Guild Wars 2

Hey guys
Just wondering, is any of you guys playing exclusively Stronghold during the League?
Is any of you playing just Stronghold at all?

I’m asking this because now that Stronghold is back, I’m playing it a lot more, mainly because there I can play my Warrior and feel somewhat useful. This is mainly because some of the cancerous builds that are meta in Conquest (cough Bunker Mesmer cough) aren’t that useful in this game mode. I still have to deal with some counters that can do good (DH and Revs mostly) with the Conquest builds but even then, a Meditrap is weaker in this mode with 4 traps (at least 4 traps is what I mostly face in Conquest, I just use 3 top) than it is iin conquest, since once triggered I don’t have to stay in any stop to prevent capture of a point. This same point goes for the Bunker Mesmers, Staff Eles, Druids?…

I will still be playing Conquest, but I guess when playing Warrior I’ll stick with Stronghold only

stronghold is slightly more casual friendly than conquest.
conquest rotations can be, really, really hard for casual pvp players.

yes, i do intend to play stronghold, but only with a full team (of casual pvp players anyway, and we get rekt by full pugs who are good).

Same as me playing thief, I am far more useful and a much greater threat in stronghold compared to conquest, and it’s a lot more fun too, fighting at mist champion spawns and supply fights are much better.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Same as me playing thief, I am far more useful and a much greater threat in stronghold compared to conquest, and it’s a lot more fun too, fighting at mist champion spawns and supply fights are much better.

True
Overall I think this mode is much superior and it will alow for a lot more builds than Conquest. Conquest builds are all around capping the points, holding, etc so AoE skills are great there, and bunkering too.
So far I’ve not seen a bunker builds being that useful on Stronghold. There is nothing to hold, and NPC’s are squishy (Door Breakers are the most important and they die in a couple of hits). Support yes, definitly has a place

I begin to actually like Stronghold, because many balance-issues that exist in conquest, aren’t as huge in stronghold. For example diamond skin and resistance-uptimes completely negating certain builds aren’t as huge, cuz you can still kil NPC’s, run supply etc.

The bad thing about stronghold are the much longer q-times, that somehow even are longer when you tick both options, instead of just conquest…. -.-°

There are serious balance issues that need to be addressed with stronghold before it becomes anywhere close to competitive. Right now a lot of 5 man people queue stronghold exclusively and do the 5-man lord bum rush strat, killing the treb fast and relying on healers to keep bombers at full health and bursting down the lord in a couple seconds. Unless you have a team with you that can counter comp that strategy, the game is over in less than 3 minutes. Yes the strategy falls apart miserably if you manage to stave off the initial rush, but it’s completely dependent on the builds you have on your team.

The mode is EXTREMELY solo-q unfriendly especially with the frequency with which you get matched against premades due to the low number of players.

Actually bunker mesmer is pretty strong in Stronghold since you don’t stop channeling mist champion from dmg, so you can just power through the dps with stability and resistance. xD

I was playing stronghold predominantly because conquest is extremely lame and boring. But now every game is over in two minutes because people realized they could get carried through divisions by tempest cheese in stronghold. It’s a shame because before the games were fun and interesting.

May be it’s ranked games that ruin it, I have no intrest at all in this leauge stuff, I have my fun in unranked solo q and very early do we have 5 man premade that do the Lord rush, I find that also in unranked people are more relaxed and don’t have to worry about ruing 100% meta to win nodes and instead play what they want and it’s actually more effective too. Quite a few times me and bersker warrior managed to kill al of the door breakers to stall their rush.

I do enjoy me some stronghold. I’m pretty upset my lockdown mesmer build is useless in Conquest so it was nice for it to still be viable in SH.

Having said that I think because there is wiggle room for builds and abilities people gravitate towards SH to practice a profession/personal pride/ignorance of their own ability etc.

To quote someone from one of my games who commented on a ranger who absolutely failed on defense “How do you expect to be useful on a 2yo ranger build”.

