the playability doesn't exist, I'm arguing that all the aformentoned examples do a single thing quite well and fall off on the secondary aspects that makes them proper party-comp alternatives. 

Herald loses no dps for Jalis utility, Chrono loses no strips for Illusion/Veil/Portal utility, Scourge loses no dps for some barrier utility etc. 

 

Unless if you want to tell me that your server already runs Holos/Berserkers instead of DH and Revs and mainly cleanses with Druids.

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Grand Marshal.4098

[Jski.6180]

I think catalyst would be the chose for the "stab support ele" having both healing and boons support on the same class dose not seem like a good chose. Even tempest has to give up a good bit of healing to give out its strong boon support of alacrity vs aura healing.

FB is still to needed as is gurd over all for the wvw environment. It comes down to stab support.

Keep in mind this is all large group when it comes to small or roaming i do not think there can ever be balance.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

3 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

I think catalyst would be the chose for the "stab support ele" having both healing and boons support on the same class dose not seem like a good chose. Even tempest has to give up a good bit of healing to give out its strong boon support of alacrity vs aura healing.

FB is still to needed as is gurd over all for the wvw environment. It comes down to stab support.

Keep in mind this is all large group when it comes to small or roaming i do not think there can ever be balance.

Well the choice does exist for tempests. If the healing/aegis from the guardian in the party is enough, the option is usually alacrity share for lower cooldowns and better dps/defense as oppossed to greater healing against high damage or poor positioning.

I do find it a fair trade though, as for stab, I think going for earth line for a single stack is just not good reason enough, so sharing some stab from the earth overload would not be too much imo, just better than 1 stack. Same for CA 5 on druid

[Jski.6180]

7 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Well the choice does exist for tempests. If the healing/aegis from the guardian in the party is enough, the option is usually alacrity share for lower cooldowns and better dps/defense as oppossed to greater healing against high damage or poor positioning.

I do find it a fair trade though, as for stab, I think going for earth line for a single stack is just not good reason enough, so sharing some stab from the earth overload would not be too much imo, just better than 1 stack. Same for CA 5 on druid

I think its better to keep new boon very much tide to elite spec at this point. Guard is more a hold over from old balancing as is the only real stab support and only the core class has this stab support vs all of the other stab support in the game base more base off of elite spec. It is an balancing issues for sure. (Guard is anet favorite son.)

Having catalyst give stab on auras or on F5 earth would be a good pure boon support roll with out letting it have the healing out put that say tempest has.

[Dagger.2035]

No one mentioned Specter yet.  It seems like they are trying to push this spec into a support role, but I don't think it can complete with the alternatives.  It doesn't seem like it will ever fill a traditional dps or support role in zergs.  Instead, they should have Specter focus on boon stealing/boon strips.
 

3 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

There is so much untapped potential. Literally, Virtuoso just needs a 300% dmg increase on elite and rain of swords and decimation  to do decent dps.

 Virtuoso was my biggest disappointment of the EOD specs.  I was hoping it would be a fun AOE dps and utility class, but the AOE damage isn't there.  Having the slow-moving Unstable Bladestorm also be reflectable makes no sense to me.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

1 minute ago, Dagger.2035 said:

No one mentioned Specter yet.  It seems like they are trying to push this spec into a support role, but I don't think it can complete with the alternatives.  It doesn't seem like it will ever fill a traditional dps or support role in zergs.  Instead, they should have Specter focus on boon stealing/boon strips.
 

 Virtuoso was my biggest disappointment of the EOD specs.  I was hoping it would be a fun AOE dps and utility class, but the AOE damage isn't there.  Having the slow-moving Unstable Bladestorm also be reflectable makes no sense to me.

Specter seemed to be able to fill a niche role similar to Scourge if they let it happen. 

Barriershare from the shroud, ranged wells, potentially an AoE steal mechanic like Scavenger Burst that deals dmg, strips boons, poisons etc (albeit more nerfed for the multi-target ability).

But Anet believes otherwise /s

[aspirine.6852]

The meta is bring more people. kittening game gets more boring every update.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/27/2022 at 8:25 PM, aspirine.6852 said:

The meta is bring more people. kittening game gets more boring every update.

