Guild Wars 2

Let’s start with clear words: this is no QQ topic.

The current state of the game compared to Guild Wars 1 PvP is ridiculous.

Why you ask?

Because there is NO variety or whatsoever when it comes to builds, runes and/or sigils.
There is only a certain amount of viable stuff that is being used by everyone and their moms.

In Guild Wars 1 everything had the possibility to become usefull on ANY profession, there was no specific meta class or meta build. Every class was used and viable.

What do we have right now, another ele buff, another engi buff, another condi buff.. same old story but only made worse.

My point?

Make professions and utilities/traits worth playing, don’t make 1 profession 100% meta viable and leave out another. This meta game has to stop cause it really affects the fun in PvP.

Thanks for your time and I really hope this will get some attention.

-Sâmbuca

Meta can’t evolve since professions got so many broken traits/utilities and they are forced to use those playable… also majority of amulets got horrible combo of stats and amulet which could help to change meta is instantly removed as non-healthy…

lorddavito.2395:

Because there is NO variety or whatsoever when it comes to builds, runes and/or sigils.
There is only a certain amount of viable stuff that is being used by everyone and their moms.

In Guild Wars 1 everything had the possibility to become usefull on ANY profession, there was no specific meta class or meta build. Every class was used and viable.

That’s so wrong. Every game ever had a meta, GW1 is no different. Meta (loosely) means most commonly used. Let’s take HA and GvG, post derv patch. First came AoG, then WS, and after these got nerfed AoB took over. Now, AoG and WS were still decent, yet AoB was the only derv build you saw, which means AoB was meta.

Every class was used? Cool let me grab my Paragon and – ohwait, only 1 PvP build that’s somewhat viable in PvP, and nobody even takes it.

Just look at ele. You could use D/D, Staff, S/F, and even D/F tempest (different levels of viability and skill cap, but all of these work). Now, yes these are mostly cele builds, but did assassins or warriors have builds other than pure DPS in GW1? No.

I’m not saying that the current meta is good, you’re right there’s a ton of broken stuff, but the build diversity wasn’t that much better in GW1, and in GW2 at least every class is represented at top tier.

In GW1 you had 30-40 viable builds per PvP gamemode, in GW2 it’s roughly the same. There are fewer meta builds because the party size is smaller so people must work from a more limited pool of possible team comps, but that’s it.

witcher.3197:

In GW1 you had 30-40 viable builds per PvP gamemode, in GW2 it’s roughly the same. There are fewer meta builds because the party size is smaller so people must work from a more limited pool of possible team comps, but that’s it.

In GW2 you get usualy 1 truly viable build per profession once meta establishes*…
Also your example with Paragon is pretty bad, it was used often as secondary profession…

Morwath.9817:

witcher.3197:

In GW1 you had 30-40 viable builds per PvP gamemode, in GW2 it’s roughly the same. There are fewer meta builds because the party size is smaller so people must work from a more limited pool of possible team comps, but that’s it.

In GW2 you get usualy 1 truly viable build per profession once meta establishes…
Also your example with Paragon is pretty bad, it was used often as secondary profession…

Yes, but paragon itself wasn’t used only 1 skill or 2 on other classes.

And classes in both games have more than 1 truly viale build aside from the meta. It’s just that things become meta for a reason, and most people cba to use anything that’s not the easiest/most effective option.

witcher.3197:

And classes in both games have more than 1 truly viale build aside from the meta. It’s just that things become meta for a reason, and most people cba to use anything that’s not the easiest option.

Thats not true. You had much greater variety of builds in GW1.

Look at Necros for example, they have been used for different purposes, something that GW2 fails with and thats because as I’ve pointed few posts above is all because trait lanes and utilities are imbalanced.

Why would you play supportive Necro in GW2 when Blood and Death are so weak compared to Spite/Curses/Soul Reaping/Reaper (even here Curses is weak compared to other three) and lack of utilities supporting such game play even hurts more those trait lines.

Also fact that some skills have been bound to weapons and that it doesn’t allow you to pick Life Siphon without picking weapon you don’t want to use won’t help us with variety (e.g. Necro missing Support weapon)…

Wow this guy had no idea what he’s talking about lol

I see someone is forgetting IWAY Warrior/Rangers. There will always be a ‘meta’.

ranciddy.8243:

I see someone is forgetting IWAY Warrior/Rangers. There will always be a ‘meta’.

or Spike Eles…
or Spike Rangers…
or Spike Necros…
or…

Problem isn’t fact that meta exists… but fact that it can only evolve with patches, since majority of utilities/weapons/traits aren’t good enough to give us solid counter comps to meta and reshape it without help of dev team.

