Guild Wars 2

Here is an example of why this is a ludicrous update: I go in to play some PvP as a revenant. Just before the match begins, two players on the other team switch to thieves to counter me and another rev on our team. The match starts and we get trashed by the thieves, so I try to switch to DH to counter the thieves and find out that I can’t get back into the match.

Switching classes should either be allowed the whole way through, or not at all. You shouldn’t be able to switch classes before the match begins if you can’t switch during the match.

All I have to say. Is if you are looking to be able to counter build mid match. You are playing the wrong game.

GW2 and it’s community is highly against allowing players to counter their enemies builds. Therefor it puts abunch of systems and mechanics in place to prevent counter building.

Why didn’t you just switch before the match started?

Kuya.6495:

Why didn’t you just switch before the match started?

They switched at the last second, just as the game was starting. There was no time for me to respond.

Reaper Alim.4176:

All I have to say. Is if you are looking to be able to counter build mid match. You are playing the wrong game.

GW2 and it’s community is highly against allowing players to counter their enemies builds. Therefor it puts abunch of systems and mechanics in place to prevent counter building.

I agree, PvP shouldn’t be about switching to counter builds. But that’s what happens when you allow players to switch before the match begins.

Take other competitive games like League, for example, where you must lock in your champion before even seeing your enemies champions. (I’m not very familiar with League so excuse me if that’s not accurate) — and I know, GW2 is not a moba, but in any competitive type of game where counter builds exist, that kind of system is absolutely necessary.

I agree, there should be no class switching after you queue up.
I think you should be able to adjust your build as you wait for the match to begin but not swap.

veslarius.8425:

I agree, there should be no class switching after you queue up.
I think you should be able to adjust your build as you wait for the match to begin but not swap.

There was a poll on this already and this position lost.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

Take other competitive games like League, for example, where you must lock in your champion before even seeing your enemies champions. (I’m not very familiar with League so excuse me if that’s not accurate) — and I know, GW2 is not a moba, but in any competitive type of game where counter builds exist, that kind of system is absolutely necessary.

This was the point I was trying to make. Image if you couldn’t counter build in LoL, DoTA, Smite, and Paragon.

You would end up in the same issues faced in GW2 with build diversity. There would be none. Because matches are decided before the teams leave the spawn in the beginning of the match. You would have only one build that is the best at doing everything. Thus no build diversity.

Mid match counter building adds more favoring to a PvP match. More in terms of strategy. Now you the player still have to execute your evolving builds in PvP. So it takes nothing away from the mechanic play.

Kuya.6495:

veslarius.8425:

I agree, there should be no class switching after you queue up.
I think you should be able to adjust your build as you wait for the match to begin but not swap.

There was a poll on this already and this position lost.

I saw the poll on getting rid of the 5 man premades but not this one, hopefully they put it back up sometime.

veslarius.8425:

Kuya.6495:

veslarius.8425:

I agree, there should be no class switching after you queue up.
I think you should be able to adjust your build as you wait for the match to begin but not swap.

There was a poll on this already and this position lost.

I saw the poll on getting rid of the 5 man premades but not this one, hopefully they put it back up sometime.

The poll lost by, what, 15% or so? I feel people were not educated enough on that Yes side argument. There were so many questions and quite a few people wished they votes Yes.

veslarius.8425:

Kuya.6495:

veslarius.8425:

I agree, there should be no class switching after you queue up.
I think you should be able to adjust your build as you wait for the match to begin but not swap.

There was a poll on this already and this position lost.

I saw the poll on getting rid of the 5 man premades but not this one, hopefully they put it back up sometime.

The poll ended at 52/48 % iirc so not that big of a split and it took quite a while for the people against complete class locking to beat the people for class locking, which would have also had a Soft class stacking limit implemented as well as Class specific Mmr.

The real problem here isn’t that you can adjust your comp before the match starts….

I’m gonna say the real problem is there are simply too many things that hard counter rev right now. I bet at least one of those those thieves wasn’t even thinking about countering you.

If you lock professions upon queue, many matches will be over before they start due to luck.

Imagine team 1: ele, scrapper, necro, power war, condi war
and team 2: ele, dh, dh, druid, rev

GG, Team 1 wins before the gates even open (unless they are really bad). and there is almost nothing team 2 could do about it, even if they could still alter their builds. There is simply too much paper rock scissors in this game.

crunchyraisin.6054:

I’m gonna say the real problem is there are simply too many things that hard counter rev right now.