TDLR Ktrain or gfto, when EOTM was a thing devs said they loved and wanted that gameplay into wvw some dev's even "soft bashed" players that defended entire keeps against zergs on EOTM, that's the lamer mentality this company gained over the years.

 

 

[Stand The Wall.6987]

On 12/27/2022 at 6:57 AM, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Who said anything about metabattle?

you just did with this post. you've got metabattle brain, unable to try new stuff cuz fear of failure or whatever. berserker can give out plenty of boons, and yes its worth it cuz party dps > personal dps. sw/a definitely doesn't beat hammer dps since sword has no cleave, axe mainhand on the other hand would. so thats why you go with sw/sh on holo. you lose burst from rifle but the cleave from sword with the gm trait wins easily in the long run. medkit with egun is easy to accomodate.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

20 hours ago, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

you just did with this post. you've got metabattle brain, unable to try new stuff cuz fear of failure or whatever. berserker can give out plenty of boons, and yes its worth it cuz party dps > personal dps. sw/a definitely doesn't beat hammer dps since sword has no cleave, axe mainhand on the other hand would. so thats why you go with sw/sh on holo. you lose burst from rifle but the cleave from sword with the gm trait wins easily in the long run. medkit with egun is easy to accomodate.

"meta-battle brain" , do go ahead and show me the fruits of your original and creative thinking and buildcrafting that's 100% successful then. 

it's not just about dps, what boon does zerker give? Tactics Banner? Any warrior spec can do that and at that point just get a decent DH.

Every single Holo player I know will claim and show why rifle is better. What cleave does sword even have outside of autos when Holo has way better cleave options for cleave , aka Laser disk, FT. 

There is no consistent dps with hammer on warrior what are you on about, autos are slow asf, hamm 2 and 3 your only dps skills, backbreaker won't recharge if it doesn't land, burst is mediocre at best. 

In any case, do provide visual data for your claims. I need to see those amazing builds that people will def pick over the effectiveness of the aformentioned meta classes, which are meta for a reason and it's not cause I got a 'meta-battle" brain.

[subversiontwo.7501]

9 hours ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

"meta-battle brain" , do go ahead and show me the fruits of your original and creative thinking and buildcrafting that's 100% successful then.

It is less about the builds and more so about the approach. The different meta sites can be useful providing information but they never dictate play the way people who get stuck on them assumes.

The game is rather simple. It is built around parties and parties have 5 slots. Whatever is meta is just the most popular choices for those five spots and that number is many times even fewer than 5. There are plenty other things that are perfectly viable to play that people can be successful on. However, that success does not really have anything to do with convincing pickup commanders to let you play it or convince people who make websites to put your build on it.

Instead, if you want to play something different that can be useful (and successful) find friends, play with them and dictate your own choices. On the other side of the equation. If there is a pickup commander who struggles, even what is "meta" tend to have set priorities and any given squad tend to have specific, situational needs. So even from that perspective the meta is quite irrelevant. It is absolutely pointless to join a tag that lacks Mesmers on a DH and point towards some meta site. If you want to help whoever is commanding then and there, you ask them what they need and you bring that.

Those two rather simple and general situations are far better guides for being useful, successful or helpful in WvW than any one website or notion of meta can ever be. That doesn't make the sites useless: They still have good information. However, overinterpreting them and then trying to drive balance changes based on that information is just tying oneself up in a rather pointless mess. To reiterate: The three better approaches are to make a party with friends, be the tag or ask the tag and bring what they need then and there.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

9 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

It is less about the builds and more so about the approach. The different meta sites can be useful providing information but they never dictate play the way people who get stuck on them assumes.

The game is rather simple. It is built around parties and parties have 5 slots. Whatever is meta is just the most popular choices for those five spots and that number is many times even fewer than 5. There are plenty other things that are perfectly viable to play that people can be successful on. However, that success does not really have anything to do with convincing pickup commanders to let you play it or convince people who make websites to put your build on it.

Instead, if you want to play something different that can be useful (and successful) find friends, play with them and dictate your own choices. On the other side of the equation. If there is a pickup commander who struggles, even what is "meta" tend to have set priorities and any given squad tend to have specific, situational needs. So even from that perspective the meta is quite irrelevant. It is absolutely pointless to join a tag that lacks Mesmers on a DH and point towards some meta site. If you want to help whoever is commanding then and there, you ask them what they need and you bring that.

