Guild Wars 2

Good. The change is good.

But i think you can still swap characters by logging out and back in. Thats… well at least anet is consistent. Maybe by winter 2014 gw2 will be released.

Great change in every single way.

People cry for the sake of crying.

I don’t like it, make matches Bo3 and I’ll like it though

To the “Pro” Players opposed to this change. Please explain how being forced to overcome the weaknesses of your build rather then merely retooling yourself on the fly to the optimal build for any situation requires less skill? If you’re able to make yourself optimal for anything, then at least the way I see it, you’re playing easy mode. So now you’re going to have to reassess the way you play if you want to keep your loafty standing.
The game has changed and now you have to pay more critical attention to your builds.

I like the change for being a change.

To those who oppose it – give it a try before criticizing. This may turn out to be a major game changer for currently very stale tPvP.

Let Anet experiment. We will talk about it in a week when things have more or less settled.

Have a great Wintersday.

Swap gear during tournaments is just ridiculous you have enought variety with 2 weapon sets.

The thing is that you should bet for a team setup and and individual build, and play that as smart as you can along tyhe tournament. This will do that you take more time into thinking about every situation you´ll face…

I think this change will put more enphasys on team setup than individual ability to select the correct stuff to counter-everything.

Hey! ¿you guardian will be slower? deal with it, select other utilities if you think you need speed/teleports are more important than support.

I’m happy as long as util swapping is allowed, which it is.

I like the change. I think for now on the team will have to create new strategies for tournament, no more “ok now i use staff for swiftness” or “now swap in counter condition because there is a necro condition” or "now swap counter direct damage because there are 2 thieves vs.

Dual.8953:

To the “Pro” Players opposed to this change. Please explain how being forced to overcome the weaknesses of your build rather then merely retooling yourself on the fly to the optimal build for any situation requires less skill? If you’re able to make yourself optimal for anything, then at least the way I see it, you’re playing easy mode. So now you’re going to have to reassess the way you play if you want to keep your loafty standing.
The game has changed and now you have to pay more critical attention to your builds.

this ^^^^^
“l2p issue”

Its not about “efficiency” as a player to be honest. Its about “losing the spice” in PvP.

See here’s the thing with these casuals. What they want is hop-scotch, I want to do BMX or extreme skate-boarding and make the most out of my game. Get it? The main concern is PvP losing its spice, its not about the kitten “distinguish pros from casuals.” To be honest, its not even "BMX "hard to switch in-between matches and adapt through equipment.

Of course if the problem was Thieves soloing lords because of item switching in-between, then all they had to do was make lords detect stealth and lord minions smarter.

if this includes that proffesions can’t be changed during tournament games then it’s not that bad imo.

There were some cool things you could do with skill swapping, but ultimately this is a necessary change. The people who can’t see the good in it are being really shortsighted.

..And clicking through windows, however intelligently you might be doing it… is not really that leet or fun. If skill swapping during a match is the epitome of gw2 skill this game is beyond hope.

I am against implementation of this feature. Here is why:

I am NOT a pro player, however I have only dedicated my play hours to pvp quite recently, and have managed to climb my way up to rank 30 in a matter of weeks, only by playing tournaments and nothing else (almost no spvp at all, which is several times more beneficial in terms of glory grind than tournaments are). During that time I have devised many builds, and have tried many professions. When it comes down to it, mastering a single static build to a level, where further progress in usage of tools disposable to you is negligible, takes no amount of time at all compared to mastering all that a class has to offer. With this hard skill cap measure implemented, an individual is no longer required to understand his class to be effective, rather than understanding JUST his build and nothing else. For a decent player, it takes no more than a day or two of playing tournaments with his friends to achieve a level of proficiency high enough to say he can use the build with little problems.

As an example, I will give you a situation that has happened to me in one of the tournaments: I was playing a bunker guardian, and so was my point opponent. After the game ended, I have found out that his rank has been almost double of mine, yet at the beginning of the match itself I have had no problems performing just as good as him, tanking the initial graveyard wave and holding the point against ongoing assaults for quite some time. Yet as time progressed further into the match, I have noticed his performance has increased rapidly thanks to swapping of utilities and an offhand. His team has won the game by a large margin in the end, and I have learned something important that helped me grow as a player. But what if this feature would have been implemented back then? I would have (with most likeliness) performed only SLIGHTLY worse than my opponent, who has almost double the experience, if not more considering I play other classes a lot too, than me. And that is, because skill growth in terms of mastering one build is suffering from a syndrome of diminishing returns.

