Please stop the 'nerf <insert current new build>' threads please

[Kuma.1503]

10 minutes ago, TomUjain.8206 said:

 

I never claimed to know the game very well, nor am I claiming to be some top tier PVP'er either. I am claiming to have lived through this game and I can tell you from experience what I saw and what I believe. I am not claiming to be a paragon or pro.

 

However. I disagree with you in regards to how 'good' things were back then. Bunkers (atleast upto gold) had alot more sway than you think, annoying -- is putting it mildly, Anet went to war on bunkers, so much so that any trait, amulet or skill with the ability to bunk effectively was removed or heavily reworked.  Make no mistake, back then - it was possible to tank or keep 'busy' the entire team 1 vs 5. No damage? Sure, but useless? Hardly. You could contest the node, indefinatly.

 

The Turrent build was everywhere at one point, I mean everywhere - disregard the 'plat' and above players for a moment -- it was, casually a problematic and difficult build to counter. So much so, A net nuked turrents so hard they have never recovered (TILL THIS DAY!)

 

And don't underestimate how annoying the old engineer mine kit was, back when stability was low - you couldn't see those annoying things and engineers could just spam you with cc (remember old slick shoes?) To add,  even back then - was plenty of cheesy 1 hit kill builds going around -- just less of them.

 

I will add, and I remember this very vividly -- PVE was extreamly slow and clunky back then. I'm not defending how easy raids / PVE is now, but equally I do remember how sluggishly-slow it was to kill a single mob back then.  I do agree, however the 'pace' of PVP is a lot faster now, but honestly the best way to get around that would be to give us more choice of amulets to pick from.

 

Frankly, bunkers are a problem because Conquest disproportionately rewards bunkers. 

Your goal is to get on a node and hold it for as long as possible. Immediately, what kind of build comes to mind that would allow you to achieve this?

Bunkers, obviously. 

Anet has gone all in on making conquest the definitive and only PvP game mode, and because of this, they've had to do systematic nerfs to bunkers in order to give other classes a fighting chance. This includes removing toughness amulets, healing power amulets, ect. 

What we need are more maps and more game modes that reward different build styles. Capture the flag, for example. I'd love to see how Anet handles a capture the flag map, and what builds and metas would start to arise as a result. 

[Downstate.4697]

Just now, Kuma.1503 said:

Frankly, bunkers are a problem because Conquest disproportionately rewards bunkers. 

Your goal is to get on a node and hold it for as long as possible. Immediately, what kind of build comes to mind that would allow you to achieve this?

Bunkers, obviously. 

Anet has gone all in on making conquest the definitive and only PvP game mode, and because of this, they've had to do systematic nerfs to bunkers in order to give other classes a fighting chance. This includes removing toughness amulets, healing power amulets, ect. 

What we need are more maps and more game modes that reward different build styles. Capture the flag, for example. I'd love to see how Anet handles a capture the flag map, and what builds and metas would start to arise as a result. 

Bunkers are good for the game as long as they aren’t decap bunkers

[TomUjain.8206]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 I will also add that 'elite' pvp'ers is not a good bench mark for balancing, as the majority of players will be, well 'casuals' and I will argue that regardless of how bad a class is, a pro PVP'er who knows what they are doing can make any old trash look very good.

 

It isn't repesntitive.

 

I will also point out, back then a lot of skills had 1,800 range -- even granades! You moan about scraper granades then, but I remember you could spam those things from across the map -- and back then there was a trait where you could add an extra granade (now removed) and stealth was a huge issue back then.

 

I'll repeat - 2017 was riddled with more problems than you think, the grass was not greener. And even as a 'casual' I remember very heated forum topics on several toxic issues in 2017.

 

That isn't me saying we don't have issues today. It is me saying that this approch to 'nerf everything' is sustainable, nor is it going to work. People now are generally more unhappy and confidence in Anet is at an all time low. PVP population is down, massively and people are not enjoying PVP. Why? I would argue that is down to how unpredictable and how much Anet keep moving the goal posts.

 

 

[Kuma.1503]

Just now, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Bunkers are good for the game as long as they aren’t decap bunkers

I'll agree with that. Decap bunkers are good at punishing do-nothing builds that just sit on node and nothing else, but they also actively discourage interaction because they become do-nothing builds that sit on node and nothing else. 

