What this new patch has taught me

[Kuma.1503]

I consider myself relatively bad at PvP. I currently sit at around a Gold 3 - Gold 2 skill level, and a lot of that is due to inexperience with the game, and not understanding the in and outs of other classes. For that reason, I've been really enjoying this patch. With damage being lower, I actually have a chance to see and react to what's killing me, rather than dropping dead in an instant because someone randomly hit 2 in my general direction because I didn't realize that that skill would crit me for 13k.

 

Here are a few things I've managed to pick up on now that I have more opportunities to engage my brain during fights.

 

**Learning your burst combos is important**

 

This wasn't so important before when you could passively stack 25 might and kill someone for looking at you funny, but now that kills take work, you will occasionally need to pool cooldowns and execute your burst well in order to kill someone. This is especially helpful when dealing with tankier specs like Ele, Prot Holo, and Necro. Don't use up all your cooldowns to burn the necro down in shroud, you won't have enough damage to finish the job when they come out. Find a sustained dps rotation that works for your class and whittle them down. Then the instant you see their bar turn read, land your CC and unleash everything on them.

 

**Calling targets helps. A lot**

 

This is another thing that was helpful before, but not necessary with how explosive damage was. I've noticed a lot of Necros and bunker eles running around being difficult to kill. At first, my teams would complain that the patch was a failure and that Ele's were still perma evading, perma invuln, sustain gods. That was until I decided to put a red target over their head. There was an immediate difference. I made use of the many skills I had that apply poison and made sure to watch the ele's condis. Every time he cleansed I put poision on him again. He dropped within seconds. This leads me to my next point.

 

**Watch everyone else's boons and condis**

 

I didn't even realize for the longest time that I could see my team's by looking at the bars in the top left corner. I mainly play supports so this is important information that I was missing. I learned that I should space out my condi application in order to bait out cleanses instead of dumping everything at once when they still have cooldowns. By watching my focus frame, I can see when they have cleansed and when I need to reapply condis to them. Very helpful when dealing with any bunker spec.

 

Likewise, if someone has stability on them, best wait things out for a bit instead of mashing buttons and seeing "immune" pop up on my screen. I noticed quite a few people doing that, then complaining about how dumb the other person's class was. Stab is precious now, it's worth paying attention to.

 

**For the love of Melandru, stop mashing**

 

Admittedly, this is a bad habit born from constant fear of being one shot at any moment. I'd enter teamfights, with the knowledge that someone (usually a mesmer off-screen) could drop me from 100-0 at any second, so I'd blow my cooldowns at the start of the fight, hoping to kill them before they kill me. I doesn't help that PvE helped to further encourage that mindset. Ele is a squishy boi, so your best bet is to burn things down before they have a chance to slap you for what little 11k health you have.

 

My support gameplay wasn't much better. At any point my allies could drop dead, so I was ready to unload every healing skill I had at a moment's notice.

 

I've slowed things down a bit and I use my cooldowns more intellegently. I still find myself regressing back on old habits, but that can be fixed with practice.

 

**People will always complain for nerfs**

 

I've spent enough time on numerous forums to know that this is true. It doesn't matter if we're talking about WoW, GW2, Smash Bros, Street Fighter, you name it. There will always be outliers, and people **will** call for them to be gutted instead of trying to adapt. Out of all these games, however, I've noticed Smash players have the best attitude. "Git Gud and Adapt" has even become a bit of a meme within the community due to how prevalent the mindset is. I'm grateful for the amount of times smashers have called me out for being salty, because it's helped me improve my mindset.

 

I've seen what happens when the Devs do listen to forum outcry. I've seen what happens when every class that overperformed is nerfed into the ground. WoW happens.

 

In WoW, Caster classes were kiting melee too hard because of how high mobility was. So the devs pruned all caster mobility.

