Guild Wars 2

Now that the hype from the expansion has come and gone, I think we should look at what remains after the settling.

I stopped playing GW2 partway through season 1 at the end of sapphire because the bunker meta just wasn’t fun. I played a few games after the balance patch of last month, and a few games at the start of season 2, but I just can’t get invested in it the same way I did previously. The game just lacks tactical depth beyond that of rotations.

The only major strategical decision you have to make in GW2’s conquest style pvp is rotations, ie. deciding which node/objective to go to at which time, to make sure you have the right people in the right fights, and thats it. When you delve into the actual combat of a team fight, the tactical depth falls apart. In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam. Copious AoE, cleaving melee weapons, and frequent gap closers on many classes lessens the importance of tactical positioning. Generally speaking whichever side has more people in a fight will win, unless the side with fewer members has much stronger builds compared to the other side, or are simply able to coordinate focus fire better than the other team, which isn’t tactically satisfying.

What do you do when you’re in a fight? You try to win control of the point, often by killing any enemy whoever is on the point. This is fine, but what do you do tactically to win that fight? You spam. You spam damage until its enough to outspam the enemy’s sustain. You spam as much sustain as you can when your enemy is spamming their damage at you. Trying to interrupt key skills/heals/rezzes/stomps is about as tactically deep as it gets. The fact that most classes lack much resource management aside from cooldowns or class mechanics turns the game into an exercise in juggling those cooldowns.

I’m glad that new amulets like mender’s and sage’s let me run that squishy healer ele or druid role I always wanted to play, but given the things I’ve said about AoE and gap closers, you’ll often have to put yourself in harm’s way to heal someone with your shorter radius on your healing skills. It only manages to work because those healer builds are able to spam sustain and back off when needed. But I can tell you right now that if the bunker amulets were still in the game, there’d be no point to this since the game design blatantly favors spamming skills that keep yourself alive on a point for as long as possible. An interesting case for a different sort of healing is ventari rev, but it just doesn’t work because self-less healers can’t spam sustain on themselves, so they’ll just die, even though the whole concept of ventari rev was to reward tactical positioning and skill-based support. It just doesn’t work, and I believe that highlights the problems of GW2.

And finally the balance. Most of my problems with this game aren’t an issue of balance, but rather the fact that the game design of GW2 (role dilution and no trinity and general fast pace) has always made the game into a race of sustain vs. dps. Even though most of the bunkers are no more, it still feels the same as juggling cooldowns to survive/disengage or hold a point as long as possible instead of tactically outwitting the enemy team. You just adapt your rotations and thats it. But I will say that some things, like the survival-damage ratio of scrappers is blatantly broken, and you’d be gimping yourself by not bringing one on a team.

So this is how I feel. It just doesn’t really feel right to play this game anymore for more than the occasional romp, just because its so unsatisfying.

GW2 PvP is a mechanically complex game mode. Most people who play it do not understand all the involved mechanics and expecting a group of spectators to understand them by watching is just a pipe dream. Is designing and managing a system that serves the purpose of maybe 100 players out of 10s of thousands worth it?

nearlight.3064:

In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam.

I’ve won copious amounts of 3v4 and 3v5 team-fights because the enemy team held the same considerations as quoted above and didn’t understand the concept of peeling.

Welcome to Heart of Power Creep.

Velimere.7685:

nearlight.3064:

In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam.

I’ve won copious amounts of 3v4 and 3v5 team-fights because the enemy team held the same considerations as quoted above and didn’t understand the concept of peeling.

Well of course you do. No disrespect, but you also tend to play the best builds that metabattle can give you, so of course you’d be able to win 3v5s against the type of random stuff people may come up with. Yeah and there’s peeling too, but that’s not really what I’d consider complex or insightful.

As compared to what? What other MMO provides such tactical gameplay? You aren’t going to see anything more complicated than peeling, focusing, and LoS.

