Balance Update

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

We are way past a balance update and at the very least some comments on what's coming. I'm sick of the amount of CC, things like perma stealth, hell feels like almost every damned class has invisibility. Don't even get me started on things like druids who can live forever one on one, overly powerful condition classes. We need another balance run which was promised with greater frequency and yet here we are months since the last go around without so much as a tweak.

Can we get an update?

[Crazy.6029]

This is just my opinion, but, this meta is very boring. I cant quite figure out what makes it so boring, but to me, it is very boring. I get the toning down of damage, but CC and healing is just blah. I almost would rather have kill somebody in 2 secs meta back, at least it was intense at times. This is just running around and living for ever. Is this supposed to help players feel they are doing good or something? I don't get it. Maybe more balance will be coming to fix this boring meta.

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

Stealth in general is a good mechanic, but they are slowly giving more and more to more classes. It should be relegated to thieves and mesmers primarily.

And yea... rangers and revs are insane right now 1v1.

 

On a side note, id like to see them help deadeyes become more viable in spvp.

 

The lack of raw damage makes all these pesky condi builds sprout out of the woodwork.

[Samug.6512]

Nothing changed in the meta. Spellbreakers still dictates the battle with Winds of Disenchantment. The only difference is you go down in 2 seconds to 20 stacks of Torment and 15 Burns instead of 15k Coalesence of Ruins.

 

I despise Cmc not changing bubble skill just because "i LikE tHiS skIlL".

[DemonSeed.3528]

Speaking of the update, it's really about time they start going back to look at ridiculous changes like 300s cd's. I find it disturbing that they just left it at that until now without even going back to it.

[Melian.5368]

> @"DemonSeed.3528" said:

> Speaking of the update, it's really about time they start going back to look at ridiculous changes like 300s cd's. I find it disturbing that they just left it at that until now without even going back to it.

 

Yep, this is just ridiculous. I never understood the logic behind these nerfs. At least remove them and change into something else.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

> @"Melian.5368" said:

> > @"DemonSeed.3528" said:

> > Speaking of the update, it's really about time they start going back to look at ridiculous changes like 300s cd's. I find it disturbing that they just left it at that until now without even going back to it.

>

> Yep, this is just ridiculous. I never understood the logic behind these nerfs. At least remove them and change into something else.

 

Its laziness plain and simple.

[Doug.4930]

> @"Crazy.6029" said:

> This is just my opinion, but, this meta is very boring. I cant quite figure out what makes it so boring, but to me, it is very boring. I get the toning down of damage, but CC and healing is just blah. I almost would rather have kill somebody in 2 secs meta back, at least it was intense at times. This is just running around and living for ever. Is this supposed to help players feel they are doing good or something? I don't get it. Maybe more balance will be coming to fix this boring meta.

 

Seen a few people who think this and I don't quite understand it. I far far far prefer this meta over the previous. Just from the thief perspective its nice to have actual fights where I need to make decisions and conserve my skills instead of just spamming the target for 25k crits and oneshotting them. I mean why bother to learn my opponents build/skills/mannerisms when i can literally one hit KO them?

 

Last Meta was the worst, this one is a step in the right direction. But as always there needs to be far more frequent balance updates.

[Dadnir.5038]

> @"SlitheSlivier.1908" said:

> Stealth in general is a good mechanic

 

That was the funniest thing I've read in a while.

Objectively, stealth is too potent visually (There is basically no way to see through it), too easy to enter into (no matter whether you're seen or not you can enter stealth. Stealth should at least require to get behind your target out of sight) and sorely lack any drawbacks (like in some other licences where getting into stealth reduce your movement speed or damage for example).

[Svarty.8019]

Don't worry guys, we've been on a four-to-six week balance update cadence since the February megapatch.

 

Oh... it's June.

[Samug.6512]

> @"Svarty.8019" said:

> Don't worry guys, we've been on a four-to-six week balance update cadence since the February megapatch.

>

> Oh... it's June.

 

wait was the ranger bird nerf not satisfying enough for you? it's a completely different game ever since!

[UNOwen.7132]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> > @"SlitheSlivier.1908" said:

> > Stealth in general is a good mechanic

>

> That was the funniest thing I've read in a while.

