Guild Wars 2

Arenanet, both naito and Leki have made posts atm against this, and now I will. Soon, the rest of my team will and after that the team Onibawan will do it aswell and we’ll make sure more of the same circuit comes in.

Who are these people someone may ask, they’re the top players, all of us.

We are the players that spend 6 hours minimum every day on this so please trust us on this one when we are going to tell you to NOT listen to the casual core and keep this as a part of the game.

It enhances the amount of plays you can do in the game, requires you to be fast and aware and has a fitting punishment if you screw up. All top teams have players with multiple weapons ready, in case they need to change for what’s coming up and also to do many trick plays (swap to torch as a mesmer, do prestige, swap back to pistol and get stealth engage, necro on windows kyhlo? swap to focus and try to pull him down. Someone about to take your point? Quickly swap to greatsword, summon berseker and swap back quickly and you’ll cripple him)

This is a DAMN good thing to have in a game and I cant believe why you could possibly want to dumb your game down any more. This is not something that would hurt you in esports and for the casual players it wont make a damn change since you’re only locking it in tournaments.

PLEASE, reconsider your choice. I don’t want to not be able to stack might/stealth/swiftness anymore which is a good call to prepare a teamfight with only because I’m going to be permanently on the kitten focus in order to have some movement speed. I don’t want guardians to be several times slower because they cant swap to leap finishers, I don’t want all the cool fast paced plays you can do with weapon swapping gone for no other reason that rank 15 players find it bothersome to open their inventory.

Please, arenanet, listen to the pros. Please.

I could kinda accept with no weapons swapping during the match but why would prevent the utilities swap. There are only 3 main utility skills (I am not counting elite). So the skill cap is not that great. Being able to choose the right skill for the moment had lead players to utilize our professions better

There are wishes to increase the number of utilities from my side if Anet is going to make these changes permanent

No more swapping to scorpion wire on the run to clutch pull an enemy stomping a teammate

No more swapping to flash to teleport body block a kill shot

No more swapping to ice bow to quickly down the treb, instead now enemies can respawn and run back after tough 1v1s before the treb dies

No more getting additional condition cleanse because you are fighting a caltrops thief with 30 second duration bleeds

Slower mobility in the long run means less engagements, and more snowball effect.

But what do I know about competitive pvp and what adds and diminishes skill. I guess i’m not considering the casuals who have just as much reason to be here as myself. This is just frustrating, nothing people won’t be able to get over, but frustrating. Some people spent loads of time thinking of how to #nextlevel

Because changing your utility to a res ability is amazing skill. Right.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This was supposed to go out with the Wintersday patch, but part of it went out a little early when the patch was delayed.

It is intended that you can’t swap to new weapons, skills and traits during tournament matches.

nice to see your making this game require even LESS skill. please dont make it any worse.. these updates are shocking… you buffed pointless things? underwater skills?

Personally a big problem of mine was rez signets, and they didnt get touched…
if anything, you made it easier for these bunker teams to rez, since you left the signets the way they are, and its easier to rez due to 85% health.

another terrible meta for another month.. roll on january…

EDIT: if you didnt like the changing utilities.. change that.. not the weapon/amulet switching.. thats such a stupid change lol

Infinitus.3712:

MindlessRuff.1948:

aydenunited.5729:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Shukran.4851:

what about “learn to play”?
what about “theorycraft more and test more before starting a tourney”?

how can it be making the game more simple? forcing people to use their brain is so difficult?

Actually it is taking the thinking OUT of the game, I highly enjoy taking the right tools for the situation, why not lock runes, utilities, and trait selection when you load into the map too? Just make a build and be hard countered the whole game while being able to do nothing about it.

I disagree. It forces less thought, more fast clicking, because you can take EVERY tool into the game you need, rather than having to choose.

Exactly, instead of having all your tools available to your class, you are now severely limited, creating less diversity, which is the opposite of what Arena net said they want.

The diversity is there, it’s just that it means that you have to actually think about what you want to bring to the team, which in turn shows skill. Also do you think that the bunker or glass cannon meta as it is at the moment more diverse? I don’t think so if anything this should make people actually think about there build before entering a match.

