Does Anet Know How to Properly Balance a Metagame?

I made a now favoured build on Guildwiki using that exact skill simply to see if I could get it to work, and to be simple, this build does work with that skill. Yes the skill isn't amazing, but it can work. and btw, this build works in RA so it must be good <_<. BTW its here: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Build:E/Mo_Ebon_Earthquake

This is an excellent critical review of the balancing job done by Anet. Most of your claims are ironclad... irrefutable, that their common method has been to keep destroying skills, even whole professions of the game with the dreaded reduction of the skill's stats. What's more, they frequently promise buffs, but the buffs are of a totally contrary nature to what is nerfed, meaning certain powers in the game end up lost for good. It's not balance so much as neutering anything powerful, and putting silly incentives on irrelevant things. I hope they take a long hard read of the original post here, because they would do better to reconsider the destructiveness of their method in the future.

This is the reason why perfect balance can never exist. The most ANet can do is change or add variety to what is being played by nerfing the current powerful strategy. But a new overpowered strategy will eventually emerge and be played to replace the previous powerful strategy.

In perfect balance all options would be equal and there would be no next best option, because all options would be equal and balanced. However that is a task that is completely out of reach with so many options.

It's not ABOUT having perfect balance, if thats what you people want go outside, look around the WORLD DOES NOT HAVE that.

However Matching things together letting the gap between them shorten allows for more combinations.

SF was popular but imagine if we weakened it a bit just to make sure its not Overpowered but lets buff some stuff to the degree of it, Bam now its just not 1 kind of ele, you have eles skilled in different things.


Pokemon has more balance than GW its not exactly a Bash GW thing but more of a in comparison something has achieved what the other hasn't.

In pokemon you have your standards which are stronger than most, but you dont just have 1 build for these standards or 2 you have 3-6, and you have Many standards.

This doesnt mean ADD more clases it means give all of them more builds.

There should be maybe 3-7 plausible Fire magic builds, and 3-7 for each type of element.

There should not just be 2/3 assassin combinations. 1 magic and 1 dagger. There should be a few so that GVG isn't as predictable as you can go, theres aan 80% chance if this guild brings an ele its SF it should be more like

20% SF 20% sand storm 20% water trident etc.
_______________

Anyways A-net needs to slow the nerfs if your gonna nerf something don't make it meh, make it just a bit weaker and buff other things to near its status. If there were more PLAUSIBle builds thered be less FOTM and more diversity.

Or when PVP gives all the players the the same skill bar, attributes and homemap to use.

BoA was just nerfed........


i agree that anet should let us figure out counters for popular builds


another thing is if you make up a great build, dont share it outside your circle.

I made a sin build al ong the lines of BoA about 3 weeks before BoA's showed up and then everyone started to try to counter them, my build suffered. NOw BoA's are nerfed and the person who invented it lost his creative product

Sorry, I should've added something.

Use this skill outside of RA

I also played around with it for a while, with my 4 elements elementalist.

Besides, real men don't use combos in PvE, just pure tanking or damage :P

I will say this that playing a Monk is just has hard skill wise as it is a Mesmer.This is one thing I would like to say in this thread ther other how about fixing some broken skills endure pain for one thing.

I think the OP for the most part is right in his assesment of Anet here...

It seems now that if there is a build that's very powerful (in PvP, of course), the playerbase just waits for Anet to nerf it -- whether it's truely broken or not... Anet has done this too much and players have been conditioned to not discover counters to builds themselves.. they just wait for the (inevitable) nerf to come.

You can see this when you read articles about builds on guildwars.com itself -- they talk about how great this or that build is, but always end up with "until we nerfed it". It's always "until we nerfed it" because players don't have time to come up with counters to builds.

I think the whole idea of balancing by nerfing/buffing the same skillset (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall skills) over and over again is a really bad idea. People like/need some sort of stability ... with all the skill updates, there is no sense of stability -- you feel like skills which you are comfortable with, that you know the ins and outs of, can change randomly at any time.