Those two rather simple and general situations are far better guides for being useful, successful or helpful in WvW than any one website or notion of meta can ever be. That doesn't make the sites useless: They still have good information. However, overinterpreting them and then trying to drive balance changes based on that information is just tying oneself up in a rather pointless mess. To reiterate: The three better approaches are to make a party with friends, be the tag or ask the tag and bring what they need then and there.

I do not deny what you said at all.

Discussion digressed tho from: builds are too effective vs builds that can be as effective but aren't, to: you lack this that this, comp group theory, thesis on teamwork and cooperation. 

I can make a group of 10 players where we all play core warrior and core rev and make it work sure, I know that already.

What was the point of this thread: Arenanet can't balance the mode properly and is obviously propping up classes while leaving other specs that can perform similar roles, fade and disappear from a healthy spot. 

Again, I agree with the aformentioned though. Meta is generally a good way of keeping track of mainstream and effective, you can tinker around it.

But that's the problem arenanet has created. You actually cannot reliably tinker around the meta!

 

[subversiontwo.7501]

16 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

I do not deny what you said at all.

Discussion digressed tho from: builds are too effective vs builds that can be as effective but aren't, to: you lack this that this, comp group theory, thesis on teamwork and cooperation. 

I can make a group of 10 players where we all play core warrior and core rev and make it work sure, I know that already.

What was the point of this thread: Arenanet can't balance the mode properly and is obviously propping up classes while leaving other specs that can perform similar roles, fade and disappear from a healthy spot. 

Again, I agree with the aformentioned though. Meta is generally a good way of keeping track of mainstream and effective, you can tinker around it.

But that's the problem arenanet has created. You actually cannot reliably tinker around the meta!

 

I took the liberty to bolden some of the key points to address. None of those things are completely devoid of each other. They re all interconnected. I'll try an example, though I'm not sure if it will be clear enough, but ...

Take a Scrapper and a Druid: They have exceled at different things. The Scrapper has exceled at things that have been more popular among pickup squads because those involve things like stacking on tag and pressing 1111. The Druid on the other hand has exceled at things like speed, reach, formerly unique offensive support and so on. Giving the Druid all the things that made a Scrapper popular does not make for a healthy spot and certainly not for a healthy larger balance. Then it either has the things the Scrapper has plus the things it had before, which isn't balance or you take away the things it had before and now you have two Scrappers (because some Rangers for some subjective reason did not want to play on an Engineer, in a horisontal progression game). Neither of those situations are healthy for the game.

Instead, the game's balance was at its ever healthiest when the meta had three distinctly different party types (ie., akin to a party-diverse 15-spot meta). This disappeared for a while with HoT (because Revs were just way too OP at release and turned everything into a stack-Revs pirate ship or PoF turned things into a stack-Scourges pirate ship meta for over a year) and has been rather muddled or clouded since. However, most of what we see drive popularity today is not what is good (effective) but rather what is simple (effective) because ambition is at an all-time low. Pickup commanders does not ask for Druids because the things they excel at requires the commander to trust whoever running it to lead themselves to a higher degree. They don't ask for Daredevils or even less exotic tings like Weavers or Berserkers for the same reason.

However, the way forward to a healthy game balance is not to dumb everything down to a 5-spot meta. It is to encourage some sort of restoration of that healthier meta and that has much more to do with player ambition than balance confines. Druids still excel at things like supporting Weavers and Weavers still excels in a party with other Weavers being supported by Druids rather than carrying Weavers around in a party with Firebrands, Scrappers, Scourges and Breakers. Similarily it isn't more effective to have 10 parties with that kind of support than it is to have say 7 parties of whatever simplified meta and 3 parties with something more risky off-meta: It is rather the opposite, it is better (more effective) to have diverse purpose-built parties but it is not as simple (effective).

