Guild Wars 2

Balance for Guild Wars 2 means many different things to many different people. The pacing of fights is a big factor for most who claim something is unbalanced. Some fights end very abruptly, some fights extend indefinitely(or until the match ends). Some people prefer this style of “balance”.As a result of this pacing of fights, any given match is almost entirely dictated by momentum and tactics.

The team with the most momentum, or the ability to largely disrupt the momentum of the opposing team will win. Most of the time it’s sending high damage high mobility classes to shift the momentum of stagnant fights. Sometimes it’s sending an extremely tough class/build to a point to hamper their momentum. Every fight, whether is is 1v1 or 5v5 is dictated by momentum as well.

It seems there is actually very little strategy involved in GW2 at the moment. The most strategy you will likely encounter are beginning strats for who to send to which point. The match is then dictated by tactics or reactionary decisions and decisive movements. It is impossible to say at the beginning of a match how you will be dealing with anything near the end of the match.

The problem herein is that between the rapid pace of fights and little strategy involved, gives very little room for error. For instance in a 4v4 one team may down 3 members of the opposing team, in a decisive action, one team may give up a point to assist the losing(and now downed team). That one person can single-handedly shift a losing team with 3 people on the ground, to 5 people standing and reverse the situation all in a matter of seconds with either a stomp or a res. That person could have been stopped, but still that’s not a lot of room for error. I’ve personally witnessed this very scenario on many occassions.

I cannot and will not blame any individual class for any of the percieved imbalances in this game. Do I think the game is imbalanced? It doesn’t matter, I just don’t really enjoy playing the game(PvP) the way it is right now. I think many others might feel the way I do. Most people on the forums just end up pointing fingers.

I blame the pacing of this game(not the "action"or amount of activity skills, speed, mechanics). I don’t think this game is very far from having good pacing. I believe that the basic problems across the board for “pacing issues” lie in the amount of damage overall and the amount of defenses available.

If all damage(not just burst) were toned down, points could be more easily contested or held off with less tanky builds, and making mistakes when defending, wouldn’t be so costly. Also group fights would be more habitable to melee classes like warrior and thieves, so balanced builds might be more desirable than burst. AoE damage(which stated as a problem by the devs themselves) would also be toned down.

If less defenses were available(along with less damage) fights would result in less stagnant standoffs. Also because there would be less defenses available and less damage flying around, support builds would become more attractive and thus more build diversity.

The pacing would become more of an even temper across the board. It doesn’t invalidate burst and it doesn’t remove defensive builds. What it does do is make coordination and teamwork have a greater effect.

I think apart from the few people who actually do enjoy the current state of PvP in this game, this solution would solve many problems for many people. It would make the game a little more noob friendly, make fights more thoughtful and involved, and make errors a little less costly.

I want to enjoy playing GW2, but right now all I can do is make absurdly long forum posts and hope -_-

Makes sense.

+1

Agreed. The pacing of fights doesn’t feel right.

The biggest thing keeping this game from being fun for me is that I don’t feel like there’s enough things to separate good players from the best. In WoW I felt there was plenty. It was very apparent who the top few players were where I played. Here I can watch 3 different ‘good’ players of a class and not really see any difference (other than positioning).

I feel the same way for the most part, but, check 2 of my posts for other issues I feel contributing to this issue and off in general. But ya, to bursty creating fights that people go, oh kitten missed that one dodge at full health, I’m dead or at 1/4 health and dead “LAME”. Or kitten this fight is going for 1-5 mins because of rez timers, rezzes, stall tactics and leaving people feeling “Frustrated”.

But there is balance issues in the general sense of the word. The ideal classes are ideal for a reason, they offer exactly whats key (bunker/ele bunker is best bar none, mesmer off point and gives portal/AOE quickness, can’t pass that up for any other better choice, ele roamer dps with great out’s, perhaps the best, and something super bursty and a necro that gives condi removal, rezzes, pressure, corrupt boon/anti bunker.) It’s pretty much gold right there and yes other comps. work, but I think equal skilled players using this build vrs any other comp. would ultimately lose more than win. Perhaps you could substitute a super bursty for a semi bursty/balanced build, but it reall limits the options…..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Some-quick-easy-changes-that-would-help-Tpvp/first#post1146945

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Some-more-idea-s-to-help-tpvp/first#post1146935

I feel the pacing is fine. I find the action oriented combat a breath of fresh air in a traditionally slow and boring genre.