I think Anet should have copied Magic with the phasing in and out of skills. That way, skills don't exist forever. The phasing in and out of skills would follow a regular schedule so things still seem stable to the player. There would always have to be nerfs/buffs, but maybe only one per new skillset (as they get phased out eventually anyway) -- this way players can feel confident that skills that they know and are comfortable with aren't being modified all the time.

This would also be great because there could be "theme" sets of skills -- maybe a whole set of skills could focus on conditions. the game wouldn't be permanently damaged if this didn't turn out to be a good idea because eventually these skills would be phased out anyway. This way, Anet could be more creative, and the game would be more dynamic, but not in a random manner.

How would this be implemented? Each set of skills (from each chapter) would last, say, 3 chapters, and then be phased out. This way, there's also a fixed number of skills to balance, instead of an ever increasing number.

In terms of PvE, if we call the chapters Prophecies I, Factions I, Nightfall I, then Prophecies II, Factions II, Nightfall II, etc., then when you are in the lands of Factions II (Cantha II), you can use skills from Nightfall I, Prophecies II and Factions II. If you map to Elona II (in Nightfall II), then you would be allowed skills from Prophecies II, Factions II, and Nightfall II. There would still be core skills (which would change with each edition of Prophecies) which are selections of skills from previous chapters, so that people could still have some of their favorite skills from the past.

Of course, this will never happen since Anet has abandoned GW1... but i think this would have really improved the game (this is not an original idea, but ripped off of Magic's system).

being a primary paragon, i know how bad Anet is at their so called "balancing"

The paragon, by the stories that i heard- i never actually played during that time- at first were INTENSELY powerful (ha i heard aggresive refrain gave a party wide, RECHARGABLE attack speed buff!). But the hammer came down so hard that theres barely a use for non spearagons unless your in very specific situations and are playing in large arenas.

Sure you needed to nerf some things to be more reasonable, but not burn them to the ground, god they nerfed anything that had a CHANCE of being useful, instead of letting people cast *gasp* vocal minority or something! It would be like nerfing warriors because simply gave too much pressure (though thats their role! and they have counters!)

so true it makes me want to cry XD

I'm no big fan of how Anet changes some skills, but if I truly wanted a game where one 'build' or 'combination' of skills would allow me to dominate, I would go back to playing my console games, or even dust off my MechWarrior 4 collection. The constant changes in skills means taht I need to stay on top of what's out there, and what I might have to bring to counter/negate the effects of this skill. Its annoying at times, but it's a welcome change nonetheless.

Anet doesn't do a lot of things that we understand, and even now they're starting to give some rhyme to the reasons behind such changes. Maybe they gave a buff to the counter for Hex A, but in testing it with their group of in-house people they found it was too powerful. They discard it, start over, but they don't tell us that. I wouldn't expect them too, nor would I want them to; I don't need to know everything that goes on back in their offices.


I see where NoChance is going with his idea of phasing in and out skills, but they would have to come up with new skills, develop/debug, release, rebalance, nerf/buff, and then finally pull them to make more. This would be an endless task for them that would likely take up all their time and resources to do, leaving them with no real time to develop other expansions/campaigns/GW2, etc. The whole concept of Proph I/II is a nice one, and works well for card games, but computer games are much more complex, and would introduce an unheardof level of complexity to GW that could wind up driving more people away from GW than any perceived slights that are going on now.

From where I see it you cannot directly 'balance' metagame, since its almost completely playerbased which evolves and changes on long cycles, 'balancing' any skills used in meta will only mess it up, and it takes time before it builds itself back up, and this is why 'The only natural result of such an action is for people to play the next most powerful thing' takes it toll, and it seems too powerfull, and needs changes.. which then again messes up the game, and new gimmick will born.

While I personally am very excited to see what skills Anet will change, I think it'd be best if they kept the skill changes to minimum, and only every 2 months or so, so the current meta gets time to balance it self out.

