Guild Wars 2

When gathering information about tPvP I come across this very limiting truth:

there is always mention of defending bunker builds, coupled with roaming burst builds.

Is there any room in this game for ‘jack of all trades’ builds, for ‘normal’ builds that aim at having decent survivability with good sustained?

Not talking professions as such here, but more the choices that are viable in tPvP.

This game is advertised as having massive options in playstyle, and it is of course the follow up of GW1 which set the standard for having many choices in builds.
But if it’s mostly bunkers or burst, than where are the real choices gone in pvp?

Prove me wrong, I’m asking a question here, not stating that there are no choices. Maybe there are and I just don’t see them enough.
I’m learning this game, so I post questions that cross my mind. Nothing more.

For what the game designer has recently posted on this forum, they want to favor high damage builds over bunker builds and he does not mention balanced builds at all. Make of it what you want…

I greatly dislike 2 shot games, I had enough of that garbage in Warhammer Online, where a RR100 Witch Hunter / DE (read: “rogues”) would easily unstealth => 2s stun => kill before is over or shortly after. Yes they could kill glass cannons within the 2s opener and no, there are no “PvP trinkets” in there to counter it.

anet wanted the game being : offence >> defence. so your best deal for " decent survivability with good sustained" is killing your opponent faster than him, or soaking more damage opponet can do to you, to let teammates come to help.

Hey I think the reason you don’t see many discussions about balanced builds is because they are more difficult to make. With burst, you just max damage, with bunker, you max survivability, but what ratio of damage vs tankiness is appropriate for balanced? It’s a question that will have different answers as the meta changes.

Also Vaerah is misrepresenting the developers comments. It was only said that bunkers have too much retaliation and it was upsetting game balance.

My personal opinion of how the 3 kinds of builds play out is as follows (others may disagree):

burst beats bunker – burst has advantage because bunker can’t kill him.
balanced beats burst – balanced uses stunbreak, then has dmg to kill the burst
bunker beats balanced – bunker can’t kill him, but wastes his time

I think balanced is also an excellent team fighter, whereas burst characters will simply get focused and die before they have much chance to do anything, and people will avoid attacking bunkers if there are easier targets around.

With a few professions as exceptions, the game generally benefits most offensive characters that do not completely negate defense.

Pure glass cannons with no stealth or clones as defense are a very bad way to spec, as having your armor as less than 2300 would mean you take exponantially increased damage.

So I’d say “normal” characters are the best way to spec, with offense being focused in your build a little more than defense.

Thanks so far for the answers.

Is this all translating to tPvP teams as well?
If I would join one, wouldn’t they expect me to go either burst or bunker?
Friends play as they like, I mean joining up with people who would only take me for what I can bring to a team.

I picked an engineer for the versatility, and that’s exactly what I’m building towards.
But my questions are aimed at any profession in the game.

The game is balanced around tpvp, so that’s what you should always be thinking about. Teams generally need a bunker or two, a roaming burster or two, and some midline balanced builds for larger fights. Engineers can also spec bunker, and they often do, so make sure you’re clear to your team what you’re playing as. Just depends what the team needs as to whether they’d want you to switch to bunker.

Edit: engineer has great mobility with speedy kits. You may want to try a kind of roamer that responds to your bunkers in distress.

Something just struck me.
It’s not about game balance so much, as it is about the specific nature of the pvp maps.

Capture the point battles will alwyas focus on speedy bursters going around, and defensive bunkers staying behind.
This is also more true since the points are very close to each other, if not a roamer would have to be more defensive too, just to get there alive. Now he just has to be fast.

In the end this game severaly lacks versatility in pvp styles.
I think that is where my issue begins.

I like the current maps, a lot.
But even if it is only the same capture point, adding for example a 20 vs 20 map would bring a lot more ‘balanced’ builds to the table.
And that’s not even starting on capture the flag or arena’s or anything else out there.

5v5 is way more strategic than a 20v20 zerg would be, unless the map size were adapted to that…

In my opinion no super specialist is viable. What you need is a strong offense and a respectable defense, all synergized to your style & weapon functionality. It makes no sense to build as a fragile offense machine or a mitigation & healing powerhouse. Both of these just make you a stoppable force. You need to find the mix that deals more pain to the opponent while also shaking off more than they can collectively throw your way. If you neglect those defenses you will fall to cc, burst, condition, too easily. If you can’t counter most if not all of these defenses you will be throwing noodles at people rather than making combat impact.