And in reality, the implementation of this feature will ONLY lead to decrease in number of viable builds, as everyone will be trying to find the optimal distribution of resources in order to get the max out of what they can (at the casual level). Can you imagine running a build without any stunbreaker against a team devised around stacking as much crowd control as possible?

i like this change now everyone will be punished for their choices and start to think when making a build/setup

@ Silferas.3841: so opponent won the fight against you because he had to change his build..is it pro you think? impressive.
and about last question: it is DESERVED. if you play with no stubreak and opponent strategy goes around CC it is your fault, not theirs.
you are outplayed, outbuilded and not smart. gg no re

Much needed a step in the right direction~!!

Keep in mind, if sPvP does not have this restriction, it’s very possible custom arenas will either make it an option, or not have it at all either. At that point, you could easily have third-party tournaments that allow weapon/trait/whatever swapping if it’s deemed that integral to spicing up PvP.

And Schwar, no, I don’t get how clicking through menus is the BMX/extreme skateboarding to an established build’s hop-scotch. You want hop-scotch where you have to continually change to new shoes in the middle of it to accommodate new types of terrain.

Which, for the record, also sounds more tedious than skillful.

this change it’s really stupid
in league of legends if we are fighting with a guy with lots of defense. we do armor pen
counter the other team it’s importante for a game that wants to grow like a e-sports. we need to react to our oponnent.
and what’s nice to watch in e-sports is seeing teams coming back when they are losing without weapon swaping for mobility will increase the snowball effect

FINALLY!
15char

Suprised this wasnt always implemented. Wasnt that the whole idea with the 1 hotbar? If they wanted us to use every skill on a whim why wouldnt they have just gone down the path of every other mmo and given us 6 hotbars?

They promoted the idea of carefully picking your weapons and utilities before a fight. I dont see why anyone is shocked by this change (which is for the better imo)

My opinion is that this change will encourage better pregame team strategy. Teams will consider how to deal with condition heavy enemy teams, ect, and who/how their team will be able to deal with that. For example, “better make sure jake has field type X and sam has finisher Y that way they can spam aoe condition removal if they need it.” This will take more “skill” than everyone just switching utilities/weapons/traits on the fly to be able to do anything on their own.

tldr: this change will force more teamwork.

Tribant.8127:

Suprised this wasnt always implemented. Wasnt that the whole idea with the 1 hotbar? If they wanted us to use every skill on a whim why wouldnt they have just gone down the path of every other mmo and given us 6 hotbars?

They promoted the idea of carefully picking your weapons and utilities before a fight. I dont see why anyone is shocked by this change (which is for the better imo)

its good but its not in the same way.. now this game should be caulled “build wars 2”
since the strongest build comp will win. if one counters the other. no matter how good you are now you will lose since you cant adapt to the situation

Force more teamwork? xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD, this is funny..

1)Someclases arent affected by this changes, static builds who is beneficied

2)By my point as a mesmer, funnyx10, i just dont care about sigils traits, amulets, swapping of character or utilitys/elit (cause im running same utilitys all the matches) but WEAPONS? hahaha

3) more snowballs

4)cant turn arround a game

5)Less skill needed, I wasnt only changing to my focus for speed.. i was using it, and also
gs/staff and s/s – s/p

6)Everyone was able to change weapons and i think no one was complaining about it.

7) GG naked illusions

8)Nice REPLY from the state of game

9)And ppl who was winning will continue wining. ^^ But with more borring games

I think this was a good move on their part. Handling an awkward UI is not fun and probably deters some people from participating in tournaments. (It’s definitely one of the things that deter me).

That said, the serious discussions in this thread is all good. It’ll help them consider putting back some of the good stuff in a balanced and appropriate manner.

Just went into tournament, seems like you can still swap Utilities.