Also on last note, I dont think myself as PvP expert, altho I enjoy it immensively d;

Also on the long intervals on the updates, not 100% sure but I think Ive read somewhere that Anet wont change skills mid-season, unless its absolutely necessary (Signet of Creation anyone?).

Was skimming and I read that. I didn't read anymore. You are obviously a PvE only type person because paragons probably have the highest DPS out of any class. I can't be sure of that because warriors can dish out a lot, but warriors have more counters against them such as wards and snares. Paragons are STILL the most overpowered class PvP-wise. F.Y.I.

thats because only RA noobs complained about TR's.....

It is impossible to balance the game.

When you add new skills to the game but none of the old skills are removed (only tweaked) you can never have a balanced game. The more skills means more combinations which in turn means more ways to abuse.

If GW really wanted to balance things you would see things like a prophecy only bar or nightfalls only bars.

That is the reason games like MTG (GW likes to quote or take from them alot) has been a balanced game for 10+ years. Cards or "skills" in GWs case would rotate out and new cards and sets would be printed and the cycle would start all over with new mechanics added to the game. Because the new mechanics could not mix with the only mechanics the game remained balanced.

Different formats also allowed the game to be balanced. The only way to achieve balance and really be skilled based is with restrictions. Its like cheating in a game with no rules. How do you determine skill with no restrictions? Just look at racing in the 60s-70s. There were no restrictions on what size engines cars could use. No restriction on car weight. They just stuck the biggest engine in the smallest frame and pushed the win button. To determine skill restrictions have to be in place to limit players. When a player can when while even being restricted he is truly skilled.

GW2 seems to be headed in that direction with the split of pvp and pve skills. On a balance lvl that will be much easier to handle as to not screw every player just because its changed because of one aspect of use in the game.

Basicly GW1 failure but learned some good lessons. Lets hope they learned from their mistakes for GW2.

my $.02:

Anet is nerfing skills based on their use in the pvp world. Go observe ny match in HA and you will see some powerful builds, and those are the very same ones that get nerfed next time there is a skill "balance" Granted, some PvE builds make use of the same tactics, espacially now that we have hero's available to make the build EXACTLY how we want, without having to argue its usefullness with another person.

The problem with this, however, Is anet is hitting these over powered PvP builds TOO hard, to the point it is seriously affecting PvE play. Yes, some skills get buffed, but they are the useless ones that nobody uses, never will, and the same effect plus five more can get gotten out of another skill.

How is this fixed, everyone asks? Its simple, LET IT GO ON. Sure A-net, weaken the skills a little bit, make them slightly less used in PvP, but dont make them completely useless in PvE. If you let the builds continue for long enough, someone will figure out EXACTLY how to counter it, beat it, and shove it facefirst in the cold hard stone of HA's floor. Then you hve that build to deal with, and someone else will counter it and so on, until it gets to a point where nothing is beating it, THEN you nerf it.

Continually raping the good skills and boosting the shitty ones will eventually make it impossible to do anything organized in PvE, let alone in PUGS.

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it would be another immature bashing of Anet. Boy, was I wrong. What a great initial post: reasoned, thought-out, articulate, and above all, totally true.

I agree with his essential point: rather than letting the metagame adjust to flavor-of-the month builds, Anet just nerfs them. Then the next best thing comes to the forefront, and Anet nerfs it. After time, fewer and fewer builds become viable or FUN. And this goes on to hurt the hapless PvE'ers, who never cared nor saw them coming.

Over time, Anet has become increasingly heavy-handed, and the result is unfunning the game, and not giving the community the respect it deserves: to adjust the metagame as inventive, skilled players will.

I'm getting a bit tired of PvE players complaining about nerfs. Most of the changes have little to no effect on PvE. Until I hear somebody make a thread about overpowered skills in PvE that should be nerfed, I don't listen to these people.