The only way specialized builds will work is with team synergy so that the utilities you all have enable each other to all survive while the heavy damage builds proceed to wreck face. With that said, why then would teams not want to simply all build well rounded with the same synergy on their utilities? This way your damage people can’t possibly be shut down because your assault will be multi pronged coming from everyone

this irritatekittenreatly (<wut?)

instead of building your pvp character to be a solid mix of damage and defense with appropriate situational utility, we instead are encouraged to take on a particular role such as bunker or burst roamer or boon/condition support

this is not much better then the tank/healing/dps system every other mmo adopts, once again players are being rewarded because of the utility they bring as a class not the skills they bring as a player

“Balanced” builds have no place in the current metagame, mostly because your TTL is not any better over a burst build. If you die in 2-3 seconds regardless of your defensive abilities, then its better to ignore them altogether. You’ll actually improve your ability to survive by killing your opponent faster then they kill you. The only time this isn’t the case is if you are a bunker guardian.

Im currently running a balanced build thatI I find very effective with proper use of dodging and cool downs I can easily survive through a burst from a thief or two and I can take bunkers down although not very fast.

I find this build to be very effective when I play defense with it as I can surprise the node attacker when I kill them after the initial burst. I win about 85% of 1v1s while also winning the occasional 1v2 as well at the very least if I get lucky with the classes in a 1v2 I can hold them long enough for a roamer to arrive.

I said this a while ago … there might not be a holy trinity (as in “healer, tank, dps”), but there seem to be a replacement for it. I am not sure if it can be avoided, but at times the roles do seem a bit rigid … but that is a part of the not “be all, end all”, isn’t it?

Sustained damage is useful in fights. Bursts only work if you manage to catch someone off guard, which really only works on glass cannon builds. Yes, if you catch a Bunker with Disable you might be able to focus it down, but you can just as easily explode yourself.

There are a lot of builds out there with good sustained damage, Necromancers are making a fairly strong appearance lately, and that’s their most successful build.

The focus on Bunker/Burst is just the current Meta, which is already in the process of shifting. I’ve had to change my Mesmer build to stay on top of it once already. Though, I can’t speak for my other classes as I’m still settling them in.

I disagree with a lot of the posters here saying that balanced builds aren’t viable. The problem with any discussion of this though is that what is considered a “balanced build” is a semantics game. Some classes may balance out their aggressive amulet/trait choices by using defensive utility skills or weapons with defensive capabilities.

How i wish it was: bunker = balanced = burst
How it is: good bunker = undefeatable even with 3 burst = win because of pointholder even though noone died in the whole match..

And if you dont agree with that you have never fought 5 guardians which all were 100% specced in defense and healing which cant be 1v3d because they can stand still and take all hits while suviving

How i wish it was: bunker = balanced = burst
How it is: good bunker = undefeatable even with 3 burst = win because of pointholder even though noone died in the whole match..

And if you dont agree with that you have never fought 5 guardians which all were 100% specced in defense and healing which cant be 1v3d because they can stand still and take all hits while suviving

You had next to no poison or condition damage then.

Necromancer + Thief (Defensive thief.) Should have melted your Guardians easily.

Sadly, the Developer Stated combo that “Burst” is supposed to counter “Bunker” simply isn’t true because most burst classes do not successfully CC before bursting, giving the guardian plenty of means of recovery. This leads consistent damage to pick up the slack, which is actually more successful as it’s passive and much more difficult to counter.

The fact that all PvP maps revolve around capturing and holding is what makes bunker builds so potent.

If we had more game-modes like CTF, Last Man standing, Team Death Match etc. things mike look a bit different.

Another matter entirely, but one I whole heartedly agree with.

I know eSports loves revolving around only one game type, but if Guild Wars 2 wants to benefit from being one, given the diversity of their class builds, I’d say they will actually benefit from more than Capture and Hold with various gimicks attached to them.

Not that I mind the idea. But I just think it can benefit from other class types.

Heck, if they make it so bundles can’t be carried through portals, I MIGHT encourage an elaborate capture the flag map.

However I’m most interested to see if they cannot duplicate the typical MoBA ‘invade and destroy’ maps, where you would have to pressure and defend turrets leading up to the base.

The “Progression” system would have to be nixed, of course, but there’s a lot of elements that could be preserved from the MoBA setting.

Engineers are EXCELLENT at making balanced builds. You can get a bit of CC, a bit of condi removal, a bit of survivability, mobility, decent damage, and amazing utility. I believe condi-survival necros, mesmers, hamshout warriors, damage-centric guardians are also good examples of builds that end up having decent survivability with decent damage. They’re great for team fights if you’ve already got plenty of burst and bunker but want a little more stomping / ressing / support.

