Guild Wars 2

Yes. You read that right. 5 Bunkers.

Example: 1 goes to Henge, 1 to Keep, 3 to the other side of the map, Mines.

Leave 2 on Mines, 2 on Keep, and 1 on Henge. All bunker builds. GG.

But, but, Condition dmg! Burst dmg!

Umm… no. To counter, you’d need your whole team to be Condition and high Burst (Thieves, Warriors) specced in order to put a dent in their shiny armor of so called skillz. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case 99% of the time.

Went up against 2 Guardians, 1 Ele, 1 Necro, and 1 Engineer. All bunkers.

Is this what it has come to?

Necro and engie bunkers are very counterable by most classes, and conditions work reliably. However, the ele bunker and one of the two guardian bunker builds are untouchable by conditions.

What they did was leave 1 Guardian on point at the Mines and have the Necro back him up from the side. He’d be hiding somewhere until we started fighting.

At keep, same story. 1 Guardian on point, the Engineer supporting from the side.

And the Ele was alone at their Henge.

I think it’s a nice change from all the glass cannons, makes things much more interesting when people aren’t getting instagibbed by thieves and uncounterably killed by moa mesmers. I don’t see why you would complain about this, or do you want to downgrade toughness and bunker skills so you can keep facerolling everyone without any resistance? No one will go bunker anymore then and it’ll just be an instagib fest without any kind of tactics or skill.

Zsymon.8457:

I think it’s a nice change from all the glass cannons, makes things much more interesting when people aren’t getting instagibbed by thieves and uncounterably killed by moa mesmers. I don’t see why you would complain about this, or do you want to downgrade toughness and bunker skills so you can keep facerolling everyone without any resistance? No one will go bunker anymore then and it’ll just be an instagib fest without any kind of tactics or skill.

I’m not asking to faceroll anybody. This isn’t about the bunker as a spec. This is about 5 bunkers as a team.

We already know that some bunkers out there are ridiculous in terms of survival/not dying.

I’ve been seeing comps like this for a while. Even in Khylo a couple times last night. It’s a pretty frustrating comp to run up against on any map. Unless you have uber bunker/control in your own comp you’ve got no choice but to try and zerg them with all 5. Even then, you might push them off, assuming they don’t rotate to help, but you’ll have no way to hold the points you take without matching them bunker for bunker. If you can manage to zerg and rotate quick enough you can at least keep the score a little closer but that’s about the best I’ve come up with without having a team full of bunkers to counter. Not sure that’d PvP at the point, more like 5v5 tummy stix.

Bunker guard + Bunker staff Ele = just concede the node and try another point. Haven’t seen anyone double up on this yet though. Should be just a matter of time I guess.

The more I play sPVP the more I realize how so far from balanced it is.

Totally agree with the OP. Ive fought in tourneys and hot joins that are just giant endless bunker fights. Multiple minute long circle jerks where a single guardian or ele tanks 4 people. It’s absolutely ridiculous. PVP is turning into ‘lets all just stand in a circle and punch each other in the face until the time runs out’. Yea. Fun.

Sorry to use a three letter word but WoW at least required healers to support your bunkers which consumed a ‘spot’ in a team. In here, the bunkers are self sufficient and you can run 5 of them if you want.

It’s really a joke. Even more of a joke are the people that throw around ‘l2p’ because they think they actually have talent playing one of these builds.

I think the only reason bunker stacking works is because the entire tournament is based on the same game mode. if each round was a different game mode and class/build was locked upon entering the tournament then people would have to be more thoughtful and diverse with their comps.

On top of matching pugs vs premades, I’m starting to see more and more premades with 3 bunkers minimum. These FOTM builds need to go, the sooner the better.

The problem with bunkers is that the game isn’t mathematically balanced. Suppose any build has a combined output per second of total damage, healing and mitigation, well bunkers have a bigger total output than other builds putting them at a major advantage. Their healing and mitigation are already way too high, but they can also manage to damage me more than my heal can give me back, at least as a warrior. I’d rather see nerfs to bunkers than buffs to warriors.

90% of the bunkers has an anti-tactic… Seriously. Elementalists are easiest when using immobilise, freezes and well timed poison… Or a skilled backstab thief using poisons, engineer you usually yust are able to push him off the point tbh… Though simple burst from preferably a necro or bleed ranger can do miracles to. Necros… Well.. Havent found an tank necro yet. Guardian.. Well depends.. Some can yust be downed with a combination of condition apply and burst melee, preferably thief or 100b warrior or something… Some belong to the remaining 10% i talked about above though

Also… Try figurig out what is overpowered.. So far i have tested toughness is clearly not the problem, healing isnt either, most traits seem to be balanced.. So it must be an combination of some spells which work normal independantly but are to strong combined.. Who knows

Um… you can kill a bunker quickly with 2 decent players, whats the problem? (or 1 thief vs a bunker ele)

bunkers are epic and in my opinion fine

5 bunkers is an awful build. Free monster kills, and you’re saying that you can’t kill the one bunker at the henge? The points from monster kills and keeping that one node alone would put you at at least a 400 to 500 points ratio… assuming you maybe lost a monster, which you shouldn’t, if those slow bunkers are all just sitting on the points… Even if all you did was camp your 3 guys on one node where the single bunker was and your other 2 players take down the creatures, because they will be able to take them down much faster than any bunker. You could make up the points by just contesting a single node for less than a minute or two, they are bunkers, they can’t kill you fast.

