Reminder to Everyone: *It's OK to Have Different Perceptions + Opinions on the Internet!* ^^ | I made this video just to get my thoughts in one place and to hopefully open the door to some positive discussion. 😄 ++ Happy New Year All!! \o/
As a warrior main (call be biased if you want) I still feel like we can't have nice things. The one thing that was being powerful and usefull after they took away banner slave, and made changes and nerfs to warrior GS and other aspects of the class, and the elite specs, was the spear. And even with the spear we still had problems and were forced to play around them, because of how many projectile blocks and reflects there are in wvw and even pvp. They decided to nerf it. And although it's still usable and playable, is just not... Whats the word. Worth it ? People don't even want you in their groups bexause there is always some other class with a bigger power creep than you, that do more things than you, cover more boons than you. Why have a condi berzerker, even if it gives quickness, when you can have a firebrand or any other class that does more damage, more boon coverage, and in most times are even easier to aplly all of these than warrior. And dont get me started on the distance and duration of shit like rangers immobilize, or the sheer ammount of teleports and stealth professikns like Chronomancer and Thief have. It's fucking ridiculous. Some people have once said to me: "Oh just hit them, you still have reveal target to take them out of stealth, you can still hit them even if invisible." Ok then, maybe, MAYBE, if i was top 50 in pvp or whatever else in the whole server. And even if i was everything is stacked against the warrior because of the sheer ammount of dodges, movement skills and enemy dodges they have. And also, guess what, most of the player base is not top pvp players. Shit even guardian with the last elite spec can now cover stupidly ammount of distance and aegis uptime, yet somehow people say warriors spear damage and dodges were the problem.
And some people are just salty their stuff gets nerfed over & over: Cue every comment under here that says "Guild Wars 2 is Dead" while they continue to play it because it's dope.
No, the issue is that the Virtuoso meta / Skillbender roamer meta has been in place for over a year? At this point it feels like the devs deliberately avoid nerfing their preferred specs
I haven't played GW2 in like four years, and just got recommended this video. I am both surprised as well as not that surprised that basically everything that was wrong with profession balance is almost exactly the same as it was back then. And it still sounds like they have the Golden Child issue they had, except with a new balance dev's preference while leaving other professions begging for help.
yeah , the current problem with meta is not about how much damage classes do but how EASILY they do it compared to others, some classes have to put oput rotation to heal others while some of them doesnt and can use utility when they want to
It really does feel like Mesmer is just the favorite kid in the Guild Wars universe, for whatever reason. In GW1 the best team comp for solo play is to have 6/7 mesmer heroes because they just kill everything faster, with less down time, than any other class and it isn't even close. In GW2, virtuoso.
Interestingly people said the same thing about Mirage for the longest time, and now Mirage is probably the worst flavor of Mesmer. Idk what tht says about ANet's "favorite children" lol
Nah, their favorite child is definitely Guardian, almost never gets nerved, and you'll always see a Dragonhunter or a Firebrand in any content outside of PvP.
@KryticalError lol. (It shouldn't,) but that's what happens when a profession is the most plated in your game. Gotta say it felt weird when immediately after EoD-launch when Willbender kinda sucked (when the virtues didn't layer.) Until they decided Guard having such a "downside" was completely unacceptable. 🤣
@@GW2Pseudo The sad thing is I actually LOVE every Guardian spec. ESPECIALLY Willbender. But I also abso-Fi3King-lutely hate them. Like, WB and DH are OBJECTIVELY cool. But they are so annoying to play against. Of course it's all matchup dependent and player dependent, but that's true of everything. Just feels like WB especially always sets my jaw on edge when I finish a strong 1v2 or holding my own in a 1v3 / 1v4 and a Willbender blinks me from offscreen and instantly knocks me lol
Let me tell you about WARFRAME. There's this mission type called "Survival." As you take down enemies, they have a chance to drop a "LS pack" that restores 4% LS. There's a Warframe called Nekros. It has an ability where it can "break down" the corpses of enemies for potential extra loot. For a period of time, it was impossible to go longer than 10min in Survival without a Nekros on team, nothing could clear the enemies fast enough to get enough LS packs. i'd like to think that DE (the owners of WARFRAME) had to come to terms with the fact that if someone decided to bring Nekros, the team just wouldn't have to worry about Life Support. But if no one brought Nekros, you didn't have to use specialized builds to keep LS up.
OH, LS = Life Support lol. Sounds kind of familiar yes. I'm always interested in how other MMOs in the space evolve as well. Curious, did they end up nerfing Survival and/or Nekros and was it done well/good for the game?
Players will just flock to the next best/busted build option. Maybe less Willbender, but more of sth else that just feels the same - 'oppressing' if you happen to not like to play one of the fotm build(s). At least thats what I expect after 12y of wvw 'experience'.
one of the hardest things for me to get into with anyform of combat in this game, is the boon stacking meta, it being defining of your skill, im fine with your gear and skill determines what level content you can enjoy, but these days range is useless because if you not all on top of each other stacking boons your dead,
I thought i was a really bad player for the longest time because i was either dying instantly or doing 0 damage. Turns out its more sad that the game is broken and this is just Guild Wars life
I was screaming from the rooftops during the Rifle Mecha meta that Virt was even more OP. It just didn't seem that way because Mecha was so easy to play.
To be fair, Virt has also been reworked like x3+? times. The free invuln and self-sustain on it are just things that make it massively easier than other SPS classes, even ranged ones. There's competitors sure, but nothing as versatile.
The main reason I grew to truly dislike WvW is the boonball meta. Nothing worse than sitting in a keep watching a 40 man squad roll up and start knocking. There's no point in building siege because they literally deal no damage to a boonball, I just have to sit and watch as they tear our walls down. I beg for our boonball to come and help (if we even have one) and hope they come. Even being IN a boonball is not fun, I sit and tank everything with perma boons. The most fun I've had in WvW is one unorganized squad attacking against an unorganized defense. It feels like a true battlefield and it's possible to punish mistakes and target people down. Building siege is more impactful. That, or small group roaming, like 3 - 4 people.
The weird thing is, siege used to matter wayyy more too. And I 1,000% vibe with that last bit, and I think my roamer friends do the same. WvW shines where you have small skirmishes that allow for player expression. 😂 Having a perm "nuh-uh you can't interact with me at all" wall of yellow anti-counterplay stuff on someone's bar just makes you go "Welp guess I won't try."
Appreciated, welcome! I know it's easy to say, but I just try to produce content that will be positive+helpful for people, and as much as the game may frustrate me sometimes, "people" includes the Devs. I always expect nothing, but remain cautiously optimistic and I really, *really* hope they can add some class Diversity & Flavor back sooner than later! 😁
Great vid but im gunna stick my neck out and say I love relics 😂. 3 stick out in my mind as being way OP though. Stormsinger, rivers, and demon queen. 6 per patch is too many though. I think the 2 relics, 2 runes, 2 sigils idea is better. Also cool to see some of my footage used
Liking Relics is perfectly fine! I love that the 6 slot can be separated now. And I love the other 'good' ANet has done these past 2 years like the Wizard's Vault. But with such a fast deluge of them (some with new, unbelievably flashy animations while the relic itself is borderline useless) this just seems like misspent development budget that we're reminded that we paid for every 3 months. And yes, there was absolutely 0 chance I was going to be able to get all this footage myself. So definitely free plug for Homage ^ !! Check him out if you want an actually quite refreshing and positive look at PvP! 😄 I made this (and most of my videos) just because I think this is an important discussion to have. And judging by the actually amazing comments so far, it's actually sort of working!
Very interesting video! but here is my concern about the energy thing, i also live in WvW/PvP and make content (Mostly as a Ranger Soulbeast) and i can tell you that if, lets say they implement that without doing some extra stuff first... the game will be even more broken because currently there are certain professions/builds that have a bit of too much and then invulnerable. Let me explain what i mean: There are things far more unfair and broken/tonned down than this, like willbender's toolkit being just too much and on top of that having so much invulnerability windows and yet if you learn the match-up it becomes very doable. Same with eles, you can run a glass-cannon build and get away with it but not due to how many dodge rolls you get, mostly because you have a plethora of blocks and invulnerability, similar thing with mesmers... We start to see a pattern here, and the real issue is that even when you find the windows to kill those matchups, they have a free get out of the jail card ON TOP of all the other tools. Currently the evade thing is just a real issue with or against most thief specs because on top of the perma-stealth and one shot capabilities they can evade and dodge roll forever in those few windows that you have to kill them. To further sort of advocate for my point, when i started i was extremely confused and frustrated but after a while and also going over my own game-play i understood that the real issue was me. I really believe that things right now are not as unbalanced as to be a problem (Stormsinger needs a nerf tho). I think we have fallen into the trap of just pretending that if i get rekt its easier to attribute it to cheats or something being broken, you can't imagine the amount of times i have been Dm'd with the, nice cheats bro just because i space my buttons and dodge rolls and skills properly... and when i offer to go over the game-play because i was recording, they just insult you and nothing else. THAT is the real issue, players refusing to learn. When i started, everything killed me without a chance of fighting back, now i can deal with ALMOST anything and also, as you get better players and fight against better players... yeah, the fights are not over so quickly, even when 2 glass-cannon builds are happening, since movement and spacing are the most BROKEN/IMPORTANT skills in this game and yet a very low part of the player-base tries to improve on those. My conclusion: If you take away those sigils and essentially nerf the evading/dodging capabilities without toning down some of the previously mentioned stuff, you will only increase the gap and make the meta even more pronunciated towards what it is essentially already overturned because why would i run a class without popper evade options that doesn't have easy access to mobility/blocks/invulnerable when i can literally play some of the mentioned before and have all of those... like... sure, i can dodge less but guess what? i still have more broken defensive tools than you do on top of my absurd mobility and damage!
I'm getting a lot of really well thought-out responses to this video & I love it! Re: Stormsinger (largely unrelated) yes it shouldn't be able to crit. Re: Energy Sigils, I also largely agree with your analysis. But I still want to see what would happen if they tried it for a PvP/WvW season. One of my friends is actually back in the game who is quite skilled and plays a metric butt-load of Ranger as well. So we've been dueling & chatting a fair bit about current balance. Energy sigils are basically mandatory on every Ranger kit to be viable, because like Warrior, it has a lot of forced-movement skills, effectively forcing you to learn your setups' and get good.' However, unlike Warrior which can basically be a brick Wall with it's Stances and Aegis right now, Rangers often don't have as many (or as many low CD invuln s in their kit.) But remember they do get evades on their forced movement skills, stealth, 1500 range, and even optional teleports, which Warriors do not. I'm not trying to say "Oh whaaa my class is worse" I'm saying that an Apple is an Apple and an Orange is an Orange. They're different by definition. If energy sigils, (which are far & away the most OP sigil in the game) were removed, even for just say, ~3 months or so sure yes, it would likely be Hell for some classes, possibly Ranger, definitely Mirage, etc. But I do think that Energy Sigils are vastly muddying-the-waters and making it more difficult to pin down "the pain points" of over-performing builds like Willbender, or identifying Fun aspects that are lacking from other classes because they can "just run energy sigils" + whatever now. As with all things, I'm open to being wrong on this ofc! After 11 years I'd just really like to test this theory even just to see if the Devs would do anything meaningful with that data. 😄
@@GW2Pseudo Hey man! sorry for the late answer to this, been slammed with work! i do agree that it could be interesting to try it out, but absolutely not for 3 months, i don't think most players that really need those sigils to stay on par with other specs have to spend more than 2-4 weeks to see if it becomes unplayable or simply need to adapt, whatever the result might be im certain that the first wave will need adjustments and it would hurt to make ppl wait 3 months, for better or worse. RE: slight nitpick about the ranger points xD, In my opinion, some of the things you mentioned aren't true at all, starting with what you said about the range advantage, let me elaborate: While it is true that if we use longbow we have a lot of range... it is equally true that there are so many block sources and projectile deflection that makes it actually not that strong, alongside the fact that most specs, including the mentioned warrior have insane gapclosers plus, the longbow its by far the weakest weapon for the ranger, making it in paper super good but in practice very hard and frustrating to pull off. in PvP i am tempted to agree that Energy is close to mandatory and even more so on higher ranks, altho i have been only close to plat and i lack some more experience. In the WvW department however... dont get me wrong, im not saying i am the best ranger, but i am tempted to say that i am the Soulbeast that has tried and made from scratch builds that are working and capable of dealing with anything, lots of ppl picked them up and work for them too and in a lot of them, im not running energy sigils. Basically because i already have high vigor uptime. I understand that slamming energy there is NEVER a bad choice and i get the point of it but i just wanted to mention that if i can run without them and have great results, and apparently some others too... maybe the problem is what i said earlier, ppl get too comfortable with some things and shortcuts instead of actually timing some skills. As a final conclusion, i also don't agree with the sentence you said about the sigils muddying the waters and make it difficult to pinpoint some issues. Sigils or not, i can clearly see some of the over tuned things from long, looong ago. And i believe more experienced players do so even better than i do. Once again, i think the number 1 issue its lazyness and i think getting rid of a tool that allows certain specs to have a fighting chance against over tuned things without actually adjusting those first... its really dangerous, i would suggest perhaps a nerf in the sense of limiting it to just 1 for example...BUT i agree with you in the sense that i would like to see an attempt to change things for sure!!😁😁
Wvw (half roaming, half zerging) player here. I played from launch til 2018, quit, and started playing again with Janthir's launch. It was spears that got me to play again, not relics, nor ascended food, nor elite specs, nor masteries. Love most of what you've said here but your arguments on balance cadence resonated with me the most. We get a balance patch, the next most OP thing becomes apparent day 1 (usually whatever was 2nd most powerful before the patch and avoided nerfs), and we have to deal with that for 2-4 months. It's like this in pvp too. This is part of the reason I stopped playing. Wasn't much to look forward to. Just a lot more of the same. I like your ideas of how we can address that, especially the "anet should just try things", like yeah, more frequent but experimental is better than this 2-4 month stretches of dealing with everuone running bunker, and/or nuclear bursts from stealth.
Thank you for the context for your response! I don't have all the answers, (I don't think anyone does.) But to me there's very apparent "broken" pieces of builds that they could mess with. I know that when companies get involved a lot of "just do it" changes have to go through committee. But comparatively ArenaNet is tiny, and their. Plus, at this point the stagnation is just as bad if not worse when we get nothing meaningful for 3-4 months imo. They actually "sort of" kind of beta tested new balance features in the form of the Extirpation debuff that was on Necro Spear 5 for a nanosecond. But that was pretty OP and got yote' pretty fast, and see how upset people got when that was yote' leaving Spear 5 pretty basic. Now imagine that game-wide for something like energy sigils that literally almost every competitive' build uses. ArenaNet isn't stupid they know that making $ to eat food is important. Energy Sigils specifically aren't on their radar, but they'd definitely have to sneak enormous nerfs like this into larger buff patches/content releases. Which unfortunately just adds to power creep. I'm not sure what the answer is to deal with or work around such a slow balance cadence without making the community riot every other time. But 'just trying stuff' (with explanations) that they can easily 180 is probably a good step at this point! 😁
Bit of a nitpick about wvw boon uptime. Most of the reason why we run in a tight ball has to do with stability and healing. Its asking alot of a healer in a 20+ group to find damaged targets before they go down in larger fights so players need to stick to where they/we can find them. Stay on tag to get heals. In order to stay on tag they need stability. Any half decent group has a strong selection of pulls and getting pulled off stack means a quick death. Quickness doesn't have that much use for the stack except that boonstrips tend to remove quickness before stability. So good concentration helps certain builds have good stability coverage. It is a necessary and dedicated job to keep stab up. I am worried that if concentration gets nerfed in wvw pulls will simply become king.
