Guild Wars 2

In my lack of knowledge of “Esports” games I consider there to be mainly 3: Dota 2, League of Legends, and Starcraft. Of those 3 I have only played Dota 2 which is what I will be using for comparison.

In Dota 2, when updates occur that change mechanics in a game that hero is banned from competitive play until it has been reviewed and deemed balanced. This is done in order to maintain a competitive environment that is fair, with no class being superior just based on pure numbers (Ex: We are the same level and I hit you for 50 while you hit me for 500).

In Guild Wars 2 there is a lot more complex mechanics in play than in Dota 2. One such example is that we have the ability to heal on every class which allows for a very unique experience in terms of fighting where the health bar can fluctuate dramatically. However, there are some mechanics in play at the moment that are just flat out better than others but since we have healing involved we can have different examples of this:
1. I hit you for 50, you hit me for 500.
2. I hit you for 50, you heal for 60.

We can extrapolate these examples into more complex situations, keeping in mind that they all revolve around 1 thing, no counterplay. This is because if we are trading blows, there isn’t anything I can do when you hit me for 500 and I hit you for 50 when in an ideal balanced game we should both have a chance of killing each other.

Example 1: I am fighting an engineer. We are trading blows back and forth and each of us is dodging the appropriately telegraphed skills. Eventually, we are out of skills and have to auto-attack each other. I get a crit and hit the engineer for 1,500 damage. The engineer also gets a crit and procs incendiary powder giving him a damage total of 1,000 damage + 4,000 damage making a whopping 5,000 damage. Sure, Guild Wars provides some counter play in terms of condi clear, but that means I have to waste my condi clear on an auto-attack that has 0 counterplay since it cannot be dodged, blinded, or blocked. When a crit lands, so does incendiary powder.

Example 2: In this situation, I am a full dps class. I am perfect at dodging and have great skill use. I am fighting a dagger/dagger elementalist who is mediocre, dodges what he/she needs to most of the time and is just kind of doing the typical dagger/dagger elementalist rotations. For the first 30 seconds of the fight, things look like they are going well. I have done a lot of damage to the elementalist and dodged or blocked or negated most of the damage done to me. I have begun to use most of my skills so they are on cool down and I don’t have the means to continue doing damage to the elementalist or protect myself. I now begin losing the fight as the elementalist heals back up and my health pool keeps diminishing. The reason this happened is because as I was fighting the ele, every time he/she swapped to air attunement he/she was able to skill cancel the auto-attack increasing the healing so that my net damage done of 20,000 in that 30s or so was not enough even to kill this elementalist even though if he/she hadn’t used this technique they wouldn’t have had the extra healing available and would have had to be forced away. Then over time, this continued to heal the elementalist while my skills were on cool down making my hits not do enough to out damage the healing.

In both these examples a mechanic is in play that allows my opponent to beat me, simply because of the numbers that are being generated. In example 1: the engineer is doing too much damage and in example 2: the elementalist is simply out healing my damage despite the fact that I have built to do damage.

The reason I find these disturbing is that mechanics such as these (of course there are others) are allowed into competitive play because it allows them to dominate all the others simply because of their “better numbers”. As we are in the midst of the World Tournament Series I am displeased that balance has not been done and there seems to be no updates in sight for mechanics such as these to be toned down.

Until such time that these mechanics (as well as others) are brought in line, It seems only reasonable that they should be banned from competitive play (ele dagger main hand, engineer incendiary powder, necromancer nightmare runes, etc) similar to the way that heroes are banned in Dota 2 in order to provide an atmosphere that is conducive to competitive play. As it stands, many players wish to be competitive only to find that without the use of such mechanics, they are being forced to not only fight their enemies but they are doing so at a severe disadvantage.

Now, I am not saying that all abilities that allow for skill canceling should be banned (because they allow for a further depth of gameplay mechanics that truly makes a game competitive, in my opinion) but that balance should be done around these “higher numbers” in order to achieve a truly competitive environment. Given that this is seen as an issue:

Josh Davis.6015:

It’s not intended behavior, and we will be fixing it.

