Guild Wars 2

It’s in my nature to be really rude about issues that are seemingly obvious to go blindly ignored but I’m gonna to my best, pinky promise.

Lets start with your design philosophy of GW2, and the “destruction” of the holy trinity. It’s been stated numinous times that you all intend to design a game in which you can play what you like to complete fill a roll that is needed. This is a pretty idiotic claim in my opinion, here is why. Unless everyone has the exact same skill, on skill will be better than the its counterparts in a roll. From a PvP perspective, the more opportunities something has to work the better. Or in another way, lets say you have to classes/builds that fulfill the same role. X, has a skill that does 800damage and will hit your target every time. Y, has a skill that does 950 damage but requires help to set up from your team. Y deals more damage but it’s not significant considering it’s less applicable than X.

Here’s some proof. Lets look at the witch hunt surrounding Mesmers. Double range shatter was a Mesmer build played long before the June23rd patch, and despite the increased amulet stats available shatters were about in the range they were before because the ratio on shatter dps is low…anyways. Pre-patch Mesmer COULD do very good damage, but all of a shatter Mesmers damage is front loaded into one combo. And because all you had to do to basically ignore a Mesmer power build in the past was to dodge mirror blade. Phantasms are highly unreliable and die to unfocused aoe on point, and don’t even get started on iZerker, which hits for only one tick regularly. Now the June23rd patch comes around and with a combination of a trait confounding suggestions and daze mantra/daze shatter Mesmers were able to RELIABLY land their damage. So while Mesmers could land an 8k rotation before and after the patch with an almost identical build, it was never reliable before, it was like Y in the example. Now that Mesmer has become more self sufficient and the damage has shifted more towards X, now omg Mesmer is popular and has gathered fair-weathers from far and wide.

So back to the argument at hand, different skills =/= same roll, and how this ties in. Almost no build in PvP does one thing, therefore it is not pigeonholed into limited uses or scenarios. Example? Oh idk maybe the class/build that can do it all??? Ele D/D can: 1v1, teamfight, deal with condi builds, deal with power builds, escape outnumbered fights, move quickly on the map, etc. Gezz I wonder if anyone plays that class… Oh what’s that? People put two on almost every team? Huh, so a build that can do almost everything is strong enough to take the spot of a more focused class/build? Wonder why…

I’m not here to trash talk the balance team, but lord knows I’d love to. I’m here in hopes after three years of gameplay it can be admitted not all class skills are created equally. Infact their diversity should allow growth of different team comps because the differences allow you to combo in unique ways. But this will never happen if there are more “X’s” in the pool, in a way of saying.

Limit teams to one of every class in competitive play. This will force players/teams to utilize their class in different ways. Arguments against this, “well if you say that one class is better at something than the others wont everyone run the same thing?”. Answer, yes, until they are balanced teams will idle around picking the same class for a role, but as the classes are tweeked and new builds come into play. For instance what if you wanted to run a cele d/d, then you wouldn’t have access to a staff ele. But what if you wanted to combo your staff ele with something, then no d/d. This give and take would increase the viability of different builds and hopefully start us on the right track in attempts to provide a balanced pvp environment.

Examples of this working? How about the MobA community. Both Dota2 and League of Legends, even Smite do not allow for mirror matchups. If someone picks/bans something away a comp is changed in some way but not always the focus. Protect the AD carry is a popular team design in League of Legends which can be done with a variety of AD carries and a variety of team designs. I am NOT suggesting a ban phase but I think it would be another huge improvement to add a pick phase to competitive events. For example if people learn to multi-class (WHICH HASN’T BEEN NEEDED BECAUSE ONE THING ALWAYS DOES SOMETHING BETTER THAN SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT ABILITIES!!!) a draft could change depending on the team. In the current setting there’s nothing stopping teams from swaping classes over and over before a match. This does NOT mean one class per map, as in you can pick away a thief then the other team could not have one. Only that per team, one of each class.

So wall of text in one sentence.
1. Limit one of every class to 5v5 structured tournaments play
2. Consider the implementation of a “captains” mode draft style.

At this point, limiting conquest teams to “one of each class only” is probably a good idea to avoid broken exploited class stacking. It would be much more fun to watch and much more fun to compete against.

That in itself would bring balance to the competitive scene and give players reasons to use undermined classes.

I rather the same classes can’t have the same tier 3 skills on each trait line. This would promote different builds entirely for class stacking teams.

Only 1 Ele can have Blinding Ashes
Only 1 Guardian can have Indomitable Courage
Only 1 Necro can have Signet of Suffering
Same goes for every single traitline specialization.

Make an error message that automatically changes their build due to conflict of interest in Ranked pvp only. If other moba games don’t have issues with certain classes being picked first, it can work in gw2

If nothing else, maybe we can see a “hardcore” gamemode in the future with more strict pvp rules?