It’s funny because their reasoning for Revenant’s weakness versus conditions was just how strong the class was against power, and then they nerfed it into the ground without any compensation; no buff to Cleansing Channel to remove 2 conditions or anything else.

Agree completely Velimere.

crunchyraisin.6054:

The real problem here isn’t that you can adjust your comp before the match starts….

I’m gonna say the real problem is there are simply too many things that hard counter rev right now. I bet at least one of those those thieves wasn’t even thinking about countering you.

If you lock professions upon queue, many matches will be over before they start due to luck.

Imagine team 1: ele, scrapper, necro, power war, condi war
and team 2: ele, dh, dh, druid, rev

GG, Team 1 wins before the gates even open (unless they are really bad). and there is almost nothing team 2 could do about it, even if they could still alter their builds. There is simply too much paper rock scissors in this game.

I can see that both sides have their arguments on whether or not professions should be locked, but the bigger point behind my post is that it should be consistent throughout the match, to prevent the problem I described in my first post.

Using your example, let’s say Team 1 and Team 2 were originally balanced and it would have been a fair fight, but Team 1 changed professions to counter Team 2 just before the match began. Now Team 2 is at a disadvantage, and they can’t switch classes to even the playing field.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

crunchyraisin.6054:

The real problem here isn’t that you can adjust your comp before the match starts….

I’m gonna say the real problem is there are simply too many things that hard counter rev right now. I bet at least one of those those thieves wasn’t even thinking about countering you.

If you lock professions upon queue, many matches will be over before they start due to luck.

Imagine team 1: ele, scrapper, necro, power war, condi war
and team 2: ele, dh, dh, druid, rev

GG, Team 1 wins before the gates even open (unless they are really bad). and there is almost nothing team 2 could do about it, even if they could still alter their builds. There is simply too much paper rock scissors in this game.

I can see that both sides have their arguments on whether or not professions should be locked, but the bigger point behind my post is that it should be consistent throughout the match, to prevent the problem I described in my first post.

Using your example, let’s say Team 1 and Team 2 were originally balanced and it would have been a fair fight, but Team 1 changed professions to counter Team 2 just before the match began. Now Team 2 is at a disadvantage, and they can’t switch classes to even the playing field.

In your same example, team 2 should notice that team 1 is trying to counter comp and:

A-wait to see what the new enemy comp is and change before timer runs out.
B-attempt to predict what comp team 1 would be going for and try to counter-counter comp it.

Or scenario C might happen: team 1 was just faking and team 2 either fell for the bluff or called it.

Kuya.6495:

In your same example, team 2 should notice that team 1 is trying to counter comp and:

A-wait to see what the new enemy comp is and change before timer runs out.
B-attempt to predict what comp team 1 would be going for and try to counter-counter comp it.

Or scenario C might happen: team 1 was just faking and team 2 either fell for the bluff or called it.

I mean, sure, but in my opinion, a psychological battle of who can out-comp the other team before the match starts is not what PvP should be about. Doesn’t this seem like a bunch of unnecessary trouble to go through?

It actually seems like something that adds layers of complexity to pvp in this game rather than just relying on mechanical skill and knowledge of rotations. I don’t see adding complexity as a bad thing.

Hmm maybe the problem rather comes from the fact that you can see the enemy team in advance. Profession switch should be allowed to carry your team only based on what profession the players can play. Because the more balanced your team is the more chance your team will have the possibility to win. And in the worst case of scenario, if your team has players that can’t switch professions then they can play more tanky or more damage oriented setups depending on who can switch and who can not. The waiting before the match starts should also be raised to 2 minutes to account for my suggestion.

It could be a good thing if you can’t see the enemy team comp before a match. Would be an easy way to fix your problem, but I suspect many players would hate this just as much as they hate the idea of restricting class swapping.

On a side note, you had two revs on your team? Dear god why did one of you not switch in the first place?

@ Kuya

You completely missed the part where I said “If you lock professions upon queue.”

