Guild Wars 2

Lets play a game, choose your main class, choose any class and play a spec that is not the best, play the 2nd best, 3rd, hell make up your own or a reasonable variant of the best spec your class has.

You will quickly see how horrific the game design is, it’s not even rock paper scissors. Its the version of rock paper scissors where some idiot includes dynamite, volcano and gun.

In order to even win you must play as the cheapest spec you can imagine because if you don’t you will get rolled consistently by anyone with the power of google and a vague awareness of metabattle.

You can play this 2nd best spekittenil you become a master and all that mastery will mean nothing when you get wrecked in a few hits by anything meta. You can outplay all you want and in some cases simply succumb to the more powerful autos of a different spec.

Why even bother giving people the illusion of choice? In this game you don’t get to successfully play the way you want to because if you do, you get kicked in the groin repeatedly until you submit to the all powerful meta, oh want to be a unique snowflake? Too kittening bad your snowflake will get trampled by traps, chill fields and overpowered autos until you stop playing or give in.

Anet, you’re only human but come on even you must see how crap this is at the moment.

I play non-chrono shatter mesmer and i attest to this.

larocca.8391:

Lets play a game, choose your main class, choose any class and play a spec that is not the best, play the 2nd best, 3rd, hell make up your own or a reasonable variant of the best spec your class has.

You will quickly see how horrific the game design is, it’s not even rock paper scissors. Its the version of rock paper scissors where some idiot includes dynamite, volcano and gun.

This is true, but i like being volcano .

JayAction.9056:

larocca.8391:

Lets play a game, choose your main class, choose any class and play a spec that is not the best, play the 2nd best, 3rd, hell make up your own or a reasonable variant of the best spec your class has.

You will quickly see how horrific the game design is, it’s not even rock paper scissors. Its the version of rock paper scissors where some idiot includes dynamite, volcano and gun.

This is true, but i like being volcano .

Some people find volcano boring and find rock or paper much more interesting to play, yet chuck either of those in a volcano like a virgin sacrifice and see how quickly they melt.

This isn’t a play your way it’s a play whatever the meta is for that season type of game.

To be honest, yesterday I had 30min of my life to spare at the game so I thought I was going to prove these “whiners” wrong that engineer as non-scrapper can be pretty viable … long story short I have changed my opinion. When I play my scrapper though I do not play true meta scrappers, I play a gyro build but it is over the top compared to a simple engineer build. Balance is pretty OK now if you have an elite spec slotted, if you don’t you will not be making a lot of good.

So I have been thinking, there are a lot less viability in builds now since HoT as elite spec is required to be viable.

^^^Rifle engi has some nasty burst. I’ve seen few do pretty amazing with it pre and post HOT.

I dare the op to play 2 top 2 mid and one bot on Lol. And I run a non meta build for my warrior, it’s working pretty great for me. Anyways. If you want to be competitive , buy HOT. If not stop complaining because Anet is not going to change their marketing strategy to you competitve. What you are, really, for will bankrupt Anet. For godsake how hard is it to get???

There are only very few non elite builds that are competative (this is OK and marketing). Usualy you are at a disadvantage without elite. Also most classes have a mandatory traitline and somtimes weapon set and 1-2 utilities they need. So if you don´t build around this its again lowering your effectiviness.
So build diversity is brought down to a minimum if you want to be effective.
I play ele main and there its a bit diffrent. Ele can adapt a bit better but this is unstable after cele removal. Ele has so much traits and utilities that are weak in PvP that its sad. Looks like the same with other classes. So in theory you have thousands of builds, practically you have less then a fistfull per class with some small variants.

What i fear most is taht the next expansion brings another elite wit more power creep so the current elite´s get second tier. I understand the free to play base being behind in PvP, but it Anet starts to power creep elites it would be a disaster.

