aelska.4609

> @"Eugchriss.2046" said:

> It's all in the title. Being able to deal ~10k+ free damage with a passive boon is too much. And beyond that, since aegis and retaliation are complementary, guard is the only class that shouldn't have access to this boon at all since the have the monopole of aegis.

> This class retaliation uptime needs to be shaved really hard.

Retaliation is a problem as it punishes people succeeding to land many small hits more than people landing one big hit. That's an heavy counter to many weapons (e.g., you can never use GS#2 without killing yourself in a teamfight; while it is designed to be a meat grinder).

Besides that, I feel like you are especially salty towards guards. There is only one build that combines both retaliation and aegis which is bunker symbol. Because:

* Condi guard needs to keep virtues under cooldown to proc burning, which only generates retaliation when activated. It has NO aegis spam (one block each 32s cannot be considered OP with in nowaday's game). This aegis is untreated and does nothing besides a single block. So basically a build without retaliation and aegis.

* DPS guard IS heavily dependent to retaliation (huge damage boost) BUT has NO aegis spam (same as condi guard).

* Symbol bunker guard has both ... and way more: this build relies heavily on aegis + big symbols + protection to survive. Pure of heart makes aegis a wonderful healing boost. Retaliation is a by-product of wrathful spirit minor trait that is conveniently located ... in symbols traitline.

If you are mad against condi guard and DPS guard, trust me it, is not because you got hit by retaliation. These builds have low active defenses and can't sustain "many small hits" enough for retaliation to be actually effective. Dont facetank their burst and damage them while their burst is over.

If you are mad against bunker symbol then I have to confess I am too. But hitting retaliation output of this build (or guard in general) won't solve the problem, as it is only a by-product. Reduce/remove the damage of their symbols (or remove Writh or persistence trait) so that it is more healthy in a node-based gamemode. Rework mace so that it is not a bunker weapon anymore (#2 offers way too much healing, #3 got powercreeped in 2016 patch -Who said HoT ??- with massive damage + protection + aegis).

Short answer to your title: No.

Long answer to your title: Absolutely No.

Answer to your post: it focuses too much on burn guard to be relevant with the title. But it definitely is too rewarding for the use of 2 singles abilities.

Fortunately, due to the general low skill floor and low population, this build will be enough to carry you to Plat 2. Welcome to the Dame/Baroness of arena title wearers.

It's called pre-nerf Bristleback.

Although addressed specifically to rez skills, I wouldn't mind your suggestion extended to _any skill_.

Iff CC was a rare thing, which is not.

Dunno, I found it to be quite interactive tbh

(More honestly it is more meme potential than a problem if you don't do like me. Ignore and go on other nodes. I'd have expected it to be fixed in small balance patch if anet dev team didn't get killed in Jormag's landing.)

Fun thing about burn guard is that the only few builds it counters are quite cancerous by themselves:

- Stone earth tempest

- rangers (any kind)

- deadeyes

- renegade

- rezbots (any kind)

While it is inefficient vs nearly all the other builds.

You are fighting a build that has no stability, very limited defenses and the lowest mobility in game. It can surprise you once, but it's about all.

I'm not saying it doesn't deserve nerfs. Just saying that amongst all the noob-friendly mechanics we have out there, this one might be the most counterable.

> @"FrownyClown.8402" said:

> I don't think anyone has ever complained about weakness. If anything it should give -50% condition duration too.

A little search on this forum with threads having "weakness" in the title will show you how wrong you are.

Besides yes, I am the first one to complain about the RNG of weakness. If it was not a problem before, it wasn't because of the effect, but because on how rare this condition was.

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> Make so it's -50% of critical damage, not -50% chance for critical hits. The ordeal is annoying for either parties and there's enough RNG with critical chance from precision already.

There are thousands of way to change it for no RNG. OP proposed one that I might not fully agree with as it, as it barely impacts the damage output of bunkers while shaving the one of DPS. But I do trust Anet to bring a change that is both Consistent and Balanced.

Oh wait.

That's frustrating for both sides, but that's a low population problem. Even a perfect matchmaker won't be able to solve that in a finite amount of time.

Not so long ago unranked (and ranked) was proposing decent match quality (besides balance, just talking about player level) but MM cannot cope anymore.

On the "hidden" side ... i'd actually like to have it visible team-wise. Not as trashtalk material, but out of curiosity; and because I will be more encline to forgive a silver player making silver mistakes than a "potential platinum" one.

One of the billion things we expect to be fixed by small patches that never occur.

They just tried to launch a new PvP season, don't panick.

It's only the 24th time it happens to us.

> @"Paradoxoglanis.1904" said:

> Its been too long since someone complained about how dumb holo is right now. Well, they are still dumb. Also please remove flashbang thanks.

People are slowly accepting that their favourite game went the reterd way.

Power rev is so so badly designed overall, animations are way too long, mitigated by fast hitting strong skills. Fighting it is basically waiting 3s to give one hit, and repeat... Boring as hell.

Keep things simple, there are already counters to CC (breakstun, stability or dodge/block/blind/invu cover the whole "prevention/guerison/avoidance" stuff).

Now I agree that there are waaaay too many CC in this game (as of everything else) but I'd rather see the root of the problem be addressed by lowering the number of skills that apply CC / increasing their CD. They should have removed the CC from damage skills, not the damage from CC skills :)

How do you expect me to have fun in this meta if I can't trashtalk people anymore ?