I don't think Anet knows how to balance a metagame, even though I think some of the recent skill changes have been decent. Guild Wars has been a rock paper scissors metagame for a while, and that is NOT a balanced metagame. A balanced metagame is one where MANY different build types can win at a high level, and not just a few like we have been seeing.

And I think some people are underestimating the effects of overpowered skills in PvP. If a skill is overpowered, it completely and utterly destroys PvP as we know it. The game is crap, because you basically must use that skill or face the reality that your build sucks in comparison. That is not what a balanced game is all about.

Personally, I would like to see Anet implement a system where they NEVER buff skills ever again. They should just keep nerfing overpowered stuff until eventually every skill is fair game.

Agreed to the up-tinth powah.

I thought it was just gonna be a snobby and immature whine thread. Quite the opposite. I agree with pretty much everything the Cap'n has said.

I thought the OP was really smart.

One thing a lot of detractors seem to miss is the distinction being made between intention and execution. I didn't see the OP, or any post after that, suggest that the devs of GW don't intend to balance the game, or that they aren't talented. It is a given that the devs want to balance the game and that they are talented; on that count, their intentions are clear and understood by all.

The criticism was about the way the devs are trying to achieve this goal.

There were two things about the post that impressed me a great deal.

1) the emphasis on time - giving players the time to adjust as new classes are introduced, or fad builds come to the fore. Seeing direct intervention, be it by buffing or nerfing, as a last resort.

2) the dangers of falling into a permanently reactionary mode - people who have become reactionary have lost control; they try to regain the power they once had, or feel they should have, in increasingly desperate ways. And it almost never works. If the devs want to balance the game, they can't do it while beating an inglorious retreat from the unintended consequences of their own decisions.

No there not, in a group there Formidable and damn right outrageous.

There affected by almost all melee counters -_-.

An assassin can outmatch a paragons DPS, and with there now lower recharges for some skill its staying like that.

4 second recharge skills, 1-2 second recharge skills max attack skill is about 20 seconds recharge.
Warriors weapons are rather strong and there skills are stronger aswell.
A ritualist spirits give out great DPS with painful bond its even greater.
MM's give out far better DPS
Mesmer....have the potential... if they use signet of illusion.


Honestly if theres just 1 paragon in a group there not that big a deal I'd be far more worried if a ritualist spammed a bunch of attack and defensive spirits and we didnt pack a counter than a paragon.

PvE in itself is an imbalanced environment and most of the times you are facing lvl24+ enemies with respectively higher armor and health. In the context of that environment most skills actually aren't overpowered.
During the "Hero weekend" i played the Dajkah Inlet challenge mission with a few chars and was pretty surprised how many criticals i was getting against mainly lvl20 enemies.

um... /signed : )

Thank you for your kind words and comments. Some very good discussions have come out of this thread, and I'd like to comment more on them right now, but I am incredibly sleep deprived, so I will delay this until later tomorrow.

LOL at this coming from someone with your play history. You truly take trolling to the next level, my hat's off to you.

Apart from that, I'd like to add that this 'creativity' you advocate in the form of Build Wars is something that is incredibly boring as it boils down to an elaborate version of rock-paper-scissors, with the only thrill at the start of the match when you get to see whether the opposing team is paper or not. The joy of playing is in the 'skill', or 'experience'. Build design adds variety to this in a huge way, else it would be an FPS, but it should never mean that a build makes you lose because the opponent has an unbeatable counterbuild.

i'd like to comment on the notion of nerfing and countering.

there's been many people who cry foul after their favourite build get nerfed. many of them will say that: "if this build is so overpowered, why doesn't everyone bring skill X to counter!" case in point, someone mentioned that: "if paragons were so overpowered, why doesn't everyone bring vocal minority?" the problem should be quite clear if you think about it: paragons were regarded as overpowered because it took a very specific counter to negate them. on the example of vocal minority, it's not enough to just bring it and hope it can shut down paragons. you need to bring a dedicated hex team build if you want it to stick for longer than 3 seconds. that severely limits build creativity: if you want a hard shutdown of a paragon, you must run hexes.

