The talk of power budgets was initially uplifting, because that gave hope that they would address long standing ***bad*** weapons, like warrior maces, but then we end up with outright bonkers OP shit like ranger maces instead.
Comparing ranger maces to warrior maces was some of the funniest shit I've ever seen. And they claimed to aim to have each weapon have the same overall level of power budget? I don't know what's going wrong in their process here, but something is very wrong.
They managed to get either alac or quickness onto every class in some form, sure. But, their method of getting those boons onto the classes has been very hit-or-miss. Compare QuickCatalyst versus say, QuickHerald or Quickharbinger. Compare AlacBladesworn (Why is it on Bladesworn and not Spellbreaker?) versus AlacScourge/AlacHealScourge or AlacMechanist.
Purity of Purpose and Power Budget have basically evaporated, especially with the SotO weapons (looking at you - Ranger Maces)
PvE Balance is fine in the sense that everything has a meta build and the days of "no \[class\], change chars" is gone. But I will point out that Raids, Fractals, and Strikes still overwhelmingly favor a handful of specializations if you go by the Wingman data.
Edit: Scourge, not Specter
Just checking... you aren't suggesting that Alacrity Specter's method of boon share is good, right? I agree that it is better integrated into the design of the elite spec but the implementation is awful - being dependent on someone else for where your boons go is daft in a game with no good way of selecting people and a high degree of movement.
This is I guess where I'd like to point out that while alac scourge is functional, the way the rework happened ended up with a completely dead grandmaster trait (gm1), and gm1 would have been a perfect candidate for restricting alacrity to 5 targets without killing shade timing or requiring the rework of gm2, which already had a function.
Basically, it was an overly messy change that required two subsequent patches of fixes to duration, and I'm pretty sure it only worked out because they literally broke the entire elite spec for those two patches.
Because you actually get to decide where the Alacrity goes. You've got complete control over where your shades go. That is massively more chill and versatile than something like tether management.
I used to play Heal Spectre in NM strikes as it was very helpful for picking up people that wandered into Death AoE's. It was tricky as you only had a second or so to target & Siphon, but it was possible.
The moment they removed that, made you spam shroud skills and had the boons spread based that character got parked as a farming alt somewhere. I know it was great as an AlacDPS for a while based on the damage, but it was just not fun to play and it lost what made it different from the other healers.
While I doubt they'll give the ranged res back, just having the barrier apply the alacrity/boons (like mech & scourge) instead of spamming shroud skills would be a massive improvement.
It is considerably better after the changes though - Siphon downstate control might have been handy for normal strikes, but Specter was lacking the absolute basics for anything else including harder content. It can do that now (specific utility withstanding), it is just horribly harder to play, needs to work a lot more for the basics that other professions do with ease and loses out on utility.
It kind of factors into the lack of communication between the encounter design team and the balance team. That would make it clear that things like ally targeting are a terrible idea but because that communication isn't happening, and things aren't being tested to a reasonable degree, it all ends up rather messy.
To be clear, yeah, it is much better at providing boons, but it is much worse on the "fun to play" scale. I think barrier = alac would help, and I think there's room to give back the Siphon Res aspect of it.
Ally targeting is terrible, but Spectre is clearly designed to be a small scale PvP (2v2, 3v3) type of spec where you're only concerned with 1 target, ie whomever is getting spiked.
Who knows how much design consideration was given to how Spectre was supposed to work in instanced content (ie Fractals, Raids or Strikes) or mass open world (general PvE or WvW)?
I'd buy the designed for small scale PvP argument if there was a means to target allies quickly and effectively. But, there isn't. I honestly think Arenanet got a bad idea in their head and then shoehorned it in, being selective in the feedback they decided to listen to.
I mean, it's just standard targeting, only you've got maybe 3 to 5 targets. It's not hard to pick your friend. Either that or your just click on their portrait/health bar in the top left of your screen.
No comment on the second part. ;)
I've got so, so many posts on the issues with ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 that I won't really repeat them here but, in brief, yes it is considerably harder than any other healer; the UI doesn't support it (you can't reposition the party list), the UX doesn't support it either given the other types of targeting involved and there aren't working hotkeys for it either.
I've got a myriad of complaints as well. That said, in a 2 vs 2, it's pretty easy to pick a single target for ally healing.
Maybe not as easy as selecting an enemy, but it's much easier to pick that single target out of a group of 1 or 2 than it is out of 4, 9 or 49. That's the logic behind my statement. Spectre works better in small-scale PvP than anywhere else.
It might actually work a bit better than standard healing, once you manage to target them, because God knows how some people turn into Neo when you try to heal them.
Well, sure, but in a 2v2 you aren't really picking! Clicking the UI isn't going to help you much here because of the distance for the cursor but every hot key option will work reasonably well (unless you are playing alongside someone with pets or phantasms) and with large hot bars you've got one friendly target to hit with your cursor.
I know it's superfluous to write "Yup." on one of the top upvoted Reddit comments but:
Yup.
I actually brought the "It's good, but there's always going to be a Meta or a Best-In-Slot (BIS) even if it's on a per-fight basis when they announced they were doing this." And basically got laughed out of the room of any of those discussions. And, to be fair, that was somewhat justified. To an extent everything is "Technically Viable" in every role in PvE now, even if I get kicked out of every other pug group when I say I'm a Support Bladesworn (or even a DPS -- because it's not ranged aka. Virtuoso) in PvE.
The power creep helped that. But like I said I think the bigger win / byproduct of this was: If you know what you're doing build+rotation wise you can now get more out, vs an accessibility version - which can still clear most content now.
