Guild Wars 2

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Ya you can do it but not before the other team shows up to kills you. And so the bunker wins.

Remove this horrible control the node game mode and problem solved…

Rather see the sPvP maps replaced with single keep zones, like the ones in DAoC. Smaller than the WvW area, but bigger than the tiny maps we have now. No people trying to flex their kitten and trying to outscore everyone on their team, but an actual group effort to benefit their realm, in this case server…

Valador.3461:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Ya you can do it but not before the other team shows up to kills you. And so the bunker wins.

Remove this horrible control the node game mode and problem solved…

Rather see the sPvP maps replaced with single keep zones, like the ones in DAoC. Smaller than the WvW area, but bigger than the tiny maps we have now. No people trying to flex their kitten and trying to outscore everyone on their team, but an actual group effort to benefit their realm, in this case server…

Sorry but I like tactics in my pvp. Don’t want brain dead DM. Or something that is already done, WvW.

@Valador

Tank classes with passive damage reflect are the easiest class to play in any game. You make your worst player play this type of class because it’s impossible to screw up. You just sit there and people kill themselves on you.

And now you want sPvP to turn into a zerg vs zerg?

Ironic, coming for someone who doesn’t want “mindless” things in the game.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Sorry but I like tactics in my pvp. Don’t want brain dead DM.

Tactics in a PUG sPvP match? Riiiiiight. Everyone pretty much goes where they want or zerg around from node to node, with no concept of defense. Sometimes stopping to chase that one random enemy around the map.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I would agree if the glass cannons damage was on longer CD. But when they are on very short or no CD like the current game is than we have a problem.

Speaking only from personal experience using a 100b warrior sometimes,
100b has like 8 second recharge, but it’s useless without kd + frenzy. It roots me and they can just walk out of it, so the “recharge” for my spike is closer to 45 seconds for a traited frenzy. This is about the same recharge of anti-spike skills (such as elixer s on my engineer). I’m not saying your complaint doesn’t have any merit, just that it seems the devs have considered these kinds of situations. We’ll see what kind of balance changes they make in the future.

milo.6942:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I would agree if the glass cannons damage was on longer CD. But when they are on very short or no CD like the current game is than we have a problem.

Speaking only from personal experience using a 100b warrior sometimes,
100b has like 8 second recharge, but it’s useless without kd + frenzy. It roots me and they can just walk out of it, so the “recharge” for my spike is closer to 45 seconds for a traited frenzy. This is about the same recharge of anti-spike skills (such as elixer s on my engineer). I’m not saying your complaint doesn’t have any merit, just that it seems the devs have considered these kinds of situations. We’ll see what kind of balance changes they make in the future.

Problem is that this is not a 1v1 game. You don’t need frenzy if others give it to you. You don’t need kd if others do it for you. And you can hit with 100b with out frenzy or kb if you set up your team correctly.

So while the solo set up CD might be longer, the group set up CD is much shorter.

Also, the sustain just has to be caught once for the Burst to own him. While the sustain has to take time to kill a burst.

And speaking as a Necro. Burst should almost never die to a Necro. We have very limited means of keeping you in a fight. If a burst wanted to run away from a Necro they can do so most of the time.

Daays.4317:

@Valador

Tank classes with passive damage reflect are the easiest class to play in any game. You make your worst player play this type of class because it’s impossible to screw up. You just sit there and people kill themselves on you.

And now you want sPvP to turn into a zerg vs zerg?

Ironic, coming for someone who doesn’t want “mindless” things in the game.

How long have you been playing these kind of games? Because I’ve been playing tank type toons as my main since 1997, and I’ve seen tanks in PvP go from utterly useless to well designed, but never truly OP and I’ve played a butt load of major MMO titles. I couldn’t care less if they totally removed retaliation, as I don’t like the concept, as long as the survivability stays.

Hardly any games have done the tank/defense archetype any justice… People kittening complain if they do any sort of damage because their argument is “zomg they’re supposed to take dmg, not deal it!!” and then they turn around and cry “zomg my leet pew pew skills cant kill a tank!! nerf!!” You can’t force anyone to attack a defensive built toon, so you gotta give them something to be useful… And I guess due to poor design, that use is to control points on the map…

Anyways, sPvP as it is now, is pretty much zerg vs. zerg from what I’ve seen. There’s no coordination and people pretty much just zerg around from node to node. They cap a point, and then run back to retake the one they just lost because no one wants to defend…

If you don’t run with your zerg you get gang banged by the enemy zerg… Nothing about a sPvP match full of randoms says tactical.

I only join small games now. 8 people or less because you don’t see don’t see as much zerging from node to node like you do in a 8v8. It’s more fun that way imo. But there are some that like the 8v8s. But that’s why we have a choice of which lobby to join. Don’t like the 8v8 zerg zerg zerg matches, join a lobby with less people like I do.

Killyox.3950:

Wow!

I pointed out that that “interview” (reddit one) had many ortographic and grammar mistakes which led me into believing it was a fake and my post got deleted? How does that not provide contribution when it’s a valid question in regard to thread’s subject?!

I’m speechless for the mods here.

The mistakes that “Jon” makes are pretty embarrassing. I really believed it was a 10 year old.

I think it is quite possible that it is fake, at least for Jon’s sake.