That argument also extends into the whole boon-discussion that keeps popping up, because while there are issues with the whole boon-play, that issue is not that there is imbalance because random dunces can't solo through double-supported parties on their own - without building such purpose-built parties for damage of their own. The boon stuff is problematic for whole different reasons than supported parties being unkillade, as data simply does not support any such assumptions. In fact, it could even be argued that inexperienced, seclusive players struggling to cut through tanks is a good thing, because that forces them to interact, organise and learn. Furthermore, the easier it is to kill things the less need you have of things that take greater risks to achieve higher damage. That last inversion is something people on the forums seem to struggle with the logic of the most. They don't seem to realise that certain builds they (or we) want to be played are getting thrown out of the meta by the very things they are suggesting, eg., more crowd-control results in melee-damage specialists being pushed further from the meta, resulting in overall lower damage output in groups and inflating the value of player numbers, etc.

[Cyninja.2954]

17 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

snip (above)

 

Very good summary/explanation.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Grand Marshal.4098]

17 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I took the liberty to bolden some of the key points to address. None of those things are completely devoid of each other. They re all interconnected. I'll try an example, though I'm not sure if it will be clear enough, but ...

Take a Scrapper and a Druid: They have exceled at different things. The Scrapper has exceled at things that have been more popular among pickup squads because those involve things like stacking on tag and pressing 1111. The Druid on the other hand has exceled at things like speed, reach, formerly unique offensive support and so on. Giving the Druid all the things that made a Scrapper popular does not make for a healthy spot and certainly not for a healthy larger balance. Then it either has the things the Scrapper has plus the things it had before, which isn't balance or you take away the things it had before and now you have two Scrappers (because some Rangers for some subjective reason did not want to play on an Engineer, in a horisontal progression game). Neither of those situations are healthy for the game.

Instead, the game's balance was at its ever healthiest when the meta had three distinctly different party types (ie., akin to a party-diverse 15-spot meta). This disappeared for a while with HoT (because Revs were just way too OP at release and turned everything into a stack-Revs pirate ship or PoF turned things into a stack-Scourges pirate ship meta for over a year) and has been rather muddled or clouded since. However, most of what we see drive popularity today is not what is good (effective) but rather what is simple (effective) because ambition is at an all-time low. Pickup commanders does not ask for Druids because the things they excel at requires the commander to trust whoever running it to lead themselves to a higher degree. They don't ask for Daredevils or even less exotic tings like Weavers or Berserkers for the same reason.

However, the way forward to a healthy game balance is not to dumb everything down to a 5-spot meta. It is to encourage some sort of restoration of that healthier meta and that has much more to do with player ambition than balance confines. Druids still excel at things like supporting Weavers and Weavers still excels in a party with other Weavers being supported by Druids rather than carrying Weavers around in a party with Firebrands, Scrappers, Scourges and Breakers. Similarily it isn't more effective to have 10 parties with that kind of support than it is to have say 7 parties of whatever simplified meta and 3 parties with something more risky off-meta: It is rather the opposite, it is better (more effective) to have diverse purpose-built parties but it is not as simple (effective).

That argument also extends into the whole boon-discussion that keeps popping up, because while there are issues with the whole boon-play, that issue is not that there is imbalance because random dunces can't solo through double-supported parties on their own - without building such purpose-built parties for damage of their own. The boon stuff is problematic for whole different reasons than supported parties being unkillade, as data simply does not support any such assumptions. In fact, it could even be argued that inexperienced, seclusive players struggling to cut through tanks is a good thing, because that forces them to interact, organise and learn. Furthermore, the easier it is to kill things the less need you have of things that take greater risks to achieve higher damage. That last inversion is something people on the forums seem to struggle with the logic of the most. They don't seem to realise that certain builds they (or we) want to be played are getting thrown out of the meta by the very things they are suggesting, eg., more crowd-control results in melee-damage specialists being pushed further from the meta, resulting in overall lower damage output in groups and inflating the value of player numbers, etc.

Thank you for the well-made response. 

It is something I agree with. 

Just to re-instate my caim though, I do not wish for Druid to be the new scrapper (example), I wish for Druid and Scrapper to be able to fill the same role in a different manner.

The game has assets that can be divided amongst classes and specs for that whole identity to exist, hense why the boon talk comes up.

Scrapper with PoP was simply capable of Heal, Cleanse and Boon coverage (all boons), Superspeed and some Fields. That's basically everything.

What I envision as a healthy gamemode is: the party needs a cleanse so you either have 1) Scrapper with Heals/Cleanses/SS, 2) Druid with Heals/Cleanses/Stab, 3) Tempest with Heals/Cleanses/Auras, 4) Vindicator with Heals/Cleanses/Alacrity

Something like that and of course a different way fo achieving the result, but not in a wildly impractical and difficult way. I'd say ease of play is still required, without completely making the entire niche of a role being "Spam 1".