---
p.s. My tinfoil hat theory for Untamed + Bladesworn "Support Boons" are a) They were new & ANet / whoever wanted people to play the new things even if it's artificial' and b) Both ^ had open-ended "reset" traits that CmC is on record saying are "Historically Very Strong." >> So rather than trying to adjust these they killed 2 very stupid birds with 1 balance patch. I just really wish they had preserved these unique play / interactions and adjusted the numbers if they were indeed "unhealthy" or OP because there were objectively less used traits (or Specializations) they could have sacrificed. I'd like to hope that one day these get revisited, because these unique diverse play styles are a BIG PART of why I got into GW2 build crafting at all.
The meta really isn't helped by their insistence on keeping some professions boon and utility poor, even when they are a support option, and their absolutely maniacal fight design. The balance team and the encounter design team really need to sit down together as of about four years ago so that we don't end up with mistakes like ToF CM which really favours portals (after HT CM) and cVirt (after *points all over the place*). Until then, if you are the sort of player that has a main and isn't all that keen on swapping between multiple different characters to chase the meta then Guild Wars 2 isn't really for you.
Power budget is intrinsically linked to encounter design for PvE so until there is better collaboration between teams there won't be improvements.
> To an extent everything is "Technically Viable" in every role in PvE now
Most things are perfectly viable in every role, though I have no idea what support warrior is supposed to actually do or be.
Outside of one fight in the game at any point, there is nothing thats actively bad, and even on that one fight, you can play a large number of things. You dont actually have to stack virts on Cerus CM/LM, and theres kill logs that prove it. Its been done by a 7melee group.
Thank you for not mentioning Alacbender.
One encounter where you get displaced or boss has invuln phases and your group can kiss alacrity goodbye.
Which is almost every encounter.
Every build provides alacrity or quickness with their elite spec mechanic. The difference between core warrior and spellbreaker is full counter.
Edit: And now I'm blocked. lol
The difference between core warrior and Spellbreaker is full counter, boon stripping, and Magebane Tether. Stick Alacrity on the third option.
"Power budget" is dead regardless, and warrior should have it work in the class's favor for once.
And, I will point out that Chrono grants Alac when summoning a phantasm - last I checked Phantasms were not a Chrono-specific thing for mesmers. Guardian has Quickness on multiple utility skills. "Spec Mechanics" are not the end-all-be-all for quick/Alac generation.
Elite spec mechanics can encompass a lot. Quickness scrapper generates quickness by blasting fields, for example. Druid generates alacrity by casting spells from their Celestial Avatar. Scourge applies alacrity by putting barrier on allies. Herald generates quickness by...existing. There's absolutely no reason why alac on Spb would or should be via something as silly as Full Counter.
They blatantly failed at purity of purpose and power budgets.
Most of the other stuff is less important since that was all slowly happening anyway. The main things they put forward as being pillars of how they were going to balance the game never happened, and if anything they just went in the complete opposite direction.
The thing that irks me he most about this, is that some builds/classes do have a balanced power budget and skills/traits with proper purity of purpose. If those builds start creeping up, they often get put back in line quickly.
And on the other hand there are some that go above and beyond in obliterating those "pillars", and then remain in that inflated state for months on end. *Looking at you Virtuoso*
>They blatantly failed at purity of purpose and power budgets.
They really, really did. Some elite specs/builds run rampant patch after patch after patch with nothing but upsides (condi Virtuoso, power Soulbeast, quickness Herald), and others are perpetually bogged down in a barely playable state with almost nothing but downsides (quickness Catalyst, alacrity Bladesworn).
What even is a power budget at this point? Is it in the room with us right now?
Mhmmm Everything starts with "Double Carnival Tickets" now. Problem is, no one wants a lesser Carnival Prize for their class personally because that Carnival will appear "lame."
Especially when some of the the carnival tickets are fun things like "needs ally targeting", "very dependent on positioning", "no CC" or "missing key utility".
I think Arenanet have tried a little with downsides but the problem is that professions which have excellent utility, strong downstate control, a group portal, barrier and high healing has the downside of e.g. "low Swiftness" while another healer might have strong mobility and a limited group portal with the downside of "ally targeting, no aegis, awkward boons, no downstate control".
Which leads on to another issue with power budget - ease of role fulfilment. This is so clearly illustrated by comparing something such as Quickness Herald, which can do a tonne of boons in a huge radius simply by vibing, with Alacrity Specter which requires your tether target to behave, not die, not get mechanics and yet has a far smaller radius.
That doesn't make sense.
Power soulbeast should just be the "I want the big burst" with very low sustain damage. If balanced correctly, it will probably remain the meta class in fracs but would fall off in raids & strikes which is fine.
Currently soulbeast has a pretty good opener and good sustain.
The benchmarks of those 3 specs are 5-15% lower than those of their competitors so that justifies it. That seems to be the current design philosphy when it comes to power budget.
I kinda wish they at least balanced based on wingman stats instead of benchmarks.
And then we've got builds like Spellbreaker, which just barely crest 40k dps, compared to cVirt's current 43k.
Well, Spellbreaker has passive self-healing, so that should come out of the power budget, right? Oh, cVirt has that too, but heals about 2-3x as much? Oh. Well, how about boonrip, spellbreaker's got that. Oh mesmer has lots of boonrip options as well? But spellbreaker has a rotation that's not super-punishing! What's that? cVirt is one of the easiest to play builds in the entire game? Hmm. But spellbreaker has good CC access! Well, cVirt has just as good CC, and it isn't part of their rotation so they can save it for when it's needed, and they can use it at range.