5 bunkers is a horrible comp, only a very uncoordinated team should lose to this idea, or a team with a few new players on it, which will happen, as the game is less than two months old. It sounds like a gimmick that will work against teams that aren’t prepared for it… I once saw Team Korea use a team full of nothing but professions with ALL the knockbacks you could have… their highest glory player had around 60 to our highest of around 200, and they beat us 500 to 150ish. It was embarassing. They didn’t even kill us, they just kept us away for an entire match, and coordinated monster kill steals with precision.

Are we to expect knockbacks to be next on the list of OP? If bunkers get nerfed, expect to see much more focus on control teams and players, and expect lots of posts here on the boards about how it’s no fun to just get knocked down and around for an entire fight, and it’s unfair.

Agree with aydenunited – 5 bunkers might seem annoying to play against, but IMO it’s really not a very strong comp.

For one, all the “run around for minutes in a 1v4” comments are beyond exaggerated. Most bunkers will either be forced off the point or will flat drop to two coordinated players after 20-30 seconds of focused assault, with some exceptions depending on what classes are doing the attacking and how well the bunker plays. Ele’s get hit very hard by immobilize and spammable poison (even triple cantrip ones w/ cleansing fire), engineers are lacking in stability, necros are pretty fragile “bunkers” once their 60 sec cd wells are gone (in addition to lacking stability), and guardians are more or less in the same boat as ele’s.

The mobility with the comp described in the OP is kinda bad as well. Outside of the ele (assuming he constantly swaps between staff and scepter), rotation speed is going to be pretty slow and decent teams will capitalize on that.

Boss killing ability is really bad with that comp and treb will hit that comp hard as well. If one of the bunkers camps your treb all game, it should be even easier to take points so long as your treb operator is mobile and knows how to play cat & mouse w/ whoever the assaulter is.

All in all, I think bunkers can be problematic in a general sense, but definitely NOT with this comp.

hackks.3687:

I think the only reason bunker stacking works is because the entire tournament is based on the same game mode. if each round was a different game mode and class/build was locked upon entering the tournament then people would have to be more thoughtful and diverse with their comps.

This game cannot support ctf, so that is out. Deathmatch? That’s the only thing left really.

Pyrial.2917:

hackks.3687:

I think the only reason bunker stacking works is because the entire tournament is based on the same game mode. if each round was a different game mode and class/build was locked upon entering the tournament then people would have to be more thoughtful and diverse with their comps.

This game cannot support ctf, so that is out. Deathmatch? That’s the only thing left really.

I could see Foefire being CtF. Khylo is really only built for conquest. No idea what to do with Forest.

@ Killing Bunkers: was the issue ever about killing them? they die all the time. it just takes a lot more time and energy to do it than a team without an equivalent amount of bunkers can afford without giving up the rest of the map. e.g. the number of bunkers in your team directly reflects the amount of time your team holds the nodes and accrues points. which is the whole key to winning. what other build does that?

Seriously, you have so many bad posts QQing about so many different topics related to PVP. You cried about thieves and now you cry about bunkers. A quick browsing of your most recent posts just shows complaints about a huge range of pvp topics that you aren’t qualified to speak on.

The 4/5 class comp teams never work. They get easily beat down by balanced good team. Given the video you posted where you “highlighted” pvp issues, I doubt you are part of one.

Right. I am guessing if they had a 5th guardian..they would win…right?

erm… ITS CONQUEST, what did you expect lol. If you played in a TDM format, you would have an even spread, possibly more biased to high dps builds, but at least a larger spread of builds.

The fact that arena.net chooses conquest mode to be the end all for spvp, means that when the casual players catch up with the meta-game of pros, which is currently happening fast as spvp is indeed dry, the optimum build to maintain/hold/cap points are bunkers.

Get a DB acro trickery specd thief on your team.

I single whip double guard bunkers often enough. There simply isn’t enough condition removal to keep a thief like this @ bay. I’ve yet to meet a bunker build I can’t put down.

1v1… done deal. 2v1… hit or miss.

Maybe I’m just that good? Possible. Unlikely… but possible. Me thinks people just aren’t breaking away from their comfort zones enough to find what works for them.

5 bunkers aren’t meta. no serious team have this build.
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