Guild Wars 2

Okay since the matrix doesn’t bend and the spoon stays the same, why not allow only certain spoons to eat with.

Intro

I know nobody who likes this meta, so I want to launch a series of tournaments with banned builds and different rules than the others. I need people who support me (streaming, additional arenas, etc.) So if you want to support plz write me ingame (Infamous Django) or here in the chat with your ingame name.

The Tournament

- The Tournament is a best of 5. (so 3 wins and you win.)
- Rotation is: Forest, Legacy, Khylo, Temple, Random
- Any Team can participate. I would say we start with 8 teams, first come first serve.

Special Rules

- Classes may not be changed during a matchup. (so you have to fight all the 3-5 games with the same comp). You may change your build

- If a team runs a build which is banned it may change the build. If the team doesn’t change or use a banned build again the match is forfeited and the other team wins.

- No class stacking (only exception is dmg Guardian and Bunker Guardian)

Banned List

Here comes the clue;

Warrior
- Any form of Hambow (Soldiers/Zerker) – means the combination of Hammer and Longbow is not allowed.
- Eviscerate/Longbow (15,0,25,0,30)
- Any form of Condition Warrior
- Bunker Warrior

Ranger
- Maximum of 1 spirit allowed (healing spirit not included)
- Spirit of nature is banned

Thief
- S/D and S/P perma evade trickery thieves. (The combination of mainhand sword with 10.30,0.30.0 // 10,30.,0,30 is not allowed)

Mesmer
- No form of phantasm condition builds

Engineer
- Automated response banned
- Any build that is a fullbunker/decapper is not allowed (0,0,20,30,20 // 0,0,30,30,10)

Necro
- The traits Terror, Dhumfiire and Fearduration increase not allowed.
- Minion master

Guardian
-

Ele
-

Runes/Sigils
-Lyssa runes banned

Additions

After the first tournament the banned list will be expanded if certain builds dominate the tournament.
If you got more ideas for the banned list please write it here

Last words

So again guys, plz let me know if you want this to happen and if so, PLEASE HELP.
We need:

- more custom arenas
- shoutcasters
- etc.etc.etc

Are you playing guardian?

Instead of asking me that just tell me what you think is OP about the guardian.

I know guardian is one of the most OP classes, because every team needs one. But banning bunker guardian is stupid.

I’m not an active guardian player but I know enough guardians and enough about guardian (500 games myself).

But you are trying to ban meta and allowing eternal metaspec to participate isn’t best way to do it.

Bunker Guardian was always part of each meta. It’s like banning monks in GW1.

I see your point. But all the Guardian players couldn’t participate probably resulting in no team participating.

weapons ele, fresh air ele.
Just for the fun of it:)

I agree on guardians points, no bunker guards, no meditation guards.
But tell me if you ban all the above, what is left to play?

Yes fresh air could probably need a banning.

Well, it’s up to you to decide, but imo this is wrong approach.

what is the right approach?

I want a tournament which could be a realistic meta.

I don’t see a chance that guardian will ever change in it’s role and not allowing bunker guardian is like not allowing 4/5 of each team existing to play resulting in no teams participating..

We could maybe ban the 0 0 5 30 30 5 build only allowing support guards. But why.

Cool idea. Tho, may I ask, what’s the prize for the 1st and 2nd places ? Might seem disrespectful but I’m speaking for myself here, we’d love to play some fun tournament with variety and better balance but we can’t be bothered if no prize involved.

I like this approach a lot.
Tournament organizers can change the rule-sets to reflect a more appealing ground for competition.
There are two things I would like to add though:

Let builds be changed (just not to any banned ones you mentioned) and have asuras maybe banned too.

Good point. I will wait how the response is and who wants to help and then look who maybe sponsors something.

If no sponsor is found I will do it myself.

Banning asuras is an interesting point. Discuss that more guys please ^^

Maybe the build should be able to change but not the class?

In this thread I just want to see how the response is and then set up the definitive rules for the tourney

Dunno if you played league of legends before but maybe implement a utility skills ban that would apply for a single match of the best of 3 or 5 ? Teams would alternatively ban 1 skill for a total of 3 each making it 6, would result in interresting changes I guess. Also no double classes allowed would be interresting.