I assume people want the illusion of playing easier builds means they can do better overall, but actually, you can run the scummiest? build, but your rotations make up for the lack of skill, which is all this game sums up to, sure, specs are overtuned, but only in the top end* then you can blame it on class unbalance. I have played on other accounts and can attest to the mouthbreather status that “scrubs” rage at, but I don’t get it.

To sum up OPs argument, are you a top 10% player? Probably not. Should ANet fix balance based on these players and be held accountable for it? Yes. Unfortunately, we won’t see a balance patch until after the S1 Finals, which might end up being whoever comes up with the cheese spec. (debatable, but meh)

Wolfric.9380:

There are only very few non elite builds that are competative (this is OK and marketing). Usualy you are at a disadvantage without elite. Also most classes have a mandatory traitline and somtimes weapon set and 1-2 utilities they need. So if you don´t build around this its again lowering your effectiviness.
So build diversity is brought down to a minimum if you want to be effective.
I play ele main and there its a bit diffrent. Ele can adapt a bit better but this is unstable after cele removal. Ele has so much traits and utilities that are weak in PvP that its sad. Looks like the same with other classes. So in theory you have thousands of builds, practically you have less then a fistfull per class with some small variants.

What i fear most is taht the next expansion brings another elite wit more power creep so the current elite´s get second tier. I understand the free to play base being behind in PvP, but it Anet starts to power creep elites it would be a disaster.

I would disagree with this, given that each trait is supposed to proc with certain weapons. Let’s look at warrior,for example, most of us run strnegh def discpline/zerker (melee warrior build). This build will only work for melee warrior, switching one of the traits for arms without changing one of your weapon would hamper the efficiency of your build. Hence why, rifle warrior usually runs arms, same goes for torch warriors; and finally warhorn warriors usually take tactics. So it depends on your weapons, some proc better with certain traits and vice versa…

Most warriors are discipline + zerker + X or am i wrong ?

Wolfric.9380:

Most warriors are discipline + zerker + X or am i wrong ?

Yup, you are because it depends on the build. Futhermore, many melee warriors have started ditching discpline for strength. Then again,it depends on what you are building.

Meh. I play hammer guard with a Grestsword as back up weapon. I have a blast, cry less IMO.

Sometimes I play shortbow ranger for giggles.

Attitude is more important than build. If you have the reflexes you can beat virtually anything if you put your mind to it. To be good, you gotta be bad

Sad but true OP.

Before June 2015 Patch, when they did remove the attributes point for trait line, it was easier to play none-meta build when you master a class and adapt to meta.

It was meta versus none-meta. We had top players playing their own build.

Since the June Patch, the build diversity is down. The 3 or 4 viable top build / class are down to 1 or 0.

Welcome to Cheap Wars 2 where everybody should be Dumb Wars 2 enough to take 1 of the 5 Meta build and rolls on those who don’t.

At first I disagreed, but the more I think about it, pre june patch last year had more versatility.

Think of warrior for example, before the big trait line change last year, we saw hambow, shoutbow, signet warriors, banner tank warriors, gs warriors, even though they all used the healing signet, there was more variations I saw in pvp.

I can’t say this is true for all professions, ranger was sidelined for so long and am glad they’re getting played now, but ranger was also the only profession not in tier 1 for awhile. Now I feel like it can only home about 4 professions reliably for high tier play. Don’t even get me started on stacking revenants lol

Jourdelune.7456:

Welcome to Cheap Wars 2 where everybody should be Dumb Wars 2 enough to take 1 of the 5 Meta build and rolls on those who don’t.

Thieves who can manage their initiative to a decent level have practically on demand stealth with dagger/pistol and could get in a good CC by swapping to staff. Steal is also a good gap closer and can be traited to grant stealth and stealth speed to stay on your target easier in that window and can hit quite hard and trait for some healing on crits. Likewise guardian sword 2 (I think it’s 2) is a good teleport, has 5 second invulnerability, and a pullback that work together with near instacast hard hitting and CC traps that ensure dodges or CD’s will be spent to avoid the damage. Did I mention that thief and guardian are some of the least cheap classes despite these? It’s very rare for me to lose a 1v1 on a druid or rev vs. a guardian.

