Guild Wars 2

NevirSayDie.6235:

Alarox.4590:

Because you have no Pow/Pre/Tuf gear so you can choose to only go condition, burst, or bunker. That is literally the reason. I’ll explain below.

This is a big reason. Everyone complains about game mode, certain professions, etc, but the bottom line is that amulet choice limits builds. The “balanced” amulets don’t really work for any builds. Has anyone ever run a celestial amulet build? Of course not.

I’ve recently been trying some WvW and I’ve really enjoyed how flexible the stats are. (of course, finding a decent skirmish is pretty rare, but the point is the stats). I can work my gear stats to get equal parts power and precision up to about 3200 attack and 50% crit chance and 25% extra crit damage, and still have 2700 armor. In PvP, if I want ANY working combination of power and precision, I must have zero toughness.

This has been brought up dozens of times and every time it gets shot down by multiple people saying, “toughness/vit/healing would ruin the game, don’t allow any new stats!” No one in their right mind is suggesting an ultimate bunker combination. But some better balanced combinations would really help.

That’s one thing I liked about wvw too, I could go partial knights, partial wvw armor for a good mix. And did some other mixes depending on builds.

Talked to a thief when I was still new who was explaining it to me and he was doing the same for his condition build saying it just wasn’t possible in spvp.

The versatility really makes it better imo, I didn’t really care for the all stats in one piece way of doing things.

I played wvw and…….. pve…………… for so long (bought the game for spvp) that I even forgot about this when I went back into spvp and my knights amulet wasn’t even the same as my knights armor.

“Bunkers are needed to survive burst and burst are needed to take down bunkers”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-How-to-fix-the-problems/first#post1691309

I gave my solution, here, tell me your thoughts.

Braxxus.2904:

When stupid high burst damage exists though, and some classes don’t have the innate defenses like thieves/mesmers to take advantage of glass cannon builds the only other option is to bunker as hard as you can.

Actually you have mentioned two of the most viable glass cannon classes in respect to defences. Many of the thieves mobility skills also double at creating distance (so survivability) coupled with stealth, thief also can get up to 40% evade using pistol whip while waiting for its own energy to regen (keeping it energy neutral), but also allows for “burst dodge strings” (but it will probably not hit anyone). Mesmers have limited access to stealth and with sword (common weapon) they get access to an approx 30-33% evade cycle (given the sword CD trait that is a t1 trait w/ bonus’ while rangers is tier 2 w/ none what… but thats not the pt of this post). When you throw a staff on top of that which can be used during stun and the ability to gain aegis you have chosen two of the burstiest classes with great defense. Warrior and Engie have blocks instead which is tied to more defensive weapons (meaning less attack) meaning in glass cannon builds they will have lesser forms of defense.

Empiren.6401:

“Bunkers are needed to survive burst and burst are needed to take down bunkers”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-How-to-fix-the-problems/first#post1691309

I gave my solution, here, tell me your thoughts.

A better idea would be to design a PvP system that revolves around “PvP” instead of standing on a point and jerking it.

I like bunkering on my ranger because I like being Eternal, that and I always feel more like a beast of a man being the immovable object than the unstoppable, yet kill able, force.

I’m glad they have both, but I do think bunkering just one point should be frowned upon, and burst needs to be toned down if they do that granted, or at least just not totally favorable…

It’s the fault of the game mode. Winning comes from holding a point; killing players does contribute some ofc, but it’s minor. Bunkers hold points….

Eclipses.7152:

Bunkers are necessary in PvP because of the lack of healers. Serious argument here.

Healers in MMOs increase the TTK dramatically, often allowing you to discern what an opponent is doing, their kit, class strats and ways in which to counter them. However with no healers, this game’s TTK is very very low – unless you go bunker. Having a player on your team that’s focused on support isn’t nearly as powerful as just going Bunker yourself and having access to almost the full array of boons.

Secondly, the way these sPvP maps are designed, bunkers are more than viable – they’re necessary. Capture and hold point style maps necessitate the need for a bunker.

