Guild Wars 2

As a new GW2 player (some 75 days in), I have dedicated a considerable amount of time during the last 50 days to GW2 sPvP. As a PvP’er with some good level of experience in other games, my goal was to enjoy and gradually learn how to play this game, until I could reach a good feeling about my skill and enjoy some more. I am well aware that I could not achieve these goals in 50 days, and I was planning to dedicate 1 year to the learning process (yup, I was commited). However, since I am almost sure I will soon leave GW2, I decided to share my experience now.

My general thoughts about the game are:
- The pace is too fast: it’s mostly about muscle memory and reflexes, and almost nothing about depth and strategy
- Too many things happen at the same time: absolute insanity in cluster fights, absolutely unplayable for a new player; too much information, too little clarity; almost impossible to learn and improve, because there is no time to gain any awareness on what is happening
- Balance between classes is an absolute aberration

These aspects have probably been worsened by the fact that I have been playing a DPS Ranger, which is probably one of the weakest options atm. I did my best to improve my skill while running into an horrible amount of adversity, and I am finally exhausted from seeing so much nonsense and having so little fun.

In my opinion, there should always be room for diversity, and that should always be the main goal for those responsible for the game’s balance. Some ways to achieve this in PvP are:
» The difference between the best builds/classes and the worst should be measured in less than 10% of power/impact/relevance
» Rock/Paper/Scissors
» Average players with an average quality class/build should still be meaningful in a fight vs a stronger opponent (not pulverized in 2 seconds)
» If any class/build consistently allows a 1 v 2+ of any kind, it must have an equally relevant weakness

From what I have seen, GW2 is seriously lacking in all these aspects.

It seems that the developers have opted to create more stuff instead of improving existing stuff, which has resulted in losing track of what basic balance and common sense should be.

In sum, I would be willing to play a relatively weaker class/build because of my personal preference for it, but not to the point of becoming so horribly handicapped that enjoyment is no longer possible. And yes, that is what happens to a player who tries to learn GW2 sPvP playing a classic offensive ranger. Just sadly horrible.

One question to the Community… As a new player playing a DPS Ranger, I have no time or space to notice stuff like weapon swapping, casting animations, conditions affecting opponents, and whatnot, because I am overwhelmed at all times by the extreme need of staying alive (kiting is my only way of survival, and even that is taken away when thieves are around). So, in your opinion, what is the best class/build that can be used to learn and gain awareness of these aspects of PvP?

Although I am almost sure that I cannot overcome all the bad stuff that I already experienced, recovering the feeling that I may be learning and improving would be the one thing that might make a difference…

Thanks in advance for your participation!

TL:DR op needs to git gud

1) The game has class balance issues, that’s true. Specializations are more powerfull than the core classes and there’s also problems of balance between different classes and a huge lack of viable build diversity at high level play.

2) The game isn’t too fast. Isn’t too fill of effects, actions or fx. The basic skills it requires has a mid to low ceiling and can be -to some extent- fastly adquired playing with good players while they teach you. The most hard thing is to learn which skills perform each class, due the basic counters to that skills (block, evade, stunbreaks, stability, cleansing…) are always pretty much the same.

3) If you were using a Ranger you should try to play the Druid specialization as a “bunker” iteration:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Bunker_Druid

Due is really tanky and has a clear role and simple mechanics you should have a lot of room to learn which works and which not.

If you want to play a more offensive role then try Daredevil or Herald, but their main mechanics are a bit trickier.

I’ll address some of your points:

• The pace is too fast: it’s mostly about muscle memory and reflexes, and almost nothing about depth and strategy*

Yes reflexes matter as they should, but the strategy comes from using your skills from what you perceive to be the optimal time. Too many players throw the baby out with the bathwater leaving themselves vulnerable. What is a noob you may wonder, a noob is someone who doesn’t grasp the core elements of his class and doesn’t fully explore the class’s concept.

• Too many things happen at the same time: absolute insanity in cluster fights, absolutely unplayable for a new player; too much information, too little clarity; almost impossible to learn and improve, because there is no time to gain any awareness on what is happening.*

This is another dimension of skill, to boil the seeming chaos of the fight into its most basic parts! Why does Abjured/Astral and other top teams consistently win their games? Because they grasp the battle’s essence and have a firm grasp of the multitude of complex dynamics that can and have occurred. It is up to you the player to make things clear! Look at the chaos and be a dynamic force that tips the advantage in your team’s favor!

• Balance between classes is an absolute aberration*

I’ll have to agree here, Elementalist can do decent damage while cleansing, aurasharing, healing, and has an answer for pretty much everything. Engineer is also a top tier class. Thief and Warrior on the other hand lack such tools, but still bring useful functions to the table.