It seems to me like you want to be a healer, and that’s fine. Having healing classes doesn’t add depth to a game though. Look at wow pvp, the entire fight is centered around trying to chain cc the healer and burst them down.

+1 couldnt agree more

Over time and namely with HoT the game has sifted away from highly telegraphed single skills that put the dodge mechanic to its full potential and instead become an aoe spam your skills off cooldown fest that relys on dodging as a brief invulnerability as oppsed to a way of skillfully negating single blows. I miss the days of pindown and engie pulls where doging the hardest hitting skills could win you the fight.

claytonmorby.3751:

As compared to what? What other MMO provides such tactical gameplay? You aren’t going to see anything more complicated than peeling, focusing, and LoS.

It seems to me like you want to be a healer, and that’s fine. Having healing classes doesn’t add depth to a game though. Look at wow pvp, the entire fight is centered around trying to chain cc the healer and burst them down.

I probably could have explained it with better examples, and other MMOs really don’t do much better as far as I know. I guess a moba or fps would be a better example.

My main concern about the lack of depth is that fights have become just an exercise in juggling cooldowns more than anything else.

Yeah again though those are different games. Mobas still even have a bit of CD management. Fps IMO is much more quick reaction and hand and eye precision.

The fact is when you break any game down and strip away that much it’s easy to talk about the lack of depth. And that’s just down to the fact that we’re all just pressing 10-14 keys on a keyboard. :p

Original Poster is completely correct.

GW2 is about AoE spam skills whether it be damage, mitigation, healing, or cc.

There is little skill in using the most effective AoE abilities.

GW1 was designed right. MOST everything was single target designed while OCCASIONALLY you had a good AoE skill whether it be damage, mitigation, healing, or cc.

Please Fire GW2 Game Designers and Re-Hire the GW1 Designers.

Thank you!

Rotating requires you to be able to count, can you count? gud, you can play guild wars now.

If you think GW1 wasn’t aoe based you never played HA. But still, coordination was required to keep them in said aoe, and you had the choice to walk out of AoE.

Guild wars 2 is annoyingly simple, theres only 4 maps in ranked, and the things you have to do are always the same, so people always bring the same tools to the table to do so. The difference between GW1 and GW2 isn’t the skills, but the objectives. GW1 had plenty of pvp modes, HA only had 5+ maps to play on. Next to that there was AB, 4vs4 and GvG.

So are we talking about tactical depth or mechanical skill? Because they are two very different things. GW1 still had people using the best skills available.

Yes GW2 has several low cd skills that could be called “spam able” but they are low impact that add up in combination with each other. Skills like search and reduce, chilled to the bone, slick shoes, wash the pain away are all very high impact skills that can turn the tide of the fight.

Do things need to be balanced? Of course, no pvp game had perfect balance. But it’s not completely braindead, you have to have quick reaction time and knowledge of other classes.

nearlight.3064:

Velimere.7685:

nearlight.3064:

In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam.

I’ve won copious amounts of 3v4 and 3v5 team-fights because the enemy team held the same considerations as quoted above and didn’t understand the concept of peeling.

Well of course you do. No disrespect, but you also tend to play the best builds that metabattle can give you, so of course you’d be able to win 3v5s against the type of random stuff people may come up with. Yeah and there’s peeling too, but that’s not really what I’d consider complex or insightful.

Maybe you experienced a lot of random stuff in Sapphire Division last season, but I didn’t in Diamond Division up until I stopped for the season in December, though what I did see on the enemy team quite frequently even in Diamond Division was enemy teammates not peeling for each other and thus losing team-fights.

Admittedly, I am not a scrub as I definitely take every advantage I can get in order to win. However, that goes for anyone who actually wants to win and who isn’t a hipster that only wants to win on their own terms if at all even possible.