In any case, I experiment a lot and with my absense for a month or so from the game, I returned to it and these questions returned to me.

[subversiontwo.7501]

41 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Thank you for the well-made response. 

It is something I agree with. 

Just to re-instate my caim though, I do not wish for Druid to be the new scrapper (example), I wish for Druid and Scrapper to be able to fill the same role in a different manner.

The game has assets that can be divided amongst classes and specs for that whole identity to exist, hense why the boon talk comes up.

Scrapper with PoP was simply capable of Heal, Cleanse and Boon coverage (all boons), Superspeed and some Fields. That's basically everything.

What I envision as a healthy gamemode is: the party needs a cleanse so you either have 1) Scrapper with Heals/Cleanses/SS, 2) Druid with Heals/Cleanses/Stab, 3) Tempest with Heals/Cleanses/Auras, 4) Vindicator with Heals/Cleanses/Alacrity

Something like that and of course a different way fo achieving the result, but not in a wildly impractical and difficult way. I'd say ease of play is still required, without completely making the entire niche of a role being "Spam 1".

In any case, I experiment a lot and with my absense for a month or so from the game, I returned to it and these questions returned to me.

Well, I'm not sure if we miscommunicate or what it is, but my point is rather that you can't really agree with what I say and still maintain that you want more things to fit into the same role as my point is that we need more roles for classes (and ultimately builds) to fit into.

I think the issue lies in where it gets complex. Let's see if I can illustrate that with another example and if that example makes sense. Take the Chrono and Breaker now, they fill the same meta role in the manner I think you mean. However, my point is that the game was more diverse when their two main builds in the meta filled completely different roles. That meta was more diverse, the tactics were mor varied and it was easier for the devs to manage that balance.

The complication is that it isn't necessarily of evil to have Chronos and Breakers be similar enough to fill the same role satisfactory enough on its own. However, it is a problem if that is the extent of balance in the game and it is a problem if our foremost priority and balance goal is focused on that rather than on eg., restoring the role of a Mesmer as the point-runner in a vanilla havoc party (as that older role was more diverse and opened up more opportunities for more classes to shine; ie., the natural partner to the Mesmer's main role back then was a Thief, so Thieves were very much apart of the larger-scale meta). That's the thinking we need and subsequently that is how we need to prioritise our road to balance.

For the same reason I prefer to see balancing encouraging the Elementalists nominal Weaver role above its Tempest role. Again, the complication is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to have the Tempest as a viable alternative to the 2nd-support role, but it is a bad thing if that comes at the expense of the ranged-havoc role of the Weaver disappearing from the balance discussion and from the actual tactical landscape (rather than just from the simplicity of a meta). Ie., they should push the Weaver over the Tempest, if they can then manage to find a good spot for the Tempest too, fine, but that's not really what people on the forums typically suggests or what the devs are necessarily doing at the moment. Arguably, the Tempest was fine before the recent buffs that unseated the Scrapper from its throne. It already was good enough to act as an alternative and people just didn't value the off-sided things it brought to the table because their perspective is limited to basics like heal- and cleanse meters or restricted by eg., the importance of stability. Yet people wanted a meta-Tempest to compete with a meta-Scrapper like a meta-Chrono competes with a meta-Breaker and that is what we got. We also got less overall diversity in roles recently while the roles are still the same meta (1st support [def-boons], 2nd support [heal/cleanse], balance [off-boons/dmg], strip/dmg and strip/CC [/w filler-boons]; those are the 5 concurrent roles: aka. GWEN/GREN - G (FB), R (Herald/Vindi), E (Scrapper/Tempest), N (Scourge), W (Breaker/Chrono). That meta isn't getting more fun if all we do is shoehorn eg., Rangers into the G-role and Thieves into the N-role.

On the other side of the argument, we can't just buff crowd-control and nerf reflects so it becomes super easy and effective for Rangers and Thieves to press LB/Rifle 2 in a cloud either. We need to encourage those types of builds to form parties on their own, built around what their classes excel at, by building group-synergies around them rather than just dreaming of making them OP on their own. All of that starts with Anet setting down a vision for their balance. If anything, their somewhat unsure vision right now actually seems to be more of what you are suggesting, even though you are not happy about the current results or state of it.

