And now for something completely different…
PVP takes an existentialist turn when Engi Prufrock tries to get on the leaderboards. Matches are futile…and then you die. Apologies to T.S. Eliot, who I’m sure would have mained engi had he ever played GW2. If you like this one (and why should you?), check out my Gunga PVP poem , too.
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Let us duel then, you and I,
Once I manage to dispatch this other guy
With a well-timed magnet-pull into a chasm;
Let us duel, on half-deserted Mine,
To test these new designs
Of burst builds that we don’t yet play too well
‘Cause these ground-target grenades are utter hell:
I’ll stealth and then I’ll sneak around the back
To crit you with my pry-bar condi stack…
Oh, don’t type, “LMAO” when you evade!
I guess I should have used my chill grenade.
.
In the lobby players take offense-
Their plaintive map chat makes no sense.
.
The rank-10 guardian charges Far and ends up in re-spawn,
The rank-10 warrior strikes at Far and ends up in re-spawn
Used up his big attacks while blinded, the poor sod,
Stunned himself against my shield, oops,
Then fell upon his back to Big ol’ Bomb,
Slipped off the point, tumbled in a heap,
And seeing that he was very nearly dead,
Swore colorfully ‘til I then put him “to sleep.”
.
Yet indeed there’ll be a time
When a terrormancer slides into my view
Played by someone who is much better than you;
The time will come, the time will come
To be fear-chained and then fear-chained off your feet;
There will be a time to kill and to be killed,
And a time to misfire stunbreaks or your stealth
Then watch conditions melt away your health;
Time to win and time to lose,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred build revisions
Before the taking of both Henge and Keep.
.
In the lobby players take offense—
Their plaintive map chat makes no sense.
.
And indeed there will be a time
To wonder, “Do I care?” and, “Do I care?”
Time to open up the leaderboards and stare,
While comparing stats to all the others there—
(They will say: “That engi’s really crap!”)
Must be my botched rotations, that I ignored the mini-map,
They forget my decaps, not the times that I was capped—
(They will say “lmfao, I can beat you while I nap!”)
Do I care
That I’m not in the top one thousand?
At next board reset there’ll be time
For MMR revisions to make the next strat mine.
.
And I have known the builds already, known them all—
Builds that are condi-based and power too
(But in the meta, owned by the skilled few!)
Is it just turret-based A.I.
That makes me want to cry?
Builds that faceroll, or that seem a bit OP.
And what should my build be?
And how should I decide?
.
Shall I say, I have beaten players with 50 ranks on me
And watched a n00b shred me into steak tartare,
Though to be fair he was a thief, and came from…I don’t know where…
.
I should have been an elementalist
Triggering condition cleanses after every dodge.
.
Queue solo….queue solo…
How I’ll get 50% win rate, I don’t know.
.
Shall I bunker down at Home? Do I dare to take the Keep?
I shall go and back-cap Henge when the other team’s asleep.
Meanwhile my team is zerging like a flock of sheep.
.
I do not think that they will peel for me.
.
I have seen them triple-capping uncontested points,
Ignoring the smart tips from our pre-match plans
When I thought that we might really have a chance.
.
We have lingered in the halls of PvP
Our fingers carpal-tunneled to the bone
Till our pet build gets nerfed and we get pwn’d.