To complain yet still adapt is one thing, but to complain and do nothing is something else entirely. In my experience, scrubs play what they want to play how they want to play it, and they still end up not playing regardless because they don’t enjoy losing. They live in this bubble of idealism and call it quits when they’re met with reality. That’s just one big paradox right there. Then I started playing with people who actually adapt to the meta, and despite not playing what or how we wanted to play, we kept playing because we were winning, and the bottom line is that winning in and of itself is fun and losing isn’t.

In the end, there will always exist a meta no matter how balanced this game is.

claytonmorby.3751:

So are we talking about tactical depth or mechanical skill? Because they are two very different things. GW1 still had people using the best skills available.

Yes GW2 has several low cd skills that could be called “spam able” but they are low impact that add up in combination with each other. Skills like search and reduce, chilled to the bone, slick shoes, wash the pain away are all very high impact skills that can turn the tide of the fight.

Do things need to be balanced? Of course, no pvp game had perfect balance. But it’s not completely braindead, you have to have quick reaction time and knowledge of other classes.

Mechanical skill and tactical depth are very different. To me mechanical skill is all basically being able to juggle those cooldowns in the best way, especially when it comes to stomping, rezzing, or holding a point. Tactical depth is about making moment-to-moment decisions that greatly influence the outcome of a fight. The “high impact” skills you mentioned do have the power to turn a fight, but they are all for the most part AoE CC or AoE support abilities that you simply use when you lock someone down or want to save someone whose dying or down, and honestly they’re just cooldowns that you have to choose when to use. You don’t pay anything for the high impact skill. In fact, the highest risk, highest reward builds are the worst in this game because its fundamentally designed to favor low risk, high reward gameplay, where almost nothing has a cost other than time. and if you manage that time correctly you’ll be able to succeed.

Maybe the AoE is the big problem here. But it could also be the pace of the game. This has to be probably the first MMO where a 1 second cast time is considered almost unbearably long. The best skills are instant or have a very short cast time, so they become set-and-forget.

Mobas would be very similar in that regard, IMO they are. While they take much more mechanical skill due to skill shots and such. You still are going to use your abilities on the focus target (adc or whatever). Again you’re right Gw2 doesn’t have a lot of tactical depth but no competitive game really does, other than something like Starcraft 2.

Most tactical games require planning, predict enemies and trying to counter while trying conceal your strategy. It’s more of a mind game than a action one. While mobas, mmos, and fps lie on the other side of the spectrum.

Velimere.7685:

nearlight.3064:

Velimere.7685:

nearlight.3064:

In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam.

I’ve won copious amounts of 3v4 and 3v5 team-fights because the enemy team held the same considerations as quoted above and didn’t understand the concept of peeling.

Well of course you do. No disrespect, but you also tend to play the best builds that metabattle can give you, so of course you’d be able to win 3v5s against the type of random stuff people may come up with. Yeah and there’s peeling too, but that’s not really what I’d consider complex or insightful.

Admittedly, I am not a scrub as I definitely take every advantage I can get in order to win. However, that goes for anyone who actually wants to win and who isn’t a hipster that only wants to win on their own terms if at all even possible.

To complain yet still adapt is one thing, but to complain and do nothing is something else entirely. In my experience, scrubs play what they want to play how they want to play it, and they still end up not playing regardless because they don’t enjoy losing. They live in this bubble of idealism and call it quits when they’re met with reality. That’s just one big paradox right there. Then I started playing with people who actually adapt to the meta, and despite not playing what or how we wanted to play, we kept playing because we were winning, and the bottom line is that winning in and of itself is fun and losing isn’t.

In the end, there will always exist a meta no matter how balanced this game is.

Winning and losing was never a huge deal to me. Yeah it sucked when I had a long losing streak once in emerald due to MMR-matchmaking weirdness, but I’ve had winning streaks that were just as good in the past. Winning and losing is on the team and not the individual, so wins and losses never felt like a true reflection of my potential or skill.

