Guild Wars 2

As we see tonight, on NA, the meta is quickly becoming an utter disgrace. The things people thought were overpowered, like Chill Necro and Dragonhunter are being quickly replaced with two builds in particular:

1. Bunker Mesmer
2. Condition Revenant

In fact, three teams ran identical comps tonight on NA: Double rev, double bunker mesmer, and tempest. This is probably one of the most absurd, lowest counterplay, lowest skill comps I’ve ever seen. It makes things like Reaper and Druid look ballsy and high risk.

The success of these comps hinges on a few things:

1. Infused Light: Makes it impossible for cleave comps with Scrapper, Necromancer, Warrior, etc to actually get kills, because the cleave damage heals downed players being ressed. One of the worst traits I’ve ever seen.

2. Eye for an Eye (Revenant, Retribution trait): A 3 second long taunt for CCing a rev, which can literally kill you by itself if you don’t have a stunbreak and have confusion on you). Nevermind the fact that it also gives the Revenant protection, and is on a 45 second CD, the shortest in the game for defensive traits like this.

3. Illusionary Inspiration (Mesmer, Inspiration trait): Remember when Rangers could self stack quickness and 25 might with HaO, and remember when that got nerfed within 48 hours? Well, enter Illusionary Inspiration, where mesmers can do that for their entire team in a mid fight every 30 seconds.

4. Lack of counterplay: So, how does one actually go about killing a Bunker Mesmer? Let’s recount what they have:

-4 instant cast heals (for every shatter), all remove a condition
-1 well heal with half second cast time, 7k
-Generally permanent protection from chaos armor (constantly available from wells)
-Illusionary Defense stacking more damage reduction
-Bountiful Illusions giving extremely high stability uptime + emergency resistance
-Well of Precognition, Distortion, Blurred Frenzy, and Echo of Memory for extreme defense against power based damage
-Extremely strong AoE CC with Gravity well + Chaos Storm + Tides of Time

If these two builds remain untouched, we will without a doubt be witness to the most boring, disgusting pro league matches Guild Wars 2 has even seen for the forseeable future. This is 100% Arenanet’s fault for adding these type of uncounterable mechanics to the game, and it’s their job to fix it in a timely manner.

Signed,

Someone who cares about the game and has no conflicting interest in what happens in the Pro League other than the success and enjoyability of the tournament for players and viewers.

I agree, Anets philosophy of balancing after every season is flawed and just a cop out to justify the slow balance they’ve always given us. it took them close to a year to nerf turret engi and we’re going to be dealing with brainless bunker Mesmer and overpowered mallyx rev for the next 8+ weeks. There are simple things arenanet can do to significantly bring these builds in line but knowing them that’s way too much to hope for. I have no idea how I’ve dealt with this for 3 years because every meta is depressing, seeing the builds Anet allows to exist.

All is well – anet

I honestly don’t see any recovery that is possible from the HoT power creep. You nerf condi rev and bunker mesmer and then some other super aids bunker will dominate the meta. I’m pretty sure Anet killed their own game with this expansion.

Photinous.4628:

I honestly don’t see any recovery that is possible from the HoT power creep. You nerf condi rev and bunker mesmer and then some other super aids bunker will dominate the meta. I’m pretty sure Anet killed their own game with this expansion.

I kind of disagree.

Right now the two other optional support classes are Tempest or Druid, both of these have obvious weaknesses and are able to be focused… in fact, we saw the Druids and Tempests being brought down more often than the Revenants running vipers in today’s matches…

Saw this coming a mile away.

infantrydiv.1620:

Photinous.4628:

I honestly don’t see any recovery that is possible from the HoT power creep. You nerf condi rev and bunker mesmer and then some other super aids bunker will dominate the meta. I’m pretty sure Anet killed their own game with this expansion.

I kind of disagree.

Right now the two other optional support classes are Tempest or Druid, both of these have obvious weaknesses and are able to be focused… in fact, we saw the Druids and Tempests being brought down more often than the Revenants running vipers in today’s matches…

Oh hey!…Viper is a bunker amulet.