Rant and a little history lesson from a big Guild Wars 1 GvGer and Tomb/Heroes PvPer and a Guild Wars 2 Scrapper Enjoyer: In GW1 Arenanet learned the lesson that 'too different' can be detrimental to the health of your game when they introduced the Assassin and Ritualist. They were so wildly different from the base classes that the health and balance of the game was in a bad spot for a long time. In GW2 the opposite seems to be happening. They seem to be afraid to deviate from the base concepts in the game and give specializations 'cool' things. It ends up where Professions feel like Paint Jobs for your character. If I pick a Necromancer I get Necromancer animations but I'm not providing anything different from a Warrior or Mesmer. The part about some specs losing their identify now that weapons can be used across specs hits the problem on the head. If the only thing Scrapper had going for it was it used a hammer....was Scrapper really ever 'cool'? I've loved ArenaNet since GW1's release. I have hope they can figure it out, but some of these issues have been around a long, long time.
That's actually really interesting about GW1. I have a lot of friends who played it & that's never come up actually. I really like when ANet is clever. And the only way to truly be 'clever' is to try stuff and fail sometimes. While the HoT specs were defiantly less ambitious than what came later, both Scrapper and Spellbreaker were comparatively pretty simple on paper. The difference is that Scrapper was stupidly OP in the PvP meta at the time (I'm not saying Berserker wasn't, cause it was) so Scrapper got gutted and basically never recovered, while Spellbreaker which came later, only had [Full Counter] destroyed on it over & over, but otherwise mechanically aged like fine wine because it turns out boon removal in a boon meta is pretty good. Berserker, meanwhile, enjoyed almost 3 years in the dumpster after it was nerfed horrifically and repeatedly, only to somewhat recover last year. I'm sure you know all this already and I'm not asking ANet to add more not boon-buffs. I'm just hoping that one day Specs like Scrapper, Specter, and even Bladesworn get the reworks that they deserve. The "cool" factor is big in games and at least 2/3 of those if not many other Specs in the game could definitely use a fresh coat of "cool paint" to say the least.
As a PvE vet(? Coming up on 5y of pve now, seen pre-alac druid/scourge/pre-quick berserker/scrapper/pre-eod metas and have consistently raided and striked through that time) I think most relics aren't really OP, at least in terms of damage and especially boons. Karakosa is an OP healing relic, but you solve the issue by adding an ICD. At best, we have: 10% strike damage from Peitha (unreliable on most builds, a bit jank on the ones that might be able to proc it reliably) 10% strike and condition damage from Dragonhunter (not a self buff, needs a specific type of utility to hit a target and hit consistently) 7% from weaver/deadeye (weaker but self buff from a specific utility, really only deadeye is usable on deadeye and weaver relic sucks) 7% strike from Claw (requires burning CC which may not be super available in your kit or rotation, i.e. power weaver doesn't want to hit air sw2 or go to air/earth for sw3) 7% strike from Fireworks Decent condi damage from Fractal (not a percentage buff but only "op" because there's really no competition) Part of the problem is that relics initially tried to fill the gap from effects like Rune of the Scholar's t6 effect (5% increased strike damage when above 90% hp) but without the drawback (thief relic). Condi relics just have too many issues design wise (blightbringer) or too little damage to keep up with Fractal, which isn't even that OP but just has nothing to compete with. Some of these relics have really interesting effects, I especially like Cerus relic for being an extra set of strikes as opposed to just a flat buff, but its really, really hard to make a relic like that useful without being too good for something (needing nerfs for the one thing that's OP with it). Another example is the Beehive relic, it could be a really cool option for professions with a lot of poison (not many) and especially condition druid (the 8 additional strikes, which could be increased in pve, could add additional astral power generation for condition druid, which depending on how its done could not be too game breaking, in addition to the potentially good poison damage if buffed) but the damage is just too low, same thing with Blightbringer being a poison alternative to fractal. Others are just too hard to reliably proc or not worth enough when procced. Relic of the Stormsinger could be really cool for mobility builds like Willbender, and Relic of the Steamshrieker could be awesome in specific comps if made a little stronger (to help push a bit of extra DPS out for having extra water fields in your group, such as a heal druid dropping glyph for the potentially inferior healing spring depending on the fight or having a condition firebrand take time to use their tome water field). Overall relics as a system just did not try to go hard enough into the more out there or "wacky" relics and it is really hard to make those work because something might be balanced on 9 out of 10 DPS builds but the 10th gets it ruined for the rest of them
Thank you for specifying context! This is *extremely* well-written. ^ And yes, mayhaps it didn't come across in the video, but for PvE I 100% agree relics are great! The customization they afford is great. This statement: "Overall relics as a system just did not try to go hard enough into the more out there or "wacky" relics and it is really hard to make those work because something might be balanced on 9 out of 10 DPS builds but the 10th gets it ruined for the rest of them" Also I agree with. The trouble is then, trying to balance these "wacky+powerful" relics with things like WvW & PvP without making it "unfun" for whatever you're fighting. I think that's why I find a lot of them boring and would rather just get some other equipment variety at this point. But above all, I really hope they shift their development budget away from new, unique visual/effects for relics and add those to interesting Grandmaster traits again as I said. Especially now that they seem to have a new, baller, FX team. Just personal preference on that one I suppose though.
Your point on the weapon unlock i disagree with, the main reason is that with this lock you are either saying these elite spec weapons should just be better than all others and if they are not then every build will just use the already available big weapon such as guardian greatsword, for engineer, you need to consider that the sword just wasn't all that good to begin with it doesn't really have a real niche for the engineer so it of course is going to get overwhelmed by the hammer, we generally see a similar factor with the ranger one hand sword which isn't really used that much. In particular what I like about this weapon unlock is that it allowed use to use mace/shield scrapper which is by far the most fun way to play a support bunker engineer, it's capabilities fit far better into scrapper than into mechanist which displays the sheer advantage of allowing this, at the end of the day you didn't even need your elite spec weapon in many cases so there is little "fantasy" lost in them being unlocked and alot of "fantasy" gained.
And that's a very reasonable take honestly. I didn't mean it to sound that I feel as though Specialization Weapons should somehow be "more juiced" than the base weapons. Moreso that they should interact with and help define a *possible* playstyles of a Specialization more. (Think heat on Holo Sword or old Kneel+1500 range on Deadeye before they changed it, even Torch on Berserker for King of Fires fits.) They untamed hammer being weirdly more customizable on non-untamed is probably the best example of going against this imo. But there are some others. Engineers however, far & away needed the shared Weapons proficiency the most. It's helpful to be reminded that there are classes like Engi and pre-SotO Ele who didn't really have many options. Still, I think if ANet was on this train of thought Engi would have gotten 2 1-Handed somehow ranged Weapons that just function identically to the 1-3 and 4-5 short bow skills, but could be combined with other weapons. Maybe electric throwing daggers or some such. I still can't believe they have Engi a 2-handed weapon and Thief a main hand without an off-hand weapon. 🙄
I think I pretty much agree with almost everything you said in regards to PVP and WvW, and that's coming from someone whose main trick is montaging "1 shots" - I definitely think ANET has been too slow to move on things like MEGA OVER REPRESENTATION or UNDER REPRESENTATION with amulets, stat loadouts, runes, sigils, relics, builds, and mobility. And I think the game would be WAY more fun if damage and tankiness and boon permanence were all toned down and brought closer to what feels manageable. That doesn't mean I think there should be no one shot builds or no bunker builds. And mobility is fun, so I don't want to see all mobility extremely nerfed or removed. But some things scream they should be either toned down significantly or reworked for the long term health of the game. I mean, remove Willbenders completely, tho. Other than that, I think some number tuning and some occasional reworks will get us into a good spot.
Everything feels the same when you roam. When you duelled the harb and my druid from your last stream its like oh we cant kill each other. Lets just walk different directions now 😂
24:50 This is exactly what I've been saying since SotO came out. I'm glad the weapons are getting nerfed honestly, but bring back interesting Grandmasters please!
Yup. Move the line in the sand but also the shovel back a bit. Both would need to happen at once. Otherwise we can "only go up from here" at least in PvE.
Cool video, I vibe with your temperament and this type of content in general. Since I am a relatively new player I will chime in and say that I think relics can be quite fun but I clocked them immediately as pure power creep put into the game solely to make buildcrafting more interesting for veterans. I wasn't aware just how many they have been adding though-it does seem egregious and will contribute to bloat. But at the same time, I think needing to acquire these relics via achievements or other explorations into other game modes is really healthy for the game in other ways. As for WvW, I have my own sort of mechanical hangups as a new player, but your veteran perspective on the actual stats, gear, and buffs was really interesting to me. It's not at all uncommon for these older MMOs to struggle with homogenization, ie maintaining their class identity while keeping everything semi-viable. ANet does seem to have serious issues with not nerfing clearly broken shit though. I wonder where that comes from because surely the feedback they get in that regard is quite loud and clear.
Thanks! & Re: "Broken shit": Not to mention their internal metrics must be screaming at them as well. If I had to guess, and we do a lot of the time, I'd say it really comes down to their hyper irregular balance cadence. (i.e Sometimes we get 3 balance patches in 3 months, sometimes we have to go 4+ months with nothing at all.) But combined with the fact that their "design goals" seem to vary and change from patch to patch like a leaf on the wind. For example, EoD specs: Patch 1 Get them out. Patch 2 nerf the over-performing PvP stuff, Patch 3 put Cele in the game and prep to scrap all EoD class identity and make loads of the Specs technically be able to give whatever boon for PvE. This is somewhat reductive because, as I said, I was actually a fan of changes like Cele, at least for PvE (because it makes the game MUCH more accessible to new players, and more people playing the game means that literally everyone wins. But the I think of the OG Bladesworn or Willbender dev crying in the corner over all the work they did engineering a class that thematically made sense *and* was balanced/had balanced trade offs that made sense, before their Specialization was nerfed/buffed to being un-recognizable respectively, and I wonder if all that design work couldn't have been spent doing literally anything else. Thanks for the feedback though. It's helpful to hear what newer players especially are thinking! And also to always helpful to remind myself/others that many other MMOs are just as baffling if not worse in terms of consistency. I give ANet mad props for better communication lately. It can always improve though.
I feel like Anet has painted themselves into a corner and they don’t know how to get out of it. Since the layoffs, I have thought that GW2 has been “sort of” in barely more active than maintenance mode. I hope they are working on GW3 with a new game engine and I would love it if I could migrate my characters from GW2 into GW3, but that’s pie in the sky wishful thinking on my part. I just hope that the GW franchise is worth the investment it will take to make a GW3 that is better than GW2 and I worry that there might not be enough of the original talent still working for Anet, to pull off creating a new MMORPG on the same scale and quality of GW2. I’ll probably stick around for many years to see what happens, because I still enjoy GW2.
Well, that's why I attempted to give a couple suggestions for the various mode(s) that I think might help! But regardless, I think the "still enjoying Guild Wars 2" part is easy to skip over for a lot. As frustrated as I can get some times at GW2 (and I too take breaks,) video games are for fun after all, and I play this one (and make content for it) because I enjoy it! 😁 If I didn't I wouldn't, simple as that. Re: GW3 With what I know about development pipelines, for better or worse, I guarantee it's not coming any time soon. Since it was just getting funding allocated ~last? year, and that it'll likely be done kind of mmo that's 4-5 years tops. I still doubt it'll look anything like Guild Wars 2 though. Maybe (hopefully) it'll retain the combat system, but I'd guess the underlying engine and structure will be completely different.
@ Yeah, I hope that some or all of your suggestions as well as those from WP and other GW2 content creators, will be implemented by Anet, while we are waiting for GW3 to be released several years from now.
Im a relatively new player, returned 2 years ago. I dont care about relics (or any new slot things they want to add later), wouldnt mind it being deleted. I think they should stop powercreep, limit around 30k mark and I want the rotations to be easier, if I want high APM Ill play Starcraft.
Relics by themselves being separated is nice. The #s going up forever isn't sustainable though as many fights we're designed around classes doing ~maybe 20K DPS. Just FYI there are some low-er amp builds that absolutely slap rn. Check out my Auto-Attack 0-button Deadeye Build: th-cam.com/video/0aVUu0SK9L0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Wjqe7PQCELdFjCq_ or Fresh Air Tempest if you haven't! The former is great to learn mechanics of fights on & the latter does Competitive DPS rn and is like 6 buttons. (It's also what I play in DPS in PvE because frankly I suck at it these days.) 😂 But I get what you mean.
20:27 I was watching a wvw stream the other day and the commander was like "I want a relic of the driver so I can survive longer" like damage reduction (from both receiving and giving lol) and maybe immune to pulling/moaing? that would be interesting but only can be equipt by the commander xD
Macro relics that interact like that would definitely be interesting. Imo that's less out-of-place on a Grandmaster too. -- That's somewhat what old [Deathless Courage] seemed to do when the virtues on Willbender didn't layer. (e.g. Basically invalidate your outgoing and incoming dmg for a bit when you pushed F3.) It even has the teleport on it too to get you ahead of your Zerg. 😂
biggest problem with this mmo is arena nets balancing for sure, remember how they changed scrapper to only give quickness when doing blast finishers? yeah... but then quickness firebrand be like "Press button and give quickness", they just don't follow their own logic, and this happens with a bunch of other balancing decisions, also about the power creep... yeah it's just really bad, gotta love how Soto pretty much introduced even more "Meta playstyles" to classes that didn't need it lol, then we get the spear builds and everythings changing in the build sites 😂😂the continuos trend of power creep definitely hasn't stopped, and it just makes older expansions feel terrible to play.
To be fair I've heard that some people like Engi Blasting for Quickness. But conversely I can't stand "just casting Dragon Slash" on Bladesworn and you give alacrity to literally the whole world. Imo it's out of place and doesn't fit the class fantasy at all. Somehow it still has the best combat system 😂 tho. They just need to use it so it makes sense.
it's the exact same way i feel about it, realizing theres other classes that give quickness better and easier, just doesn't feel very good xD, thats not to say scrapper doesnt have other utilities though, but it is true, gw2 has the best combat out of any mmo ive tried 😎
@@Raindrop511Definitely. Just trying to help & be constructive here & the discussion in the comments so far has been pretty solid so far. Let's hope 2025 is a better year for Balance 😁
I would like them to remove the power skill coeficient so the dmg numbers in tooltips are not totally useless and the rework of conditions in a way that they act as soft CCs only not as a type of dmg
Honestly, I'd like to see them remove gameplay-affecting buffs from food and enhancements (sharpening stones, etc.) completely. Keep 'em as magic/gold find, XP and gathering bonuses, but remove anything that gives a buff to overall power level. Edit: Oh, and even though they've never explicitly said this, and the community is in denial about it, every successive elite spec has been more powerful than the last set in order to drive sales of later content, very much making the game "Pay to Win." This is the reason specs like Virtuoso and Willbender are still ridiculously OP. Core needs to be able to properly compete with all Elite specs; to that end, those specs should be brought in line with Core, and not vice versa with Core lines being buffed.