Let’s look at a few of these mistakes:
“if we merged heart we woulrd just have 20 overflows instead. so still only see some people and no choerence”

Woulrd? Choerence?

“i mean seeing the same peoply so you can form a community”
Peoply? Really? Y isn’t even close to E on the keyboard.

“bunker guardian has to much retal period. obviously. frankitteno much prot also. but that is not the heart of the matter. the core problem is real. because with it, bunker builds eliminate spike builds from the meta game. which in turn makes bunker builds OP. so the counter to them is beeing countered by them. aka balance problem. defensive builds are important, they help establish strategies. but they are als determining the entire meta right know.”

Pretty much all of this is fail.

“more buf fixes for necor coming. i feel like we got some good bugs out this week.”

“because u have WvW and the game isnt designe for open pvp.”
“um ho do you not?”
“and you can do that in WvW in fact. i do that every time i log into WvW. you can absolutely gank in WvW. the only reason for not beeing able to is if you are sucking. plain and simple. it the truth, i call it like i see it”

All of these quotes look like a 10 year old texting on their iPhone. I would think a professional would speak correctly, at least to show us that he/she is somewhat intelligent.

I almost hope that this is fake. Most companies don’t allow this type of texting-speech to be used.

I’m glad I’m not the only one here that noticed how bad the grammar was in this Q&A conversation. Perhaps we should not take it too seriously, as it may not have been legit. After all, Jon’s forum posts are far more coherent and correctly written.

Neb.5347:

I’m glad I’m not the only one here that noticed how bad the grammar was in this Q&A conversation. Perhaps we should not take it too seriously, as it may not have been legit. After all, Jon’s forum posts are far more coherent and correctly written.

It wasn’t some organized Q&A session. He was in the Heart of the Mists on his character and people started talking to him and asking him questions. His answers were off the cuff and unscripted, but more importantly they were honest and transparent. Who cares if he’s a bad typer?

It’s legit, btw. There are screenshots of the conversation.

you can clearly see who came from wow and who came from pvp games.
no, burst is NOT ment to blow past bunker
in REAL pvp games its supposed to be

debuff > Bunker
healing > Dps ( but spike damage is supposed to trump healing because of surprise)
AoE > Healing
ranged burst > melee burst
melee sustained > ranged sustained

only people who came from wow would think… im just SUPPOSED to blow everyone away because im deepz… and thats what deepsz does AMIRITE!?!?
I play a bunker mezmer and obviously by the name, a bunker guiardian. both die very slow and painful deaths to condition as it should be because neither build has much condition removal.

Neb.5347:

Killyox.3950:

Wow!

I pointed out that that “interview” (reddit one) had many ortographic and grammar mistakes which led me into believing it was a fake and my post got deleted? How does that not provide contribution when it’s a valid question in regard to thread’s subject?!

I’m speechless for the mods here.

The mistakes that “Jon” makes are pretty embarrassing. I really believed it was a 10 year old.

I think it is quite possible that it is fake, at least for Jon’s sake.

Let’s look at a few of these mistakes:
“if we merged heart we woulrd just have 20 overflows instead. so still only see some people and no choerence”

Woulrd? Choerence?

“i mean seeing the same peoply so you can form a community”
Peoply? Really? Y isn’t even close to E on the keyboard.

“bunker guardian has to much retal period. obviously. frankitteno much prot also. but that is not the heart of the matter. the core problem is real. because with it, bunker builds eliminate spike builds from the meta game. which in turn makes bunker builds OP. so the counter to them is beeing countered by them. aka balance problem. defensive builds are important, they help establish strategies. but they are als determining the entire meta right know.”

Pretty much all of this is fail.

“more buf fixes for necor coming. i feel like we got some good bugs out this week.”

“because u have WvW and the game isnt designe for open pvp.”
“um ho do you not?”
“and you can do that in WvW in fact. i do that every time i log into WvW. you can absolutely gank in WvW. the only reason for not beeing able to is if you are sucking. plain and simple. it the truth, i call it like i see it”

All of these quotes look like a 10 year old texting on their iPhone. I would think a professional would speak correctly, at least to show us that he/she is somewhat intelligent.

I almost hope that this is fake. Most companies don’t allow this type of texting-speech to be used.

I’m glad I’m not the only one here that noticed how bad the grammar was in this Q&A conversation. Perhaps we should not take it too seriously, as it may not have been legit. After all, Jon’s forum posts are far more coherent and correctly written.

love these grammar losers. He comes online and posts in chat, people cry he doesnt use proper spelling. Had he not spoken at all you’d be crying zomg they dont communicate with their players ever.

lose-lose

Dear Jon, next time you come online even though you are getting asked 10 questions per second make sure you take the time to use proper sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation to not make whiners upset.

Sprawl.3891:

Neb.5347:

Killyox.3950:

Wow!

I pointed out that that “interview” (reddit one) had many ortographic and grammar mistakes which led me into believing it was a fake and my post got deleted? How does that not provide contribution when it’s a valid question in regard to thread’s subject?!

I’m speechless for the mods here.

The mistakes that “Jon” makes are pretty embarrassing. I really believed it was a 10 year old.

I think it is quite possible that it is fake, at least for Jon’s sake.