another problem with such counters is that they are extremely inflexible. let's say you bring divert hexes and purge sig to help you against hex stack builds. you go in, and you don't meet hexes. well, your monk is suddenly running with no elite and only 6 skills, because divert hexes and purge sig are useless against anything other than massive hex stacks. if you meet hexes, great. if you don't, you're screwed. the game will turn into a big game of rock-paper-scissors: overpowered skills with overpowered counters. if you brought the right counters, you win. if you didn't, you lose. the term "build wars" describes this situation exactly, and i'm quite sure nobody wants that to happen.

that's where nerfing comes in. the main purpose for nerfing skills/professions is to reduce it to a level where it doesn't take a very specific counter to manage it. anet's track record with this isn't really spectacular, but their recent update to hexes and hex removal is a step in the right direction. the combo of sig of devotion and deny hexes is a prime example. used in a combo and they are effective against hex teams. not as effective as the hard inflexible counters, but the recent adjustment will make staying up against hex stacks much more manageable. individually, sig of devo and deny hexes are still effective if you don't meet a hex team. that is a step in the right direction: skill interactions that are viable on their own, and effective flexible counters when needed.

a healthy metagame is where you can into a match with any number of builds and still be viable. when you complain why your favourite build got nerfed, think about this: does it need an inflexible hard counter to negate? if so, then the nerf was justified.

SO what your saying is you like the FOTM becauses its so Stale.

You like knowing what your opponents going to have because you never have to think about a different build other than FOTM?


In a diverse game you can technically win even at an disadvantage.
It's kinda boring to go into a match and Both sides have the Exact same build so that it turns into

1) who messed up first
2) Who messed up again.


Its not rock paper scissors when theres more than 3 choices if there were 10 viable builds for each class so that it wasn't all predictable but counters all worked, there wouldn't be as big a deal.

Oh the sin may bring this but I have blind and it WILL work on Warrior, Dervish,ranger and paragon aswell

Sin/ele is a spell caster Ill bring backfire/daze.

You know there are Universal counters like Blind and daze, weakness is pretty good now aswell.

I would like to refocus on the Ritualist a bit

You are absolutely correct here with ANET not allowing the Metagame to create counters. As it is there is and was many good counters to the original Spirit Lord build that was the focus to much debate. However you will never see the counters blossom because the meta game was never allowed to prosper. Then when Nightfall was released there were suddenly an influx of counters that became obsolete because they were originally designed as the meta game counters for the original Spirit Lord build of skills. Plus the Spirit Lord builds were never put back into their original cost and design even though the build was no longer overpowering for PvP because of the influx of Nighfall counters.

The over nerfs to the Communing and Spawning attribute have forced players to use Restoration or Channeling more and more ignoring the fact that Restoration and Channeling are really compliment attributes to the main attributes of Spawning and Communing as was intended but there was still hope for the Communing line of skills with the Spawning of three low cost attacking spirits Pain, Shadow Song, and Blood Song.

Then when Blood Song was moved to Channeling instead of Anguished was Lingwah (because of PvP complaints and the lack of counters to many Spirit Spamming builds) that was the breaking point for the communing line. The move did not stop Spirit Spammers as was intended but strengthened it by forcing a Communing Channeling build, but at the cost of injuring the Spawning and Communing attributes even more. The many Ritualist communities responded and made it clear to ANET that the Blood Song move did not work or make sense (no reason for it outside of some PvP player complaints) and that Anguished was Lingwah was the better choice and the community (PvP and PvE) was as a whole, ignored.

Now you have several problems with the Ritualist class because of not allowing a meta game to develop.
1) They are no longer defined by role and primary attribute.
2) The skills within the Ritualist attributes are mixed up and misplaced because of NOT following attribute definitions. (Offering of Spirit is but one example and there are skills in the Channeling line that should be in Spawning and skills in Communing that should be in Channeling and skills in Spawning that should be in Communing etc. etc. this is not merely opinion but an observation defined by attribute definitions)
3) Area’s of magic they can do effectively, can be utilized as or more effectively by other classes thus dissolving their place in the world. For example Restoration vs. Healing Monks and Channeling Spikes vs. well any Elementalist Spike build and Weapon skill builds vs. the Ranger.