I agree there are a lot options and they are quite fun and playable. Also there are more that are weak. If you look at top level it narrows down.
I am a player that always plays diffrent and tries to break meta. I already did this 20 years a go at MTG (Magic the Gathering) and do it in evry game i play. Im am very successful with it. Metabattle is for me to look what i have to counter.
So be creative and build what you like and can play best. I tested my build and more meta oriented with new amulets to compare and while the metabuilds are good ones i barely notice them being better just diffrent. Maybe if i play a metabuild for a while i get better with it but i am shure i can already see the efect. In my case i would just trade offence for survivability and alone the effect being non meta and catching someone by surprise often outperforms the meta build even when the meta is overal more stable.

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

I still play longbow / greatsword ranger (not druid, ranger)
I play MM necro
I have a greatsword necro build
I play staff ele with fire, water, and arcane
I play d/d (or d/w) air, earth, tempest
I also have a staff + sword/torch build for mesmer (chaos, dueling, inspiration)

None of them are “meta”.
Do they always work? No. But neither do they completely bomb out either. Depends on the battlefield. Of course, I only play at mid-tier as well…

shrug

Shattered Aegis DH. If you have a team you can work with, the damage output is very nice. Constant AOE shatters is fun.

DrDivine.5378:

Think of warrior for example, before the big trait line change last year, we saw hambow, shoutbow, signet warriors, banner tank warriors, gs warriors, even though they all used the healing signet, there was more variations I saw in pvp.

I can’t say this is true for all professions, ranger was sidelined for so long and am glad they’re getting played now, but ranger was also the only profession not in tier 1 for awhile. Now I feel like it can only home about 4 professions reliably for high tier play. Don’t even get me started on stacking revenants lol

This so much, the sheer amount of viable builds even for warrior at that point was brilliant. The fact that seeing a warrior in the pregame window and NOT BEING ABLE TO PREDICT THEIR BUILD was what made spvp unique.
(Other classes i can’t speak for atm, its 2am and i just got back from work.)

See a class now and its almost always the build you expect, roll up against a team of Guards, you bet they’re all Dragonhunters and very rarely does anyone play anything different, those that do, kudos seriously.

It’s great to see more rangers rolling about they are actually in a great spot at the moment, you can doo brilliantly with most druid specs and mix it up with shortbow or a condi axe trap etc build

However, consider the amount of effort put in by some builds compared to these top tier builds, you literally have classes that can output more damage than another can with 1 ability.
An offensive tempest ele will struggle to output the same damage as a reaper for example and when the ele specs to do so, they sacrifice so much survivability in order to “keep up”.
A shatter mes is in the same boat, fantastic damage and certainly able to still do significant burst but melts when looked at
Sword thief will do the same yet succumb to another thief rolling d/p

Some classes have strong options for non meta but they will typically get rolled by 1-2 classes that are no competition.

Diversity is fun, it always is, because having viable options in a game is a hallmark of great design and at the moment there are very few viable options for many classes, with or without HoT.

Attitude will only get you so far and its downright depressing when you’re repeatedly smacked down by simply better, more damaging, tankier and more versatile builds, you can only do so much with what you’re given. There are too many one trick ponies yet not enough opportunities for something deeper.

Without having any supporting data, I would guess the overwhelming majority of forum-users regularly play non standard builds. I certainly do.

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

This.
I often run into ‘special snowflakes’ who riddle the mapchat with passive-aggressive remarks whenever they see an opponent with a meta build. Hipster cred doesn’t win you games mate. Meta builds are popular for a reason.
To be fair, I mostly see this in hotjoin, and trashtalk is bound to happen there. But I still wonder where this attitude problem comes from.

The game does need a lot more diversity though, but this a a balance problem; not a player problem. The post-HoT power creep is absolutely disgusting.

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

This.