> Objectively, stealth is too potent visually (There is basically no way to see through it), too easy to enter into (no matter whether you're seen or not you can enter stealth. Stealth should at least require to get behind your target out of sight) and sorely lack any drawbacks (like in some other licences where getting into stealth reduce your movement speed or damage for example).

 

Objectively its too potent out of combat, and *too weak* in-combat. Its problem is that if you try to stealth up in combat, its worse than useless, its actively detrimental.

[Dadnir.5038]

> @"UNOwen.7132" said:

> > @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> > That was the funniest thing I've read in a while.

> > Objectively, stealth is too potent visually (There is basically no way to see through it), too easy to enter into (no matter whether you're seen or not you can enter stealth. Stealth should at least require to get behind your target out of sight) and sorely lack any drawbacks (like in some other licences where getting into stealth reduce your movement speed or damage for example).

>

> Objectively its too potent out of combat, and *too weak* in-combat. Its problem is that if you try to stealth up in combat, its worse than useless, its actively detrimental.

 

What? We've got 8 years of players complaining that the thief and it's ability to enter stealth easily allow him to reset fight at will. We've got 8 year of the thief using stealth to burst down opponent from stealth (whether in combat or out of combat). And you still think that this peculiar stealth design is worse than useless in combat? The thief have stood up as one of the most potent duelist since release of the game only carried by how stealth work in this game and a bit of mobility, I can garantie you that it's far from being "weak" in combat.

[DKRathalos.9625]

Trust me Anet treats wvw player as 2nd class citizens.

[bluberblasen.9684]

> @"DKRathalos.9625" said:

> Trust me Anet treats wvw player as ~~2nd~~ third class citizens.

ftfy

 

 

[UNOwen.7132]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> > @"UNOwen.7132" said:

> > > @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> > > That was the funniest thing I've read in a while.

> > > Objectively, stealth is too potent visually (There is basically no way to see through it), too easy to enter into (no matter whether you're seen or not you can enter stealth. Stealth should at least require to get behind your target out of sight) and sorely lack any drawbacks (like in some other licences where getting into stealth reduce your movement speed or damage for example).

> >

> > Objectively its too potent out of combat, and *too weak* in-combat. Its problem is that if you try to stealth up in combat, its worse than useless, its actively detrimental.

>

> What? We've got 8 years of players complaining that the thief and it's ability to enter stealth easily allow him to reset fight at will. We've got 8 year of the thief using stealth to burst down opponent from stealth (whether in combat or out of combat). And you still think that this peculiar stealth design is worse than useless in combat? The thief have stood up as one of the most potent duelist since release of the game only carried by how stealth work in this game and a bit of mobility, I can garantie you that it's far from being "weak" in combat.

 

Players complaining about it (especially given what level the most vocal ones tend to be it) does not make it fact. The truth is that while thief can easily reset the fight at will, not only does he not do it using stealth, but stealth is one of the few ways he can make sure that he *cant* reset the fight. And no, thieves, good thieves that is, only use stealth out of combat. In combat its terrible. Your damage comes from backstab, and good luck getting a back backstab off after stealth in-combat (assuming you didnt just die when you made the grave error of stealthing up). Thieves have not been "one of the most potent duelist" (or even "decent duelists") for over 4 years now. And for most of the games history, they relied on S/D, a weaponset that doesnt even have any real stealth access (it has CnD, but you never use CnD).

 

You cant guarantee something that is false. Stealth is awful in-combat. But let me elaborate *why*. So, why is in-combat stealth awful? It suffers from 3 critical issues. First, its incredibly initiative-inefficient. It both means you lose a lot of damage, but also cut your only lifeline in the form of infiltrators arrow. So if you stealth up and they just burst you down and try to down you, you *will* die (Which is *exactly* whats going to happen, as we will see in a bit). Second, it takes away your offense while providing minimal to no defense. Obviously while you are in stealth, you cant fight back. Or you lose stealth. However, all it provides to you is that you cant be targetted anymore. However, AoE attacks, Melee attacks and Channeled Ranged attacks can all continue to hit you. And if you look at the meta builds of each class, you will find that all of them fit into one of these categories. Melee attacks are particularly devastating, as they not only hit you, but also let them track your location thanks to the autoattack chain.

