Guild Wars 2

would like to get your opinion on how pvp build diversity will be affected with HoT. specifically if there would be more build diversity or less with regards to pvp. I would like to think by introducing specializations yada yada there may be more “options” … but do you guys feel these are going to be viable pvp options or will gw2 slowly become metawars? i have to admit personally, i’ve wanted to believe anet wants more build diversity for a long time, but ive seen too many aspects of every profession put on the backburner and left to never be viable for pvp. will there be more of this with the new specializations yada yada? Your thoughts?

There are plenty of good builds. People just tend to be followers and use whatever a top player is using. Think about it:

1. How many people use the Tage medi hammer guard build? He did well and they all want to try to be like him. Earlier they all used him bunker build.
2. How many D/P thieves used the Caed critical strikes build? How many now use the EU panic strike build? How many used the sizer S/D build?

I can keep going here, but the point is that there are plenty of good builds. People just tend to bandwagon onto builds until a top player uses something else. Then everyone jumps to that.

Even Top Players copy/paste themselves since finalist teams always run the same builds

I did not see any1 use Vamp runes until Helseth used it first now every1 runs with it!!!

If people spent the time they did watching and copying other players toward building a team and thinking of a team strat…

Idk there’s a hierarchy in all PvP games for a reason

Because of the way this pvp is setup, I don’t think there will ever be diversity. It’s still going to be the same setups of teams. You’ll have someone spiking, you’ll have someone bunking, and that’s about all there is to it.

In GW1, the concept was a simple push and pull — you would try to wait till the other team was low on energy to give it all you got, then if they countered, you had to go on defensive until you’re all recharged for the next spike.

On here, get a team of 2 bunkers and 3 spikers well coordinated and that’s about it. This concept won’t change from the way I see it, which means the new builds will eventually trickle down to “useless” status once more when you realize that there are only a few viable selections to go with if you want to be of any use.

Duka.5864:

I did not see any1 use Vamp runes until Helseth used it first now every1 runs with it!!!

I don’t really know why people follow Helseth that much, there are a lot of mesmers much better than him. Though I happy people use those runes, condi spiking them at 30% and watching them die in mist form is priceless

There are many people questioning build diversity ever since the (in)famous Ready Up streaming showcasing the new traits. It can only get better from here as there is no diversity what so ever. Every class has 1-2 meta builds that everyone copy/pastes around (even the highest of tiered players). And that’s common sense as there’s an optimal way to spread points now. First issue is due to passive stat bonuses from traits, second issue is the abundance of useless traits, third issue is the unneeded complexity of the current system. There will still be a meta (there always will be), but my guess is that people might actually try different variations of those meta builds more often.

BakiSaN.9281:

There are many people questioning build diversity ever since the (in)famous Ready Up streaming showcasing the new traits. It can only get better from here as there is no diversity what so ever. Every class has 1-2 meta builds that everyone copy/pastes around (even the highest of tiered players). And that’s common sense as there’s an optimal way to spread points now. First issue is due to passive stat bonuses from traits, second issue is the abundance of useless traits, third issue is the unneeded complexity of the current system. There will still be a meta (there always will be), but my guess is that people might actually try different variations of those meta builds more often.

Your perspective is very much how i am perceiving the future. right now i feel there is only 1-2 builds per profession that you will see 99% of matches. sometimes there will be a random tweak in a build which is nice to see but i would love to see more than this. Im also hoping there will be more variations to the meta builds, i guess i was just hoping for it to go a bit further then just little tweaks but i feel the general consensus is this is how pvp will be going forward. maybe specialization become the new meta for some profs.

it would be nice if when you see the other teams comp before the match starts, you can actually say “hmmm, XXXX profession can be using 1 of 4 or 5 different builds” instead of how it is now when you say “well guess that XXXXX profession is either this build or the other one, lets flip a coin and see what he landed on…”

i think the way the whole profession system is set up with weapon skills/ utility skills and trait lines, there may always only be 1-2 builds that are generally meta. It just seems, the meta is all about the easiest way to play XXX profession while being effective. I would love to see players who have dedicated most of there time to one profession be able to use a very unique build and not get stomped by equally skilled player using a meta build.

I think thats where i would like to see diversity head towards, it may not be possible with how the build system is set up though?

There will be diversity, just like there is now. It’ll just be unexplored. Eventually some builds will be proven superior and popularized, and they will go against the current meta builds. As with builds, there will be various team compositions tested using combinations of those new builds and current builds - meta and non-meta because of course, builds that aren’t meta could yet become meta. Again, eventually, some compositions will be proven superior and popularized, and they will go against the remaining current meta compositions and the new meta will begin to take shape. Shortly after that, the complaints of not enough diversity will return. The culprit is simply the long times between balance updates.