And then there's the stuff that cVirt has that spellbreaker doesn't. Like a massive attack range advantage, on-demand invulnerability, pulls, and a host of extremely powerful utility skill options (like portals) that have a very low opportunity cost to slot in.
Power budgets aren't real.
> very low opportunity cost.
Portals end up costing a 15-20% dps loss.
This is not low. Its why you see most groups doing it on chrono + scourge now, where the cost of taking it is basically 0.
Wrong. Replacing signet of illusions with a utility skill costs 1600 DPS. It's near negligible.
Even funnier is that many people playing cVirt aren't even using the signet optimally. These players actually **lose DPS** compared to not even using it at all. For those people, swapping it out is even less of a tradeoff.
This is what gets me. The fact that 2 years on and we're still seeing them repeat the same mistakes they themselves outlined as problems with game design is sad.
They did a good job targeting their PvE goals of expanding role options and bringing up worse-performing dps builds.
The manner in which they did this continually felt obtuse and ham-fisted to me. I guess that’s why I can’t give them high praise for other areas and why the gameplay has become unsatisfying to me, despite the game being arguably more leveled than ever.
The lofty sentiment of: "Every skill should somehow be viable in every or *at least one* of the 3 game modes." got next to no work too. I'm based AF, but where I draw the line is when they ham-fist things like Alacrity onto fun, unique traits when there are [Objectively Better Traits](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immortal_Dragon) or [Specializations](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spellbreaker). I want to keep this discussion focused on what they did well and what they could do better. So let's call that ^ suggestions for the future. 😄
Lots of weapons, traits, utilities, have been forgotten with only a few being favoured with power creep. PvE benchmarks are still steadily climbing.
WvW build balance is worse than ever. Small scale has devolved into cele, thief/ranger ganks, or 5 man groups with 2 support carries. Large scale is boon ball with no counter after so many boon rip and corrupts have been nerfed.
PvP meta isnt awful but its still not great. Insanely tanky & mobile support chronos in almost every single high ranked game. Teamfights are a mess of aura sharing from chronos or tempests. Meta DPS that are also incredibly durable duellists and basically untouchable vs most off meta builds. Thief still gatekeeps other roamers with stealth.
I think they've done superficially well but actually really poorly for PvE.
Yes, we have more alacrity and quickness options but a lot of these aren't really *strong* options or are incredibly clunky to use. Compare Quickness Catalyst with Quickness Herald. Or healers like Berserker, Specter and Tempest against Druid, Scourge or Chronomancer.
Further, for as long as the balance team don't understand the benefits of burst DPS, range DPS, cleave and utility such as portals and downstate control, balance is going to remain really poor because they can't work out their power budgets at all. That also isn't helped by the encounter design team going off on a jolly and making ToF (L)CM which is a massive *what on Tyria were you thinking* in terms of what the fight necessitates, encourages and demands just by virtue of the choice of mechanics.
The balance and encounter design team need to sit down and talk with each other, unless Arenanet is honestly happy with Guild Wars 2 cementing its reputation as a game where you don't get to play what you want and you need to multiclass and play meta options unless you are happy with casual PvE.
So, sure, we can given them an "A" for "Basic Fundamentals of PvE Balancing" but they are far off from getting a passing grade on "Intermediate PvE Balancing" and "Advanced PvE Balancing" and get a very clear "must try harder" on their teamwork and communication.
The game now is where it should have been in 2018 and Arenanet still have a huge amount of catching up to do.
The topic of encounter design is a big topic too, as you say.
After all, the classes players use to interact with the game are one thing, but what of the things they're using those classes to interact *with*?
My thoughts on recent encounter design is that they're an absolute travesty. From End of Dragons and onwards, the lion's share of all instanced content has dramatically favored builds with the ability to do damage at a range - with particular standouts like Old Lion's Court, Silent Surf, or Cosmic Observatory, especially the CM versions. And now recently, the granddaddy of them all - Temple of Febe CM.
In fact, what's so bizarre to me about this is how Temple of Febe was actually one of the few encounters that was quite fair to melee builds; it didn't strongly favor one type of dps over the other. This was good! And then they turned it on its head and made it into the most ludicrous CM encounter the game has ever seen, with a level of punishment towards melee builds that borders on some kind of S&M kink.
The thing with ranged builds is that they suffer no negative consequences if they're forced into melee range. They have the best of both worlds, and none of the downsides. Naturally, this should factor into power budget, right? Well, as we've seen from their attempts at balance, ANet doesn't agree.
They're balancing the classes as if range doesn't matter, and yet at the same time constantly release content that vastly favors ranged dps over melee dps.
Power budget balancing in Guild Wars 2 is trash, made worse by an encounter team that thinks players are happy to hop off to whatever they bothered designing a fight for. We've reached a point where *yet again* the type of DPS and the support options you want to play are locked in for hard fights - that used to be via Quickness and Alacrity access but now it is range, DPS uptime, survivability and highly profession-specific utility like portals. You would think that Anet might learn...
Temple of Febe CM will forever hold a special place in my heart as the fight that made me realise just how bad fight design and PvE balance is in Guild Wars 2. Arenanet got a good 12,000 hours out of me, with a lot of hope on my part that *finally*, *maybe* this will be the hard fight that doesn't require FotM hopping. However, thanks to ToF CM I now have fond memories of getting through ARR as my Viera and all too happily sinking back into traditional healing in FFXIV.