Chi Malady.2015:

I feel the pacing is fine. I find the action oriented combat a breath of fresh air in a traditionally slow and boring genre.

I’m not talking about the speed of the game and the “action oriented combat .” I’m talking moreso about the speed at which people die and res.

People can be downed almost instantly, or they can survive for minutes.

Sometimes you can have 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 that would actually last a decent amount of time, but usually like I was saying you just have a high mobility burst class come in and what might be a “normally paced fight” is suddenly and violently over. This is very much the same for large fights like the example I used in my first post.

It’s these extremely sudden momentum shifts that make for bad gameplay. It can turn from a favorable situation to unfavorable in a matter of seconds. That doesn’t just affect one person on a team, it affects the whole team. So one small mistake turns into a huge mistake.

In Guild Wars 1 the momentum shifts were much more gradual and linear. Mostly because you had more structured groups, where there was more of a priority list for targets. Also because you had dedicated healers so HP pools could go back up as fast as they went down. This made it very difficult to kill anyone on a well coordinated team. And when you killed someone it just pushed them a little closer to losing. You could either use res sig or they would get ressed in 2 minutes.

In GW2 the pacing is absurd in comparison. Dying is so common and instead of ressing every 2 minutes you res in 20 seconds. Res skills recharge themselves instead of being one time use(except with morale boost)

Anyways my beef is with the pacing and it’s massive influence on momentum shifts.

I actually like the speed, action, and mechanics the of combat

To be the devil’s advocate here, I actually prefer the extremist pacing and how a well executed attack can turn the tides in your favor. Also how a poorly timed dodge can easily be your doom.

Let me use this example to explain my point; The other day i was playing with members of JBUO against QT one foefire. At one point my teammates had downed 2 enemies and were in the process of stomping them. I was mulling about at around 2k hp with 0 dodges left as a ranger on the mid point. Hman (a really good warrior) proceeded to cleave me down and quickness stomp me with stability, instantly rallying his teammates which lead to them winning the node.

Even though i was the victim of poor play, I felt that Hman’s actions should be rewarded and I should be punished for failure. This makes games more exciting and fun to play imo.

The way i read your post you suggest that they either remove or tweak downed state significantly and normalize damage and tankiness across the board to all professions. If this were to occur we would lose a ton of interactions with the downed state, and every single build would be similar. There wouldnt be any bunker builds, burst builds, condition builds, it would just be tanky dps, tanky dps, tanky dps.

That was mind numbing in LoL and that would be dreary here in GW2.

P.S. when you’re talking about room for error, you suggest that if they were to Incorporate your ideas the game would be more noob friendly. Well, there is only minimal room for error against good teams. If there was a matchmaking system so that noobs didnt have to go against experienced players… there would be more room for error.

Hellsyeah OP. Game needs less burst and less bunker and the pacing will be better and more fun for most. Man he got the velcros!

HappinessFactory.4910:

To be the devil’s advocate here, I actually prefer the extremist pacing and how a well executed attack can turn the tides in your favor. Also how a poorly timed dodge can easily be your doom.

Let me use this example to explain my point; The other day i was playing with members of JBUO against QT one foefire. At one point my teammates had downed 2 enemies and were in the process of stomping them. I was mulling about at around 2k hp with 0 dodges left as a ranger on the mid point. Hman (a really good warrior) proceeded to cleave me down and quickness stomp me with stability, instantly rallying his teammates which lead to them winning the node.

Even though i was the victim of poor play, I felt that Hman’s actions should be rewarded and I should be punished for failure. This makes games more exciting and fun to play imo.

The way i read your post you suggest that they either remove or tweak downed state significantly and normalize damage and tankiness across the board to all professions. If this were to occur we would lose a ton of interactions with the downed state, and every single build would be similar. There wouldnt be any bunker builds, burst builds, condition builds, it would just be tanky dps, tanky dps, tanky dps.

That was mind numbing in LoL and that would be dreary here in GW2.

P.S. when you’re talking about room for error, you suggest that if they were to Incorporate your ideas the game would be more noob friendly. Well, there is only minimal room for error against good teams. If there was a matchmaking system so that noobs didnt have to go against experienced players… there would be more room for error.

