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The Elephant in the balance room: How Cheese has evolved to hurt GW2 PvP more than balance.


Master Ketsu.4569

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@"DoomNexus.5324" said:

To enter Stealth, a Thief must build for it through traits, utilities, and combos.Nothing about this is difficult.Yes it is.. at least if you want any substantial amount of stealth time. Most of it only barely lasts long enough to try 1 backstab or something.. And if you want to go invis for just a bit longer (often not even long enough to outrun someone - since invis != invul and everyone's just spaming AoE and stuff which ofc still hits - you have to trait into Shadow Arts or something and therefore have to giveup something else extremely critical. As thief your traitlines are pretty much fixed, there are no real alternatives. You basically can't run any thief build without trickery and ditching deadly arts would also be very substantial. The third traitline then is either an elite spec or in case of s/d acrobatics and swapping it out would greatly reduce your utility (besides shadow arts being pretty much useless with s/d since you virtually never stealth)It's funny.. thief is one the least stealthy classes nowadays. S/D basically provides no stealth other than a veeeeery occasional Dagger5 (which costs a fuckton of initiative and doesn't do a lot of dmg - its primary use was for D/D into backstab I guess)

Right, but again, all I've said was that nothing about getting access to stealth or entering stealth is
difficult.
For Thief, there is absolutely nothing difficult about getting stealth on your bar or going into stealth. Whether or not going into stealth at any given point is "meta" is up for debate (particularly considering how almost no meta Thief build really utilizes it in huge amounts--outside of maybe the Deadeye gimmick--typically opting instead for extra evades and teleports), but what you're basically trying to argue is how just because stealth doesn't operate as a win-button or let you get away from every threat possible, it's "difficult" to use.
Seriously, just spare me. That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.
I wanted to completely agree with you (because apparently I indeed didn't exactly address your issues with stealth with my commentary) - until you got condescending and insulted me (and the playerbase) unnecessarily. I guess I just quote you back on this: That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.And your insults continue: v

@"DoomNexus.5324" said:Being able to outrun as thief has become magnitudes more difficult. Almost every class has either pretty good in-combat mobility (through teleports, blinks, leaps, charges, what not) or a huge range. Unless you have ez and instant access to LoS you realistically can't outrun ranger or mesmer for example.

You're basically failing at a map-knowledge level: a "skill" so fundamental and superficial that anyone should have it after playing GW2 for more than a few weeks (or even just after watching a video on some of the gimmick teleport spots among the PvP levels). Know your gimmick teleport spots and terrain through which you can teleport.

Stop belittling me lol.. "Seriously, just spare me".

You also can just juke people repeatedly by doing things like getting chased up to that bridge area which borders Temple mid, dropping down from the bridge, and then just Shortbow 5'ing back up to the top of the bridge again from underneath. How is this even difficult?? You have evades to cover yourself while you buy time and reposition for this stuff too.

Did you just describe how to kite? Because when I'm talking about "outrunning" I mean "catch up with me when I try to disengage because I'm about to die" not kiting.. because I call kiting kiting, you know? And I don't want to reposition when I try to outrun, I want to get away as far and as quickly as I can.Don't get me wrong, of course thief has superior possibilities for resetting the fight and disengaging over a lot of other classes but my statement of "outrunning became magnitudes harder" still stands.

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@DoomNexus.5324 said:

To enter Stealth, a Thief must build for it through traits, utilities, and combos.Nothing about this is difficult.Yes it is.. at least if you want any substantial amount of stealth time. Most of it only barely lasts long enough to try 1 backstab or something.. And if you want to go invis for just a bit longer (often not even long enough to outrun someone - since invis != invul and everyone's just spaming AoE and stuff which ofc still hits - you have to trait into Shadow Arts or something and therefore have to giveup something else extremely critical. As thief your traitlines are pretty much fixed, there are no real alternatives. You basically can't run any thief build without trickery and ditching deadly arts would also be very substantial. The third traitline then is either an elite spec or in case of s/d acrobatics and swapping it out would greatly reduce your utility (besides shadow arts being pretty much useless with s/d since you virtually never stealth)It's funny.. thief is one the least stealthy classes nowadays. S/D basically provides no stealth other than a veeeeery occasional Dagger5 (which costs a fuckton of initiative and doesn't do a lot of dmg - its primary use was for D/D into backstab I guess)