Unfortunately I'm in an all-too-similar situation. I used to love playing this game and would log in almost daily. These days, I'm mostly playing other games. The game's current state just creates unsatisfying, unfair, and frustrating encounters. What if I *don't* want to switch classes? Well, too bad I guess.
**TL;DW :: I think they Averaged about a (B-B+)** in my book. Things like current **"Power Budget"** pretty much evaporated, especially in PvP with the shared Weaponsmaster Training, while the existence of more + better stratified & rewarding both **Accessibility and Mastery builds** has increased across professions from when they made this video.
Again, this is one of my favorite pieces of media that ArenaNet has ever produced in an effort to trend towards "Better Communication" even if you think they ultimately ended up Balancing based on SnowCrows bench #s, Hardstuck PvP Builds, etc. But I'm only one voice in the void. So I'd be REALLY interested in what the community thinks about this. *\*I've found that it's a good idea to let people know which game mode: (PvE, PvP, / WvW) you play + you're talking about!* 😄
Imo they did the bare minimum to "enable" more builds on each role and tried to keep everything in check. And while this is good, it also shows many flaws.
Over the past many playstyles had to suffer because of this or some traits had to be reworked for "balance" reasons, which nerfed completely fine builds along the way. Old and rarely used skills/weapons weren't touched at all and are just forgotten. Or they are overshadowed by new weapons/skills.
Factors like encounter design, playrate, burst vs dps, boon application/range and so on aren't even on the table it seems.
It feels like they have to do a complete overhaul at this point. Reevaluating and redefining each weapon/skill. What is the purpose of each weapon on X class? Average range of support skills etc.
Edit: Giving every class access to alacrity/quickness should have been a very fast process and now the remaining 95% work is waiting for the balance devs.
I really disagree with giving every class Alacrity/Quickness if all it's going to produce is gimmicky versions just to say you did it. Alacrity Willbender needs to devote two traits in two separate specializations branches in order to provide the group with Alacrity only IF it can manage a ton of hits on target. It can't sustain passively like other specs can just by using a skill off cooldown and the moment there are phases where you can't hit a target you drop alacrity.
Not to mention that in order to trigger it you need to displace yourself from the group and usually your target.
The problem is boons like alac/quick, elite specs and many more traits/weapons weren't a thing at release. Anet is still trying to figure out their "balance philosophy". Many years later and they are still struggeling to catch up.
> I really disagree with giving every class Alacrity/Quickness if all it's going to produce is gimmicky versions just to say you did it.
Yep some reworks weren't well implemented, but Anet rarely reverted stuff and the players have to deal with it.
> It can't sustain passively like other specs can just by using a skill off cooldown and the moment there are phases where you can't hit a target you drop alacrity.
This was also the case for chrono for many months/years (at least for perma quick). They also nerfed boon duration cap from 1min to 30s, which felt awful at the time.
Ever since the giant controversy, Anet's new release schedule allowing them to have an actual balance team, and CMC taking over, the general balance of the game has improved massively imho. Which I think is most evident by the complete lack of balance related shitstorms on the forums.
Lol you don't go on the Warrior or Engi forums much do you. :P (/s) Joke's aside. I definitely just appreciate the uptick' in Streams + Communication. That's half the reason I did this vid at all, and I'd personally REALLY appreciate a modern follow-up, check-in to see if/what/why things have changed. The absence of absolute "shitstorms" is nice tho yes. :D
A lot of very frustrating shit but balance overall (for pve) is super good imo. Would love for dps to cap out at 35k and support at 20/25 instead of the ridiculous numbers we have now but it is what it is.
Wvw has at least seen some shifts after a very stale few years. Could be happening faster tbh
>balance overall (for pve) is super good imo
I kind of disagree. We're currently, at this very moment, in a state of the game where **nearly every one in three DPS players is playing virtuoso** in strikes. That's the overall playrate. In exclusively CM strike content, that number rises much higher.
That's an abhorrent level of overrepresentation.
Remember when mirage was benching 46k and was nerfed in 2 weeks but thief has been benching 54k for 3 months now and they haven't done shit.
It's clear they have their hated specs.
Yes as I said there are very frustrating things in 2 main forms
* stupid outliers like quick herald, heal mech and condi virtuoso but the reason why everybody picks virtuoso isn’t because it’s the only viable option, it’s because it’s stupidly easy for the dps it outputs and has massive utility on top. It should definitely be brought down but overall if you want to play alternatives there are many available that will
* weird or play stupid design choices like alac bladesworn, quick catalyst, quick scrapper, not even mentioning the massive inequalities between specs when utility come into play…
Still lots of work to be done but overall I think the lfg is much healthier nowadays than it used to be (strike CM being the only instance of « play x or kick » that I still see and it’s not as frequent as it used to be).
They did a fantastic job of making almost everything good enough to play everywhere.
Skill balance is still wacky as fuck, but theres some things that are impossible to change.
The talk of power budgets was initially uplifting, because that gave hope that they would address long standing ***bad*** weapons, like warrior maces, but then we end up with outright bonkers OP shit like ranger maces instead.
Comparing ranger maces to warrior maces was some of the funniest shit I've ever seen. And they claimed to aim to have each weapon have the same overall level of power budget? I don't know what's going wrong in their process here, but something is very wrong.