Edit: (Specifically the ability to increase the healing potential of Signet of Restoration by cancel-casting Lightning Whip after the first half of the animation.)

It seems only fair that these mechanics are not permitted in competitive play.

Good points all around.

I do want to point out that I do not believe everything in this game should be counterplayable, however, there is way too much that is unavoidable. Once random fear from a Necromancer can mean certain death if you had to use your stunbreak for something else in a team fight. A good Necromancer will continue their fears off of the original instant-fear and condi-bomb you to death.

Obviously there’s plenty of things that are not telegraphed in this game, but that is one of the more annoying/well-known ones.

Eurantien.4632:

Example 1: I am fighting an engineer. We are trading blows back and forth and each of us is dodging the appropriately telegraphed skills. Eventually, we are out of skills and have to auto-attack each other. I get a crit and hit the engineer for 1,500 damage. The engineer also gets a crit and procs incendiary powder giving him a damage total of 1,000 damage + 4,000 damage making a whopping 5,000 damage. Sure, Guild Wars provides some counter play in terms of condi clear, but that means I have to waste my condi clear on an auto-attack that has 0 counterplay since it cannot be dodged, blinded, or blocked. When a crit lands, so does incendiary powder.

The only way Incendiary Powder is doing 4000 damage is if a condi Engi with Balthazar Runes hits you with it! And the damage is over a 7 second period! Engi autos are hilariously bad and no condi Engi will be even close to 1000 damage per auto! Meanwhile Ranger autos are insane, will do way more damage than Engi autos + Incendiary Powder, and also proc uncounterable Air/Fire runes! Two sides to a story and all that!

Look at these CSGO patch notes! http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/category/updates/
They recently reverted an overnerf that was released a month before! Please stop this 6 month patch period and balance the game more frequently! And if something doesn’t work out, freakin own up to it and stop taking years to find a perfect solution! Look at Skyhammer! Took you over a year to make a SINGLE change and the map is still terrible! Anet plz!

Also lol @ disabling Incendiary Powder in tournaments! You are comparing two different things! The only thing that’s disabled in DotA are new changes! Engis and Eles have been in the game since launch! If they introduced a new class, then it could be reasonable to ban them in tournaments!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I don’t think this is a matter of exact numbers or an argument about whether Ranger or Engineer autos are better.

And auto crits do hit for over 1k, jsyk. ^^

Condi Engi will not crit for over 1k lol! The damage on Fragmentation Shot is just terrible! The only use it has is to proc Incendiary Powder from range! If you are taking about Cele Engi, then yes Hip Shot will do over 1k crits, but Incendiary Powder damage is pretty much halved because of the reduced damage and duration! Incendiary Powder is strong, but it’s not so broken like everyone seems to think! The problem with Cele Engi isn’t Incendiary Powder! 2000-2500 cleansable damage every 10 seconds is not that great when you compare it to Air Sigil’s 1500 damage procs every 3 seconds!

But this is getting offtopic!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

I am pretty sure Anet balances around a 5v5 conquest mode. They do not seem to care much about the outcome of a 1v1. It is up to you to recognize which builds you can generally beat and which you should try to disengage from.

With any of these skills that are annoying, you should expect them from the profession and be prepared for it or disengage from the fight if you cannot handle it.

Taking a build designed to teamfight and buffing it (or nerfing others) to win side node is the same mentality that led us to this meta. You should not win those fights.

While engie/ele could use balancing, it should not be done in order to allow you to play every point just like those builds do now.

Based on your Dota2 example we should start banning traits and/or rune/sigils from tournaments?

No offense, but 6 months is fine.
You NEED to have a period of adaptation and to gather enough data to rebalance again.

The difference is that those games are only moba and gw2 is an mmorpg. The balance everything around only 5v5 conquest mode is hurting the game more than helping. Because of that we have no new game modes. Because of that wvw balance is a joke.