I play a GS meditation guardian. Me not being able to switch weapons greatly effects my mobility. By switching to staff, out of combat mind you, i was able to successfully fulfill the role of roamer. I feel limited now, and it is not cost effective for me to roam anymore. I’m not a fan of playing bunkers, but I feel that this ‘fix’ is forcing me to. I could live with not being allowed to change traits, but i see no reason why gear (weapons and armor) should not be interchangeable, i.e., as they were pre-patch.

Not only this change was necessary but it should be extended to the whole tournament. Team builds are formed for each match and not for the entire tournament.
The complete team build should be locked for the entire tournament to prevent people to change classe or builds between matchs. I often see anti-treb elementalists in Kylho that you never see in the first round.

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.

So now using Necro in Tournaments is useless. Thanks for that. Would have been nice to get some kind of utility to replace weapon and trait swapping since the reason people were doing it wasn’t because of the advantage (it takes precious time to swap and it can only happen out of combat already).

The reason people were doing it is because without swapping the classes they were players were not competitively viable.

Roamers with Burst and Tanks are the ONLY meta in PvP. Without being able to swap weapons to get swiftness out of the gate, or swapping traits to deal with a heavy bunker, Necro, Engi, Ele are all screwed out of the gate.

Tournaments are now for Thief, Guardian, Mesmer, Warrior, in that order. Everyone else might as well forget about tournaments.

Believe it or not Anet will end up killing this game. Yet they say oh we read the forums everyday…good luck in the long run

Shukran.4851:

@ Silferas.3841: so opponent won the fight against you because he had to change his build..is it pro you think? impressive.

Yea, I think the ability to change your build on-spot to match the situation is a major part of your skill and is open only to those who know their profession well and have lots of combat experience. On the other hand ANYBODY who spends a few hours reading skills and doing some theorycrafting can make a balanced build for his class and just pray he doesn’t meet a build that counters his own. And you call THAT skill?

I think people are happy about this change, because the teams that stomped them day and night whenever they registered for a tournament are going to suffer. But that’s not going to change anything about random PUGs and newbies getting stomped by proper teams. Without a normal ranking system based on win/loose ratio and matchmaking that puts people of similar skill level into the same bracket, no matter what change is implemented nobody’s situation will get any better than it already is. People, stop being delusional about being skilled players trapped amongst bads, because of some stupid mechanic. This is the same as crying about ELO hell. We are all where we should be, and the only way to start winning is by improving one’s skill.

In a proper matchmaking system, people who can’t be bothered with changing their build to match the situation would just be matched against other people who couldn’t be bothered with learning a vital part of the game, while those willing to adapt would rise to a higher bracket. And everybody would be happy.

Shukran.4851:

and about last question: it is DESERVED. if you play with no stubreak and opponent strategy goes around CC it is your fault, not theirs.
you are outplayed, outbuilded and not smart. gg no re

In any balanced build, you have two stunbreakers at most, both on a considerable cooldown. More often than not, it’s just one stunbreaker. If you’re a great player you can anticipate the enemy’s movements and you can dodge two additional skills. And then you will get caught by all the other crowd controls (ever fought a cc heavy engi/guardian/warrior?), and you can go grab a drink while death timer ticks. Or you can be paranoid and make a counter-cc build that will be utterly useless in any other situation, or you can make a full condition spreading team, that will just own everything, because your condi removal capabilities coudln’t handle such an overload.

Simply said this build limitation propagates extremes that were before counterable with ease, yet now would require your team to know what builds your enemies are running ahead of time.

As many others have said before me: a game won before the match starts, that’s what this change is going to bring.

exacly right ^^^ rename your game anet – build wars 2

OP Hman.5490:

Believe it or not Anet will end up killing this game. Yet they say oh we read the forums everyday…good luck in the long run

I bet they do read the forums every day, but without a functional context the forums are a mass of mostly useless information.

This thread is just a reiteration of what happened back when Anet announced that players would not be able to overhaul their trait trees during a match.
Everyone started crying about how Anet was killing build diversity by not allowing players to counter specific builds mid-game.

Guess what? If you’re being hard-countered, then you are probably a hard-counter to someone else. If you want to be able to adapt to every situation, then create a balanced build.

Currently, I’ve no opinion on this because I’ve been so discouraged with sPvP in general that I’ve been in a ‘wait and watch’ mode. I’m inclined to think this change limits player options and is a step toward homogenization. I could easily be wrong.