Tbh, in my opinion capture the points is not an great esport choice anyway. I think things like team deathmatch or perhaps even capture the flag (given the fact that you would lose the flag if you used things like portal/teleport and such.). But capture the bases yust gives an edge to certain proffesions in my opinion.

anet wanted the game being : offence >> defence.

And yet pretty much every single viable trait that the elementalist has is defensive in nature?

Wildclaw

And yet pretty much every single viable trait that the elementalist has is defensive in nature?

Well, that’s his statement, not mine. I know an elementalist can go full bunker and still lose just 20% of his “DPS”, because our DPS has been nerfed so much it’s pointless to go for it. I mean, you can gain 20% DPS and lose 80% survivability, how many would go for that?

One of the main disadvantages of balance builds in this game, from what I see, is that a balanced build can not outlast a burst dps. Nor can he kill him faster, obviously…
That’s my experience so far, but I’m still learning.

A bunker might, but a balanced specc just loses on both ends in this game I’m afraid.

This of course, forces players more towards one of the two options here. Mostly it’s burst characters that I see.

In spvp throughout the weekend, all I fought was thiefs, mesmers, lots and LOTS of whirling warriors and the occasional rattling ranger.
All of these were bursty in nature.

I didn’t see many guardians by the way, but maybe those are simply all doing tpvp…

My conclusion so far: the burst is out of control and since spvp does not have the concept of ‘defending’, you only need burst.

I don’t see the need of either bunkers or balanced builds in spvp. And what’s worse: I don’t see the balanced builds getting anything killed fast enough before dying at all.

Is this really what it boils down to in this game?

Burst in spvp and bunkers + burst in tpvp?

1 vs 1 in spvp the balanced build always loses it seems.

Either the burst nukes too hard and you can’t do enough to stop it in time.

Or the bunker lives so long someone is bound to come along…

I hate this, I want a game to be favouring the balanced builds before anything, especially if that game made it’s name on removing the trinity in pve!

“balance” as a single player will always always always be worse than any other choice. There are support style characters, utility characters, dps characters, tanky characters, and together they form a team build. There has never been a game I can think of where if you chose to be something that just sort of did everything, it was successful. As a player on a team, you specialize in something and you expect your teammates to pick up the slack for your short failings.

You need to pick an objective that your character wants to achieve and work to do that as best as possible. You can’t expect yourself to pick a build that can do everything, if such a build existed then 5 of those builds would simply be over powered.

Balance in terms of other games is a team build in which you can handle basically anything due to the setup of the team. You should be able to have some counter to any weighted build. The problem is that there are a lot of weighted builds right now that are more effective than they should be. For example, a team with 5 tanky characters is generally very effective, or more effective than most other options. The thing that could counter this is a buff to a pressure style character.

It is not interesting to set the game up as

x > y, y > z, z > x. It is something many people have done and it is very rock paper scissors in mentality. Guildwars 1 had this and also didn’t have this. There were gimmicky builds that fell into this set of category and then there were balanced builds. Balanced builds could theoretically beat all of those, but they were far more difficult to play. To me, that is how a good game should function. The rock paper scissor mentality needs to exist but not be the entire game. That style of play is a great way for newcomers to learn the game by playing a lower skilled build and still get some wins under their belt and build confidence. Then, there should be a high skill option where playing it comes down to who plays it better and perhaps only minor changes along skill choice and trait choice that have more a play style effect than anything else. This build should be hard to master and honestly hard to play but capable of beating everything other than a better played balanced build.

Guildwars 1 had this for a very short period of time. It was deemed boring and entire classes were changed just to “shake up the meta.” It was a remarkably disappointing adjustment in the meta and forever changed that system. It is a system I would love to see appear again.

ANYWAYS… point being, you can’t be a balanced player, only a balanced team.

Added: btw, this concept of balanced teams is very hard if not impossible to implement in a conquest style game where it focuses on short sided fights more than anything.

Imo balanced builds > all others. It just doesn’t fit anywhere in conquest.

spvp has no team balance, or communication, or the need to co-ordinate at all… it just has ‘follow tha leader’ zerging.

spvp has no use for defending, stronger even: defending is doing it wrong. At least from what i gathered so far.
1 or even 2 defenders get overrun each and every time by a zerg going around and simply have wasted time weakening their own teams zerg.

This is what I hate most about the way spvp is developped in this game: it rewards no team play, not beyond ‘run together in a zerg’.
The ideal 8v8 team has 2 zergs going around, nothing more…

Given this messed up design of the current spvp battles, there is no need for anything else in there but bursting characters.

Even supporting builds don’t make much of a difference: 4 bursters kill everything in sight, they don’t need support in spvp chaos.

tpvp is a different game.
There bunkers have a niche, a rather BIG niche it seems.
Support also might have a limited spot there I suppose.