I don’t know if it was 2yo, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Opc.4718:

There are serious balance issues that need to be addressed with stronghold before it becomes anywhere close to competitive. Right now a lot of 5 man people queue stronghold exclusively and do the 5-man lord bum rush strat, killing the treb fast and relying on healers to keep bombers at full health and bursting down the lord in a couple seconds. Unless you have a team with you that can counter comp that strategy, the game is over in less than 3 minutes. Yes the strategy falls apart miserably if you manage to stave off the initial rush, but it’s completely dependent on the builds you have on your team.

The mode is EXTREMELY solo-q unfriendly especially with the frequency with which you get matched against premades due to the low number of players.

That strategy is dumb and bad, only relying on players not defending and running bad comps. Yes, it’s hard if you are solo-Q’ing and ppl don’t listen to anything wrote in chat, but it’s really not a strong strategy. I think the way strondhold works now, doesn’t favour offense anymore at all; defending has more than enough advantages to make it wortwhile:

- Faster reinforcement
- Enemies drop supply on kill
- Hiding behind gates when low and dealing DMG through them is very strong
- NPC’s are decent
- Doorbreakers ball up so heavily, you can easily kill them with a smart comp and the enemy won’t ever have enough healing
- You have a treb which can be useful
- More players don’t add a faster push necessarily, since progress through the gates is tied to the doorbreakers and not the players themselves.

So, you’re saying that with all those advantages you can’t fight a full-on attack? hell no, it’s just because ppl don’t defend in this mode: they try and go atk and run supply when ppl are bumrushing their base, thats just bad play and has nothing to do with balance.

I like stronghold more than conquest but the queue is longer and bunker cancer is spreading there pretty hard as well with healspam on minions.

PowerBottom.5796:

That strategy is dumb and bad, only relying on players not defending and running bad comps. Yes, it’s hard if you are solo-Q’ing and ppl don’t listen to anything wrote in chat, but it’s really not a strong strategy. I think the way strondhold works now, doesn’t favour offense anymore at all; defending has more than enough advantages to make it wortwhile:

- Faster reinforcement
- Enemies drop supply on kill
- Hiding behind gates when low and dealing DMG through them is very strong
- NPC’s are decent
- Doorbreakers ball up so heavily, you can easily kill them with a smart comp and the enemy won’t ever have enough healing
- You have a treb which can be useful
- More players don’t add a faster push necessarily, since progress through the gates is tied to the doorbreakers and not the players themselves.

So, you’re saying that with all those advantages you can’t fight a full-on attack? hell no, it’s just because ppl don’t defend in this mode: they try and go atk and run supply when ppl are bumrushing their base, thats just bad play and has nothing to do with balance.

You underestimate the healing ability of tempests and druids. Once the treb is killed, it is extremely difficult to take down the doorbreakers when the whole team is buffing themselves on top of the doorbreakers. Unless you take down the healer, the doorbreakers will NOT go down if the healer is competent. The healer is backed up by the entire team designed around 5 man sustained bunker brawls. So instead of just killing the dbs, you’re constantly engaged in long drawn out fights and all the while your doors are getting broken down. You NEED to counter comp it with very specific builds to win this war of attrition, and unlike conquest, if you don’t have the necessary builds, you can’t just avoid the fights and rotate around unfavorable matchups. This just becomes even more of a silly scissor paper rock game and that is why stronghold is flawed. This is doubly the case at higher tiers when the players involved understand just how easy it is to ‘exploit’ this strategy with maximum effectiveness.

It’s the same as the conquest double bunker healing meta. It’s arguably a “dumb and bad” strategy as well, relying on the inability of people to rotate properly or do enough dps, but in practice it works way too well and everyone needs to be running the same comps or get left behind. It takes very little skill to be successful with the strategy, and a LOT of effort to counter it. At this point it’s just incredibly boring. If you’re solo q-ing up against premade teams running these strategies, it’s pretty much game over already unless you have a super pug team with all the lucky right comps.

Obviously, the only way you can guarantee a ‘smart’ comp is to have a 5 man team yourself, and that stronghold comp isn’t even really good for conquest. I’d much rather just queue for conquest.

i like stronghold because it makes certain meta builds weaker ( mostly because of all the moving around involved) and that it also encourages people to play strategically and use other heroes than turai ( in fact my xmas pimpcoat svaard was mvp of the match the other day )