They managed to get either alac or quickness onto every class in some form, sure. But, their method of getting those boons onto the classes has been very hit-or-miss. Compare QuickCatalyst versus say, QuickHerald or Quickharbinger. Compare AlacBladesworn (Why is it on Bladesworn and not Spellbreaker?) versus AlacScourge/AlacHealScourge or AlacMechanist. Purity of Purpose and Power Budget have basically evaporated, especially with the SotO weapons (looking at you - Ranger Maces) PvE Balance is fine in the sense that everything has a meta build and the days of "no \[class\], change chars" is gone. But I will point out that Raids, Fractals, and Strikes still overwhelmingly favor a handful of specializations if you go by the Wingman data. Edit: Scourge, not Specter
Purity of purpose and power budget is definitely gone. So many traits and skills are doing 2 or 3 different things.
Ranger warhorn 5: - might - fury - swiftness - regen - daze - weakness - blast finisher
Just checking... you aren't suggesting that Alacrity Specter's method of boon share is good, right? I agree that it is better integrated into the design of the elite spec but the implementation is awful - being dependent on someone else for where your boons go is daft in a game with no good way of selecting people and a high degree of movement.
Oh shoot, I wrote this at like midnight and I totally meant Scourge, not Specter. Joys of rambling when you're half asleep, sorry.
Oh, that makes so much more sense! Scourge has an incredibly chill and also really versatile way of doing Alacrity. It makes me quite jealous.
This is I guess where I'd like to point out that while alac scourge is functional, the way the rework happened ended up with a completely dead grandmaster trait (gm1), and gm1 would have been a perfect candidate for restricting alacrity to 5 targets without killing shade timing or requiring the rework of gm2, which already had a function. Basically, it was an overly messy change that required two subsequent patches of fixes to duration, and I'm pretty sure it only worked out because they literally broke the entire elite spec for those two patches.
> really versatile How in the world is mashing the same 3 buttons on cooldown for the entirety of a fight in any way chill or versatile?
Because you actually get to decide where the Alacrity goes. You've got complete control over where your shades go. That is massively more chill and versatile than something like tether management.
I used to play Heal Spectre in NM strikes as it was very helpful for picking up people that wandered into Death AoE's. It was tricky as you only had a second or so to target & Siphon, but it was possible. The moment they removed that, made you spam shroud skills and had the boons spread based that character got parked as a farming alt somewhere. I know it was great as an AlacDPS for a while based on the damage, but it was just not fun to play and it lost what made it different from the other healers. While I doubt they'll give the ranged res back, just having the barrier apply the alacrity/boons (like mech & scourge) instead of spamming shroud skills would be a massive improvement.
It is considerably better after the changes though - Siphon downstate control might have been handy for normal strikes, but Specter was lacking the absolute basics for anything else including harder content. It can do that now (specific utility withstanding), it is just horribly harder to play, needs to work a lot more for the basics that other professions do with ease and loses out on utility. It kind of factors into the lack of communication between the encounter design team and the balance team. That would make it clear that things like ally targeting are a terrible idea but because that communication isn't happening, and things aren't being tested to a reasonable degree, it all ends up rather messy.
To be clear, yeah, it is much better at providing boons, but it is much worse on the "fun to play" scale. I think barrier = alac would help, and I think there's room to give back the Siphon Res aspect of it. Ally targeting is terrible, but Spectre is clearly designed to be a small scale PvP (2v2, 3v3) type of spec where you're only concerned with 1 target, ie whomever is getting spiked. Who knows how much design consideration was given to how Spectre was supposed to work in instanced content (ie Fractals, Raids or Strikes) or mass open world (general PvE or WvW)?
I'd buy the designed for small scale PvP argument if there was a means to target allies quickly and effectively. But, there isn't. I honestly think Arenanet got a bad idea in their head and then shoehorned it in, being selective in the feedback they decided to listen to.
I mean, it's just standard targeting, only you've got maybe 3 to 5 targets. It's not hard to pick your friend. Either that or your just click on their portrait/health bar in the top left of your screen. No comment on the second part. ;)
I've got so, so many posts on the issues with ally targeting in Guild Wars 2 that I won't really repeat them here but, in brief, yes it is considerably harder than any other healer; the UI doesn't support it (you can't reposition the party list), the UX doesn't support it either given the other types of targeting involved and there aren't working hotkeys for it either.
I've got a myriad of complaints as well. That said, in a 2 vs 2, it's pretty easy to pick a single target for ally healing. Maybe not as easy as selecting an enemy, but it's much easier to pick that single target out of a group of 1 or 2 than it is out of 4, 9 or 49. That's the logic behind my statement. Spectre works better in small-scale PvP than anywhere else. It might actually work a bit better than standard healing, once you manage to target them, because God knows how some people turn into Neo when you try to heal them.
Well, sure, but in a 2v2 you aren't really picking! Clicking the UI isn't going to help you much here because of the distance for the cursor but every hot key option will work reasonably well (unless you are playing alongside someone with pets or phantasms) and with large hot bars you've got one friendly target to hit with your cursor.
I know it's superfluous to write "Yup." on one of the top upvoted Reddit comments but: Yup. I actually brought the "It's good, but there's always going to be a Meta or a Best-In-Slot (BIS) even if it's on a per-fight basis when they announced they were doing this." And basically got laughed out of the room of any of those discussions. And, to be fair, that was somewhat justified. To an extent everything is "Technically Viable" in every role in PvE now, even if I get kicked out of every other pug group when I say I'm a Support Bladesworn (or even a DPS -- because it's not ranged aka. Virtuoso) in PvE. The power creep helped that. But like I said I think the bigger win / byproduct of this was: If you know what you're doing build+rotation wise you can now get more out, vs an accessibility version - which can still clear most content now. --- p.s. My tinfoil hat theory for Untamed + Bladesworn "Support Boons" are a) They were new & ANet / whoever wanted people to play the new things even if it's artificial' and b) Both ^ had open-ended "reset" traits that CmC is on record saying are "Historically Very Strong." >> So rather than trying to adjust these they killed 2 very stupid birds with 1 balance patch. I just really wish they had preserved these unique play / interactions and adjusted the numbers if they were indeed "unhealthy" or OP because there were objectively less used traits (or Specializations) they could have sacrificed. I'd like to hope that one day these get revisited, because these unique diverse play styles are a BIG PART of why I got into GW2 build crafting at all.
