Guild Wars 2

I keep hearing that GW2 is a “team game” and that it’s not “meant” to be balanced around 1v1. Let me ask you this:

Have you ever met someone who kicked your butt and you wanted to fight them again and again? Then you start to catch on and adapt your tactics. Then you win a fight. Then they try something different and after 5 or 6 fights both of you are far better players than when you started. You learn new ways to do things that you weren’t forced to learn before.

Yesterday for example I met a warrior. As a phantasm mesmer I usually laugh at them but a quick skirmish with this guy told me I had to watch out. Axe+Shield/Greatsword. Destroying my phantasms and staying on top of me all the time. My hubris cost me the first time and I resolved to be more careful. The map changed and we dueled. My god what a duel! I never thought I would play like that. I managed to get him and out of respect for his skills didn’t finish. When the match ended, I saw his rank was r52. I’m still stuck at 39…

I am a better player because of that skirmish and also have a new respect for a well played warrior. Would this have been possible with others interrupting and irritating all the time? How sad if one of my teammates had come in and helped to kill him. So unfair!

And this is why we need duels. Nothing sharpens your skill and forces you to deal with your weaknesses like a duel. Teamfights allow you to get careless. And isn’t skill what this game is supposed to be all about?

I just don’t get why Anet doesn’t formalize a dueling system. We need to be able to rank up and progress through dueling alone if we want – something that I doubt custom arenas will address.

bhagwad.4281:

I am a better player because of that skirmish

Dueling is, imo, the best way to learn how to fight a class and so get better at yours.
The hours on end of it I used to do is why I’m such a flaming beast on my ranger.
Custom arenas will ‘answer’ that problem, at least in ArenaNet’s eyes.

You can still learn from tPvP team fights. And yeah, a dueling system would be neat and all, but the game wasn’t balanced with dueling in mind. If you could rank up through dueling, I gurantee two or three builds would rise to the top and dominate all others and then it would just get boring quickly. Not to mention rank doesn’t always accurately reflect skill, and with the ability to gain rank through dueling it would become even less so. How would you be able to tell if someone is an experienced dueler or if they’re an experienced tourny player? If they implemented a dueling system it should reward glory and only glory, that way it’s a just-for-fun thing and doesn’t become extremely competitive. Maybe it could have a small, seperate ranking system too that’s kind of like WvW rank, but just for bragging rights.

Rank in GW2 means nothing. I’d like a dueling system, but to actually reach a level based on individual skill we need rated solo Q.

ninja.4139:

You can still learn from tPvP team fights. And yeah, a dueling system would be neat and all, but the game wasn’t balanced with dueling in mind. If you could rank up through dueling, I gurantee two or three builds would rise to the top and dominate all others and then it would just get boring quickly. Not to mention rank doesn’t always accurately reflect skill, and with the ability to gain rank through dueling it would become even less so. How would you be able to tell if someone is an experienced dueler or if they’re an experienced tourny player? If they implemented a dueling system it should reward glory and only glory, that way it’s a just-for-fun thing and doesn’t become extremely competitive. Maybe it could have a small, seperate ranking system too that’s kind of like WvW rank, but just for bragging rights.

If there were just a few builds at the top of the dueling tree, I guarantee you that many builds will surface specifically to counter them. In a game as highly complex as GW2 I seriously doubt that there’s just one nash equilibrium – in fact I would say that it’s highly unlikely to be the case.

If anything, dueling would fuel the creation of more unusual builds that no one has thought of yet.

As for not being able to tell if someone is an experienced dueler or a tourney player…that’s like not being able to tell if a PvE guy is a dungeon runner or a MF farmer. We don’t need to be able to tell that.

Fully agree, duelling is a good form of practice.

ninja.4139:

You can still learn from tPvP team fights.

I agree that you can learn from tPvP play, but not nearly like a 1vs1 fight. tPvP on higher levels consists of coordinated game play. If a point is being challenged, call in 2 of your team mates to take out the one guy that’s giving you a problem. That’s why I think its not as good as a true 1vs1 situation. I have destroyed players who do coordinated tPvP every night because they sorta have a mini zerg mentality. They can’t control or take over a point by themselves so they call in the backup.

In a 1vs1 situation, you get to focus on every aspect of your opponent. Which combo of skills are they using > do they dodge roll before or after going into a skill chain > which stuns are they using > how many different ways of healing do they have. Being able to study an opponent makes me a far better player in 1vs1-3 situations.