/Esports

Im not sure I can agree with this… When talking to Mobas, we have hundreds of different champions, and you dont need the same knowledge of the champion that the knowledge you need here with your profession in order to play it… We have 8 professions, if we cant stack them, we have no room to play with 5 different profesions per team…

Needless to say I am 100% against banning classes, traits or skills. No matter what.

@Krysard

You did not understand the point of the post, I said specifically that I do not think you should be able to pick away anything.

The only reference to a moba was the draft phase, which is not included in any tournament as to date. Example in the most recent WTS, oRNG swapped a burn guard for a mesmer. What if the Abjured wanted another pick? Then what if oRNG wanted a different pick in response to the second Abjured pick? When would swapping stop?

Teams should be drafted at the start of a match. Any build should be available, one class per team, 8 classes per team 5 spots on each team.

I don’t really waste my time anymore playing PvP, Blade & Soul is coming out this fall and will be bye bye GW2.
peace \/

Jasher.6580:

Needless to say I am 100% against banning classes, traits or skills. No matter what.

BetterHappy.2517:

@Krysard

You did not understand the point of the post, I said specifically that I do not think you should be able to pick away anything.

The only reference to a moba was the draft phase, which is not included in any tournament as to date. Example in the most recent WTS, oRNG swapped a burn guard for a mesmer. What if the Abjured wanted another pick? Then what if oRNG wanted a different pick in response to the second Abjured pick? When would swapping stop?

Teams should be drafted at the start of a match. Any build should be available, one class per team, 8 classes per team 5 spots on each team.

Yes I understand, and Im against… I agree with the selection phase you are talking about, but im against the ban of any prof/build

@ Krysard

If you are referring to a ban of a class I did not say one would be good, in fact it’d be awful. Only a limitation to the number of a profession. With ALL builds available…

He’s not saying to ban a prof/build. He’s saying that you can’t have more than one of a certain class on a team. You can still play whatever profession you want. I think the same should be done with pve. For example, you should not be able to play multiple warriors in a dungeon.

You really don’t understand the real problem. Say they don’t allow you to stack classes, it’ll screw with the matchmaking and probably make longer que times because the system won’t be too lenient since the game won’t allow class stacking.

The real problem though on the other hand is the past mistakes from the old devs are coming to bite the new ones such as Robert Gee. I’ve said this before, class stacking is NOT the problem, the problem is really balancing team failing to consider “dodge count/numbers/mechanics/rotations.” There is no reason to stack thieves, there is no reason to stack rangers. But people stack d/d ele’s and mesmers because they TAKE NO SKILL TO PLAY. THAT is the real problem, how easy certain classes are is what makes class stacking stupid. The solution is to MAKE THOSE CLASSES STOP BEING EASY MODE.

Like for example, d/d ele wouldn’t be abused by so many people if they didn’t have blinds on burn on top of evades while having so much mobility AND tankiness. The problem is related to the balancing team itself.

If d/d ele gets nerfed, this game will be close to balance. I promise you.

Your class stacking solution will simply screw over people who can only play one class. It just isn’t an ideal world and will fail in practice.

@ Nier

If you read through the post which I understand is a bit long, I stated that this is a bandage on what is a bigger issue with class balance. I agree with you that there is a bigger issue at hand with balance.

Further more where in my post did I advocate “class stacking bans” in pool play such a lader. I said 5v5 structured Tournament play, in reference to WTS, ESL, AG, etc. I have 5-10min Q’s on my main already I can only imagine what that would be like with more limitations.

Perhaps this could implement a new Q system. A solo Q, a group Q, and a team Q. Team Q’s would copy Tournament rules since as a team you’re able to communicate and identify what everyone will play. Maybe then teams could battle for ranking points that would score them in Tourneys. For example, what if you start up a team with a group, do well and gain some points through the ladder, those points could translate to seeding points in tourneys?? Just a thought

But please, people are going past what I have said and assuming greater implications. This should only effect COMPETITIVE play. For people that just want to log on and play they should be able to do so. All that would need to happen is a separation of Leader-boards, like I stated.

Lots of good suggestions for competitive SPvP there. No reason these proposed changes would need to affect anything else.

BetterHappy.2517:

@ Krysard

If you are referring to a ban of a class I did not say one would be good, in fact it’d be awful. Only a limitation to the number of a profession. With ALL builds available…

Yeh, my bad, I have not explained well, I’m against a stacking ban, so Im against banning double ele or double necro or double guard or whatsoever

EDIT: Even if this ban only happens in competitive play, and so its a more reasonable idea, I still think the problem here is the balance issue, not double prof composition, cause we can have so different builds between this double comp and not always we see a double meta build being played (see double guard/warrior in WTS)

I am against any type of limitation or bans.