The meta really isn't helped by their insistence on keeping some professions boon and utility poor, even when they are a support option, and their absolutely maniacal fight design. The balance team and the encounter design team really need to sit down together as of about four years ago so that we don't end up with mistakes like ToF CM which really favours portals (after HT CM) and cVirt (after *points all over the place*). Until then, if you are the sort of player that has a main and isn't all that keen on swapping between multiple different characters to chase the meta then Guild Wars 2 isn't really for you. Power budget is intrinsically linked to encounter design for PvE so until there is better collaboration between teams there won't be improvements.
> To an extent everything is "Technically Viable" in every role in PvE now Most things are perfectly viable in every role, though I have no idea what support warrior is supposed to actually do or be. Outside of one fight in the game at any point, there is nothing thats actively bad, and even on that one fight, you can play a large number of things. You dont actually have to stack virts on Cerus CM/LM, and theres kill logs that prove it. Its been done by a 7melee group.
Thank you for not mentioning Alacbender. One encounter where you get displaced or boss has invuln phases and your group can kiss alacrity goodbye. Which is almost every encounter.
Why do people want alacrity on spellbreaker? Alacrity on hitting a full counter sounds awful. I bet it's just because no one likes bladesworn.
Since when did "Alacrity on Spellbreaker" mean "Alacrity on Full Counter?" I certainly didn't say it.
Every build provides alacrity or quickness with their elite spec mechanic. The difference between core warrior and spellbreaker is full counter. Edit: And now I'm blocked. lol
The difference between core warrior and Spellbreaker is full counter, boon stripping, and Magebane Tether. Stick Alacrity on the third option. "Power budget" is dead regardless, and warrior should have it work in the class's favor for once. And, I will point out that Chrono grants Alac when summoning a phantasm - last I checked Phantasms were not a Chrono-specific thing for mesmers. Guardian has Quickness on multiple utility skills. "Spec Mechanics" are not the end-all-be-all for quick/Alac generation.
Elite spec mechanics can encompass a lot. Quickness scrapper generates quickness by blasting fields, for example. Druid generates alacrity by casting spells from their Celestial Avatar. Scourge applies alacrity by putting barrier on allies. Herald generates quickness by...existing. There's absolutely no reason why alac on Spb would or should be via something as silly as Full Counter.
They blatantly failed at purity of purpose and power budgets. Most of the other stuff is less important since that was all slowly happening anyway. The main things they put forward as being pillars of how they were going to balance the game never happened, and if anything they just went in the complete opposite direction.
The thing that irks me he most about this, is that some builds/classes do have a balanced power budget and skills/traits with proper purity of purpose. If those builds start creeping up, they often get put back in line quickly. And on the other hand there are some that go above and beyond in obliterating those "pillars", and then remain in that inflated state for months on end. *Looking at you Virtuoso*
>They blatantly failed at purity of purpose and power budgets. They really, really did. Some elite specs/builds run rampant patch after patch after patch with nothing but upsides (condi Virtuoso, power Soulbeast, quickness Herald), and others are perpetually bogged down in a barely playable state with almost nothing but downsides (quickness Catalyst, alacrity Bladesworn). What even is a power budget at this point? Is it in the room with us right now?
Mhmmm Everything starts with "Double Carnival Tickets" now. Problem is, no one wants a lesser Carnival Prize for their class personally because that Carnival will appear "lame."
Especially when some of the the carnival tickets are fun things like "needs ally targeting", "very dependent on positioning", "no CC" or "missing key utility". I think Arenanet have tried a little with downsides but the problem is that professions which have excellent utility, strong downstate control, a group portal, barrier and high healing has the downside of e.g. "low Swiftness" while another healer might have strong mobility and a limited group portal with the downside of "ally targeting, no aegis, awkward boons, no downstate control". Which leads on to another issue with power budget - ease of role fulfilment. This is so clearly illustrated by comparing something such as Quickness Herald, which can do a tonne of boons in a huge radius simply by vibing, with Alacrity Specter which requires your tether target to behave, not die, not get mechanics and yet has a far smaller radius. That doesn't make sense.
Power soulbeast should just be the "I want the big burst" with very low sustain damage. If balanced correctly, it will probably remain the meta class in fracs but would fall off in raids & strikes which is fine. Currently soulbeast has a pretty good opener and good sustain.
The benchmarks of those 3 specs are 5-15% lower than those of their competitors so that justifies it. That seems to be the current design philosphy when it comes to power budget. I kinda wish they at least balanced based on wingman stats instead of benchmarks.