One thing that I’ve not seen in this thread is a justification. Why the change? Why was it needed? Why is it good? Why is it potentially bad? Seen a lot of opinions, but not much else. Can some one explain?

jgowans.3156:

Currently, I’ve no opinion on this because I’ve been so discouraged with sPvP in general that I’ve been in a ‘wait and watch’ mode. I’m inclined to think this change limits player options and is a step toward homogenization. I could easily be wrong.

One thing that I’ve not seen in this thread is a justification. Why the change? Why was it needed? Why is it good? Why is it potentially bad? Seen a lot of opinions, but not much else. Can some one explain?

It helps prevent some classes from being able to build for mobility and extreme burst. Some classes don’t include Thief and Warrior which can still do both. But… yeah.

Other than that I see zero positive. This was not a win/win decision by any means.

Adaptability can have many meanings: Should you build balanced character and adapt through your skill when playing that character (by skill I mean using available options at appropriate time), or should you adapt by clicking on equipment pieces /skills / (or traits) and adapt by essentially respeccing inside the match?

If argument is that ‘more respeccing flexibility is always better’ then why do not we take it to extreme and allow respec of traits as well during the match?
Actually how about we request ANET to allow us to preset unspecified number of spec and then switch between them on single click? We could request them to allow us to switch to equipment preset along with traits on single click? That way you can go from one spec to another in one click. How about allowing us flexibility to do it during the fight? Not good? Yeah it is kittenty idea, and allowing ppl to swap equipment during the match is just one aspect of it.

Locking in weapons/“trait spec” does not limit your ’adaptability. Rather it requires you to build more balanced character and then compensate/(adapt) through your skill, rather than ‘adapting’/compensating by one click giving you new weapon/equipment piece (or by changing traits which should also be allowed if argument is that “more respeccing inside the game is always better”).

And Schwahrheit.4203, stop with that ‘top’ player attitude….makes me laugh. No ‘spice’ will be lost, you will just need to adapt through your gameplay rather than through swapping weapons.

Mufa.1326:

.. doesn’t limit you… more balanced..

Yeah no. The opposite is true. Not allowing people to swap traits and weapons in tournies just means that if they build a certain way before the match they cannot adjust during the match to suit the “unknown” circumstances.

It is sort of like Random Character in DoTA/LoL/HoN. And if you have played them you know that Random Character in those games means, you either lose or win based on what characters the random number generator chooses.

That is the exact opposite of what the stated intention of GW2 PvP combat experience is. This also makes truly competitive PvP impossible.

I guess the fact that you can still switch out skills 6-10 is probably not working as intended – is there a statement from Anet to this?

XiL….your character is NOT random, you made it, so you trade off between strengths and weaknesses.
Build a balanced build without hard counters and learn to play with it.
If you build a niche build that hard counters some builds but with obvious glaring weakness(es) then yeah, it becomes more like a random number generator for you. You either encounter build that you are hard counter to or you run the risk of running into something that hard counters you…or you meet balanced build that you do not hard counter but who beats you due to his skill (he figures out your weakness and then uses it to beat you). (or you better have teammates that can compensate for the holes in your build)

@Mufa.1326 : what you are saying is utter nonsense. There is no adaptability to the way one plays. You use a condition removal skill when you have many conditions, you use a stun breaker when you need to avoid major burst while crowd controled. But you do that regardless of build. You do that always because that’s what the kittened skill is for. That’s NOT ADAPTATION. That’s using your brain and playing with some skill.

GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE HOW YOU ADAPT WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING.

I dare you, give me at least one example how you can adapt your playstyle against a condition necro or burst thief, that you wouldn’t be doing regardless of build. If there is a way to counter something just by certain behavior everybody is doing it already, and if not, they are just plain bad.

Mufa.1326:

XiL….your character is NOT random, you made it, so you trade off between strengths and weaknesses.
Build a balanced build without hard counters and learn to play with it.
If you build a niche build that hard counters some builds but with obvious glaring weakness(es) then yeah, it becomes more like a random number generator for you. You either encounter build that you are hard counter to or you run the risk of running into something that hard counters you…or you meet balanced build that you do not hard counter but who beats you due to his skill (he figures out your weakness and then uses it to beat you). (or you better have teammates that can compensate for the holes in your build)

Your argument would only be sound if there were no hard counters in the meta. If you get a hard counter verses the build they are designed to counter you essentially get a 100% victory guarantee. Which is exactly the same as choosing random characters in any MOBA. You get against your hard counter in competitive play and even a brand new player with no skill whatsoever can destroy you.