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> @"aelska.4609" condition cleansing works in a way of last in, first out.

> there is NO rng involved, this is way some condi bursts dont output maximing dmg and in turn apply cover conditions at the end, it adds another layer of depth to the game, to understand how to apply conditions, cover them AND know how often and how much a class cleanses

Considering how often these applications are applied, and how many skills apply different conditions at once, from a human PoV that is RNG. Frequently checking the condition bar and remembering the order of application of 12 conditions that not only can appear and disappear but also stack; in order to precisely know how many cleanses are required to cleanse that little 10 burning stacks, is beyond human capabilities. It does not matter if "de facto" it isn't RNG, at the human scale it is.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> > @"aelska.4609" said:

> > > @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> > > Can someone really explain why we are in a co do some spam meta? I am very I retested to know the inner worming of exactly why this is the case ...

> >

> > Easy. Spammed random balance patches lead us here.

> > Have you ever read a balance patch note entirely and told yourself "Wow these changes are so consistent and they definitely are giving a soul to my class,. That pushes me forward to master it." ?

> > Me neither.

> >

>

> Not the answer I was looking for. I wasn't an explanation of why the meta is Condi or aoe. A breakdown of the classes and builds in it.

I'll nuance more with a bit less trolling :) In my opinion it's wrong to say meta is condi or AoE. If you look the meta builds from godsofpvp, you will find equally as many builds playing AoE as single targets, or power and condi.

However, what we can agree on (as the OP of this post), is that it is not fun to fight against. You will see your opponent comfortably sitting inside his nodes in the middle of AoEs, and all you will be able to do is wait for them to disappear.

In 1v1 it is still manageable. In 2v2 (or more), you can be sure there will always be AoEs on the floor and you'll be forced to walk on it. With all the visual clutter, you might not even distinguish what AoE you are stepping on, and that's a problem. If you are playing a AoE class, the best way to win a teamfight is not to hold your AoE for the best moment, but just spam it over and over again.

There was a time where AoE were so little present that even in WvW you could differentiate what was a necromancer well from a static field; and could react accordingly (pop stab or not ?). This time is long gone, and now all you see is a random red circle that you don't care about, because there will always be one below you.

The condition problem is an other one, and my main reproaches would be:

1. 3 of them (bleeding/burning/torment) do the same things, which is boring.

2. Chilled is just a glorified version of cripple (more powerful + messes up cooldowns), which is boring.

3. Weakness is now overly present for a total RNG-power killer condtion

4. Fear is now the only CC that deals insane amount of damage (when traited by necro), with a duration scaling up with a stat.

5. There is no differentiation between "damage conditions" and "cc conditions" when cleansing. So if you are chilled and have 10stacks of burn and use a cleanse, you have 50% chance of dying the next second.

6. Like everything else in the game, their application is so frequent that it just feels like spamming conditions vs spamming cleansings.

7. Condibuilds feel more tanky to fight against than power builds.

An other way to see if something is healthy to the game is by asking yourself: if a pro player (or a group of) faces an inexperienced player (or a group of) while playing the same build, would you be able to recognize the pro player directly ? If the answer is no, then something is wrong.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> Can someone really explain why we are in a co do some spam meta? I am very I retested to know the inner worming of exactly why this is the case ...

Easy. Spammed random balance patches lead us here.

Have you ever read a balance patch note entirely and told yourself "Wow these changes are so consistent and they definitely are giving a soul to my class,. That pushes me forward to master it." ?

Me neither.

Nothing surprising, as it didn't get any change since it got introduced.

That particularly triggers me because it could be way better with simple fixes:

* invulnerability if the game has not yet started. I can't tell how stupid it is to be put in combat when swapping build.

* Totally disable "faster rez" traits/skills.

* Automatically give the win to the team with 2 players alive if the other team has one dead by the end of the timer.

* No class stacking.

Meta will still be trash, but that will take longer to fix.

Like many other options in the game, it's balanced but cheese. The extreme power coefficient is just an unadmitted oversight from big patch, as it was for pet damage coefficients and grenades.

Indeed, sometimes I struggle to cover legacy of foefire's central node with my symbols when not treated.

To be honest I quite find every class to be playable, and I wonder if build diversity has ever been that high in gw2 history.

On the down side most build options are so dumb that you can only differentiate a good player from a bad one by the way they trashtalk you in teamchat.

Very good news, voice acting is excellent in gw2 and it is good you can keep that up ! :)

If your friend really quit just because of holo, i'd say he's quite a pussy. Complains about holos are legitimate but they only overperforms slightly. They are not a total nuke either and they are really manageable if you keep your awareness up.

But if he quits because there are too many things unfun to fight against, and because the game development not only lags behind but goes in the opposite direction, that I would understand.

That's one of the many bad designs that push people off pvp while getting cherished by anet.

I can only speak for myself, but several reasons prevent me from playing ranked:

* Meta is quite boring, bunker builds are legion, meta dps builds are oppressive while having strong survival options at the same time

* Random toxicity is overly present and nothing is done to help that

* Patches are disappointing, changes feel random and actual problems are too rarely addressed.

* (+) I can't be bothered to play a gamemode that isn't fun anymore for the sole reward of a title I already have.