Elementalist Owner.7802:

Take other competitive games like League, for example, where you must lock in your champion before even seeing your enemies champions. (I’m not very familiar with League so excuse me if that’s not accurate) — and I know, GW2 is not a moba, but in any competitive type of game where counter builds exist, that kind of system is absolutely necessary.

In ranked people take it in turns to pick a class for LoL… Captain chooses 1 champion, usually the toon the jungler wants to play because it’s hardest to counter a champ not in lane. You got some exceptions like if the enemy chooses Nocturne, you can pick Lee simply because Noc needs his blue buff and Lee does not require mana so you can counter Noc by taking his Red buff while he’s busy taking his blue. Each team takes it in turn of choosing a champion, usually what counters the other lane best.

I made it to Gold in Season 2 for Ranked 5v5 teams with one of my teams and Silver for team 3v3 ranked, haven’t really played ranked since then though so it may have changed.

What you’re referring too for not seeing enemy champs is usually Unranked Blind pick.

crunchyraisin.6054:

@ Kuya

You completely missed the part where I said “If you lock professions upon queue.”

Probably because i wasn’t responding to you.

In my mind, swapping after the game proper starts was a borderline exploit all along. Structured PvP games lock your skills so it doesn’t become a game of trying to identify and counter your enemy’s builds after the game starts, but switching characters was still an option… so people with fast load times could get an advantage by having a stable of characters with different builds, and switching once they know what the enemy is running.

Preventing that is, IMO, an improvement. The problem is that it does allow countercomp sniping as the OP describes. Now, this is still an improvement, as in this case the enemy team doesn’t actually know what builds people are running so their attempt to countercomp might backfire… however, the problem is that some professions have so few viable builds that you know how to counter them as soon as you see the profession.

Given that locking during the countdown was defeated in the poll, the best answer is probably to hide the enemy team’s professions until the game starts, as others in this thread have said. This would allow players to switch to improve their own comp, but they can’t try to build-wars to counter the enemy team.

The enemy comp should remain hidden until the match starts to prevent counter comping.

Yesterday I couldn’t change class before the match started (and I tried to change early and was back on my original class before the match started). Has anyone else has this happen? The only thing that I can think might have caused it is I queued up and joined the match from a hotjoin server.

So you stayed as a rev in a team with another rev (that’s a mistake for sure) and then managed to lose to team with 2 thieves? I’d say it is not about composition or class counter issue, it is just lack of skill from your side and that’s it.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

Here is an example of why this is a ludicrous update: I go in to play some PvP as a revenant. Just before the match begins, two players on the other team switch to thieves to counter me and another rev on our team. The match starts and we get trashed by the thieves, so I try to switch to DH to counter the thieves and find out that I can’t get back into the match.

Switching classes should either be allowed the whole way through, or not at all. You shouldn’t be able to switch classes before the match begins if you can’t switch during the match.

Anet should make some change on the profession:
1. Both team cannot see each other professional before game start.
2. Players can switch before the game start for their better setup.

It will make a more fair game

Reaper Alim.4176:

All I have to say. Is if you are looking to be able to counter build mid match. You are playing the wrong game.

GW2 and it’s community is highly against allowing players to counter their enemies builds. Therefor it puts abunch of systems and mechanics in place to prevent counter building.

What we are against is some moron who thinks they play 7 classes well when in fact they play one half decently and 6 others awfully. So even though in theory class A counters class B some dope is so bad at class A he would have been better off playing class C which he queued with and is much better at even if it worse against class B all things being equal. Games like Lol are a bad comparsion its played by like 1000x more people and there are 1000x more high level players that play multiple classes really well. League of Legends also has class specific MMR. At least compare apples to apples. I know you think you are saving the day when you switch to a class you are only 80-90% as good on as your best class to counter comp but your not.

Konakona.4130:

So you stayed as a rev in a team with another rev (that’s a mistake for sure) and then managed to lose to team with 2 thieves? I’d say it is not about composition or class counter issue, it is just lack of skill from your side and that’s it.

At skill cap, thief beats out rev easily, so your argument is nonsensical.

2 revs is a bad pick anyway doesn’t matter what you’re fighting

Elementalist Owner.7802:

At skill cap, thief beats out rev easily, so your argument is nonsensical.

Except that this guy is nowhere near skill cap if they stayed as 2 revs and anyway couldn’t handle team with 2 thieves.