KarsaiB.9475:

Dunno if you played league of legends before but maybe implement a utility skills ban that would apply for a single match of the best of 3 or 5 ? Teams would alternatively ban 1 skill for a total of 3 each making it 6, would result in interresting changes I guess. Also no double classes allowed would be interresting.

Bans during champion select.
A ban would have to be pronounced in map chat for now though and someone, like a shoutcaster, has to count down with a manual timer for example.

I’d like to see temple out of the rotation, it favors independent comps (ranger, warrior) instead of teambased-comps (burst-specs). Maybe add BM-Ranger to forbidden builds, it’s pure cheese.

i would like the idea to ban bunker guard. this would change the setup completly. right now it may only be a turnament with less played existing builds.

i understand that its hard to play without bunker guard, but i would like to see how people would handle this issue. maybe with a bunker ele, regenbanner war or midbunker engi.

Sign me up with shatter mesmer

Definitely supporting this.

Make it happen!

I have played with this idea in my head but you know i’m naturally to lazy to put something like this together. So ye if you make this happen that would be freaking awesome and I’m pretty sure our team would love to participate.

We do not need Arenanet to balance if we create our own artificial balance. (do not take this as an excuse -net)

I don’t get how you can defeat the meta and allow me most basic piece of the meta… (bunk guardian)

This would be a breath of fresh air for sure. (No pun intended, srlsly.) The mere fact that this thread exists kind of tells you how bad the current meta is. It would be great to see a tournament with less cheese. Heck, I’d even settle for different kind of cheese at this point.

Someone could probably even persuade Xeph, Phantaram, Teldo, Azshene and Symbolic to participate with their old comp from back in the day…

EDIT – As far as banned stuff goes, as an engi, I would add Automated Response to the list of specifically banned traits. It’s such a toxic ability.

Aereniel.7356:

As far as banned stuff goes, as an engi, I would add Automated Response to the list of specifically banned traits. It’s such a toxic ability.

This especially yes please thanks

No healing singet or shadow refuge matches would be fun to see.

Ban fresh air ele? are u kidding me?
It’s the only thing that makes ele “sort of” viable.

You ban this while still allowing things like: Shatter mesmer, backstab thief.
Doesn’t make any sence…

You could also just say: ban ele.

this isn’t about viability, this is about breaking the meta, and thats the ele meta:)

sounds good and i suppourt this

when its going to happen i will donate for the price + watch finally a tournament on twitch again^^

when arenanet can´t fix/remove the cheese so tournament organisators can do it – not All is Vain

ok plz everybody!

Teams who want to participate please write me ingame (infamous django). An ingame-mail would be perfect.

ppl who want to help with infrastructure plz also write me ingame.

I would like to make this happen in 2-3 weeks

would a 0/30/20/20/0 (with terror but not dumbfire) necro build be on the banned list?

Skrill.6170:

Ban fresh air ele? are u kidding me?
It’s the only thing that makes ele “sort of” viable.

You ban this while still allowing things like: Shatter mesmer, backstab thief.
Doesn’t make any sence…

You could also just say: ban ele.

As an ele main, I agree. How is fresh air op? This is the first time I have ever heard this.

DuranArgith.1354:

this isn’t about viability, this is about breaking the meta, and thats the ele meta:)

yea, well.. then ban:
- bunker guard
- d/p burst thief
- shatter mesmer / gs mesmer
- power necro

as this is all meta too…
(Saying any ele build is meta… sry. that’s just stupid)

Can’t we all just run Celestial’s and call it a day?

I like this idea of playing builds that aren’t meta and stale and boring. The fact that people have to theorycraft new builds is cool. Hopefully this gets popular!

I’d venture to say power isn’t really meta except maybe like wells+ds. But if you try to bam condi, mm AND power, I mean… What are you expecting a necro to play? Just because there are builds for it, doesn’t meant it’s meta. (like trap ranger)

Banning bunker engineer and allowing bunker guardian seems… just… weird.

I’d say ban class stacking..

