ANet wants celestial gear to do what it currently does because they directly profit from it being strong.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Pretty much the title. 

It would be one thing if they just buffed the set to being as strong as it is by adding the concentration and expertise, but ANet also changed the gear you get from the Lv80 boost from the gem store from full soldiers to full exotic celestial. It went from being a relatively rare set with a time gate to being available to anyone with a credit card within 6 months of the set being buffed.

Sure. Anet wants it to be strong so players new to a class can do well on it and experiment with different builds on a single gear set. I can accept that, that's a good thing for many reasons. That said, while ANet directly profits from this move in terms of gem/expac sales it's hard not to see it as an intentional act on ANet's part, much like the elite specs from the latest expac being left bonkers OP for years on end until the next one comes out.

It doesn't matter what you think about celestial stats, or what I think about them for that matter. It's clear that celestial stats are intentionally being left as strong as they are. The boon spam is also being left as it is for the same reason. The balance the game had in vanilla is gone, this is the new normal. The sooner people realise that and accept it, the happier they'll be. 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level-80_Boost

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/95447-game-update-notes-may-11-2021/ - The patch celestial was changed to include concentration and expertise.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/102830-game-update-notes-october-5-2021/ - The patch the Lv80 boost was changed to give every class celestial gear. 

 

 

[Riba.3271]

9 minutes ago, Shorra.7256 said:

. You nerf players who enjoy core whilst their elite counterparts is broken

Tbf you should just accept that using elite spec is a must.

First of all, their gameplay is more complex, you get only 1 elite traitline and they're called "elite".

Core builds are always some longbow or judges + hammer 2 oneshot cheese.

 

Returning back to topic, yes celestial is disgusting as it is.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Riba.3271

[Shorra.7256]

Just now, Riba.3271 said:

First of all, their gameplay is more complex, you get only 1 elite traitline and they're called "elite".

Then in that case we can all admit the game is P2W no ?

[Riba.3271]

3 minutes ago, Shorra.7256 said:

Then in that case we can all admit the game is P2W no ?

Buying a game doesn't mean its P2W.

I would just say that anyone that says Guild Wars 2 is F2P is lying since all the core content and specs are outdated.

Btw, HoT and PoF specs are also strong, but if one slaps 5 traps on their dragonhunter like every noob before them and complain about willbenders, maybe their build isn't the greatest?

Edited April 11, 2023 by Riba.3271

[subversiontwo.7501]

13 minutes ago, Shorra.7256 said:

Then in that case we can all admit the game is P2W no ?

I guess Riba already beat me to it, but the game launched as B2P - making it F2P came later - and suggesting you buy the expansion moves it back in the direction of B2P. If you ask many of us here, we don't think you should even be able access WvW with F2P since it opens up so much exploitation.

Paying to transfer servers to one that goes up or has content though ... 😉

[subversiontwo.7501]

As for the original topic:

I'm pretty sure that Juggle is right, at least to a degree.

However, what I see constantly overlooked in these recent Celestial threads is that ArenaNet does not balance for 1v1. I think that has much more to do with how they treat Celestial than the players who make these threads (choose to-) comprehend. First and foremost this is a massive-multiplayer game and even if you go down to a scale of solo roaming, there is more to that than a duel. The amount of people here who primarily or even exclusively deals in that content probably translates poorly to overall content. That is beyond even considering that by being a controlled submode, players can make rules for duels themselves (same as GvG). It is of and by itself a submode that is less dependent on balance. If this is about more than duels we are talking about a far more complex topic and I don't trust the typical no-you-angryface people to handle that. It is evident by how those topics have been handled so far.

[Hotride.2187]

Lets not pretend they care enough about wvw for this to be the case. For pve, I can imagine this to be true.

[devastoscz.9851]

Celestial should be nerfed in every game mode, even PVE. It should be a "stepping stone" stat, that can be useful for new players to experiment buildcraft and open world exploration/lazy content. Not the hybrid damage tank that it's being used as right now by several classes.

 

When it comes to WvW as a competitive game mode (there's a reason it was removed from PVP), it should be considerably nerfed in terms of how many stat points it gives. Across the board 20-30% stat reduction and the problem is basically solved. You could still bring it (cause choice), but specialized classes played moderately well will outlive or kill the celestial in most scenarios if a significant nerf is implemented.

