We desperately need a decent balance patch

[Melumi.6432]

Recently it feels like games are decided by what specs you have on your team, lesser so individual skill.

IMHO:
Overwhelmingly Strong: Vindi
Too Strong: Untamed, Staff SPB, Condi Reaper, DE, Mes Support
Nearly Too Strong: Willbender

Yes, it takes skill to play the above specs, but when you mix skill with something that's already innately strong, it's unfun. Games are more volatile than ever; I can't remember the last time I had a 480/500 ranked game or anything around this region that I'd call fun, regardless of whether I'm the winner or loser.

I'm not seeking drastic nerfs (maybe on vindi regarding the dodge), I don't want specs to become obsolete like BS; we're close to achieving a relatively healthy state where most specs can be viable in some way. I'd simply prefer to fine-tune the top performers towards a more level playing field.
 

Edited July 20 by Melumi.6432

[arazoth.7290]

11 minutes ago, Melumi.6432 said:

I'm not seeking drastic nerfs (maybe on vindi regarding the dodge)

 

Death Drop instant damage removed. Let the passive buffs on it stay and add a few extra vulnerability stacks on hit + a little cripple condi. 

Once the instant damage of dodge is gone, it creates more breathing room to counter and no need to waste defensive/dodge on a dodge that does damage.

 

Other then this, no other nerfs are needed for it. This will already be enough

[Zekent.3652]

Defense staff spb is really strong and annoying to face, i hope it gets nerfed.
 

I'm bored of this mirror.

Edited July 20 by Zekent.3652

[OddFinrir.6801]

The skills and traits need to be gutted. Balance isn't possible anymore. The "good" builds can't die, do high dmg, and teleport all at the same time. It's so bad people don't even notice all the cheating going on anymore and think things like Dagger Storm are on a 20 second cooldown and than a WB can teleport indefinitely. Just hit your teleport, stand on 20 aoes while taking no damage, and hope your macro burst gets through the spam before your character model even registers to the other players.

[Saiyan.1704]

8 minutes ago, OddFinrir.6801 said:

It's so bad people don't even notice all the cheating going on anymore and think things like Dagger Storm are on a 20 second cooldown and than a WB can teleport indefinitely.

To be fair I've been accused of "tele hacking" on WB because these silver players don't even know we could have more than 6 ports lol... the surge of newbies is unreal.

[arazoth.7290]

44 minutes ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

To be fair I've been accused of "tele hacking" on WB because these silver players don't even know we could have more than 6 ports lol... the surge of newbies is unreal.

I have been called for hacking because 2 people couldn't get me below 50%, they made a ticket about it 😂

[Kozumi.5816]

We don't need anything, PvP in this game has been dead for years and Anet refuses to admit to it and strings along new players with marketing and advertisements that acts like it's a real game mode that's supported.

PvP is just a few peoples personal RMT revenue stream, and has been for years.

Edited July 20 by Kozumi.5816

[WingSwipe.3084]

8 hours ago, Melumi.6432 said:

Recently it feels like games are decided by what specs you have on your team, lesser so individual skill.

IMHO:
Overwhelmingly Strong: Vindi
Too Strong: Untamed, Staff SPB, Condi Reaper, DE, Mes Support
Nearly Too Strong: Willbender

Yes, it takes skill to play the above specs, but when you mix skill with something that's already innately strong, it's unfun. Games are more volatile than ever; I can't remember the last time I had a 480/500 ranked game or anything around this region that I'd call fun, regardless of whether I'm the winner or loser.

I'm not seeking drastic nerfs (maybe on vindi regarding the dodge), I don't want specs to become obsolete like BS; we're close to achieving a relatively healthy state where most specs can be viable in some way. I'd simply prefer to fine-tune the top performers towards a more level playing field.
 

Spellbreaker could use some tuning down for sure.

Id say that Willbenders are too strong too, the only reason I have any success against them is due to unblockable attacks. But against skilled Willbenders even that makes little difference. Its just so much, porting, self buffing, aegis spam, nuclear damage output. Only thing they dont have going is the small healthpool that you sometimes get to tickle.

[vcxxx.3159]

50 minutes ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

Spellbreaker could use some tuning down for sure.

Id say that Willbenders are too strong too, the only reason I have any success against them is due to unblockable attacks. But against skilled Willbenders even that makes little difference. Its just so much, porting, self buffing, aegis spam, nuclear damage output. Only thing they dont have going is the small healthpool that you sometimes get to tickle.

Anet has been moving the game towards a fast paced burst pvp for years now yet they still allow builds that are designed to waste your time to over perform. I say nerf spellbreaker to dust. At the very least increase their condi cleanse on weapon swap, heal, and ultility internal CD to useless levels. I would much rather face a meme rifle build that has a 50% chance of 2 shotting me than a spellbreaker thats gonna take 3 minutes to kill. While we're at it do the same to druids. The thought process behind, "Im going to log into pvp today to waste people's time" is inheritly toxic.

[TruthSeeker.3697]

11 hours ago, Melumi.6432 said:

we're close to achieving a relatively healthy state where most specs can be viable in some way.