We got static meta instead of dynamic and changing one, because of lack of balance.

Morwath.9817:

witcher.3197:

In GW1 you had 30-40 viable builds per PvP gamemode, in GW2 it’s roughly the same. There are fewer meta builds because the party size is smaller so people must work from a more limited pool of possible team comps, but that’s it.

In GW2 you get usualy 1 truly viable build per profession once meta establishes*…
Also your example with Paragon is pretty bad, it was used often as secondary profession…

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Cele Meta for example:
Engi : Cele Rifle
Ele: Cele Ele
Warrior: Cele Shoutbow
Necro: Carrion Terror
Guardian: Hammer/SF Zerker
Thief: S/D Zerker, D/P Zerker
Mesmer: Shatter Zerker
Ranger: nothing (!)

Do you think Carrion Terror is the current Necro meta build, or are you talking about some past time? I would be really surprised if that were the case.

And I wish I could follow this conversation because I always find it interesting to hear about GW1, but literally everyone remembers that game differently. Since it’s almost all anecdotal and dripping with nostalgia, it’s very difficult for me to believe anyone as to how the game actually was.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Do you think Carrion Terror is the current Necro meta build, or are you talking about some past time? I would be really surprised if that were the case.

I’ve been talking about past time (celestial meta), however I believe Carrion Chillomancer is new meta.

How to end the OP’s topic in 1 link

http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/PvX_wiki

Morwath.9817:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Do you think Carrion Terror is the current Necro meta build, or are you talking about some past time? I would be really surprised if that were the case.

I’ve been talking about past time (celestial meta), however I believe Carrion Chillomancer is new meta.

Ok, I figured. You are probably right with Carrion Chillmancer though right now, based on what I’ve read in ye olde Necro forums. I think there might actually be a few other builds that serve as “viable” for a large portion of PvP, though, including power-based tanky Reapers and most likely a cele signet build.

Morwath.9817:

ranciddy.8243:

I see someone is forgetting IWAY Warrior/Rangers. There will always be a ‘meta’.

or Spike Eles…
or Spike Rangers…
or Spike Necros…
or…

Problem isn’t fact that meta exists… but fact that it can only evolve with patches, since majority of utilities/weapons/traits aren’t good enough to give us solid counter comps to meta and reshape it without help of dev team.

We got static meta instead of dynamic and changing one, because of lack of balance.

Those teams never really made it far. The season my team went undefeated we just ran heavy physical pressure with a mesmer lol.

2 War
1 Paragon
1 Ranger
1 Mesmer
1 Necro/Ele (I think she switched it up randomly)
2 Monks

That was able to beat everything and anything

gw1 had the same issues

the big difference is: in gw1 you had a first class and a second class so you can do combo or fill the gap of the first class with the second one.
+ all the team build (iway, spike…) were weaker than balance team build.

In gw2 if your class/build lack of something you are screwed so the game becomes a paper/scisor game and the team build are just the addition of the 3 OP meta class/build.

Between all classes there’s probably 50-80% of completely unusable (at least in pvp) utilities and elite skills… that’s extremely bad for build versatility.

GW1 had a LOT of terrible skills too (probably about 50% if not more too), but when you can choose 8 skills from a selection of 300, it’s hard NOT to find a lot of different working combinations.

Even if 80% of the 300 skills were bad, that still leaves 60 good skills from which you can make a selection of 8 – lots of different builds.

But if a class has 80% bad pvp utilities (eles and warriors come to mind), out of the 20-25 skills we get in GW2, that only leaves about 5 if not less usable skills.

For example, as an Ele in PVP, you’ll never take
- Arcane skills because they only offer damage and you need defense
- Glyphs because they are all terrible
- Conjures simply because the conjure mechanics are so bad and earth shield isn’t instant
- And finally: You’ll never take Signets now because they can no longer give auras which could then be used to give boons. Without Auras, signets are completely worthless on ele – but Arenanet moves those auras on utility skills to shouts with tempest…

Sorry OP, but this is complete nonsense. Any single gw1 character skillbar was written in stone, copyright by meta. The team comp made your build, no one brought it by himself. “Bring your own build(b.y.o.b)” is what you mean, gvg players sometimes did this for fun, but this was completly unserious and disadvantaged against any organized team and most times won by supercrazy split actions and creating chaos everwhere.