As to your question the Metabattle Tempest build but with Mender’s in place of Cleric’s, Sigil of Transference, Eye of the Storm in place of Feel the Burn, and Harmonious Conduit in place of Invigorating Torrents. Mender’s will give your air and fire overloads better zoning potential (to discourage enemies being in those spots) and cleaving rezzers while Harmonious Conduit makes your overload successes more secure.

This is how new players see the game as it is an accurate comparison to more balanced pvp centered games.

Jake.5279:

TL:DR op needs to git gud

And this is the problem. The game needs new players to keep going. Telling everyone this is going to just make them think the PvP players in GW2 are an unfriendly bunch. No game survives with no new blood. The OP has points. PvP needs to be attractive to new players. If GW2 is to become the E-Sport ANet wants it to be. They need to look at PvP player retention. And not keep the people who think they are being funny by telling people to “git gud”.

Thank you for the constructive answers and the understanding…

At this point, as a player, I honestly see no way I can overcome the issues I described in the opening post. I think your suggestions are spot on in terms of the classes that might allow me to create a viable way to play sPvP, but my level of mistrust towards the game is probably too high already.

Yesterday I played a few matches, Ranked and Unranked, trying, as always, to make the best of the one class/build I can currently play. After the usual majority of frustrating matches and very few fun moments, the two last ones where specially devastating:
» While fighting a hugely superior team (match was clearly lost), I decided to engage in a 1v1 fight with an engineer, seeing it as a good opportunity to gain experience. Did my best to offbalance him, using my pets, ranged attacks, and obstacles in the environment. Kept my concentration to detect his reflection mode, and swooped in with GS for the occasional surprise mini burst. Even though it felt like I was fighting a player with 2 health pools and insane amounts of defensive options, I progressively gained the upperhand, and eventually downed him. I went in to finish the fight, got interrupted, and before I could do it a 2nd time, the player was already up, with a full health pool. I honestly have no idea if cheating was involved, but if it was not, the existence any mechanics that would allow such a thing is an absolute aberration.
» In the last game, again fighting a hugely superior Team with the match already lost, I again went to fight an engineer. This time his defensive ability was even higher, I could barely scratch his health pool, and when another team mate arrived for a 2v1, we could barely take him down to 50% health. While some incompetence from our part may have well been involved, the amount of sheer options at the engi’s disposal is, in itself, an utter disrespect (in terms of imbalance) for most other classes.

From my perspective, the game is clearly broken. At this point I am a very unhappy costumer and player. Am already trying out 2 Moba’s as an alternative, and following the news on Camelot Unchained and Crowfall. I don’t know if any of these will give me a more fun character to play with (yup, the mechanics of Power Ranger in GW2 by itself are great fun for my taste), but I am certain they do/will provide basic sanity in terms of PvP balance and playability. And, in all honesty, these will feel blissful things to have after what I have mostly been witnessing here.

“I went in to finish the fight, got interrupted” —
In all honest, you should at least learn a bit about safe-stomping. You could just hide behind your pet for stomp or dodge the interrupt.
There’s a lot of good and simple guides about pvp basics, try to read and learn from them.

I relate to the op comments looking back at when i started in pvp, it does seem at first a cluster shumk of button spamming, and really with the poor random party system it still is as new players get bunched with experienced, so the team work that is required is not present. And it is this team work that is heavily weighted to individual skill. In essence you need to understand every class, and how each of your skills adds to others, and how each skill of another effect you. successful teams work together, unfortunately it only takes one player in a random team to try and be a hero, and due to the weighted nature of how skills work in effecting team mates, this can loose you the match.

the game will never have balance or build diversity so long as there is a metabattle site available and elites spec. the site pulls ppl into playing 1 way and eliminates build diversity. remember we are dealing with sheepl and not ppl. as far as the elite specializations go, i like to see them completely nerfed into the ground, but that wont happen. anet values money over the quality of the game.

My advice to you is to move on to other games before becoming too emotionally invested. There are a ton of player suggestions to make other builds better that go relatively ignored. They clearly want you to buy the game and refuse to make core builds more viable. This game was a sinking ship the moment HoT came out.

i agree, with HoT came the downfall of Gw2

This is all correct.

And in my experience, anyone disagreeing with that is basically exploiting the problems at the expense of the game being actually fun.

The problem is, because of the nature of how builds are built and how balance is adressed, and the lack of ‘dynamic balance’ meassures that kick in on the fly preventing anything from getting extreme, extremes are always around and abused until removed. And then the exploiters merely switch to the next exploitable gimmick.