I for one am please to see this change and it is good to see anet take a set in the right direction. Little by little we may actually see a well rounded game.

I guess they did this to eliminate things such as switching to rez signet while going to save a team mate, but I still don’ t like it, sure you have to think before the game, but i do that ALL the time, this just takes the thinking out during the game, and trying to find the new “OP” build which counters the majority of the builds in the meta. Sure you can say you now have to work better to have a more diverse team comp, but it makes individuals much weaker overall since it much easier to hard counter them.

Oblivion.8307:

Because changing your utility to a res ability is amazing skill. Right.

If you choose to ress someone by switching your utility’s skill doesn’t it means that now you are stuck with only two utilities while the third one is on 3 min cool-down..

MindlessRuff.1948:

Infinitus.3712:

MindlessRuff.1948:

aydenunited.5729:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Shukran.4851:

what about “learn to play”?
what about “theorycraft more and test more before starting a tourney”?

how can it be making the game more simple? forcing people to use their brain is so difficult?

Actually it is taking the thinking OUT of the game, I highly enjoy taking the right tools for the situation, why not lock runes, utilities, and trait selection when you load into the map too? Just make a build and be hard countered the whole game while being able to do nothing about it.

I disagree. It forces less thought, more fast clicking, because you can take EVERY tool into the game you need, rather than having to choose.

Exactly, instead of having all your tools available to your class, you are now severely limited, creating less diversity, which is the opposite of what Arena net said they want.

The diversity is there, it’s just that it means that you have to actually think about what you want to bring to the team, which in turn shows skill. Also do you think that the bunker or glass cannon meta as it is at the moment more diverse? I don’t think so if anything this should make people actually think about there build before entering a match.

I for one am please to see this change and it is good to see anet take a set in the right direction. Little by little we may actually see a well rounded game.

I guess they did this to eliminate things such as switching to rez signet while going to save a team mate, but I still don’ t like it, sure you have to think before the game, but i do that ALL the time, this just takes the thinking out during the game, and trying to find the new “OP” build which counters the majority of the builds in the meta. Sure you can say you now have to work better to have a more diverse team comp, but it makes individuals much weaker overall since it much easier to hard counter them.

I don’t get why people are saying this, the enemy has to deal with the same issue. What’s to say you don’t hard counter them just as easily and they can’t do much to overcome that? I thought that was the point of most tPvP… team comps that adjust to overcome weakness.

And there are far fewer “counter comps” to balanced builds, which I’ve been working on with a few professions since BETA. They will become even more viable now that you can’t simply stack stats and swap something when you find out you’ve stacked the wrong stats.

@anet This game individual skill cap is already SO low, why lower it even more?

Big props for this… and a bigger Lol at the win button cries for those that can’t play the abilities their spec provides

#top 20 EU

Happy holiday Arena Net u gave us puzzles and other important things i love u !

I 100% Agreed with Oni, i still dont get why they made this change. It wasn’t requested by the players no one even complaint about it. And if they did im sure it was mostly those casual players and hotjoins farmers you haven’t seen any top team cry about stuff like this. I hope you guys fix this cuz it wont help the game in the long run..

And for the love of god, will all you “pros” stop already with the “takes no skill” comments. It’s a crutch word… skill.

It’s the new gaming culture fad to blame anything that beats you as requiring no skill, to make yourself feel better, and this change is across the board, so it’s balanced… it affects everyone. Skill doesn’t come into play, as the majority of higher level players that didn’t gear swap or utility swap didn’t do it because of lack of skill, they didn’t do it because it was annoying to do. I was doing it on my Guardian forever before I finally said “f this, I’m just making a build that uses staff anyway”.