I just got bored of the game because it lacked the depth to keep me engaged. Thats why I always played all these different builds and classes, to help keep the boredom away. But one day I just realized that no amount of build creativity or learning a new class could keep me interested any longer. When strip away the fun and unique classes and all the options they have, you’re left with gameplay thats really fun at first, but doesn’t have the staying power or the skill cap to keep you invested. There were always builds that anyone could just pick up and play and win, that was something that bothered me, especially in the bunker meta with chronomancer and tempest. Now it seems a bit better, to require more of a modicum of skill except for the class I once mained I’m afraid.

But despite all of that, I continued to play this game and watch all the pvp tourneys and streamers until around Christmas or so. Then I just decided to play something else. Anything else. And I became so much happier because of it because I wasn’t devoting such a huge amount of my time an mental energy to a game that was just boring to me. I’ve had way more fun playing other games, many of which do have more tactical and mechanical depth to them (although not MMOs so not really comparable, but still) and I’ve had a way more active social life since quitting GW2, so all in all I couldn’t be happier. I just felt the need to let people know why I felt that this game became so unsatisfying.

I’m glad you’re enjoying it though.

nearlight.3064:

Now that the hype from the expansion has come and gone, I think we should look at what remains after the settling.

I stopped playing GW2 partway through season 1 at the end of sapphire because the bunker meta just wasn’t fun. I played a few games after the balance patch of last month, and a few games at the start of season 2, but I just can’t get invested in it the same way I did previously. The game just lacks tactical depth beyond that of rotations.

The only major strategical decision you have to make in GW2’s conquest style pvp is rotations, ie. deciding which node/objective to go to at which time, to make sure you have the right people in the right fights, and thats it. When you delve into the actual combat of a team fight, the tactical depth falls apart. In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam. Copious AoE, cleaving melee weapons, and frequent gap closers on many classes lessens the importance of tactical positioning. Generally speaking whichever side has more people in a fight will win, unless the side with fewer members has much stronger builds compared to the other side, or are simply able to coordinate focus fire better than the other team, which isn’t tactically satisfying.

What do you do when you’re in a fight? You try to win control of the point, often by killing any enemy whoever is on the point. This is fine, but what do you do tactically to win that fight? You spam. You spam damage until its enough to outspam the enemy’s sustain. You spam as much sustain as you can when your enemy is spamming their damage at you. Trying to interrupt key skills/heals/rezzes/stomps is about as tactically deep as it gets. The fact that most classes lack much resource management aside from cooldowns or class mechanics turns the game into an exercise in juggling those cooldowns.

I’m glad that new amulets like mender’s and sage’s let me run that squishy healer ele or druid role I always wanted to play, but given the things I’ve said about AoE and gap closers, you’ll often have to put yourself in harm’s way to heal someone with your shorter radius on your healing skills. It only manages to work because those healer builds are able to spam sustain and back off when needed. But I can tell you right now that if the bunker amulets were still in the game, there’d be no point to this since the game design blatantly favors spamming skills that keep yourself alive on a point for as long as possible. An interesting case for a different sort of healing is ventari rev, but it just doesn’t work because self-less healers can’t spam sustain on themselves, so they’ll just die, even though the whole concept of ventari rev was to reward tactical positioning and skill-based support. It just doesn’t work, and I believe that highlights the problems of GW2.

And finally the balance. Most of my problems with this game aren’t an issue of balance, but rather the fact that the game design of GW2 (role dilution and no trinity and general fast pace) has always made the game into a race of sustain vs. dps. Even though most of the bunkers are no more, it still feels the same as juggling cooldowns to survive/disengage or hold a point as long as possible instead of tactically outwitting the enemy team. You just adapt your rotations and thats it. But I will say that some things, like the survival-damage ratio of scrappers is blatantly broken, and you’d be gimping yourself by not bringing one on a team.

So this is how I feel. It just doesn’t really feel right to play this game anymore for more than the occasional romp, just because its so unsatisfying.

I agree with some of it but disagree with alot of it too. Before the HOT expansion you were talking alot of things. For instance out rotating a bunker guardian and moving players into positions take a mid point but not really to take it but to actually set up a far push. When your on a actual team you discuss rotations in game alot and which targets you want to isolate.

