Guild Wars 2

Just about every tournament I see, there’s at least three bunker-specialized classes. When tPvP is based on point control, durable classes that can withstand condition builds and burst builds, bunkers are king. They need to be nerfed. Without mercy.

Go on, tell us how you really feel.

You’ve said:

tPvP is based on point control

That’s the work of Bunkers x’ D

Bunker guardians hold points. the point of spvp and tpvp is to capture them and defend.

This means your team must also include bunker guardians

let me guess… your team is just a bunch of dps….

You failed to play the current META

spvp is random team balance, so you dont always get the well balanced teams you find in tpvp

Elan.3167:

Just about every tournament I see, there’s at least three bunker-specialized classes. When tPvP is based on point control, durable classes that can withstand condition builds and burst builds, bunkers are king. They need to be nerfed. Without mercy.

With this build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3YjQaV6Zaia87JAJFPj90jvHX8IFEPMA;TwAgyU7Y2RsjdH3OydWhMC5EyGkXIA

I actually beat two bunkers in spvp and I am a necro.

The main reason is, if you are a bunker and your fighting me I always win. Here is why.

10 seconds of 50% fumble I can cast every 10 seconds, and I can cast it again with another skill every 25 seconds.

Fumble = all noncritical hit damage reducded by 50%.

If you are specced for bunker and are really low crit chance, have fun having permenent 50% damage reduction, then I cast my wells and gain 16 seconds of 33% protection, not to mention I can get around 9 seconds of retaliation, all at the same time about.

Necro > any guardian.

Bunkers are such a waste, I can easily live longer than them with all of the skills I employ as that build. I haven’t met a guardian yet who can beat me in a 1 vs 1.

How2dealwith Bunker Guards. Boon strip Necro + wells. Hopefully your Roamers aren’t kitten because a Guardian with no boons are easy roam food.

True. Tournament game outcome depends on number of bunkers in a team in my experience. When Pug vs Pug, the team with most bunkers usually crushes the other team. When a team is premade or even just partial premade it’s even worse because they have planned team composition and communication. At this point, GW2 has the typical problem I’ve seen in every other MMO PvP I’ve tried: some builds are just worth more than others, so it’s “bring the build” not “bring the player” if you want to win.

shaolin.9716:

True. Tournament game outcome depends on number of bunkers in a team in my experience. When Pug vs Pug, the team with most bunkers usually crushes the other team. When a team is premade or even just partial premade it’s even worse because they have planned team composition and communication. At this point, GW2 has the typical problem I’ve seen in every other MMO PvP I’ve tried: some builds are just worth more than others, so it’s “bring the build” not “bring the player” if you want to win.

Any player can bring any build after doing the ten minute tutorial, so it’s definitely “bring the player”. That doesn’t alter the issue, just pointing it out.

By ‘bring the player" I meant bring a player playing any build he wants. But “bring the build” is what you need to do to win because some builds are vastly superior to others, so it sucks for anyone who doesn’t wanna play a bunker, just as it sucked in other game where you wanted to be a dps but if your team had no heals it was pointless to try. I can understand some builds being more mobile or reasonable stuff like that, but not builds which are superior in combat i.e. having less chance to lose in a 1v1 situation like bunkers are right now. Builds made to hold a node should have more CC and abilities to delay the fight but not endless strong heals and mitigation abilities.

ele bunkers are just as bad as guardians. bunker builds are ruining spvp.

nerva.7940:

ele bunkers are just as bad as guardians. bunker builds are ruining spvp.

try to remove bunkers’ boons.
try to put on them poison because poison lower the healing power.
try to daze/stun bunkers a couple of times.

watch them falling

hope it helped

Any pvp team game is a combination of individual player skill, individual builds (in any form, fps got weapon sets, rts has build orders, etc) synergy between players/classes, and overall metagame / team strategy. Some builds are just worth more than others just because people dont usually like thinking outside the box and testing the limits of other builds other than their own.

The fact that the game provides you the chance to be whatever you would LIKE to be doesent mean you are gonna faceroll every other class out there just because you are a better player. Then again, if it always came down to that, it would be emphasising the solo aspect of a game, when clearly, the game is beeing designed for a 5v5.

Same speech about “Tanks are worthless, dps needs a ruthless nerf” would be made if they happen to release a deathmatch mode. You dont need to go tanky if your team knows how to rotate. You dont need to fight the bunker at their point. You dont need to solo engage a player, and you dont need to stomp everyone every time you can, yet 99.99% of the players do it and dont even know why.