But else i think pretty decent list, maybe not ban spirit rangers completely just limit the amount of spirits(and no rez spirit untill it’s fixed) and what about necros running terror but no dhumfire(it’s basicly weaker than before dhumfire patch anyway since it has fewer bleeds)?

MM, it should be called “Dodge the Meta” rather than defeat.

banlist looks more like ban all the cheese to emulate the meta we had before arenanet was going crazy + some modifications (started with necro buff)

i can live with this, old meta was much better than what we have now

Django.5923:

Mesmer
- No form of phantasm condition builds

Did you mean to say ‘Prismatic condition builds’ for mesmer?

Pure condi phantasm builds don’t work so well anymore since duelist was fixed and perplex runes don’t exist in pvp.

Might be easier to ban any 30 pts in any traitline build and then go ban happy on other builds.

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

I want to support this from a 3rd party pov, but dont know how. What should I do?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

s/p is pretty brainless though… i main thief btw :P

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

s/p is pretty brainless though… i main thief btw :P

It’s only brainless if you think that spamming 3 is how you win, which is not how the set is played. S/P has a higher skill floor that most thieves can’t/don’t bother to reach, and in higher levels of tournament play it’s easy to see a good thief using S/P compared to a bad/new one.

Actually, it would be interesting to see another tournament with the reverse of this concept. Instead of banning builds, you just have fixed builds for people to choose from, like lol or a fighting game.

The tournament organizers decide on a moderate power level, and then carefully craft 3 builds per class that’s balanced and interesting and not stronger than that power level.

Over successive tournaments, unused builds can be adjusted or replaced, or additional builds can be designed.

Basically we’re taking away the rpg aspect from players. (but using it as a mechanism for community-driven balancing).

Viking Jorun.5413:

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

s/p is pretty brainless though… i main thief btw :P

It’s only brainless if you think that spamming 3 is how you win, which is not how the set is played. S/P has a higher skill floor that most thieves can’t/don’t bother to reach, and in higher levels of tournament play it’s easy to see a good thief using S/P compared to a bad/new one.

PW precast + IR is sooo harddddd (eyesroll)

I like the idea. A community run tournament should adhere to what the community wants and considering the players have little to no control over class/skill balance, allowing the players to dictate what is acceptable within that tournament is worth encouraging. Especially when particular parts are so remarkably out of place for, what the players would like to believe is, a fair and skill-based game.

Had Phantaram not proposed something similar in the past? I’m unsure as to whether that gained any traction and that’s probably the biggest issue with this notion. For it to gain traction the players would need to be rewarded or incentivized by a potential reward upon success to consider it worth their time. Why else bother ignoring aspects of the game that they’ll be using everywhere else, within the game, whilst being rewarded for it. (Rank/Glory/Gems/Gold etc can all be earned in other tournaments and Team/Solo queue.)

If such a tournament were to gain popularity, which I’m sure it could, I doubt anyone is genuinely enjoying watching/playing/facing warrior dominated comps in their current state. (Was it not a triple warrior team that won the last ESL Weekly…) Maybe the outcomes and opinions formed could be used by the devs and become beneficial to the development of the game… Hopefully…

The ban list needs work, obviously, and I know many experienced players who would be willing to help here, including myself, but believe at the moment the most important thing would be to get this idea in motion so it’s no longer just an idea.

Fluid.1726:

The ban list needs work, obviously, and I know many experienced players who would be willing to help here, including myself, but believe at the moment the most important thing would be to get this idea in motion so it’s no longer just an idea.

Would a whitelist (only allow certain builds) be easier than a blacklist (ban certain builds)?

I’ve spun off my idea into another thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Community-balanced-GW2-Fighting-game/3574224

Rather than playing whack-a-mole by banning things as they become problems, it might be more balanced and fun if we discard the RPG aspect and just have a carefully crafted list of pre-set builds to choose from.

I wonder if experienced players (such as yourself) would enjoy designing 2 or 3 of the most “skillful” builds for each class, and then we adjust them all to be of similar overall strength levels via tweaks to items and other details.