Also you talk as if individual skills are not important. if you go back and watch but people got into 1 vs 1 and someone lost. Tarcis easily won a 1 vs 1 on rev vs another rev during the season as well as others.

I agree there as been some dissolving of the classes since every class seems to be able to do the exact same thing but you generalized it. Any game you play is about spamming. Any sport you play is about basic things. In basketball the team who puts the ball into the basket better wins. Which is what you did and im sorry but if it was that easy you wouldnt see the same 20 players for NA and EU on top all the time.

There are tactics, there is skill but maybe just not the type you are looking for. Actually since the HOT release im kind of feeling the same way.

And again back to some of those skills I mentioned, they are important and they do make a difference if you do them correctly. If a rev misses his staff 5 on people rezzing that can be a fight lost. If I chill to the bone a group with stability they’re probably laughing at me. And yes this only makes a difference at higher level play.

I’ll be honest it sounds more like you’re just kinda done and bored with GW2, which is cool, but that’s your subjective opinion. Now if randoms were just rolling into ESL tourneys and beating pro teams I’d be more inclined to agree on some points.

Edit: yeah kdaddy hit it on head

nearlight.3064:

The only major strategical decision you have to make in GW2’s conquest style pvp is rotations, ie. deciding which node/objective to go to at which time, to make sure you have the right people in the right fights, and thats it. When you delve into the actual combat of a team fight, the tactical depth falls apart. In larger fights, the action devolves into skill spam, and sustain spam. Copious AoE, cleaving melee weapons, and frequent gap closers on many classes lessens the importance of tactical positioning.

What do you do when you’re in a fight? You try to win control of the point, often by killing any enemy whoever is on the point. This is fine, but what do you do tactically to win that fight? You spam.

I agree that some classes have more spammy skills but this does not apply yo DH. Not my style of play anyhow.

Scenario:
Last game I had 2 necros, scrapper, mesmer, dh on the opposite team. I was constantly switching between them all depending on situations.

• My team weren’t exactly focused. They were a bit sporatic themselves on picking targets so I had to addapt and pick my burst skills appropriatly.
• I had to keep a watch on mesmers Blur, Necro first initial DS stability and DH’s focus bursts + his F3 shield. A failed ToF/Smite/True Shot cc bursts meant me and my team’s survivability reduced. Also had to use my F3 and CoP appropriately.

Additional strategies that’s a must.

• F1 pull a Revs block effect + lb#2 or #3 cc
• Sword+Shield bubble people from cliffs (happens quite often especially when being chased, drop down, then sword#2 back up cliff)
• Shield#5 stomps/rezs
• Surviving mid bursts with F2 away from combat, F1 pulls, f3 shield etc.
• Push/pull inside ToF trap

It’s not all spam baby.

All is about the difference between skillcap and mastering.

Ow i have to spam this skil at that time wel if you call that strategy? In a moba you need to make smart item descision the chosen item needs to be reflected on the enemy composition and how you are playing and how the game is developping. You have the oppertu ity to adept your build while in game having to create room for your carry(s) ypu don’t only have cooldownmanagment but also manamanagment. This is what makes it way more tactical. So if you say gw2 is tactical cause you need to manage cooldowns wel thats just a lie since thats just a very small part of the tavtis in a moba so yes OP is right sPvP lavks tactical depth to be an extraordinary game keeping you compelled cor years to come.

Yet in mobas almost everyone gets identical items or the best in slot for their character. They have a meta just like gw2.

I will say mobas are extremely mechanic intensive, probably one of the most in gaming. But you can’t call a game like company of heroes tactical and a moba at the same time.

claytonmorby.3751:

Yet in mobas almost everyone gets identical items or the best in slot for their character. They have a meta just like gw2.

I will say mobas are extremely mechanic intensive, probably one of the most in gaming. But you can’t call a game like company of heroes tactical and a moba at the same time.