Im tired of people crying how long it takes them to kill a freaking bunker guardian on a point 1 on 1. WHY ARE YOU EVEN WASTING TIME TRYING TO TAKE OVER A POINT 1v1 THATS ALREADY BEEN TAKEN. Best case scenario, you kill the guy in 30s, you neutralize a point just before the roamer goes to finish your kitten off, and you made your team lose a player and 25sh (between point holding and getting stomped). Regouping or waiting 10s for your friend to respwan is WAYYY too much for some people. Even though, hitting a point defender 2v1 with enough cc will shut him down completely in matter of seconds and will prove to be much more effective than crying.

If you would like mirror matches, go play something else that fits your needs.

Threads like… “guardians are op, they can hold a point 2v1”, “Thiefs do too much damage”, “Mesmers moa / portal is broken”, “Warriors are up and 100’s b do too much damage”, “necros are all about f1 and spaming”, “eles are unkillable,neeeerff staaahhp”, “engis bb’s are too strong”, “rangers asp is too strong, pets still follow me” are getting freaking old.

Agreed.

It’s not about not being able to kill bunkers, they do go down. It’s just it takes forever. You sit a bunker on each point and have two speedy classes rotate. Even if you do take down the bunker class, you won’t do it before the other teammates rotate or unless you rotate 3+ players to deal with them, anything less and you’ve spent too much time and resources focusing on one player on one point.

What’s the counter here? Burst doesn’t work against a good bunker build, they have too many immunities and toughness/heals/vit, and if you’re glass cannon then you’ll just kill yourself with retal. Condition damage seems like the natural counter to a high defense build, but it’s all damage over time, so you’re still just waiting until the rest of the team comes and reams you.

The problem is, there’s no real easy fix for this either, and with paid tournies coming in a few weeks, I’d be worried..

It’s not fun fighting against bunkers. It’s not hard to play a bunker spec effectively.

The key is to make sure your bunkers are better than thiers and to make sure you can take down a bunker faster than they can take yours

Behold the bane of all bunkers: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Superior_Nullification
Also worth noting: conditions don’t trigger retaliation

Or maybe, just maybe, you weren’t that good in 1vs1 situations while playing non tournament sPvP. Just maybe you had a little help or dueled wounded players that didn’t have their cooldowns up

Webley.1295:

The key is to make sure your bunkers are better than thiers and to make sure you can take down a bunker faster than they can take yours

Seems like a more fitting name for the game would be “Bunker Wars 2”.

Well if there were different game types…. It might be different

Guardians make good point holders. Points are the only things to be held in tpvp. Unfortunatley there are no flags or anything yet

its the current meta for team matchups

Webley.1295:

Bunker guardians hold points. the point of spvp and tpvp is to capture them and defend.

This means your team must also include bunker guardians

let me guess… your team is just a bunch of dps….

You failed to play the current META

spvp is random team balance, so you dont always get the well balanced teams you find in tpvp

This mentality…do you really, honestly think that it is a good and interesting thing to have bunker guards a requirement in every team? That is a completely ridiculous and lazy claim. Any combination of classes should be viable. Remember that manifesto thing?

It’s not up to me to judge whether or not bunker guards are op. What I do know and feel is that they are very simple to play and can be very agitating/boring to players on the opposing team.

There are 2 kinds of bunkers ..
the normal bunkers, defensive.. high survivability, can survive 1 guy but with 3 guys they mostly die for sure (most of the bunkers and totally not even near overpowered)
then you have the bunkers people should complain.. the ones who can stand still while soaking in the damage of 3 people and still survive (even though fewer exsist then the normal bunkers… they do exsist)

the problem is finding the thing that differs those 2 types.

Bunkers are such a waste, I can easily live longer than them with all of the skills I employ as that build. I haven’t met a guardian yet who can beat me in a 1 vs 1.

This is the weirdest sentence i have seen ever… Bunkers are damage takers.. they knock you off the point and make sure they never die while standing on it.
Ofcourse they cant 1v1 you.. the thing is, you cant 1v1 a nice bunker to.

And if you do…. it aint a nice bunker..

