Guild Wars 2

I am not here to talk about what’s OP or UP, as I think plenty of that has been expressed across the community. Lots of things are terribly broken and the things that aren’t are sitting ducks.

However, the imbalance that HoT’s power creep brought isn’t even as bad as what it’s done to the gameplay itself. I mean, my go to description for GW2’s PvP has always been, “Yeah, it’s a bit of a clusterduck.” (Obviously not duck)

But now it’s just pure absurdity. The busy-ness of spell effects is overwhelming, but on top of that some builds are almost perpetually untouchable. I don’t mean they’re overpowered (though many of them are), I mean that you literally cannot interact with them for huge periods of gameplay with no input of skill on your part. Without considering balance, this is just purely NOT GOOD GAMEPLAY. It’s totally unsatisfying. Players want to have an effect and consequence sense of playing. This is such a principle hallmark of good PvP that I sometimes feel like an A. Net dev never sat down and queued for PvP in this game once. There’s just so much that jumps out as, “Oh, wow, that shouldn’t be like that…”

In Spvp right now, you mostly just spam abilities into a sea of immunitiy, block, evade, insane regeneration, stealth targets disappearing over and over etc etc. Not to mention that survivability is so out of hand, most everyone is running a build that would be considered tanky by the standards of most previous metas. There’s very little sense of impact or presence. Other PvP games and MOBAs just don’t have PvP combat like this because it’s atrocious.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, more abilities means people have found even more way to implement CC, a very useful PvP skill, into their build. CC is getting insane, and while a lot of classes have constant stability now (which is ridiculous in its own right), many of them do not. I think it’s time for this game to see diminishing returns on CC at the very least.

Long story short: This game is not fun anymore. It always had problems, but now it’s just a big, ugly, unsatisfying mess. It’s not fun to play, it’s not fun to watch, and I am quickly getting to a point where I am just looking for the next MMO to let me out after several years of being pretty exclusive to GW2.

Apologies for a QQ post, but after years of trying to get into this PvP for all the things I’ve liked, I’ve lost hope that they can make this any fun. I hate to be this guy, but I just don’t feel like A. Net is making good choices when it comes to combat mechanics. I should have known their design was never going to fully mesh with me since the downed state always seemed like one of the worst ideas in Spvp. “Let’s slow down combat and promote zerging. Players love that!”

I know a lot of people will keep queueing up with insane meta builds (Chrono, Herald, Scrapper, Dragon Hunter) and I hope they enjoy what’s left, but I really want something more versatile, compelling, and just satisfying to play.

PS – I know crying on these forums is a waste of time, but venting makes me feel slightly better. :P

PvP has become less satisfying. That being said you have to remember that this is a game. If you aren’t having fun then find something you enjoy in it. I think this is why there are so many people running around without HoT in PvP because the game just isn’t fun and the addition of Elites hasn’t really done it for most people. I have been enjoying my Necro Bunker, mostly because it eats chrono and dragon hunter, and yeah I was able to cut chaff out of my build with Reaper Elite, but for all that PvP just keeps getting more… eh. So yeah we would like to see some changes and we can keep suggesting changes… I guess what I am saying is hang in there and keep the hope alive or find something you enjoy more, be it in this game or in another. If player activity drops in pvp they will notice.

PvP is not fun. The new specs defensive capabilities are so overtuned attacking enemy players seriously feels pointless after the nonstop “Block,Evade Evade Immune Block Evade”. I dont enjoy playing conquest anymore, the interactions have become braindead button mash and mitigation spam.

RonDonJonVanDam.1289:

PvP is not fun. The new specs defensive capabilities are so overtuned…

As the new specs offensive capabilities, dont forget about it.

Now that it has been a few weeks since leagues started, I can say that I’m less inclined to play every day. I can deal with the subpar matchmaking and other problems. However, the balance is what’s killing it for me, it’s no longer fun. Having games go on for 15 minutes where no team scores over 200 is mind numbingly boring. It’s just everyone AoEing on point (not even doing correct rotations) spamming. Any skill this game had is now gone. I’ve been around since launch and have 9.5k games under my belt and this is easily the worst meta I’ve seen. I was pretty excited for leagues, planned on going to legendary, but now I don’t even care because the game isn’t fun to play anymore.