I completely understand. I mainly play thief and warrior, so I have seen how rewarding it can be to turn the tide of a fight. In fact that’s pretty much all I ever did.

I have also seen how frustrating it can be. If you have any one teammate that just isn’t up to par, it can mean the game. It doesn’t matter how good some of the other players are, things just happen so quickly that there’s really no possibility helping them.

I don’t think people understand what it would be like playing this game if survival wasn’t such a dire effort. I think it would encourage people to engage in fights more often. I know from playing a warrior that would be true. I actually hate just going in, unloading damage, and getting out. Killing people doesn’t even feel satisfying anymore unless it’s vs a bunker.

What I am advocating is that all damage be brought back equally, again not just burst, and to compensate bunkers can’t remain with their current ability to withstand damage as nobody would ever kill anybody. So burst would still exist as it does, it would just require better timing and coordination to utilize effectively. I feel as though it should require teamwork to kill someone very quickly, and not just one person’s whim.

As for rally and downstate, they could use dodgeball rules. Rallying could occur on merely downing someone, but it would only rally one person(the first person to be downed). So a roamer(or anyone assisting) could still turn the tide massively, they would just have to work harder for it. Res skills could be made to only res one person. So I don’t think that changing down state is necessary. This would make the momentum shifts of big fights much more predictable.

My, I’ve been getting a little wordy here.

I’m not sure that pacing is the best thing to complain about amongst the myriad of things to QQ about in GW2.

As a roamer I find the pacing perfect. Split second decisions are a must and one wrong decision or one death at the right moment could mean you lose an entire match. It’s where the teamplay comes in as well as having two roamers have two different ideas about what to do next could lead to getting 3 capped. To be honest I’ll say that this is the majority of the skill cap in GW2. The pacing might be the one thing they got right.

I think the issue isn’t directly pacing, but the fact that the over emphasis on extreme builds throw it off. Burst should be a well timed thing you do to seal the deal, not be blowing someone up from full hp to 0 outside of team spike. Conversely bunkers create a need for such high damage because many builds stall out on them. This causes a very binary feel to game play at times that can be very unsatisfying.

HappinessFactory.4910:

To be the devil’s advocate here, I actually prefer the extremist pacing and how a well executed attack can turn the tides in your favor. Also how a poorly timed dodge can easily be your doom.

Let me use this example to explain my point; The other day i was playing with members of JBUO against QT one foefire. At one point my teammates had downed 2 enemies and were in the process of stomping them. I was mulling about at around 2k hp with 0 dodges left as a ranger on the mid point. Hman (a really good warrior) proceeded to cleave me down and quickness stomp me with stability, instantly rallying his teammates which lead to them winning the node.

Even though i was the victim of poor play, I felt that Hman’s actions should be rewarded and I should be punished for failure. This makes games more exciting and fun to play imo.

The way i read your post you suggest that they either remove or tweak downed state significantly and normalize damage and tankiness across the board to all professions. If this were to occur we would lose a ton of interactions with the downed state, and every single build would be similar. There wouldnt be any bunker builds, burst builds, condition builds, it would just be tanky dps, tanky dps, tanky dps.

That was mind numbing in LoL and that would be dreary here in GW2.

P.S. when you’re talking about room for error, you suggest that if they were to Incorporate your ideas the game would be more noob friendly. Well, there is only minimal room for error against good teams. If there was a matchmaking system so that noobs didnt have to go against experienced players… there would be more room for error.

so what u are saying is that the figth that was “won” turn to be a 100% loss becouse u die , so by killing u he was rewarded by ur death, the res of 2 team mates and a point cap all in like what 3 seconds? isnt that sound a bit too excesive? i saw that thing so many times for my team and the opposite team, i can deal with that type of gameplay its cool and all.

As easy the game is easy to play like using the skills moving and stuff but the game has to be more new friendly like i said the stuff that u said are fine but its not game healthy tbh.

bunkers just have too many oh kitten abilities. you can play bunker very poorly and still last a hella long time, play pro and can last forever until zerged.

Some burst classes are similar, play poorly but can still dominate due to how easy it is to pull of said burst. The risk vs reward is backwards on some bunkers and burst builds.

Angriff.1935:

I completely understand. I mainly play thief and warrior, so I have seen how rewarding it can be to turn the tide of a fight. In fact that’s pretty much all I ever did.

