Guild Wars 2

The point of this post is to shed some light on what’s happening in upper-level paid tournaments on the US side. To give myself some credibility, I am #18 on the Qualifier Point list with 26 Qualifying Points. I go by the name ‘Holly Jolly Folly’ in spvp.

I originally was very optimistic that arenanet knows what they are doing, but I’m really starting to reconsider. The reason for this, above everything else, is because teams are allowed to blatantly use exploits with no repercussion. The biggest issue with doing nothing about exploits is that the already small community is getting smaller every day.

Why is the community getting smaller?
Well, as a lot of people have said, it’s hard for new players to get into the game more competitively. Hot join always turns into an 8v8 zerg. Free tournaments turn into getting stomped by teams that can’t queue paids because the queues won’t pop. This causes new players, new teams, and solo queuers to quit.

Paids don’t pop that often, and when they do it’s generally a few teams that can stomp everyone else. This causes weaker teams to quit because they have two options: destroy people in free tournaments, or get destroyed in paids. This causes weaker teams that can’t compete in paid tournaments to quit.

When exploits come into the game this gets even worse. Now those teams that are actually competitive in paid tournaments run into the choices of: get destroyed by good teams running exploits, sometimes beat the lesser skilled teams running exploits, or run exploits (this is seriously the stupidest excuse that people use). This causes teams that are competitive in paid tournaments to quit

What are the exploits? There are 2 big ones:

1) Block bug. This happens when a guardian uses the mace 3 skill (which is supposed to be an aoe block that only blocks 1 attack) and immediately cancels it (for example by using the esc key.) This causes the guardian to block attacks for the next 6 seconds in an aoe. This means if you stand near an ally you will block all the attacks on yourself and on the ally you are standing near. It’s also on a 15 second cooldown.

And this is where I’m going to call out team PZ aka “I’m like a nine you’re like a five”. They are probably the biggest offenders of this bug, and have been using it before paids even came out. When accused, they say “it’s shelter” (Shelter is the guardian heal skill that blocks for 2 seconds). Well, when you actually play a guardian you know when it’s shelter and when it’s not by the animation and the duration. The thing about it is this team can actually be a competitive team in paid tournaments without using exploits. But it doesn’t stop there, because they also abuse the next bug, which is the Rune of Svanir bug.

2) Rune of Svanir bug. This happens when you run 6/6 Rune of Svanir and get turned into a block of ice for 5 seconds after you hit 20% health. This makes you invulnerable for the duration, and when you use a stun break you are free to move around and use any ability that you want while still being invulnerable. You also don’t lose a point if you’re the only one on it like you would if you used other invulnerabilities. This also doesn’t seem to have a 90-second cooldown because it seems to reset on death.

So you might be thinking, so what, 5 seconds of invulnerability and then you can kill them, right? Wrong. What about when a bunker uses that 5 seconds of invulnerability to wait for cooldowns to come back up? What about when you run 3 bunkers and it allows enough time for allies to come support you? Or lets take a bunker guardian that saves Tome of Courage > Light of Deliverance (the aoe full heal) during the invulnerability? Now you have to kill him all over again. It takes bunkers to a whole new level.

There’s also other things like “silent trebucheting” that seem to occur a lot more often with certain teams, but I’m not sure if that’s something that is controlled or not. If it’s controllable, I wouldn’t put it past some people to abuse it. Either way, these bugs need to be fixed too please!

Fixing the Problem
There are a couple ways that you can fix this.

1) The first way is to fix the actual problem. Fix the bug with mace, and fix the bug with rune of svanir. I’m guessing that anet can’t determine how to fix it, which is why it isn’t fixed. This is totally ok! It would just be nice to know that they can’t determine it yet, and can try solution 2:

2) The second way is to temporarily remove the mace for guardians (at least in spvp, if not the entire game), and temporarily remove the Rune of Svanir (at least in spvp, if not the enitre game). Then, when you figure out how to fix the problem you put it back into the game. Not a huge deal at all, and honestly is the best solution.

3) A third way is to start doing something against people that exploit. I realize you might not have the manpower, but you don’t have to take action against everyone. If you take action against the most competitive teams that exploit, then others will be less inclined to risk exploiting. Lets look at the whole karma exploitation when the game was released. What anet did there was good. If anet can look past the “friendships” they’ve made with certain top tier teams, such as Team PZ, maybe the game can be fixed.

