Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to ask the question about the state of PvP. I see in alot of ranked matches that people ask thieves,warriors and guardians to change classes before the match even starts.

Before HOT and obviously the god D/D meta this was never a problem. If a team ran 5 rangers i didnt know if 1-2 were pew pew, bunker or trap. Depending on skill these classes builds did well.

Same with thief, you had the venom thief, dps thief, and i know of 1 bunker thief and he had success with it. People didnt like it because he didnt play the quote um quote thief role.

I could go threw all the classes but i truly feel this game took a giant step back in build quality. We all saw the mirror matches if you watched even 2 matches in ESL.

I just want to ask the question if people are having more fun with the new HOT builds or like myself forced to play similar builds as other people with the same class to stay competitive and not having fun with less creative freedom?

To be honest, I only had ONE person tell me to change my warrior, and that was last season!

I have fun with berzerker as I do with the old builds, so thats fortunate for me. However, the state of pvp is horrid. Atrocious matchmaking, atrocious balance, atrocious leagues, broken hotjoin, no solo queue, need I go on lol? The only saving grace is unranked.

Build diversity/ balance sucks now. It’s the main reason I don’t play pvp very much anymore

HoT spec power creep is out of control. The worst part is that it made gameplay far too faceroll.

The longer ANet takes to bring HoT specs down to core level, the more the PvP scene will continue to die off.

Exedore.6320:

HoT spec power creep is out of control. The worst part is that it made gameplay far too faceroll.

The longer ANet takes to bring HoT specs down to core level, the more the PvP scene will continue to die off.

+1

Build diversity went out the window with HoT powercreep.

We want our core specs back, ANet!

kdaddy.5431:

I just wanted to ask the question about the state of PvP. I see in alot of ranked matches that people ask thieves,warriors and guardians to change classes before the match even starts.

Before HOT and obviously the god D/D meta this was never a problem. If a team ran 5 rangers i didnt know if 1-2 were pew pew, bunker or trap. Depending on skill these classes builds did well.

Same with thief, you had the venom thief, dps thief, and i know of 1 bunker thief and he had success with it. People didnt like it because he didnt play the quote um quote thief role.

I could go threw all the classes but i truly feel this game took a giant step back in build quality. We all saw the mirror matches if you watched even 2 matches in ESL.

I just want to ask the question if people are having more fun with the new HOT builds or like myself forced to play similar builds as other people with the same class to stay competitive and not having fun with less creative freedom?

There’s a couple reasons for the lack of diversity, outside of balance changes and HoT:

1) MetaBattle. It used to be pretty tough to find an exact build that there was much of a consensus over. Back in the early days, at best you’d be able to get builds from what people ran in tournaments, but that information was less readily available, so less people followed it.

2) The new PvP League. With the new league, competition in GW2 PvP overall has gotten a lot tighter. With pips at stake, people are a lot less likely to risk losses by running experimental builds outside of unranked.

Dahkeus.8243:

kdaddy.5431:

I just wanted to ask the question about the state of PvP. I see in alot of ranked matches that people ask thieves,warriors and guardians to change classes before the match even starts.

Before HOT and obviously the god D/D meta this was never a problem. If a team ran 5 rangers i didnt know if 1-2 were pew pew, bunker or trap. Depending on skill these classes builds did well.

Same with thief, you had the venom thief, dps thief, and i know of 1 bunker thief and he had success with it. People didnt like it because he didnt play the quote um quote thief role.

I could go threw all the classes but i truly feel this game took a giant step back in build quality. We all saw the mirror matches if you watched even 2 matches in ESL.

I just want to ask the question if people are having more fun with the new HOT builds or like myself forced to play similar builds as other people with the same class to stay competitive and not having fun with less creative freedom?

There’s a couple reasons for the lack of diversity, outside of balance changes and HoT:

1) MetaBattle. It used to be pretty tough to find an exact build that there was much of a consensus over. Back in the early days, at best you’d be able to get builds from what people ran in tournaments, but that information was less readily available, so less people followed it.

2) The new PvP League. With the new league, competition in GW2 PvP overall has gotten a lot tighter. With pips at stake, people are a lot less likely to risk losses by running experimental builds outside of unranked.

I can understand this but alot of the older builds had some give and take.

Guardian had the medi dps, bunker, burn burst. None were necessarily better then the other but it depended on what the team needed. I mean out of no where Tage came with a hammer guardian at the WTS. In WTS 2 we saw a ranger when people said it couldnt be done. Even with some imbalance high level players could make classes work.

I always felt you could see a unique build in the AG/ESL tournaments even with meta battle.

kdaddy.5431:

Dahkeus.8243:

kdaddy.5431:

I just wanted to ask the question about the state of PvP. I see in alot of ranked matches that people ask thieves,warriors and guardians to change classes before the match even starts.