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

s/p is pretty brainless though… i main thief btw :P

It’s only brainless if you think that spamming 3 is how you win, which is not how the set is played. S/P has a higher skill floor that most thieves can’t/don’t bother to reach, and in higher levels of tournament play it’s easy to see a good thief using S/P compared to a bad/new one.

PW precast + IR is sooo harddddd (eyesroll)

I don’t get why people think that PW is a burst skill at all. 2 hits are guaranteed, for a whopping 2k crit if you’re lucky. I get why you think it’s mindless, but no decent S/P thief uses PW as the main source of damage, as it’s just an initiative hog. Sword AA does much more damage and provides perma cripple and weakness, ruining anyone running burst with AoE cleave, and Pistol 5 is fantastic for safely burning down melee bunkers and far point assaulters. Pistol Whip is a utility, not a direct damage source. When you learn that, you find that S/P isn’t as easy as you thought it was. I’d love to see videos of your top-tier thief play running S/P just to show the world how easy it is. Until then, go ahead and believe that misguided notion you’ve got.

Also: You can’t even use IR with PW precast anymore, and it wasn’t even a good combo when it was possible before IR got a cast time nearly 2 months ago. I like how you bring that up and are trying to argue against S/P when clearly you’re so biased against sword thieves that you haven’t even tried or followed the events leading up to or past December 10th.

Rieselle.5079:

Would a whitelist (only allow certain builds) be easier than a blacklist (ban certain builds)?

Not sure I would consider a whitelist easier to put together, but I can see how it may produce a more “balanced and fun” tournament. I’d personally prefer to not be too heavy handed, allowing as much variation as possible without letting obviously skill-less abilities in and end up creating a tournament where the PvP is not too drastically different from what the game would be without the rules/restrictions implemented.

For example, I would not limit a warriors options so much as the OP has done, but instead target the specific abilities I feel encourage mindless game play. For a warrior this could mean blacklisting:

- Berserkers Stance (Too strong considering some classes are completely reliant on conditions)
- Healing Signet (Too good, passive, uninterruptable regen… No play based around it. It’s just there. You can either outdps it or you can’t.)
- Longbow (Disgustingly large unavoidable AoE field with ridiculously high uptime, I hate it)

This is all subjective ofc, but you get the idea. Though, I can’t really say that a blacklist is definitely the better option until I were to actually set time aside and attempt to create such lists.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Cynz.9437:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hah, I like how Thief S/P is banned. It got a minor buff along with the hard hit on IR, and somehow it’s OP now. Because logic. And he didn’t even bother banning D/P Trickery, which is more cheese than S/D could ever hope to be.

S/P can’t even perma evade. Shows how much OP knows about the class.

s/p is pretty brainless though… i main thief btw :P

It’s only brainless if you think that spamming 3 is how you win, which is not how the set is played. S/P has a higher skill floor that most thieves can’t/don’t bother to reach, and in higher levels of tournament play it’s easy to see a good thief using S/P compared to a bad/new one.

PW precast + IR is sooo harddddd (eyesroll)

I don’t get why people think that PW is a burst skill at all. 2 hits are guaranteed, for a whopping 2k crit if you’re lucky. I get why you think it’s mindless, but no decent S/P thief uses PW as the main source of damage, as it’s just an initiative hog. Sword AA does much more damage and provides perma cripple and weakness, ruining anyone running burst with AoE cleave, and Pistol 5 is fantastic for safely burning down melee bunkers and far point assaulters. Pistol Whip is a utility, not a direct damage source. When you learn that, you find that S/P isn’t as easy as you thought it was. I’d love to see videos of your top-tier thief play running S/P just to show the world how easy it is. Until then, go ahead and believe that misguided notion you’ve got.

Also: You can’t even use IR with PW precast anymore, and it wasn’t even a good combo when it was possible before IR got a cast time nearly 2 months ago. I like how you bring that up and are trying to argue against S/P when clearly you’re so biased against sword thieves that you haven’t even tried or followed the events leading up to or past December 10th.

ya my bad, ment IS

either way, idk what game you are playing but every single thief i see is running s/p atm and all spam 3 non stop