But with 60% more bouncy castle. 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

23 minutes ago, TomUjain.8206 said:

The Turrent build was everywhere at one point, I mean everywhere

Exactly like Rifle Mechs.

23 minutes ago, TomUjain.8206 said:

disregard the 'plat' and above players for a moment -- it was, casually a problematic and difficult build to counter.

You didn't need to build a counter for it. The counter was LOSing and exploiting AI limitations with any class/build you played. These are simply l2p issues. They don't require great reflexes to perform or inhuman savvy wit to figure out, just general experience & play time to notice that you can do. These are the same l2p issues back then, that made people think Rifle Mech now, was godly OP.

Then what happens? A bunch of casual players who've never figured out that projectiles can't go through walls who only walk directly to and stand in the middle of nodes, come and complain about how OP something is, and it gets nerfed, even though it was already not viable in higher tier play, and then it becomes unplayable. The problem here is that mediocre or worse players seem to have this idea that "the game should be balanced for us" all the while failing to consider that maybe what they are feeling is their own player limitations and not that something is actually OP.

Isn't this ^ exactly what you and jdawg were vouching against in this thread? This is why I'm pointing this out. Stuff like this needs to stop. The game needs to be balanced around what is happening in higher tiers, where every player knows how to use classes/builds to maximum or near maximum efficiency. If some players in mediocre brackets feel something is ultra OP even though higher tiered players are saying it's actually bad and we can clearly see that class/build in question isn't used by any teams in an MAT, those mediocre players need to seriously stand down, stop complaining about things they don't understand, and do themselves a favor by taking the time to figure out the simple ways in which those builds are countered, rather than crying to get everything nerfed down to some artificial level of l2p issue dynamic.

But at the end of the day, this discussion is about "how to deal with the intra-class dynami as a whole". Well, I can tell you that they do largely base balance decisions off of what happens in the MATs, where classes/builds are being utilized to their fullest potentials, which also exposes the limitations that weak builds have. This is the way it should be. But it is my strongest suggestion that power creep needs to stop, and that right now in this current patching, there are only things that need to be nerfed down to par with everything else FIRST before even considering tossing buffs to anything else. I mean when we are talking only two classes that are greatly overperforming everything else in obvious ways, it is much easier to achieve balance by nerfing those two classes who are the outliers, than trying to buff 7 other classes to keep up with them, which will only result in more and more power creep that ruins overall dynamic, as I've already discussed.

23 minutes ago, TomUjain.8206 said:

but honestly the best way to get around that would be to give us more choice of amulets to pick from.

I would love to agree, but pvp would turn into wvw if they did this. We'd have a bunch of overly tanky builds that couldn't kill each other if they did this. I'm not even talking Cele stats, just reimplementing things like Mender Or Marshal or Knight's, would immediately result in all the bunkery kind of play that you had mentioned you did not like.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[TomUjain.8206]

5 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

What we need are more maps and more game modes that reward different build styles. Capture the flag, for example. I'd love to see how Anet handles a capture the flag map, and what builds and metas would start to arise as a result. 

 

I agree. New maps / modes are desperatly needed. As well as a full rework of the underwater system (remember the old underwater pvp maps. They removed them instead of reworking them)

 

My whole point with bunkers was @Trevor Boyer.6524  they didn't do much damage, yes -- but they were by no means no threat, even in top tier matches. My point being that the grass is not greener. 2017 had huge problems, and looking back at it with rose tinted glasses is just dishonest.

 

Today, in 2023 we have differnt issues -- but back then we had the benefit of a much more active dev team, and one that had more of an idea of what they were doing. Now, I honestly don't think anyone knows what they are doing (I suspect due to cost cutting / budget cuts)

 

and as @Kuma.1503 pointed out - randomly nerfing things left and right is not going to stop power creep, it'll only shift it around and destroy build potential.

 

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

33 minutes ago, TomUjain.8206 said:

and as @Kuma.1503 pointed out - randomly nerfing things left and right is not going to stop power creep, it'll only shift it around and destroy build potential.