The main reason I’ve pvp this long is because I enjoyed the combat and gameplay, however what we have at the moment is nothing short of atrocious. Hopefully Anet understands this isn’t the direction they need to be going with pvp and the balance patch at the end of the season fixes these issues.

Dragonhunter is such meta. There’s absolutory no possibility that when there are one or 2 tempests on the other team I have to completely reroll to revenant because I can do zero damage

I would advise you to do something else. I was just like you dear OP. Was not having fun with this meta, or the build versatility. I am now playing EB/WvW with zergs when I am online. If my friends insist I usually go unranked ( I will not play ranked until this horrendous meta/ system is fixed. You should protest too).

All and all this new style is not working for me very well. And it seems my Guild Wars 2 days will be over in few weeks altogether. It is sad to see the game I loved changed so much. Although there are still who loves this meta, It feels empty to me.

Making a post like this, I expected to get some backlash of, “Fine. Quit. LoL, L2P noob.”

But not one bit of that so far. Just pure agreement and lamentation of this game’s utter failure to be enjoyable.

I don’t make comments like this on forums. Been a hardcore PvPer since vanilla WoW, and I’m never blaming devs or speaking in extremes like this but come on Arena Net. You need a TREMENDOUS balance patch and a borderline overhaul to make this worth a kitten .

If they don’t, I bitterly hope their PvP hemorrhages players like mad. If they ignore it enough to let it get this bad, they kind of deserve it.

I do agree with you. I have been playing this game for 2 and half years without any break. PvE has been done for me long time ago. HoT seems just like another grind and cba to do it anymore. Raids are okay so that is still on positive side. But PvP, the only thing that was keeping me in game all happy and stuff, is dying. I loved to make own builds and they worked. I was all hyped for expansion, more variations for classes and pvp builds, But what happened. Now there is even less than there was before patch. Almost everyone in pvp are just each others clones, maybe one of the 3 eles runs staff others d/f.
I think it is just sad how the meta currently is, i never wanted to run meta builds because well, “thats what everyone runs”. Now only non meta that works okay is some cheesy cleric tempest. Might just step aside till the next patch and see how much will things break more and most likely then stop playing the game, i really have loved all this time until now.

Would have been nice to get a huge overhaul before the winterbreak : P, its back to college when they start discussing the new changes with us ;_; .

And yes, I agree. There should be a limit to how much you can block/evade/invuln spam. Like a 3-4 second timer before you can use another one like stealth for instance[I don’t know how bad this would be].

FriendlyInvader.3126:

Would have been nice to get a huge overhaul before the winterbreak : P, its back to college when they start discussing the new changes with us ;_; .

And yes, I agree. There should be a limit to how much you can block/evade/invuln spam. Like a 3-4 second timer before you can use another one like stealth for instance[I don’t know how bad this would be].

Immunity timers would be great.

I cannot fathom why Anet would go this route… No one likes losing control of his/her character for an extended period of time. other MMO’s found this out the hard way, and now Anet is going down the same rickety path.

The combat is not fun at all. They need to buff power builds either by removing all this bullkitten evade/block/immune the new specs get for free or some numbers/kit change. I feel like I don’t die to anyting anymore, it’s just condis ticking away at your health. Condis are the only viable form of damage right now and its horribly stale.

I have 26k hp on my druid and I got 100-0’d by a dragonhunter+necro 2v1. DH spammed 4 traps while Necro spam condi’d me. I was dazed from full health all the way to death. I used my 1 stun break and tried to get off my heal, but alas I ran into a fragment of faith (which was nearly impossible to see with all the visual noise of 4 DH traps) and the lockdown continued.

Fun stuff.

There’s too much spam of everything. Too many stacks of too many conditions and boons. Too many properties in too many skills.

This is not something that can be fixed with mere skill changes.

The combat system must be reworked completely.

I agree with you OP. PvP is a clusterduck as it is. The amount of CC is just ridiculous to tje point that it’s a spamfest of AoE stuns and knockbacks. It really takes no skill considering you can just spam CC skills without any drawback

I agree. By now I make my 3 daily matches and then I leave pvp or go offline entirely.

I started the season with my old D/D ele because it was really fun pre-hot. Well I realized fast that this was a waste of time. You pretty much get instagibbed in a teamfight as D/D ele.

Switched to staff to get a bit of range and it was better but still lacking. A few matches after that I said to myself “kitten it” and went tempest like any sane person would.

