Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

there are some good things about GW2 PvP such as the very important combat system of Guild Wars. But a good competetive game needs more than just a good combat system and graphics.

So here is my input on how to improve everyones experience:

1. In its current state, every meta build is far too tanky and thus 1v1s between evenly skilled players will take forever. Even if one makes a mistake, his cooldowns will be up in time so save him. This should not happen in a competetive game which wants to enter E-Sports. People will find it hard to impossible to win 1v1s by skill, they are decided by player rotations.

Possible fix: Make builds less tanky. Even a full tank should not be able to tank attacks forever in my opinion, you also dont have this kind of tank in other PvP games. In LoL and Dota tanks are kitable by squishys, it just takes them a long time. Since those two games are on the top of the competetive scene, you can see how this is an important thing.

2. Another way to adress this issues and also to make the game more interesting is to increase the build diversity. Especially squishy builds need a huge buff. Currently playing glass cannon is pointless cause you trade a little higher damage for a huge portion of your tankyness.

3. Games need to be more exciting. I find that often games are decided within the first teamfight. If the enemie holds close and mid it is very hard to land a comeback. This reduces the tension of the game.

Possible fix: You could introduce more neutral monsters which gives your team a buff by killing them which could turn the game around.
This system already exists on foefire’s essence, temple of the silent storm and Niflhel. But especially the reward you gain from the monsters in Niflhel is neglible and you are better off just holding 2 points.

The story of GW2 is about dragons so why can’t we kill dragons which give huge buffs in PvP? Like a gamechanging buff, but therefore a huge risk in attempting to kill the dragon.

4. Balance. Nothing to say here.
Fix: Have some insider working for you and collecting information of good players in order to make changes instead of listening to some plebs on the forum who think DH is op.

This list is meant to be continued. Just add your thoughts.

kind regards
-Fess

In response:
1. every class too tanky
Unless you’re fighting a signet necro or condi warrior (or tempest). Then even with equally skilled players unless you’re ALSO playing a signet necro or condi warrior you lose (or get bored not moving the health bar at all and leave).

While I agree that most builds need to be less tanky, condi is way out of control. They need to reign in the power creep before they take any survivability away.

2. increase build diversity
Again, while I agree this needs to be done, I don’t want “condi necro #’s 1, 2, 3, and 4” and “you can play a condi warr with a mace or you can play a condi warr with a mace, BUT HEY, rifle is now also viable for the ~2% of fights you do anything other than open with headbutt and stick your mace down their throat!” or “you can play a tanky druid with an annoying but mostly useless knockback, or you can play a tanky druid with an annoying but mostly useless trap.”

The current problem isn’t lack of damage, it’s that PVP is all about burst instead of sustained damage. A well-timed low-mid total damage burst will kill most people, whereas the best full-zerker sustained damage is easily healed through or mostly negated long enough to nuke the glass cannon. And the big problem is even the tankiest bunkers right now are capable of low-mid-damage bursts. They shouldn’t be capable of burst at all at any damage level.

3. Absolutely they need to be more exciting. The best way to achieve this is LARGER MAPS. It’s ridiculous that it takes 10-12 seconds to respawn but only 3 for pretty much any class to run back to home or 6 to run to mid. When even a lopsided 1v1 lasts 20-30 seconds, having someone back in the fight in 16-18 seconds is ridiculously too low. Dying should be more of a hindrance to the over-all team fight as your allies are out of it for long enough to actually matter.

4. Balance. Oh, the never-ending quest for balance. There’s a problem with balance though: If you balance for end-game PVP, you end up with huge discrepancies in character usefulness for end-game PVE, and even larger discrepancies in the relative power of certain classes (when compared for ease of learning curve) for middle-of-the-pack PVP and WVW. A great example of this is current DH: They absolutely destroy bad players (even when played poorly) because the strategy is “crap traps, stand on traps, traps’ll kill anything” and that’s it, but they’re very very bad as far as actual competitive play and nearly worthless in high-end fractals and most raids due to poor survivability and low DPS (and the “everything procs reflect” issue in fractals if you don’t have a mesmer to boonstrip)