Hit the nail square on the head. Burst in this game is so insane that there is no room for balanced builds. The game type also makes bunker the more viable option. That being said as they add in boon hate the are going to nerf burst also. The bigger issue is that boon hate has such ridiculous meta issue because you can’t drop a boon and most apply to allies. very few classes can run with ) boons. Honestly they should have added in a boon lock ( cant use protection etc) or better boon nullification and stealing.

What I never understood is that if 2 players sit on an already captured point while one player from the other teams holds it why it doesn’t tick back to neutral slowly.

TheGuy.3568:

Eclipses.7152:

Bunkers are necessary in PvP because of the lack of healers. Serious argument here.

Healers in MMOs increase the TTK dramatically, often allowing you to discern what an opponent is doing, their kit, class strats and ways in which to counter them. However with no healers, this game’s TTK is very very low – unless you go bunker. Having a player on your team that’s focused on support isn’t nearly as powerful as just going Bunker yourself and having access to almost the full array of boons.

Secondly, the way these sPvP maps are designed, bunkers are more than viable – they’re necessary. Capture and hold point style maps necessitate the need for a bunker.

Hit the nail square on the head. Burst in this game is so insane that there is no room for balanced builds. The game type also makes bunker the more viable option. That being said as they add in boon hate the are going to nerf burst also. The bigger issue is that boon hate has such ridiculous meta issue because you can’t drop a boon and most apply to allies. very few classes can run with ) boons. Honestly they should have added in a boon lock ( cant use protection etc) or better boon nullification and stealing.

What I never understood is that if 2 players sit on an already captured point while one player from the other teams holds it why it doesn’t tick back to neutral slowly.

To be honest i do wish it worked so you could just flat out, outman the enemy to recapp the point, but at the same time zerging would become way to strong in this scenario…

Capturing and holding a point is the name of the game.

The longer you stay alive, the more points you gain for holding a point.

So… why not?

Short answer: In conquest bunkers win matches. That is why every team that wins uses them.

Long answer: I think the lack of build variety is what you are really irritated about, andnot necessarily the bunker issue. Right now there are a number of issues that contribute to the problem of the lack of variety.

1) Lack of amulet diversity – There is a very small set of viable stats in sPvP (it varies by class which ammy’s are best, but there are always just a few that work).

2) Burst is out of hand and so are bunkers – Both the current amount of burst effectiveness and the current amount of bunker effectiveness are way too high. If both were toned down, then more balanced stats would become a viable option.

3) Low Population in sPvP – There simply aren’t enough sPvP players in this game to generate a real meta-game where new and different builds are found and made effective. Since release there have been relative few adjustments to the build landscape, and the previous 2 issues have always made it easy for the community to make small adjustments and maintain effectiveness with the bunker/burster combination. #4 below adds to this issue, because the player base that started the game in sPvP is largely gone now.

4) Understaff/unresponsiveness to issues – sPvP was probably the least polished part of the game at release, and the lack of attention to this specific portion of the game has hamstrung it in its ability to catch up in terms of quality. Sadly, the engine is good and there is a lot of potential, but the game was released when PvE “was ready”, WvW was almost “ready” and sPvP was nowhere near “ready” to meet the expectations of the A-net loyalists who loved GW for the GvG and ToPK/HA PvP. The low levels of staff available to get this portion of the game up to speed have compounded the problem.

Now, I have never been one to state problems without proposing solutions, but this is a particularly difficult dragon to slay.

1) The whole rune/amulet/trait system would require some re-work along with most of the weapon sets. Doing this correctly requires careful statistical analysis that A-net may not have even built into the program to begin with, and the statistical data may even point them in the wrong direction based on the inadequate sample sizes that they would probably have available if the data collection is in their software. Rather than throw darts and hope to hit the mark, I think getting the data and using it as a guide would be best regardless, because you can always reverse mistakes and learn from them.