Let’s look at a few of these mistakes:
“if we merged heart we woulrd just have 20 overflows instead. so still only see some people and no choerence”

Woulrd? Choerence?

“i mean seeing the same peoply so you can form a community”
Peoply? Really? Y isn’t even close to E on the keyboard.

“bunker guardian has to much retal period. obviously. frankitteno much prot also. but that is not the heart of the matter. the core problem is real. because with it, bunker builds eliminate spike builds from the meta game. which in turn makes bunker builds OP. so the counter to them is beeing countered by them. aka balance problem. defensive builds are important, they help establish strategies. but they are als determining the entire meta right know.”

Pretty much all of this is fail.

“more buf fixes for necor coming. i feel like we got some good bugs out this week.”

“because u have WvW and the game isnt designe for open pvp.”
“um ho do you not?”
“and you can do that in WvW in fact. i do that every time i log into WvW. you can absolutely gank in WvW. the only reason for not beeing able to is if you are sucking. plain and simple. it the truth, i call it like i see it”

All of these quotes look like a 10 year old texting on their iPhone. I would think a professional would speak correctly, at least to show us that he/she is somewhat intelligent.

I almost hope that this is fake. Most companies don’t allow this type of texting-speech to be used.

I’m glad I’m not the only one here that noticed how bad the grammar was in this Q&A conversation. Perhaps we should not take it too seriously, as it may not have been legit. After all, Jon’s forum posts are far more coherent and correctly written.

love these grammar losers. He comes online and posts in chat, people cry he doesnt use proper spelling. Had he not spoken at all you’d be crying zomg they dont communicate with their players ever.

lose-lose

Dear Jon, next time you come online even though you are getting asked 10 questions per second make sure you take the time to use proper sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation to not make whiners upset.

I can type extremely fast and still maintain proper sentence structure and grammar/spelling. He literally types like a 10 year old in this Q&A. A representative of a company is not supposed to type like a 10 year old on his iPhone. It makes him/her appear uneducated. No company tolerates this style of writing.

It’s not like he is making subtle errors, the are errors are extensive. I simply was unsure if this was actually Jon, due to the amount and degree of errors in his messages.

Some of you guys have no clue. At the moment there are some bunker builds that are extremely difficult and sometimes impossible to kill 1v1 even with the greatest cheese. Some classes can’t even hope to kill a good bunker regardless of what spec they play. The issue is that bunkers need to die 1v1. It should be a test of skill, not a test of button pressing.

I know this may sound blasphemous, but I play bunker guardian, warrior, and even support ele. I think it’s absolutely stupid that someone has to be a pistol whip thief with thieves guild to even stand a chance. Dying to a skilled player who sacrificed survivability for damage should happen if I play so much as 1% worse than him. Right now it doesn’t however. Imagine all those bunkers you try to kill who are cackling at their monitors.. Ignorant to whatever you’re doing, but none of that matters because they have 3400 armor, brainless regen, and stability.

So the only viable way to avoid being killed in 2 hits by thieves is going to be nerfed.

Thank god I don’t play this game anymore.

If he said that, this Sharp guy does not seem to be that sharp.
Let’s just turn the game into a 1shot fest. That will fix.
Ermagerd, my 100B warrior can’t trash bunker… nerf nerf…
Ermagerd, mesmer is our brainchild… how about giving it a non elite Moa utility that lsts 5 seconds with a cooldown of 45 sec….
Ermagerd… that post is complete fail.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

milo.6942:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I would agree if the glass cannons damage was on longer CD. But when they are on very short or no CD like the current game is than we have a problem.

Speaking only from personal experience using a 100b warrior sometimes,
100b has like 8 second recharge, but it’s useless without kd + frenzy. It roots me and they can just walk out of it, so the “recharge” for my spike is closer to 45 seconds for a traited frenzy. This is about the same recharge of anti-spike skills (such as elixer s on my engineer). I’m not saying your complaint doesn’t have any merit, just that it seems the devs have considered these kinds of situations. We’ll see what kind of balance changes they make in the future.

Problem is that this is not a 1v1 game. You don’t need frenzy if others give it to you. You don’t need kd if others do it for you. And you can hit with 100b with out frenzy or kb if you set up your team correctly.

So while the solo set up CD might be longer, the group set up CD is much shorter.

Also, the sustain just has to be caught once for the Burst to own him. While the sustain has to take time to kill a burst.

And speaking as a Necro. Burst should almost never die to a Necro. We have very limited means of keeping you in a fight. If a burst wanted to run away from a Necro they can do so most of the time.

But as you just said, it’s not a 1v1 game. Just as multiple people have ways to help CC to setup for a burst, there are multiple ways on all classes to help the teammate CC’d to get away from the burst, usually by CC’ing the guy that does the burst.

And it isn’t easy to give other people quickness. There’s just Time Warp. An Elite skill with a long cooldown.

Look, this game is different than others. Remember that. It’s not just that they blew up the holy trinity, but that they also replaced it with their own balance.

Balanced/Sustain builds need stun breakers and CC to beat burst builds. Once bursts use up their CC or quickness skills, they’re boned. This also makes balanced builds great for team fights. As many of you have already noticed, Condition builds give great sustain, often need to slot utilities to help in team fights anyway, and are always a boon to your side during a big battle. They fit into this. Balanced/Sustain builds are often the ones that come in with decent damage and a lot of damage mitigation through conditions and stuns. Most Mesmers, believe or not, are playing this way.