Blaming this change on casuals is equally ignorant.

lol @ you guys crying at this change. Maybe instead of countering a team you will actually have to think about your team comp and all their utilities instead of abusing team counter.

soul.5368:

Big props for this… and a bigger Lol at the win button cries for those that can’t play the abilities their spec provides

#top 20 EU

#eu = pubstomping qp treadmill

Now just make some weapons useful for other things than some speed after having ressed, else I cant see them anywhere else then in our pvp lockers.
But really, weapon swapping isnt really the issue, the issue is people changing characters completely between games giving us same kind of setups on all maps… not interesting gameplay at all… and I dont think that got fixed in this patch right? (want to be corrected as being wrong here)

Please give me a bit more cry’ing couse im loving this thing so much!

GJ A-net!

The people who are opposed to this change just refuse to actually consider how this will affect things, and how that relates to the structure of the game and meta. Instead, they see that it will directly affect how they play, and get upset because they’re forced to change. They often refuse to acknowledge that these things affect every team, and not just their own.

The reality is this will force players to actually decide upon the value of certain skills. Costs for taking certain weapons or skills are actually reflected now because if you take something, you’re stuck with it.

But really people, stop kidding yourself. Taking 3+ weapons doesn’t require “skill.” You’re not a better player because you can open your inventory and change weapons on the fly. That’s just mindless gimmick play, not some sort of vast display of “epic skillz.”

I wouldn’t mind players being able to make adjustments while in their spawn area. There’s a legitimate argument to be made there, that a player who has died can change his setup before heading back out. But swapping out weapons for the mobility then never actually using them is just a bad gimmick, and an example of unskilled play.

I feel like you should be able to swap utilities while out of combat since you can’t swap to another one unless it’s of cooldown, unlike a weapon where you can swap in make use of an ability and then swap to another weapon and have no abilities on cooldown. I think you should still be able to swap weapons while in the base area as well.

I don’t think swapping your weapon to another one to use a swiftness ability and swap back is “skill” in any form and it makes it so that many weapons which actually have swiftness are totally trash because you can get a huge amount of value from the weapon by just swapping to it while out of combat and using the swiftness.

OP Hman.5490:

I 100% Agreed with Oni, i still dont get why they made this change. It wasn’t requested by the players no one even complaint about it. And if they did im sure it was mostly those casual players and hotjoins farmers you haven’t seen any top team cry about stuff like this. I hope you guys fix this cuz it wont help the game in the long run..

Actually this change alone will help the game heaps as now people actually have to think about what utilities to bring to offer your team support instead of “Oh dont worry guys ill just equip this and this during the game and we are fine” or “Dont worry guys let me changes classes to counter their whole team”

Countering is not skill.

Not a good move from a-net, this just prevents a higher skill cap and makes the game more boring. Without switching weapons and utilities you stuck playing one build and if someone counters it, there’s nothing you can do about during the game but take it. Feel like this game is just gonna turn into a rock-paper-scissors game where best comp wins and skill is not that important.

Zodian.6597:

soul.5368:

Big props for this… and a bigger Lol at the win button cries for those that can’t play the abilities their spec provides

#top 20 EU

#eu = pubstomping qp treadmill

I actually played on #na for a while and #eu has the better teams and better PvP environment and players overall

aydenunited.5729:

And for the love of god, will all you “pros” stop already with the “takes no skill” comments. It’s a crutch word… skill.

It’s the new gaming culture fad to blame anything that beats you as requiring no skill, to make yourself feel better, and this change is across the board, so it’s balanced… it affects everyone. Skill doesn’t come into play, as the majority of higher level players that didn’t gear swap or utility swap didn’t do it because of lack of skill, they didn’t do it because it was annoying to do. I was doing it on my Guardian forever before I finally said “f this, I’m just making a build that uses staff anyway”.

Blaming this change on casuals is equally ignorant.

It is balanced across the board sure, taking a huge part out of the game that was there since beta away from everyone. Also you say it was annoying to do, how does that even matter? It is a trick to learn to improve your play of course if you aren’ t used to it you won’ t like doing it but you don’ t remove key parts of a game to reduce annoyances.

So I guess character swap between games are still allowed then?

LegendaryLukeee.1462:

Not a good move from a-net, this just prevents a higher skill cap and makes the game more boring. Without switching weapons and utilities you stuck playing one build and if someone counters it, there’s nothing you can do about during the game but take it. Feel like this game is just gonna turn into a rock-paper-scissors game where best comp wins and skill is not that important.