Can’t kick a rock without finding a Revenant these days. I’m safe from Mesmers…for now…. I think a Bunker/Heal Mesmer+Condi Rev on point A+B with a roaming fifth will make an invincible comp. You can’t kick em off the point, the two classes are just indestructible. But its k, Nerf thief.

My guess is that Anet has a low budget for PvP and cant afford enough people to pay attention to the metrics and thus balance out the game.

It is truly sad, Im sure they are trying their best but it seems it isnt cutting it. Plenty of people have noticed the problem, and now even Apex Prime’s captain is speaking up to this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/My-Opinion-After-Today-s-Pro-League

The system plus poor balance have made this season a total bust.

Lets hope ANet learn from their mistakes, own up to them and is willing to improve upon it!! I have faith in them

ReaperJr.5967:

All is well – anet

mesmer’s wells

ftfy

Fortus.6175:

My guess is that Anet has a low budget for PvP and cant afford enough people to pay attention to the metrics and thus balance out the game.

It is truly sad, Im sure they are trying their best but it seems it isnt cutting it. Plenty of people have noticed the problem, and now even Apex Prime’s captain is speaking up to this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/My-Opinion-After-Today-s-Pro-League

The system plus poor balance have made this season a total bust.

Lets hope ANet learn from their mistakes, own up to them and is willing to improve upon it!! I have faith in them

Talked to some apex players tonight and they are already considering swapping comps because the pro league teams have a lot on the line, so why not just play cheese to win games easily…

I dont know why everyone hasnt moved to passive bunker builds at this point. If money was on the line shoot just run 3 mesmers and 2 shout eles or what ever you need to to simply sustain the whole match.

BlazinFyre.2410:

I agree, Anets philosophy of balancing after every season is flawed and just a cop out to justify the slow balance they’ve always given us. it took them close to a year to nerf turret engi and we’re going to be dealing with brainless bunker Mesmer and overpowered mallyx rev for the next 8+ weeks. There are simple things arenanet can do to significantly bring these builds in line but knowing them that’s way too much to hope for. I have no idea how I’ve dealt with this for 3 years because every meta is depressing, seeing the builds Anet allows to exist.

I don’t necessarily think its flawed but there had to be a balance patch before the 1st season, it is ludicrous that that they considered HOT itself the balance patch when at release so many classes were still in flux.

Band-aid fix without completely rekking balance mid-league: no more class stacking.

“Flux”. Thief was BARELY usable, then died altogether. We got called Shortbow 5 often. Now its “can you please swap? I’d like to win this ranked match.”. I left a guild because they said they refused to pvp with me because I played Thief.

I know Warrior was with it before HoT then died flat out. I’m not sure how you guys are doing, but on Thief side I got booted.

Fortus.6175:

My guess is that Anet has a low budget for PvP and cant afford enough people to pay attention to the metrics and thus balance out the game.

I thought they said they had an entire team (probably 1 person) whose sole job it was to work on balance. I guess they are on vacation for the next 2 months.

Agreed. EU should be ashamed for running such boring comps.

butch.8136:

Band-aid fix without completely rekking balance mid-league: no more class stacking.

As a Revenant main, I’m actually scared of Anet’s band-aid fixes(because they wont prevent class stacking like you’re promoting; they’ll just destroy classes). Not because I don’t think certain things shouldn’t be nerfed, but I really want my higher-risk Mallyx gameplay back instead of this super safe Viper bunker garbage with so many design flaws and I fear that we’ll never get the needed design changes with this Viper build dominating.

-Give the Stability back to Jalis’ road(and make it faster), it makes no sense for Stab to be in the Herald line anyway as it forces Jalis/Retribution(Jalis’ Road was nerfed and then we were presented with Enhanced Bulwark…)
-The above change makes Mallyx more risky as he’ll lack the crazy Stability uptime that makes him safer from CC(also, Eye for an Eye doesn’t need to do this much stuff for kitten ICD), but with no self-conditions, the condi-transfer and Resistance doesn’t make much sense anymore and makes for a much safer Revenant than before; change it to a cleanse or something unless you plan to return Mallyx to his risky style. Either enforce the Condi hoarding or don’t(why does our heal and a few traits encourage condi hoarding, yet the scaling is so much worse than before?).
- Shield shouldn’t really be two healing skills. Change Shield 4 into a more offensive skill with no healing and while you’re at it make Ventari much better at his job; he’s the one that should be focused on Healing and supporting defensively after all.