Non meta works wonders in solo Q because of lack of communication though. For example a zerker static discharge engi can take ~5 players by surprise and that’s a win right there. And if the enemy isn’t experienced enough to change their play against a non-standard build you might even catch them again and again. I’m sure everyone can think of plenty of times you lured someone in with a false sense of security and hen gibbed them.

@OP:

Which builds do you consider meta? There haven’t been any pro league games yet so I’m not sure anyone really knows the meta builds. Even metabattle has nothing listed as meta for the exact same reasons.

Anything pretty much works now. You’re going to run into trouble with scrapper, reaper, and revenant. Of all the broken builds, scrapper is the worst. Even with core builds everything is a toss up except for scrapper and in some cases reaper. Scrapper is the no child left behind build/profession of this season. Anyone can pick it up and do well with it. You don’t even need to know how to play it.

Support necro here don’t tend to loose (i play to win), lightning rod ele too (s/w) love my builds there is a meta for a reason but that doesn’t just mean 5 builds or quit

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

I don’t get the hate on meta builds just because they are meta either, however you should hate them because most of them are overly reliant on passives, way too forgiving and easy to play.

Maxodon.5243:

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

I don’t get the hate on meta builds just because they are meta either, however you should hate them because most of them are overly reliant on passives, way too forgiving and easy to play.

Not really. Actually, the whole game is built on passives. Generally speaking, non meta builds are based on just as much passive benefits, just with less synergy or less useful application. I’m not thrilled with how traits are designed based on procs and so on. But it’s not a meta build issue, it’s a design issue.

ronpierce.2760:

Maxodon.5243:

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

I don’t get the hate on meta builds just because they are meta either, however you should hate them because most of them are overly reliant on passives, way too forgiving and easy to play.

Not really. Actually, the whole game is built on passives. Generally speaking, non meta builds are based on just as much passive benefits, just with less synergy or less useful application. I’m not thrilled with how traits are designed based on procs and so on. But it’s not a meta build issue, it’s a design issue.

Actually, there are builds that don’t rely on passives, the only passives they have grant them access to some minor boons like vigor, regeneration, swiftness or fury, they just aren’t really viable.
Also, the early metas didn’t include that many builds which had an amount of strong passive procs comparable to the current meta builds. So the game atleast wasn’t developed with that many passives in mind, the current cancerous state of the game is all thanks to some bad balance choices.

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t get the hate behind “meta” builds. This is a game of build adaptation, you build for what’s necessary. All “meta” builds are are shared adaptations. Literally, that’s it, just shared builds proven to work… People can feel free to not share and accept information, but in the end you end up with a sub-par build that doesn’t fit the environment. If you’re fine with that, then okay, but to say “don’t run meta” is simply saying “don’t run well put together builds” which is just silly… o.O

I agree to an extent.

A lot of the current meta builds and some of the previous meta builds, are very low risk, high reward. Not all but a lot of them.

I can’t speak for everyone else but I know I dislike losing to someone who’s playing a build that’s low risk, high reward when I’m using a build that’s high risk, high reward. Not because I refuse to adapt but because whether I win or I lose, I put in twice the effort that they put in for the same reward.

Again I agree to an extent. It’s true that you should adapt or not blame the meta if you refuse, but denying that most of the current meta is brain-dead easy is nothing but ignorance.

Half the builds I enjoyed playing on engi died with the core specs patch, and the other half died with HoT. I wouldn’t so much mind the meta build being so kitten much stronger if it was at least fun to play, but it’s just not. Still kittenes me off that HoT, which was supposed to introduce new ways to play classes, ended up killing off more builds than it could ever introduce.

Is green slime going to fall on my head if I lose the dare? How about taking the physical challenge instead?

Anet wanted far fewer skills in GW2 than there is in Guild Wars to make it easier to “balance”; it seems the issue was simply websites like PvXwiki and Metabattle allowing people to just copy and paste the same thing as the next guy which then gets over used to the point that it is now meta/cheese and it causes them to over tune things (nerfs/buffs). Then X gets replaced by Y and the cycle continues.