The skill cap is even higher now, since now you actually need to talk with your teammates to figure out how their builds will overlap with yours and ultimately cover the holes your personal build has.

And that’s good.

LegendaryLukeee.1462:

Not a good move from a-net, this just prevents a higher skill cap and makes the game more boring. Without switching weapons and utilities you stuck playing one build and if someone counters it, there’s nothing you can do about during the game but take it. Feel like this game is just gonna turn into a rock-paper-scissors game where best comp wins and skill is not that important.

Are you stupid? Weapon and utility swapping mid game is what promotes a rock paper scissors game. Now what we need to do is lock team comps and were set. No more class swapping mid game.

That’s a pretty big change, people often use weapon swap from inventory to get swiftness etc between fights / while respawning.

Utility swapping for clutch situations was also there, but I guess it makes sense to do this for one main reason linked to e-sports:

It creates a “pre-game meta” where both teams have to choose what they are running with and it’s set in stone after that.

That’s something that viewers and players can “hook” onto, and creates a lot more “how are they going to deal with this with what they have” situations and anticipation.

Seether.7285:

I feel like you should be able to swap utilities while out of combat since you can’t swap to another one unless it’s of cooldown, unlike a weapon where you can swap in make use of an ability and then swap to another weapon and have no abilities on cooldown. I think you should still be able to swap weapons while in the base area as well.

I don’t think swapping your weapon to another one to use a swiftness ability and swap back is “skill” in any form and it makes it so that many weapons which actually have swiftness are totally trash because you can get a huge amount of value from the weapon by just swapping to it while out of combat and using the swiftness.

I think the right compromise would be to allow switches in the spawn area.

However, I think Anet’s reasoning here is to bring the game a little bit back to the style of GW1. Once you take a set of skills, you’re stuck with it. Since weapons are tied to skills, that means weapon swaps must be reined in as well.

xiv.7136:

That’s a pretty big change, people often use weapon swap from inventory to get swiftness etc between fights / while respawning.

Yes and now people will actually have to talk to their team about this stuff, instead of everyone having a form of swiftness.

MindlessRuff.1948:

aydenunited.5729:

And for the love of god, will all you “pros” stop already with the “takes no skill” comments. It’s a crutch word… skill.

It’s the new gaming culture fad to blame anything that beats you as requiring no skill, to make yourself feel better, and this change is across the board, so it’s balanced… it affects everyone. Skill doesn’t come into play, as the majority of higher level players that didn’t gear swap or utility swap didn’t do it because of lack of skill, they didn’t do it because it was annoying to do. I was doing it on my Guardian forever before I finally said “f this, I’m just making a build that uses staff anyway”.

Blaming this change on casuals is equally ignorant.

It is balanced across the board sure, taking a huge part out of the game that was there since beta away from everyone. Also you say it was annoying to do, how does that even matter? It is a trick to learn to improve your play of course if you aren’ t used to it you won’ t like doing it but you don’ t remove key parts of a game to reduce annoyances.

I think what it does is fix a broken mechanic that was never meant to be in the game to begin with. You can blame Anet for being slow to fix this and you’d be right, but it seemed pretty obvious to me in the manner you had to switch gear that it wasn’t intended as a game mechanic from the start and was going to be fixed at some point.

Quick question to clarify, since I’m downloading the patch right now, are you able to swap armour sets during a tPvP game? They made no mention of this in the patch notes but I would assume it would be like this so you couldn’t abuse the 6 slot perks of rune sets in different ways (I never used this but was just wondering).

Specter.9238:

LegendaryLukeee.1462:

Not a good move from a-net, this just prevents a higher skill cap and makes the game more boring. Without switching weapons and utilities you stuck playing one build and if someone counters it, there’s nothing you can do about during the game but take it. Feel like this game is just gonna turn into a rock-paper-scissors game where best comp wins and skill is not that important.