I think there needs to be some degree of guaranteed damage in this game, which should be more based around auto attacks in general than around Fire/Air, Incendiary Powder, etc. Engineer in particular would be helped a lot by having functional autoattacks on Rifle/Pistol, and having Incendiary Powder toned down or changed. An auto that scaled better with power on Rifle would help Berserker/Power based engineers a lot as well.

I think it’s fine for some classes to have instant CCs like Doom, Updraft, Fear Me, etc. Then, there is some CC which needs to be changed like Runes of the Nightmare. Overcharged Shot is simply too good as it currently stands given how short it’s cooldown is.

The current ‘meta’ classes need to have certain things decided about their survivability. For example, D/D ele has permanent vigor, as well as extremely high HPS, high amounts of condi cleanse, as well as protection. Arenanet needs to make a design decision based on: do we want this build to survive based on healing + condi cleanse, based on dodging, or based around extremely high protection uptime. Since it’s a melee brawler build, its understandable that it needs good survivability, but some of these things should possibly be toned down.

Air and fire sigils shouldn’t exist in my opinion either. However, while some classes like engineer become over the top with incendiary powder other classes NEED air/fire to even compete. Both should be removed and skills should be balanced around that change in order to achieve balance.

As for Dota 2 and GW2 banning, there are 100’s of heroes in Dota 2, but only 8 in GW2. That means that instead of banning entire profs (which is ridiculous) banning a build or certain traits, whatever, would allow for a similar comparison.

As for balancing I believe it should be balanced around PvP but all things need to be considered. 1 v 1s will happen, 2 v 2s will happen, 3 v 3s will happen, maybe even 4 v 4s but rarely will 5 v 5s happen in competitive games. Sure, these changes will affect WvW and PvE but PvE can be balanced via changing enemy NPC or environmental mechanics. WvW is just Zerg v Zerg and changes in PvP won’t have a dramatic effect on the GWEN meta.

Seriously wish people would stop going on about counter play.

It is so exceptionally dangerous to add things like cast time/tell to dark path (necro death shroud fear).

How do you add a ton of counter play to stuff and then expect anything to die. Imagine hitting a perma vigor/extra dodge thief or a perma vigor engi/ele with massive healing when they can just dodge everything.

Then on top of this people want to add counter play? Counter play buffs dodging and blocks and other such things. It is all very complicated….

I.e. I am fine with adding counter play but there needs to be counter play to heals like healing turret/ele signet/feline grace/withdraw etc etc etc

Some things should have counterplay others should not. Steal does not need a cast time or a tell, neither does updraft, or DS fear. Heals don’t necessarily need counterplay, like withdraw or heal turret (even though it COULD be interrupted). But these heals should also not be the BEST heal for the class. Good Ex: both withdraw and hide in shadow are used while signet is rarely used. Signet could use a buff. Healing turret is too good for what it does, I think the other engi heals should be buffed and the damage of engi should be nerfed (like IP) because although the engi has a good heal it can still be dealt with in various ways.

Meanwhile Ele with its passive heal has all the tools it needs to be able to survive making the ONLY way to kill it is to burst it down with multiple people, making that heal a little too strong for ele. Mainly because, it can do damage WHILE healing. Which is absurd. Once an ele swaps out signet heal for a cast heal they become incredibly balanced and can be dealt with.

Eurantien.4632:

Some things should have counterplay others should not. Steal does not need a cast time or a tell, neither does updraft, or DS fear. Heals don’t necessarily need counterplay, like withdraw or heal turret (even though it COULD be interrupted). But these heals should also not be the BEST heal for the class. Good Ex: both withdraw and hide in shadow are used while signet is rarely used. Signet could use a buff. Healing turret is too good for what it does, I think the other engi heals should be buffed and the damage of engi should be nerfed (like IP) because although the engi has a good heal it can still be dealt with in various ways.

Meanwhile Ele with its passive heal has all the tools it needs to be able to survive making the ONLY way to kill it is to burst it down with multiple people, making that heal a little too strong for ele. Mainly because, it can do damage WHILE healing. Which is absurd. Once an ele swaps out signet heal for a cast heal they become incredibly balanced and can be dealt with.

