During the Q&A today Jon Peters actually stated that at this moment they are balancing the game for eSports and that they are delaying the pve balancing until they are done with pvp balance. He also said that pvp will be balanced around 5v5.
This is just awesome. Finally a game that prio pvp.
Well i don't think it's going to be priority pvp, they seem to want to keep both sides pretty equal, however Anet are effectively splitting PVE and PVP, and like in GW1 if a move is REALLY good in pvp, to the point that it's better then every other option they'll split the move and make a pvp counterpart that'll be nerfed down a bit or changed in functionality.
Or perhaps even:
Necromancer
Necromancer
Necromancer
Necromancer
Necromancer
I went through the ability calculator for necro's, and I think if you totally spec for minions you can have up to 6 permanent minions at one time.
Can you say 35v5?
Granted, I assume all of these minions are going to be far less beefy than a ranger pet, but I think they are more beefy than mesmer illusions and clones.
However, they don't provide the added confusion as to figuring out "which one is the actual player" like mesmer clones do. And I'm also not sure about the relative cooldowns and thus relative up time (how long they take to kill vs how long the cooldown to cast a new one) for all of your minions.
You can have more then 6, you can have 2 from 1 utility, and then 3 from your other 2 utilities and your heal, and then your flesh golem from elite, and then you gain a jagged horror every time you dodge, and have a chance of gaining a jagged horror every time an enemy dies near you.
Or Team "Garen"
Guardian
Guardian
Guardian
Guardian
Guardian
All with greatswords, and then staggered every 6 seconds one guardian casts:
Binding Blade 30sec cd Throw blades at your foes, causing damage over time. Bound foes can be pulled to you. The effect ends when a foe moves out of range.
And then on every cooldown, :
Whirling Wrath 10sec cd Spin in place and swing your greatsword while hurling powerful projectiles.
SPIN TO WIN!
TILL THEY DIE!
IF YA JUSTICE THEY WILL CRY
SPIN TO WIN!
ACE EM' ALL
JUST ONE SILENCE AND THEY'LL FALL
thanks for all the ppl who cant take a discussion seriously, it was funny the first time with 5 mesmers haha "knee slapper" really wanted a discussion about the infomation we had what comps would ya play instead of just x/x/x/x/x random shit just saying random things without giving reasons why... Thanks ya very much
Well having 5 of the same prof is totally viable, and if you did what someone else said earlier with making a 5 team of mesmers that all looked the same and had very similar names you're going to be able to drive your enemy into complete insanity by not knowing whose really where. and the necromancer build with tons of minion masters... ouch, good luck capping a point they can all stay alive long enough for reinforcements and then take you down with shear numbers!
Wow you're something else trying to troll me even more then the ppl here.. If have nothing intelligent to say just go away, your argument is saying that cheese comps are valid strats... Maybe for some low lvl play which im sure most ppl here are going to be playin in, no one has added anything constructive to this discussion just bunch of idiots
I'm not trolling, who said they were cheese comps anyway? You know how much variety each of those can have? A LOT, you spend 30 points into 1 trait tree and still have 40 more points to do with as you please, so even if you all go minion master (death magic) you still have 40 more points to put elsewhere, sorry that you don't understand that Anet are making each prof very customizable to the player, but just because it's 5 necros or 5 mesmers doesn't mean they wont be able to cover several different bases
While I think that the team comps that I have suggested are amusing (5 of various things), and while I meant for them to bring some laughs, as to their viability: I am entirely serious.
Mesmer*5:
Having a sheer number of clones and illusions will make it very difficult to actually target any actual player. And while your clones and illusions don't have a lot of HP and are thus very vulnerable to AOE, a team stacking too much AOE may be able to effectively clear out the clones and illusions, but in this case, it would mean that since so many skills are devoted to AOE, it means more of their damage will be avoidable by the actual mesmer player. (Though perhaps the 5 guardian team I put forth would be an effective counter to this team because it would pull in and destroy not only the clones but also the players.)
Necromancer*5
The sheer number of more permanent minions could be a real problem. Necromancer minions, as far as I know, have much more hp than mesmer clones or illusions and thus are going to be harder to clear out. And if you simply try to focus the necromancer, all they need to do is switch to a life steal weapon set and kite and life steal while their minions go to work on you. (perhaps again the guardian team could counter this, but that's the interesting part to team comp building, that I do not think that there will be a BEST team comp, and I do not think and I certainly hope that it is not the case that the set of viable team comps will be small or even easily enumerable.)
Guardian*5
The ability of that team to pull all enemies in range together and just AOE them constant is seems to me to be an AMAZING amount of crowd control, disruption, and sheer damage output. I realize they might be countered by sufficiently spreading out so that only 1 or 2 people get pulled at a time, but the ability to spread out will sometimes be limited by the terrain. If the guardian team can play strategically to force battles in small confined places (like the clocktower in the 5v5 map we've seen in videos) their opponents may not be able to sufficiently spread out.