 

And finally, and this is the big one, entering stealth is slow and unsafe. Youre locked in a 1.25 second animation, during which your defenses are entirely down. This is easily, and heavily punished. You try to stealth up in-combat, and I just bullrush into hundred blades you and you die (or burn a shadowstep while wasting the stealth entirely). Or I throw a Grenade Barrage and you get downed. Or I start channeling Rapid Fire and you die. Or, or, or. Every class has a trivial way of punishing it, and each of those punishments end with you either burning valuable cooldowns while the stealth does absolutely nothing, or you dying. And what for? You gain nothing from it. Damage-wise its a lot worse than just using Shadowshots and Heartseekers. Defense-wise its worse than using Shadowshots and Heartseekers. And for the purposes of running away, something that is usually safe and unstoppable for thief thanks to Infiltrators arrow, trying to stealth up in-combat is the *only* way a thief can ensure that he fails to run away and dies. You dont use it to reset, because its the only way you can fail to reset.

[Ubi.4136]

> @"DemonSeed.3528" said:

> Speaking of the update, it's really about time they start going back to look at ridiculous changes like 300s cd's. I find it disturbing that they just left it at that until now without even going back to it.

 

The 300 sec cd's are because the trait is being removed/replaced. The team that does skill changes though, is not the team that does balance. So, the balance team nerfed it to remove it, now we are waiting for the skill team to actually replace it.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

> @"Ubi.4136" said:

> > @"DemonSeed.3528" said:

> > Speaking of the update, it's really about time they start going back to look at ridiculous changes like 300s cd's. I find it disturbing that they just left it at that until now without even going back to it.

>

> The 300 sec cd's are because the trait is being removed/replaced. The team that does skill changes though, is not the team that does balance. So, the balance team nerfed it to remove it, now we are waiting for the skill team to actually replace it.

 

But a competant dev would have never outright deleted them as they were a big part of any builds. A temporary increase to 180 sec would have at least made them still useable until the rework. Look at the war def line, removing 2 of the 3 traits taken in the entire line for over half yr is unacceptable.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

All the stealth complaints in wvw also has me wondering if players are seeing and being engaged by the many thieves using hacks. If u play thief a lot u can tell them apart very easily. Many thieves u see trolling groups of players will stealth up with no animation repeatedly almost as if they have blinding powder repeatedly off CD, so u look at them and with zero animation or tell will disappear and will do so secs after their stealth runs out repeatedly, They rarely us smoke fields for stealth due to the above mentioned, and no their not silent scoping. Ull see some use shadow refuge repeatedly every 10 secs or less, No way improv is procing it that often. U hard cc them with no stability and does nothing the whole match and acro trait being 300 secs now yeah right. Lastly they will always have shadoestep off CD so if u get them low they shadow step away, heal and shadow return only to shadow step away less than 10 secs later over and over and no not sw2. Had a group laughing the other night how obvious a thief was hacking while we trolled him as he tried trolling us.

The best tho is if u kill a player in a 2v1 and cleave em down and their back to 2v1 again in literally 5 secs before u can even down the other player lol.

[DKRathalos.9625]

> @"bluberblasen.9684" said:

> > @"DKRathalos.9625" said:

> > Trust me Anet treats wvw player as ~~2nd~~ third class citizens.

> ftfy

>

>

 

Right... I forgot the 2nd is PvP. We the wvw players are the 3rd.

[Clownmug.8357]

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> All the stealth complaints in wvw also has me wondering if players are seeing and being engaged by the many thieves using hacks. If u play thief a lot u can tell them apart very easily. Many thieves u see trolling groups of players will stealth up with no animation repeatedly almost as if they have blinding powder repeatedly off CD, so u look at them and with zero animation or tell will disappear and will do so secs after their stealth runs out repeatedly, They rarely us smoke fields for stealth due to the above mentioned, and no their not silent scoping. Ull see some use shadow refuge repeatedly every 10 secs or less, No way improv is procing it that often. U hard cc them with no stability and does nothing the whole match and acro trait being 300 secs now yeah right. Lastly they will always have shadoestep off CD so if u get them low they shadow step away, heal and shadow return only to shadow step away less than 10 secs later over and over and no not sw2. Had a group laughing the other night how obvious a thief was hacking while we trolled him as he tried trolling us.

> The best tho is if u kill a player in a 2v1 and cleave em down and their back to 2v1 again in literally 5 secs before u can even down the other player lol.