The skill cap is even higher now, since now you actually need to talk with your teammates to figure out how their builds will overlap with yours and ultimately cover the holes your personal build has.

And that’s good.

That’s a huge thing that’s coming out of this that frankly hasn’t existed up to this point. It seems for the most part players had a “role” on the team, but then played matches as individuals. This will force synergy upon players. Teams that don’t coordinate before hand are going to have either overlaps in skills (leaving them at a disadvantage) or gaps in abilities (leaving them greatly at a disadvantage). This should actually increase the performance gap between the top teams and everybody else.

The guys that disagree with this change are giving no arguments to defend the pre-patch situation. The only thing iv’e read is " it was not demanded" (so what?) or “now its needed less skill” (seriously? swapping weapons is skill?)

I supose the game was designed to not have everithing in ur character. The last weeks eles with a bunker build swapped weapons to be roamers, then swapped amulet to be dps, and then went back to original stats, its that fair or balanced?

I agreee that changing utilities or traits demands some skill to know what u’r facing, but again, if u can have it all, how’s this game different to others?

Please more arguments deffending ur points and less " u have no idea" or “im pro, ur casual, im right ur not”.

Use ur brain to ague please.

PD: sorry for my bad english, and if someone was offended it wasn’t my intention.

Lmao I don’t understand why some of you are so angry about this change, just because you can’t switch your utility and wpn to fit in a certain situation does not mean this will destroy any competitive game-play.

This just means that you are stuck with what you chose to use in the first place and use what you were dealt with.. Personally I think being able to switch utilities multiple times throughout a game is kitten and bad design, imo this further encourages teams to develop diverse builds with a purpose.

I think people seem to forget that these changes affect the other team just as much as it affects themselves.

If anything I think it hurts the casual player the most, not the teams with the highest communication. We’re in for more emphasis on build wars.
Teams will make it out fine from this, but individuals are going to feel pain when we can’t exactly cover our weaknesses to the same extent. At the same time at a learning level, it’s not like you can just adapt to getting smashed anymore.

As a Guardian if you didnt run a staff and greatsword you had to have them in your inventory for the speed bonus on switch now without them you are beyond slower then any class and extremely useless for anything unless you have a teammate giving you swiftness.

Powerr.3649:

No more swapping to scorpion wire on the run to clutch pull an enemy stomping a teammate

No more swapping to flash to teleport body block a kill shot

No more swapping to ice bow to quickly down the treb, instead now enemies can respawn and run back after tough 1v1s before the treb dies

No more getting additional condition cleanse because you are fighting a caltrops thief with 30 second duration bleeds

Slower mobility in the long run means less engagements, and more snowball effect.

But what do I know about competitive pvp and what adds and diminishes skill. I guess i’m not considering the casuals who have just as much reason to be here as myself. This is just frustrating, nothing people won’t be able to get over, but frustrating. Some people spent loads of time thinking of how to #nextlevel

You can still do all that stuff, you just can’t do all of it in one build. This is about build diversity. It’s hard to get people to play a variety of builds when you can cherry pick the best elements from any build and use them all at once.

What some people don’t understand is that we don’t complain because we think this will nerf us, it obviously wont. All the dominant teams will remain dominant for the simple reason that they’re playing better. We are complaining because we feel that this reduces the amount of plays you can do in the game. It reduces the complexity. People say ‘’you have to think about your build’’
No, I don’t. I’ll swap the nullfield to illusion of life and I’ll swap my pistol to focus. There is nothing deep about it.

I have now been talking to other players, thinking this whole through and even though I can see the arguments why Anet wants to change it and despite the fact that i am just a kittening lazy player I tend to dislike the change very much. Swapping weapons and utilities to adapt to a certain situation/layout of a point was just a THE trademark of a good player. The amount of builds that are viable is quite small now and this change will only narrow the amount of utilities and weapons being used now. As a Mesmer it a real no-brainer now.
P.S. Writing this lines I come to the conclusion that basically only some of the classes are really affected by this change. It really seems like a backdoor nerf to classes that switched a lot utilities and weapons. Just like lowering downstate hp opened the door to the current insta rezz meta. Everything looking innocent, until you start thinking it through. Is this how Arena Net thinks about transparency?