Bunkers are here because of CONQUEST mode. In this mode you have to capture and defend points.
People say bunkers and immediatelly think about guardians.. but hey.. thats because of the metagame.
Guardians actually have most CC comming from their spirit weapons + hammer that they can literaly kick your kitten out of your point and at least neutralize.

but look at the game.. look at whats being used? We started with balanced setups, then there was a high thief burst metagame, insted then guardians and as a reply to guardians bunkers people actually started to bring necromancers to tPvP !

Thats how the game evolve.. thats what will be in future called metagame.
At this point i could only say guardians are here because they have access to AOE stability comming from shouts (24 second traited).. Without this luxury.. people will start to think why to bring guardian? why not tanky necro? or tanky mesmer? both can be even more tanky then guard..

but the main is.. game mode.. it will be always about roamers / defenders as long as we have to cap the points for victory

Hmm… all this talk of condition removal, poisoning and so on makes my warrior cry.

Is there anything less useful than a warrior in tpvp

This is a silly topic. Teams win tournaments by teamwork, not by how many bunker/tanks they have. The way I see it, a bunker gained is dps lost.

Lol are they really complaining about elementalist’s only viable spec?
Burst builds like all thief’s builds need to go, they burst right through the bunker.

Saiyan.1704:

This is a silly topic. Teams win tournaments by teamwork, not by how many bunker/tanks they have. The way I see it, a bunker gained is dps lost.

nice strawman.
given equal skill and teamwork, teams running 2 bunkers will own any team running 1/no bunker.

Bunkers just provide enough time for reinforcements.. sometimes too much of time. And they can possibly kick you many times out of point which result in neutralize or total lost of your point.

Back to the topic, it will always be like that.. – due to the game mode. You need to have defensive guys .. defending and offensive guys with high mobility. Thats the trick.

But i agree its highly annoying. Especiatelly seeing more and more defenzive playstyles..

Aragiel.6132:

Bunkers just provide enough time for reinforcements.. sometimes too much of time. And they can possibly kick you many times out of point which result in neutralize or total lost of your point.

Back to the topic, it will always be like that.. – due to the game mode. You need to have defensive guys .. defending and offensive guys with high mobility. Thats the trick.

But i agree its highly annoying. Especiatelly seeing more and more defenzive playstyles..

What this guy said.
Also thing to note is if they are going bunker build, their damage output is minimal compared to a full on dps spec of that class. My suggestion…stop bloody whining and be prepared when engaging.

No they don’t, the meta needs to adapt. Bring control + condition damage.

Meta started to change.. dont you see so many necromancesr arround now ? what a boom !!
and actually fights against double guardians are now simply easy.. the only difference is khylo.. they are so strong there with thiefs as roamers (due to thief being able to avoid stairs by ports)

That’s the problem.

tPvP is based around point control. Control in which you cannot lose as long as 1 person is on the point.

Needs to be redesigned to a clickable channeled object that breaks on damage.

That would remove the need for 2-3 bunker classes every game.

and pug pvp….. which the other 80% of the game is playing…
Damage is king. weather it be dps, condition or burst. all 3 rule.

the meta has never changed for pug pvp. it started out with dagger thieves and 2handed mezmers and 2handed warriors and is now…. dagger thieves, 2hmezmers and shortbow rangers.
I pug spvp with 99% of my playtime. and have yet to meet a thief that I can redily take 1v1 nor a mezmer.

oh and if you wanna kill my bunker guardian or bunker elementalist… bring a necro. condition damage and boon removal eat us alive.

you would still see bunker classes interrupting flag

But it wouldn’t be the end-all class needed for every map.

Isn’t about removing bunkers. It’s removing the need for 2-3 every map.

You could bring more ranged & well-rounded specs with a flag cap system.

it would still be easier to interrupt flag if you had bunker guarding 2 flags and all the AoE this game has this system would not work tbh

I’ve efficiently bunkered as:
Guardian
Warrior
Engineer
Ranger
Elementalist
Necromancer

If almost every class has a viable bunkering spec, then basically what you’re asking for is the inability to specialize your character into defensive statistics and traits. This is part of the game, there are counters to it and it can be beat. Please learn to counter aspects of the game that frustrate you instead of asking for the immediate removal.

@Sanis

Just means the cap time has to be low. Something like 3 seconds. That would allow for some CC —> flag cap if your team wanted it.

If people want to sit on the flag and AoE, then you can range DPS them down. If they’re AoEin’g the flag cap, then they’re not AoE’ing the players, in which case your team could die because you’re focusing too much on the flag and not on the other team.