No

Not only does nerfing things stop power creep, but it actually reverts it.

This is very easy to understand:

1. You buff damage the damage gets higher. You nerf damage, the damage gets lower.
2. You add a lot of super speed to something it goes a lot faster. You remove super speed from something it goes a lot slower.
3. You increase heal factors the heal goes up. You cut heal factor by 50%, the heals go down.
4. You give something stealth & teleports it has them. You take them away, it no longer has them.

Hard, logical, factual, no need for goofy metaphysical philosophy.

 

But to clarify, I think what you specifically are more referring to is the idea of, regardless and outside of how power-crept or nerfed the game is, how strong are classes/builds in relation to each other? Because we could go back and use a super non-power-crept patch from 2012 and see how Cele Elementalist was out-performing everything to the same degree that Scepter Catalyst has been doing in the past few months. So proportionately, regardless of how power-crept or nerfed a patching is, there can be the same margin of difference between one class being stronger than others, but these are two very different things we are discussing here. I am not talking about marginal difference in power or value within the intra-class dynamic in any patching. I am talking about power creep in general and what it does to distort ultimate game mechanics & dynamic in the long haul. 

For example, imagine a boxing ring designed for two normal men with boxing gloves on. Now imagine power creep where suddenly they possess the power level of saiyans. This boxing ring is no longer an adequate arena for the play. This is exactly what's happened to conquest maps that were originally designed for the significantly lower power & mobility levels upon the game's initial release. The way the game's dynamic in conquest feels now, is truly bad compared to what it felt like on the initial release. THIS is what I'm talking about when i say the power creep needs to stop.

Now if they designed a new game mode that was meant to be played with this level of power dynamic, that would be very different and if it was done right, I wouldn't be opposed to it. But increasing power & mobility while only offering us 5v5 conquest maps and the tiny 3v3 areanas, the game is continuing to feel worse and worse.

I think this ^ is where our misunderstanding was.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[jdawgie.1835]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

My dude, you can state your opinions & argue with me and everyone else and I will respect it, so long as it is coming from academic factual standpoints that make sense. But pulling the "I'm gonna ignore the obvious and continue to state misinformation card" is just silly man.

Some obvious facts for you about how power crept GW2 is in 2023 that are inarguable:

1. WvW is ****show of celestial build that can't kill each other.
2. PvP is full of classes/builds that now move across maps quite seriously twice as fast as they did in year 1-2. The chase potential has been buffed to be roughly twice as strong as disengage potential, which has led to dynamic of spawn camping, where when a losing team undergoes a bad wipe, there no methods to get back to nodes for node play, which is what is resulting in so many super lopsided blowout matches. Before all this power creep, chase vs. disengage was roughly equal, and a losing team could at least attempt to formulate witty rotations to outplay a team that was mechanically stronger. But now? Even Conquest is just a combat mechanical death match now. Strategical rotational play takes a definite backseat to the sheer ability to just win combats now in Conquest.
3. CM Fractals now are only as difficult as T4 fractals were about 4 or 5 years ago. Raid bosses, die in half or 1/3rd the time that they did 5 years ago. Due to inflated Support play, people literally stand still and ignore mechanics in favor of maintaining DPS because what were intended to be dangerous mechanics, are now considered ignorable.
4. In years 1-2 or even 3, it required 5 players running meta DPS builds to go into classic dungeons not only for reasonable clear times, but because they were so difficult and the enemies so dangerous, that you needed a full team of actual good experienced players to approach any of realistically at all. In 2023, any mediocre pver can put exotic berserker gear onto a power reaper and go clear those dungeons by themself, in roughly the same amount of time as the year 1 full meta party, and with little to no risk of dying during the solo. This means that DPS wise, a single person in 2023 is shelling out about 4x to 5x the DPS that was capable by a single player upon the first year of launch. And sustain wise, a single player in 2023 is functioning like a year 1 DPS build that had a couple supports following him around.

Conducting your side of the argument with the strong statement that "power creep is not real" is nonsense.

You side stepped my entire post. Cherry picked one item. You also skipped the part where the basis of your argument was all of this experience you seem to have.  Further I said power creep is made up ***Because.... Let me include the full quote for you since you seem incapable. 

