Guild Wars 2

This is of my personal opinion, and in no way am i claiming to be right or wrong. I make this just to throw the idea out in the open and see what the community thinks, along with the Devs.

We see all kinds of ideas that come from 4 major foundations.
Support: Dps but mostly there to pick up the ball in a matter of speaking.
Pure DPS: Come in, burn people down, but limited survivability.
Hybrid: DPS but tuned to be able to survive some burst. (Community turns its eye to look at d/d Eles >.> )
Bunker: Get in, sit down, and yell screw you to everyone else and hold a point.

While their may be builds that seem to take the place of two of these, or a little bit of all, the ideas still come from these foundations. And of course these foundations have a little more to them, but I’m simply looking at the Bones of this.

What I see missing you ask? Well I don’t see very much control, in the builds or the class.

Now, some of you high tier guys are looking at me and going “Pssh, says you, we can lock a team down and kill them by combing multi classes, and using strategy .” And you can… to a degree. But these is highly limited, and only works against people that don’t understand whats going on, or don’t have the class/builds to counter it. Case and point, not being a condition remover with the other team has two trap rangers and a necro. (no this is not the current meta, but it gets my point across)

What I am talking about is a class limited in its DPS, but strong in countering, and shutting down players. And we have 3 classes that would be perfect to fit these builds if slightly altered. Necro, Engi, and Mesmer. (Reason I don’t bring ele into this is because i feel the bones of the class would have to be changed to achieve this). Again, some of you look at me and say “Well Engi has some of that, or necro has this, or that mesmer could do it already.” And your right… to a degree. And while I don’t have a lot of game time in Engi, or Necro, I have seen both played in all tiers of the game. But I do have extended play time with a mesmer, seeing as its my main.

Now, you competitive players are thinking at this point, “This could never happen, it would change everything if they put a true control class(es)/Build(s) into the game. The meta would be drastically altered, the foundation that combat works on would be altered, every class would have to be re looked at to possibly changed to keep things balanced” And it very well might. But the classes in of themselves would not have to change as much as you first think.

I will use mesmer, as I know this class best, but I would love to see others post here something similar with ideas for Engi, and Necro.

Mesmer has one weapon that is NOT used, or at the very least VERY little use it, and in using it you get MASSIVELY trolled. Scepter. This means you could reformat it, and have little affect across the community as a whole. Across that, altering a few utilities and tweaking a few things, such as damage and traits. Using the greatsword or staff with focus would highly complement this. And while I specific ideas on what to be changed, and how, I’ll avoid this, for I don’t wish this post to digress form its origin.

But this is just a single instance, and while i understand a HUGE amount of research, development and balancing would be needed to achieve this, i feel it is needed. As of now, the game is forced into only a few forms of PvP, and is limited in in the complexity that most driven PvP games encourage. And by this I am not calling this cam simplistic, only that it is curiously blind in some aspects of PvP that most game push in.

I feel that I have spoken to much, and not said enough, and so I now leave this in the hands of the community and the Devs, and if we are lucky, maybe another better spoken than I can express, say, and explain this better than I have. And maybe even bring more to this idea and possibly push for implementation of this idea. (Though I realize this would be much further down the road)

Can reach me in game on Coretana(yes, I know its Cortana, but the kitten name was already taken) or Oranz for theory crafting, or further discussion. =D

~Oranz

At Devs: I really want to know if this is something you looked into before, or have I brought something new to your table? I know alot of times you cant comment on much, whether it be do to red tape, or policy. But if you can even hint that you have looked into this I’d love to know. If not, is it something you are willing to consider? I know there has been a lot of talk about changing some weapons that are not used, could this be the direction you go with that?

If you’re talking about putting one class as control to have precedence over the other classes namely the DPS then what’s going to have to happen is your team as a whole has to be on the exact same page every single step of the way. It takes a lot of synergy and teamwork to get to that level, but I believe in due time, the game’s meta may or may not change to that depending on how heavily team fight oriented the meta will be.

When i use the word “control” I’m talking about a shutdown class. And I think an example would be best that would also address a few issues with the power of AOE.

I feel Aion would be best for this example. They had a sorc class that had a few skills that prime skills that would illustrate my meaning.

Sleep Storm: Put Target to sleep for 8-10 seconds(cant remember exactly) And up to 5 targets within like 15meters, LoS required. This broke on Damage, any form, dots, AE, single target. But it changed the game play in pvp.
They also had single target version of it as well, Sleep, and Curse of Roots, both worked the same but single targets. Along with root that broke on damage.

Now I’m not saying restructure the entire game for something like that, but with all these useless traits/weapons, that most people wont touch you can do this. You would be able to force the meta to move awat form these High AE team set ups and force a more creative/balanced meta on ALL tiers.
AE immobilize for X seconds and breaks on Y forms of damage. Daze would work like the sleep, sorta; ofc you would be able to move still but you would stop all skills/interrupt.

These are the things I’m talking about, and yes they would require team communication, which in of itself forces people to group with each other more often. Which would bring about the problem people claim of “Not enough competitive teams”. It wouldn’t fix it alone, but be a big push.

Plainly put, this PvP system is VERY “Dps race” heavy, and worse so in lower tiers of play. May not be as noticeable in higher up teams but it is still there, and i think that is the root of the problem.

I agree scepter could use some love. But I doubt they’ll add new conditions or effects like long term sleep/immobilize.

Here’s how to fix scepter with only existing mechanics:

Scepter 1: Add a random condition (maybe confusion, burn, vuln) like winds of chaos, but no boon/bounce on the first two in the chain, third would remain the clone summon.

Scepter 2: Currently feels clunky and the clone summon sometimes messes up my dodges. Maybe something like guardian focus instead. Create a shield that absorbs the next 3 attacks, if not destroyed the shield explodes, blinding nearby enemies.

Scepter 3: Get rid of the channel, make it a simple on target spell. Reduce total damage a bit to compensate. Would deal moderate damage and apply 5 stacks of confusion.

hammer warrior?

Im not saying they need to add those things, i just used that as my example, But simply adding things LIKE it, IE, Immobilizes everyone within X distance from Y target for Z seconds, Breaks on damage. Things of that nature.

As far as what I’ve seen for Hammer warrs. They don’t really add much control, granted they are great for chain KD’ing, but that’s about it, and unless you make them REALLY tanky, they go down pretty quick.

hammer warrior fits this pretty well honestly. I main d/d ele and hammer warrior has better dps than me unless I go a bit hybrid (even still it’s about equal trading burst for consistant) and hammer warrior is tanky if made correctly. basically you just run high AP with no crit and get crit from fury, ends up with 2k toughness and 26k life with extra utility slots since you don’t need quickness.

I honestly think they should rework thief to be the control class for pvp and possibly weakness + vulnerbility stackers for pve and do away with the burst reliance. this would make them gear more balanced instead of glass aswell. give him sustained average-slightly below avg dps. current thief is all gimmicks. kills fast dies fast, waits behind a rock for a good moment then gets out. that’s kitten especially with the way stealth is right now (broken)