I think that was the idea on HoT release (for the elite Specs to have trade-offs.) but they said they're "not doing that anymore" and I have a feeling that comes down to core going free to play. Honestly, you're right about Elite Spec (and new Weapon) power creep. I'm not saying it's right, but literally every studio does that. And I'm even OK with "no trade-offs" in a perfect world. The problem is that even many Elite Specs still have very real trade-offs while others very much are just "more, better, yeah!" Having a design goal that's well intentioned but not followed isn't incredibly useful.
I've been saying that for a while. The elite specs are a form of pay to win. They are not all that egregious from a PvE perspective, since you need the expansions anyway to get access to most of the content where that's relevant, but I would imagine it's a noticeable difference in pvp/wvw. Also, you can gain access with a rather small purchase and you don't need to sink tons of money into it. So personally I don't think it's a big deal. But it's naive to not call a spade a spade. Especially since the core guide advertised as free to play and not an extensive free trial. Some might call that semantics, but I think it's a meaningful enough difference to influence people's perception of the game. However I do think that with the new mini expacs not having new elite specs, core classes are getting more attention again. The community discusses them more and the last balance patch seemed to at least include an attempt at buffing core guardian. So maybe we'll see the playing field level out.
@melinnamba I'm also in the rather unpopular position of being actually very glad that they nerfed *most* of the new Spears as fast as they did? Did they go overboard on some? Yes. Do Guard & Mes still need the same treatment? Probably. | But was it ultra-stupid different colors had to buy the newest XPac to keep up even just via the weapon? (e.g. Competitive DPS on Rev? Or having a viable ranged-option on Warrior?) Absolutely. The question is now, where that power budget goes, or if it even needs to go anywhere. Or if the community is comfortable with "throwing the car in reverse" for a while. Only time will tell. 😄
if every class have everything than you will have a problem, because the other classes will lose what they had to compesate the disajustment in first place.
On the PvE aspect Anet managed to allow a lot of viable build to be played for all content which is quite impressive. But at the same time their balance decision doesnt make sense. They have killed Rifle on Engineer and Rifle Mechanist in all gamemode (quite frankly Mechanist is quite bad in all non PVE gamemode and requires much more work to be able to do what other spec does in less button) but kept Virtuoso relatively untouched just because Virtuoso is not as popular as Mechanist back then. But still, you can play all profession and almost all spec for all PvE gamemode. I will skip PvP because I barely touch that gamemode. On WvW though, I am surprised no one is talking about the mobility powercreep and the excessive mobility some class (Thief and Willbender just to name a few) have. I used to use terrain as a weapon, houses and tree as shield but these days, these things means nothing when a Thief or Willbender can just instant teleport to your location and burst you. I used to save up some movement skill just so that I can create distance if needed, but now what is the point when a Willbender or Harbringer can just dash towards you, burst and then dash away again with little to no CD. And I wont even talk about exploit that has been in the game since forever and havent been patched. Honestly if PvP is considered by some a "dead gamemode", WvW would sure be the "forgotten gamemode".
Mhmmm, and as you said I do hope that there's space for some unique class identity to be added back to various Professions. But feature creep (like everything having ultra-mobility) as you mentioned is also a huge issue. In the vacuum of power creep it would be fine. But Things like Harbinger Sword skills just go further (600) than the tooltips say (450)? So not really sure what's going on there. Maybe on paper Necro is supposed to still have at least "more limited mobility." But then again they were put in to the game ~a year ago? So maybe fix that at some point so your execution matches your design documents, or at least change the tooltips so we know which one it's supposed' to be. 😂
Nuclear take, but some class identities are just straight up bad. They dont exist very well in a post EoD/SoTO meta where we had the boon homogenization and weapon master. Being that a lot of elite spec design held the weapon in mind as part of its identity, removing it has highlighted a lot of problem areas that Anet doesn't have the time/resources to handle. Some identities need a massive tune-up. Hell, a ton of the core traitlines need reworks because they're full of hot nonsense that no one wants to use, or are just ridiculous in how strong they are given the game mode (think Guardian giving Aegis when it gives itself Aegis) I'm a primarily PvE raid guy, so a lot of this is just complaining for the sake of it, but i think this game is long overdue for some systems makeovers, which it might never get give the cadence of balance and content updates
I don't see why we can't get a patch every 2 weeks. I don't get why we can get hot patches to fix broken things for pvp or wvw. We already know Annette is almost putting all their eggs in the basket for guild wars so why can't we get these things. It makes sense to get these things.
You just said "things are too tanky while doing too mutch dmg" and you solution is to ........ nerf energy sigil? Wait what? xD. The problem is the boon spam/Condi Spam in comb with defensive class mechanics..... i think the energy sigil is the shortest end of them all ...... 😅
@@GW2Pseudoyour comments that virtuoso has the freedom to just take whatever tho is just plain false. Dropping sigils / elite is a dps loss in the same way any other class is. The damage cvirt specifically does is not busted compared to other classes. It just happens to fit the role best for the most common / popularized pug strat for ToF CM / LCM. I’ve said this on the forums before, and I’ll say it here as well, just because many people play cvirt in pugs does not mean it is the strongest option on an encounter. The only 2 encounters it shines on are ToF and KO. The one thing I would concede is I think nerfing their cleave and maybe adjusting the malices to be able to be immobilized sooner would open up more options to strategy.
@@EvOILLuSionZThey do for HTCM, (note the footage under that comment is HTCM and not LCM.) LCM is a DPS check while HTCM is a prolonged mechanics check. Virtuoso just happens have the flexibility, DPS, and utility to perfectly fit both of those while (most) other classes do not. Virt also gets a free invuln with no cast time that you can do DPS during. But even if it was Necro or Warrior or Ranger doing 43K cleave from 1200 range that's still a "Line in the Sand." The point was not to pick on Virtuoso or Willbender specifically. Other classes have been meta for much of PvX as well. They just happen to have been kings for a very long time lately. And since it's 2025 those are the examples that exist.
@@EvOILLuSionZI wrote "They do" not "They are" and under your second comment. As in "They do have the freedom to drop utilities and run Portals, not that "They are strictly necessary" for either. They're just the most common. The same way that Willbender is in PvP now, Catalyst was, or even Bladesworn was when it came out when it could reload it's Healing-Shout skills, which was equally as stupid and bad for the game. I think you're missing my point, so I'll try to Summarize it: I am not picking on Virtuoso specifically but, does the power-curve just keep going up since Virtuoso is not "necessary" but by far the easiest, & the most versatile for clears and this is the line in the sand?' (This creating "A Meta" and this discussion in the first place.) The issue is power/free feature creep, and that the Meta has been allowed to Stagnate. It just so happens that that meta laned on Virtuoso and Willbender. So the question becomes: Do we nerf these 2, or buff (could be utility, support, damage or instert-x-here) everything else? Do Ranger and Warrior get portals now, or Necro get an invuln? Or could we maybe require Virt to give up, say, some damage for a portal (as they do with HTCM) or a damage trait in PVE for their free invuln, cleave, range or some combination of the 3? That's what balancing around a Meta means.
What Anet can do to balance game: Rework Berserker. Please.... 😞 But to be completely honest. The only problem I have with this game is: Almost everything run Berserk/Viper gear. I'm not talking about supports or anything else. It's a problem in every single game where max damage is available. I would love if berserk prefix didn't exist in the game so you have to make a choice between higher base damage/crit chance/hp/healing/thoughness, etc. Instead we just run damage and spam skills all the time. Utility skills are mostly for defience bar... Hammer Berserker and it's values are a joke... Why? It looks so cool and it's utter dogshiet
Going to push back hard on "every class feels the same". Warrior doesn't play anything like an Elementalist, Elementalist doesn't play anything like a Theif, Theif doesn't play anything like a Reverent. Classes applying the same boons doesn't mean they play the same. That's like saying every character in Street Fighter plays the same because they all have throws.
That's not a bad take Oceanbat I'm glad we can disagree on stuff. Tbh I don't like the "Press Class Mechanic X to do Y boon" thing whether it's in the support line or or a Grandmaster, I honestly preferred when they were trying to give it to Banners & Spirits etc. at least then you saw the Visual Representation of whatever was going you boons. But that also probably would have been worse. I don't think there's a magic bullet to any of this. But I will say I want more interesting Grandmasters than "give boon X" on Specializations back. But ofc, as you know, super not biased on that. 😂
Good video but, they reality is that ANET does pander, they have listened to a lot of crying over the years (muh player retention fears). So in their attempts to make everyone a winner they really stopped caring about risk/reward and simply try to make everything equally rewarding. Why ever play Power Herald (dead since 2020) when you have Willbender, Necro with its new mobility, etc? Yes, homogenisation is a symptom of that. (Either way, Id rather have a patch that unfcks other specs from their past stupid changes than a nerf to WB and such. It is actually not that oppressive. This perpetual "nerf/remove what I dont like" cycle is also largely responsible for the state of the game). The community was in fact largely responsible for the shtty Feb 2020 patch. It has gone downhill ever since. Back then, it was no problem to burst down a slop tanky, Minstrels build. Their hyper-fixation with balance is what started fckin it all. Pretending that this is something other than an MMORPG. Also, boons are never going away until they can address the perpetual vomit fields all over the ground pulsating damage and CC. And they know this. It is an arms race. The game is unplayable without permanent Stability and Resistance. They simply haven't had a real philosophy or direction to follow for years. Instead, they seem to balance and even design around Golem benchmarks and Monthly tournaments (and random crying posts). It is pathetic. Other things: 1. Relics were a great change. Most of them are pretty decent. If anything, damage modifier ones shouldn't exist. But 6 per update is a lot, yeah. 2. The new weapons are so overloaded. They keep trying to cram the equivalent of elite specs into them. They need to stop that, and they need to nerf all the current spears even more, before they continue to "balance" (nerf) classes and builds around them. 3. WvW is a lot more salvageable than sPvP. It is over for that mode. Conquest was never that good, sorry pseudo-esports bros.
I'm mostly a new player to this game. 3500 achievement points. But I've spent 6k hours in ESO. And there are similar problems. Their version of guardian - Templar - is literally useless and unplayable in PvP. So please-please-please, don't ruin my willbender here, I'm just getting used to how things function here. But holly cow, this burst gank meta is a big bs. On another hand, in ESO I could have a 15 minutes duel and it ended because we both get bored and move away from each other. It actually doesn't matter for me as a new player, if I play some "op" spec. It's not OP in my hands. Just nerf some high end intricate specifics, if you really need to.
1:29 Virt does indeed have cleave and 1200 range. Range doesn't really matter except for what, two fights in the form of Cerus Legendary mode and Kaineng? Three if you wanna kite on Q2 I guess. It does have cleave but idk, better watch out for the cleave of unload thief or it'll steal your lunch money. Having distortion is both stupid and funny lol 2:24 There's no reason to not pick virt as a damage class? footage shows how there's multiple people on damage not playing virt. It is a good class, that's for sure but you can take power tempest, you can take condi mech, you can take power cata if you're one of those crazy people that only wants damage or you can take scourge and have a 900 range revive and a bunch of barrier per dps gamer for example. You'll do very similar damage and each of those also brings other stuff to the table. 2:33 There's no reason to talk about willbender in pvp/wvw in the pve section. 3:06 No reason to talk about wvw and pvp in the pve section. 4:10 Heal warrior or heal specter being bad? Yeah they are. Well, you can say that they aren't bad but that they are in a different (worse) league than other healers. Considering that the staff for warrior came out in february of last year I wouldn't say that it's the balance team that's not fast enough but that they are fine with warrior being a bad healer. There have been multiple balance patches since we all knew it was not in the best state and its continued being in a not great state. Unless there's some comment from some random twitch chat from Grouch or whatever saying that they wanna make those two better, with how much time has passed, I'll consider this a decision the balance team took instead of saying that they aren't fast enough to change it. I also wanna add that while they are in fact the worse healers out of every option, you can still clear every single fight and every single cm with them. 4:51 Once all your boons and all the mechanics you'll deal with have been covered, you will always want the maximum ammount of the best class that you can get. There is no mechanic preventing you from picking six of anything. You can delete virtuoso from the game and everyone will play cerus lcm with six scourges, or with six tempest, with six [insert the best class here]. The only reason this is not happening on every single fight is that most of the other fights are not hard enough to push you to want to have the best chance you can. This is not a problem, this is a design decision. No ammount of balance can change this without a combat system rework (which is ludicrous at this point in the game's life). To add a bit to this, it's neat when the meta changes and there's new stuff to play and enjoy (and you can say that it's not fast enough for your taste) but this is already happening. Since HTCM released there have been moments when everything you saw was rifle mech, or bladesworns, or sure condi virt. There's also moments when condi scourge was doing 50k dps. We had power tempest doing a ton of damage on an easy build, we had rev spear doing stupid numbers, we had double pistol willbender with a whole bunch of burning for a moment. Except for mirage and arguably weaver, there is a reason to play each elite spec; to play each class. Each one of them can clear every fight in the game. Do you not want to see specifically a virtuoso on your pug runs? that's fair, it has been a very good build for quite a while; but lets not pretend that the balance of the game is not in the best state it has ever been. I was there when the only real dps build was tempest and I don't wanna go back to pressing F because someone downed and accidentaly stealing a conjured weapon instead of helping.
I think you're missing my point, so I'll try to Summarize it: I am not picking on Virtuoso, specifically. OR Willbender, or even Immobilize Druid. These are just examples of each of the 2 points I'm trying to condense for each game mode. PvE Virtuosos are not strictly necessary" for either HTCM, LCM, or even Weekly R. They're just the most common. The same way that Willbender is in PvP now, Catalyst was, or even Bladesworn was when it came out when it could reload it's Healing-Shout skills, which was equally as stupid and bad for the game. But given this does the power-curve just keep going up since Virtuoso is not "necessary" but by far the easiest, & the most versatile for clears and this is the line in the sand?' (This creating "A Meta" and this discussion in the first place.) The issue is power/free feature creep, and that the Meta has been allowed to Stagnate. It just so happens that that meta laned on Virtuoso and Willbender. So the question becomes: Do we nerf these 2, or buff (could be utility, support, damage or instert-x-here) everything else? Do Ranger and Warrior get portals now, or Necro get an invuln? Or could we maybe require Virt to give up, say, some damage for a portal (as they do with HTCM) or a damage trait in PVE for their free invuln, cleave, range or some combination of the 3? That's what balancing around a Meta means, and that's the discussion I'm trying to foster here! 😄
Will probably get flamed here but, don't care. It was a mistake to introduce "relics" in the first place. Agree, having 100% or permanent boon(s) shouldn't ever happen in game. Now, I don't play PvP, absolutely hate it. WvW, only when I need gift of battle however, I'm working on Coalescence, I'm having to do more WvW for skirmish tickets. It's a recipe to disaster. Yes, more runes/sigils and give us a leggy aqua helm. I remember the original "banner warrior" before Anet killed it. Then brought it back but couldn't use any weapon, then had to revamp it to a much weaker build than what it was originally. They these are "balance" patches, I really question exactly what they are... great video, cheers :)
Thx! & Thanks for providing context for your answer, it's very helpful for discussion. To be fair I haven't touched PvP much in JW but I'm a huge WvW nerd. And as a couple people have pointed out here some Specializations could also be massively over-performing as well. Unfortunately all of the interplay between new systems make it basically impossible to determine what's over-performing. Like I always say I think it just comes down to: *"What's FUN but fair-enough"* at the end of the day. And to me at least, different individual build pieces to play with where builds, & classes can actually interact with each other for more than 1-second windows 95% of the time, seems a lot healthier.