I've heard that so many times over the years:
"We're so close! If they just nerfed the things I don't like, the balance would be the best it's been in years!" And then that feeling is gone after 10 days.

At least you mentioned a variety of specs and not only vind, but the funny thing is that things such as WB are way more problematic for the vast majority of the population. For instance, WB is just a power crept Power Herald; Low Floor, High Ceiling. Way easier to play, easier to recover from mistakes, no resource management.
Power is completely relative.
So, what's your personal philosophy? Balancing around equal representation? Or balancing around Risk and Reward? Floor vs Ceiling.
Because having everything being equally represented and still keeping things "skillful" is 100% impossible.

Balancing around tournaments and the 1% (15 players) has not been very bright either. Some players here and the devs have become so hyper-fixated on balancing around Conquest tournaments that anything outside of super fast-paced combat is always deleted from sPvP. Not very MMO friendly. Fun comes last.
Another thing, even though Condition builds aren't "meta" they are still driving off new players all the time. The conditions system is terribly flawed. Same goes for stealth.
That's more problematic for most people than a power Vindicator.
But anyway, I agree on the common consensus going around on simply deleting its damage from Death Drop.
However, I know this place, a fair amount of people that live here wont stop crying about it until it becomes unplayable and no good player bothers with vindi anymore. "It is finally balanced; I'm now killing every single vindi I find within 4 seconds."
Or instead, the devs themselves keep nerfing everything around it until it becomes a garbage spec. Typical.
And the cycle will continue.

This game mode failed because of its obsession with Conquest tournament balance and the lack of game modes for different gameplay.

11 hours ago, Melumi.6432 said:

Games are more volatile than ever; I can't remember the last time I had a 480/500 ranked game or anything around this region that I'd call fun, regardless of whether I'm the winner or loser.

That's a population and matchmaking issue. If a pvp rush barely brought in players, then there's nothing else to do.

Edited July 21 by TruthSeeker.3697

[roederich.2716]

well there been lots "balance patches" and never it brought what you people still believe is "perfect balance".

if you want to "save pvp" you need to reduce the number of specs drastically.  

if anyone thinks more specs, relics, armor stats, weapons will change anything has no clue at all.

only reducal in possibilities will bring it back. no "balance patch" in this world will do anything. cant even hear that description anymore. "balance patch" looooooooooooool

[Sovarica.4368]

I do get tired of Willbenders swirling damage being too overbearing on my team mates it's just the ultimate semi casual killer and it's remained pretty much the same since EoD so many people have completely mastered it and are just hitting Plat like it's nothing. It would have been nice if it had more alternate play styles it's just rarely seen oh and it has an insane cleave burst damage which pretty much makes me pause and not play support.

Also Staffbreaker can be a bit over bearing with it's defenses but I'm confident it will be nerfed

[WingSwipe.3084]

13 hours ago, vcxxx.3159 said:

Anet has been moving the game towards a fast paced burst pvp for years now yet they still allow builds that are designed to waste your time to over perform. I say nerf spellbreaker to dust. At the very least increase their condi cleanse on weapon swap, heal, and ultility internal CD to useless levels. I would much rather face a meme rifle build that has a 50% chance of 2 shotting me than a spellbreaker thats gonna take 3 minutes to kill. While we're at it do the same to druids. The thought process behind, "Im going to log into pvp today to waste people's time" is inheritly toxic.

Please dont nerf core traitlines, warrior already has a really tough time.

Focus on nerfing the elite spec, not core traits.

[Saiyan.1704]

13 hours ago, TruthSeeker.3697 said:

At least you mentioned a variety of specs and not only vind, but the funny thing is that things such as WB are way more problematic for the vast majority of the population. For instance, WB is just a power crept Power Herald; Low Floor, High Ceiling. Way easier to play, easier to recover from mistakes, no resource management.
Power is completely relative.
So, what's your personal philosophy? Balancing around equal representation? Or balancing around Risk and Reward? Floor vs Ceiling.
Because having everything being equally represented and still keeping things "skillful" is 100% impossible.

I've always thought this game had a class design issue. The ceiling between WB and Cata is so astronomically large that you have two different extremes going on.

WB is easy to use and even easier to master, so you have more of them farming newish players. On the other hand Cata (before it was gutted) could fill every single role on the map but very few people played like a God, so it remained unchecked for multiple seasons in a row. Even during the core cele days back in 2014, players ran at minimum 2 ele's on a team but it wasn't nearly as big of an issue in regular rank pvp... people in 2014 were still complaining about core burst guard doing too much damage 😐

 

[Kozumi.5816]

2 hours ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

yet they still allow builds that are designed to waste your time to over perform.

This has been the bane of this games PvP since the beta. I don't know why they even have tank trees in this game - they're all useless for PvE and just ruin PvP.

  

15 hours ago, TruthSeeker.3697 said:

This game mode failed because of its obsession with Conquest tournament balance and the lack of game modes for different gameplay.

As always, trying to make a game an esport kills it.