 

Truth is, nobody likes playing against celestial stat users. It's a boring war of attrition in the best of cases, if not a flat out burst and heal tug-o-war with certain classes (I'm looking at you Firebrand/Willbender/Harbinger/Catalyst).

[kash.9213]

Makes sense. WvW fights can get hot though and they probably figured the redshirts needed to be able to stay up for a few more seconds when two blobs or a world boss splash into each other. They filled in dirt behind them in that hole they dug though because profession skills and their interactions in a group would have to roll back to be more deliberate across the board so people can take the training wheels off. 

[Burnfall.9573]

6 hours ago, Shorra.7256 said:

Anet doesn't care about balance. Hell, even if they did the whole "Our staff look at the forum everyday" shtick is a deception.

They only have ever cared about one thing and that is squeezing out as much money as they can until the profits aren't good enough. Nothing will get patched (Maybe Micro Nerf until a new Season is released or Expension).

 

The staffs are jokes when it comes to balancing, Since Release, I finished School, University, Got a job, a car and a house - They can't even do a decent balance patch in all that time. it's incredible they can't see that.

 

WvW roaming is diabolical and I'd be rich if I had a penny for every EoD class I go up against. 

- As an edit (Nerfing the core class doesn't always fix the problem - Fix the Elite Specs that go along with it too. You nerf players who enjoy core whilst their elite counterparts is broken ((Core Thief > Daredevil - Deadeye )) Remove Perma Stealth from both of them!

 

You know what, you pretty much said what I was going to say before I started typing. 

 

I don't even have to bold your words at all

[TheGrimm.5624]

7 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

Sure. Anet wants it to be strong so players new to a class can do well on it and experiment with different builds on a single gear set. I can accept that, that's a good thing for many reasons.

 

Good references by the way and +1 from me on that bit on the follow up info.

Did you re-read the way they phrased it? 

"All level-80 equipment granted by the Level-80 Boost is now of the Celestial (all attributes) stat set. This is not retroactive; only Level-80 Boosts used after this update will receive Celestial equipment. Previously, most professions were given Soldiers (power, toughness, vitality) equipment. The intent of this change is to ensure that all characters using a Level-80 Boost are given a serviceable equipment set that will allow players to experiment freely with their skill and trait choices and not result in situations in which their chosen traits and skills are entirely unsupported by their equipment."

I won't argue agree or not here, but their own word choice is interesting, yes? As a programmer though this is also a way that someone that was given a task and told how do you future proof this item since we don't know what's next but we don't want to special code for every potential but we want something that can cover the issue for anyway something might work. Translation jack of all trades stats. But serviceable was the way it was defined.

7 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

That said, while ANet directly profits from this move in terms of gem/expac sales it's hard not to see it as an intentional act on ANet's part

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Level-80_Boost

Had a new player that came back to the game after leaving it shortly after launch since they weren't into the PvE but didn't know about WvW. Took them about 2 weeks to get to level mins to enter WvW. Told them use the ToKs if they wanted to fast track to 80. Also told them about the booster. After just a couple of hours of WvW play they asked why would anyone buy the booster by itself considering how many ToKs are passed out? Didn't have an answer there. Just a side note I found interesting from a returning player.

Will people buy boosters, PvE maybe. Why would any WvW players buy boosters after playing WvW, that I would question. When I was asked how long it took to get to level 80 had no idea, can't remember last toon that I didn't just pull out a 250 stack to boost up and do all the clicking to clear, that's outside of the stacks of birthday instant level scrolls even. If you see them removing ToKs from reward tracks then keep this handy. 

Edited April 11, 2023 by TheGrimm.5624
spacing

[Chaba.5410]

Players don't seem to know what they really want.  Hehehe.  But yea, totally a conspiracy by Anet to grab more money.  /sarcasm

[TheGrimm.5624]

18 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Players don't seem to know what they really want.  Hehehe.  But yea, totally a conspiracy by Anet to grab more money.  /sarcasm

lol, tempted to go to the older forum archives when Zerk was king and pull out the threads saying that PVT gear needed to be removed because it made the game unfun and was OP. Did a check on the trailblazer removal threads but those are also still somewhat current, same with Dire and ...well you've been here. I think people want us all to have no armor, attack 1 is an auto attack with a stick and ability two is throw a rock with a 600 second cooldown. Maybe we need to go back to Pong for people to find balance. Oh wait, nope people said people playing on the right side of the screen were OP, we are doomed it seems.