Before HOT and obviously the god D/D meta this was never a problem. If a team ran 5 rangers i didnt know if 1-2 were pew pew, bunker or trap. Depending on skill these classes builds did well.

Same with thief, you had the venom thief, dps thief, and i know of 1 bunker thief and he had success with it. People didnt like it because he didnt play the quote um quote thief role.

I could go threw all the classes but i truly feel this game took a giant step back in build quality. We all saw the mirror matches if you watched even 2 matches in ESL.

I just want to ask the question if people are having more fun with the new HOT builds or like myself forced to play similar builds as other people with the same class to stay competitive and not having fun with less creative freedom?

There’s a couple reasons for the lack of diversity, outside of balance changes and HoT:

1) MetaBattle. It used to be pretty tough to find an exact build that there was much of a consensus over. Back in the early days, at best you’d be able to get builds from what people ran in tournaments, but that information was less readily available, so less people followed it.

2) The new PvP League. With the new league, competition in GW2 PvP overall has gotten a lot tighter. With pips at stake, people are a lot less likely to risk losses by running experimental builds outside of unranked.

I can understand this but alot of the older builds had some give and take.

Guardian had the medi dps, bunker, burn burst. None were necessarily better then the other but it depended on what the team needed. I mean out of no where Tage came with a hammer guardian at the WTS. In WTS 2 we saw a ranger when people said it couldnt be done. Even with some imbalance high level players could make classes work.

I always felt you could see a unique build in the AG/ESL tournaments even with meta battle.

Yea…I guess you have a point. I mean, historically, most classes have generally had one meta build, but there usually at least a class or two that had some wiggle room. There seems to be a little bit of play for necros between two very similar builds and druids have a bit of flexibility with their build as well (Bunker vs DPS), but none of those variants are really that much different from each other compared to earlier days when you had medi vs bunker or traps vs longbow, etc.

Either way, I’m definitely looking forward to the next balance patch. The changes from the last balance patch were definitely good, but they just weren’t enough to deal with all the problems that came with HoT’s release changes.

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

sephiroth.4217:

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

No not so much this. It doesn’t take theory crafting away at all. You are more than welcome to theory craft all you would like, meta’s change. You may have a build that does better against some classes etc than the meta build. Truth is though the meta build is usually the best option for a variety of situations.

But if you know better than the pro players I’m excited to see them get stomped by some build they probably never thought of.

class diversity is kinda okay, but build diversity is IMHO not that great:

- Ele now is locked into a single amulet and a single weapon set. In S1, there at least were some Staff and some Dagger/Focus and Dagger/Dagger builds possible.

- Rev’s are mostly power now, last season, there were more condi-revs, which aren’t as good anymore.

- The other classes pretty much have 1 decent metabuild each, the necro is probably the most diverse, with different traitlines, runes and even amus being used quite often. War still has no strong builds and thief got a bit better, but still not as good.

So IMHO no differences in classes that have good builds, but especially ele and rev have fewer different possible builds.

That being said, I think that the maybe 6 best metabuilds are closer together than ever, we might not even see multiple stacked classes in ESL even without the no class stacking rule.

NeXeD.3042:

sephiroth.4217:

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

No not so much this. It doesn’t take theory crafting away at all. You are more than welcome to theory craft all you would like, meta’s change. You may have a build that does better against some classes etc than the meta build. Truth is though the meta build is usually the best option for a variety of situations.

But if you know better than the pro players I’m excited to see them get stomped by some build they probably never thought of.

I’m just saying people go to meta battle to get their builds a lot of the time. What would Pvp look like if meta battle didn’t exist?

R O C.6574:

NeXeD.3042:

sephiroth.4217:

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

No not so much this. It doesn’t take theory crafting away at all. You are more than welcome to theory craft all you would like, meta’s change. You may have a build that does better against some classes etc than the meta build. Truth is though the meta build is usually the best option for a variety of situations.

But if you know better than the pro players I’m excited to see them get stomped by some build they probably never thought of.

I’m just saying people go to meta battle to get their builds a lot of the time. What would Pvp look like if meta battle didn’t exist?

PvP existed long before MetaBattle existed, lol. There was a bit less diversity, but people still knew mostly what the meta was and ran meta builds. The biggest difference was that it was just less convenient to find out what was meta.

NeXeD.3042:

sephiroth.4217:

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

No not so much this. It doesn’t take theory crafting away at all. You are more than welcome to theory craft all you would like, meta’s change. You may have a build that does better against some classes etc than the meta build. Truth is though the meta build is usually the best option for a variety of situations.

But if you know better than the pro players I’m excited to see them get stomped by some build they probably never thought of.

META builds are best for learning a new class and they stem from streamers. “The Pro’s use it so it must be good” which is fair enough logic but doesn’t mean there is only one viable build. And yes META builds will most likely change every ESL and yes META builds are generally customised for allround potential, but doesn’t mean it’s the best, they logically change due to either a balance patch or because A better build was discovered… Playstyles and variable factors also come into play and it really comes down to how much knowledge the player has over his class and experience involved with it, which again applies to the Pro’s.