 

The result: Casters don't even kite anymore. They plant their feet and face tank the melee's damage because moving takes valuable time away from dpsing. It's the healer's job to keep the casters alive. Classes that still have any capacity to kite at all (Hunters, Frost Mages) are complained about for being "op", not due to poor design, but because they have a core mechanic that other classes dont.

 

In WoW, tanks were too good at... doing their job?

 

So the devs gutted all tanks and forced them to rely on healers for their survivability. The result: Brewmaster, a once skillfull tank that can literally (no exaggeration) face tank raids and let their passive mechanics keep them alive while the healer does all the work. People complain that Brewmaster needs a nerf.

 

**Even if Anet guts every class you hate, it wont make the game better.** All it does is create a reverse power creep. New Op specs will rise up doing something that players percieve as being "out of line". Best focus on what gameplay patterns you want to encourage, and which you find degenerate.

 

Personally, I don't think Ranger pets should hit as hard as they do since having an AI do all the work is literally mindless gameplay.

 

These are one man's thoughts anyway. Hope this was able to help anyone else.

 

Good Luck in the mists!

 

 

 

 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

This is a nice post and all.,,because the power creep in this game has been detrimental for newer players to get into the game.

 

However, I want people to understand that this patch was NOT to address powercreep. People overuse this word to the point where it’s like a buzz word synonymous with something being overpowered.

 

This patch was meant to address TTK, which it definitely addressed.

 

If this patch were to fix powercreep they wouldn’t have touched any of the core skills or traitlines, but that is MOSTLY what they touched in this patch.

 

Anyway, the increase in TTK is why you are having a better experience, but the power creep has not gone away (in most cases). That’s why the balance patch is so polarizing right now.

 

But my position is that I do want to have increase TTK and less power creep, but this balance patch did it the wrong way...by utterly destroying build diversity.

 

All builds that kinda was working before and had potential, definitely don’t work now, and builds that we’re working before, work at a less functional level. This is in my opinion a failure of the balance change so far which i HOPE they eventually get to...but I doubt they ever will.

 

Just an example, is that resurrection in Zerg fights in WVW is now completely off the table... It was possible with a few builds that could pull it off, but now, it’s almost pointless to even attempt any kind of Rez in a Zerg fight... more than it was before which is sad because pugs can’t live long enough to even be useful and are even detrimental when it starts rallybotting, something that was alleviated by resurrection abilities.

 

Anyway, many builds died with this patch and not much was born to fill that space...and you won’t see the effects of this failure until you realize months from now that you can only play a select fewer and fewer builds, if any at all.

 

 

[hypehype.9047]

How can we say TTK has been fixed when it is 2v2 and not 5v5? once 5v5 starts again it will be the same as before.

 

All this patch has done is killed builds.

[Kuma.1503]

I never had much issue with "powercreep" to begin with. In some respects, I like that classes can do so much, so long as the game remains skillful and challenging. What caused me not to enjoy PvP before was ttk. It was a shame that a game with such rich combat didn't give me the an opportunity to enjoy it because fights ended so quickly.

 

So what if the opponent's class/build is better. Going back to my smash example, I've always played characters that I enjoyed regardless of tier. Yoshi in Melee, Pokemon trainer in brawl, Charizard in Smash 4... If their class/character is better, I'll play better. In most cases, the actual impact that has is minimal compared to the *percieved* impact (save for the highest levels of play).

 

I currently have no plans on shooting for top 10 on the ladder, so powercreed, overpowered classes, or whatever else people call it-- it does not bother me.

[Dadnir.5038]

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684"

I must admit that it's also starting to bother me to see people talking about how the patch adressed powercreep when it didn't. It reduced damage and sustain, yes, but powercreep? No.

 

The abusive use of the word "powercreep" is rampant. Powercreep represent things added in the game after it's release and it's mostly boons, conditions, condi cleanse, ferocity, expertise, concentration... etc. that have been added. The increase of damage and sustain are merely a consequence of the powercreep. ANet adressed the consequences of the "powercreep" in the sPvP/WvW context not the "powercreep" itself.