Burst builds need to beat Bunker builds in any control point based game. Don’t look at just RPGs. FPS games like TF2 make a good example. When they turtle up, you send a flanking class to take them out or severely cripple them, like Sniper, Spy, Scout, etc. Burst builds are the ones that try to focus on 1v1s. That’s what Thief does right now, although I think they might have one too many escape mechanisms.

Defense/Support builds focus on survivability. These are your frontline fighters that try to take the brunt of the CC and burst. And then they only get back up again because their teammates come and pressure the opponents off of them. That’s why it often takes two balanced builds or a burst build to take them out. Or, again from other games, you need a flanker to come in and either kill them or severely cripple them. Otherwise you find yourself needing to retreat as their help comes in, which will now demolish you.

And during all of this, despite these advantages, the better player can still win. It’s more of a soft circle of balance than a hard counter system. Balanced/Sustain builds are currently the hardest builds in the game to properly make and use (outside of Mesmers, I think) so that’s why they’re not doing their job very well at the moment. But one thing they were able to help right away was defensive builds having a way too easy time against burst builds, especially in a control point based game.

Since this appears to be a team game, I would like to ask the following:

- apparantly many agree on the fact that a bunker guardian takes 2 to take him down.
For the reason of this not being a 1v1 game I guess.

- so if it’s really a team game, we must assume that guardian has at least 1 helper too.

- so… if those 2 come to kill the guardian, and he has 1 helper.

will the bunker die?

Kimbald, the correct answer is: leave and cap another point, leave 1 burst to keep their attention but not engage directly. People are getting so focused on “how do i kill guardian????” they forget their other options.

Those are other options.
but they say nothing about game balance.

If, for the sake of argument, a thief can kill 3 players, than when a thief comes you can also run and get another point.

For the record: you are very very right, but this doesn’t solve the issue in any way.

Game balance kicks in when the used scenario is: what happens if you fight?

Kimbald.2697:

Those are other options.
but they say nothing about game balance.

If, for the sake of argument, a thief can kill 3 players, than when a thief comes you can also run and get another point.

For the record: you are very very right, but this doesn’t solve the issue in any way.

Game balance kicks in when the used scenario is: what happens if you fight?

I don’t understand your thief argument.
Anyway, it’s kind of useless to talk about game balance in fights. Even if we assume their profession, we know nothing about their weapons, utilities, traits, skill level, and that’s for just a simple 1v1 situation. If you want to say a guardian + 1 other random player vs 2 random players, it means almost nothing. It’s not even possible to have a coherent discussion about that. You see what I’m saying?

What happens if you fight? Well, if you are more prepared and/or more skilled and/or have good counters to the enemy you will probably win. How else could anyone answer your guardian + ally scenario if you wanted to insist that they fought?

edit:
tl;dr: discussing game balance using scenarios with unspecified builds is fruitless

The problem is condition builds have a hard time competing. Condition ranger/necros are far less survivable than their power build counterparts? Why is it like this, both builds are missing huge amounts of vitality/extra utility skills that can be used for defense compared to power builds. Most popular condition builds for necro sit at like sub 20k life and are usually locked into epidemic/corrupt boon/plague signet. Trap condition rangers sitting at sub 17k life and forced to burn all their utility slots for traps to make the build function, instead of quickness/whatever+stun break+stone signet (much better defense).

There is no cond/vit/toughness amulet in SPvP, yet there is a power/vit/toughness one?

Maybe I’m just a conditions fan boy, but it just seems burst builds are completely outclassing condition builds by miles right now and condition builds just tend to die before they can wear people down.

What role do condition/steady dps classes have in the game? They just die to burst damage and can’t kill bunkers any faster than burst classes. They aren’t tanky enough to fight for extended periods of time so….? When you are bringing a conditions necro you are just bringing corrupt boon to kitten guardians, you don’t really give a kitten about the conditions let’s be honest.

The problem is not primarily the inability to kill bunkers, but the fact that uptime on retal makes it impossible to attack them with variety of weapons, and stuff like AoE retal, stability for 5+ sec every 30 sec (or less traited) makes it really hard to hurt any other opponent. Classic example is Mesmer greatsword which has autoattack with 0 net effect on ANY class with some armor and retal. The fact that the thing you’re hitting doesn’t have high damage doesn’t matter in a situation like that.

Add to that fact the fact that they are hard to kill even without retal and it because really an impossible for most builds to deal with.

I’m sorry but Retaliation Guardain kitten my CONDITION DAMAGE BOON STRIPPING Thief with 2k Toughness.

Its awesome having 15k retaliation damage while stipping boons and doing only bleed damage

HAhahahahahahaaa! Oh, man, that is HILARIOUS! There are people seriously arguing that there’s no point to balancing around COMBAT, which is at least 80% of the game in control point matches? OH MY GOODNESS!

Okay, seriously, if you’re seriously going to argue like that, just please do us all a favor and leave. There is absolutely no point to arguing from a position of “balance is impossible!” when the goal is absolutely to balance things to the point where the game can legitimately be considered an “e-sport”.