It’s a futile game of whackamole that would be easily fixed by covering all holes with tape instead pointlessly mashing 2-3 holes every 2-3 months.

the game will never have balance or build diversity so long as there is a metabattle site available and elites spec. the site pulls ppl into playing 1 way and eliminates build diversity. remember we are dealing with sheepl and not ppl. as far as the elite specializations go, i like to see them completely nerfed into the ground, but that wont happen. anet values money over the quality of the game.

The metabattle site is not a problem, it is a symptom. The problem is the poor balance state that makes metabattle right. If Metabattle were the issue, then that would mean tons of other builds would be viable, and people just wouldn’t be using them. In that case, clever players could be playing these equally viable builds and crushing “meta build” players because those players would be too used to fighting the metas and not know the right tactics to handle these oddball builds.

Instead, the fact remains that meta builds are typically much stronger than non-meta, and while you can tweak them slightly and still do fine, many build set-ups and even entire classes are completely noncompetitive. That is what needs to change, not that there is an awareness of which builds are better than others, but that some build ARE better than others.

Ohoni.6057:

the game will never have balance or build diversity so long as there is a metabattle site available and elites spec. the site pulls ppl into playing 1 way and eliminates build diversity. remember we are dealing with sheepl and not ppl. as far as the elite specializations go, i like to see them completely nerfed into the ground, but that wont happen. anet values money over the quality of the game.

The metabattle site is not a problem, it is a symptom. The problem is the poor balance state that makes metabattle right. If Metabattle were the issue, then that would mean tons of other builds would be viable, and people just wouldn’t be using them. In that case, clever players could be playing these equally viable builds and crushing “meta build” players because those players would be too used to fighting the metas and not know the right tactics to handle these oddball builds.

Instead, the fact remains that meta builds are typically much stronger than non-meta, and while you can tweak them slightly and still do fine, many build set-ups and even entire classes are completely noncompetitive. That is what needs to change, not that there is an awareness of which builds are better than others, but that some build ARE better than others.

Metabattle builds come from the research of pro-players. They may be flawed human beings but as far as the game goes they’re less flawed than the rest of us. Still, there could be excellent, not so obvious builds they’re overlooking. Even under Power Shiro I noticed the lack of Eagle Runes under the Strength Rune alternatives! While no one is disputing that Strength Runes are great Eagle Runes build up invaluable bonus damage through crit, ferocity, and doing more damage to an opponent under 50% health. Why no Infiltration Runes for warrior? Is it because they’d be too engrossed in attacking they’d likely just undo the stealth proc anyway? What’s wrong with critical strikes for thief or Harmonious Conduit and Mender’s for elementalist? If Viper’s ele with Balthazaar Runes was so bad then how did I manage to stay in the game long enough for a top two score during the off season with top condition damage done (I know score doesn’t really mean anything but in this context it implies I stayed in the game long enough) traiting fire, water (for aurashare and cleansing chill and burning on dodges like my main tempest build) and tempest? With Lightning Flash and Eye of the Storm (carried over from my main build, which is the metabattle build with Mender’s, Harmonious Conduit, Sigils of Transference and Rage to heal and get overloads off faster, and the water dodge trait) I have some good stunbreak and disengage.

To OP:
Spot on, your post sums up really nicely what GW2 PvP is atm. Nothing to add, nothing to criticize.

My 2 cents

1-. I dont think this game is actually about muscle memory at all. I mean, comboing stealth with dp, bursting with fresh air and balsting your turret heal are the most complex combos you will face. Everything else is about positioning, focus and cd manage…
2-. Teamfights are a big mess since HoT compared to pre-expansion, but even back in the day there was no new player that could tell what was going on on a teamfight. You need to be a really experienced player in order to focus on whats happening at all moment between the 6+ players on the screen while reacting and performing at your best.
3-. If you mean build diversity yes, if you mean class balance then gw2 is actually in a pretty balanced state except for guards

Any tankier build tends to be more forgiving, and so better in order to learn the pace of the game

Still, there could be excellent, not so obvious builds they’re overlooking.

Sure, but you’re still free to try those builds if you like. And if they are better than the official meta builds, then you will start crushing face. I don’t run a meta build myself. I run a Scepter/Focus DH, it’s pretty far from meta, although it is informed by how the meta builds do work.

But again, the meta builds work because they tend to make the most of the current balance scenario. The reason why non-metas builds typically do worse is not because of the metabuild site, it’s because the game balance makes certain builds significantly better than others.