2) Addressing #1 above correctly fixes 2.

3) The low player base problem is very tricky. Some have suggested a limited feature F2P release of the sPvP portion of the game, but I think this is an overreaction, and frankly, it doesn’t fit A-net’s business model. A reduced cost, limited feature B2P edition on the other hand could infuse enough cash to get devs on the case fixing the sPvP and adding more cash shop features to make it profitable. Releasing F2P right now would probably net a very brief uptick in population, because the game mode just isn’t good enough to stand alone right now.

4) I do not have enough data to make more specific suggestions to A-net on how to staff their departments, so I suppose I have to leave this one flat other than to say that you could get boatloads of free interns to write all kinds of code for you. Every pimply faced awkward college kid getting a computer science degree would gladly go on a killing spree at your whim just to get an unpaid internship workin on your game. A number of features that would make the game more saleable could be implemented with fairly pedestrian code leaving your paid staff more time to work on the more involved matters that require a greater degree of skill.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Short answer: In conquest bunkers win matches. That is why every team that wins uses them.

Long answer: I think the lack of build variety is what you are really irritated about, andnot necessarily the bunker issue. Right now there are a number of issues that contribute to the problem of the lack of variety.

1) Lack of amulet diversity – There is a very small set of viable stats in sPvP (it varies by class which ammy’s are best, but there are always just a few that work).

2) Burst is out of hand and so are bunkers – Both the current amount of burst effectiveness and the current amount of bunker effectiveness are way too high. If both were toned down, then more balanced stats would become a viable option.

3) Low Population in sPvP – There simply aren’t enough sPvP players in this game to generate a real meta-game where new and different builds are found and made effective. Since release there have been relative few adjustments to the build landscape, and the previous 2 issues have always made it easy for the community to make small adjustments and maintain effectiveness with the bunker/burster combination. #4 below adds to this issue, because the player base that started the game in sPvP is largely gone now.

4) Understaff/unresponsiveness to issues – sPvP was probably the least polished part of the game at release, and the lack of attention to this specific portion of the game has hamstrung it in its ability to catch up in terms of quality. Sadly, the engine is good and there is a lot of potential, but the game was released when PvE “was ready”, WvW was almost “ready” and sPvP was nowhere near “ready” to meet the expectations of the A-net loyalists who loved GW for the GvG and ToPK/HA PvP. The low levels of staff available to get this portion of the game up to speed have compounded the problem.

Now, I have never been one to state problems without proposing solutions, but this is a particularly difficult dragon to slay.

1) The whole rune/amulet/trait system would require some re-work along with most of the weapon sets. Doing this correctly requires careful statistical analysis that A-net may not have even built into the program to begin with, and the statistical data may even point them in the wrong direction based on the inadequate sample sizes that they would probably have available if the data collection is in their software. Rather than throw darts and hope to hit the mark, I think getting the data and using it as a guide would be best regardless, because you can always reverse mistakes and learn from them.

2) Addressing #1 above correctly fixes 2.

3) The low player base problem is very tricky. Some have suggested a limited feature F2P release of the sPvP portion of the game, but I think this is an overreaction, and frankly, it doesn’t fit A-net’s business model. A reduced cost, limited feature B2P edition on the other hand could infuse enough cash to get devs on the case fixing the sPvP and adding more cash shop features to make it profitable. Releasing F2P right now would probably net a very brief uptick in population, because the game mode just isn’t good enough to stand alone right now.

4) I do not have enough data to make more specific suggestions to A-net on how to staff their departments, so I suppose I have to leave this one flat other than to say that you could get boatloads of free interns to write all kinds of code for you. Every pimply faced awkward college kid getting a computer science degree would gladly go on a killing spree at your whim just to get an unpaid internship workin on your game. A number of features that would make the game more saleable could be implemented with fairly pedestrian code leaving your paid staff more time to work on the more involved matters that require a greater degree of skill.

I love you.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I love you.

Touching. I do it all for you.