Proven.2854:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

milo.6942:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I would agree if the glass cannons damage was on longer CD. But when they are on very short or no CD like the current game is than we have a problem.

Speaking only from personal experience using a 100b warrior sometimes,
100b has like 8 second recharge, but it’s useless without kd + frenzy. It roots me and they can just walk out of it, so the “recharge” for my spike is closer to 45 seconds for a traited frenzy. This is about the same recharge of anti-spike skills (such as elixer s on my engineer). I’m not saying your complaint doesn’t have any merit, just that it seems the devs have considered these kinds of situations. We’ll see what kind of balance changes they make in the future.

Problem is that this is not a 1v1 game. You don’t need frenzy if others give it to you. You don’t need kd if others do it for you. And you can hit with 100b with out frenzy or kb if you set up your team correctly.

So while the solo set up CD might be longer, the group set up CD is much shorter.

Also, the sustain just has to be caught once for the Burst to own him. While the sustain has to take time to kill a burst.

And speaking as a Necro. Burst should almost never die to a Necro. We have very limited means of keeping you in a fight. If a burst wanted to run away from a Necro they can do so most of the time.

But as you just said, it’s not a 1v1 game. Just as multiple people have ways to help CC to setup for a burst, there are multiple ways on all classes to help the teammate CC’d to get away from the burst, usually by CC’ing the guy that does the burst.

And it isn’t easy to give other people quickness. There’s just Time Warp. An Elite skill with a long cooldown.

Look, this game is different than others. Remember that. It’s not just that they blew up the holy trinity, but that they also replaced it with their own balance.

Balanced/Sustain builds need stun breakers and CC to beat burst builds. Once bursts use up their CC or quickness skills, they’re boned. This also makes balanced builds great for team fights. As many of you have already noticed, Condition builds give great sustain, often need to slot utilities to help in team fights anyway, and are always a boon to your side during a big battle. They fit into this. Balanced/Sustain builds are often the ones that come in with decent damage and a lot of damage mitigation through conditions and stuns. Most Mesmers, believe or not, are playing this way.

Burst builds need to beat Bunker builds in any control point based game. Don’t look at just RPGs. FPS games like TF2 make a good example. When they turtle up, you send a flanking class to take them out or severely cripple them, like Sniper, Spy, Scout, etc. Burst builds are the ones that try to focus on 1v1s. That’s what Thief does right now, although I think they might have one too many escape mechanisms.

Defense/Support builds focus on survivability. These are your frontline fighters that try to take the brunt of the CC and burst. And then they only get back up again because their teammates come and pressure the opponents off of them. That’s why it often takes two balanced builds or a burst build to take them out. Or, again from other games, you need a flanker to come in and either kill them or severely cripple them. Otherwise you find yourself needing to retreat as their help comes in, which will now demolish you.

And during all of this, despite these advantages, the better player can still win. It’s more of a soft circle of balance than a hard counter system. Balanced/Sustain builds are currently the hardest builds in the game to properly make and use (outside of Mesmers, I think) so that’s why they’re not doing their job very well at the moment. But one thing they were able to help right away was defensive builds having a way too easy time against burst builds, especially in a control point based game.

I don’t think you understand what your saying.

By definition a bunker build will be the most tanky build in the game. If a burst Spec can take one down fast, what is going to happen to all other spec? Any other non bunker build is going to have less defense than an bunker build so a Burst Spec is going to kill them even faster. The meta will end up everyone running a burst spec.

Grizz.7045:

The problem is condition builds have a hard time competing. Condition ranger/necros are far less survivable than their power build counterparts? Why is it like this, both builds are missing huge amounts of vitality/extra utility skills that can be used for defense compared to power builds. Most popular condition builds for necro sit at like sub 20k life and are usually locked into epidemic/corrupt boon/plague signet. Trap condition rangers sitting at sub 17k life and forced to burn all their utility slots for traps to make the build function, instead of quickness/whatever+stun break+stone signet (much better defense).

There is no cond/vit/toughness amulet in SPvP, yet there is a power/vit/toughness one?

Maybe I’m just a conditions fan boy, but it just seems burst builds are completely outclassing condition builds by miles right now and condition builds just tend to die before they can wear people down.

What role do condition/steady dps classes have in the game? They just die to burst damage and can’t kill bunkers any faster than burst classes. They aren’t tanky enough to fight for extended periods of time so….? When you are bringing a conditions necro you are just bringing corrupt boon to kitten guardians, you don’t really give a kitten about the conditions let’s be honest.

I agree. it is a real problem.

Was that even written by Jon? Unless I read something different when clicking on the link, the language and communication skill being shown in the replies and such don’t even match what we’ve seen on the forums. It’s almost like he forgot how to use the English vocabulary.

If we keep picking on the grammar and language used, it will be definitely be the last time anyone will officially reply in a casual conversation.
Fully edtited and structured official statements will be all we get than.

If it was him, than please give him some slack on the whole language thing.
if it wasn’t him, the topic would have been closed by now I think.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

I don’t think you understand what your saying.

By definition a bunker build will be the most tanky build in the game. If a burst Spec can take one down fast, what is going to happen to all other spec? Any other non bunker build is going to have less defense than an bunker build so a Burst Spec is going to kill them even faster. The meta will end up everyone running a burst spec.