Lastly, I know I mention Team PZ several times on this post. This is because without exploits they would be a good team that would win against most of the other teams. I get really cheesed because despite this, they decided to exploit as much as possible, and are not making paid tournaments fun at all. They are doubling any other team’s QP in NA not because they’re better, but because they exploit.

If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this: Something needs to be done about an exploit beyond “attempting” to fix it in the next big patch. Anet should hopefully learn from this, or it’s going to be even harder to get competitive pvp off the ground in this game.

Great post coming from someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Posts like these coming from credible sources are essential to things getting fixed. If any Joe Shmoe types these things, they get blasted for not knowing how to play.

Thanks.

Quick note: Folly meant “PZ aka Im Like A Nine N Ur Like a Five”. Pancakes to Celebrate (PTC) is a different team

I knew about the block bug for the mace, a bit frustrating when I pop 100b and it hits nothing xD By all rights, they should drop dead with 16k+ damage combo, but not. And yes, it seems high end teams (r40+) are using the Svanirs runes more than often. Not just in Paid, they are a joke in Free. Specially now with the 2 guardians or 1 guardian/1 bunker ele combinations; they are hard to kill, or takes time in 1vs1 but next to impossible with this exploits. Several of them, as already mentioned, they use those precious seconds to just, top up their health when they are next to dead.

Great post Folly. This is exactly everything in my mind put into better words and typed out.

Hotfix or disable game breaking bugs as soon as they have come to light. Letting them be exploitable for months on end is unacceptable. Because these exploits have been allowed to go on for so long, people are starting to see them as “OK to do” or “can’t win without them any more” which is so unbelievably wrong. Exploiters should get punished, not ignored and/or rewarded.

Dolmur.2573:

Quick note: Folly meant “PZ aka Im Like A Nine N Ur Like a Five”. Pancakes to Celebrate (PTC) is a different team

oh wow you’re right, my bad. I’ve never actually seen PTC/pancakes ever exploit and they’re awesome for that.

Another bug abuse would be thief shortbow teleport in kyhlo and legacy of foefire. They can be teleported from outside of the clocktower to right onto the ct capture point. Also it is possible for them to use it when approaching treb as well. And for foefire, ive seen thiefs and mesmers ignoring the doors, though, i don’t know how they manage to pull it off. I’m assuming that thiefs aim their shortbow ability to somewhere at the door and teleported into the gates. And for mesmers, im guessing portal should do the trick. It really gets annoying when you hear that “your lord is being attacked” once and lose the game.

They’ve fixed the Svanir bug. Removing the ice block through stun removal now removes the invulnerability . (I’ve test it; also see patch notes under “General”)

Gilgamesh.2561:

They’ve fixed the Svanir bug. Removing the ice block through stun removal now removes the invulnerability . (I’ve test it; also see patch notes under “General”)

He is not really talking about the bugs themselves but its more of a ponderance of why when bugs are so pronounced and well know that they can skew results of paid tournaments which yield real rewards, are teams not discouraged from exploiting. By doing nothing to the skills/abilities when found, this means the developers are giving free reign to anyone that wishing to exploit it, and is why my team took a break after a run in with some well known teams using Svanir’s + Block bug while streaming their games. This type of behavior is not okay by the developers or the playerbase and needs a new approach to keep the honest competetive community playing.

The options he lists out are reasonable but I really like the idea of disabling the specific abilities or nerfing them out of existence in PvP until such a time as they ability is fixed. Letting exploiters farm is not okay in a competetive environment.

both these bugs are fixed in the latest patch, arent they? svanir ice rune is fixed, and so is the mace block bug apparently. i havent tested them

Taym.8326:

Gilgamesh.2561:

They’ve fixed the Svanir bug. Removing the ice block through stun removal now removes the invulnerability . (I’ve test it; also see patch notes under “General”)

He is not really talking about the bugs themselves but its more of a ponderance of why when bugs are so pronounced and well know that they can skew results of paid tournaments which yield real rewards, are teams not discouraged from exploiting. By doing nothing to the skills/abilities when found, this means the developers are giving free reign to anyone that wishing to exploit it, and is why my team took a break after a run in with some well known teams using Svanir’s + Block bug while streaming their games. This type of behavior is not okay by the developers or the playerbase and needs a new approach to keep the honest competetive community playing.

The options he lists out are reasonable but I really like the idea of disabling the specific abilities or nerfing them out of existence in PvP until such a time as they ability is fixed. Letting exploiters farm is not okay in a competetive environment.

Exactly.