In spvp I see only burst being succesfull.
What’s a guardian going to defend against 3 or 4 zergers?
It can’t be a co-incidence that I only come across warriors, thiefs, mesmers and rangers… all bursting.

I really want a balanced build to be succesfull, because in random pvp, where you don’t join as a team you have to be prepared for everything.

spvp should be the place where balanced builds shine! Simply because it’s random and has no real team set up.
tpvp should be where teams must be constructed of complementing builds…

If it’s any consolation to those trying to run balanced builds in spvp, I’d urge you to keep trying to find a good build. I have been playing engineer for a while, and I think I’ve come across a great build that suits my style of play and allows me to consistently place top of my team.

It’s kind of a roaming support character with heavy defense (3k armor) low-moderate damage, and very good team healing. I’ve got 2 stun breakers (and their toolbelt skills which are great) and I use the elixir gun and rifle. I can pretty easily solo any of these burst classes, and after a while of playing I notice people running away when they see me. I can bunker a point for a while if it’s needed, I can slip away from fights that are going badly, I have a reasonable about of damage (especially against all these silly glass cannons) and my rifle chews thieves and warriors for breakfast. I am the resmaster 5000 and I often save allies at the last second who are about to get stomped, I cc bursters off my allies, I cap points solo and hold them vs 2 people for a bit. etc etc etc.

This is only 1 build from 1 profession, but I would urge people to consider their utility slots not as more damage, but as defensive skill slots for yourself and teammates. You really only need a moderate, sustained amount of damage to kill these burst classes, the more important thing is staying alive.

@Kalar Meadia.8439 LOL Just the other day I was watching the League of Legends world-finals between TSM and AZF, and the idea of a MoBA game mode in GW2 would be so kittening amazing.

“Defense wins championships.”

Deleting monks doesn’t change that mantra. In the absence of a game mechanic that actively promotes offense, defense always comes ahead.

Sports are always having to change rules to upset whatever defensive strat emerges. After the rule change, there is a period of exciting offensive play until a new defensive trend sets in.

We saw the same thing in GW1 when Rawr spike was reigning. Anet kept nerfing their key skills, immediately following the nerfs, offensive builds would emerge but before the next nerf defense typically reigned supreme again.

The removal of the red line in hockey, the 24 second shot clock in Basketball are examples in sport. Soccer hasn’t had that and as a result, is an incredibly defensive driven game (consider formations, with generally 3-5 defenders, 3-5 midfielders and 1 or 2 attackers).

A great example of where offense is encouraged is actually RTS games that have resources spread throughout the map. This need to collect resources is what pushes those games to have an offensive element.

Forest Creatures and Guild Lords are examples, but they aren’t big enough rewards to encourage offense. Additionally, the forest creatures promote big bursts rather than true offense.

Yes Oni, can all be true and such, but do you really believe there is defense in spvp?
tpvp is another game, but in spvp?
I understand your reasoning, and I think you’re right on that. But the issue seems to be that there is no reward for defending in spvp at all. Not in points, not in helping your team win, not in persoanl fun since you mostly wait till you get zerged and killed instantly.

spvp has burst and zerging group of burst.
I don’t see much beyond that.

It’s great to read posts explaining how balanced builds work for them by the way.
These give me hope that I will find a satisfying balance build myself that I don’t feel helpless with against extreme bursters.

important note: seeing the latest nerfs of oct 7, I gather the dev’s want to adress burst as well. Maybe balanced is their goal as a build after all…
(no idea why warriors were left out, but maybe that’s my limited experience talking).

Agreed on spvp vs. tpvp.

Effectively, if winning is the goal, you will see hyper defensive builds because defense wins. In spvp, the win bonus is so small and unreliable (you dont pick your team) that you are better off just focusing on raw points.

The points are skewed incredibly toward “cheesy” offense, burst or AOE. The goal is to get enough damage on enough people to consistently get the skirmisher, assaulter and defender bonuses.

If a huge win bonus was added in, it might go all defense like Tpvp. The way the points are now, you get the same number of points (actually, usually more) for capping and leaving as you do for bunkering/holding. In fact, I often want to leave so they can cap the point so I can come back and later and cap it again…..

Pushing someone off a point gets you no personal points (you need to actually kill them) and in 8v8 hot join, the bunker may not even be able to get enough damage on a character to get the points etc when they eventually get bursted by a sin etc.

So yes, winning is spvp isn’t actually about team score, its individual score. And the individual score is set up to promote either massive aoe or burst.

Again, this is the flaw of the gametype. Capture and Hold promotes defense over offense.