You could put this comment back 2 years ago with the eles then. And it would be in place. We had all these dicussions on the forums then and it lead to the ele healing signet nerf.

I think they just dont agree with you (anet), even though I do

Eurantien.4632:

Air and fire sigils shouldn’t exist in my opinion either. However, while some classes like engineer become over the top with incendiary powder other classes NEED air/fire to even compete. Both should be removed and skills should be balanced around that change in order to achieve balance.

As for Dota 2 and GW2 banning, there are 100’s of heroes in Dota 2, but only 8 in GW2. That means that instead of banning entire profs (which is ridiculous) banning a build or certain traits, whatever, would allow for a similar comparison.

As for balancing I believe it should be balanced around PvP but all things need to be considered. 1 v 1s will happen, 2 v 2s will happen, 3 v 3s will happen, maybe even 4 v 4s but rarely will 5 v 5s happen in competitive games. Sure, these changes will affect WvW and PvE but PvE can be balanced via changing enemy NPC or environmental mechanics. WvW is just Zerg v Zerg and changes in PvP won’t have a dramatic effect on the GWEN meta.

Balancing a game around 1v1’s and 2v2’s is a ridiculous concept and impossible to do. That is 8 different 1v1’s to consider, with multiple possible builds. Sorry but if you have ever worked on a team designated to balancing a game, that is asking too much. Also to ask Anet to change the entire PvE build that is currently in place, to satisfy your personal needs for counterplay to two specific class/builds, is another outrageous concept. Should they even consider overhauling the entire build in place, should they have to do it again once a new meta build is discovered to be very strong? Outrageously selfish ideas, there is no sweeping change that can be made to completely balance any game. There are certain match ups, based on classes and builds, that are impossible to win against for the average player. Thats just how any competitive game is. Once you can accept that, you will become a much stronger gamer overall.

@ Star. I admit that I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. I am sorry that you think these balancing ideas are outrageously selfish when I am only trying to better the “Esports” of GW2. As it stands, without further balance updates, teams consisting of mechanics that are blatantly superior numbers wise will have the advantage and will continue to be winning the majority of the $50,000 available at each of the WTS tournaments. All I ask is for a fair chance for all community members and not for those who have been lucky enough to have been deemed superior by gods of unbalance.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Seriously wish people would stop going on about counter play.

It is so exceptionally dangerous to add things like cast time/tell to dark path (necro death shroud fear).

How do you add a ton of counter play to stuff and then expect anything to die. Imagine hitting a perma vigor/extra dodge thief or a perma vigor engi/ele with massive healing when they can just dodge everything.

Then on top of this people want to add counter play? Counter play buffs dodging and blocks and other such things. It is all very complicated….

I.e. I am fine with adding counter play but there needs to be counter play to heals like healing turret/ele signet/feline grace/withdraw etc etc etc

This is coming from the guy who makes at least one post a week about another class that’s not named “Necromancer” being overpowered.

tichorum.2415:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Seriously wish people would stop going on about counter play.

It is so exceptionally dangerous to add things like cast time/tell to dark path (necro death shroud fear).

How do you add a ton of counter play to stuff and then expect anything to die. Imagine hitting a perma vigor/extra dodge thief or a perma vigor engi/ele with massive healing when they can just dodge everything.

Then on top of this people want to add counter play? Counter play buffs dodging and blocks and other such things. It is all very complicated….

I.e. I am fine with adding counter play but there needs to be counter play to heals like healing turret/ele signet/feline grace/withdraw etc etc etc

This is coming from the guy who makes at least one post a week about another class that’s not named “Necromancer” being overpowered.

Nice one mate

I disagree with both examples for both dont include what utilty skills> you basiacally say there op cause there base traits are better and the very thing that makes them unique is making this unfair in your opinion. Also example 2, as a great football player would say Ray lewis, “Man dont do his job do yours. Stay in your lane homie” If Your a pure dps character what are you doing trying to solo a bunker character. In theory you should lose since you didnt say what class you were therefore i assume your a dps mesmer who gettting hit with condi and no way to remove condtions. Also if your a thief go help someone out instead of trying to play hero mode. Its 5 vs 5 and not everyone can be superman. Someone has to be batman and actually just play support and out think the other team.