The gw1 meta wasnt about single player bars, it was about 5-6 good running teambuilds for each gamemode. Like “What do we play today? Balanced, split or spike?”. Then the choosen teambuild and your position determined your personal skillbar. A shockaxe warrior, p-block mesmer, protmonk or a flagrunner always looked exactly the same.
Except, and thats the big difference, you played any highly specialized team comp like crazy hex-/condiovers, iway, rspike or stuff like this, which had completly other skillbars than the usual meta ones. But those builds were countered by good splits easily, so youve always been disadvantaged against any good balanced, and thats why those builds were only played in tombs and not in gvg.

GW2 instead brings much more options for each individual player, but less for the team comps. I see at least 3-4 personal builds for each class that, depending on the team comp, can be somehow viable.

A games balance will never be “choose randomly between your traits and utilities and your build is as good as everyones else one”, and thats why there is a meta in every game: The best synergizing traits, utilities and equip for a certain role. But that doesnt mean that anything else is disadvantaged per se. You just cant expect to randomly throw anything in and have a good build.

GW2 has a larger percentage of ‘viable’ builds, while GW1 has a larger quantity of ‘viable’ builds. There are multiple reasons for this, but for the most part it boils down to GW1 having more skills even though a fair amount were niche skills, while the majority of GW2 skills are better designed and useful outside of niche situations (excluding Ranger). And like with most games, the viability of builds changes depending on the level of competition you’re facing. While a GW1 touch ranger or GW2 berserker longbow ranger are effective against weaker competition, their viability goes down as the competition’s skill increases to the point where they’re not seen in upper tiers.

But yes, the profession balance in GW2 still has a long ways to go, especially for some professions. For example, thinking mainly of ranger, there’s a massive number of reasons you rarely see them in high-level tournaments.

Gw1 really didn’t have that much variety. Gw1 didn’t last long enough to compare. 3 years into gw1 the pvp was already dead. You saw the same exact people every time. Everyone in heroes ascent knew everyone. The top gvg guilds all played against the same guilds.

terrorshard.3854:

Morwath.9817:

ranciddy.8243:

I see someone is forgetting IWAY Warrior/Rangers. There will always be a ‘meta’.

or Spike Eles…
or Spike Rangers…
or Spike Necros…
or…

Problem isn’t fact that meta exists… but fact that it can only evolve with patches, since majority of utilities/weapons/traits aren’t good enough to give us solid counter comps to meta and reshape it without help of dev team.

We got static meta instead of dynamic and changing one, because of lack of balance.

Those teams never really made it far. The season my team went undefeated we just ran heavy physical pressure with a mesmer lol.

2 War
1 Paragon
1 Ranger
1 Mesmer
1 Necro/Ele (I think she switched it up randomly)
2 Monks

That was able to beat everything and anything

You comment pre Factions meta with post Nightfall meta, gj.

I very much enjoyed GW1 PvP (as a mostly arena player) more so than GW2 PvP… but it definitely had a “meta” which wasn’t probably terribly much more diverse than the GW2 meta in terms of number of builds. The difference was, GW2 was designed to be more cookie cutter to make it easier to balance, and has continued to become more cookie cutter over time (the trait rework going from choosing individual trait point investment with many options, down to just choosing 3 trait bars with only 1 or 2 viable options per major trait slot for instance.)

In terms of skill choices, the majority of your bar is decided by your weapon (which there are generally only a couple viable pvp options for weapon combinations per class), 1 or 2 viable paths of utility synergies (shouts, signets, cantrips, etc.) and an Elite skill… which used to be exciting and diverse cornerstones of a build in GW1, but which now generally have recharges so high they don’t impact the overall build all that much and are again usually limited to 1 or 2 viable options. Amulets, sigils, and runes likewise don’t usually have that many competing viable options for a particular build, but GW1’s pvp gear system wasn’t really much better in that regard.

Overall though, being able to slot 8 individual skills (including ones from a secondary class) with build defining Elites just led to a lot more options for customization, even though in the end most people in the “meta” still chose pretty similar skill bars. Whereas GW2 just forces much more cookie cutter builds due to severely limited choices (either literally limited, like the new choose-from-3 trait system, or limited by how bad alternatives are in the case of most classes utility skills and elite slots.) And in the absence of a large customization possibility space, the best builds are usually found quickly and copied by the masses.