But you try to promote “Defense wins Games” in any MOBA type game and you’ll often lose, because it’s assault objective based and defense can’t defend turrets.

Sorry to say this so many times, but this IS wakamole, Anet. Until you make the changes that make the standouts less so and multiple builds per class equally viable in contrast to their opponents, you’re going to be caught in the adjustments loop.

There’s nothing wrong with quickness or burst builds. So long as the enemy has an opportunity to respond and must make at least 1 mistake to die, short TTL is ideal from an esport perspective.

Short TTL means that you need high APM, great reaction time, and mistake-free decision making under pressure. Every esport AND regular sport is based on this philosophy.

Long TTL is boring, doesn’t require high APM, and allows you to recover from mistakes (i.e. sloppy play isn’t punished).

Who do you want to be at the top of your esport, DRG/MVP/MKP or Goody/Incontrol?

If you don’t like the enemy’s burst builds, copy him and use his own build against him.

Fantom.9217:

There’s nothing wrong with quickness or burst builds. So long as the enemy has an opportunity to respond and must make at least 1 mistake to die, short TTL is ideal from an esport perspective.

Short TTL means that you need high APM, great reaction time, and mistake-free decision making under pressure. Every esport AND regular sport is based on this philosophy.

Long TTL is boring, doesn’t require high APM, and allows you to recover from mistakes (i.e. sloppy play isn’t punished).

Who do you want to be at the top of your esport, DRG/MVP/MKP or Goody/Incontrol?

If you don’t like the enemy’s burst builds, copy him and use his own build against him.

That’s a pretty bold comment.

“Short TTL means that you need high APM, great reaction time, and mistake-free decision making under pressure. Every esport AND regular sport is based on this philosophy.”

And not really true at all for regular sport. You didn’t even try and give an example of how it is true in regular sport (and barely an example for e-sport).

No one watches sports to see kitten go boom, they watch to see plays develop. If we wanted bursty sports, the goaltender wouldn’t exist anywhere. The goaltender pretty much exists to cover mistakes made by the team up the field/playing surface.

So let’s go through some sports:
Basketball – A sport that has anywhere from 30-50 scores per game and one in which only an incredibly minority of scores come off the rush.
Soccer – I don’t think you can get less “bursty” than soccer which is akin to chess matches and slow methodical ball movement (and has goaltenders).
Football: Let’s get rid of offensive lines ability to block in NFL. YEAH! BURST FOOTBALL!!
Baseball: Oddly enough, this is actually the sport that is maybe closest to what you described as it is brutal on mistakes (hence the tracking of errors). It is also incredibly slow and is primarily focused on the battle between pitcher and batter. I happen to personally find this sport incredibly boring despite its harshness on mistakes.
Racing: Why race for more than one lap? Let’s just BURST it all in one lap. You make a mistake, you lose. I’m sure people will tune in for that.

For crying out loud, most professional sports have games on the order of an hour of play time and 3 hours with stoppages. How is that short TTL?!

You know what is shortest TTL? Rock Paper Scissors. If you play speed rock paper scissors, it probably has lots of APM (all that fist pumping) and if you make a mistake, you lose! (Point, isn’t getting beat by builds the quickest TTL? you lose the instant you enter the match – I wouldn’t call that fun).

In fact, most of the short TTL sports are all those that don’t generally get much coverage outside of the olympics, mainly the racing events (track, speed skating, sprint cycling) and athletic events (and even in the athletic events, they all give multiple chances PURELY to let people make mistakes)

Finally, if short TTL is what you consider ideal for esports, can you honestly tell me you think 10 thieves running around the map bursting each other would be an ideal esport you would want to watch?

milo.6942:

burst beats bunker – burst has advantage because bunker can’t kill him.
balanced beats burst – balanced uses stunbreak, then has dmg to kill the burst
bunker beats balanced – bunker can’t kill him, but wastes his time

I think this was the original intention for the game and would be AWESOME because it is a circular meta game. Whatever you’re doing, it can be countered or beaten. It makes for some real mind games when playing known teams.

However, what the reality atm is that bunkers (mostly guardians) are actually able to kill/survive almost anything. This throws everything out of wack because if bunkers are extra good that makes what they counter extra “bad”. AKA if non-one is rolling bunker busting builds or what balanced builds are good at dealing with, theres no reason to roll a balanced build.
^IMO

division of labor

/thread

worked in rl, works in gw2.

teams with players fitting their role perfectly are outperforming those who just ramp up “jack of all trades” builts all day everyday

and yes there’s a lot of pigeonholing going on, especially on khylo

but since the game is at least one year away from an e-sport state, let’s not worry