I still need to learn more I did thief to 40 did not like it like in other mmo did a 80 ticket on revenant loving it so far did the ,last expansion to get flying mount and not doing story… I have a virtuoso to 80 but need hero points still so far not liking it to the renegade for ow don’t care for pvp as of now
Every-single class and every-single spec has cleared both HTCM and LCM. As for LCM/Cerus specifically, Condition Virtuoso is only 'meta' because it is incredibly easy to play with modest (quite low relative to other dps benchmarks) damage. Most players are not good enough to complete both the mechanics and play a class to at-to-near benchmark damage. So, Condition Virtuoso helps with that skill gap. Many other specs are actually far more advantageous to take in LCM. Some examples: * Tempest is a better class to play on LCM than Virt if you can dodge (real problem: bad players cannot). It has better cleave and lets you stay near the boss; * Scourge has as much utility and more survivability than Virtuoso. It makes sub 10% a joke; * Deadeye has better cleave and has an 'easy' version that can also clear both LCM and HTCM. The actual biggest issue with endgame content currently aren't the dps classes--it is the hordes of 'omg I'm a support main' players, who do not understand basic mechanics and think they are doing 'great' if they press a heal button. I think this is reflected in your comments about engi/warrior not being 'good enough healers' around 4:25. Both engi and warrior have heal cleared all content (including LCM and HTCM). However, it does require more skill to use these classes in this content. The biggest takeaway for anyone looking to clear difficult content in GW2 is that you have three options: (1) be extremely good on a class you one-trick and feel is not 'represented--that still fills a role effectively (can cleave on LCM/do appropriate damage on HTCM); (2) create your own group to clear the content; or (3) adapt, be a team player instead of complaining, and learn the easiest classes to clear the difficult content.
For PvE this is a discussion of what a stagnant Meta is, how that feels, and what that means in terms of 'required' (or at least expected) power-creep for the game's future. I just joked that it's "aka. The Virtuoso problem" because that is what people are most familiar with as it happens to be the one that's been in the spotlight here for the longest. Virtuoso is not "necessary" you're correct in that regard. But 93% of groups have 6 just because it means you're going to be able to prog "hard" content or just get your weekly clears done that much easier. And is that not what "A Meta" is by definition? (It's what's most used for X or Y content.) People have been saying that they want more reward for playing 'harder' piano classes (Ele, Engi, Deadeye, etc.) for a while. So is that not exactly a good thing? The main thing, as you said is Virt is "easy"-er. It gets a free invuln on it's DPS kit, cleaving range, and can also bring Utility / Do roles (aka. Portals) that the "meta" of the one other "hard" fight (HTCM) in the game demands (again most' of the time.) Even taking utility out of it though, say in terms of damage, do you think it's "healthy" for the future of the game for *anything* (Warrior, Virtuoso, Ranger, whatever) to be able to do 43K+ dps easily from range, especially when original raid fights were designed (and balanced) around classes doing max 20? There's no wrong answer here. "Yes." Is an entirely acceptable answer to that question, especially with the caveat/rationale that "it will get newer players into older raid content." But if that's the answer we need to be prepared to live in the reality of aggressive power creep that we all sanctioned. There's no "magic bullet" solution to any of this as people seem to think, but it's an important discussion to be able to have because everyone is different and has different perceptions of what is "right" and what "needs fixing." 😄
Respectfully, I don't think that's the point that Pseudo's making. It's not about Virtuoso specifially. He probably could have phrased that better, it's about the meta of power and feature creep without build investment. There will always be a Meta' at Doing X' in any game, or anything really. Virtuoso just happens to have the easiest DPS *AND* Utility in the 2 high en PvE fights right now. Willbender is still king in PvP. But neither are particulatly useful in Zergs in WvW where Firebrand an scourge still dominate. It's more about the game environment that both Homogenization of Boons/DPS in theory creates. I.R. now do we now go up' or down' from here? Do we add Portals to Ranger, Revnant so they can do the same things Virt can and further the power/creep/Homogenization of the game? Or up the ranged, cleaving DPS of Necromancer? Or are we willing to eat the bullet and take either some of the "free" or "free-er" utility i.e. Portals, Invulns, DPS away from Virt in order to preserve Class Identity and avoid even more Aggressive Power Creep. Once upon a time Dhuum CM was considered "Hard, Prestigious Content." If we don't turn the car around HT, LCM and even the next LCM will eventually be trivialized as well.
@@GW2Pseudo respectfully, if you think cVirts can do 43k+ dps at ranged easily, you don't know what you are talking about. The benchmark barely hits 43k at the golem, and the vast majority of players are going to be at 70-80% of that. There are exactly 0 raid fights in this game that benefit the group taking a virtuoso for ranged dps over a superior (higher dps) spec, of which there are many (21 of them). I do agree, that yes, old encounters have become power crept by ALL specs (not just virt).
On wvw 150 toughness ench, 10% DMG reduction from food, 20% from talent, perma prot and perma resolution. WTF are they smoking this wb thing is no comment
The real issue with it is it has literally no downside. WB's are honestly a lot more manageable in WvW than PvP rn where the overall power level of *everything* is a lot higher. The real issue is in PvP where nothing competes it in terms of what it brings as a roamer, or counters it right now at high level. It'll be really interesting to see what they do it it *if* they ever nerf it. Whether it's mechanical, survivability, damage or some combination of the 3.
Not sure how managable they are in WVW if they are in danger you can just click Elite then you have movement skills worth 3-4k range. F3, F2, F1, F2 with a bit of map awareness you can find a target to use sword 2 and sword 5. For example a good WB will not overextend to that degree. For example weirdly enough cele core eng beats WB but when he is in danger he just leaves combat. On DE i beat them 75% of the time but at any moment just a single skill can take 50% of my HP for example F1 deals 9.5k dmg which leaves me on 6k :D. On PVP eng is xD and Thief is just useless especially in the double support meta where a single target at 130 range burst just does not cut it :D
The game maybe is in its best state for the last 5 years. Yes, it is not like vanilla or HOT or POF... does it need heavy nerfs to be more balanced ? ... NO, no, and NO. Foremost, GW2 will never be perfectly balanced, there will always be better specs and best builds. How can you possibly balance 36 specs (including core) with each weapon they have and have diversity and uniqueness in all of them. That's why Anet is trying to harmonize specs and boons with game modes. Yes it is not the best idea possible... yes some of the gameplay of those classes are frankly dull, but it is not that bad at all. Look at other games - FF14, WOW, they all have meta. Yes, they are easier to balance, BECAUSE they have standard roles - they have the holy trinity in one way or other. But GW2 have such a diversity in combination of stats, abilities, classes, and so on and so on.... the more you try to balance all that the more of a mess it becomes, or you lose what makes GW2 special in the first place. The game must be fun to play, not a perfectly balanced mathematical equations. 44K DPS ? How many of you have reached that even with meta gear and builds... me personally never... My DPS never gets over 20-25k even with meta followed and flawless rotation. Just enjoy your experience and don't overthink it.
"The last 5 years" encompasses a huge range of time and very different states of the game. Many of my Guild get that high on the golem as they're practicing for Cerus. And yes, Guild Wars 2 is doing great! I'm glad you're enjoying it, I am as well!! This is not a doomer/criticism video, it's an analysis video for feedback because things can always improve! This is a build & systems channel after all 😄
You know HTCM was completed with like an all core guard group? Also, your own video footage on HTCM shows a bladesworn(**sorry, zerker?**) absolutely shredding virt DPS. The top DPS on a bunch of runs of HTCM is still, very often, vindicator. As for cerus LCM/CM/EOS/etc, I did LCM on a scourge comp. The only reason condi virt is popular there is because of a strat that was well documented, not because nothing else can be used. Virt could use some balance in that skills intended to mitigate damage shouldn't proc damage, but this seems like more of a relic issue (fireworks) than a class issue. Also please stop calling to nerf end game content difficulty. It's supposed to be hard and we should rise to the occasion. Getting an LCM brought me back to the game.
For PvE this is a discussion of what a stagnant Meta is, how that feels, and what that means in terms of 'required' (or at least expected) power-creep for the game's future. I just joked that it's "aka. The Virtuoso problem" because that is what people are most familiar with as it happens to be the one that's been in the spotlight here for the longest. Virtuoso is not "necessary" you're correct in that regard. But 93% of groups have 6 just because it means you're going to be able to prog "hard" content or just get your weekly clears done that much easier. And is that not what "A Meta" is by definition? (It's what's most used for X or Y content.) I'm not calling for a nerf to end-game content difficulty, or Virtuoso in a vacuum. Far from it. I said nerf the DPS required to complete LCM, (in conjunction with nerfing the DPS that every class can do proportionally.) It would still be just as hard. What I'm seeking to avoid is the aggressive power creep that we're both experiencing and looking down the barrel of in every game mode. LCM (and the new one) having insane DPS checks is great. Classes doing 43K+ DPS when OG raid fights were designed around classes doing 20K max maybe is exactly what's been happening . And is going to continue to happen with the existing LCM effectively "nerfing" it as you said you wished to avoid if we keep just going "Up and Up and Up" in terms of the hybrid Utility classes can bring, DPS, or both.
@GW2Pseudo I agree that power creep is a problem but that's been happening for years and just seems like the nature of MMOs. If your real point was power creep then highlighting virt only is kind of defeating the purpose of your argument. A meta can shift as fast as someone grinds out a new rotation with a higher benchmark and can have very little to do with the class and the balance itself. Also, LCM is perfectly doable with classes that have lower benchmarks, so even if everyone was brought back to 34-38k dps, you could still kill LCM. HTCM is doable (and has been done) entirely with core classes. Power creep and virtuoso being good at a few fights are two very different issues.
@elisethechemistttv I also highlight Willbender for PvP + WvW. But you're right, I probably shouldn't have called it the "Virtuoso Problem" too many people seem to be confused by that. So lessons for next time. However I think that it's *the specific fights* (HTCM and LCM) that makes it an issue. Say if Virt was "the way it is right now" and meta for HTCM because it could do portals and the invuln was useful for not wiping/restarting your entire group on such a long fight but, say, scourge did 50K DPS (just as an example in this micro discussion) just because (again bad example) "Cerus took double damage from torment," or "reflected projectiles 56% of the time" or whatever then I would at least look at that an more diverse' and healthy for the game' in a way instead of having a Purple Wall on every fight. It will be interesting when the new LCM comes out to see if Virt is still the "Path to Victory" on the new LCM or if Harbinger somehow becomes bonkers or something and the meta shifts.
@@GW2Pseudo Right now, you can easily do HTCM with a single portal virt of you want that and your entire DPS can be vindicator or reaper. Both are very strong. You can even bring DE and portal to the greens instead. You can bring a heal Chrono and have them do portals and then your entire DPS can be whatever. Again, it's popular strats that seem to force virt when in reality, the fight can easily be done on anything. As for LCM, the only reason it's a lot of purple right now is because of one popular strat not requiring immob from your healers. Every one of my groups except one runs druid or heal scourge immob and we run with a team of tempest, cata, scourge, willbender, virt, etc. One easy strat change to immob and suddenly you don't need range and cleave to handle malices. There is no virt problem. It's a strat problem.
@@elisethechemistttv I never said Virtuoso was the problem. It's just illustrative of a stagnant meta. Read what I wrote again ^ and try to understand this point is a discussion about power/feature creep, not 1 class. 😂
Respectfully disagree, relics are not what makes classes do high dmg or become busted in pvp, same as cele was not even the issue in wvw, and it was not really nerfed lol, cele was S tier before expertise and concentration was added to it. The issue is the classes dude....yes the classes, the elite specs, the utilities, those are the things that need to be nerfed/toned down, not the spears not the weapons, THE ELITE SPECS. It's the lack of balance and the abandonment of the game modes that create these problems. Guild wars 2 is on it's way out, it's basically on maintenance mode that is funding w/e project that is not guild wars 2. Sad to say but it's the reality, even the big content creators understand this, Teapot is quiting, Mukluk aint gonna be doing gw2 anymore, combined with the poor marketing of Arena net, new players are not joining the game. Very little incentive for Arena net to balance the professions in pvp and wvw.
And that's 100% fine. It's fine to disagree too!! I've heard "GW2 is dying" for years now. But regardless, games (and) people come & go. But back on topic: I really don't see any Elite Specs overperforming honestly, even Willbender if they tone down it's damage. PvP is much more Balanced than WvW and the main 2 differences are The Existence of Concentration + Expertise stat combinations and ability scaling. I'd really love to see how WvW goes for a week if they used Amulet Balance honestly 😄
@@GW2Pseudo incorrect, it's also a massive problem in Spvp, its very broken and overperforming, even Naru himself Team USA hates the current meta and balance, grimjacke and all the EU pros hate it. There is fundamental problems with class design in 2024 and many of the professions need to be cleaned up. It's diff a class balance issue.
@BBLONwhited I mean I'm 100% open to being wrong. Discussion is entirely why I made this video, and if I only got 1/8 wrong I'm pretty ok with that. I haven't touched PvP much these past few months, and that entirely could be the underlying issue. I still think relics didn't exactly help with the power creep there, especially in terms of tank / damage. But if ANet wants to tone down or revisit adding some trade-offs to Specializations I'm all for that. Still no idea why they 180'd on that really.
Anet shitted on so many things with the last expension... necromencer has been destroyed with a karateka pistolerro???? what anyone can think about this for asian based necromencer.. they are so dumb. They destroyed everything.
great video personal take I left the game 3 months ago,I got bored of all the bullshit I wont come back until they do their job If they never do their job, I'll go and play sth else, GW2 is getting boring and it is the devs faults for not balancing it properly
TY &100%. I've been there. Also took a 7m break a couple years back. Video Games are for fun (usually.) The Boon Homogenization thing and WvW Cele gear are probably the closest I've been to dipping out myself. 😅 But I just thought I'd try to give some constructive feedback since I'm still enjoying it, at least for now lol
![СКАЙРИМ НА СТЕРОИДАХ! [RFAB] ЧТО ЭТО И КАК В ЭТО ИГРАТЬ? • ВСЁ О СБОРКЕ REQUIEM FOR A BALANCE [1]](/img/n.gif)
Reminder to Everyone: *It's OK to Have Different Perceptions + Opinions on the Internet!* ^^ | I made this video just to get my thoughts in one place and to hopefully open the door to some positive discussion. 😄 ++ Happy New Year All!! \o/
Virtuoso: *full ranged dps with no downtime*
ANet: let's nerf warrior's only good ranged tool.
To be fair it was very busted, but to also be fair Virtuoso is about 8x as bad. 🤣
What a well put together video tbh all of these points seem very valid.
As a warrior main (call be biased if you want) I still feel like we can't have nice things. The one thing that was being powerful and usefull after they took away banner slave, and made changes and nerfs to warrior GS and other aspects of the class, and the elite specs, was the spear. And even with the spear we still had problems and were forced to play around them, because of how many projectile blocks and reflects there are in wvw and even pvp.
They decided to nerf it. And although it's still usable and playable, is just not... Whats the word. Worth it ? People don't even want you in their groups bexause there is always some other class with a bigger power creep than you, that do more things than you, cover more boons than you.
Why have a condi berzerker, even if it gives quickness, when you can have a firebrand or any other class that does more damage, more boon coverage, and in most times are even easier to aplly all of these than warrior.