Right, but again, all I've said was that nothing about getting access to stealth or entering stealth is
difficult.
For Thief, there is absolutely nothing difficult about getting stealth on your bar or going into stealth. Whether or not going into stealth at any given point is "meta" is up for debate (particularly considering how almost no meta Thief build really utilizes it in huge amounts--outside of maybe the Deadeye gimmick--typically opting instead for extra evades and teleports), but what you're basically trying to argue is how just because stealth doesn't operate as a win-button or let you get away from every threat possible, it's "difficult" to use.
Seriously, just spare me. That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.
I wanted to completely agree with you (because apparently I indeed didn't exactly address your issues with stealth with my commentary) - until you got condescending and insulted me (and the playerbase) unnecessarily. I guess I just quote you back on this: That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.And your insults continue: v

@DoomNexus.5324 said:Being able to outrun as thief has become magnitudes more difficult. Almost every class has either pretty good in-combat mobility (through teleports, blinks, leaps, charges, what not) or a huge range. Unless you have ez and instant access to LoS you realistically can't outrun ranger or mesmer for example.

You're basically failing at a map-knowledge level: a "skill" so fundamental and superficial that anyone should have it after playing GW2 for more than a few weeks (or even just after watching a video on some of the gimmick teleport spots among the PvP levels). Know your gimmick teleport spots and terrain through which you can teleport.

Stop belittling me lol.. "Seriously, just spare me".

You also can just juke people repeatedly by doing things like getting chased up to that bridge area which borders Temple mid, dropping down from the bridge, and then just Shortbow 5'ing back up to the top of the bridge again from underneath. How is this even difficult?? You have evades to cover yourself while you buy time and reposition for this stuff too.

Did you just describe how to kite? Because when I'm talking about "outrunning" I mean "catch up with me when I try to disengage because I'm about to die" not kiting.. because I call kiting kiting, you know? And I don't want to reposition when I try to outrun, I want to get away as far and as quickly as I can.Don't get me wrong, of course thief has superior possibilities for resetting the fight and disengaging over a lot of other classes but my statement of "outrunning became magnitudes harder" still stands.

Evading hitscan by teleporting through LoS blocks is far more powerful than trying to outrun hitscan by doing nothing but covering raw distance units; that's not even up for debate. "Get away as far as I can," is not the thought process of something who is actively planning on how to escape an already deteriorated situation; that sort of panicked thinking is most likely just going to get you into an exposed position. There are so many ways to completely shake opponents without really moving much distance at all when you have teleports galore like Thief. All you need is super-basic map knowledge of teleport spots. And how you feel about my choice of words doesn't add any wrinkles to your brain.

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@Kageseigi.2150 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:Except the Thief is constantly pressuring un-guarded nodes, and can easily inflict troublesome damage to lone players without putting himself at too much risk.

NOTICE THIS!!!

We have gone from the Thief being cheese because Stealth is OP to the Thief being OP because it can pressure
empty
points and cause "troublesome damage" to isolated targets, and at one point near launch, it could actually kill things!

This is why Thief players don't take complaints seriously. Honestly, listen to yourselves!

Yup, Thieves are so special! I'm sure other professions are extremely envious of the abilities to pressure empty points and cause troublesome damage to lone targets!

I guess I should just give up my slot as a Thief so someone else can have the privilege of playing this ultimate and effortless class! I mean, I must be taking up an exclusive slot, right? Why else wouldn't everybody be playing it? After all, it seems that I've been playing it wrong the whole time!