Good form of practice… but not good to be a competitive mode.

bhagwad.4281:

If anything, dueling would fuel the creation of more unusual builds that no one has thought of yet.

I don’t see how it would encourage any sort of creativity that doesn’t already exist, especially since it would become much simpler without team synergy to consider. All it would do is create a 1 on 1 meta game seperate from normal play.

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

If anything, dueling would fuel the creation of more unusual builds that no one has thought of yet.

I don’t see how it would encourage any sort of creativity that doesn’t already exist, especially since it would become much simpler without team synergy to consider. All it would do is create a 1 on 1 meta game seperate from normal play.

It would encourage build diversity because there are hard counters to every “one trick pony” build. In a team setting your weaknesses are not so apparent. In 1v1, you can exploit them.

In current play, balanced builds are discouraged since one pure bunker and one pure DPS can cover each other’s soft spots and together present a formidable team. There’s no advantage to being balanced right now. In a 1v1, if you spec too much of one thing you will surely meet someone who will take advantage of that.

What we will have with dueling is a proliferation of balanced builds having decent offense/defense tradeoffs and a lot more emphasis on skill.

The meta game would never be stable for this very reason. And isn’t that what we want?

I enter too many regular spvp matches where the players claim to be dueling and if you try to attack the enemy and cap, all the players gang up against you and kill you. Furthermore, it is a source of false reports. Players get reported for trying to cap even though that is what the map is for. Dueling will take those kinds of players out of the 8 vs 8s or 5 vs 5s. That way players wont waste their time getting reported for joining a “dueling” 5 vs 5 map.

bhagwad.4281:

It would encourage build diversity because there are hard counters to every “one trick pony” build. In a team setting your weaknesses are not so apparent. In 1v1, you can exploit them.

In current play, balanced builds are discouraged since one pure bunker and one pure DPS can cover each other’s soft spots and together present a formidable team. There’s no advantage to being balanced right now. In a 1v1, if you spec too much of one thing you will surely meet someone who will take advantage of that.

What we will have with dueling is a proliferation of balanced builds having decent offense/defense tradeoffs and a lot more emphasis on skill.

The meta game would never be stable for this very reason. And isn’t that what we want?

Let me take back that last statement then, I misinterprited you. I thought you meant build diversity for the general PvP game, not just duels. Of course I understand that there are going to be specific builds for 1 vs 1. I’m all for having a duel system in place, but that’s specifically why I think it shouldn’t be ranked. Even if you disagree with me that there would be an end all be all build, I think we can both agree that a-net isn’t going to balance the game around dueling. If it awards rank, then it’ll encourage a play to win mentality and not play for fun or practice, which means people will try to find the end all be all build and there will be a meta. We should probably also consider that if it’s ranked, that means there will need to be a definite winner and loser and people will be more inclined to find ways to cheat the system. What’s stopping someone from staying stealthed for near indefinitely? There would probably need to be a single capture point to stop people from dodging death forever, but then extreme bunker defense becomes much more appealing.

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

It would encourage build diversity because there are hard counters to every “one trick pony” build. In a team setting your weaknesses are not so apparent. In 1v1, you can exploit them.

In current play, balanced builds are discouraged since one pure bunker and one pure DPS can cover each other’s soft spots and together present a formidable team. There’s no advantage to being balanced right now. In a 1v1, if you spec too much of one thing you will surely meet someone who will take advantage of that.

What we will have with dueling is a proliferation of balanced builds having decent offense/defense tradeoffs and a lot more emphasis on skill.

The meta game would never be stable for this very reason. And isn’t that what we want?

Let me take back that last statement then, I misinterprited you. I thought you meant build diversity for the general PvP game, not just duels. Of course I understand that there are going to be specific builds for 1 vs 1. I’m all for having a duel system in place, but that’s specifically why I think it shouldn’t be ranked. Even if you disagree with me that there would be an end all be all build, I think we can both agree that a-net isn’t going to balance the game around dueling. If it awards rank, then it’ll encourage a play to win mentality and not play for fun or practice, which means people will try to find the end all be all build and there will be a meta. We should probably also consider that if it’s ranked, that means there will need to be a definite winner and loser and people will be more inclined to find ways to cheat the system. What’s stopping someone from staying stealthed for near indefinitely? There would probably need to be a single capture point to stop people from dodging death forever, but then extreme bunker defense becomes much more appealing.

