Guild Wars 2

• HoT boon spam
• HoT cc spam
• HoT evade spam
• HoT heal spam
• HoT abilities that do all sereval of the above at once + high damage
• Condis2strong
• Power2strong
• Class Stacking
• Opaque matchmaker (might as well be completely random, from what little info we actually get)
• Low population
• Toxic population
• Yo-yo class balance
• Time limited achievements
• Pretty much all conquest
• Stronghold queue times (for you SH lovers, all 5 of you!)

I think I got everything?

I will try to bring my 2 cents here:

• boon spam + boon corruption spam (necro)
• CC spam + stability spam (engi, rev)
• evade spam, block spam, heal spam + condi2strong, power2strong
  this all is summarized by a simple concept: power creep. Yes, by adding spam of stability you counter CC spam and achieve “balance”, same for evade/block/heal countered by absurd power and condi damage. But this makes the game so much less enjoyable overall.

Class stacking is not a new problem, and I don’t think it is a problem on its own, the problem is that stacking classes using the exact same build should never been the optimal thing to win.

Yo-yo balance: technically gw2 PvP is well balanced, maybe more than it has ever been. Sure guardians currently wreck low and medium tiers, but high tier is at its best. The problem is again the power creep. This balance is just not an enjoyable one.

You forgot: abysmal build diversity. Here again, partly result of the power creep since you need HoT broken specs to work.

Finally, low and toxic population is in great part the result of all the above. So all the main gw2 problems can be summarized by “power creep”.

STOP AND REVERT THE POWERCREEP!

Silverkey.2078:

I will try to bring my 2 cents here:

• boon spam + boon corruption spam (necro)
• CC spam + stability spam (engi, rev)
• evade spam, block spam, heal spam + condi2strong, power2strong
  this all is summarized by a simple concept: power creep. Yes, by adding spam of stability you counter CC spam and achieve “balance”, same for evade/block/heal countered by absurd power and condi damage. But this makes the game so much less enjoyable overall.

Class stacking is not a new problem, and I don’t think it is a problem on its own, the problem is that stacking classes using the exact same build should never been the optimal thing to win.

Yo-yo balance: technically gw2 PvP is well balanced, maybe more than it has ever been. Sure guardians currently wreck low and medium tiers, but high tier is at its best. The problem is again the power creep. This balance is just not an enjoyable one.

You forgot: abysmal build diversity. Here again, partly result of the power creep since you need HoT broken specs to work.

Finally, low and toxic population is in great part the result of all the above. So all the main gw2 problems can be summarized by “power creep”.

STOP AND REVERT THE POWERCREEP!

Yo when you say CC spam and only include Rev/Engi as the worst of your problems, than you might want to start paying attention to warriors (3 stuns), druid (2 cc’s or more depending), necro (2-3 fears depending on their rune), mesmer (chaos storm + 2 stuns from f3 given they are chrono condi), and thief (headshot spam, as well steal, as well as basalisk)

but yeah this game is trash, it has been since HoT, simple fix? remove HoT from pvp

xDDD

You missed the biggest one.

Unskilled players.

dustydawg.3105:

Silverkey.2078:

• CC spam + stability spam (engi, rev)

Yo when you say CC spam and only include Rev/Engi as the worst of your problems, than you might want to start paying attention to warriors (3 stuns), druid (2 cc’s or more depending), necro (2-3 fears depending on their rune), mesmer (chaos storm + 2 stuns from f3 given they are chrono condi), and thief (headshot spam, as well steal, as well as basalisk)

but yeah this game is trash, it has been since HoT, simple fix? remove HoT from pvp

xDDD

I referred to engi and rev for the stability spam. The CC spam is all over, and actually rev is almost a least offender (if you exclude staff #5)

What’s the problem with powercreep?
I think that with that definition you mean “dps meta”, then what’s the problem?
We asked for a dps meta from years and when finally we’re able to play something different than bunkers everyone say “powercreep! powercreep! powercreep!” all the time.
WHY????