Edited December 31, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Grand Marshal.4098]

26 minutes ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Well, I'm not sure if we miscommunicate or what it is, but my point is rather that you can't really agree with what I say and still maintain that you want more things to fit into the same role as my point is that we need more roles for classes (and ultimately builds) to fit into.

I think the issue lies in where it gets complex. Let's see if I can illustrate that with another example and if that example makes sense. Take the Chrono and Breaker now, they fill the same meta role in the manner I think you mean. However, my point is that the game was more diverse when their two main builds in the meta filled completely different roles. That meta was more diverse, the tactics were mor varied and it was easier for the devs to manage that balance.

The complication is that it isn't necessarily of evil to have Chronos and Breakers be similar enough to fill the same role satisfactory enough on its own. However, it is a problem if that is the extent of balance in the game and it is a problem if our foremost priority and balance goal is focused on that rather than on eg., restoring the role of a Mesmer as the point-runner in a vanilla havoc party (as that older role was more diverse and opened up more opportunities for more classes to shine; ie., the natural partner to the Mesmer's main role back then was a Thief, so Thieves were very much apart of the larger-scale meta). That's the thinking we need and subsequently that is how we need to prioritise our road to balance.

For the same reason I prefer to see balancing encouraging the Elementalists nominal Weaver role above its Tempest role. Again, the complication is that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to have the Tempest as a viable alternative to the 2nd-support role, but it is a bad thing if that comes at the expense of the ranged-havoc role of the Weaver disappearing from the balance discussion and from the actual tactical landscape (rather than just from the simplicity of a meta). Ie., they should push the Weaver over the Tempest, if they can then manage to find a good spot for the Tempest too, fine, but that's not really what people on the forums typically suggests or what the devs are necessarily doing at the moment. Arguably, the Tempest was fine before the recent buffs that unseated the Scrapper from its throne. It already was good enough to act as an alternative and people just didn't value the off-sided things it brought to the table because their perspective is limited to basics like heal- and cleanse meters or restricted by eg., the importance of stability. Yet people wanted a meta-Tempest to compete with a meta-Scrapper like a meta-Chrono competes with a meta-Breaker and that is what we got. We also got less overall diversity in roles recently while the roles are still the same meta (1st support [def-boons], 2nd support [heal/cleanse], balance [off-boons/dmg], strip/dmg and strip/CC [/w filler-boons]; those are the 5 concurrent roles: aka. GWEN/GREN - G (FB), R (Herald/Vindi), E (Scrapper/Tempest), N (Scourge), W (Breaker/Chrono). That meta isn't getting more fun if all we do is shoehorn eg., Rangers into the G-role and Thieves into the N-role.

On the other side of the argument, we can't just buff crowd-control and nerf reflects so it becomes super easy and effective for Rangers and Thieves to press LB/Rifle 2 in a cloud either. We need to encourage those types of builds to form parties on their own, built around what their classes excel at, by building group-synergies around them rather than just dreaming of making them OP on their own. All of that starts with Anet setting down a vision for their balance. If anything, their somewhat unsure vision right now actually seems to be more of what you are suggesting, even though you are not happy about the current results or state of it.

Well the issue there is that Anet does not want Mesmer to have the unique role it could/did. Same for other classes.

If anything Anet has even fewer roles in mind when it comes to the meta than players. 

My idea is solely based off of the fact that the meta cannot change in terms of roles cause 1) Most players don't want it to, 2) Anet doesn't want to create a balance nightmare with some many unique abilities/roles from specs.

So basically the only route rn is for them to at least introduce more classes into pre-existing roles, because the days when a class had a role as its identity, are long gone from what I see. 

 

[Xenesis.6389]

50% is tempest/catalyst.

50% everything else.

🤷‍♂️

🤡

[KeyOrion.9506]

Maybe Anet needs to install Boon Sickness.  This permaboon, extended boon, sharing boon is starting to become total garbage and it's getting tiring.  Either your overpowered with group boons, and even stripping the boons doesn't help, because the group is synergetic now and pulsing every single boon to every single party member.  It's become...bad.  Very bad to play now.