And dont get me started on the distance and duration of shit like rangers immobilize, or the sheer ammount of teleports and stealth professikns like Chronomancer and Thief have. It's fucking ridiculous.
Some people have once said to me:
"Oh just hit them, you still have reveal target to take them out of stealth, you can still hit them even if invisible."
Ok then, maybe, MAYBE, if i was top 50 in pvp or whatever else in the whole server. And even if i was everything is stacked against the warrior because of the sheer ammount of dodges, movement skills and enemy dodges they have. And also, guess what, most of the player base is not top pvp players.
Shit even guardian with the last elite spec can now cover stupidly ammount of distance and aegis uptime, yet somehow people say warriors spear damage and dodges were the problem.
This is everything I've been saying for about 3 years now, all put in one place. Dope vid honestly man
And some people are just salty their stuff gets nerfed over & over: Cue every comment under here that says "Guild Wars 2 is Dead" while they continue to play it because it's dope.
No, the issue is that the Virtuoso meta / Skillbender roamer meta has been in place for over a year? At this point it feels like the devs deliberately avoid nerfing their preferred specs
Honestly a really solid take. I appreciate your way of looking and analyzing things. I’m subscribing!
Welcome aboard! Just trying to add positively to the discussions I think to community should be less afraid to have!! 😄
I haven't played GW2 in like four years, and just got recommended this video. I am both surprised as well as not that surprised that basically everything that was wrong with profession balance is almost exactly the same as it was back then. And it still sounds like they have the Golden Child issue they had, except with a new balance dev's preference while leaving other professions begging for help.
This made me chuckle lol. Thanks for that. We'll see what happens in January's patch I guess. 😂
I like to think that these problems persist so long because ANet is working on GW3. Let me dream.
I like that. I'll wake you up in 4-5 years if/when it comes out 😄
yeah , the current problem with meta is not about how much damage classes do but how EASILY they do it compared to others, some classes have to put oput rotation to heal others while some of them doesnt and can use utility when they want to
It really does feel like Mesmer is just the favorite kid in the Guild Wars universe, for whatever reason. In GW1 the best team comp for solo play is to have 6/7 mesmer heroes because they just kill everything faster, with less down time, than any other class and it isn't even close. In GW2, virtuoso.
Interestingly people said the same thing about Mirage for the longest time, and now Mirage is probably the worst flavor of Mesmer. Idk what tht says about ANet's "favorite children" lol
Nah, their favorite child is definitely Guardian, almost never gets nerved, and you'll always see a Dragonhunter or a Firebrand in any content outside of PvP.
It's Guardian. Without question.
@KryticalError lol. (It shouldn't,) but that's what happens when a profession is the most plated in your game. Gotta say it felt weird when immediately after EoD-launch when Willbender kinda sucked (when the virtues didn't layer.) Until they decided Guard having such a "downside" was completely unacceptable. 🤣
@@GW2Pseudo The sad thing is I actually LOVE every Guardian spec. ESPECIALLY Willbender. But I also abso-Fi3King-lutely hate them. Like, WB and DH are OBJECTIVELY cool. But they are so annoying to play against. Of course it's all matchup dependent and player dependent, but that's true of everything. Just feels like WB especially always sets my jaw on edge when I finish a strong 1v2 or holding my own in a 1v3 / 1v4 and a Willbender blinks me from offscreen and instantly knocks me lol
Let me tell you about WARFRAME. There's this mission type called "Survival." As you take down enemies, they have a chance to drop a "LS pack" that restores 4% LS. There's a Warframe called Nekros. It has an ability where it can "break down" the corpses of enemies for potential extra loot. For a period of time, it was impossible to go longer than 10min in Survival without a Nekros on team, nothing could clear the enemies fast enough to get enough LS packs. i'd like to think that DE (the owners of WARFRAME) had to come to terms with the fact that if someone decided to bring Nekros, the team just wouldn't have to worry about Life Support. But if no one brought Nekros, you didn't have to use specialized builds to keep LS up.
OH, LS = Life Support lol. Sounds kind of familiar yes. I'm always interested in how other MMOs in the space evolve as well. Curious, did they end up nerfing Survival and/or Nekros and was it done well/good for the game?
If there is not a proper Willbender nerf in upcoming balance patch, I will think twice before stepping into WvW or PvP.
Players will just flock to the next best/busted build option.
Maybe less Willbender, but more of sth else that just feels the same - 'oppressing' if you happen to not like to play one of the fotm build(s).
At least thats what I expect after 12y of wvw 'experience'.
one of the hardest things for me to get into with anyform of combat in this game, is the boon stacking meta, it being defining of your skill, im fine with your gear and skill determines what level content you can enjoy, but these days range is useless because if you not all on top of each other stacking boons your dead,
I thought i was a really bad player for the longest time because i was either dying instantly or doing 0 damage. Turns out its more sad that the game is broken and this is just Guild Wars life
I was screaming from the rooftops during the Rifle Mecha meta that Virt was even more OP. It just didn't seem that way because Mecha was so easy to play.
To be fair, Virt has also been reworked like x3+? times. The free invuln and self-sustain on it are just things that make it massively easier than other SPS classes, even ranged ones. There's competitors sure, but nothing as versatile.
The main reason I grew to truly dislike WvW is the boonball meta. Nothing worse than sitting in a keep watching a 40 man squad roll up and start knocking. There's no point in building siege because they literally deal no damage to a boonball, I just have to sit and watch as they tear our walls down. I beg for our boonball to come and help (if we even have one) and hope they come. Even being IN a boonball is not fun, I sit and tank everything with perma boons.
The most fun I've had in WvW is one unorganized squad attacking against an unorganized defense. It feels like a true battlefield and it's possible to punish mistakes and target people down. Building siege is more impactful. That, or small group roaming, like 3 - 4 people.
The weird thing is, siege used to matter wayyy more too.
And I 1,000% vibe with that last bit, and I think my roamer friends do the same. WvW shines where you have small skirmishes that allow for player expression. 😂 Having a perm "nuh-uh you can't interact with me at all" wall of yellow anti-counterplay stuff on someone's bar just makes you go "Welp guess I won't try."
You just got a sub because of this 27:05. I share your sentiment about patch balances. I agree with all your points. Great video!
Appreciated, welcome! I know it's easy to say, but I just try to produce content that will be positive+helpful for people, and as much as the game may frustrate me sometimes, "people" includes the Devs. I always expect nothing, but remain cautiously optimistic and I really, *really* hope they can add some class Diversity & Flavor back sooner than later! 😁
Great vid but im gunna stick my neck out and say I love relics 😂. 3 stick out in my mind as being way OP though. Stormsinger, rivers, and demon queen.
6 per patch is too many though. I think the 2 relics, 2 runes, 2 sigils idea is better.
Also cool to see some of my footage used
Liking Relics is perfectly fine! I love that the 6 slot can be separated now. And I love the other 'good' ANet has done these past 2 years like the Wizard's Vault. But with such a fast deluge of them (some with new, unbelievably flashy animations while the relic itself is borderline useless) this just seems like misspent development budget that we're reminded that we paid for every 3 months.
And yes, there was absolutely 0 chance I was going to be able to get all this footage myself. So definitely free plug for Homage ^ !! Check him out if you want an actually quite refreshing and positive look at PvP! 😄
I made this (and most of my videos) just because I think this is an important discussion to have. And judging by the actually amazing comments so far, it's actually sort of working!
Very interesting video! but here is my concern about the energy thing, i also live in WvW/PvP and make content (Mostly as a Ranger Soulbeast) and i can tell you that if, lets say they implement that without doing some extra stuff first... the game will be even more broken because currently there are certain professions/builds that have a bit of too much and then invulnerable. Let me explain what i mean: There are things far more unfair and broken/tonned down than this, like willbender's toolkit being just too much and on top of that having so much invulnerability windows and yet if you learn the match-up it becomes very doable. Same with eles, you can run a glass-cannon build and get away with it but not due to how many dodge rolls you get, mostly because you have a plethora of blocks and invulnerability, similar thing with mesmers... We start to see a pattern here, and the real issue is that even when you find the windows to kill those matchups, they have a free get out of the jail card ON TOP of all the other tools. Currently the evade thing is just a real issue with or against most thief specs because on top of the perma-stealth and one shot capabilities they can evade and dodge roll forever in those few windows that you have to kill them. To further sort of advocate for my point, when i started i was extremely confused and frustrated but after a while and also going over my own game-play i understood that the real issue was me. I really believe that things right now are not as unbalanced as to be a problem (Stormsinger needs a nerf tho). I think we have fallen into the trap of just pretending that if i get rekt its easier to attribute it to cheats or something being broken, you can't imagine the amount of times i have been Dm'd with the, nice cheats bro just because i space my buttons and dodge rolls and skills properly... and when i offer to go over the game-play because i was recording, they just insult you and nothing else. THAT is the real issue, players refusing to learn. When i started, everything killed me without a chance of fighting back, now i can deal with ALMOST anything and also, as you get better players and fight against better players... yeah, the fights are not over so quickly, even when 2 glass-cannon builds are happening, since movement and spacing are the most BROKEN/IMPORTANT skills in this game and yet a very low part of the player-base tries to improve on those. My conclusion: If you take away those sigils and essentially nerf the evading/dodging capabilities without toning down some of the previously mentioned stuff, you will only increase the gap and make the meta even more pronunciated towards what it is essentially already overturned because why would i run a class without popper evade options that doesn't have easy access to mobility/blocks/invulnerable when i can literally play some of the mentioned before and have all of those... like... sure, i can dodge less but guess what? i still have more broken defensive tools than you do on top of my absurd mobility and damage!
I'm getting a lot of really well thought-out responses to this video & I love it!
Re: Stormsinger (largely unrelated) yes it shouldn't be able to crit.
Re: Energy Sigils, I also largely agree with your analysis. But I still want to see what would happen if they tried it for a PvP/WvW season. One of my friends is actually back in the game who is quite skilled and plays a metric butt-load of Ranger as well. So we've been dueling & chatting a fair bit about current balance. Energy sigils are basically mandatory on every Ranger kit to be viable, because like Warrior, it has a lot of forced-movement skills, effectively forcing you to learn your setups' and get good.'
However, unlike Warrior which can basically be a brick Wall with it's Stances and Aegis right now, Rangers often don't have as many (or as many low CD invuln s in their kit.) But remember they do get evades on their forced movement skills, stealth, 1500 range, and even optional teleports, which Warriors do not.
I'm not trying to say "Oh whaaa my class is worse" I'm saying that an Apple is an Apple and an Orange is an Orange. They're different by definition. If energy sigils, (which are far & away the most OP sigil in the game) were removed, even for just say, ~3 months or so sure yes, it would likely be Hell for some classes, possibly Ranger, definitely Mirage, etc. But I do think that Energy Sigils are vastly muddying-the-waters and making it more difficult to pin down "the pain points" of over-performing builds like Willbender, or identifying Fun aspects that are lacking from other classes because they can "just run energy sigils" + whatever now. As with all things, I'm open to being wrong on this ofc! After 11 years I'd just really like to test this theory even just to see if the Devs would do anything meaningful with that data. 😄
@@GW2Pseudo Hey man! sorry for the late answer to this, been slammed with work! i do agree that it could be interesting to try it out, but absolutely not for 3 months, i don't think most players that really need those sigils to stay on par with other specs have to spend more than 2-4 weeks to see if it becomes unplayable or simply need to adapt, whatever the result might be im certain that the first wave will need adjustments and it would hurt to make ppl wait 3 months, for better or worse.
RE: slight nitpick about the ranger points xD, In my opinion, some of the things you mentioned aren't true at all, starting with what you said about the range advantage, let me elaborate:
While it is true that if we use longbow we have a lot of range... it is equally true that there are so many block sources and projectile deflection that makes it actually not that strong, alongside the fact that most specs, including the mentioned warrior have insane gapclosers plus, the longbow its by far the weakest weapon for the ranger, making it in paper super good but in practice very hard and frustrating to pull off.
in PvP i am tempted to agree that Energy is close to mandatory and even more so on higher ranks, altho i have been only close to plat and i lack some more experience.
In the WvW department however... dont get me wrong, im not saying i am the best ranger, but i am tempted to say that i am the Soulbeast that has tried and made from scratch builds that are working and capable of dealing with anything, lots of ppl picked them up and work for them too and in a lot of them, im not running energy sigils. Basically because i already have high vigor uptime. I understand that slamming energy there is NEVER a bad choice and i get the point of it but i just wanted to mention that if i can run without them and have great results, and apparently some others too... maybe the problem is what i said earlier, ppl get too comfortable with some things and shortcuts instead of actually timing some skills.
As a final conclusion, i also don't agree with the sentence you said about the sigils muddying the waters and make it difficult to pinpoint some issues. Sigils or not, i can clearly see some of the over tuned things from long, looong ago. And i believe more experienced players do so even better than i do. Once again, i think the number 1 issue its lazyness and i think getting rid of a tool that allows certain specs to have a fighting chance against over tuned things without actually adjusting those first... its really dangerous, i would suggest perhaps a nerf in the sense of limiting it to just 1 for example...BUT i agree with you in the sense that i would like to see an attempt to change things for sure!!😁😁
Wvw (half roaming, half zerging) player here. I played from launch til 2018, quit, and started playing again with Janthir's launch. It was spears that got me to play again, not relics, nor ascended food, nor elite specs, nor masteries.
Love most of what you've said here but your arguments on balance cadence resonated with me the most. We get a balance patch, the next most OP thing becomes apparent day 1 (usually whatever was 2nd most powerful before the patch and avoided nerfs), and we have to deal with that for 2-4 months. It's like this in pvp too. This is part of the reason I stopped playing. Wasn't much to look forward to. Just a lot more of the same.
I like your ideas of how we can address that, especially the "anet should just try things", like yeah, more frequent but experimental is better than this 2-4 month stretches of dealing with everuone running bunker, and/or nuclear bursts from stealth.
Thank you for the context for your response!
I don't have all the answers, (I don't think anyone does.) But to me there's very apparent "broken" pieces of builds that they could mess with. I know that when companies get involved a lot of "just do it" changes have to go through committee. But comparatively ArenaNet is tiny, and their. Plus, at this point the stagnation is just as bad if not worse when we get nothing meaningful for 3-4 months imo.
They actually "sort of" kind of beta tested new balance features in the form of the Extirpation debuff that was on Necro Spear 5 for a nanosecond. But that was pretty OP and got yote' pretty fast, and see how upset people got when that was yote' leaving Spear 5 pretty basic.
Now imagine that game-wide for something like energy sigils that literally almost every competitive' build uses. ArenaNet isn't stupid they know that making $ to eat food is important. Energy Sigils specifically aren't on their radar, but they'd definitely have to sneak enormous nerfs like this into larger buff patches/content releases. Which unfortunately just adds to power creep. I'm not sure what the answer is to deal with or work around such a slow balance cadence without making the community riot every other time. But 'just trying stuff' (with explanations) that they can easily 180 is probably a good step at this point! 😁
Bit of a nitpick about wvw boon uptime. Most of the reason why we run in a tight ball has to do with stability and healing. Its asking alot of a healer in a 20+ group to find damaged targets before they go down in larger fights so players need to stick to where they/we can find them. Stay on tag to get heals. In order to stay on tag they need stability. Any half decent group has a strong selection of pulls and getting pulled off stack means a quick death. Quickness doesn't have that much use for the stack except that boonstrips tend to remove quickness before stability. So good concentration helps certain builds have good stability coverage. It is a necessary and dedicated job to keep stab up. I am worried that if concentration gets nerfed in wvw pulls will simply become king.