The problem comes again from comparing this game to how a MOBA deals with stuff. I definitely agree with the concept, but if you ban 1 champ/hero from competitive play in a MOBA there are 100+ other options (or at least a decent amount more that can fit that same role). If you ban Ele mainhand dagger he has 2 other options. If it was something like a utility I would be more inclined to agree whole heartedly with this considering there would be other options.

DIdn’t some of the smaller 3rd party 2v2 3v3 events last year ban PU mesmer and all rangers while getting advertisement on Ready Up?

Bran.7425:

DIdn’t some of the smaller 3rd party 2v2 3v3 events last year ban PU mesmer and all rangers while getting advertisement on Ready Up?

That would be my organization. We run a weekly 2v2 event that bans PU mesmer and heavily discourages SA thieves. Not for the reasons discussed in the OP however. We banned those builds because their only purpose was for trolling/stalemating their opponent, which while it may work in conquest, has no place in a game mode where the objective is to actually kill your opponent.

BLUna.7928:

That would be my organization. We run a weekly 2v2 event that bans PU mesmer and heavily discourages SA thieves. Not for the reasons discussed in the OP however. We banned those builds because their only purpose was for trolling/stalemating their opponent, which while it may work in conquest, has no place in a game mode where the objective is to actually kill your opponent.

Actually by defining that reason as “has no place..” that kind of illustrates a similarity of concept, unfortunately Anet has decide to take the "we make square blocks’ method of class design while content comes in a “variety of shaped openings.”

ArrDee.2573:

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Your posts are so annoying to read that I stopped reading two sentences in. Stop using the exclamation point so much. Nearly every one of your sentences doesn’t need it and shouldn’t have it. Stop. Just stop.

@ kdaddy,
I used the 2nd example to illustrate that no matter how much damage I have, no matter how perfectly I evade their damage, it is still not enough. At top tier, nothing can beat a good d/d ele. Which would be fine if they were bad in team fights like a condi ranger (which I believe to be the 2nd best side node spec atm). However, they are also a very good class in team fights given their CC, amount of healing, aoe, etc. Making them over the top. It isn’t my opinion that these abilities are “over the top” they ARE superior to others atm.

@ Blu,
I get that there aren’t 100’s of heroes to choose from, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options available for these classes. If we remove IP, that doesn’t remove engineers from play. If we remove dagger mainhand for ele until it is balanced, then there are still 2 viable specs for ele that are both closer to being balanced and that can have a place at top tier. Sure, this does limit ele from 3 options to 2, but it isn’t removing them from play completely.

The autobalancing mechanism of GW2 is ability roll new character fitting the curent meta (which is due to lack of balance updates pretty stable in this game). I hope this helepd you.

If a build is truly overpowered you would see full teams running the build and winning all the time. The only build I have seen full teams run is turret engi, and they still get stomped by competent players.

Because this is a team based PvP you do not need to remove the ability for people to play that build, it just forces both team to have at least one player using the build.

The metabattle page for d/d ele suggests that the d/d ele is weak to Axe Longbow Warriors, Hambow, Condi Engi

Eura I disagree with removing mainhand weapons, offhand weapons perhaps, but mainhand weapons kills the amount of available options.

If things were going to be banned ANet would have to take time to come up with both a system and process to do so. Maybe they should spend time on this, maybe they shouldn’t. There is merit to the idea that the game simply can’t find an acceptable balanced from a build diversity perspective given ANet’s track record. I’m just not sure that ‘ban parts of builds’ system is the right way to spend their time, which from a pvp perspective seems to be relatively low in comparison to the rest of their game (which is fine since they have yet to include PvP as a significant part of their revenue, don’t want the game to die as a whole, but hopefully pvp doesn’t).

someone.7485:

If a build is truly overpowered you would see full teams running the build and winning all the time. The only build I have seen full teams run is turret engi, and they still get stomped by competent players.