2 hours ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Powercreep is made up as it used as a way to account for new boons, new skills, and new professions. Of course power is higher. We need to get this game inline with where things are today. Not where things "used to be at core" my dude we are 3 expacs past core days. There were once 9 professions. We have 27 now. We cannot operate as if core is the standard. Because it simply isnt. 

You say power creep. I say its a just a word used to describe the obvious increase in the games output from launch.

You say you want things scaled back. Your walls of text dont change the fact that this is a ridiculous take. We cant go back. There's a decade of content in the game now that was not accounted for then. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by jdawgie.1835

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

6 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

You side stepped my entire post.

Because you're ignoring factual data I'm posting and making statements with nothing to support those statements. There isn't a reason to hold a discussion with you.

If you noticed @TomUjain.8206 had continued a discussion while at least explaining himself, which resulted in me realizing where our misunderstanding was, that we were talking about two different things. I now understand his point of view.

You on the other hand, are just quoting things I say and trying to discredit. You are no longer even discussing the game.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

19 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

You also skipped the part where the basis of your argument was all of this experience you seem to have.

Continuing to reference & target my play time & experience vs. your own is probably not the best route to take to fuel whatever is left of your argument.

-> For Forum - display age - Twitch

[jdawgie.1835]

21 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Continuing to reference & target my play time & experience vs. your own is probably not the best route to take to fuel whatever is left of your argument.

Trevor your not better than me bud lol. And even if you are, who really cares man. Also you brought all of that up not me remember? So dont try to use dirt you dug and push it on me like I am the one whos grandstanding. Your not getting away with passively condescending me when you talk to me. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by jdawgie.1835

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

27 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Trevor your not better than me bud lol. 

Not once did I say anything like that. What happened is I first said this: 

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Have you not played the game very long?

And it was a serious question not an emasculation, because your points of view for a person claiming to have been here this whole time avidly playing since beta, are very different than 90% of other people who have been here playing avidly since day 1. Not once did I say anything about being better than you. But you fired back with:

27 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Lol. So if were making this into a thing. I have 100% with out a doubt played the game longer than you. And at a higher level. I've been here since launch. You and I have always been cordial. No need to get rude now. 

With your response here, I noticed that you took what I had said the wrong way and had gotten very defensive and wanted to make sure that I knew that you were better than me. It was actually you that said you were better than me. That actually happened. When I noticed this I decided to drop that part of the conversation so it wouldn't abscess and become rotten.

When you said this, it was because I was avoiding going there with you, because it had nothing to do with discussing the game:

1 hour ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

You side stepped my entire post. Cherry picked one item. You also skipped the part where the basis of your argument was all of this experience you seem to have.

But you kept at it, so I decided to show you a record of my play experience so we could get past your focus on that.

Again, you then toss a response to make sure that I know that I'm not better than you.

27 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Trevor your not better than me bud lol.

Saying this over and over again seems awkwardly insecure and quite silly, considering I have in no way been driving a conversation about myself being better than you. If you reread from the top, it was your own insecurity leading you to repeatedly make comments like this.

Only now did I post about this aspect of the discussion as to show the difference in what actually was said & happened, vs. w/e it is on your end you are choosing to selectively believe.

Anyway, I'm done with this conversation. This is not productive.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[jdawgie.1835]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 Cool man. You keep cherry picking my statements. Hers the whole statment.

32 minutes ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Trevor your not better than me bud lol. And even if you are, who really cares man

Anyway man wish you well good luck and all that (This is a genuine statement) Apparently your a d2 vet good stuff good stuff. Maybe your tired, maybe I am tired, try again a different day. For what its worth I am glad there are some "middle class" pvpers like us still left. The game dies with out those of us in the middle. And like I said before I have always enjoyed our forum discourse prior to all of this so lets keep that track. Passionate people will always butt heads at time. This is my signal to call a peace here. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by jdawgie.1835

[Kuma.1503]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

No

Not only does nerfing things stop power creep, but it actually reverts it.

This is very easy to understand:

1. You buff damage the damage gets higher. You nerf damage, the damage gets lower.
2. You add a lot of super speed to something it goes a lot faster. You remove super speed from something it goes a lot slower.
3. You increase heal factors the heal goes up. You cut heal factor by 50%, the heals go down.
4. You give something stealth & teleports it has them. You take them away, it no longer has them.