Mobility is the most important thing in a conquest format, especially in a game with baseline movement that is as sluggish as what is featured in GW2. A character able to more or less freely cover massive distances is going to put pressure on even things like teamfights happening on the other side of the map just because any team is going to know that if an enemy Thief isn't on screen, then they are going to be losing conquest nodes. I don't get why you're so triggered about this lol.

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@Dreddo.9865 said:It's funny how topics tend to get so many replies irrelevant with the OP. Let me help. This post is about cheese builds and how they annoy/ discourage players.

It really feels like the Thief class just has no function or identity that would fit into a game designed around risk/reward and well-timed combat. The moment that people start talking about what GW2 would look like if PvP had a higher skill ceiling, we get problems with players who have devoted a lot of time to the specs which break most of the rules.

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@Swagg.9236 said:Mobility is the most important thing in a conquest format, especially in a game with baseline movement that is as sluggish as what is featured in GW2.

Except Conquest isn't a race. It's all about capturing and defending points through combat. A Thief may be able to consistently get to a certain place faster than others, but unless that place is actually undefended, then mobility is moot. The smaller the map, the less important it is.

Yes, baseline movement is sluggish for everyone... INCLUDING the Thief. The Thief has access to high mobility that others may not have, but it's not THAT extreme... certainly not enough to consistently flip points if the opposing team builds and operates in a manner to counter it.

The Thief's mobility advantage just isn't enough to make up for its lack of combat disadvantage. Combat capability is much superior in Conquest the vast majority of time. Combat capability allows you to impose your will on the battlefield. Mobility does not. Mobility requires that the other team makes mistakes, and only allows you opportunities to punish them for it IF the mistakes are bad enough. But again, the Thief is not THAT much faster simply getting from Point A to Point B than several other professions... especially when you factor in the readiness to fight once they arrive at Point B. A Thief using Shortbow 5 is going to be out of gas.

I keep saying this over and over: the Thief in Conquest is like the Seeker in Quidditch. Except there is no Golden Snitch.

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I should pop back into my thread to re-mention that "OP" and "Cheese" are two different concepts. Especially in Conquest.

Take Rifle+Sword/Pistol Deadeye. Anyone who understands this build knows that played properly, it cannot die 1v1 to anything. BUT it also can't 1v1 on point. It's also a pure cheese build that relies on infinitely resetting the fight via stealth until it gets a favored outcome.

Problem is, if this build goes up against a good spellbreaker at far node it will take the DE over a minute to kill him. All the while the SB has full control of the point, and can instantly take the point back as soon as he respawns. So while the DE is "Technically" winning the 1v1, in terms of points the spellbreaker is actually generating more for his team. This is one of the many reasons why SB is meta and Rifle DE is just considered "Playable".

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GW2 was destined to go this route. It wasn't hard to see at the beginning though I believe people were in denial.

The foundational problems with combat are as follows:

  • Evade on skills
  • Immunity
  • Hard CCs: stun and fear
  • Thief initiative design
  • GW2 Mesmer design
  • Lack of cast bars
  • Excessive spam with graphical effects cluttering the screen

We are 7 years into gw2 life span, nothing has gotten better. Its slowly gotten worse. Its because the game can't get better if the foundation remains the same. The only way we would see real improvement is if Anet nuked GW2 pvp entirely, recycled the assets remake it from the beginning using GW1 as a blue print. Other wise what will continue to happen is the same thing that has been happening from the beginning. More spam, more power, more cheese, less animations it won't stop ever.

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OP missed the CC conditions , the so called cover conditions ha, most of them are the real killer, you manage to clear the burns, confusion and torment but that 1 minute 30 cripple somehow is still on you and guess what you get steamrolled by something or the damage conditions are back on you. The fun part is that they stack on top of each other, hard cc doesn't stack if you are stunned for 3 seconds but someone knocks you down for 1 you are out of the stun, but you can still layer hard cc with "soft" cc the nightmare combo immobilize into stun.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I realized that I somewhat abandoned my own thread without clarifying some of the things in it. Apologies for the lateness of this reply.