I feel like, if any band-aid fix were to happen, at the very least only touch Enhanced Bulwark, Shield, and potentially Pain Absorption.
/end Rev change thoughts

I can’t say much for Chronomancers, but maybe they shouldn’t be this good at not being hit…

Malchior.5732:

I can’t say much for Chronomancers, but maybe they shouldn’t be this good at not being hit…

At the very least, anything that makes you invuln (unable to be hit) should prevent capture point contribution. Change all the skills that give “evade” to instead give “invuln” and chronomancer is instantly worse and way easier to decap.

It’s no different than any of the previous metas that included builds such as Hambow, Turret Engi, ect.. ect..

It really isn’t.

At this point I don’t care about pips or my wins losses… At least my team and myself have dignity not to run this crap, and shout out to the teams who do not run bunker mesmers.

Half of these memser(almost all )were there before and were not op in slightest so you cant blame these traits for bunkines or distrotion or blured frenzy .

Resistance on BI?

What is giving all that survivability is chronophantasma clone generation (again chrono )and F5+ wells.
Dont touch skills and trait that have been there for ages and almost NO1 used them.

You are seriuosly compalyning about skill that is on 45sec icd?

So average player vs average player,i beat that viper rev.

Does that mean when you lift skill lvl a few grades that suddenly rev becomes invincible, or that higher skill lvl you dont know when to stop attacking and just stomp?

I brefly saw one match yesterday it was mirror team comp with 2 rev ,yet one was demolishd by other, why?

I didnt even see a team trying different comp ,pro guyz all just copy paste.

Also i dont see any difference in what is happening now and what was before with cele ele x4.

In conclusion not all blame is on anet for this situation ,if they even consulted some1 on took their insght i bet it was PRO teams who gave passing light .

For sure they did not listen to 90% of players

infantrydiv.1620:

3. Illusionary Inspiration (Mesmer, Inspiration trait): Remember when Rangers could self stack quickness and 25 might with HaO, and remember when that got nerfed within 48 hours? Well, enter Illusionary Inspiration, where mesmers can do that for their entire team in a mid fight every 30 seconds.

Obviously Ranger’s can’t have nice things or actually be considered good, right? That’s why we get nerfed the quickest. Anet can’t even take critisim about their issues with managing Ranger without having to remove those posts from their respective websites, lol

Worst thing about the power creep PvP suffers from ? Anet doesn’t want to split skills and traits into PvP and PvE anymore, and toning them down would destroy the fragile balance they have for Raids.

Serious Thought.5394:

Can’t kick a rock without finding a Revenant these days. I’m safe from Mesmers…for now…. I think a Bunker/Heal Mesmer+Condi Rev on point A+B with a roaming fifth will make an invincible comp. You can’t kick em off the point, the two classes are just indestructible. But its k, Nerf thief.

See all the boons everyone gets ? The necro trait that gives 1% life force per boon received got butchered because other professions are giving them like candies at Halloween.

Balance team is a kittening fraud.

Despiteful is all I have to say to those who play that team build.
This is how most of us feel when we get teamed against such premade comp:

Condi-Rev’s are ridiculous:

- tons of stability
- tons of quickness
- almost immune to conditions thx to unlimited resistance
- decent against physical dmg cuz of evades/blocks
- some of highest DPS currently and it’s mixed thx to viper
- high single-target and cleave
- very high mobility
- some of the best boonstrip
- deny cleave dmg against downed bodies

—> They single-handedly dictate every build that’s currently used in the meta.

And there are some very easy fixes:
- give the boonstrip a higher cost or a CD or give the Resistance on Mallyx-skills an ICD.
- Get rid of viper amu. Might as well add sinister too, since it would just be the next in line and probably almost as bad.
- lower the duration of the insane boons on the rev, like resistance, stability and quickness.