Hard, logical, factual, no need for goofy metaphysical philosophy.

 

But to clarify, I think what you specifically are more referring to is the idea of, regardless and outside of how power-crept or nerfed the game is, how strong are classes/builds in relation to each other? Because we could go back and use a super non-power-crept patch from 2012 and see how Cele Elementalist was out-performing everything to the same degree that Scepter Catalyst has been doing in the past few months. So proportionately, regardless of how power-crept or nerfed a patching is, there can be the same margin of difference between one class being stronger than others, but these are two very different things we are discussing here. I am not talking about marginal difference in power or value within the intra-class dynamic in any patching. I am talking about power creep in general and what it does to distort ultimate game mechanics & dynamic in the long haul. 

For example, imagine a boxing ring designed for two normal men with boxing gloves on. Now imagine power creep where suddenly they possess the power level of saiyans. This boxing ring is no longer an adequate arena for the play. This is exactly what's happened to conquest maps that were originally designed for the significantly lower power & mobility levels upon the game's initial release. The way the game's dynamic in conquest feels now, is truly bad compared to what it felt like on the initial release. THIS is what I'm talking about when i say the power creep needs to stop.

Now if they designed a new game mode that was meant to be played with this level of power dynamic, that would be very different and if it was done right, I wouldn't be opposed to it. But increasing power & mobility while only offering us 5v5 conquest maps and the tiny 3v3 areanas, the game is continuing to feel worse and worse.

I think this ^ is where our misunderstanding was.

I'm actually going to agree with you here. 

I like that you take the time to lay out opposing arguments before you make your own. Most people don't do that and attempt to shout the other person down. Kudos. 

Onto the points you've laid out. Mobility Creep is one aspect of power creep that you can't tune using by introducing conventional counter measures. Introducing a grounding mechanic that prevents mobility skills from being used for example would not work here. 

The maps we're playing on are as old as dinosaurs. They have not been adapted to account for the increase in mobility. How long it takes a person to make it from point A to point B fundamentally affects how conquest is played. 

When builds get too fast, the opportunity cost of zerging down the opposition once you've got the snowball rolling decreases. Not only can the blob respond to split tactics more easily, but once you're caught in an unfavorable fight, it becomes harder to disengage that fight and find opportunities elsewhere. This contributes to blow out wins/loses where the losing side is ran down on repeat.

 

This is one reason among many that I push for new maps and new PvP game modes. The ones we play on now are relics of the past, and the current game doesn't fit them. 

[Hotride.2187]

I played defense dagger/gs spb and it did need a nerf. And I fought enough catas to be able to say the same for cata. Before that wb was bonkers, they got that checked too. Before that, bladesworn was too durable (played it too and, yes, shouldve been and was nerfed)

IMO nerf X has been on point enough times in the last year.  Sure not all of them, but often enough. I dont mind the threads. There are enough experienced players here that dont need half an year to know something is out of line. If anything the devs dont react fast enough.

[TomUjain.8206]

20 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

But to clarify, I think what you specifically are more referring to is the idea of, regardless and outside of how power-crept or nerfed the game is, how strong are classes/builds in relation to each other?

 

This is what I am leaning towards yes. Because right now we are ping ponging from left to right and getting nowhere. What we really need is a huge nerf -- across the board -- to all classes, that is the only way we can 1) make this fair 2) stop this visious circle 3) reduce the disorinating identiy crisis of a lot of classes shifting from one thing to another.

 

As it stands, slowly nerfing and buffing things isn't going to get us anywhere. I will also add; we need to strike that balance of damage and sustain. In regards to PVE - we need to tread carefully or we risk mobs and bosses becoming bullet spondges, which was somewhat the case a while ago -- equally we need to be careful to not be able to nuke everything into orbit by blinking.

 

In regards to PVP -- damage is too high, and buffs need reigning in, some buffs need to be exsluvie to some classes (stealth, thief only -- for example) while other buffs should be universial (might for example) I agree it is not a good outlook if everyone and everything can fart out buffs left and right.