@DoomNexus.5324 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:
TL;DR: Anet please start considering counterplay and interactive gameplay into your balance decisions more often. The current trend of not doing so is putting the excellent combat system GW2 has to waste and making people quit the game.

And Anet skipping straight to TLDR be like "Y da heck you need counterplay against raid bosses?"

Really good post tho. Agreed.

lol.But being serious, most of the balance changes Anet makes don't really seem to be for raids -some are- but most seem geared towards mid-high level PvP and WvW.

The mistake the balance team keeps making seems to come more into their philosophy and approach to balance. Every balance patch the goal seems to be two things, 1- Shaking up the meta by changing a few underperforming skills/traits around and 2- Toning down overperforming specs by hitting some of their kit. While it isn't necessarily bad to do things this way, the point I am trying to make is that Anet is currently missing a key ingredient: which is that they should also be asking themselves each balance patch if the changes are helping make full use of GW2s combat system to encourage skillful play. They currently don't really do this...at all really, and it's a huge amount of wasted potential. Occasionally one of their dartboard nerfs/buffs will do it, but it always feels random. A broken clock is right twice per day.

@Kageseigi.2150 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:
-Stealth
works in GW2 in such a way that seriously bugs out depending on latency and often desyncs animations for 1/2 a second after revealing. You can even precast a ton of skills while stealthed and they will all hit before your model even renders on other players screens. Anets current model of fixing this problem is to add revealed on cast to certain skills - while this is a good fix that should be added to more heavy hitters, a better way would be to just add better counters to stealth. There are a lot of underpowered abilities in the game that are due for a buff, and just adding "Reveals nearby enemies 600 range" to a few utilities for every class would go a long way.

Please... no more Revealed skills unless Thieves are given some form of immunity to them. Stealth Thieves are too squishy to survive without the ability to hide, and most don't hit that hard (relatively speaking) even from Stealth. Not only is a Thief in Stealth giving up control of a point in Conquest, but being locked out of Stealth negates an entire traitline.

Not only can Thieves not contest a point in Stealth, but they cannot counter Stealth either... they have no Revealing skills. So they are just as at risk of other Stealthed foes as anyone else, perhaps even more so. And seeing that almost all of their defenses are active, they cannot mitigate the damage coming from an invisible attack. This is especially troublesome for non-Dagger/Pistol/Rifle Thieves who cannot enter Stealth on demand simply to avoid getting hit.

Now, it would be a different matter if "Reveal" skills only removed a Thief from Stealth instead of locking it out completely. But until given a trait or some other method of countering Revealed, Thieves have enough trouble already. Stealth is just as much a defensive tool for the Thief than it is an offensive one.

I probably didn't clarify this well enough.

I mean more skills should get the "Death's judgement" treatment in that they give revealed on cast if used from stealth. Heck, Anet could potentially put this in the game as a base mechanic for any skill that does over X power and targets a player. It would immediately make a lot of builds have more interactivity to them. It also would be a bandaid-fix to the issues caused by stealth and latency.

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@Master Ketsu.4569 said:Every Holosmith and their mom and their moms mom and their moms moms mom does the same thing: Elixer U, Rifle CC, Spam forge skills, maybe add a photon wall if you care enough, did you win the fight? Yes- gg! No- Elixer S reset fight with healing turret.4 out of 5 of skills are core engineer skills, with core engineer traits making some of them strong (alchemy).

So what exactly is the target of the nerf here?

All the core engineers running around in sPvP are too OP?

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Master Ketsu.4569 said:Every Holosmith and their mom and their moms mom and their moms moms mom does the same thing: Elixer U, Rifle CC, Spam forge skills, maybe add a photon wall if you care enough, did you win the fight? Yes- gg! No- Elixer S reset fight with healing turret.4 out of 5 of skills are core engineer skills, with core engineer traits making some of them strong (alchemy).

So what exactly is the
target
of the nerf here?

All the core engineers running around in sPvP are too OP?

Core traits, skills, and utilities have never once ever been off limits when it comes to targeted nerfs towards over performing builds.

There's no such thing as an over performing elite specialization that doesn't have two also over performing core traitlines at it's back.