The Ritualist has a multi level problem and I don’t see a solution or a willingness to create a solution in the near or far future by ANET.

I do not have the time or energy to go into Paragons and Mesmers but I agree with you there as well.

The ritualist meta DID develop -- it just sucked. Spirits could be placed so defensively and still work they could effective gunk up the game at will. No one liked playing against it or as it. And what's worse, you couldn't stop it without making a serious build compromise just to stop the chance that they had a spirit spammer. The problem wasn't that the meta didn't have time to adjust, the problem was that the meta could not adjust to beat rits without seriously weakning the build to everything else.

This is the problem with so many specialized overload gimmicks. Balanced teams can simply no longer fit the counters they need to beat all of the active gimmicks by skill. You need a shields up chain for paraway, some way to stop caster spikes inside wards with mantra, enough enchant removal to stop signet of mighty crap, mass hex removal and a way to stop sbri, mass condition removal as well as antidaze, mass antiphysical including ways to stop ass instagibs, ways to deal with infinite movement sins, ways to deal with vod teams... And that is just the start.

In the old days, a good balanced team with standard counters (dshot, shock, diversion, a few hex/condi/chant removes) could counter most gimmicks by skill. Now there are so many gimmicks that are so difficult to stop, it is very hard to win with balanced. This is why mid/low level gvg and tombs is exclusively build wars -- the average palyer running a balanced build cannot reasonably counter the majority of gimmicks. And what's worse, many builds have such a huge build advantage over others even good players lose to poor ones. Thus, they are forced to run a gimmick themselves, and the game gets worse and worse.

Some of you may like Build wars and think the innovation is fun. I like skill based games and think gimmickry needs to always be a weaker strategy. The average player running an average balanced build should be able to beat a gimmick by skill.

Yep, I played IWAY. I also noticed that people were reluctant to put melee counters and just blindly relied on the current acceptable balanced meta or ranger spike (lol) even they were expecting 8 IWAY matches out of 10. Very few teams used anti melee hexes (and won) and those who didn't and lost to IWAY just ran away, hoping for an A.Net intervention. So who is to blame? The lazy IWAYers or the dumb / nerf dependent player base?

Yep, creativity and skill via Build Wars. Please watch War Machine vs Lum (and give me a summary of that). I also heard eF owned iQ who ran sb/ri spirit build in jade map. I think A.Net should maintain the inherent build advantages and just add map mechanics (we have one atm: ability to split and hopefully theyll add more) that will make matches balanced.

To OP

(I don't have the time or energy...)

In short
"Leaving it to the players' is not working. I think you overestimate people's tolerance for uneven game play.

And I find it ironic that some of the PvErs screaming about the nerfs and telling people to adjust are the same people complaining about the SR nerf that is how old?

Bottom line is PvP and PvErs dont have the patience when there is no monthly and gaming landscape is very competetive.

Some aren't complaining about the nerf. They just find people saying things are overpowered in PvE (e.g. SR) ridiculously funny.

Some are and some are not. And those find it funny is probably because overpowered is the soup de jour in PvE.

I think the point is that all the moaning & groaning is NOT backed up by the statistical data. People complain no matter what. Heck, they complained BEFORE the nerf was even put in. But the point is, based on their research & numbers, they may be able to show that it's NOT making a significant difference.

this is just my opionion but as i see it ten characters and 3 chapters has made things just alittle complicated to balance out. everygame that comes out seems to to recreate the wheel and players opinions are a mixed bag of empty air or creative sparks. Anet can't trust the mob for good ideas so where does that lead them? adjust to a gamers perspective meaning play the game and read the posts and in the end figure out their solutions among themselves. hopefully inviting a positive exploit now and again.