I’m a necro main and I really would like to turn back into a bunker meta where I will be finally able to not insta die every time I go in a teamfight, but the game is really enjoyable and balanced now, why do you want to take it back to a meta everyone hated?

About conditions, the only classes really able to play condition are warrior and mesmer (necro don’t have any kind of decent condi burst and they’re damage output is in a middle tier, nothing more, that’s why they’re forced to play hybrid builds to be barely viable), and even on war and mesmers you see more direct damage builds than condi ones in game.

The actual meta is a Direct Damage CC Active Defence Meta, the thing everyone asked for years (unless for the CC…).

The people will always be unhappy about the game meta, but this one is the best we ever had.
7 classes totally viable plus a necro useful to boon corrupt and die and a elementalist able to be a really good bunker/supporter, still if everyone think it’s the worst class atm.
It’s seriously the best meta we ever had.

Daily PvP is for me the worst possible thing to ever happen in GW2….this only create one sided matches that frustrate people and push them away from the game all together, I for starter couldn’t be happier that CIV 6 coming out next week…tired sick of this circus

My biggest gripe is how the potential for build diversity dropped since specializations took effect but here’s the other perspectives/opinions of mine.

-how the pip system replaced leaderboards and with ultimate incentive is legendary and a backpiece, not knowing if you’re among the top 5% or top 50%

- it feels more grind-based than competitve (comparing to back in 2013-2014)

-how tank and dps capibilities can be intertwined with limited drawbacks.(warrior/necromancer/guardian i find ok to have such combination since they lack disengage abilities compared to other classes)

-in conquest the skill cap feels to revolve around player roltation and builds(yes its a team-based pvp but no-matter how well I performed in ranked, I only felt carried in the end)

-the things that wasn’t spam-friendly has become spam-friendly

-we have a dishonor system but no honor system

-the whole concept of “any class can do any role” seems to be tossed in the air w/o a conclusive direction to land

Silv.9207:

What’s the problem with powercreep?
I think that with that definition you mean “dps meta”, then what’s the problem?

No, I don’t mean DPS meta. Power creep is not only damage creeping, it is everything, the list being given above. You have an increasing amount of damage, only countered by a increasing amount of block/evades/heals. An increasing amount of CC is countered by a increasing amount of stability.

It is very much a “Red Queen’s race”: you have more of everything, so the balance is still respected. But the enjoyment has decreased because everything relies more and more on unfun mechanics.

The obvious proof to the power creep is the fact that the pre-HoT meta builds are now unviable. They didn’t receive a nerf, many even got buffed, but they were just absolutely outgunned by HoT stuff.

The people will always be unhappy about the game meta, but this one is the best we ever had.
7 classes totally viable plus a necro useful to boon corrupt and die and a elementalist able to be a really good bunker/supporter, still if everyone think it’s the worst class atm.
It’s seriously the best meta we ever had.

I said that before. The balance is the best it has been for a long time, maybe ever. That does not change the fact that pre-HoT meta was more fun by a large margin. In a sense, we now have a balance between 9 equally broken specs.

Silverkey.2078:

Silv.9207:

What’s the problem with powercreep?
I think that with that definition you mean “dps meta”, then what’s the problem?

No, I don’t mean DPS meta. Power creep is not only damage creeping, it is everything, the list being given above. You have an increasing amount of damage, only countered by a increasing amount of block/evades/heals. An increasing amount of CC is countered by a increasing amount of stability.

It is very much a “Red Queen’s race”: you have more of everything, so the balance is still respected. But the enjoyment has decreased because everything relies more and more on unfun mechanics.

The obvious proof to the power creep is the fact that the pre-HoT meta builds are now unviable. They didn’t receive a nerf, many even got buffed, but they were just absolutely outgunned by HoT stuff.

The people will always be unhappy about the game meta, but this one is the best we ever had.
7 classes totally viable plus a necro useful to boon corrupt and die and a elementalist able to be a really good bunker/supporter, still if everyone think it’s the worst class atm.
It’s seriously the best meta we ever had.

