ISO 'pre juni patch' server.
You’re right. I’m one of those old school players. It’s sad what its become.
It wasn’t perfect, but PvP had structure back then. You had the old trait system, which gave us multiple builds to choose from. More importantly, it had trade-offs. If you wanted to spec for offense, you had to give up defense, and vice versa. There was also separate solo and team queues. There’s wasn’t all this animosity between solo and team queuers like there is now. Everyone had a place to go. Sure the queues were longer, but PvP was still new, plus only had Conquest. The most important though, balance. Balance was much better back then. This shouldn’t even be a question. Again, it wasn’t perfect, but it was workable. Yes there were op builds, but not as often though, and certainly not as egregious as elite specs.
Now, for today***
The old trait system was replaced by the spec panel. This caused a powercreep effect. More offensive builds started to come out. I remember as a warrior, I could finally make condi builds with swords, a build I couldn’t really pull off in the old trait system. That was just the beginning. HoT took a sledge hammer to PvP balance and never recovered. Elite specs came out and just overpowered the original builds. Elite specs gave you BOTH offense and defense, something that wasn’t possible before. The powercreep went out of control. Players were rewarded more for less skill.
Main difference as the post above says, traitlines with points for various attributes as well as elite speccs. I honestly don’t see the elite speccs as being helpful to the game at all. They’re pretty much mandatory and as a result you know exactly what you’re gonna face. Build diversity went down the drain and what we’re left with is more akin to checkers than chess. If checkers was poorly balanced.
Main difference as the post above says, traitlines with points for various attributes as well as elite speccs. I honestly don’t see the elite speccs as being helpful to the game at all. They’re pretty much mandatory and as a result you know exactly what you’re gonna face. Build diversity went down the drain and what we’re left with is more akin to checkers than chess. If checkers was poorly balanced.
Haha! Tic-tac-toe is more respectable than this! At least it’s fair!
Yeah. I miss that. For the most part, skills did either offense or defense. Elite specs added tons of power to existing classes with no tradeoff. The fact that there has never been any response to these concerns despite ‘HoT power creep’ being the most oft-repeated phrase on forums suggest that it was probably intentional to sell expansions…
I bought the expansion happily, but I hate what it has done to the combat. It’s just less skillful now and build diversity has tanked.
Okay, let’s put away the rose tinted glasses for a moment please.
First of all, we never had build diversity in gw2.
In the begining of the game, we saw more builds being played because we sucked and did not understand what was potentially OP. But as more and more tournament happend, and the playerbase got better at the game, the meta slowly became more and more restrictive. It It really wasn’t better, there was usually not even one meta build per profession.
Balance?
There was only 3 period of time where all classes were viable in high-end tournament. Just before the june-patch and the new trait system, just before hot launched, and right now.
Skillful builds?
Okay, let’s rewind time and take a look at the old d/d cleric then cele ele, the hambow war, shoutbow war, medi guard, spirit ranger… In every meta there were always a few builds considered brainless and OP.
Really, the only thing that the specialisation patch did was increasing the pace of the game thanks to the power creep. And then, the expansion increased the pace even further. I understand why someone would like to go back to a slower pace with more impactful skills, but what we have now is just as skillful as before.
Other than that, yeah, i do miss the old solo/teamq system they had in place. Hopefully, they’ll add some kind of team based ranking system to the league.
Before june 2015.. Wasnt that the braindead Cele-meta? lol..
I prefered 2014-2015 meta, atleast EVERY class was viable and played in ESL.
HamBow, Support Shout Guard, DPS GS/Staff Mesmer and Thief (back then it became S/P to S/D), Condi P/S Engi, Support Spirit Ranger, Condi Rabid Necro, Cleric Staff Ele,…
Best fun to be had those days.
Not rose-tinted at all.
There’s are big differences between then and now which are being overlooked and discredited. First the difference between top builds and viable build wasn’t as large. If you played a viable build well, you could beat meta builds except when played by top players. Second, current meta builds are too forgiving of mistakes (which feeds into the first item). Missing a key ability or combo would kitten down your pressure for a while. You can’t just keep hitting the next ability and be fine like now. Third, there were less hard counters to CC, projectiles, and conditions. That fact has led to an arms race where CC or conditions are too extreme.
Oh, i’m not saying what we have now is better than what we had back before the specialization patch. It’s simply different, the game changed.
There are more hardcounter in the game, and that put more emphasis on rotations rather than pure mechanical skill.
Also, there’s a lot more emphasis on cooldown management because we now have so many defensive cd’s and there is a lot more damage in the game.
I 100% understand why someone would like to go back, but the game is clearly not less skillful/balanced than before. The skills required simply changed with the pace of the game.
but the game is clearly not less skillful/balanced than before.
Fact: The game is less skill dependent, and more unbalanced than before.
This is at the core of all post HoT complaints. This is what people mean when they say (and they say it a lot) that HoT broke the game.
And, for the record, we had one sweet spot of design and balance for those couple of months after the trait revamp, and before HoT dropped. Everybody was thrilled with the way things were for that brief period of time. Then, DOOM> XD
HoT
adjective, the big change
1.
DOOM
2.
Despair
4.
WTF??!