Same items at low mmr you mean? There are some cores yes mostly 3 the other 3 are vary a lot on the situation you’re in! How much have you played moba’s?

claytonmorby.3751:

Yes GW2 has several low cd skills that could be called “spam able” but they are low impact that add up in combination with each other. Skills like search and reduce, chilled to the bone, slick shoes, wash the pain away are all very high impact skills that can turn the tide of the fight.

Stuff like corrupt boon, inpacting disruption, gunflame, auraspam or Precision strike got low inpact indeed

nearlight.3064:

claytonmorby.3751:

So are we talking about tactical depth or mechanical skill? Because they are two very different things. GW1 still had people using the best skills available.

Yes GW2 has several low cd skills that could be called “spam able” but they are low impact that add up in combination with each other. Skills like search and reduce, chilled to the bone, slick shoes, wash the pain away are all very high impact skills that can turn the tide of the fight.

Do things need to be balanced? Of course, no pvp game had perfect balance. But it’s not completely braindead, you have to have quick reaction time and knowledge of other classes.

Mechanical skill and tactical depth are very different. To me mechanical skill is all basically being able to juggle those cooldowns in the best way, especially when it comes to stomping, rezzing, or holding a point. Tactical depth is about making moment-to-moment decisions that greatly influence the outcome of a fight. The “high impact” skills you mentioned do have the power to turn a fight, but they are all for the most part AoE CC or AoE support abilities that you simply use when you lock someone down or want to save someone whose dying or down, and honestly they’re just cooldowns that you have to choose when to use. You don’t pay anything for the high impact skill. In fact, the highest risk, highest reward builds are the worst in this game because its fundamentally designed to favor low risk, high reward gameplay, where almost nothing has a cost other than time. and if you manage that time correctly you’ll be able to succeed.

Maybe the AoE is the big problem here. But it could also be the pace of the game. This has to be probably the first MMO where a 1 second cast time is considered almost unbearably long. The best skills are instant or have a very short cast time, so they become set-and-forget.

I don’t think the fact that many skills are AoE instead of single-target makes the game more spammy. AoE’s are used for positional control. Certainly AoE are most spammy when used in conquest maps, but only when that AoE covers most of a capture point, and many AoEs are not the conventional large circle that everyone likes to mention. One could argue that, with some exceptions, single-target is more braindead because you don’t have to worry about where your target is or where your target wants to be. Just hit tab and fire away.

I certainly agree with the low risk you mention. I think GW2 does a lot of things right, but one thing it really needs some improvement on is resource management in combat (e.g. tactical decision-making as we are talking about). There is relatively little cost to using a skill because all skills are governed solely by independent cooldowns. Thief and Revenant are a bit better about this, but even those two are still largely regulated by cooldowns. There is no long term resource management in GW2, so wearing down an opponent over time is not possible in most circumstances. Instead, players try their burst combo, and if it fails, they use their evades/blocks/invulns to buy time until burst cooldowns are up and then try again. Fights can last for minutes and go nowhere because there is no attrition in long battles. It’s really just a test of who can execute their kill combo or defense repeatedly without making a mistake. While this does indeed take focus and skill, it is not particularly tactical.

regarding spamm
when i soloq yes i see lots of spamm. so i w8 and just AA. when the spamm of the bursty skills is over i do my burst which sometime ends in a kill …
so it is not just spamm its also:

rotation – i sometime see 3v1 while i left alone 1v2 – why ?!
class rotation – sometime i see ranger and ele doing 2v2 so on other point we dont have support/sustain
decap free point
etc…

I think there is actually plenty of depth… if you’re on a good team with coms vs another good team with coms. The Abjured losing to Dragon 55 strat, skirmish vs team fight thing was a perfect example.

Soloq? Nope.

Mightybird.6034:

I think there is actually plenty of depth… if you’re on a good team with coms vs another good team with coms. The Abjured losing to Dragon 55 strat, skirmish vs team fight thing was a perfect example.