The problem didn’t solve itself entirely though. Even with the better range and skill-set you still get interrupted by any kittening ability you get hit by. I swear there were fights in which I were unable to cast my heal because I got knocked around, dazed and stunned like crazy…

All this made me switch classes to something more over the board. I decided against DH (because I don’t like playing the lame one-trick ponies) and went for revenant (yea judge me if you want).

That was a lot better but there are still fights in which I can’t do kitten if I get unlucky. especially in a 2v1 I can be happy if I get a single heal through. And then the Rev nerf hit. Can’t say it hit very hard but it is definitely noticeable. Now you not only get interrupted all the time. You also die almost immediately by 20 stacks of all kinds of conditions everybody kittens on you in a matter of seconds in a teamfight.

I thought maybe I should try something else because I just suck as melee (always have. Don’t know why but my positioning is much better as ranged player in any game). So I finally gave in and tried my guardian in a few hotjoin matches. Noobstomp at its best. People at my MMR can’t handle a DH in the slightest.

So I’m stuck with playing the most stupid class in HoT or getting frustrated by the amount of cc and conditions and heal and invulnerability and immunity and all the other stuff every kittening elite specialization has nowadays.

I can’t believe I’m saying this (especially because I hated it as D/D ele) but I really wish we could have the turret engi meta back. That was exhausting but at least playable. In HoT matches I’m unable to move most of the time. I really wish we could go back to pre-HoT state. Just disable all the elite specs or if you don’t want to do that then please disable all the classic specs (there is not a single class that benefits from not taking its elite). At least then all people would be on the same page.

I completely agree with the OP.

Every time I play now, every game, I find myself saying to the computer- “this is totally kittened up”.

i wanted to avoid making this thread as a player whos returning after over a year. i wanted to at least get to a point where i could play every class again so i can weigh in. but yeah, some these new elite specs and more specifically the revenant just turn me off. not only that but they seem to have removed solo queue tpvp so i havent even began to be bothered with leagues.

Jackalrat.5493:

In Spvp right now, you mostly just spam abilities into a sea of immunitiy, block, evade, insane regeneration, stealth targets disappearing over and over etc etc. Not to mention that survivability is so out of hand, most everyone is running a build that would be considered tanky by the standards of most previous metas.

That’s because:
1- The Elite professions just do more of what we already had instead of doing new things. More chill, more immobs, bigger burst, more condi, more protection, more auras, more healing, etc. They were lazy on the development of new ideas, mostly condi/boons which they all gave to the mesmer. More interesting thing should have been done also: Why is ele Warhorn getting another kittening fire field and water field?
Serious lack of vision. Why does every Reaper skill does Chill? The result of all of this along with the new trait system is a huge drop in build variety.

2- The game modes are really limited. Stand on points and hold (makes bunker builds the best) and a Stronghold mode with only 1 map where to win you just have to heal npcs, use the maximum amount of ccs and then aoe dps another npc. How much more can you expect to obtain from such a limited game mode? PvP should be bigger and more varied.

Let’s go play WoW guys, or any moba of your choice. We won’t find a balanced PvP game here. I must say at least Bli$$ard is trying, unlike Anet. What do you even expected from a Korean owned company? These guys (Koreans) have a large history of kittened up mmos.

Mhur.2904:

Let’s go play WoW guys, or any moba of your choice. We won’t find a balanced PvP game here. I must say at least Bli$$ard is trying, unlike Anet. What do you even expected from a Korean owned company? These guys (Koreans) have a large history of kittened up mmos.

Arenanet’s 3 co-founders all worked as lead programmers for Blizzard.

The balance in WoW is horrible though, so I don’t really know why I pointed that out.

I’ve used this already, but i guess it’s time to use it again :

GW2 PvP

Chip Skylark.2367:

Mhur.2904:

Let’s go play WoW guys, or any moba of your choice. We won’t find a balanced PvP game here. I must say at least Bli$$ard is trying, unlike Anet. What do you even expected from a Korean owned company? These guys (Koreans) have a large history of kittened up mmos.

Arenanet’s 3 co-founders all worked as lead programmers for Blizzard.

Only 1 remained at GW2 launch and given the GW2 direction under his management I think its fair to say he used up all his blizzard credits long long ago.