No, that’s not how it works at all.

The point is bunker builds should not have the damage to kill anyone if they’re going to be nearly unkillable. Their entire purpose is to hold a point and keep people from claiming it as long as possible, not to actually defeat anyone who arrives (that would be OP, and it is why retaliation was so heavily nerfed for that particular trait – note that they STILL have plenty of other sources of retaliation in the game).

Sustained damage builds are going to have something to counter quickness (i.e. “endure pain” for warriors, “Elixir S” for engineers, “mist form” for elementalists, and so on) and then dish out the pain. Glass cannon builds simply cannot take much damage before going down, whereas sustained damage builds can. The difference is they can actually deal the damage where bunker builds cannot (they’re not supposed to).

Burst builds are simply not viable in the game as it is, because they only counter other burst builds. If everyone where to roll a sustained damage build with at least one “oh snap!” button, these burst builds would be completely nonviable. That’s kind of a problem.

The only reason people roll so many burst builds today is because, well, so many people roll so many burst builds. If the meta changed, these builds would serve no purpose at all. That is a problem.

Get the drift?

Daays.4317:

Heavy Defensive > Well-rounded
Heavy Offensive > Heavy Defense
Well-rounded > Heavy Offense

I like this but from my Exp it don’t work like this my ‘Well-rounded build DESTROY bunker builds the easiest 1v1s for my well rounded guardian build is bunker specs the only bunker i don’t kill is an elly but that’s because they run away (off point ) so i already won because that was my goal to start with =)

Haku.5068:

The issue is that bunkers need to die 1v1.

Really? And who the kitten are you to say who should lose a 1v1?

Because if they don’t have a weakness that can be exploited in a very small timeframe, they are effectively immortal, since by the time these condition builds finally wear them down it doesn’t matter, because the bunkers roaming, burst support has shown up long ago and killed the counter before it could counter the bunker.

5v5 is as much about application of resources as it is builds and what counters what, and the simple fact is that you can’t drop a bunker 1v1 right now before his suport shows up, which means you instead must dedicate 2-3 players to taking down one guy, which leaves you with 2 other guys on your team trying to hold off 2-3 enemy teamplayers, therefore you are outnumbered and will probably lose unless you yourself rolled with a FoTM bunker build.

Which is what is dictating the metagame. Roll with a bunker build because if the other team has one you lose. Roll with a mes because if the other team has one on on Khylo you probably lose since you can’t keep their treb out of action and they can keep yours out of action. Roll with a high dps burst class because if the other team has one and you don’t you’ll take longer to kill their trebs/lords/creatures and risk having to pull too much manpower to kill something than the opposite team, ergo freeing up manpower for them to spend elsewhere.

The trinity is still in the game, it’s just not the trinity people are used to.

Valador.3461:

Haku.5068:

The issue is that bunkers need to die 1v1.

Really? And who the kitten are you to say who should lose a 1v1?

I think the point is that ALL need to die 1v1… he’s simply including bunkers in that balance.
I doubt he is saying a bunker should die in every actual 1v1 fight…

How many people play this game and still think Retaliation returns an amount of the damage dealt? People think Retaliation counters burst…but it will always return the same amount of damage based on the power of the one being hit.

If you hit me for 300, I return 260
If you hit me for 5000, I return 260

Sustained condition damage is the biggest threat to bunker guardians. People seem to have a misconception about “Sustained” though. If you kitten around doing x8 autoattack hits after using all your cooldowns on his defensive cooldowns then yes, you are going to die. You can’t just win because you’re sustained dps, you have to actually know how to pressure and manage your own cooldowns vs theirs.

Example is when Rangers come up to me and blow quickness and a bunch of other cooldowns while stacking 18+bleeds on me in the first 3seconds of a fight. What happens? They end up hitting themselves for 3k because they hit me 10+ times. I have to use one condition removal, and still have all of my defensive abilities left.

Retaliation counters people who just mash buttons/skills/damage without thinking. You counter it by making your skills as effective as possible. Don’t blow condition stacking when they have removes still up. Don’t blow huge burst when they have protection up. Don’t stun -> burst when they have a stunbreak. Hell, if they blow protection, YOU CAN STOP ATTACKING instead of killing yourself doing almost half damage autoattacks. Bunker builds don’t do most of the damage. You do the damage to yourself.

5v5 is as much about application of resources as it is builds and what counters what, and the simple fact is that you can’t drop a bunker 1v1 right now before his suport shows up, which means you instead must dedicate 2-3 players to taking down one guy, which leaves you with 2 other guys on your team trying to hold off 2-3 enemy teamplayers, therefore you are outnumbered and will probably lose unless you yourself rolled with a FoTM bunker build.

Yes it will take a while to kill a bunker. Sorry that a build designed to live takes so long. Their team will probably show up to hold the point, but you still managed to either kill or make him call for backup all by yourself. Normally that would take about 3-4 facerolling dps classes. Once you get the bunker start calling for help 1v1 he is going to be calling a lot earlier for the rest of the game, because he knows that even in a 1v1 with you it isn’t safe. Just the possibility of there being MORE than just you makes him call for help.

Obviously offense needs to be able to somehow overcome defense, because if an offensive build can’t, what kittening hope does a balanced build have?

