Guild Wars 2

It comes down to the effort required to produce a result.

Right now it still feels way off to me.

e.g. – for me to produce 5k dmg on my engi and survive in a fight longer than 10 seconds, takes way more effort that for that same occurrence on a number of classes.

i could go on, but what does any of this really matter?

Though there are some imbalances in the game so desparity does exist, it’s good to keep in mind classes in the game are capable of a wide variety of build types, and their proficiency in those roles vary from class to class, so it’s very possible to make an underperforming build, especially in HotM where builds are tested to their limits much more then any other mode in the game.
So to summerize, the classes in GW2 aren’t fully balanced yet, but most of them have a few builds that are more effective then others.

Considering engis are a class of attrition then it would make sense that they couldn’t burst as hard as thief’s or eles…

Not too sure what your really asking.

Coopers.4376:

Considering engis are a class of attrition then it would make sense that they couldn’t burst as hard as thief’s or eles…

Not too sure what your really asking.

Attrition; absolutely. The nature of attrition is contingent on the other party being of an attrition mentality themselves also. Otherwise, there exists no attrition when your ability to mitigate said burst is negated either by a persistent ability to negate (stealth with thieves particularly), or burst dmg to counteract lessened survivability (still thinking mesmer shatter).

In other words, yes we are attrition based; but what good is attrition when you’re insta-gibbed with no cool-down recourse or dodge recourse. Or for that matter the relative ease with with other classes reset the fight in their favor; in other words fleeing and resetting cooldowns.

The fact is i dont see much of a niche for ANY class other than either full burst or full bunker for tourney or for hotjoin. The attempt to avoid polarization has resulted in exactly the opposite of the intended result. in anything but organizied tpvp, which is a mess itself, you either roll a full burst build to hopefully insta-gib, or a bunkery build and wait for reinforcements.

The irony is, that in all the efforts to avoid polarization, if anything, that has been the key propagating factor with the current glory award system (aka no pt defense incentives or the like).

I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

Pretty good analysis, IMO, EatThisShoe. I think it’s always generally been harder to avoid key attacks than to execute them in MMOs. However, in GW2, you get punished much more for failing to avoid key attacks than in other games. This widens the gap between those who can consistently read and avoid attacks and those who can’t for whatever reason.

This helps explain the dichotomy in player feedback with respect to GW2 PvP.

EatThisShoe.5136:

I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

Best analysis of GW2 pvp right here.

Totally agree it’s much more easy to make a bursty combo than defending against it. Mesmers illusions spammers with mind wracks are a good example of this there is absolutely no skill invovled but the result is extremely strong and very hard, if not impossible to counter especially as melee.

EatThisShoe.5136:

I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive.

I’d probably take it a step further and say that most of the skill in this game is tactical – i.e. rotation, coordination, communication, positioning, map knowledge, et al.

The classes in this game have generally low skill caps because they’re fairly simplistic in terms of number of abilities and the range of actions that a player can accomplish with those abilities (comparatively speaking, in relation to past MMO’s). Even team fights are mostly AoE fests where people who aren’t being focused take excessive splash damage from nearly every offensive ability in the game, while the lack of hard support classes means that you can train all damage and all cc on the same person without really having to worry about controlling anybody else or executing complicated swaps. Lack of cast bars and target of target further reduces individual skill cap as well.

For the most part, skill in GW2 is 95% map sense (on the part of your whole team) and 5% being able to predict other players so you don’t get blown up instantly.

This game is less complicated than most of the PvP MMOs out there. In a week or so of playing WvW and the hot joins I don’t really see much strategy and tactics at all. I’d solidly put gameplay for this game in the ‘twitch’ category compared to the other past similar MMOs.

I don’t think much is possible without voice chat because the fights are just scooby-doo style chase scenes with people teleporting, cloning, stealthing and rolling everywhere. It’s no surprise to me everybody wants to burst because I don’t think people would reliably die otherwise. The only reason bunker works is because of holding points… I haven’t heard anybody claim it’s good to make defensive class with the purpose of buffing, healing, or CCing, because all of that is pretty mediocre right now. Is it possible?

EatThisShoe.5136:

I think one of the things which frustrates people is that most of the skill in this game is defensive. There’s a big divide between players who can reliably avoid burst combos and those who can’t. This means that almost anybody can pick up a burst build and kill you, and you have to struggle to get better just to stay alive. You can contrast this with FPS games, which often have lower time to kill, but bad players are not very dangerous because they can’t aim. In GW2 there are few skills which really reward high skill with greater damage. In fact some game mechanics really favor low skill attackers, such as blocked and blinded attacks not breaking stealth.

The second issue is that defense is limited. You only get a couple dodges, and whatever defensive skills your profession can add. This has two sub-issues, first even a good player can simply run out of defensive skills and endurance, leaving them an easy kill. Second some professions can retry failed bursts much more often than others, this is part of why shatter mesmers and backstab thieves stand out from 100blades warriors, because bursts come often enough that they can overwhelm defensive cooldowns. Of course the number of defensive skills you can viably pack into a build also varies with profession.

Wow I really hope Anet takes this post seriously because this is on point regarding gw2 pvp’s current situation.

of course, taking from this post, if Anet reduces the player-skill requirement on being efficiently ‘defensive’ and/or makes defense much more accessible, IMO there are variable outcomes. It may help in either reducing the appeal of straight burst builds because they can no longer overwhelm a regular (non-bunker) target so quickly (/efficiently), or make current bunker players nigh invincible thus making more extreme forms of burst damage necessary.

I personally think that burst damage and bunkers should be ignored for the time being, and instead test a version of points capping in favor of the team with more living players on it. Bunkers, the single players that they are, would lose their attractiveness as two attackers means the point will be lost regardless of how well said bunker stays alive. Also, burst builds (glass cannons) would lose their appeal in higher level play because of the downed mechanic – a downed player on point still counts as a capturing player. Bursting them to downed has two negative effects in this scenario – cooldowns are tanked (generally) and now they have a glass cannon’s inherent lack of staying power coupled with diminished damage output for the next 30ish seconds and the possibility of not achieving a permanent advantage while being disadvantaged themselves. Of course, shatter mesmers are somewhat outside of that disadvantage, but nevertheless.