Then you would aslo have to make decisions mid fight. At 50% hp, do you dodge roll the incoming burst damage or stop the cap? After that dodge roll, you now have to use a damage ability, leaving you open.

It’s just adding more decisions to make when taking a point. Allows for more tricky game play. And moves away from the defensive nature of the game.

Because right now there is really no decision making. It’s bring 2-3 tanks and sit on points.

yea there might be more decisions, but those could be reduced if you have that bunker spec interrupting and rest of the guys killing players like they normally would do. cap in 3 sec? then you should reduce the time in bost of the knockbacks especially AoE ones… they would be way too strong

I guess you never played WoW RBG in AB where groups pretty much always had that 1 guy just spamming AoE near the flag and rest of the team killed players.

I played with one of the top 3 RBG in the US.

People kept their eyes on cappers and played normally. No one had a specific job to aoe on the flag. It was everyone’s job.

Bunkers would be less of an issue in a flag cap system. If your team won mid, you could easily CC the bunker (as stability was most likely blown in the fight) and cap the point.

Also, almost all AoE knockbacks and fears come up slower than stability.

This attitude some people seem to have adopted surrounding bunkers is just an example of some game players laziness. “I can’t overcome this problem, so it must be changed. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t tried using a new approach, or haven’t kept myself informed as to what others might be doing to get around this problem – I want it to be easy.”
The OP here shows how the general attitude of many players is detrimental to gaming. Sadly, these kinds of players make up enough of the gaming community to be able to force companies such as Anet into a situation where they have to bend to their wishes. I very much hope that Anet doesn’t bend, especially if they want GW2 to succeed as an esport game, as many of it’s players do.
My advice would be this: watch some live streams on twitch, see how the players who have learned how to counter bunkers and adapt. By nerfing bunkers, you open the game up to pure dps button mashing fests where no point will be defendable, and team comp’s such as five thieves actually become viable, at which point the game will flop faster than AoC did upon launch.
This isn’t even about “L2P” it’s more learn to make an effort.

Not sure how any tournament team can win with more than 1 bunker; you wouldn’t be able to kill anything.

Bunkers are just one form of sPvP strategy. They are so easily countered though, if you use your head.

How to counter a bunker:

First thing first: a bunker’s goal is to waste your team’s manpower.

1. A bunker is doing their job if it takes more than 1 of you to kill them. If it takes 2 of you, then you need to kill them very fast. If you still can’t kill them after, say, 30 seconds — then they’ve really done their job to waste your man power.
2. Most teams have 1 bunker. If you simply ignore the point the bunker is at and attack the other points, you’ll have a much easier time winning.
3. Bunker’s don’t do much damage, but they have great support and control. They use their control, usually in the form of knock backs, to get you off the point. How do you counter knock backs? Stability. Save stability skills for certain animation cues when a bunker is about to knock you back.
4. If engaging a point with a bunker and other enemies, kill the bunker last. Save at least one CC to control the bunker from rezzing their teammates.

I like playing bunker engineer because I like long fights. There’s nothing more boring than a PvP game where players die in a few hits.

@Gilgamesh

You don’t need to kill anything. Not quickly anyways. This is most apparent on BoK where having 4 tanks with lots of knockbacks/immobilize is actually a very hard team to play against.

The only map where damage really matters is foefire, as the mid point is too large to knock people off.

The game is about point control. Not killing people. As such, 2-3 tanks are required.

Also, short fights are much more intense as one mistake can end the fight. So I find it funny you think long battles are entertaining, because long fights where no one dies and no one is punished for mistakes is the most boring game play ever.

Just go watch Blizzon VODs of 3x healer teams in WoW. Super exciting!

It’s called balance. Sure, a full 5 tank team would be boring. A full glasscannon team is boring, too.

A mixture of DPS and bunker, however, is entertaining.

This would all be solved with more than a single map type. Instead of nerfing classes or broad strategies they need to make another map where the objective isnt stand on a point longest. Bunkers of course dominate in this map type, they are literally designed to.

Where is cap the flag where a mix of tank/mobility is required? Where is deathmatch where raw damage usually carries the day? Where is push like in Dystopia (some people with mobility have to go and flip switches/defend switches while the tanky classes move a point forward).?

I think Anet knows better than to nerf defensive builds. Contrary to what a few players seem to think, bunkers are the only thing saving tPvP right now. Why else wouldn’t you go with five mobile burst builds?

