Guild Wars 2

Here’s how you build a paid tournament team
Take X bunkers.
Take 5 – X burst specs.

There you go, your team is built. I probably don’t have the experience in paid tourneys that some of you posting here will respond with, but in all 6 games I’ve played in, this is the exact setup. Every player who isn’t bunker is designed to dump as much damage as possible, and bail if that didn’t work.

Anet, this is extremely boring – I refuse to go 30/30/0/0/10 BS thief and hope my opponent doesn’t have a stun break or extremely quick reflexes – its binary, and boring as kitten. I like to run a well thought out spec, where both my opponent and I have to react to each others moves in an attempt to win – neither of us should be running a preset burst rotation, then either stomping or running away, and relying on a Guardian/Ele/Engi to sit on a point and just stay alive. It’s the antithesis of fun. Someone please tell me this is what the Nov 15th patch will be addressing?

I sure hope both burst and bunker builds get toned down.

Bump, because it needs it.

bump, because it needs it.

lol watch anet only fix stealth and not touch anything else balance-wise. i think that might be the best and the worst decision for them. best to take changes slowly and not make them too extreme though.

I’m all for well thought out changes to the game. The issue here isn’t small, or subtle however – across all the range of specs the designers had in mind for the years they worked on this game, it’s all boiled down to bunker or burst.
It also puts a huge favor on class selection – for bunker, you take a Guardian or Ele nowadays. Engi and to some extent necro are still an option I guess, but they’re not the best, so why field them?

For burst, you take a Thief or Ele – they have the best burst potential while also having the ability to run away if things look like they’re going sour. Mesmer and warrior work also, and you’ll actually see them in games.

well, in their defense, every competitive game will attempt to minmax every bit that they can. if that means they can only use 25-50% of the currently available classes, and abuse the heck out of them, then that’s what they’ll do to win. if they don’t, they’ll sure as hell be playing someone else who does, so it will bite them in the kitten the problem is that the maxs are too high and the mins are too. the stuff in between just gets slashed.

sad. face.

I agree. I’m not trying to bash Anet – Balancing a complex game is very hard. I only care because I enjoy the game, and feel it has potential. That being said, I still want them to at least acknowledge the issue, and let us know steps are being taken/things are being looked into (which is what I’m hoping the patch later this week will address)

evilapprentice.6379:

I agree. I’m not trying to bash Anet – Balancing a complex game is very hard. I only care because I enjoy the game, and feel it has potential. That being said, I still want them to at least acknowledge the issue, and let us know steps are being taken/things are being looked into (which is what I’m hoping the patch later this week will address)

They’ve already told us they’re looking ay burst and bunkers.

tOss.9024:

evilapprentice.6379:

I agree. I’m not trying to bash Anet – Balancing a complex game is very hard. I only care because I enjoy the game, and feel it has potential. That being said, I still want them to at least acknowledge the issue, and let us know steps are being taken/things are being looked into (which is what I’m hoping the patch later this week will address)

They’ve already told us they’re looking ay burst and bunkers.

I specifically mentioned the patch notes earlier (and in the post you’ve quoted) because I want to see it in the patch notes. I do appreciate that the devs come onto the boards to comment, but they tend to be very non-commital (understandably, but still). A “we’re looking into this” in a boards comment isn’t the same to me as patch notes mentioning “we’re looking into/re-working some burst damage and bunker potential”.

Some sort of timeline would also be nice. This isn’t a “waah, i’m going to quit!” statement, but if they told me they hope to have everything fixed by some fixed date, I’d find something else to occupy my time and come back at said date – I don’t pay monthly, and I don’t have to worry about people beating me in a gear race, so that’s not problem. I’m just beginning to feel like there’s no end in sight. I understand why they don’t give us timelines (because they change, and internet people are the most unforgiving), but that doesn’t make it any easier.

It was unfortunate that the original vision of damage/support/control turned into burst/bunker so quickly. I think Anet’s commitment to giving every profession multiple viable damage/support/control builds is awesome, but it certainly made things very near impossible to balance. In a traditional trinity, no one complains that the healers can’t build for burst damage.

That said, they will have to be super careful in nerfing stuff. It’s going to take a lot of time, and there are only a few simple fixes. Also, Anet is committed to their player base, which is overwhelmingly PvE right now. It’s fairly narcissistic to complain that Anet is spending more time on PvE than PvP.

Ah man I totally agree. This is far from an esport. It is extremely repetitive and boring. Another disapointement.