But back to the point, “Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players”. – Of which I fully agree off the basis that everyone assumes that I’m a “cleric support Ele” in game.

Dahkeus.8243:

There’s a couple reasons for the lack of diversity, outside of balance changes and HoT:

1) MetaBattle. It used to be pretty tough to find an exact build that there was much of a consensus over. Back in the early days, at best you’d be able to get builds from what people ran in tournaments, but that information was less readily available, so less people followed it.

2) The new PvP League. With the new league, competition in GW2 PvP overall has gotten a lot tighter. With pips at stake, people are a lot less likely to risk losses by running experimental builds outside of unranked.

I disagree with your 1) and maybe even 2) – I’ve been a ranger back in the day (2,5 years ago) and got nooo love – people always wanted to win, it’s not just the League.
To 1) : people always had “meta builds” because back in the day there were tons of youtube videos of people doing pvp or wvw stuff around and most of them linked their builds.
So, I guess the Meta is how it is because this game is pretty very much imbalanced.

ETA: Yeah, hadn’t had coffee yet. You already wrote that. Still I think that people have always been running meta builds. If it wasn’t on youtube/streams it was on the forums.
But I think there was more freedom to swap some traits here and there – I did so with a metabuild and found a streamer running that exact build later on.

Dahkeus.8243:

R O C.6574:

NeXeD.3042:

sephiroth.4217:

R O C.6574:

Meta battle takes all the theory crafting out of the game for most players

So much this.

There is plenty of build options if you know your classes well enough. This season I think is the best season for build diversity, but the worst for match making.

EG: Tempest can do a lot more than just “Clerics Heal” lol just a shame no one actually knows how to use an Ele outside of D/D cele and whats posted on METAbattle.

No not so much this. It doesn’t take theory crafting away at all. You are more than welcome to theory craft all you would like, meta’s change. You may have a build that does better against some classes etc than the meta build. Truth is though the meta build is usually the best option for a variety of situations.

But if you know better than the pro players I’m excited to see them get stomped by some build they probably never thought of.

I’m just saying people go to meta battle to get their builds a lot of the time. What would Pvp look like if meta battle didn’t exist?

PvP existed long before MetaBattle existed, lol. There was a bit less diversity, but people still knew mostly what the meta was and ran meta builds. The biggest difference was that it was just less convenient to find out what was meta.

Yes. I know. But we’re talking about now. METAbattle has become the authority in what’s what.

Jana.6831:

Dahkeus.8243:

There’s a couple reasons for the lack of diversity, outside of balance changes and HoT:

1) MetaBattle. It used to be pretty tough to find an exact build that there was much of a consensus over. Back in the early days, at best you’d be able to get builds from what people ran in tournaments, but that information was less readily available, so less people followed it.

2) The new PvP League. With the new league, competition in GW2 PvP overall has gotten a lot tighter. With pips at stake, people are a lot less likely to risk losses by running experimental builds outside of unranked.

I disagree with your 1) and maybe even 2) – I’ve been a ranger back in the day (2,5 years ago) and got nooo love – people always wanted to win, it’s not just the League.
To 1) : people always had “meta builds” because back in the day there were tons of youtube videos of people doing pvp or wvw stuff around and most of them linked their builds.
So, I guess the Meta is how it is because this game is pretty very much imbalanced.

ETA: Yeah, hadn’t had coffee yet. You already wrote that. Still I think that people have always been running meta builds. If it wasn’t on youtube/streams it was on the forums.
But I think there was more freedom to swap some traits here and there – I did so with a metabuild and found a streamer running that exact build later on.

I’m not sure you really disagree with my 1, but you may misunderstand it. Yes, there were definitely meta builds and there was information on strong builds, for sure. However, they weren’t all in one place, and it wasn’t as easy to tell a real good build from an overhyped mediocre/bad build.

As for 2, yes, there have always been very, very competitive players, but not on the same scale as there are now simply because the rewards for being competitive have never been so good. In the early days, you could really get any PvP rewards you wanted, just from grinding through enough games.

The leaderboards also pushed a lot of competitiveness, but not to the same scale as today where not only is being a high rank more visible (icon next to your name), but the actual leaderboard within the Legendary division is a lot more exclusive and won’t be topped by some new account that got a lucky 10 game win streak against low tier enemies. =P

If nothing else, the league system has attracted a lot of achievement point hunters and legendary gear seekers into the scene.

Dahkeus.8243:

Yes, there were definitely meta builds and there was information on strong builds, for sure. However, they weren’t all in one place, and it wasn’t as easy to tell a real good build from an overhyped mediocre/bad build.

The way I see it: There is only a few builds that are “worth taking” = OP – because the traits have been shaved that much in June that there is no real alternative.
I don’t think that anyone is really coming up with anything better than metabattle.