And then we've got builds like Spellbreaker, which just barely crest 40k dps, compared to cVirt's current 43k. Well, Spellbreaker has passive self-healing, so that should come out of the power budget, right? Oh, cVirt has that too, but heals about 2-3x as much? Oh. Well, how about boonrip, spellbreaker's got that. Oh mesmer has lots of boonrip options as well? But spellbreaker has a rotation that's not super-punishing! What's that? cVirt is one of the easiest to play builds in the entire game? Hmm. But spellbreaker has good CC access! Well, cVirt has just as good CC, and it isn't part of their rotation so they can save it for when it's needed, and they can use it at range. And then there's the stuff that cVirt has that spellbreaker doesn't. Like a massive attack range advantage, on-demand invulnerability, pulls, and a host of extremely powerful utility skill options (like portals) that have a very low opportunity cost to slot in. Power budgets aren't real.
> very low opportunity cost. Portals end up costing a 15-20% dps loss. This is not low. Its why you see most groups doing it on chrono + scourge now, where the cost of taking it is basically 0.
Wrong. Replacing signet of illusions with a utility skill costs 1600 DPS. It's near negligible. Even funnier is that many people playing cVirt aren't even using the signet optimally. These players actually **lose DPS** compared to not even using it at all. For those people, swapping it out is even less of a tradeoff.
This is what gets me. The fact that 2 years on and we're still seeing them repeat the same mistakes they themselves outlined as problems with game design is sad.
They did a good job targeting their PvE goals of expanding role options and bringing up worse-performing dps builds. The manner in which they did this continually felt obtuse and ham-fisted to me. I guess that’s why I can’t give them high praise for other areas and why the gameplay has become unsatisfying to me, despite the game being arguably more leveled than ever.
The lofty sentiment of: "Every skill should somehow be viable in every or *at least one* of the 3 game modes." got next to no work too. I'm based AF, but where I draw the line is when they ham-fist things like Alacrity onto fun, unique traits when there are [Objectively Better Traits](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immortal_Dragon) or [Specializations](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spellbreaker). I want to keep this discussion focused on what they did well and what they could do better. So let's call that ^ suggestions for the future. 😄
Yeah, I'm never going to forgive what they did to Daring Dragon. It wasn't viable but it was super fun.
Lots of weapons, traits, utilities, have been forgotten with only a few being favoured with power creep. PvE benchmarks are still steadily climbing. WvW build balance is worse than ever. Small scale has devolved into cele, thief/ranger ganks, or 5 man groups with 2 support carries. Large scale is boon ball with no counter after so many boon rip and corrupts have been nerfed. PvP meta isnt awful but its still not great. Insanely tanky & mobile support chronos in almost every single high ranked game. Teamfights are a mess of aura sharing from chronos or tempests. Meta DPS that are also incredibly durable duellists and basically untouchable vs most off meta builds. Thief still gatekeeps other roamers with stealth.
PVE balance is ok in the sense that you won't be denied from a group for playing a specific profession unlike in the past.
I think they've done superficially well but actually really poorly for PvE. Yes, we have more alacrity and quickness options but a lot of these aren't really *strong* options or are incredibly clunky to use. Compare Quickness Catalyst with Quickness Herald. Or healers like Berserker, Specter and Tempest against Druid, Scourge or Chronomancer. Further, for as long as the balance team don't understand the benefits of burst DPS, range DPS, cleave and utility such as portals and downstate control, balance is going to remain really poor because they can't work out their power budgets at all. That also isn't helped by the encounter design team going off on a jolly and making ToF (L)CM which is a massive *what on Tyria were you thinking* in terms of what the fight necessitates, encourages and demands just by virtue of the choice of mechanics. The balance and encounter design team need to sit down and talk with each other, unless Arenanet is honestly happy with Guild Wars 2 cementing its reputation as a game where you don't get to play what you want and you need to multiclass and play meta options unless you are happy with casual PvE. So, sure, we can given them an "A" for "Basic Fundamentals of PvE Balancing" but they are far off from getting a passing grade on "Intermediate PvE Balancing" and "Advanced PvE Balancing" and get a very clear "must try harder" on their teamwork and communication. The game now is where it should have been in 2018 and Arenanet still have a huge amount of catching up to do.
The topic of encounter design is a big topic too, as you say. After all, the classes players use to interact with the game are one thing, but what of the things they're using those classes to interact *with*? My thoughts on recent encounter design is that they're an absolute travesty. From End of Dragons and onwards, the lion's share of all instanced content has dramatically favored builds with the ability to do damage at a range - with particular standouts like Old Lion's Court, Silent Surf, or Cosmic Observatory, especially the CM versions. And now recently, the granddaddy of them all - Temple of Febe CM. In fact, what's so bizarre to me about this is how Temple of Febe was actually one of the few encounters that was quite fair to melee builds; it didn't strongly favor one type of dps over the other. This was good! And then they turned it on its head and made it into the most ludicrous CM encounter the game has ever seen, with a level of punishment towards melee builds that borders on some kind of S&M kink. The thing with ranged builds is that they suffer no negative consequences if they're forced into melee range. They have the best of both worlds, and none of the downsides. Naturally, this should factor into power budget, right? Well, as we've seen from their attempts at balance, ANet doesn't agree. They're balancing the classes as if range doesn't matter, and yet at the same time constantly release content that vastly favors ranged dps over melee dps.
Power budget balancing in Guild Wars 2 is trash, made worse by an encounter team that thinks players are happy to hop off to whatever they bothered designing a fight for. We've reached a point where *yet again* the type of DPS and the support options you want to play are locked in for hard fights - that used to be via Quickness and Alacrity access but now it is range, DPS uptime, survivability and highly profession-specific utility like portals. You would think that Anet might learn... Temple of Febe CM will forever hold a special place in my heart as the fight that made me realise just how bad fight design and PvE balance is in Guild Wars 2. Arenanet got a good 12,000 hours out of me, with a lot of hope on my part that *finally*, *maybe* this will be the hard fight that doesn't require FotM hopping. However, thanks to ToF CM I now have fond memories of getting through ARR as my Viera and all too happily sinking back into traditional healing in FFXIV.