Those are good points. In GW1, there was a system where in case of a draw, the more aggressive team would be awarded the match. This would usually happen if a random arena team suddenly had 3 monks! It prevents a “pure bunker” mentality and will also take care of the indefinite stealth issue.

Yes, I agree that there will be a meta. What I’m saying is that the meta will always be in flux. Like it was in GW1. As A-net makes changes overall, the meta would change too. It’ll be a very exciting process!

dueling is useless when you face classes/build that you will never kill in a duel, such as glass cannon thief vs bunker guardian, non sense.

Dueling is just one of the things this game lacks.
The first time I read about the absence of dedicate healers and the new action-based combat system, I automatically thought “HELL YEAH, DUELS!”.
And what we had? A game that has nothing of what made GW1 PvP great, no dueling system and only a dumb conquest gamemode with insanely stupid meta.
GW1 hasn’t sold 6 millions copies because of PvE or e-sports, neither because of a conquest mode, in fact, that was the only mode GW1 lacked (excluding some HA rounds). I wonder where the original GW1 PvP team is.

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/225681859/17cm_wooden_ruler.jpg

Right click and select print for your very own “Am I a Good Duelist?” kit.

Dueling will not be balanced EVER. But that does not make it useless. In my guild, we’ve done plenty of duels just to test our builds or practice playing versus an opponent of a specific class. I don’t see a feature for duels in a competitive play, but I see great opportunity for a training one.

Mooncrosser.7519:

Dueling will not be balanced EVER. But that does not make it useless. In my guild, we’ve done plenty of duels just to test our builds or practice playing versus an opponent of a specific class. I don’t see a feature for duels in a competitive play, but I see great opportunity for a training one.

Actually, balancing around 1vs1 is way, way easier than balancing in teamplay.
Simply because when balancing around teamplay, you have to consider a massive amount of possible skill combinations and interations with other professions, making balancing way, way harder.
It is just math, not opinions.

sorrow.2364:

Mooncrosser.7519:

Dueling will not be balanced EVER. But that does not make it useless. In my guild, we’ve done plenty of duels just to test our builds or practice playing versus an opponent of a specific class. I don’t see a feature for duels in a competitive play, but I see great opportunity for a training one.

Actually, balancing around 1vs1 is way, way easier than balancing in teamplay.
Simply because when balancing around teamplay, you have to consider a massive amount of possible skill combinations and interations with other professions, making balancing way, way harder.
It is just math, not opinions.

They can be equally hard because of the different mechanics. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say we got a Mesmer and a Necromancer that are well balanced to fight each other and on the other hand, a Thief and a Necromancer. Hypothetically the Mesmer is running a confusion build. This build (theoretically) might be really good for fighting a Thief, so good that we can say, Mesmer>Thief. So we nerf the confusion so Mesmer=Thief. But that will hit the Mesmer/Necromancer balance and if we nerf the Necromancer, the Thief/Necromancer balance will be broken, so we nerf the Thief and we’re back to the starting point.

My point is, easier said than done :/

Mooncrosser.7519:

They can be equally hard because of the different mechanics. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say we got a Mesmer and a Necromancer that are well balanced to fight each other and on the other hand, a Thief and a Necromancer. Hypothetically the Mesmer is running a confusion build. This build (theoretically) might be really good for fighting a Thief, so good that we can say, Mesmer>Thief. So we nerf the confusion so Mesmer=Thief. But that will hit the Mesmer/Necromancer balance and if we nerf the Necromancer, the Thief/Necromancer balance will be broken, so we nerf the Thief and we’re back to the starting point.

My point is, easier said than done :/

Well, no.
Actually, because every profession have access to multiple spec and multiple hybrid, the main goal is to find a combination who can counter almost everything, to find the best balance inside the profession itself.

Let’s say, taking your example, that the confusion build is really strong against the Thief. Instead of nerfing the confusion build, the player should put some condition removals in his build in order to have a better counter against the confusion build. Has the Thief access to enough condition removals, maybe at the cost of some damage, in order to counter the confusion build? Yes? The game is balanced. No? The thief needs some buff in condition removals. As simple as it is.

Another example can be Guardian vs Thief. A raw burst thief can do nothing against a bunker guardian. But has Thief enough tools to kill a guardian? Yes. He just have to focus on a more balanced build, bringing maybe some boon removals. Obviously, if you want to kill a bunker Guardian, which is an imbalanced build on defenses made just to counter heavy bursters, with a glass Thief, you are going to lose.

