Guild Wars 2

So, the other night I ended up in a team of 4 Engis and me as a Warrior, so of course I instantly swapped to my Engi as well. We ended up being a surprisingly potent combination of pure condi, celestial, and turrets. We crushed, it wasn’t even funny. After that game we all grouped up. This is where we became a bit naughty.

We decided it would be funny to all join as different classes, then swap about 30 seconds from the game start. What started as a joke became a ridiculously effective tactic. With minimum communication we won all but one game, and that loss we almost won but someone d/c’d. If we had joined as all Engis, players would have changed out to counter us. However, waiting till the last second to swap out didn’t allow for that.

This is a fairly complicated problem. If you lock players into their class/build once you accept the queue you might end up with 3 Mesmers and 2 Teefs or some other silly composition and not be able to fix that. On the other hand, you have the ability to do what I described above. I can’t really say our team comp was OP, just that if you suddenly find yourself up against 5 Engis and don’t have time to swap builds/classes you get a big advantage.

I think locking once you accept queue makes perfect sense. That’s part of the thrill of solo queue (when it works) interesting team comps and matchups. It should also lock the whole PvP build.

I don’t mind swapping before the match, but I feel like swapping during the match is unfair.

If you are losing Legacy of Foefire, you can do stuff like bringing in a mesmer to portal the whole team into the lord’s room without the other team realizing it quickly enough because they didn’t expect a mesmer. Or switching to a thief, so the player can quickly decap a point after dying.