I said that before. The balance is the best it has been for a long time, maybe ever. That does not change the fact that pre-HoT meta was more fun by a large margin. In a sense, we now have a balance between 9 equally broken specs.

Bingo. The fact is, the only existing “balance” is within the confines of the meta. It’s not that the game itself is balanced, but this current meta is. The problem here is that the current meta isn’t changing.

And from the experts, that’s objectively bad design. The entire concept of a metagame is to play into the weaknesses of one’s opponents broadly speaking. A well-balanced game would see this constantly shift around without developer intervention. A perfectly-balanced one would be so dynamic it’d almost mirror the expected result of there being no metagame – where everything is viable. When the meta doesn’t change, it means there’s something going on behind the scenes which is definitively obscuring the possibility of a diverse game – an imbalance between what’s currently being played and what isn’t.

The biggest objective/selling point of GW2 was to allow players to play the game in any way they wanted. That’s where its player base came from, and why there was such a potential for competitive PvP; a well-balanced game featuring a diverse potential roster to allow for huge upsets by going against the meta is precisely what makes the competitive scene to interesting to watch in most games; the pros play on a whole other level when it comes to changing things on the fly and being on the forefront of emergent play strategies.

Because the power creep is so massive in HoT, and because the core specs within themselves and relative to one another (which is why there’s a profession limit in pro league games; ANet knows the game lacks balance and the sPvP team’s answer to this was to just plug leaks where they could) are imbalanced, we’re left with an unchanging meta and very strict guidelines on how to play. Simply, this isn’t fun, and this stale gameplay turns people off from wanting to play in general.

There is 2 overall theories;
1) Perfect balance. Everything is tuned, more or less to be on the same page as each other. The advantage comes from what you do with it. The example being chess. However, the limitation is that although there is potentially millions of iterations in chess one can learn these and selectively choose which iterations work best against opposing iterations. It now becomes a game where the player with the most depth of game technique and proper implementation will succeed.

2)Imperfect balance.
The game is never truly balanced and you expect to see meta situations developed. People will play what gives them the most advantage. However, as players bandwagon other players begin to form tactics to counter the bandwagoner’s. In order to do each player needs to have access a large and diverse range of resources to create unique counter meta strategies.

What we have seen is a mixture of both. Maps are conquest so builds are irrelevant here. Whoever positions to holds the most nodes will secure the most points. In order to secure these nodes there will moments of conflict where the players using meta advantages will probably win.

The best thing at this point would be to remove skill trees as we know them. Each skill will have a tree in which it can be found, but players have a limited amount of choice in choosing skills from any tree. Players currently having to invest in adept and minor, major traits just to get one grandmaster trait is severely limiting build diversity and the ability to create counter meta tactics. It needs to be remembered that imperfect balance requires a large and diverse pool of resources to work.

Let players choose;
3 grandmaster traits
3 major traits
3 adept traits
9 conjunction traits.
Add a lot more cultural skills.
Stop removing amulets and runes.

This would create broader resources and allow meta/counter meta to improve and is in the best interests of imperfect balance.

The matchmaking is by the far the worst thing about GW2 pvp.

If I am going to comment on this thread twice..then huge shout out to Bound/vault spam thief and perma-evade condition spam thief. Try fighting those two on a side node.

Honourable mentions to revenant and blink/distortion mesmers.

Load up a warrior and use the build template “high condition, control, duelist.” and enjoy how far you get with that.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

If I am going to comment on this thread twice..then huge shout out to Bound/vault spam thief and perma-evade condition spam thief. Try fighting those two on a side node.

Honourable mentions to revenant and blink/distortion mesmers.

Load up a warrior and use the build template “high condition, control, duelist.” and enjoy how far you get with that.

agreed completely. but you forgot ranger.if you nerf these things you absolutely have to nerf ranger.not op right now would become op then.