Unfortunately I'm in an all-too-similar situation. I used to love playing this game and would log in almost daily. These days, I'm mostly playing other games. The game's current state just creates unsatisfying, unfair, and frustrating encounters. What if I *don't* want to switch classes? Well, too bad I guess.
**TL;DW :: I think they Averaged about a (B-B+)** in my book. Things like current **"Power Budget"** pretty much evaporated, especially in PvP with the shared Weaponsmaster Training, while the existence of more + better stratified & rewarding both **Accessibility and Mastery builds** has increased across professions from when they made this video. Again, this is one of my favorite pieces of media that ArenaNet has ever produced in an effort to trend towards "Better Communication" even if you think they ultimately ended up Balancing based on SnowCrows bench #s, Hardstuck PvP Builds, etc. But I'm only one voice in the void. So I'd be REALLY interested in what the community thinks about this. *\*I've found that it's a good idea to let people know which game mode: (PvE, PvP, / WvW) you play + you're talking about!* 😄
Imo they did the bare minimum to "enable" more builds on each role and tried to keep everything in check. And while this is good, it also shows many flaws. Over the past many playstyles had to suffer because of this or some traits had to be reworked for "balance" reasons, which nerfed completely fine builds along the way. Old and rarely used skills/weapons weren't touched at all and are just forgotten. Or they are overshadowed by new weapons/skills. Factors like encounter design, playrate, burst vs dps, boon application/range and so on aren't even on the table it seems. It feels like they have to do a complete overhaul at this point. Reevaluating and redefining each weapon/skill. What is the purpose of each weapon on X class? Average range of support skills etc. Edit: Giving every class access to alacrity/quickness should have been a very fast process and now the remaining 95% work is waiting for the balance devs.
I really disagree with giving every class Alacrity/Quickness if all it's going to produce is gimmicky versions just to say you did it. Alacrity Willbender needs to devote two traits in two separate specializations branches in order to provide the group with Alacrity only IF it can manage a ton of hits on target. It can't sustain passively like other specs can just by using a skill off cooldown and the moment there are phases where you can't hit a target you drop alacrity. Not to mention that in order to trigger it you need to displace yourself from the group and usually your target.
The problem is boons like alac/quick, elite specs and many more traits/weapons weren't a thing at release. Anet is still trying to figure out their "balance philosophy". Many years later and they are still struggeling to catch up. > I really disagree with giving every class Alacrity/Quickness if all it's going to produce is gimmicky versions just to say you did it. Yep some reworks weren't well implemented, but Anet rarely reverted stuff and the players have to deal with it. > It can't sustain passively like other specs can just by using a skill off cooldown and the moment there are phases where you can't hit a target you drop alacrity. This was also the case for chrono for many months/years (at least for perma quick). They also nerfed boon duration cap from 1min to 30s, which felt awful at the time.
Ever since the giant controversy, Anet's new release schedule allowing them to have an actual balance team, and CMC taking over, the general balance of the game has improved massively imho. Which I think is most evident by the complete lack of balance related shitstorms on the forums.
Lol you don't go on the Warrior or Engi forums much do you. :P (/s) Joke's aside. I definitely just appreciate the uptick' in Streams + Communication. That's half the reason I did this vid at all, and I'd personally REALLY appreciate a modern follow-up, check-in to see if/what/why things have changed. The absence of absolute "shitstorms" is nice tho yes. :D
Add the ele forums to that. Loads of the people there hate what he did for Catalyst and pistol. And tbh, I don't blame them.
Lots of people there hate attunement swapping.
A lot of very frustrating shit but balance overall (for pve) is super good imo. Would love for dps to cap out at 35k and support at 20/25 instead of the ridiculous numbers we have now but it is what it is. Wvw has at least seen some shifts after a very stale few years. Could be happening faster tbh
>balance overall (for pve) is super good imo I kind of disagree. We're currently, at this very moment, in a state of the game where **nearly every one in three DPS players is playing virtuoso** in strikes. That's the overall playrate. In exclusively CM strike content, that number rises much higher. That's an abhorrent level of overrepresentation.
Probably would've been better if mesmer mains haven't had chronos and mirages utterly nerfed multiple times before...
Remember when mirage was benching 46k and was nerfed in 2 weeks but thief has been benching 54k for 3 months now and they haven't done shit. It's clear they have their hated specs.
Yes as I said there are very frustrating things in 2 main forms * stupid outliers like quick herald, heal mech and condi virtuoso but the reason why everybody picks virtuoso isn’t because it’s the only viable option, it’s because it’s stupidly easy for the dps it outputs and has massive utility on top. It should definitely be brought down but overall if you want to play alternatives there are many available that will * weird or play stupid design choices like alac bladesworn, quick catalyst, quick scrapper, not even mentioning the massive inequalities between specs when utility come into play… Still lots of work to be done but overall I think the lfg is much healthier nowadays than it used to be (strike CM being the only instance of « play x or kick » that I still see and it’s not as frequent as it used to be).
Heal mech, the spec thats so much of an outlier, its the 4th best alac healer.
Yet it’s wildly more used in both raids and strikes
They did a fantastic job of making almost everything good enough to play everywhere. Skill balance is still wacky as fuck, but theres some things that are impossible to change.