 

Yeah, thinking back over the years I'd say a few thieves I've encountered were probably covering up hacks. Not just repeated stealth without animation, but doing the teleporty speed hack or instantly resetting health while in stealth.

 

Warrior, guardian and revenant also seem like they're preferred by hackers in my experience. For warriors and guardians they usually slap on some -10% damage food as if to pretend they're a tanky build, but are actually resetting their health whenever taking damage. The revenant ones are even more subtle, they allow moderate amounts of damage but always have Infuse Light off cooldown to save them somehow.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

> @"Clownmug.8357" said:

> > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > All the stealth complaints in wvw also has me wondering if players are seeing and being engaged by the many thieves using hacks. If u play thief a lot u can tell them apart very easily. Many thieves u see trolling groups of players will stealth up with no animation repeatedly almost as if they have blinding powder repeatedly off CD, so u look at them and with zero animation or tell will disappear and will do so secs after their stealth runs out repeatedly, They rarely us smoke fields for stealth due to the above mentioned, and no their not silent scoping. Ull see some use shadow refuge repeatedly every 10 secs or less, No way improv is procing it that often. U hard cc them with no stability and does nothing the whole match and acro trait being 300 secs now yeah right. Lastly they will always have shadoestep off CD so if u get them low they shadow step away, heal and shadow return only to shadow step away less than 10 secs later over and over and no not sw2. Had a group laughing the other night how obvious a thief was hacking while we trolled him as he tried trolling us.

> > The best tho is if u kill a player in a 2v1 and cleave em down and their back to 2v1 again in literally 5 secs before u can even down the other player lol.

>

> Yeah, thinking back over the years I'd say a few thieves I've encountered were probably covering up hacks. Not just repeated stealth without animation, but doing the teleporty speed hack or instantly resetting health while in stealth.

>

> Warrior, guardian and revenant also seem like they're preferred by hackers in my experience. For warriors and guardians they usually slap on some -10% damage food as if to pretend they're a tanky build, but are actually resetting their health whenever taking damage. The revenant ones are even more subtle, they allow moderate amounts of damage but always have Infuse Light off cooldown to save them somehow.

 

Yeah I've seen war and rangers teleporting in and outa fights like thieves sw2 2, it's kinda funny to watch bud sad, I mean to hack a game is kinda lame in itself but gw2? Lol

[WastedYears.8934]

Too many "balanced patch" which killed off variety. Way back before the crazy amount of balancing nerf, almost every class could be viable in their skill tree because mechanics were flawed.

 

While it was pretty flawed at that time, however, it also allowed people to play and experiment with crazy amount of builds which were actually viable and FUN!

 

People actually made builds that defied against how their class were supposed to be played. It gave people something to talk about, experiment with..

 

"Broken" builds were frustrating to fight against but it had variety. Creatively it was just different....

 

Thanks to the request about balance, well at this moment, just using it as an example, its pretty much condi meta. It kinda ruins people play style tbh and hamper creativity since people have to play certain builds/ have certain utility skills/ runes/sigil or we're screwed.

 

I mean you only have to watch youtube videos to see some of the class builds which were pretty crazy years ago and they now no longer work..broken.. killed off..patches by patches

 

Imba and crazy....well..they were actually fun..and had entertainment value..

[Melian.5368]

> @"Clownmug.8357" said:

> Warrior, guardian and revenant also seem like they're preferred by hackers in my experience. For warriors and guardians they usually slap on some -10% damage food as if to pretend they're a tanky build, but are actually resetting their health whenever taking damage. The revenant ones are even more subtle, they allow moderate amounts of damage but always have Infuse Light off cooldown to save them somehow.

 

Yeah I recently encountered a rev who somehow always stopped losing health when he reached ~10% hp, and we were a ranger, holo and warrior constantly on top of him. We keep reporting these but we never know if any action is ever being taken.

[Justine.6351]

> @"Crazy.6029" said:

> This is just my opinion, but, this meta is very boring. I cant quite figure out what makes it so boring, but to me, it is very boring. I get the toning down of damage, but CC and healing is just blah. I almost would rather have kill somebody in 2 secs meta back, at least it was intense at times. This is just running around and living for ever. Is this supposed to help players feel they are doing good or something? I don't get it. Maybe more balance will be coming to fix this boring meta.

 

Wow, who could have predicted that.

Pve is more dangerous.