[KrHome.1920]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684"

> I must admit that it's also starting to bother me to see people talking about how the patch adressed powercreep when it didn't. It reduced damage and sustain, yes, but powercreep? No.

>

> The abusive use of the word "powercreep" is rampant. Powercreep represent things added in the game after it's release and it's mostly boons, conditions, condi cleanse, ferocity, expertise, concentration... etc. that have been added. The increase of damage and sustain are merely a consequence of the powercreep. ANet adressed the consequences of the "powercreep" in the sPvP/WvW context not the "powercreep" itself.

The patch reduced one aspect of powercreep which was cc+damage (all at once) combos (say hello to holosmith at pof day1!). Other forms of powercreeps from bloated skills and traits do still exist. The powercreep factor lack of elite spec tradeoffs to be not just a flat upgrade is finally adressed too (not just in this specific patch, but for two more specs: soulbeast and mirage).

 

In 2015 (when anet reworked the traitsystem as preparation for the elite specs) one big powercreep factor was the merging of several traits to one trait. The other factor was the introdution of skills that just do much at once with the elite specs. Full counter and manifest sand shade in their original form are good examples, soulbeast stances are another one - every single one of them just does too much, so we got unkillable boonbeast.

 

At one point somewhere in 2015 anet decided to fight fire with fire and countered overpowered things with other overpowered things. E.g. double the amount of corrupts for necros when boon spam came up. Give everyone more cleanses when condi bursts came up. It seems these times are finally over.

[JTGuevara.9018]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684"

> I must admit that it's also starting to bother me to see people talking about how the patch adressed powercreep when it didn't. It reduced damage and sustain, yes, but powercreep? No.

>

> The abusive use of the word "powercreep" is rampant. Powercreep represent things added in the game after it's release and it's mostly boons, conditions, condi cleanse, ferocity, expertise, concentration... etc. that have been added. The increase of damage and sustain are merely a consequence of the powercreep. ANet adressed the consequences of the "powercreep" in the sPvP/WvW context not the "powercreep" itself.

 

It did address it. Addressing the effect of powercreep is still addressing powercreep. Still, I agree with you. It's not just damage and sustainability, it is also things like boon creep as you say here. It's also mobility creep. Things like super speed are a nightmare to deal with at times. There is also CC creep.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

> @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> > @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684"

> > I must admit that it's also starting to bother me to see people talking about how the patch adressed powercreep when it didn't. It reduced damage and sustain, yes, but powercreep? No.

> >

> > The abusive use of the word "powercreep" is rampant. Powercreep represent things added in the game after it's release and it's mostly boons, conditions, condi cleanse, ferocity, expertise, concentration... etc. that have been added. The increase of damage and sustain are merely a consequence of the powercreep. ANet adressed the consequences of the "powercreep" in the sPvP/WvW context not the "powercreep" itself.

>

> It did address it. Addressing the effect of powercreep is still addressing powercreep. Still, I agree with you. It's not just damage and sustainability, it is also things like boon creep as you say here. It's also mobility creep. Things like super speed are a nightmare to deal with at times. There is also CC creep.

 

I believe that It didn’t really address it because most of the powercreep came mostly from mechanics, not sheer numbers (with a few exceptions.) and this is why I believe they handled it in the wrong way.

 

Now what I mostly notice is that some things got nerfed to the point where they are simply not functional anymore, like PP thief for example, Because it was a core skill on a core weapon, it was buffed to try and make it viable until deadeye came along and boosted the numbers so ridiculously high via its inherent mechanics... Then they just nerfed unload into non-viability and now with this patch made it even more weak, to the point where it’s absolute garbage on core/daredevil and barely viable on deadeye.

 

So if you ask me I don’t think these things were addressed properly. The thing that’s wrong with PP was always the weaponsets functionality and it was never addressed.

 

So ya just my 2 cents