@Echra

I want you to take a second and review what you’re saying.

Don’t use condition stacking if the have their removals up. Guess what’s wrong with the logic behind this one? It will always be up because there hasn’t been a need to use it.

Same with don’t stun/burst. If you don’t stun, then there is no reason to use a stun breaker.

The only one that makes sense is protection because the player has to decide when to use it before the incoming burst. Not after.

Same with “don’t attack during retal”. The point of the bunker spec is to delay. Having retal makes it so that attacking the guardian either kills you or forces you to stop attacking and heal up, in which case he fulfilled his role. Not attacking allows the guardian to delay, in which case he fulfulled his role.

Your idea of balance is pretty skewed.

milo.6942:

Bunker purpose is to “waste time” not necessarily “win” a 1v1 fight.

Listen to this guy, all the complaints in this thread are missplaced because you are concerning yourselves with who ‘wins’ against who, as if these different roles were duelling eachother.

A glass cannon sacrifices survivability in order to be able to kill things quickly.

A bunker sacrifices damage in order to stay alive as long as possible, and hold a point.

If the bunker’s goal is to stay alive as long as possible, it’s plainly obvious that the counter to that goal is a character who is built to kill things as quickly as possible. Any other conclusion would require some alternative victory condition that didn’t involve killing the bunker so you can cap the point.

The problem the devs are referring to is not the ability of the bunker to stay alive for a long time, or the ability of the cannon to kill things quickly. The problem is that the excessive retaliation on the bunker allows them to outright kill the cannon in a fight, rather than just turtling up for time. The bunker is supposed to have sacrificed damage to be able to turtle for a long time, allowing them to kill cannons while turtling through reflection doesn’t make sense.

Which is why their solution doesn’t touch the ability of the Guardian to stay alive, it just makes it harder for them to kill things while doing it.

Yes it will take a while to kill a bunker. Sorry that a build designed to live takes so long. Their team will probably show up to hold the point, but you still managed to either kill or make him call for backup all by yourself. Normally that would take about 3-4 facerolling dps classes. Once you get the bunker start calling for help 1v1 he is going to be calling a lot earlier for the rest of the game, because he knows that even in a 1v1 with you it isn’t safe. Just the possibility of there being MORE than just you makes him call for help.

Nonsense. They won’t send their team to see off one guy. They’ll send their bursty roamer to assassinate you while you’re engaged with the bunker. Then he’ll go back to roaming. It doesn’t take a whole team effort to kill one sustained damage class poking at a point, and by the time said sustained damage class realises the backup has arrived it’s too late for you to dedicate another man from your team to where their weakpoint is at that moment.

And this only assumes one bunker. Bring 2 and either one can hold off any form of team split long enough for their backup to arrive. You can’t quickly drop one bunker unless you bring almost your entire team, which leaves 3 guys on the enemy team to run around uncapping the point you’ve left undefended and/or support whichever bunker is under attack, prolonging the engagement and at the very least denying you control of that point for long enough to result in the assault becoming a net point-loss anyway.

It makes no sense to assault a bunker unless you have to because it results in a net-loss for your team, and the only way you can feasibly do it right now is to bring utterly overwhelming odds to mitigate the fact that they soak a stupid amount of damage, ergo sacrificing map control elsewhere because, y’know, most of your team is in one place.

People keep comparing the balance in this game to other games and it just doesn’t work like that. This game is a whole new monster with its own rules.

Bunkers in other games are completely different. They usually have high hp, high armor, and passive avoidance and mitigation. The bunkers in GW2 gain survivability through healing, boons, active dodging/blocking, and knockbacks/cc. In this game, burst counters bunker by being able to hit hard and fast before the bunkers can react. But a guardians retaliation is owning burst builds because it is up way too often.

Vandal.8029:

People keep comparing the balance in this game to other games and it just doesn’t work like that. This game is a whole new monster with its own rules.

Bunkers in other games are completely different. They usually have high hp, high armor, and passive avoidance and mitigation. The bunkers in GW2 gain survivability through healing, boons, active dodging/blocking, and knockbacks/cc. In this game, burst counters bunker by being able to hit hard and fast before the bunkers can react. But a guardians retaliation is owning burst builds because it is up way too often.

I’ll concede the inversion of the balance cycle if adjustments are made to solidify the method.

Meaning they need to weaken burst builds against sustained damage builds so that going glass cannon does not out preform every other build type.

Right now, that’s not the going case. If burst can counter bunker, then burst can counter everything right now, because many sustained damage lacks the control and damage reduction function to turn it around on a glass cannon – current standing exception to the rule being Mesmer, due to their ability to trait defensively while gearing offensively. In which case, Mesmer is functioning as intended and a lot of classes need some defensive buffs. (Or more players need to trait defensively.)

Sigh.

Once again, the only reason burst classes kill tank classes that don’t have perma retal is because those tank classes have very little to no offensive pressure.

Burst classes don’t do well against a more well-rounded play style. These classes take the defensive utility and traits in order to survive the burst, while being able to dish out damage. A bunker spec can’t (or shouldn’t, hence the change) dish out enough damage.

If your well-rounded build can’t win vs a heavy offensive play style then you need to rethink your build.