We aren’t talking about the balance of a specific build, we are talking about the balance of a whole profession, which is incredibly easy to archieve in a 1vs1 environment.

When talking about teamplay, on the other hand, it is almost impossible to get balance. Just see at the actual tPvP meta, it is a mess at best.

sorrow.2364:

No? The thief needs some buff in condition removals.

And when you give him to him, you screw all the Necromancers, because, in our perfect world the Necromancers and the Thiefs would have been balanced before that change. Anyway, we’re going off topic so I won’t answer any following posts.

The whole thing is:
if you run scissor to beat paper and you lose to rock, that doesn’t mean that scissor has to be nerfed, neither that paper must be buffed.
Running scissor means you are accepting the risk to meet rock and lose against, while being effective against paper.
Everyone, then, will run neither scissor, neither rock, neither paper. Just an hybrid to be effective against everything.

sorrow.2364:

The whole thing is:
if you run scissor to beat paper and you lose to rock, that doesn’t mean that scissor has to be nerfed, neither that paper must be buffed.
Running scissor means you are accepting the risk to meet rock and lose against, while being effective against paper.
Everyone, then, will run neither scissor, neither rock, neither paper. Just an hybrid to be effective against everything.

Exactly. A true “rock paper scissors” outcome is impossible to create in a game with this kind of complexity.

what dueling teaches you, specifically, is how to be aware of the maneuvers your opponents are making so that, during skirmishes in tPvP, you are an asset to your team because you are able to proactively attend to the unique skill queues of the opposing team.

while you can, over time, begin to distinguish these queues within the milieu, it is far more efficient (and, imo, advantageous) to discover these queues on a 1v1 scale so that your skill set becomes additive, rather than deconstructive (which is to say “deconstructing the skirmish”).

think of sports training, videos of skirmishes are used to single out individual strengths and weaknesses, so that the team improves from the ground up.

nakoda.4213:

what dueling teaches you, specifically, is how to be aware of the maneuvers your opponents are making so that, during skirmishes in tPvP, you are an asset to your team because you are able to proactively attend to the unique skill queues of the opposing team.

while you can, over time, begin to distinguish these queues within the milieu, it is far more efficient (and, imo, advantageous) to discover these queues on a 1v1 scale so that your skill set becomes additive, rather than deconstructive (which is to say “deconstructing the skirmish”).

think of sports training, videos of skirmishes are used to single out individual strengths and weaknesses, so that the team improves from the ground up.

Perfect description. Well said.

Beastmaster Ranger, Phantasmal Mesmer, D/D Elementalist (Not anymore, atleast), and Minionmancer Necro.

Strongest 1v1 builds in the game, and virtually impossible to beat without other 1v1 builds. THAT is why duels don’t matter.

Duels can be used to teach new players and to partially learn mechanics of a fight, but most things can be learned from Tournaments. Plus many builds are unviable in 1v1 than in 5v5, such as my Staff AoE Elementalist. Sucks horrid in a stand up 1v1, but in a 5v5? I rain death like nobody’s business.

yes learn to fight on the caps.

Although I do agree with dueling being good for learning.

You beat an underpowered class 1v1, with a God tier 1v1 build that takes little to no skill.

Although still balanced since crappy for team fights so I don’t think it needs to be nerfed or anything like that. But aslong as this mentality exists for balance we’d never see dueling as a serious thing.

How about a duel system in mists or PvE that uses your PvP set, that spawns a mini point under your feat.

both players have to be atleast 2400 distance away and then the fight wins when both points are caped with a 5 seconds respawn time between the two points.

(this will still have the rock, paper, scissor, problem. However will make it so less builds are uselss.)

just because everyone on one team can 1v1 and win against the other team doesn’t make them better. The only thing I find 1v1 good for is when u see a hgh engy tearing up your team and your team is dumb enough to not go after him so u have to 1v1 him.

in a team game, dueling is a necessary training/testing/practice mode, but meaningless as a competitive mode.

it would be great to have a variety of training modes,.dueling,.team dueling, target dummies that give statistical feedback, configurable target dummies, etc.

but given that the game is not intended to be balanced for 1v1, there’s no point in having ladders or other competitive support for dueling.

so anyways, custom arenas will presumably provide much of what you need, except it needs to be paid for.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Beastmaster Ranger, Phantasmal Mesmer, D/D Elementalist (Not anymore, atleast), and Minionmancer Necro.