Oni.5429:

What some people don’t understand is that we don’t complain because we think this will nerf us, it obviously wont. All the dominant teams will remain dominant for the simple reason that they’re playing better. We are complaining because we feel that this reduces the amount of plays you can do in the game. It reduces the complexity. People say ‘’you have to think about your build’’
No, I don’t. I’ll swap the nullfield to illusion of life and I’ll swap my pistol to focus. There is nothing deep about it.

In fact, this buffs us. When we are winning a team not as good as us, they won’t be able to change the match and lose inevitably.
This also buffs the imbalacing of the game: when there’s something overpowered (like a new unknown build), you won’t be able to counter it.
This makes the game MUCH MORE static and boring:
-Less global mobility
-Less variety of builds and situations. For example, now it’ll be weird to see a guardian with a hammer trying to decap a point in 1v1 (or even hammer dueling at kylho)
-Less usage of underpowered weapons. Who is gonna use Warrior’s Warhorn skills or Guardian’s Staff skills? NO ONE.
Forbidding people to change their amulets/runes/sigils/characters is fine, but skills and weapons? The old system was great, now it’s gonna be a pathetic static match.

I hope you guys reconsider this, because imho it’s not the way to go. I’m trying to give positive feedback but it’s hard because I can’t understand this change at all.
As you can expect, we DO want the game to be very successful. This is similar to a symbiosis:
-You guys earn money because the game gets more a more famous and played
-We earn money by playing tournaments
I also want the casuals to be as happy as “pros” because every game needs a huge amount casuals to be successful but this change doesn’t benefit anyone, only makes things worse.

Tyler, I want to THANK YOU and the pvp team for implementing this feature. This was the right thing to do and will lead to much more balanced play in the long run. Another user commented that in WoW arenas you do not see the other team until the start of the match. While this does prevent people from swapping classes mid tourney, it removes the ability of a team to strategize about the match in the beginning. I would like to see the requirement to keep the same character through the tourney and I see the only way to do that being locking characters at registration. You should be able to switch things up prior to match start, but keep things locked like the new change. Again, THANK YOU.

I am an Elementalist and i approve this change! =)

On a serious note:
First of all, what makes all of you “top players” think that your say has more value than others? Most of you measure their “proness” with the amount of QP’s on a forum post which you guys, and be honest, “grind out”!
Without matchmaking and a proper ranklist, QP’s are just a poor indicator for real skill and being on “top”…i am tired of it!
Yes, it still tells that you and your team are capable of getting a tournament rank that rewards QP’s, but please…the game is still in it’s baby shoes, so stop embarrassing yourself claiming to be top EU and so on, it’s really a joke.

I am also tired of the negative atmosphere within the community lately, all i see is whine and blame, less and less respect between people and also towards Anet. You don’t realize that you are destroying the very base of what you might actually want to protect, the community and the attraction to the game for new players, so you can shine in a populated PvP environment!

I am also dissapointed that the tools for being an esport aren’t there already, but i am also mature enough to understand that things don’t happen overnight.
It was us, the community itself, who totally hyped the game to be an esport title right from the get go.
Now, it’s also a big part of the community that is working against the devs, creating a huge influx of negativity in forums, fueled by the very dissapointment that things don’t fit their own hyped illusion. If you don’t like it, just quit and come back when it fits your desires, easy!

You complain about a stall meta, you complain about bugs and exploits, but isn’t it exactly you, the “top x” players who love to use what makes you win more easy? QQ blockbug, let’s run 2 or more guardians, QQ gate porting…, but everyone can, so everyone does, soo let’s do it, we want to be “top x”!
Don’t take it personal, i am just speaking by my experience without calling names, but i think you get my point.

Now in fact we are restricted to our pre chosen wpn sets/traits/amulets/utilities and again all i can see is a massive whine from self claimed “pro’s” that, obviously knew best how to use it to their own advantage. It takes skill to drag your mouse and double click, seriously?!