Kimbald.2697:

Since this appears to be a team game, I would like to ask the following:

- apparantly many agree on the fact that a bunker guardian takes 2 to take him down.
For the reason of this not being a 1v1 game I guess.

- so if it’s really a team game, we must assume that guardian has at least 1 helper too.

- so… if those 2 come to kill the guardian, and he has 1 helper.

will the bunker die?

A condition necro can kill a bunker guardian 1v1.
A bunker mesmer can kill a bunker guardian 1v1.

So, yes the bunker will die 1v1.

so the counter to them is beeing countered by them.

counter to them = burst
being countered by them = retal
them = guardians

A condition necro can kill a bunker guardian 1v1.
A bunker mesmer can kill a bunker guardian 1v1.

Can kill. But will he have the time? Before backup arrives and his 1v1 advantage is nullified because it is no longer 1v1? Seeing as you use 1v1 argument when it is instead 2v2 in this and most cases.

when will they create a game where the best cc and stun are not accessable to the classes with the highest burst damage?
when will they make a game where defense trumps offense? and 90% of the playerbase just dosent roll the most overpowered or easy to use damage dealer.

only one game did this and thats the game STILL to this day 15 friggin years later, everyone says was the best pvp game of all time. how can we have not mastered this after all these years??

I honestly don’t see anything wrong with a burst heavy meta. It’s not like anyone is stopping you from speccing burst, just mirror the other team if you’re so upset about how they spec.

Fast paced PVP requires much more skill than slow paced PVP where you’re in no danger of dying. Look at an FPS. It doesn’t take more than a second to kill someone in 99% of the FPS out there, and they’re considered some of the most competitive video games of all time.

Even an RTS like Starcraft is incredibly fast paced. The top players have literally 300+ actions per minute. How can you even hope to approach that skill cap in an MMO when fights are slow and take literally 60+ seconds to get a single kill?

And relying on king of the hill/capture modes is just a cop out. There’s nothing unskilled about being better than your opponent at a deathmatch, especially when you have access to exactly the same classes, skills, and stats as the enemy.

People that cling to “objective” as the only viable playstyle are just trying to cover up for sucking at direct conflict and not having the speed/reaction time/twitch skills to beat an enemy 1v1.

Fantom.9217:

I honestly don’t see anything wrong with a burst heavy meta. It’s not like anyone is stopping you from speccing burst, just mirror the other team if you’re so upset about how they spec.

Fast paced PVP requires much more skill than slow paced PVP where you’re in no danger of dying. Look at an FPS. It doesn’t take more than a second to kill someone in 99% of the FPS out there, and they’re considered some of the most competitive video games of all time.

Even an RTS like Starcraft is incredibly fast paced. The top players have literally 300+ actions per minute. How can you even hope to approach that skill cap in an MMO when fights are slow and take literally 60+ seconds to get a single kill?

And relying on king of the hill/capture modes is just a cop out. There’s nothing unskilled about being better than your opponent at a deathmatch, especially when you have access to exactly the same classes, skills, and stats as the enemy.

People that cling to “objective” as the only viable playstyle are just trying to cover up for sucking at direct conflict and not having the speed/reaction time/twitch skills to beat an enemy 1v1.

Pace is one factor to measure skill. Certainly, being able to react and make the right decisions separates good players from bad, but APM (especially at the 300+ level) is not a good measure of skill, especially considering some players that just spam click unnecessarily. Fight length has no bearing on how much skill is required. Honestly, longer fights in which you need to consistently make the right decisions show more skill than fights that just end on the first mistake made.

Using your RTS example, having burst as the only viable builds is just like having every game be some sort of rush (‘ling/proxy/etc.) being the only viable SC2 strategy. Not allowing for any mid or late game strategies. It wouldn’t be very interesting. Those strategies should have a place, forcing people to be aware and able to counter them, but they should not be the only/best way to win. Just as burst should have a place, but should not be the only way to build.

I am not sure why you think objectives somehow reduce the skill in PVP. You still need to win fights to secure objectives, and generally the team that wins the most fights wins the match. But objectives do allow more strategies for winning and alter the decision making (e.g. use knockback to neutralize a point, instead of to finish someone) when compared to team death match.

I have never fought a bunker gaurdian I couldn’t kill in tpvp as a rnager yea they maybe able to remove conditions and have retaliation but I can apply those same conditions all day long and he can remove them so many times before hes dead. And of course you have those gaurdians who can full heal but as a shortbow/axe-torch ranger running dual spider pets I can stun him long enough after hes removed my conditions to just apply all my conditions again which do over 30k altogether and auto attack him to death everytime. But I’m sure condition necros would be a far better counter to gaurdians since they can turn all boons into conditions and strip boons like crazy.

Guess it got missed.

Tell me a burst build that isnt also a dps build please?

I see ppl arguing wether burst or dps builds should counter bunkers… but im at a loss to think of a burst build that cant dps, and i cant think of any dps builds commonly run that cant burst. The fact is that to make a dps build youve already taken most of what it takes to burst, so the remaining cost of opportunity between burst or survival…

The ONLY exceptions that come to mind are the ranger dot build, which has questionable dps, and my total lack of understanding regarding necro builds.

The more tpvp I run, the more guardian premades I encounter, and most of them being defense spec’d. So my necro can kill them, but it still takes forever, they are a freaking PITA.