This is and has always been such a pedantic argument. People have whined about their crappy niche builds being collateral damage because they share elements of overpowered or toxic builds since before elite specializations have been a thing. The immediate health of the meta that impacts literally everyone in the game mode is more important than any one crappy nonmeta build just one guy is running.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:Every Holosmith and their mom and their moms mom and their moms moms mom does the same thing: Elixer U, Rifle CC, Spam forge skills, maybe add a photon wall if you care enough, did you win the fight? Yes- gg! No- Elixer S reset fight with healing turret.4 out of 5 of skills are core engineer skills, with core engineer traits making some of them strong (alchemy).

So what exactly is the
target
of the nerf here?

All the core engineers running around in sPvP are too OP?

Core traits, skills, and utilities have
never once ever
been off limits when it comes to targeted nerfs towards over performing builds.

There's no such thing as an over performing elite specialization that doesn't have two also over performing core traitlines at it's back.

This is and has always been such a pedantic argument. People have whined about their crappy niche builds being collateral damage because they share elements of overpowered or toxic builds since before elite specializations have been a thing. The immediate health of the meta that impacts literally everyone in the game mode is more important than any one crappy nonmeta build just one guy is running.

I do agree that Core shouldn't be nerfed or gutted because an E-spec is over-performing. The E-spec in question should get a hard look at and what works on core shouldn't work for the spec? This way people who want to play the core profession can and don't have to worry about a "Spec" causing problems for a whole class, but this would require balance to have a point in which it can actually happen... which I doubt will ever be a thing.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:Every Holosmith and their mom and their moms mom and their moms moms mom does the same thing: Elixer U, Rifle CC, Spam forge skills, maybe add a photon wall if you care enough, did you win the fight? Yes- gg! No- Elixer S reset fight with healing turret.4 out of 5 of skills are core engineer skills, with core engineer traits making some of them strong (alchemy).

So what exactly is the
target
of the nerf here?

All the core engineers running around in sPvP are too OP?

Core traits, skills, and utilities have
never once ever
been off limits when it comes to targeted nerfs towards over performing builds.

There's no such thing as an over performing elite specialization that doesn't have two also over performing core traitlines at it's back.

This is and has always been such a pedantic argument. People have whined about their crappy niche builds being collateral damage because they share elements of overpowered or toxic builds since before elite specializations have been a thing. The immediate health of the meta that impacts literally everyone in the game mode is more important than any one crappy nonmeta build just one guy is running.

See this is where I think the OP's point kind of comes into play especially in regards to elite specs but also the buffs and reworks we've seen to accommodate them:

"Cheese in GW2 seems to reach increasing heights every balance patch, with classes being nerfed around the cheese rather than just...nerfing the cheese. When you nerf everything except the cheese, that just makes it so pretty soon all that is left is cheese. And when the game is cheese, the game dies."

In this example how many of that rotation is actually from core as it was in core?Elixir S but even that got buffed to be a true immunity.Overcharged Shot is almost the same but range increased to 1200.

Elixir U used to always give quickness through haste or quickening zephyr and be a stunbreak but that stab is new and very strong.Photon Forge skills are basically a free, very streamlined and effective kit.Photon Wall is new but I would honestly say one of the more balanced skills around at the moment.Healing Turret has nearly always been one of the best heals in the game and best on Engineer by a mile.What wasn't mentioned was the sustain from heat therapy during the Elixir S and reset.

During HoT people stopped using pistols, rifles and shields as much of the playerbase used the grossly overtuned (compared to core at that time) hammer and scrapper. What ANet then did was buff the living hell out of those weapons over and over again in weird ways instead of tackling the actual problem. The cool downs and coefficients on hammer were significantly higher than that of core. When Scrapper waned in the meta they buffed core to bring back engineer but a buff to core is a buff to elite so we had it come back and be a strong fairly passive bruiser with easy resets and not really using kits like we used to.