Because this is a team based PvP you do not need to remove the ability for people to play that build, it just forces both team to have at least one player using the build.

The metabattle page for d/d ele suggests that the d/d ele is weak to Axe Longbow Warriors, Hambow, Condi Engi

D/D ele is weak to nothing, different builds just perform relatively less bad vs it.

I used to believe that the indication a build isn’t OP is that you can’t class stack it, however, now I think it’s also important to look at the meta overall and see in how many winning team comps a build is in.

D/D ele by the way can be stacked and is in pretty much every winning team comp you’ll see.

I understand the hesitation in wanting to ban unbalanced abilities in competitive play (by competitive I mean like WTS) but given that “balance” updates are few and far between it seems the only fair conclusion because the game is not updated as frequently as it needs to be in order to create a fair competitive environment.

I would also like to mention that I agree with Shockwave. Even though you don’t see 5 d/d ele teams rolling around you often see things such as 2 engis, 2 d/d ele, X. Which imo, is class stacking of the 2 strongest classes and I believe the only reason they have engis is because they don’t know 2 d/d eles that are available as most every team desiring to be competitive has at least 2 d/d eles.

Eurantien.4632:

I understand the hesitation in wanting to ban unbalanced abilities in competitive play (by competitive I mean like WTS) but given that “balance” updates are few and far between it seems the only fair conclusion because the game is not updated as frequently as it needs to be in order to create a fair competitive environment.

I would also like to mention that I agree with Shockwave. Even though you don’t see 5 d/d ele teams rolling around you often see things such as 2 engis, 2 d/d ele, X. Which imo, is class stacking of the 2 strongest classes and I believe the only reason they have engis is because they don’t know 2 d/d eles that are available as most every team desiring to be competitive has at least 2 d/d eles.

If they would place more fixes of known exploitative option/bug instead of saving them to pad the balance patches, it might be better for the game. Wasn’t there a bug during one of the tournaments/events (not the last one but middle of last year) that with the trait manipulation you could have the passive of signet of might without the signet equipped?

Eurantien.4632:

I understand the hesitation in wanting to ban unbalanced abilities in competitive play (by competitive I mean like WTS) but given that “balance” updates are few and far between it seems the only fair conclusion because the game is not updated as frequently as it needs to be in order to create a fair competitive environment.

I would also like to mention that I agree with Shockwave. Even though you don’t see 5 d/d ele teams rolling around you often see things such as 2 engis, 2 d/d ele, X. Which imo, is class stacking of the 2 strongest classes and I believe the only reason they have engis is because they don’t know 2 d/d eles that are available as most every team desiring to be competitive has at least 2 d/d eles.

I think 1 D/D Ele and 1 Shoutbow Warrior as point holders, 2v2 skirmishers, in a Cele comp works 99% as good. Double Ele Double Engi comps have SFA for revive utility, which Battle Standard and the tactics line brings some of.. We have Wakkey on Ele instead of War because his specific role is to 1vX, which Ele does better than War.

Bran.7425:

If they would place more fixes of known exploitative option/bug instead of saving them to pad the balance patches, it might be better for the game. Wasn’t there a bug during one of the tournaments/events (not the last one but middle of last year) that with the trait manipulation you could have the passive of signet of might without the signet equipped?

There have been issues with bug abuses in tournaments. I can remember specifically when a team ONLY won because they were using the warrior reflect bug so we couldn’t beat their warrior(s) with our designated side node guy because the war had 50% up time on projectile reflect AND could attack at the same time.

Eurantien.4632:

There have been issues with bug abuses in tournaments. I can remember specifically when a team ONLY won because they were using the warrior reflect bug so we couldn’t beat their warrior(s) with our designated side node guy because the war had 50% up time on projectile reflect AND could attack at the same time.

If they want esports then they need to have some standards, but if they banned players/teams for that they would probably not have many left. Win at any cost, and all that.

Bran.7425:

If they want esports then they need to have some standards, but if they banned players/teams for that they would probably not have many left. Win at any cost, and all that.