I have also seen how frustrating it can be. If you have any one teammate that just isn’t up to par, it can mean the game. It doesn’t matter how good some of the other players are, things just happen so quickly that there’s really no possibility helping them.

I don’t think people understand what it would be like playing this game if survival wasn’t such a dire effort. I think it would encourage people to engage in fights more often. I know from playing a warrior that would be true. I actually hate just going in, unloading damage, and getting out. Killing people doesn’t even feel satisfying anymore unless it’s vs a bunker.

What I am advocating is that all damage be brought back equally, again not just burst, and to compensate bunkers can’t remain with their current ability to withstand damage as nobody would ever kill anybody. So burst would still exist as it does, it would just require better timing and coordination to utilize effectively. I feel as though it should require teamwork to kill someone very quickly, and not just one person’s whim.

As for rally and downstate, they could use dodgeball rules. Rallying could occur on merely downing someone, but it would only rally one person(the first person to be downed). So a roamer(or anyone assisting) could still turn the tide massively, they would just have to work harder for it. Res skills could be made to only res one person. So I don’t think that changing down state is necessary. This would make the momentum shifts of big fights much more predictable.

My, I’ve been getting a little wordy here.

Well lets think a little bit outside of the box now, rallying does provide huge momentum changes but there are other things that are similarly powerful and more consistent. Rallying itself only occurs during a situation in which a teammate is downed and an enemy is stomped or vise versa. However there are spells and utilities that proved the same if not more influence on a team fight. Ex; Rez signet, timewarp. Most of the time rez sig only needs to rez one person to be powerful, and timewarp is 10s of quickness which leads to some pretty nasty stuff.

I bring these spells up because I feel that it’s not just rallying that sways teamfights. And largely it’s not, even a well timed book can break a teamfight.

And as for your ideas about moderating the burst/bunkers. It does require a team to down a good player quickly. Generally 1v1s against good players will last a 30 seconds even on the glassiest of builds. But, a good player will down a bad player instantaneously mostly because lack of knowledge and a viable build. I feel these changes towards bunker/burst would cater too much towards beginners and the cost of a dynamic game for the rest of us.

Juan Ignacio.8903:

so what u are saying is that the figth that was “won” turn to be a 100% loss becouse u die , so by killing u he was rewarded by ur death, the res of 2 team mates and a point cap all in like what 3 seconds? isnt that sound a bit too excesive? i saw that thing so many times for my team and the opposite team, i can deal with that type of gameplay its cool and all.

As easy the game is easy to play like using the skills moving and stuff but the game has to be more new friendly like i said the stuff that u said are fine but its not game healthy tbh.

What’s not game healthy is not having a matchmaking system, pitting no life “pros” against people who just hit rank 20 in paids is not okay.

Every game has a learning curve, this game might have a steep learning curve compared to most mmos. But it’s trying to be an e-sport for crying out loud, and guild wars 2 has a lower learning curve than league of legends.

Now take a moment before making a reply, League of Legends gave players 30 levels of noob heaven to learn every fasset of the game, and even starts people near the bottom of the ranking ladder when they jump into ranked.

If this game had some sort of tutorial or MMR where people had a chance to learn the impacts of stomping, rallying teammates, trebuchet on kyhlo, and all the things people fail to grasp in hotjoins. We might not be having this conversation right now.

What happened to me was against one of the best teams in north america. That should be expected, but that kind of stuff never happens in free tournaments.

Where to start…

I’ll just say that momentum shifts happen too quickly and with too little effort or risk. Things like Time Warp could easily be addressed by making it a channeled skill that surrounds the mesmer. It then becomes a group support skill and becomes counterable.

The pace at which things happen is too quick and mistakes are too costly. Giving a little more room for error doesn’t remove dynamics. The only way that would happen is if they were to disproportionately reduce the amount of damage or defenses, which might result in stagnant game play or over the top damage. Reduce them properly and the game will see a more even temper, not reduced dynamics.

Matchmaking will help stop new players from facing top tier teams, which is good, but paid tournaments will still be bad because of the low amount of teams queuing.

I’m not going to even begin with GW2 vs LoL. It’s bad to compare the games both in the way they’re balanced and the learning curve. If the mechanics were the same lets say like LoL vs DoTA, then it might be valid.