Finally, one of the primary and guiding principles that ANet has in building this game is that they want any combination of professions to be viable and for any profession to be able to play any role. And while for the guardian team and necromancer team I suggested at least partially the same build for all the team members (greatswords for the guardians and minion abilities for the necromancers) in the case of the guardians, even if they all took a greatsword with them, that's only one of their weapons, they could each take a different weapon set for their other weapon as well as widely varying their class abilities and traits. And in the case of the necromancers, you get almost all of your minion abilities from your class abilities and I said basically nothing about what weapon sets they each would use. In both cases there will be many set ups to build a variety to ensure your team can cope with a wide array of situations. And in the case of the mesmer team, I have said absolutely nothing about any of the specs or weapon set ups. You could build 1 mesmer for support, 2 for damage, 2 for extra illusions and clones, but pretty much and mesmer build is going to have at least 1 or 2 illusions or clones.
And I realize perhaps you might have been more interested in more specific builds and picking all the traits (as you have done) I, personally, do not think that such extensive and detailed building is really warranted at this point. We don't have all the trait info, we don't have all the abilities info, and everything is subject to change and to tweaking. And even if it was all set in stone, a lot of things aren't clear in how effective they will be or how well they will work together and at the moment, unless you are in or have been in any of the closed betas, you have no way to do any testing on effectiveness. And so I was focusing more on over all team comp strategy. Because while the exact number of minions or relative strength of them might change, it is highly unlikely that necromancers will cease to have a decent number of minions come release.
5v5 in GW isnt arena, its Battle for Gilneas 5 man. Objective based pvp. Not deathmatch.
Also, ANet has specifically stated that they are balancing for the PvP 5v5's first and then worrying about PvE, and they have also said that they built in the technology to allow spells to work differently in PvP from PvE. And although they said they want to avoid doing that as much as possible, if there turns out to be an ability that is OP in one and UP in the other and there's no way to fix this by just tweaking the ability's function in both, they will have the power to fix it for one without affecting it in the other. Also, the way they have designed PvE content around positioning and without the "holy trinity", PvE combat will much more closely mirror how PvP combat will work anyway so their should be less discrepancy. PvP won't be all cc and less damage and PvE won't be all damage and less cc, both will have about the same amount of focus on each. Also, for competitive PvP, there will be no gear grind; all players will have access to all the best stat gear and all abilities and traits and you will not have to do any work for them. At level 1 you can go into competitive PvP, in there you are automatically scaled up to be lvl 80 and given free access to all the best gear, traits, and abilities (but only while in the competitive PvP setting).I thought Arena ruined WoW?
People say arena ruined WoW because abilities started getting invented and tweaked that affected PvE in unwelcome ways. People felt like they didn't need better mobility and didn't like some of their nukes getting neutered to make them less bursty in PvP. This will not be a problem in GW2.
Last edited by Shufflepants; 2012-03-16 at 05:41 AM.
Whelp if the underlined is true, they aren't actually fixing anything. They're initially making one avenue good while spending 6 years trying to tweak PvE. Essentially they're doing the opposite of Blizzard. I'm not sure how you can argue that this won't be a problem. The hand goes both ways: Something fixed in PvP can break PvE, and vice versa. They can "say" that it won't all they want. Unless they provide a concrete example, it's just bullshit speak.
Frankly, unless the spells are 100% different for PvP and PvE, you're delusional if you think there will be no issues.
Last edited by KrazyK923; 2012-03-16 at 07:30 AM.
It seems like you read the underlined part and then stopped reading. Spells won't necessarily be 100% different, but if it becomes necessary, they can be. Also, you seem to have missed the part about how they are designing PvE content to be more in line with how PvP combat will go. Because of the tools in place to separate PvE spells from PvP spells and from the combat being similar, there is no reason to believe that it will be 6 years trying to tweak PvE in order to bring some semblence of balance. They will definitely be tweaking, but I think we can reasonably expect that they will be able to very quickly bring things to close enough balance that people will have no room to reasonably complain (not that some won't complain anyway, there will always be some one complaining about that last fraction of a percent).
And you also seem to be applying a false dichotomy of extremes. When I say it won't be a problem, I mean that it won't be a significant enough problem to the point where certain classes become wholly underpowered in one aspect of the game (PvE or PvP) to the point where players will have serious and significant complaints. There will always be some amount of imbalance, but I think ANet, with their design choices and tools available to them stand a good chance of making those imbalances infrequent and mostly imperceptible.
You are correct that something changed for PvP CAN break PvE, but again, because they are allowing for PvE spells and PvP spells to work differently (as they did in GW1) it doesn't have to. And if they find that it would break the other, they can always split the spells so that it doesn't. Whereas blizzard was commited to making spells work mostly the same; ANet is not.
The best comp is for me to grab 4 friends that I know to actually be skilled at their profession, rather than having a flawless build. I don't really care which professions they play.
---------- Post added 2012-03-16 at 02:49 AM ----------
Incoming Mesmer multi-boxing.
---------- Post added 2012-03-16 at 02:49 AM ----------
GW2 is not WoW.
I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.
If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.