[Chaba.5410]

45 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Oh wait, nope people said people playing on the right side of the screen were OP, we are doomed it seems.

Don't you see?  Atari planned it that way because they got more money from all the right-handed players who are the majority of the population.  Those dastardly programmers!

[ZTeamG.4603]

Pretty sure the reason they changed the Lvl 80 boost gear is because Soldier's is garbage, and it resulted in PvE players that thought they had good gear ("It's exotic isn't it?") having the worst gear for pretty much all content.  

 

Celestial is strong in WvW, but it still requires class knowledge and skill to be a threat, albeit not as much as a glass cannon build. That said: if you're getting bodied by someone who just bought the game and got their first character to level 80, the issue is not the gear they're wearing nor the build they're running.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Hey all, just wanted to clear something up. 

I don't personally care one way or another if ANet are making money from people buying the Lv80 boosts, tbh I expect them as a company to do stuff that makes them money above all else because that's kinda the point of them existing. 

I also don't have a problem with the actual reason they changed the Lv80 boost gear to cele, as Subversion points out it's a fairly reasonable change and it makes sense on a lot of levels.  

My main point is that since they have doubled down and made celestial gear part of the "I'm new to this class, what does this do?" experience through the Lv80 boost that comes with buying expacs, and because selling expacs is one of the main ways ANet makes money, you shouldn't expect it to get changed anytime soon because it's not catering to the WvW audience in any way whatsoever. They are fine with it being strong because it will bring positive feedback on the new, paid, content, the same way that new elites are allowed to be strong for the lifespan of an expac then see a flurry of nerfs when the next spec gets released. 

If you want to see actual meaningful change at this point, you'd be better off asking for nerfs to boons themselves so they don't make up such a huge part of a spec's effectiveness and for that nerf to be compensated by buffing skill coefficients across the board. Yes, that will require changing your power & condi builds as well. Ideally you'd keep everything with perma boons at the same power level they are now, but make it so specialised builds are more effective against celestial because there's a lesser reliance on boons when it comes to overall effectiveness. Celestial stays the same in PvE, and it stops being best in slot for small scale WvW, everyone's happy. 

[Dawdler.8521]

19 minutes ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

If you want to see actual meaningful change at this point, you'd be better off asking for nerfs to boons themselves

... which are so obscenely strong when using the expansion builds for exactly the same reason celestial is, Anet quadroupled down on easy boon generation.

So I'm not sure how that would be any better request on this matter.

[Zyreva.1078]

38 minutes ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

If you want to see actual meaningful change at this point, you'd be better off asking for nerfs to boons themselves so they don't make up such a huge part of a spec's effectiveness and for that nerf to be compensated by buffing skill coefficients across the board.

The only way buffed dmg coefficients (which also benefits cele) allows non cele builds to counter cele is via oneshots - and i don't think oneshot gameplay is very fun and healthy. Dmg is overall fine in relation to player health. Too high sustain is the problem. In longer fights cele would still outsustain anything else and general buffs or nerfs won't fix the disparity between cele and everything else. Also what @Dawdler.8521 said. Cele is only one part of anets strategy.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Zyreva.1078

[senftube.6081]

Cele is killing roaming in wvw and anet doesn't care.

[Xenesis.6389]

10 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Buying a game doesn't mean its P2W.

I would just say that anyone that says Guild Wars 2 is F2P is lying since all the core content and specs are outdated.

Btw, HoT and PoF specs are also strong, but if one slaps 5 traps on their dragonhunter like every noob before them and complain about willbenders, maybe their build isn't the greatest?

It depends on your views on it I guess.

For pve it's not p2w, you pay for new content to access, the only advantage you get is maybe clearing that content faster, it's not like there's leaderboards to beat other players, it's just dps races to clear content.