Rant and a little history lesson from a big Guild Wars 1 GvGer and Tomb/Heroes PvPer and a Guild Wars 2 Scrapper Enjoyer:
In GW1 Arenanet learned the lesson that 'too different' can be detrimental to the health of your game when they introduced the Assassin and Ritualist. They were so wildly different from the base classes that the health and balance of the game was in a bad spot for a long time.
In GW2 the opposite seems to be happening. They seem to be afraid to deviate from the base concepts in the game and give specializations 'cool' things. It ends up where Professions feel like Paint Jobs for your character. If I pick a Necromancer I get Necromancer animations but I'm not providing anything different from a Warrior or Mesmer. The part about some specs losing their identify now that weapons can be used across specs hits the problem on the head. If the only thing Scrapper had going for it was it used a hammer....was Scrapper really ever 'cool'?
I've loved ArenaNet since GW1's release. I have hope they can figure it out, but some of these issues have been around a long, long time.
That's actually really interesting about GW1. I have a lot of friends who played it & that's never come up actually.
I really like when ANet is clever. And the only way to truly be 'clever' is to try stuff and fail sometimes.
While the HoT specs were defiantly less ambitious than what came later, both Scrapper and Spellbreaker were comparatively pretty simple on paper. The difference is that Scrapper was stupidly OP in the PvP meta at the time (I'm not saying Berserker wasn't, cause it was) so Scrapper got gutted and basically never recovered, while Spellbreaker which came later, only had [Full Counter] destroyed on it over & over, but otherwise mechanically aged like fine wine because it turns out boon removal in a boon meta is pretty good. Berserker, meanwhile, enjoyed almost 3 years in the dumpster after it was nerfed horrifically and repeatedly, only to somewhat recover last year.
I'm sure you know all this already and I'm not asking ANet to add more not boon-buffs. I'm just hoping that one day Specs like Scrapper, Specter, and even Bladesworn get the reworks that they deserve. The "cool" factor is big in games and at least 2/3 of those if not many other Specs in the game could definitely use a fresh coat of "cool paint" to say the least.
As a PvE vet(? Coming up on 5y of pve now, seen pre-alac druid/scourge/pre-quick berserker/scrapper/pre-eod metas and have consistently raided and striked through that time) I think most relics aren't really OP, at least in terms of damage and especially boons. Karakosa is an OP healing relic, but you solve the issue by adding an ICD.
At best, we have:
10% strike damage from Peitha (unreliable on most builds, a bit jank on the ones that might be able to proc it reliably)
10% strike and condition damage from Dragonhunter (not a self buff, needs a specific type of utility to hit a target and hit consistently)
7% from weaver/deadeye (weaker but self buff from a specific utility, really only deadeye is usable on deadeye and weaver relic sucks)
7% strike from Claw (requires burning CC which may not be super available in your kit or rotation, i.e. power weaver doesn't want to hit air sw2 or go to air/earth for sw3)
7% strike from Fireworks
Decent condi damage from Fractal (not a percentage buff but only "op" because there's really no competition)
Part of the problem is that relics initially tried to fill the gap from effects like Rune of the Scholar's t6 effect (5% increased strike damage when above 90% hp) but without the drawback (thief relic). Condi relics just have too many issues design wise (blightbringer) or too little damage to keep up with Fractal, which isn't even that OP but just has nothing to compete with.
Some of these relics have really interesting effects, I especially like Cerus relic for being an extra set of strikes as opposed to just a flat buff, but its really, really hard to make a relic like that useful without being too good for something (needing nerfs for the one thing that's OP with it). Another example is the Beehive relic, it could be a really cool option for professions with a lot of poison (not many) and especially condition druid (the 8 additional strikes, which could be increased in pve, could add additional astral power generation for condition druid, which depending on how its done could not be too game breaking, in addition to the potentially good poison damage if buffed) but the damage is just too low, same thing with Blightbringer being a poison alternative to fractal.
Others are just too hard to reliably proc or not worth enough when procced. Relic of the Stormsinger could be really cool for mobility builds like Willbender, and Relic of the Steamshrieker could be awesome in specific comps if made a little stronger (to help push a bit of extra DPS out for having extra water fields in your group, such as a heal druid dropping glyph for the potentially inferior healing spring depending on the fight or having a condition firebrand take time to use their tome water field).
Overall relics as a system just did not try to go hard enough into the more out there or "wacky" relics and it is really hard to make those work because something might be balanced on 9 out of 10 DPS builds but the 10th gets it ruined for the rest of them
Thank you for specifying context! This is *extremely* well-written. ^ And yes, mayhaps it didn't come across in the video, but for PvE I 100% agree relics are great! The customization they afford is great.
This statement:
"Overall relics as a system just did not try to go hard enough into the more out there or "wacky" relics and it is really hard to make those work because something might be balanced on 9 out of 10 DPS builds but the 10th gets it ruined for the rest of them"
Also I agree with. The trouble is then, trying to balance these "wacky+powerful" relics with things like WvW & PvP without making it "unfun" for whatever you're fighting. I think that's why I find a lot of them boring and would rather just get some other equipment variety at this point. But above all, I really hope they shift their development budget away from new, unique visual/effects for relics and add those to interesting Grandmaster traits again as I said. Especially now that they seem to have a new, baller, FX team. Just personal preference on that one I suppose though.
Totally agree that class identity is disappearing. Every class shouldn't have every skill.
Your point on the weapon unlock i disagree with, the main reason is that with this lock you are either saying these elite spec weapons should just be better than all others and if they are not then every build will just use the already available big weapon such as guardian greatsword, for engineer, you need to consider that the sword just wasn't all that good to begin with it doesn't really have a real niche for the engineer so it of course is going to get overwhelmed by the hammer, we generally see a similar factor with the ranger one hand sword which isn't really used that much.
In particular what I like about this weapon unlock is that it allowed use to use mace/shield scrapper which is by far the most fun way to play a support bunker engineer, it's capabilities fit far better into scrapper than into mechanist which displays the sheer advantage of allowing this, at the end of the day you didn't even need your elite spec weapon in many cases so there is little "fantasy" lost in them being unlocked and alot of "fantasy" gained.
And that's a very reasonable take honestly. I didn't mean it to sound that I feel as though Specialization Weapons should somehow be "more juiced" than the base weapons. Moreso that they should interact with and help define a *possible* playstyles of a Specialization more. (Think heat on Holo Sword or old Kneel+1500 range on Deadeye before they changed it, even Torch on Berserker for King of Fires fits.) They untamed hammer being weirdly more customizable on non-untamed is probably the best example of going against this imo. But there are some others.
Engineers however, far & away needed the shared Weapons proficiency the most. It's helpful to be reminded that there are classes like Engi and pre-SotO Ele who didn't really have many options. Still, I think if ANet was on this train of thought Engi would have gotten 2 1-Handed somehow ranged Weapons that just function identically to the 1-3 and 4-5 short bow skills, but could be combined with other weapons. Maybe electric throwing daggers or some such. I still can't believe they have Engi a 2-handed weapon and Thief a main hand without an off-hand weapon. 🙄
I think I pretty much agree with almost everything you said in regards to PVP and WvW, and that's coming from someone whose main trick is montaging "1 shots" - I definitely think ANET has been too slow to move on things like MEGA OVER REPRESENTATION or UNDER REPRESENTATION with amulets, stat loadouts, runes, sigils, relics, builds, and mobility. And I think the game would be WAY more fun if damage and tankiness and boon permanence were all toned down and brought closer to what feels manageable. That doesn't mean I think there should be no one shot builds or no bunker builds. And mobility is fun, so I don't want to see all mobility extremely nerfed or removed. But some things scream they should be either toned down significantly or reworked for the long term health of the game. I mean, remove Willbenders completely, tho. Other than that, I think some number tuning and some occasional reworks will get us into a good spot.
Everything feels the same when you roam. When you duelled the harb and my druid from your last stream its like oh we cant kill each other. Lets just walk different directions now 😂
Pretty much "/sleep" Also Happy New Year!! 😁
24:50 This is exactly what I've been saying since SotO came out. I'm glad the weapons are getting nerfed honestly, but bring back interesting Grandmasters please!
I'm 98% sure they're going to do a weapon-less Specialization for the next expansion too
If they nerf virtuoso without adjusting Cerus, new players will have it stricly harder. I dont think they can do that
Yup. Move the line in the sand but also the shovel back a bit. Both would need to happen at once. Otherwise we can "only go up from here" at least in PvE.
Cool video, I vibe with your temperament and this type of content in general. Since I am a relatively new player I will chime in and say that I think relics can be quite fun but I clocked them immediately as pure power creep put into the game solely to make buildcrafting more interesting for veterans. I wasn't aware just how many they have been adding though-it does seem egregious and will contribute to bloat. But at the same time, I think needing to acquire these relics via achievements or other explorations into other game modes is really healthy for the game in other ways. As for WvW, I have my own sort of mechanical hangups as a new player, but your veteran perspective on the actual stats, gear, and buffs was really interesting to me. It's not at all uncommon for these older MMOs to struggle with homogenization, ie maintaining their class identity while keeping everything semi-viable. ANet does seem to have serious issues with not nerfing clearly broken shit though. I wonder where that comes from because surely the feedback they get in that regard is quite loud and clear.
Thanks! & Re: "Broken shit": Not to mention their internal metrics must be screaming at them as well. If I had to guess, and we do a lot of the time, I'd say it really comes down to their hyper irregular balance cadence. (i.e Sometimes we get 3 balance patches in 3 months, sometimes we have to go 4+ months with nothing at all.) But combined with the fact that their "design goals" seem to vary and change from patch to patch like a leaf on the wind. For example, EoD specs: Patch 1 Get them out. Patch 2 nerf the over-performing PvP stuff, Patch 3 put Cele in the game and prep to scrap all EoD class identity and make loads of the Specs technically be able to give whatever boon for PvE.
This is somewhat reductive because, as I said, I was actually a fan of changes like Cele, at least for PvE (because it makes the game MUCH more accessible to new players, and more people playing the game means that literally everyone wins. But the I think of the OG Bladesworn or Willbender dev crying in the corner over all the work they did engineering a class that thematically made sense *and* was balanced/had balanced trade offs that made sense, before their Specialization was nerfed/buffed to being un-recognizable respectively, and I wonder if all that design work couldn't have been spent doing literally anything else.
Thanks for the feedback though. It's helpful to hear what newer players especially are thinking! And also to always helpful to remind myself/others that many other MMOs are just as baffling if not worse in terms of consistency. I give ANet mad props for better communication lately. It can always improve though.
I feel like Anet has painted themselves into a corner and they don’t know how to get out of it. Since the layoffs, I have thought that GW2 has been “sort of” in barely more active than maintenance mode. I hope they are working on GW3 with a new game engine and I would love it if I could migrate my characters from GW2 into GW3, but that’s pie in the sky wishful thinking on my part. I just hope that the GW franchise is worth the investment it will take to make a GW3 that is better than GW2 and I worry that there might not be enough of the original talent still working for Anet, to pull off creating a new MMORPG on the same scale and quality of GW2. I’ll probably stick around for many years to see what happens, because I still enjoy GW2.
Well, that's why I attempted to give a couple suggestions for the various mode(s) that I think might help! But regardless, I think the "still enjoying Guild Wars 2" part is easy to skip over for a lot. As frustrated as I can get some times at GW2 (and I too take breaks,) video games are for fun after all, and I play this one (and make content for it) because I enjoy it! 😁 If I didn't I wouldn't, simple as that.
Re: GW3 With what I know about development pipelines, for better or worse, I guarantee it's not coming any time soon. Since it was just getting funding allocated ~last? year, and that it'll likely be done kind of mmo that's 4-5 years tops. I still doubt it'll look anything like Guild Wars 2 though. Maybe (hopefully) it'll retain the combat system, but I'd guess the underlying engine and structure will be completely different.
@ Yeah, I hope that some or all of your suggestions as well as those from WP and other GW2 content creators, will be implemented by Anet, while we are waiting for GW3 to be released several years from now.
Im a relatively new player, returned 2 years ago. I dont care about relics (or any new slot things they want to add later), wouldnt mind it being deleted. I think they should stop powercreep, limit around 30k mark and I want the rotations to be easier, if I want high APM Ill play Starcraft.
Relics by themselves being separated is nice. The #s going up forever isn't sustainable though as many fights we're designed around classes doing ~maybe 20K DPS. Just FYI there are some low-er amp builds that absolutely slap rn. Check out my Auto-Attack 0-button Deadeye Build: th-cam.com/video/0aVUu0SK9L0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=Wjqe7PQCELdFjCq_ or Fresh Air Tempest if you haven't! The former is great to learn mechanics of fights on & the latter does Competitive DPS rn and is like 6 buttons. (It's also what I play in DPS in PvE because frankly I suck at it these days.) 😂 But I get what you mean.
20:27 I was watching a wvw stream the other day and the commander was like "I want a relic of the driver so I can survive longer" like damage reduction (from both receiving and giving lol) and maybe immune to pulling/moaing? that would be interesting but only can be equipt by the commander xD
Macro relics that interact like that would definitely be interesting. Imo that's less out-of-place on a Grandmaster too. -- That's somewhat what old [Deathless Courage] seemed to do when the virtues on Willbender didn't layer. (e.g. Basically invalidate your outgoing and incoming dmg for a bit when you pushed F3.) It even has the teleport on it too to get you ahead of your Zerg. 😂
biggest problem with this mmo is arena nets balancing for sure, remember how they changed scrapper to only give quickness when doing blast finishers? yeah... but then quickness firebrand be like "Press button and give quickness", they just don't follow their own logic, and this happens with a bunch of other balancing decisions, also about the power creep... yeah it's just really bad, gotta love how Soto pretty much introduced even more "Meta playstyles" to classes that didn't need it lol, then we get the spear builds and everythings changing in the build sites 😂😂the continuos trend of power creep definitely hasn't stopped, and it just makes older expansions feel terrible to play.
To be fair I've heard that some people like Engi Blasting for Quickness. But conversely I can't stand "just casting Dragon Slash" on Bladesworn and you give alacrity to literally the whole world. Imo it's out of place and doesn't fit the class fantasy at all.
Somehow it still has the best combat system 😂 tho. They just need to use it so it makes sense.
it's the exact same way i feel about it, realizing theres other classes that give quickness better and easier, just doesn't feel very good xD, thats not to say scrapper doesnt have other utilities though, but it is true, gw2 has the best combat out of any mmo ive tried 😎
@@Raindrop511Definitely. Just trying to help & be constructive here & the discussion in the comments so far has been pretty solid so far.
Let's hope 2025 is a better year for Balance 😁
I would like them to remove the power skill coeficient so the dmg numbers in tooltips are not totally useless
and the rework of conditions in a way that they act as soft CCs only not as a type of dmg
Now that's a hot take
Honestly, I'd like to see them remove gameplay-affecting buffs from food and enhancements (sharpening stones, etc.) completely.
Keep 'em as magic/gold find, XP and gathering bonuses, but remove anything that gives a buff to overall power level.
Edit:
Oh, and even though they've never explicitly said this, and the community is in denial about it, every successive elite spec has been more powerful than the last set in order to drive sales of later content, very much making the game "Pay to Win." This is the reason specs like Virtuoso and Willbender are still ridiculously OP.