I don’t think players should be banned for exploiting poor game design. However, these issues are known by the developers and are left to be exploited in tournaments where these bugs can be the difference between victory and defeat. This creates an unbalanced and unfair competitive environment which is why they should either be banned from competitive tournaments (ie WTS, MLG, ESL) or updated ASAP in order to provide a fair atmosphere for all. I think they should still be allowed in ranked and unranked queues in game as to not alienate the player base, but for “Esports” tournaments it is absurd that there is no standard, like you mention. As it stands, it is highly off putting for those that want to participate in fair and competitive play to have to play against these types of bugs/exploits.

But when the (meta and teams) are built around bugs/flaws in the system every fix is a risk of alienating the player base. It would be nice to have Anet at least take a stronger stance than “Not working as intended, and it will be fixed” while waiting for the right time. It is kind of funny how fast they fix when rangers had fury on hit bug on longbow, wasn’t even a week if I recall how are some of the other class bugs still around, or if the fixes are ready have to wait for patch day?

Bran.7425:

But when the (meta and teams) are built around bugs/flaws in the system every fix is a risk of alienating the player base. It would be nice to have Anet at least take a stronger stance than “Not working as intended, and it will be fixed” while waiting for the right time. It is kind of funny how fast they fix when rangers had fury on hit bug on longbow, wasn’t even a week if I recall how are some of the other class bugs still around, or if the fixes are ready have to wait for patch day?

Of course some changes will rock the boat, but If a “top team” is dependent on the use of unbalanced mechanics then they shouldn’t really be deserving of their wins. Instead, I would expect such players to embrace a balanced environment in which they can prove that they are better than their competitors via skill and not through whose numbers are just blatantly better. Which would mean that these players would not be alienated but actually welcoming of such changes; and although the balance should be performed around the top tier, (as evident by other successful Esports games) the majority of course should be considered, which is why we allow the average casual to be able to play with whatever they wish, as is the case in similar games, like Dota 2 (in unranked matches).

Slightly off topic but I would also like to see on process sigils removed all together…

Sube Dai.8496:

Slightly off topic but I would also like to see on process sigils removed all together…

Thing is, those sigils are allowing Zerker builds to even have a chance against the current tanky meta we’re experiencing.

Chaith.8256:

Eurantien.4632:

I understand the hesitation in wanting to ban unbalanced abilities in competitive play (by competitive I mean like WTS) but given that “balance” updates are few and far between it seems the only fair conclusion because the game is not updated as frequently as it needs to be in order to create a fair competitive environment.

I would also like to mention that I agree with Shockwave. Even though you don’t see 5 d/d ele teams rolling around you often see things such as 2 engis, 2 d/d ele, X. Which imo, is class stacking of the 2 strongest classes and I believe the only reason they have engis is because they don’t know 2 d/d eles that are available as most every team desiring to be competitive has at least 2 d/d eles.

I think 1 D/D Ele and 1 Shoutbow Warrior as point holders, 2v2 skirmishers, in a Cele comp works 99% as good. Double Ele Double Engi comps have SFA for revive utility, which Battle Standard and the tactics line brings some of.. We have Wakkey on Ele instead of War because his specific role is to 1vX, which Ele does better than War.

Shoutbow is here currently simply because there’s no burst damage around but just very high sustained damage.

D/D ele is the uber build tho, you’re totally right, engi can’t really compare ( tho engi deals way more damage than ele).

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

Having contemplated the topic at hand, I would like to make mention of one of the issues that has arisen in the concept of banning certain mechanics form competitive play due to the lack of balance updates. The main argument was that it would be removing too much from the game like Blu mentioned. That while in Dota 2 we have 100 + heroes in Guild Wars we only have variations of our 8 professions. One suggestion that I made seems to be disconcerting for many and that is the idea of banning elementalist dagger main hand from competitive play. Being that the main issue is not necessarily main hand dagger but its combination with healing signet it could be proposed the this specific combination would be banned instead. That would mean d/d ele could still exist in competitive play but would have to use another heal. Likewise, healing signet could still be used but only if dagger is not the mainhand for the ele. This hardly limits the options available while still providing fair play for all.