We’ll likely receive a balance patch between every League season so, we’ll see if they’ll concentrate on other build variants other than the 1 viable build each class currently has. Granted, core meta indeed needs balancing before moving on to other traits or abilities.

I heavily advise posting build suggestions in your forums now, and keep reiterating ideas throughout the season leading up to a balance release. Burn Guard prepatch was a prime example; we kept pushing for something viable and (granted, months later) they finally completely reworked Burn/condi Guard for the cummunity who wanted it. It was viable up to HoT release.

Where Mesmer is concerned, I’m having much more success on PU condimancer than I do as a Chronomancer. Sad, considering that I bought HoT (twice) specifically to play Chronomancer.

double dog?

I’ve been playing Fresh Air S/D tempest with air/fire/tempest and paladins ammy..its so much fun actually, lightning flash+churning earth combos are a blast bahaha. But running fire I get really high damage in fire and air, its hard to play as you don’t have a ton of sustain, but you have mobility to make up for it. Its just refreshing compared to cele bunker tempest!
On the contrary scrapper is literally the most faceroll thing I’ve played. I wanted to see what all the hype was about and rolled one, uses maruader hammer build and it practically plays itself. It’s ridiculous tbh..

The reason why I liked PvP more in online games is probably because people playing PvP very often pay more attention to their builds than in PvE and come with some really fun and new ideas. This is also the reason I like playing unranked games once I am dead tired of that repetitive boring kitten I see in ranked games. For me it’s really fun to see some non-standard build pulling absolutely crazy stuff on you and I don’t really care if a guy keeps farming me by CD as long as it’s something new. Figuring how does it work and why that’s it.

Like this thread, since making builds is so much more fun then playing them (wrong, I know, not my fault). Not only have I been maining ranger in pvp for over a year now, but lately I have been moderately successful on a headbutt warrior, and yesterday I got rekt by a pistol engineer. You better dare me to play meta, because I usually just muck around in a game I have a hard time taking seiously. Not saying that it isn’t fun tho, just unserious.

I tried, played non-Tempest Fresh Air ele and actually did something, mostly because the players were bad and I do have a lot of experience in playing non-Tempest Fresh Air. I couldn’t kill anyone solo tho, which extremely BAD considering I am suppose to be the one that kills stuff, rather than the ranger bunker. The energy sigil nerf hurts much, much more than anyone may think.

i don’t think any of my chars are meta, i play only zerkers, and only unranked,
war? GS/hammer/dual axes zerker
engi? SD, sometimes turrets!
necro? dagger+wells zerker.
mesmer? phantasm zerker.
guard? burns.
thief? P/P zerker or vault spammer.
ranger? rabid trapper.
ele? staff zerker.

meta?
i think the only metas i pay is condi reaper, and even that i spec completely offensively.

Don’t know your class? Check out Metabattle.

Too lazy to tweak your own build? Check out Metabattle.

A streamer won an unlikely match up? Copy his build and make it meta.

play power necro and die in your kitten 4Head

imo it isnt just meta vs non meta, its that if you did well on a nonelite build then you simply would have done better using an elite.

even a nonmeta elite build will wreck a core build.

thanks power creep.

im playing non-meta ever since HoT and i have 60%+ win rate

thats all

Maxodon.5243:

I don’t get the hate on meta builds just because they are meta either, however you should hate them because most of them are overly reliant on passives, way too forgiving and easy to play.

Most people don’t hate meta builds out of elitism but for the fact that it narrows a game with lots of customization options to a tiny subset of combinations that you have to play to be competitive. The fact that most current meta builds are not only the best choice (which always exists) but shamelessly overpowered and passive adds to this. There is simply no fun in playing against players when you will be continuously beaten by the game mechanics, not the player.
Meta builds suck because they eliminate the aspect of comparing skill between players in this game. Sure, some people will “play to win” and will be satisfied by their positive pvp stats but many people enjoy the confrontation more than the outcome in pvp.