Core needs to be able to properly compete with all Elite specs; to that end, those specs should be brought in line with Core, and not vice versa with Core lines being buffed.
I think that was the idea on HoT release (for the elite Specs to have trade-offs.) but they said they're "not doing that anymore" and I have a feeling that comes down to core going free to play.
Honestly, you're right about Elite Spec (and new Weapon) power creep. I'm not saying it's right, but literally every studio does that. And I'm even OK with "no trade-offs" in a perfect world. The problem is that even many Elite Specs still have very real trade-offs while others very much are just "more, better, yeah!" Having a design goal that's well intentioned but not followed isn't incredibly useful.
I've been saying that for a while. The elite specs are a form of pay to win. They are not all that egregious from a PvE perspective, since you need the expansions anyway to get access to most of the content where that's relevant, but I would imagine it's a noticeable difference in pvp/wvw. Also, you can gain access with a rather small purchase and you don't need to sink tons of money into it. So personally I don't think it's a big deal. But it's naive to not call a spade a spade. Especially since the core guide advertised as free to play and not an extensive free trial. Some might call that semantics, but I think it's a meaningful enough difference to influence people's perception of the game.
However I do think that with the new mini expacs not having new elite specs, core classes are getting more attention again. The community discusses them more and the last balance patch seemed to at least include an attempt at buffing core guardian. So maybe we'll see the playing field level out.
@melinnamba I'm also in the rather unpopular position of being actually very glad that they nerfed *most* of the new Spears as fast as they did? Did they go overboard on some? Yes. Do Guard & Mes still need the same treatment? Probably. | But was it ultra-stupid different colors had to buy the newest XPac to keep up even just via the weapon? (e.g. Competitive DPS on Rev? Or having a viable ranged-option on Warrior?) Absolutely. The question is now, where that power budget goes, or if it even needs to go anywhere. Or if the community is comfortable with "throwing the car in reverse" for a while. Only time will tell. 😄
BUFF WARRIOR NOW!
Don't say that, you'll get it nerfed again lol
if every class have everything than you will have a problem, because the other classes will lose what they had to compesate the disajustment in first place.
On the PvE aspect Anet managed to allow a lot of viable build to be played for all content which is quite impressive. But at the same time their balance decision doesnt make sense. They have killed Rifle on Engineer and Rifle Mechanist in all gamemode (quite frankly Mechanist is quite bad in all non PVE gamemode and requires much more work to be able to do what other spec does in less button) but kept Virtuoso relatively untouched just because Virtuoso is not as popular as Mechanist back then. But still, you can play all profession and almost all spec for all PvE gamemode.
I will skip PvP because I barely touch that gamemode. On WvW though, I am surprised no one is talking about the mobility powercreep and the excessive mobility some class (Thief and Willbender just to name a few) have. I used to use terrain as a weapon, houses and tree as shield but these days, these things means nothing when a Thief or Willbender can just instant teleport to your location and burst you. I used to save up some movement skill just so that I can create distance if needed, but now what is the point when a Willbender or Harbringer can just dash towards you, burst and then dash away again with little to no CD. And I wont even talk about exploit that has been in the game since forever and havent been patched. Honestly if PvP is considered by some a "dead gamemode", WvW would sure be the "forgotten gamemode".
Mhmmm, and as you said I do hope that there's space for some unique class identity to be added back to various Professions.
But feature creep (like everything having ultra-mobility) as you mentioned is also a huge issue. In the vacuum of power creep it would be fine. But Things like Harbinger Sword skills just go further (600) than the tooltips say (450)? So not really sure what's going on there. Maybe on paper Necro is supposed to still have at least "more limited mobility." But then again they were put in to the game ~a year ago? So maybe fix that at some point so your execution matches your design documents, or at least change the tooltips so we know which one it's supposed' to be. 😂
Nuclear take, but some class identities are just straight up bad. They dont exist very well in a post EoD/SoTO meta where we had the boon homogenization and weapon master. Being that a lot of elite spec design held the weapon in mind as part of its identity, removing it has highlighted a lot of problem areas that Anet doesn't have the time/resources to handle. Some identities need a massive tune-up. Hell, a ton of the core traitlines need reworks because they're full of hot nonsense that no one wants to use, or are just ridiculous in how strong they are given the game mode (think Guardian giving Aegis when it gives itself Aegis)
I'm a primarily PvE raid guy, so a lot of this is just complaining for the sake of it, but i think this game is long overdue for some systems makeovers, which it might never get give the cadence of balance and content updates
I don't see why we can't get a patch every 2 weeks. I don't get why we can get hot patches to fix broken things for pvp or wvw. We already know Annette is almost putting all their eggs in the basket for guild wars so why can't we get these things. It makes sense to get these things.
how tf did you crank this out when you only recorded it like 2 days ago !?!? lol
Oh you know
You just said "things are too tanky while doing too mutch dmg" and you solution is to ........ nerf energy sigil? Wait what? xD. The problem is the boon spam/Condi Spam in comb with defensive class mechanics..... i think the energy sigil is the shortest end of them all ...... 😅
Hot take - you don’t need virtuoso to do LCM
*Need* no. Do 95% of groups have 6? Yes. And that's what creates the "Line in the Sand" for the power level of the game.
@@GW2Pseudoyour comments that virtuoso has the freedom to just take whatever tho is just plain false. Dropping sigils / elite is a dps loss in the same way any other class is.
The damage cvirt specifically does is not busted compared to other classes. It just happens to fit the role best for the most common / popularized pug strat for ToF CM / LCM.
I’ve said this on the forums before, and I’ll say it here as well, just because many people play cvirt in pugs does not mean it is the strongest option on an encounter. The only 2 encounters it shines on are ToF and KO.
The one thing I would concede is I think nerfing their cleave and maybe adjusting the malices to be able to be immobilized sooner would open up more options to strategy.
@@EvOILLuSionZThey do for HTCM, (note the footage under that comment is HTCM and not LCM.) LCM is a DPS check while HTCM is a prolonged mechanics check. Virtuoso just happens have the flexibility, DPS, and utility to perfectly fit both of those while (most) other classes do not.
Virt also gets a free invuln with no cast time that you can do DPS during. But even if it was Necro or Warrior or Ranger doing 43K cleave from 1200 range that's still a "Line in the Sand." The point was not to pick on Virtuoso or Willbender specifically. Other classes have been meta for much of PvX as well. They just happen to have been kings for a very long time lately. And since it's 2025 those are the examples that exist.
@@GW2Pseudo virtuouso isn’t needed at htcm either. Lots of great power classes can be brought there. It just so happens portals are used there
@@EvOILLuSionZI wrote "They do" not "They are" and under your second comment. As in "They do have the freedom to drop utilities and run Portals, not that "They are strictly necessary" for either. They're just the most common. The same way that Willbender is in PvP now, Catalyst was, or even Bladesworn was when it came out when it could reload it's Healing-Shout skills, which was equally as stupid and bad for the game.
I think you're missing my point, so I'll try to Summarize it: I am not picking on Virtuoso specifically but, does the power-curve just keep going up since Virtuoso is not "necessary" but by far the easiest, & the most versatile for clears and this is the line in the sand?' (This creating "A Meta" and this discussion in the first place.) The issue is power/free feature creep, and that the Meta has been allowed to Stagnate. It just so happens that that meta laned on Virtuoso and Willbender. So the question becomes: Do we nerf these 2, or buff (could be utility, support, damage or instert-x-here) everything else? Do Ranger and Warrior get portals now, or Necro get an invuln? Or could we maybe require Virt to give up, say, some damage for a portal (as they do with HTCM) or a damage trait in PVE for their free invuln, cleave, range or some combination of the 3? That's what balancing around a Meta means.
botom line they need to rework all traits.
What Anet can do to balance game:
Rework Berserker. Please.... 😞
But to be completely honest.
The only problem I have with this game is:
Almost everything run Berserk/Viper gear. I'm not talking about supports or anything else. It's a problem in every single game where max damage is available. I would love if berserk prefix didn't exist in the game so you have to make a choice between higher base damage/crit chance/hp/healing/thoughness, etc. Instead we just run damage and spam skills all the time. Utility skills are mostly for defience bar... Hammer Berserker and it's values are a joke... Why? It looks so cool and it's utter dogshiet
why do people still play an mmo as hacked and rotten as gw2 ?????????????????. it must have disappeared too much sheater for 10 years.
Going to push back hard on "every class feels the same". Warrior doesn't play anything like an Elementalist, Elementalist doesn't play anything like a Theif, Theif doesn't play anything like a Reverent. Classes applying the same boons doesn't mean they play the same. That's like saying every character in Street Fighter plays the same because they all have throws.
That's not a bad take Oceanbat I'm glad we can disagree on stuff.
Tbh I don't like the "Press Class Mechanic X to do Y boon" thing whether it's in the support line or or a Grandmaster, I honestly preferred when they were trying to give it to Banners & Spirits etc. at least then you saw the Visual Representation of whatever was going you boons. But that also probably would have been worse.
I don't think there's a magic bullet to any of this. But I will say I want more interesting Grandmasters than "give boon X" on Specializations back. But ofc, as you know, super not biased on that. 😂
Good video but, they reality is that ANET does pander, they have listened to a lot of crying over the years (muh player retention fears). So in their attempts to make everyone a winner they really stopped caring about risk/reward and simply try to make everything equally rewarding. Why ever play Power Herald (dead since 2020) when you have Willbender, Necro with its new mobility, etc? Yes, homogenisation is a symptom of that.
(Either way, Id rather have a patch that unfcks other specs from their past stupid changes than a nerf to WB and such. It is actually not that oppressive. This perpetual "nerf/remove what I dont like" cycle is also largely responsible for the state of the game).
The community was in fact largely responsible for the shtty Feb 2020 patch. It has gone downhill ever since. Back then, it was no problem to burst down a slop tanky, Minstrels build. Their hyper-fixation with balance is what started fckin it all. Pretending that this is something other than an MMORPG.
Also, boons are never going away until they can address the perpetual vomit fields all over the ground pulsating damage and CC. And they know this. It is an arms race. The game is unplayable without permanent Stability and Resistance.
They simply haven't had a real philosophy or direction to follow for years. Instead, they seem to balance and even design around Golem benchmarks and Monthly tournaments (and random crying posts). It is pathetic.
Other things:
1. Relics were a great change. Most of them are pretty decent. If anything, damage modifier ones shouldn't exist.
But 6 per update is a lot, yeah.
2. The new weapons are so overloaded. They keep trying to cram the equivalent of elite specs into them.
They need to stop that, and they need to nerf all the current spears even more, before they continue to "balance" (nerf) classes and builds around them.
3. WvW is a lot more salvageable than sPvP. It is over for that mode. Conquest was never that good, sorry pseudo-esports bros.
Make Grandmasters Great Again [MGGA]
I'm mostly a new player to this game. 3500 achievement points. But I've spent 6k hours in ESO. And there are similar problems. Their version of guardian - Templar - is literally useless and unplayable in PvP. So please-please-please, don't ruin my willbender here, I'm just getting used to how things function here.
But holly cow, this burst gank meta is a big bs. On another hand, in ESO I could have a 15 minutes duel and it ended because we both get bored and move away from each other.
It actually doesn't matter for me as a new player, if I play some "op" spec. It's not OP in my hands. Just nerf some high end intricate specifics, if you really need to.
1:29 Virt does indeed have cleave and 1200 range. Range doesn't really matter except for what, two fights in the form of Cerus Legendary mode and Kaineng? Three if you wanna kite on Q2 I guess. It does have cleave but idk, better watch out for the cleave of unload thief or it'll steal your lunch money. Having distortion is both stupid and funny lol
2:24 There's no reason to not pick virt as a damage class? footage shows how there's multiple people on damage not playing virt. It is a good class, that's for sure but you can take power tempest, you can take condi mech, you can take power cata if you're one of those crazy people that only wants damage or you can take scourge and have a 900 range revive and a bunch of barrier per dps gamer for example. You'll do very similar damage and each of those also brings other stuff to the table.
2:33 There's no reason to talk about willbender in pvp/wvw in the pve section.
3:06 No reason to talk about wvw and pvp in the pve section.
4:10 Heal warrior or heal specter being bad? Yeah they are. Well, you can say that they aren't bad but that they are in a different (worse) league than other healers. Considering that the staff for warrior came out in february of last year I wouldn't say that it's the balance team that's not fast enough but that they are fine with warrior being a bad healer. There have been multiple balance patches since we all knew it was not in the best state and its continued being in a not great state. Unless there's some comment from some random twitch chat from Grouch or whatever saying that they wanna make those two better, with how much time has passed, I'll consider this a decision the balance team took instead of saying that they aren't fast enough to change it.
I also wanna add that while they are in fact the worse healers out of every option, you can still clear every single fight and every single cm with them.
4:51 Once all your boons and all the mechanics you'll deal with have been covered, you will always want the maximum ammount of the best class that you can get. There is no mechanic preventing you from picking six of anything. You can delete virtuoso from the game and everyone will play cerus lcm with six scourges, or with six tempest, with six [insert the best class here]. The only reason this is not happening on every single fight is that most of the other fights are not hard enough to push you to want to have the best chance you can. This is not a problem, this is a design decision. No ammount of balance can change this without a combat system rework (which is ludicrous at this point in the game's life).
To add a bit to this, it's neat when the meta changes and there's new stuff to play and enjoy (and you can say that it's not fast enough for your taste) but this is already happening. Since HTCM released there have been moments when everything you saw was rifle mech, or bladesworns, or sure condi virt. There's also moments when condi scourge was doing 50k dps. We had power tempest doing a ton of damage on an easy build, we had rev spear doing stupid numbers, we had double pistol willbender with a whole bunch of burning for a moment. Except for mirage and arguably weaver, there is a reason to play each elite spec; to play each class. Each one of them can clear every fight in the game.
Do you not want to see specifically a virtuoso on your pug runs? that's fair, it has been a very good build for quite a while; but lets not pretend that the balance of the game is not in the best state it has ever been. I was there when the only real dps build was tempest and I don't wanna go back to pressing F because someone downed and accidentaly stealing a conjured weapon instead of helping.
I think you're missing my point, so I'll try to Summarize it: I am not picking on Virtuoso, specifically. OR Willbender, or even Immobilize Druid. These are just examples of each of the 2 points I'm trying to condense for each game mode. PvE Virtuosos are not strictly necessary" for either HTCM, LCM, or even Weekly R. They're just the most common. The same way that Willbender is in PvP now, Catalyst was, or even Bladesworn was when it came out when it could reload it's Healing-Shout skills, which was equally as stupid and bad for the game.
But given this does the power-curve just keep going up since Virtuoso is not "necessary" but by far the easiest, & the most versatile for clears and this is the line in the sand?' (This creating "A Meta" and this discussion in the first place.) The issue is power/free feature creep, and that the Meta has been allowed to Stagnate. It just so happens that that meta laned on Virtuoso and Willbender. So the question becomes: Do we nerf these 2, or buff (could be utility, support, damage or instert-x-here) everything else? Do Ranger and Warrior get portals now, or Necro get an invuln? Or could we maybe require Virt to give up, say, some damage for a portal (as they do with HTCM) or a damage trait in PVE for their free invuln, cleave, range or some combination of the 3? That's what balancing around a Meta means, and that's the discussion I'm trying to foster here! 😄
Will probably get flamed here but, don't care. It was a mistake to introduce "relics" in the first place. Agree, having 100% or permanent boon(s) shouldn't ever happen in game. Now, I don't play PvP, absolutely hate it. WvW, only when I need gift of battle however, I'm working on Coalescence, I'm having to do more WvW for skirmish tickets.