Strongest 1v1 builds in the game, and virtually impossible to beat without other 1v1 builds. THAT is why duels don’t matter.

Duels can be used to teach new players and to partially learn mechanics of a fight, but most things can be learned from Tournaments. Plus many builds are unviable in 1v1 than in 5v5, such as my Staff AoE Elementalist. Sucks horrid in a stand up 1v1, but in a 5v5? I rain death like nobody’s business.

Pretty much sums up the common arguments here.
There is no out right rock paper scissors in gw2. There is no counter builds honestly. If you look at the meta builds in conquest you can already find the best 1v1 builds.

The only real counter in this game to any class is focus fire. That’s why it’s a team game. And the counter to focus fire? Coordinated cc, support, down state management.

Nobody thinks dueling is useless i guess. The debate is whether it should competitive. Dueling is already on anet’s list of features to be implemented anyway.

coordinated team efforts come from coordinated team practice. coordinated team success comes from each individual member being capable of pulling their weight by being aware of the opposing team’s composition and having the experience and knowledge to know how to adjust tactics accordingly.

dueling, then, is not “competitive” in this context because it is not about “winning,” team games are about “winning,” but dueling is rather about learning and being prepared.

not only does dueling give you a controlled environment within which to learn about opposing classes, but also allows you to find weaknesses within your own build, counter-reactions to specific opposing attacks and combinations, and pinpoints the areas within your build/profession that are under/over powered when facing an equally skilled opponent such that your feedback can then be meaningful for the developers in their efforts to balance the game.

Again, all of this can certainly be sussed out from playing nothing but team matches, but you will learn faster, better, and more clearly by taking on the challenge of each profession one at a time.

If the game is balanced around 1v1 encounters, then no one player is ever going to be useless because every class will be able to defend itself against another, leaving it down to partly skill and partly luck that determines the outcome of a fight. Then, as more and more players are added to the milieu, team tactics and combo fields become the next stage of learning.

The point here is that learning to roflstomp and steam roll as a group is nice and all, but in a competitive sport, if one of my team members is unaware of how to handle a certain class by themselves, then that player needs babysitting and is no longer an asset to the the team.

You are only as strong as your weakest link.

Goodbye!

I have no problem with duels, but until there is a mechanic in the game for them I refuse to recognize them.

Alot of games are decided by who wins the duel for a point. Its far from everything but it is important to fight well 1 on 1

Ambushbug.3146:

I have no problem with duels, but until there is a mechanic in the game for them I refuse to recognize them.

there is so much wrong with this attitude that i don’t even know where to start without setting the world on fire.

nakoda.4213:

Ambushbug.3146:

I have no problem with duels, but until there is a mechanic in the game for them I refuse to recognize them.

there is so much wrong with this attitude that i don’t even know where to start without setting the world on fire.

So strike match and let me know what’s wrong with it? Like I said, I have no issue with them once there is a proper mechanic in the game for them. Do you know how aggravating it is to hit that join now button and roughly half of the time get stuck in a room with “hey, we are dueling”. It’s a waste of my time, now I just proceed to capture points and kill whoever I come across if I can. I end up being the bad guy for playing the game as intended.

Honestly the combat system is more fitting for a dueling system with the no holy trinity, amount of particle effects and large mobility discrepancies between classes. However how elite skills were implemented doesn’t fit dueling. When I first saw their approach to elite skills I cringed as they went for more of a moba design instead of sticking to their Gw1 style. Mobas have a lot of down time while a combat system like Gw2 doesn’t so their style doesn’t transfer over cleanly.

bhagwad.4281:

I keep hearing that GW2 is a “team game” and that it’s not “meant” to be balanced around 1v1.

You’ll only hear that from non-GW1 players.

Dueling is very useful, best way to learn enemy classes and how they work. That’s far different than balancing around 1on1.

People will always min/max in a way to give up individual strength for making the group stronger.

KarlaGrey.5903:

bhagwad.4281:

I keep hearing that GW2 is a “team game” and that it’s not “meant” to be balanced around 1v1.

You’ll only hear that from non-GW1 players.

Agreed. The contrary is true of game balance. A game is truly well done when it is just as balanced in a 1 v 1 as it is in a 100 v 100. Provided all numbers are equal, it is skill against skill alone.

“You mean, you’ll put down your rock and I’ll put down my sword and we’ll try to kill each other like civilized people?” – Dread Pirate Roberts