That is the opposite of what was stated by the developers is their goal in GW2 pvp. Joining a tournament is blind. You cannot see what other people choose so the end result (even though it was your own choice) is exactly the same as using random characters in a MOBA. You still enter blindly with a class that may or may not have the tools required to perform the role you need to fill. And meeting those requirements determines the match winner. Not the skill of the players or the synergy of the team.

You can make a character that has no hard counter. Of course, you will have to trade off.

People who enter fight with composition that hard counters something but has obvious weaknesses would:
1. Not be at the top (they will win against those who they hard counter and lose against those that hard counter them).
2. Lose to balanced skillfully played build. Balanced skillfully played build should come out on top on average. You cannot be hard countered and once you build up enough skill you will defeat any niche builds (you will adjust to them through the way you play your character).

@Mufa.1326 You have answered nothing of what I asked. The closest thing to answer that came from you was to make a build that had no hard counter, which is like ordering me to go hunt unicorns with a rope woven from Santa Claus’ nose hair. There is no such a thing as build that can do everything, and most importantly builds that try to do too much of everything usually end up failing at everything they do. If you cannot even understand this much, there is no point in me having discussion with you any further.

I don’t like this change, but I think everyone needs to calm down with not just the name calling, but the whole mindset of “this game is ruined.”

I think after this and the res timer incident there should be a PTR or at least some sort of communication with upcoming changes so the community can give feedback or something. When a rating system comes out it is absolutely unacceptable for the community to be blindsided like this.

Shukran.4851:

in gw1 there was the BALANCED build , maybe with this fix , gw2 meta would evolve in that way.

guild wars 1 is deathmatch. this is capping points.

and gw1 meta is static balanced build. no build variety no fun.

This forces a team to actually become a team, to sit and discuss their builds with each other, to actually add synergy in their overall composition. Anyone who disagrees with this is in their own bubble. It never should have been about having everything to choose from to begin with. It’s only when your forced to pick a few apples from the tree when your decision effects the outcome of the match. Not IN the match knowing your up against something you weren’t equipped for and then switch out this and that accordingly. This change will weed out the sore losers and I welcome it.

alcopaul.2156:

Shukran.4851:

in gw1 there was the BALANCED build , maybe with this fix , gw2 meta would evolve in that way.

guild wars 1 is deathmatch. this is capping points.

and gw1 meta is static balanced build. no build variety no fun.

balanced
pressure
spike
split

every type had more builds in it.
i love how gw1 was so static

You can see the effects of the patch. Nobody’s playing paids in EU, lol. It takes 30min to join a queue, when normally there’re 3 tournaments at the same time at 22:00.

Silferas.3841:

@Mufa.1326 You have answered nothing of what I asked. The closest thing to answer that came from you was to make a build that had no hard counter, which is like ordering me to go hunt unicorns with a rope woven from Santa Claus’ nose hair. There is no such a thing as build that can do everything, and most importantly builds that try to do too much of everything usually end up failing at everything they do. If you cannot even understand this much, there is no point in me having discussion with you any further.

I think that for normal person it is sufficient to see where this ‘spec’ flexibility is going: In the limit it leads to switching everything, traits, entire equipment etc with one keystroke during the battle. That allows for maximum flexibility spec wise. However, it is not good for the game. There is your answer as far as this goes.

What was allowed before (people changing characters 30 sec before game start, changing characters between maps, people swapping to a weapon just to gain a speed buff, etc etc) is simply nonsense. They should face a tradeoff of more speed, or more defense, or more condition cleansing, or more dmg, etc when they are setting up character/team (weapon/trait/equipment choices). Once they apply for tournament they should get locked into those choices and simply use their mad skillz to compensate if they are at disadvantage. If they cannot….to quote those same people: L2P and also ‘learn to make a balanced build’.

This is a very odd and pointless change.