Perhaps guardians are stronger than other bunker professions, since they don’t really have to sacrifice anything to be so tanky. Bunkering as an engineer is a lot more fun, but they can’t damage anything or walk to a point and neutralize it with several seconds of area denial. Guardians do already have a couple of fatal weak spots that other people have noted, though.

As I noted on another thread exactly like this one, right now half of the game seems to revolve around knocking someone down and killing him before he can get up. That doesn’t sound exciting to me, so I defend points, which is the other half. We’re seeing some new things pop up—anti-guardian necros, for example. All of those things would be lost with a nerf to bunker viability.

ppl think guardians are “stronger” because it’s easier to play than other bunker specs

Gilgamesh.2561:

It’s called balance. Sure, a full 5 tank team would be boring. A full glasscannon team is boring, too.

A mixture of DPS and bunker, however, is entertaining.

A mixture is the best. I agree.

But that’s not what you have.

Right now, most teams are running 3 tanks(guardian, ele, engi), with two mid and one side point. On BoK you can swap to 4 tanks.

If you refuse to run with tanks, then your team is at a massive disadvantage, and you will most likely lose vs a good team. Where as if you choose to run without damage, you can still easily pull off a win because conquest is about point control. And tanks with knockbacks, survivability/healing, and immobilize are very strong in that department.

But tanks being a requirement is due to the currently poorly designed conquest system. Changing conquest to a flag cap system or team cap system would reduce the need for tanks as well as glass cannons, and bring in more well-rounded play styles.

yes Im all for getting out of the capture point system as well. as someoen who plays pug spvp, most games turn into AVOIDING combat. i have people litterally walk up to a point, see me and turn the other way, on my ELE!!
most games are won by the team that avoids combat and just caps empty bases.

while that would be cool in a pve game like warcraft, i dont want this in a pvp game like guildwars 2

Warmage Timeraider.5861:

There are 2 kinds of bunkers ..
the normal bunkers, defensive.. high survivability, can survive 1 guy but with 3 guys they mostly die for sure (most of the bunkers and totally not even near overpowered)
then you have the bunkers people should complain.. the ones who can stand still while soaking in the damage of 3 people and still survive (even though fewer exsist then the normal bunkers… they do exsist)

the problem is finding the thing that differs those 2 types.

Bunkers are such a waste, I can easily live longer than them with all of the skills I employ as that build. I haven’t met a guardian yet who can beat me in a 1 vs 1.

This is the weirdest sentence i have seen ever… Bunkers are damage takers.. they knock you off the point and make sure they never die while standing on it.
Ofcourse they cant 1v1 you.. the thing is, you cant 1v1 a nice bunker to.

And if you do…. it aint a nice bunker..

I have an AOE fear the size of the capture point, another fear that comes back every 20 seconds. My well stacks tons of vulnerability on them. Did you even read my origional post?

With this build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3YjQaV6Zaia87JAJFPj90jvHX8IFEPMA;TwAgyU7Y2RsjdH3OydWhMC5EyGkXIA

I actually beat two bunkers in spvp and I am a necro.

The main reason is, if you are a bunker and your fighting me I always win. Here is why.

10 seconds of 50% fumble I can cast every 10 seconds, and I can cast it again with another skill every 25 seconds.

Fumble = all noncritical hit damage reducded by 50%.

If you are specced for bunker and are really low crit chance, have fun having permenent 50% damage reduction, then I cast my wells and gain 16 seconds of 33% protection, not to mention I can get around 9 seconds of retaliation, all at the same time about.

Necro > any guardian

I copied and pasted that for you incase you somehow missed it. Sigh.

If you are specced for bunker and are really low crit chance, have fun having permenent 50% damage reduction, then I cast my wells and gain 16 seconds of 33% protection, not to mention I can get around 9 seconds of retaliation, all at the same time about.

Bunkers aren’t really about damage in the first place, so I’m not sure how advocating making bunkers deal even less damage is a counter.

There is much more a Necro does that counters us.

If you have on one team a bunker who takes 2 people to kill him, and none on the other team, it’s the same as if it was 5v6. A bunker build would be more acceptable if when you steps on an enemy node point, it becomes neutral, that way keyboard turning clickers bunkers wouldn’t be able to defend a point endlessly against a single opponent, which is absolutely unfair. The problem is that if you’re a dps and attack a bunker at HIS node, he will keep it, if you’re a dps at YOUR node and a bunker comes he will take it from you. Clearly imbalanced gameplay with current node capture mechanics.