It wasn't until PoF hit that we finally saw the significant reductions to scrapper that were needed to make core engineer a competitive option compared to Scrapper for PvP environments for most people. However we got Holosmith at that point bringing about a whole host of funny things and we also got the rework of Inventions.

I kinda forgot the rest of what I was going to say but essentially in all this the sustain and kit holosmith is providing isn't being touched by and large except for the frankly outrageous stuff like photonic shockwave range while it's more likely they will target core traits which affects under performing specs and other elites that aren't over performing at the moment.

Sometimes I do agree the core trait is too strong and needs adjustments, especially when it's from an ill thought through rework done previously. A good example is the recharge reduction to diversion given from mantra of distraction facilitating an increase in CC from mesmer. However a lot of the bonkers stuff is being nerfed around instead of being properly tackled, like heat therapy.

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@apharma.3741 said:

@"Master Ketsu.4569" said:Every Holosmith and their mom and their moms mom and their moms moms mom does the same thing: Elixer U, Rifle CC, Spam forge skills, maybe add a photon wall if you care enough, did you win the fight? Yes- gg! No- Elixer S reset fight with healing turret.4 out of 5 of skills are core engineer skills, with core engineer traits making some of them strong (alchemy).

So what exactly is the
target
of the nerf here?

All the core engineers running around in sPvP are too OP?

Core traits, skills, and utilities have
never once ever
been off limits when it comes to targeted nerfs towards over performing builds.

There's no such thing as an over performing elite specialization that doesn't have two also over performing core traitlines at it's back.

This is and has always been such a pedantic argument. People have whined about their crappy niche builds being collateral damage because they share elements of overpowered or toxic builds since before elite specializations have been a thing. The immediate health of the meta that impacts literally everyone in the game mode is more important than any one crappy nonmeta build just one guy is running.

See this is where I think the OP's point kind of comes into play especially in regards to elite specs but also the buffs and reworks we've seen to accommodate them:

"Cheese in GW2 seems to reach increasing heights every balance patch, with classes being nerfed around the cheese rather than just...nerfing the cheese.
When you nerf everything except the cheese, that just makes it so pretty soon all that is left is cheese. And when the game is cheese, the game dies."

In this example how many of that rotation is actually from core as it was in core?Elixir S but even that got buffed to be a true immunity.Overcharged Shot is almost the same but range increased to 1200.

Elixir U used to always give quickness through haste or quickening zephyr and be a stunbreak but that stab is new and very strong.Photon Forge skills are basically a free, very streamlined and effective kit.Photon Wall is new but I would honestly say one of the more balanced skills around at the moment.Healing Turret has nearly always been one of the best heals in the game and best on Engineer by a mile.What wasn't mentioned was the sustain from heat therapy during the Elixir S and reset.

During HoT people stopped using pistols, rifles and shields as much of the playerbase used the grossly overtuned (compared to core at that time) hammer and scrapper. What ANet then did was buff the living hell out of those weapons over and over again in weird ways instead of tackling the actual problem. The cool downs and coefficients on hammer were significantly higher than that of core. When Scrapper waned in the meta they buffed core to bring back engineer but a buff to core is a buff to elite so we had it come back and be a strong fairly passive bruiser with easy resets and not really using kits like we used to.

It wasn't until PoF hit that we finally saw the significant reductions to scrapper that were needed to make core engineer a competitive option compared to Scrapper for PvP environments for most people. However we got Holosmith at that point bringing about a whole host of funny things and we also got the rework of Inventions.

I kinda forgot the rest of what I was going to say but essentially in all this the sustain and kit holosmith is providing isn't being touched by and large except for the frankly outrageous stuff like photonic shockwave range while it's more likely they will target core traits which affects under performing specs and other elites that aren't over performing at the moment.

Sometimes I do agree the core trait is too strong and needs adjustments, especially when it's from an ill thought through rework done previously. A good example is the recharge reduction to diversion given from mantra of distraction facilitating an increase in CC from mesmer. However a lot of the bonkers stuff is being nerfed around instead of being properly tackled, like heat therapy.

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