Edited July 21 by Kozumi.5816

[Eventine.8024]

I have played PvP (not competitively) since 2012. I also won the GW2 Toaster (love it). Since 2012 (12 years!!!!) I think that the Invulnerable time is too much in PvP, and even more in this moment. Between simple invulnerable, blocks, tons of skills evade. This is quite terrible. To solve this problem is quite simple: 

1. adding several unblockable boons to skills (this is useful not only in PvP but also WvW) and you increase the amount (instead of decreasing it).
2. reduce a lot the invulnerability time. For example, having each invulnerability being max 1s
3. remove or reduce the time on some of the skill evades

All these 3 points increase the skill cap and the competitiveness instead of just randomly spamming blocks and evades.

Also I wish there would be some love to ele, in particular weaver and arcane trait lines, ALL the base game skills, and the scepter. 

[aymnad.9023]

For mace untamed my target is still the unleash. If it stops giving stacks / heals less on the unleash it will have less sustain and less dmg. I can also see a change on mace 4 dmg (it already is aoe dmg with good sustain).

For vindi my priority still is death drop. Vindi / rev is not lacking good defenses. Blocks, aegis, evade on weapons are all a quite strong but doing constant dmg while dodging is so frustrating to fight.

For spellbreaker… The current build is about chaining so many defenses and mechanics that I do not know what to hit. I still hate how loaded full counter is but I doubt it will see any change… . Staff still hits hard for the sustain it brings but I do not know which skill to go for. However I am sure that I want to see sword 4 dmg reduced as it can go for 10k.

Edited July 21 by aymnad.9023

[Hotride.2187]

Me playing unranked quite a bit for the last week, averging 2 condi reapers per team every game... Woah game went full circle back to support and 2+ necros per team. Why even bother with patches, game just returns to the same degenerate states over and over again...

Edited July 21 by Hotride.2187

[Sahne.6950]

All i wish for is, that Fullcounter had a tiny bit more Cooldown.....   Its up way to frequent.

[Hotride.2187]

4 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

All i wish for is, that Fullcounter had a tiny bit more Cooldown.....   Its up way to frequent.

Versatile Power in discipline reduces FC CD too much due to a bug. There have been many posts about this, CD should go to 10.25 sec or something, but it goes to 8.75 sec.

Fix the bug, slap the extra FC CD reduction (1.5 sec) on a strength trait (cause I play str spb and I dont wanna touch defense even with gloves on), e.g. Pinnacle of Strength. Then everyone is happy.

Edited July 22 by Hotride.2187

[WingSwipe.3084]

26 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Versatile Power in discipline reduces FC counter due to a bug. There have been many posts about this, CD should go to 10.25 sec or something, but it goes to 8.75 sec.

Fix the bug, slap the extra FC CD reduction (1.5 sec) on a strength trait (cause I play str spb and I dont wanna touch defense even with gloves on), e.g. Pinnacle of Strength. Then everyone is happy.

This, warrior has so many wonky kitten interactions and half of the trait lines are bugged to either give too much of anything, too little of anything, or straight up nothing.

A HEAVY deep dive into warriors traits and trait lines is desperately needed by the devs, Im not sure I trust them to be able to fix anything with the current track record in mind.

They really need a warrior player on the balance team, or they could take a look in the warrior forum where multiple threads exist on things that need fixing and mending ASAP.

[arazoth.7290]

Nerf willbender too, too much damage + defensives + blocks same time while being offensive the same time.

After vindi nerfed, this one will dominate more, and we're already seeing a lot of them, it will be even more.

1 nerfed, another more ez to play joins the club.

[Kyraios.8954]

People complain about vindicators like they're everywhere, but I'm only seeing one or two every 5 games or so. None of them being too memorable... And unless they're top players, rarely do they make that much of an impact solo, and are easily killed under pressure from your team. 

If they use a stun break too early and eat another cc, they just fall over, vindicator energy costs are not forgiving. 

[Sahne.6950]

1 hour ago, Kyraios.8954 said:

People complain about vindicators like they're everywhere, but I'm only seeing one or two every 5 games or so. None of them being too memorable... And unless they're top players, rarely do they make that much of an impact solo, and are easily killed under pressure from your team. 

If they use a stun break too early and eat another cc, they just fall over, vindicator energy costs are not forgiving. 

psst! youre not allowed to say that here!!!  >:C

As ilustrated in numerous threads, this is obviously a case of "banana tier" op, which is very close to "milkshake op op"... but with more bananas..... and less milkshake.    You get the idea.

It has to be nerfed! The Forum has already decided with sheer logic and extremly factual facts! 

I mean.. they can dodge 15 times in 15 seconds... and Deathdrop = Ranger Maul....   i think the case is clear.

/s

Edited July 22 by Sahne.6950

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Kyraios.8954 said:

People complain about vindicators like they're everywhere, but I'm only seeing one or two every 5 games or so. None of them being too memorable... And unless they're top players, rarely do they make that much of an impact solo, and are easily killed under pressure from your team. 

If they use a stun break too early and eat another cc, they just fall over, vindicator energy costs are not forgiving. 

The only thing that is being abused because it can make a nice duo is duo queues. And in premades AT's MAT'S because double classes being allowed