This change doesn’t only encourage more precise build crafting, it also encourages more deep teamplay and carefull profession choices, while helping new players to get into the game a little bit easier. I welcome it and i think it’s a step in the right direction!

cheers.

Yea, it did add some skill to the gameplay but it was annoying and stupid to play. Also it made rezz-sigils completely overpowered.

EDIT: Also there is no way to rate a team atm, so there are no pros in the game. Playing 6 hours a day makes nobody a pro.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This was supposed to go out with the Wintersday patch, but part of it went out a little early when the patch was delayed.

It is intended that you can’t swap to new weapons, skills and traits during tournament matches.

Oh boy. ‘Now’ you guys implement this into the game…

Be ready for pubs who doesn’t want to contribute to help develop your meta game to rage.

You now have to evaluate if it is worth it to run things for the utility vs build synergy. This is a good change, as before you could have your cake and eat it too; your guardian bunker may not make good use of the staff, except for moving to a new point but gave up nothing for that option. Now you’ll have to make a hard tactical choice in sending players without certain mobility options as well as actually run balanced teams. Its like side-decking in MTG, you can’t do it during the game, but you can do it before. Make some inferences, plan accordingly, and work with it. That is far more skill than keeping your inventory open to swap weapons around.

thank god this was fixed. It was just stupid to allow any skill/trait/class changes mid change. thank kitten

No utilities/elite swap is TOO harsh imo.Weapons and gear is fine i guess..
Is there a chance you revisit this change ??

This is the only part of the patch that I like and it’s going to be great for the game.

TEARS.

I need to get something straightened out for my own sanity:

It seems like a major complaint on Page 1 was that the limitation on utility/weapon/trait swapping mid-match could potentially result in being hard-countered. However, when this swapping was allowed, wasn’t the whole purpose of swapping to turn the “counter” back onto the opposing force?

If a team can’t knowingly go into a match with the idea that they’ll go with a build that is designed to hard counter but can be hard countered and switch if it fails, won’t they want to try for a better middle ground at the risk of just build-order losing blindly?

Won’t pre-match team comp analysis provide a level of planning to the game, almost along the lines of the pick phase of a MOBA like DotA? Of course it won’t be that in-depth, but it’s SOMEthing, isn’t it?

Also, I think it’s a universal truth that, if your game encourages having a menu open while playing (Inventory, Skill list, etc.), then your game needs to have a system overhauled.

And where’s the risk/reward in choosing a well-designed build when you can swap into whatever utility you want while you’re running around OOC? By not selecting Scorpion Wire, you sacrifice the ability to pull someone who is stomping a teammate away to gain something else. Isn’t that a decision you’re supposed to make when synergizing a team? I would think that the mechanic that encourages clicking through menus would be slandered as “annoying” instead of praised as “skill”.

Now that I think about it, the ability to swap utilities/traits/weapons in order to employ a larger number of things at a personal level sounds akin to being able to swap M:TG cards mid-match upon seeing what sort of things the opponent brings to the table. Perhaps there’s a skill element in identifying the situation where you need something else that you chose not to bring to your deck and subbing it in, but it just seems like unhealthy overhead to the gameplay. Perhaps it’s an unfair analogy, but it popped into my head.

Further, what sort of actual for-all-the-marbles tournament (not the in-game tournament that rewards arbitrary points) bases victory on a Bo1? If you built your team such that the opposing side hard-countered you, then the next match you’d go back to the drawing board, try to figure out what they’re going to do (same thing? something different? what is known about the team/players?) and working on building against it either aggressively or pulling back into a more neutral set-up.

If the game is balanced over time to support such ideas instead of generalizing into cookie-cutter everything, it could add a nice layer of depth that creates conversations between spectators about what they think the teams will choose. As an avid spectator of various eSports, those sorts of conversations are exciting, especially when you’re rewarded with being correct.

I’m not into the tPvP scene enough to personally determine how much of a drawback this might cause. However, as a person who enjoys the game and wants to eventually follow the GW2 competitive scene, this feels like a healthy step in the right direction for the game as a whole.