For pvp where every account type plays in the same player pools, it's p2w when the elite specs are obviously balanced better than previous specs, and you use those to get an advantage over other players you fight. Other games handle this by also increasing level caps, or only having arenas at max level, so when you buy new content you also level up and leave behind all the older stuff, and only face players using the new skills/talents/systems. In gw2 case you could buy the new expansion and have an advantage over 2 previous expansions and core game specs with a brand new broken op spec.

Core specs should not be "outdated", their trait lines are still used in 2/3 lines with elite specs, so is their class mechanic for the most part, so they should still be maintained for proper balance. This is why it's even more important for anet to do proper balancing, on a regular schedule, with precision and not sledge hammer nerfs, without bias, and fix any outlying problems in builds. But they obviously balance to sell expansions, not for player's happiness with the game, although for wvw it's all about the guild boon blobs, but they don't care about pvp in general.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

11 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

lol, tempted to go to the older forum archives when Zerk was king and pull out the threads saying that PVT gear needed to be removed because it made the game unfun and was OP. Did a check on the trailblazer removal threads but those are also still somewhat current, same with Dire and ...well you've been here. I think people want us all to have no armor, attack 1 is an auto attack with a stick and ability two is throw a rock with a 600 second cooldown. Maybe we need to go back to Pong for people to find balance. Oh wait, nope people said people playing on the right side of the screen were OP, we are doomed it seems.

They bitched about Cleric's too, especially on an Ele called "DaPhoenix" who was the precursor of Cellofrag and Solemn. While they didn't nerf the set, they rather royally kittened Elementalist healing coefficients.

Point is people have bitched about sustain with some damage forever - if ttk is longer than their short attention spans they cry foul and the Nerf Witch Hunt begins - peasants with pitchforks are still peasants.

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 minutes ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

They bitched about Cleric's too, especially on an Ele called "DaPhoenix" who was the precursor of Cellofrag and Solemn. While they didn't nerf the set, they rather royally kittened Elementalist healing coefficients.

Point is people have bitched about sustain with some damage forever - if ttk is longer than their short attention spans they cry foul and the Nerf Witch Hunt begins - peasants with pitchforks are still peasants.

 

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

11 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Don't you see?  Atari planned it that way because they got more money from all the right-handed players who are the majority of the population.  Those dastardly programmers!

kitten Atari and their pay 2 win ways! I should have guessed I was losing those Combat games due to I didn't buy the pay to win addons. No wonder the charge straight at them failed to work. I mean they landed 6 versus my 3 attackers, how did that fail?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

20 hours ago, Shorra.7256 said:

Anet doesn't care about balance. Hell, even if they did the whole "Our staff look at the forum everyday" shtick is a deception.

They only have ever cared about one thing and that is squeezing out as much money as they can until the profits aren't good enough. Nothing will get patched (Maybe Micro Nerf until a new Season is released or Expension).

 

The staffs are jokes when it comes to balancing, Since Release, I finished School, University, Got a job, a car and a house - They can't even do a decent balance patch in all that time. it's incredible they can't see that.

 

WvW roaming is diabolical and I'd be rich if I had a penny for every EoD class I go up against. 

- As an edit (Nerfing the core class doesn't always fix the problem - Fix the Elite Specs that go along with it too. You nerf players who enjoy core whilst their elite counterparts is broken ((Core Thief > Daredevil - Deadeye )) Remove Perma Stealth from both of them!

I'm not trying to be rude here but this simply isn't how game development works. Investors and publishers have most of the say in what a game company works on, otherwise they lose the money. Nearly all financially-related decisions either have to be cleared by, or are required by the investors and publishers.

 

(This especially applies to stuff like the gem store, expansions and other forms of DLC.)

 

ArenaNet tries to work on what they can on the side, but ultimately if NCSoft says "pour all your resources into an expansion, and don't care about PvP", that's what ArenaNet has to do, and its always been this way in the industry. Pretty much every MMO has the same problem here.

 

I've even seen investors make direct balance demands to increase sells. For example the era of Machinist being grossly overpowered would've been a selling point for many other games.

Edited April 12, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

imagine caring about roaming gear

they should fix the builds rather on the ten billion smallscalebunkers, then this would be no deal at all

furthermore, cele was not a problem before anet dropped the dmg coefficients and removed retaliation boon. it still really isn't the issue as said, but this made it from "useless" to some low effort allrounder