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

What struggles for example ? I’m genuinely curious.

Mrbig.8019:

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

What struggles for example ? I’m genuinely curious.

A mix of melee and range builds would give 5 dd eles a fit. They don’t burst hard enough to drop the other melee classes fast enough giving the ranged characters or even a theif enough time to drop an ele. After that it would snowball, I am assuming eQual skill here.

That’s my thought, I’m also curious to what chaith would say.

SoulSin.5682:

Based on your Dota2 example we should start banning traits and/or rune/sigils from tournaments?

No offense, but 6 months is fine.
You NEED to have a period of adaptation and to gather enough data to rebalance again.

Are you serious??? 6 months is NOT fine. Do you really think that if we wait 6 months, someone is going to decide that one of the specs below are ok? People who play PvP have known for multiple months that these specs are broken. The only people who don’t realize it are ANET.

Fix:

d/d cele ele
rife cele engi
turret engi

If you think any of those specs are ok, you sure aren’t playing pvp.

We really need a balance team in GW2. It feels like there isn’t one.

Turret engi is fine.

thefantasticg.3984:

ArrDee.2573:

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Your posts are so annoying to read that I stopped reading two sentences in. Stop using the exclamation point so much. Nearly every one of your sentences doesn’t need it and shouldn’t have it. Stop. Just stop.

Yeh I agree. I am at the point where I don’t want matchmaking fixed, or ele nerfed, or anything. I just want this dude to get some new material because his act is more stale than GW2’s meta

Mrbig.8019:

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

What struggles for example ? I’m genuinely curious.

The question is really off topic but a clan of D/D Eles trying to hunt Thieves and Mesmers up and down cliffs & terrain would be pretty futile after Lightning Flash has been expended. It becomes Kite2win against 5 melee professions.

Eles are overall the strongest conquest pick but a pure Ele 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, 5v5 is something less good. Falling flat on condition variety, boon removal, guaranteed spike, it’s extremely hard for Eles compare to the destruction that a pick of professions from the pool of: Thief, Necro, Engi Mesmer can pull off.

TLDR; Eles can do most everything well individually, but if you look at the grand scheme: 4-5 thoughtful unique professions allow you to truly do everything in the context of teamwork and roles.

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

Chaith.8256:

Mrbig.8019:

The only reasons why we don’t see 5 ele teams is mostly cuz they don’t have AoE poison, they lack strong CCs like engies and cuz there aren’t so many good eles around.

Interesting theory. Although I think the fact that 5 defensive Melee players with very mediocre burst would have struggles that far out-shadow a problem that Doom Sigil and Updraft couldn’t solve.

What struggles for example ? I’m genuinely curious.

The question is really off topic but a clan of D/D Eles trying to hunt Thieves and Mesmers up and down cliffs & terrain would be pretty futile after Lightning Flash has been expended. It becomes Kite2win against 5 melee professions.

Eles are overall the strongest conquest pick but a pure Ele 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, 5v5 is something less good. Falling flat on condition variety, boon removal, guaranteed spike, it’s extremely hard for Eles compare to the destruction that a pick of professions from the pool of: Thief, Necro, Engi Mesmer can pull off.

TLDR; Eles can do most everything well individually, but if you look at the grand scheme: 4-5 thoughtful unique professions allow you to truly do everything in the context of teamwork and roles.

I just can’t agree with this.

this game is won on capture points, it’s not a case the strongest professions are the ones with the strongest point presence.

if our 5 ele team is suffering the range they can just move the fight somewhere else.
2 eles will actually win every possibke 2vs2 so unless opposite team I running 4 squishies I see no way to win those fights.

and even if u win those fights, you’ll lose the game cos 4 squishies.

but u said it yourself: condition variety.

and here we go to what I said: ele lacks poison (engi aside reliable poison only has singke target confusion) and ccs.

those 2 are the real reason why 5 eles can’t really be viable.

but 3 eles + engi + x (another engi or thief or war ) is orolly not only viable, but also very very strong, we just need people to try it just to show how broken current balance is.