It's a recipe to disaster. Yes, more runes/sigils and give us a leggy aqua helm.
I remember the original "banner warrior" before Anet killed it. Then brought it back but couldn't use any weapon, then had to revamp it to a much weaker build than what it was originally. They these are "balance" patches, I really question exactly what they are... great video, cheers :)
Thx! & Thanks for providing context for your answer, it's very helpful for discussion. To be fair I haven't touched PvP much in JW but I'm a huge WvW nerd. And as a couple people have pointed out here some Specializations could also be massively over-performing as well. Unfortunately all of the interplay between new systems make it basically impossible to determine what's over-performing.
Like I always say I think it just comes down to: *"What's FUN but fair-enough"* at the end of the day. And to me at least, different individual build pieces to play with where builds, & classes can actually interact with each other for more than 1-second windows 95% of the time, seems a lot healthier.
@@GW2Pseudo Indeed. :)
I still need to learn more I did thief to 40 did not like it like in other mmo did a 80 ticket on revenant loving it so far did the ,last expansion to get flying mount and not doing story… I have a virtuoso to 80 but need hero points still so far not liking it to the renegade for ow don’t care for pvp as of now
i just want quickness and alacrity gone
Light mode is annoying to watch longterm mate
People are different, some people actually prefer it! 😂
Every-single class and every-single spec has cleared both HTCM and LCM. As for LCM/Cerus specifically, Condition Virtuoso is only 'meta' because it is incredibly easy to play with modest (quite low relative to other dps benchmarks) damage. Most players are not good enough to complete both the mechanics and play a class to at-to-near benchmark damage. So, Condition Virtuoso helps with that skill gap. Many other specs are actually far more advantageous to take in LCM.
Some examples:
* Tempest is a better class to play on LCM than Virt if you can dodge (real problem: bad players cannot). It has better cleave and lets you stay near the boss;
* Scourge has as much utility and more survivability than Virtuoso. It makes sub 10% a joke;
* Deadeye has better cleave and has an 'easy' version that can also clear both LCM and HTCM.
The actual biggest issue with endgame content currently aren't the dps classes--it is the hordes of 'omg I'm a support main' players, who do not understand basic mechanics and think they are doing 'great' if they press a heal button. I think this is reflected in your comments about engi/warrior not being 'good enough healers' around 4:25. Both engi and warrior have heal cleared all content (including LCM and HTCM). However, it does require more skill to use these classes in this content.
The biggest takeaway for anyone looking to clear difficult content in GW2 is that you have three options: (1) be extremely good on a class you one-trick and feel is not 'represented--that still fills a role effectively (can cleave on LCM/do appropriate damage on HTCM); (2) create your own group to clear the content; or (3) adapt, be a team player instead of complaining, and learn the easiest classes to clear the difficult content.
For PvE this is a discussion of what a stagnant Meta is, how that feels, and what that means in terms of 'required' (or at least expected) power-creep for the game's future. I just joked that it's "aka. The Virtuoso problem" because that is what people are most familiar with as it happens to be the one that's been in the spotlight here for the longest. Virtuoso is not "necessary" you're correct in that regard. But 93% of groups have 6 just because it means you're going to be able to prog "hard" content or just get your weekly clears done that much easier. And is that not what "A Meta" is by definition? (It's what's most used for X or Y content.) People have been saying that they want more reward for playing 'harder' piano classes (Ele, Engi, Deadeye, etc.) for a while. So is that not exactly a good thing?
The main thing, as you said is Virt is "easy"-er. It gets a free invuln on it's DPS kit, cleaving range, and can also bring Utility / Do roles (aka. Portals) that the "meta" of the one other "hard" fight (HTCM) in the game demands (again most' of the time.)
Even taking utility out of it though, say in terms of damage, do you think it's "healthy" for the future of the game for *anything* (Warrior, Virtuoso, Ranger, whatever) to be able to do 43K+ dps easily from range, especially when original raid fights were designed (and balanced) around classes doing max 20? There's no wrong answer here. "Yes." Is an entirely acceptable answer to that question, especially with the caveat/rationale that "it will get newer players into older raid content." But if that's the answer we need to be prepared to live in the reality of aggressive power creep that we all sanctioned. There's no "magic bullet" solution to any of this as people seem to think, but it's an important discussion to be able to have because everyone is different and has different perceptions of what is "right" and what "needs fixing." 😄
Respectfully, I don't think that's the point that Pseudo's making. It's not about Virtuoso specifially. He probably could have phrased that better, it's about the meta of power and feature creep without build investment. There will always be a Meta' at Doing X' in any game, or anything really. Virtuoso just happens to have the easiest DPS *AND* Utility in the 2 high en PvE fights right now. Willbender is still king in PvP. But neither are particulatly useful in Zergs in WvW where Firebrand an scourge still dominate.
It's more about the game environment that both Homogenization of Boons/DPS in theory creates. I.R. now do we now go up' or down' from here? Do we add Portals to Ranger, Revnant so they can do the same things Virt can and further the power/creep/Homogenization of the game? Or up the ranged, cleaving DPS of Necromancer? Or are we willing to eat the bullet and take either some of the "free" or "free-er" utility i.e. Portals, Invulns, DPS away from Virt in order to preserve Class Identity and avoid even more Aggressive Power Creep. Once upon a time Dhuum CM was considered "Hard, Prestigious Content." If we don't turn the car around HT, LCM and even the next LCM will eventually be trivialized as well.
@amethystcloud8515 Exactly.
@@GW2Pseudo respectfully, if you think cVirts can do 43k+ dps at ranged easily, you don't know what you are talking about. The benchmark barely hits 43k at the golem, and the vast majority of players are going to be at 70-80% of that. There are exactly 0 raid fights in this game that benefit the group taking a virtuoso for ranged dps over a superior (higher dps) spec, of which there are many (21 of them). I do agree, that yes, old encounters have become power crept by ALL specs (not just virt).
On wvw 150 toughness ench, 10% DMG reduction from food, 20% from talent, perma prot and perma resolution. WTF are they smoking this wb thing is no comment
The real issue with it is it has literally no downside. WB's are honestly a lot more manageable in WvW than PvP rn where the overall power level of *everything* is a lot higher.
The real issue is in PvP where nothing competes it in terms of what it brings as a roamer, or counters it right now at high level. It'll be really interesting to see what they do it it *if* they ever nerf it. Whether it's mechanical, survivability, damage or some combination of the 3.
Not sure how managable they are in WVW if they are in danger you can just click Elite then you have movement skills worth 3-4k range. F3, F2, F1, F2 with a bit of map awareness you can find a target to use sword 2 and sword 5. For example a good WB will not overextend to that degree. For example weirdly enough cele core eng beats WB but when he is in danger he just leaves combat. On DE i beat them 75% of the time but at any moment just a single skill can take 50% of my HP for example F1 deals 9.5k dmg which leaves me on 6k :D. On PVP eng is xD and Thief is just useless especially in the double support meta where a single target at 130 range burst just does not cut it :D
Sorry but you smoke some drugs.. the only things you been right is, they need to get more balace patch.
The game maybe is in its best state for the last 5 years. Yes, it is not like vanilla or HOT or POF... does it need heavy nerfs to be more balanced ? ... NO, no, and NO. Foremost, GW2 will never be perfectly balanced, there will always be better specs and best builds. How can you possibly balance 36 specs (including core) with each weapon they have and have diversity and uniqueness in all of them. That's why Anet is trying to harmonize specs and boons with game modes. Yes it is not the best idea possible... yes some of the gameplay of those classes are frankly dull, but it is not that bad at all. Look at other games - FF14, WOW, they all have meta. Yes, they are easier to balance, BECAUSE they have standard roles - they have the holy trinity in one way or other. But GW2 have such a diversity in combination of stats, abilities, classes, and so on and so on.... the more you try to balance all that the more of a mess it becomes, or you lose what makes GW2 special in the first place. The game must be fun to play, not a perfectly balanced mathematical equations. 44K DPS ? How many of you have reached that even with meta gear and builds... me personally never... My DPS never gets over 20-25k even with meta followed and flawless rotation. Just enjoy your experience and don't overthink it.
"The last 5 years" encompasses a huge range of time and very different states of the game. Many of my Guild get that high on the golem as they're practicing for Cerus.
And yes, Guild Wars 2 is doing great! I'm glad you're enjoying it, I am as well!! This is not a doomer/criticism video, it's an analysis video for feedback because things can always improve! This is a build & systems channel after all 😄
Buff DH plz Anet
You know HTCM was completed with like an all core guard group? Also, your own video footage on HTCM shows a bladesworn(**sorry, zerker?**) absolutely shredding virt DPS. The top DPS on a bunch of runs of HTCM is still, very often, vindicator.
As for cerus LCM/CM/EOS/etc, I did LCM on a scourge comp. The only reason condi virt is popular there is because of a strat that was well documented, not because nothing else can be used.
Virt could use some balance in that skills intended to mitigate damage shouldn't proc damage, but this seems like more of a relic issue (fireworks) than a class issue.
Also please stop calling to nerf end game content difficulty. It's supposed to be hard and we should rise to the occasion. Getting an LCM brought me back to the game.
For PvE this is a discussion of what a stagnant Meta is, how that feels, and what that means in terms of 'required' (or at least expected) power-creep for the game's future. I just joked that it's "aka. The Virtuoso problem" because that is what people are most familiar with as it happens to be the one that's been in the spotlight here for the longest. Virtuoso is not "necessary" you're correct in that regard. But 93% of groups have 6 just because it means you're going to be able to prog "hard" content or just get your weekly clears done that much easier. And is that not what "A Meta" is by definition? (It's what's most used for X or Y content.)
I'm not calling for a nerf to end-game content difficulty, or Virtuoso in a vacuum. Far from it. I said nerf the DPS required to complete LCM, (in conjunction with nerfing the DPS that every class can do proportionally.) It would still be just as hard. What I'm seeking to avoid is the aggressive power creep that we're both experiencing and looking down the barrel of in every game mode. LCM (and the new one) having insane DPS checks is great. Classes doing 43K+ DPS when OG raid fights were designed around classes doing 20K max maybe is exactly what's been happening . And is going to continue to happen with the existing LCM effectively "nerfing" it as you said you wished to avoid if we keep just going "Up and Up and Up" in terms of the hybrid Utility classes can bring, DPS, or both.
@GW2Pseudo I agree that power creep is a problem but that's been happening for years and just seems like the nature of MMOs. If your real point was power creep then highlighting virt only is kind of defeating the purpose of your argument. A meta can shift as fast as someone grinds out a new rotation with a higher benchmark and can have very little to do with the class and the balance itself. Also, LCM is perfectly doable with classes that have lower benchmarks, so even if everyone was brought back to 34-38k dps, you could still kill LCM. HTCM is doable (and has been done) entirely with core classes.
Power creep and virtuoso being good at a few fights are two very different issues.
@elisethechemistttv I also highlight Willbender for PvP + WvW. But you're right, I probably shouldn't have called it the "Virtuoso Problem" too many people seem to be confused by that. So lessons for next time.
However I think that it's *the specific fights* (HTCM and LCM) that makes it an issue. Say if Virt was "the way it is right now" and meta for HTCM because it could do portals and the invuln was useful for not wiping/restarting your entire group on such a long fight but, say, scourge did 50K DPS (just as an example in this micro discussion) just because (again bad example) "Cerus took double damage from torment," or "reflected projectiles 56% of the time" or whatever then I would at least look at that an more diverse' and healthy for the game' in a way instead of having a Purple Wall on every fight. It will be interesting when the new LCM comes out to see if Virt is still the "Path to Victory" on the new LCM or if Harbinger somehow becomes bonkers or something and the meta shifts.
@@GW2Pseudo Right now, you can easily do HTCM with a single portal virt of you want that and your entire DPS can be vindicator or reaper. Both are very strong. You can even bring DE and portal to the greens instead. You can bring a heal Chrono and have them do portals and then your entire DPS can be whatever. Again, it's popular strats that seem to force virt when in reality, the fight can easily be done on anything.
As for LCM, the only reason it's a lot of purple right now is because of one popular strat not requiring immob from your healers. Every one of my groups except one runs druid or heal scourge immob and we run with a team of tempest, cata, scourge, willbender, virt, etc. One easy strat change to immob and suddenly you don't need range and cleave to handle malices.
There is no virt problem. It's a strat problem.
@@elisethechemistttv I never said Virtuoso was the problem. It's just illustrative of a stagnant meta. Read what I wrote again ^ and try to understand this point is a discussion about power/feature creep, not 1 class. 😂
Relics are pretty boring.
Yup. *Grandmasters* > Relics
relics seems good idea but it removed all flavors of runes and fun build. Its bad.
Remove all boons from WvW. :D
Respectfully disagree, relics are not what makes classes do high dmg or become busted in pvp, same as cele was not even the issue in wvw, and it was not really nerfed lol, cele was S tier before expertise and concentration was added to it. The issue is the classes dude....yes the classes, the elite specs, the utilities, those are the things that need to be nerfed/toned down, not the spears not the weapons, THE ELITE SPECS.
It's the lack of balance and the abandonment of the game modes that create these problems. Guild wars 2 is on it's way out, it's basically on maintenance mode that is funding w/e project that is not guild wars 2. Sad to say but it's the reality, even the big content creators understand this, Teapot is quiting, Mukluk aint gonna be doing gw2 anymore, combined with the poor marketing of Arena net, new players are not joining the game. Very little incentive for Arena net to balance the professions in pvp and wvw.
And that's 100% fine. It's fine to disagree too!! I've heard "GW2 is dying" for years now. But regardless, games (and) people come & go. But back on topic: I really don't see any Elite Specs overperforming honestly, even Willbender if they tone down it's damage. PvP is much more Balanced than WvW and the main 2 differences are The Existence of Concentration + Expertise stat combinations and ability scaling. I'd really love to see how WvW goes for a week if they used Amulet Balance honestly 😄
@@GW2Pseudo incorrect, it's also a massive problem in Spvp, its very broken and overperforming, even Naru himself Team USA hates the current meta and balance, grimjacke and all the EU pros hate it. There is fundamental problems with class design in 2024 and many of the professions need to be cleaned up. It's diff a class balance issue.
@BBLONwhited I mean I'm 100% open to being wrong. Discussion is entirely why I made this video, and if I only got 1/8 wrong I'm pretty ok with that. I haven't touched PvP much these past few months, and that entirely could be the underlying issue. I still think relics didn't exactly help with the power creep there, especially in terms of tank / damage.
But if ANet wants to tone down or revisit adding some trade-offs to Specializations I'm all for that. Still no idea why they 180'd on that really.
Anet shitted on so many things with the last expension... necromencer has been destroyed with a karateka pistolerro???? what anyone can think about this for asian based necromencer.. they are so dumb. They destroyed everything.
great video
personal take
I left the game 3 months ago,I got bored of all the bullshit
I wont come back until they do their job
If they never do their job, I'll go and play sth else, GW2 is getting boring and it is the devs faults for not balancing it properly
TY &100%. I've been there. Also took a 7m break a couple years back. Video Games are for fun (usually.)
The Boon Homogenization thing and WvW Cele gear are probably the closest I've been to dipping out myself. 😅 But I just thought I'd try to give some constructive feedback since I'm still enjoying it, at least for now lol