No it did not.

Many of the Nightfall skills were specifically developed to counter the Ritual Lord and other Spirits from Banishing Strike to Mesmer Signets to new Earth based AoE's none of these great skills had a chance to develop into a proper meta game counter to the Ritualist Lord builds. The Ritual Lord died a horrible death prior to these great counters to take effect. The main issue that hit the PvP community was the inability to Improvise Adapt and Overcome or to have patience for a meta game to be created. I don't have the time to list them all but so far I have counted over 30 counters in game just from Rangers and Mesmers for a Spirit spammer and that does not include AoE spells from Elementalists.

They (mostly PvP guilds) refused to give up IWAY and many other popular builds for a solid counter. (Dammit they had their Guild build that took them over a year to develop and would be dammed if they had to change.) Also many in the PvP community did want to compromise their guild builds in fear of losing status to people who through creativity came up with some great build idea's like the Ritual Lord builds and Paragonway builds. Even skills like Avatar of Grenth were not overpowered IMO however the fear of it took hold of many guilds who feared of loosing because they did not allow a counter to come about. They did not allow the game to evolve.

Yes some buffs were needed like the buffs to Assassins over time. BUT not all nerfs were needed to develop the metagame.

Paragonway and the Ritual Lord should have had their chance to dominate if even for a few more months if only to allow for skill and build counters to come about in next chapters or to allow them to go head to head.

What is scarier the original Ritual Lord with Vow of Silence in a balanced build party or 4 Paragon Motivators, 2 Paragon Commanders mixed with 2 Earth Eles? We will never know the outcome of that match because the Ritual Lord and the Motivation Paragon was killed before the meta game could fully develop. That is why I agree with many people here the Ritual Lord Meta never developed.

ANET nerfs and nerfs and nerfs and never goes back to what made the class or skills work in the first place, even after a counter comes about though build or new skills introduced. They have to take a build and nerf every singly skill in the build so that it never surfaces again. Now we have class lead attributes (Spawning, Leadership, Inspiration) with ½ of the skills becoming useless in PvP and in PvE from Communing Ritualist, Motivation Paragons, to the Inspired Mesmer.

What happed to going back to the purpose and functionality of the class and the class primary attribute as its sole advantage over other classes?

Yes, Nightfall brought alot of counter skills, but those skills arent even useful as they Nerfed what there supposed to counter. Making them just Outdated skills.

Of course somethings are necessary to nerf
Paraway was ...a nuisance, a paragon shout effecting other paragons Tweak would've worked but no.

And besides nerfs some things aren't even buffed when they need it until after 1+ years (otugah's cry). Or buffed in the wrong way.

Sorry, Glory, but you just don't know what you are talking about.

Mesmer signets and the like were tried and discarded because they were too narrow. A team with 64 slots cannot justify devoting multiple slots to counter one narrow gimmick when there are dozens out there. See original post. It wasn't impossible to counter rits, it was just impractical to counter rits given the other gimmicks you were forced to counter and the other things you were forced to do.

If you think the community didn't improvise and test every possible combination, you are a fool. The skills put in to counter rits were unworkable, ineffective, or too narrow. They were discarded because they didn't work while letting the team beat other gimmicks as well, not because people couldn't think to use them. In this sense, the "meta" developed very quickly...as soon as people tried all the alternatives and realized none of them were acceptable.

Its wasy to whine about adapting. But think of it this way -- prove to me you can adapt and overcome these game flaws. Run a build that counters the meta and still wins against all the other gimmicks. If its so easy to do, do it and I will copy you. Show me that the flaws of the game are a result of failure to adapt by giving me proof of you adapting and winning.

Of course, the fact no one was able to do this over a 9 month period despite thousands of attempts and significant cash on the line is pretty good evidence it couldn't be done, but hey, you could be the superstar who proves us all wrong. Or you could be just another scrub who doesn't understand the game.

Let's see the proof.