Guild Wars 2

In playing GW 1, I’m learning at a fantastic rate.. but to get to the point…

I have never heard a GW1 player complain in map chat about another’s build. There’s no local chat there. There has been absolutely no salty chat while I was around.

There is also no mention of any class as a “hard counter” to another. It’s never happened in my presense.

I can’t find a single whisper of a bandwagon class or even a dominant one.

Rangers are mentioned as having been OP once, long ago. Mesmers, I’m told have been dominant at times. There have been gimmicks like the “rezmer.”

Why is this so? I can see 3 reasons;

PvP in GW1 punishes indiscriminate key pounding. Sure, there are classes and builds referred to as “nukers.” You won’t get there by pounding 2 then 5 though. At first glance, GW1 is slow to GW2 trained eyes.. but that’s only superficial. It’s all about move and counter move.

It’s my considered opinion that with the current emphasis on “button speed” and fast twitch muscle memory it will not be possible to have a balanced game. One player I met in City of Heroes plays pvp here now. He’s super skilled and any class he plays will be “OP.” It’s not the class numbers or mechanics that are the issue in my opinion. The issue is that the game caters to a very specific type of player. So, as these players migrate from class to class, each class in turn will appear “OP.”

The solution would be to de – emphasize speed and focus more on strategy.

The game is well developed and mature. Given time, GW2 may be similar.

The player base was decimated over what may have been an expansion.
People are very reticent to talk about that situation. Those that remain are mostly quite experienced.

So basically, make the game slower. I can see the point you’re making, but I prefer the fast paced style of GW2. This is a different game from GW1, and even if it was made slower, there would still be imbalances. There’s also the whole issue that it would take forever to actually do.

You can make the game plenty slow right now if you play the right builds. It’s nice that there’s such a large variation in time to kill; it means that builds customization is in a strong place.

I’m not suggesting that the game be slower, precisely. What I’m suggesting is there be penalties for button mashing.

In GW2, counterplay consists mostly of dodging and an occasional condi cleanse. A counterplay build is meaningless if it’s crushed by the flurry of button 1 presses.

In GW1 each button presses costs something and normally has a casting time. Interrupt is a major issue.

In my ( not very ) humble opinion; the reality of the present game is that the fastest button masher will probably win, even if mistakes are made.

Gw1 is much more based on TEAM builds. There were few solo builds as most gameplay wasn’t solo. Gvg usually had a solo ganker but that’s about it. And there were many cheese builds for team builds. IWAY, ritspike, searing flames, etc.

uhohhotdog.3598:

IWAY, ritspike, searing flames, etc.

Man, that’s some new school stuff right there. I remember Ranger Spike and EoE Bomb before IWAY. Anyway, people complained all of the time about other people’s builds in at least RA and TA.

To return to the topic; I suggest that there ought to be a penalty for button mashing.

I further suggest that the basic problem of gw2 balancing is not in the classes or mechanics. Rather, the problem is that the game is set up to serve one specific demographic.

When that demographic wanders to a new class or build, the build or class suddenly becomes “OP.”

We saw a demonstration of this when Turret Engineer suddenly became fashionable. It topped the leaderboards and seemed unbeatable. Accordingly, anet nerfed it. The super players moved on and now the turrets are UP.

The issue was the players, not the class. By attempting to fix the class, turret engineer was nerfed too far and became a non thing when the whim of the players changed.

Now that population likes d/d Ele and very soon it will be severely nerfed. The players will move on and ele will be left crippled.

To mitigate this problem, I recommend adding casting times to most, if not all skills. This would do two things;

It would make interrupt a useful playstyle.

Having very fast reaction times and/or excellent gaming equipment would be less of an edge.

This, in turn, would make balance easier by narrowing the gap between normal player and super player.

Ithilwen.1529:

The super players moved on and now the turrets are UP.

Turret Engis were anything but “super players”. Your entire theory falls apart considering Turrets was a build that required very little in terms of mechanical skill. Not to mention leaderboards weren’t topped by the best players. It was topped by the ones who simply played an ungodly amount of time daily.