Soloq? Nope.

imho it has quite some depth until you hold it next to an other popular esport.
when you start to compare, you start to see it lacks depth to be a propper esport.

but then again this is an opinion and you are entitled to yours as I am to mine.

Exedore.6320:

Welcome to Heart of Power Creep.

+1 lol heart of power creep !!!

I love how GW2 is taking the path that killed WildStar PvP: more and more AoE and AI, less and less skilled gameplay.

It’s just way too much spam happening at the same time to be eSports. GW2 is just eSpam in it’s current state. Vanilla gw2 was better.

claytonmorby.3751:

As compared to what? What other MMO provides such tactical gameplay? You aren’t going to see anything more complicated than peeling, focusing, and LoS.

It seems to me like you want to be a healer, and that’s fine. Having healing classes doesn’t add depth to a game though. Look at wow pvp, the entire fight is centered around trying to chain cc the healer and burst them down.

MORTAL ONLINE. That kitten is hardcore. You gota parry and aim your attacks with perfect timing. None of this i push this button and i block for 1 min. Its like you are actually fighting with a sword/magic/bow in real life. And it has all this other stuff “peeling, focusing, and LoS”.

Fnix.5608:

I love how GW2 is taking the path that killed WildStar PvP: more and more AoE and AI, less and less skilled gameplay.

It’s just way too much spam happening at the same time to be eSports. GW2 is just eSpam in it’s current state. Vanilla gw2 was better.

+1

Just take into consideration the current professions at the bottom. Warrior, Thief & Mesmer (to an extent). These professions have little to no AOE capabilities. They also have little to no “condition removal”. Its not too hard to see the correlations on why they are not viable.

claytonmorby.3751:

Yet in mobas almost everyone gets identical items or the best in slot for their character. They have a meta just like gw2.

I will say mobas are extremely mechanic intensive, probably one of the most in gaming. But you can’t call a game like company of heroes tactical and a moba at the same time.

I don’t know what kind of obscure mobas you play are playing, but I’ll disagree.

I’m going to preface this by saying I actually agree that this game is worse for not having trinity and for not having more complex mechanics based ability systems.
However the OP is using some really off arguments.

nearlight.3064:

This is fine, but what do you do tactically to win that fight? You spam. You spam damage until its enough to outspam the enemy’s sustain. You spam as much sustain as you can when your enemy is spamming their damage at you.

“spam damage?” Any game that involves HP bars is about “spamming damage.” Same for sustain.

Complexity and skill come from the details of dealing damage and the details of sustain.
How do you optimize your damage against a target that will try to counter you? How do you maximize your classes defensives tools? When should I use my long cd abilities vs when should I save them?

race of sustain vs. dps.

All combat in all games with any form of mitigation or healing is about sustained vs DPS.
Killing a player requires dealing more post-mitigation DPS than their incoming HPS. This is true for every game, trinity or no.

Again complexity is in the details of the execution not the overarching mechanic.

Even though most of the bunkers are no more, it still feels the same as juggling cooldowns to survive/disengage or hold a point as long as possible instead of tactically outwitting the enemy team.

Holding a point is a tactic in and of itself since you’re stalling the enemy team.

The thing about tactics is that tactics aren’t actually complex at all.
The greatest tactics are often simple ones, both in gaming and in real life. Example Waterloo was won by the british hiding on the reverse slope of a steep hill, Cannae (regarded as one of the most brilliant military moves in history) was nothing more than putting the light infantry in the middle and heavy on flanks and hoping the romans would fall for the obvious trap.

You win and lose games by your team’s ability to execute tactics, not the tactics themselves.
Heck I would argue that overarching tactics are detrimental in non-RTS games, since ideally you want the game to be about the ability of players to react to a dynamic environment, not about predetermined stratagems.

Most of your post seems to be you abstracting everything to the extreme. This game has plenty of depth, however the depth is at the execution level and not the abstract level.