I don’t agree. Turret engineer was available and moderately effective before it became fashionable.

It wasn’t until it turrets became fashionable that they rose to dominance. This, I’d argue, was because a certain population of players took it up, seeing that a simple button routine could be repeated fast.

As to technical skills; That is precisely what I’m arguing in one sense. The game, as it currently stands, appears to reward button speed more than it does overall skills or strategy.

Ithilwen.1529:

I don’t agree. Turret engineer was available and moderately effective before it became fashionable.

It wasn’t until it turrets became fashionable that they rose to dominance. This, I’d argue, was because a certain population of players took it up, seeing that a simple button routine could be repeated fast.

The people who picked up Turrets after several buffs and bug fixes had been applied to them were the bad players who could suddenly do well with a very easy build.

Ithilwen.1529:

As to technical skills; That is precisely what I’m arguing in one sense. The game, as it currently stands, appears to reward button speed more than it does overall skills or strategy.

Tell that to oRNG. They lost to Abjured because the Abjured had better tactics and outrotated them. oRNG were getting kill after kill and won the majority of all their fights but they still lost in the end due to the enemy team having better tactics and outplaying them.

You know, there are plenty of slower paced MMOs that you could play instead of GW2. GW2 won’t and shouldn’t change its action based and fast paced combat just to suit a handful of players who can’t keep up. I’d tell you to git gud, but since you had a handicap or whatever that’s probably asking too much. But really, you should consider switching to another game that can accommodate the skills you do have instead of trying to change this one.

That said, I would love me some cast bars or better visual cues. Telegraphs in this game are hard as kitten to see due to visual clutter a lot of the time.

button mashing is punished by opponents who aren’t scrubs.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Gw1 is much more based on TEAM builds. There were few solo builds as most gameplay wasn’t solo. Gvg usually had a solo ganker but that’s about it. And there were many cheese builds for team builds. IWAY, ritspike, searing flames, etc.

Every single one of those team builds was able to be countered. Searing Flames in particular since the skill was horrifically OP on launch (lasted about a week before it was nerfed) I was able to counter with a single earth elementalist. Garbage build of my own design good only for countering searing flames. E/D and although I don’t remember the full build it involved Armor of Earth with some other ele enchant and used a dervish enchant that gave health regen based on the number of enchants on you witch out regened the burning. All said a 16 fire magic elementalist would hit me for 8 DAMAGE! on each cast. I would slowly walk in and land earthquake aftershock and shockwave to deal massive damage to most of the team and the rest of my team would be left to just clean up the mess of the ones not close enough to shockwave to die from it.

IWAY was easily stopped by a lot of the anti-melee that became staple defense later on including combinations of water magic and earth magic for kiting and blurred vision/ward against melee leaving you at 25% chance to hit on every attack IIRC.

Any spellcasting (even ranger spike) spike team could be absolutely ruined by a single mesmer echoing cry of frustration. For some reason a lot of people wouldn’t let me use it but my guild would. Most spike teams we faced literally /FF when they realized they were going to get hit by cry of frustration on every single spike attempt. They have to stay clustered or they don’t all fire at the same time making for easy saves for an infuse monk and the clustered approach combined with often long cast times that are all in sync makes cry of frustration SUPER effective at interrupting all of them.

GW2 feels much more limited and more button mashy than GW1 and I have honestly not enjoyed GW2 anywhere nearly as much as I did GW1. Don’t get me wrong GW2 isn’t a bad game but I’ve continually come and gone since launch because the lack of strategy and diversity has left me bored after extended play. I was experimenting with build ideas for literally years in GW1 and although I didn’t come up with the exact gems many people knew well a lot of them were at least in part my brain children, improved and perfected by others. Only my Random arena assassin was godlike and all mine. Could solo entire teams by myself with the tremendous bullkitten that was that build. I was immensely proud of it and shared it with literally no one lest it be spread around and my faction farm build eat a nerf or worse, I would have to play against it. If anyone cares ask me here and I will share it now though.