Guild Wars 2

I find that in any game, learning your character is best done by individually fighting each class 1v1. Duels usually become the main factor in learning your class, or have 1v1 skirmishes in PvP.

Duels aren’t in the game, and 8v8 hotjoin (which is supposed to be where you learn your class) is nearly impossible to find a 1v1 because of the zergs.

Joining a low population match and trying to 1v1 is the only solution but that seems like jumping through hoops that shouldn’t exist.

Why, oh why, is this simple, yet crucial aspect completely overlooked?

The actual learning of your class can be done in pve, just playing your class and respeccing and testing gets you to know it.

@ R E F L H E X
I will have to disagree. I don’t want to know what my moves do, I want to know how they impact a fight against a certain class. Does X move work well against class Y? Why or why not.

I understand how dragon’s tooth works, I want to know how it works against a competent player of a certain class.

Agree to disagree

Well learning how to play your class can be done in pve. The first time you login to a class you gotta memorize what the skills do and make a build, that can be done in pve, that’s pretty much learning your class.

Learning what other classes do is best by playing them really, and knowing how they work, then with your class you know what he’s going to be using since he can’t ever change his skills really when you see him on certain weapon sets you automatically know his entire bar for the most part. Only other way which works is experience by fighting them, but without playing them you won’t know exactly what he is limited to using there will still be a little mystery.

I think learning to play your character in PvE is equal to learning to box by fighting a punching bag. Sure, you know how hard you hit and how fast you are, but that tells you nothing about how you fight in the ring.

Well for the most part your effective skills are going to be your effective skills no matter what you are fighting.

No matter what I’ve played it seems like I fight a pve monster the same way I’d spike/condition a player.

The only thing here is knowing what to avoid from your opponents class, this can be done by playing it and knowing exactly what he has and which skills to avoid and know how to avoid them.

Also, I don’t think I’ve had a single spvp match where there wasn’t multiple cases of 1v1’s. So once you learn your spike, I mean it doesn’t really matter what you fight you just need to know what to avoid and what he’s limited too your spike/burst/bunker whatever you use will almost be the same combination of skills no matter what you are fighting. If it’s not the same. It’s more about knowing what they have if anything to avoid them and there’s already too many 1v1s in spvp, and playing the class itself will teach you more about the class than actually fighting it because then you know exactly what he is working with, from there you just do all the 1v1’s you will be doing in spvp because you won’t be able to avoid them really even when you try to only do team fights.

TL:DR – Fighting in pvp and fighting in pve is almost the same thing as far as knowing what is effective on your profession, but that isn’t what you need to learn you need to learn the opponents profession which can be learned possibly best by playing one. I understand why you would want to 1v1, but 1v1 exists too much in spvp already for there to be a format for it, dueling would be ok as long as it is something simple to implement but doesn’t need any serious time spent on it, we need more formats that support team play right now that makes 1v1’ing somewhat irrelevant not dueling.

It’s like buildwars when you know what your opponent is using you can easily form counters. You don’t really need the trial and error of 1v1’ing if you know exactly what he’s limited to.

I find it odd there is no dueling.

I do find it odd that no dueling exists, not even as an “arena” located in the Hearts of Mist.

That said, I’ve found that the best way to learn a class in this game, at least from a PvP perspective, is to make the class and play a few rounds. You not only see how you’ll work at max level in max gear, but you’ll also see the things that give you a ton of trouble.

I’ll use the Elementalist, not my normal class but one that I play often enough, as an example. With a “tanky” water based build, I’m tough as nails, one of the toughest players in the battlegrounds. My total damage is shockingly low, though, and when I die it is often to attrition—I just can’t seem to kill the bad guys fast enough to keep myself alive, though I certainly can stay alive really well.

Flip my spec around and go hard DPS, and I can make some solid numbers. Not great numbers, but killable numbers. If somebody notices me, I’m pretty much toast.

I also learn that if I want to beat them, spike damage and condition removals will be invaluable. Interrupting them when they are in earth form, especially casting earthquake can save your hide and severely shut down the elementalist. Forcing them out of water and earth, and into other elements are good opportunities to bring them down.

Is it a perfect snapshot of the elementalist? Maybe, maybe not. But it helps a person learn the class from the perspective they have of it—-and when someone overcomes one of these observations, you learn a ton from that too because you notice it.

I also wonder why not duels. Only way to learn to fight against some other class is to roll one and play it. You cant spar with someone and then discuss what he did and I did and go though what can be done better. It made friends in WoW and sometimes enemies when too oversized egos clashed. But overall duels in WoW were positive effect for me.

Agree – duels should have already been ingame and must be implemented as soon as possible.

Obviously I meant 1.7.

Duelling isnt just so people can whine about 1v1 balance on the forums. It will also provide some much needed pvp variety, a way to hang out with friends, and it has a community building aspect to it as well. People can get to know eachother, newbies can watch the pro players in action. The Mists doesnt need to be a ghost town.

+1 for duels, pretty please.

I guess it doesn’t bother me. But I’d block duels, just like I do in every other game. I guess I play PvP for the strategy / tactics rather than who can mash buttons fastest.

To me, a smart player never fights a 1v1. Never fights on equal terrain. Never fights someone without the element of surprise, or while their opponent is at half health with everything on c/d.

Really, because there are so few 1v1s in hotjoin, and tournament strategy is to only be a 1v1 burst or to hold out until you have a teammate making a 2v1 or 2v2 fight, wanting to practice in duels doesn’t help so much. So when I want to test a build to see it’s impact on a fight, I go to hotjoin and just follow people around to get into as many team fight situations as possible; it’s the team fight that’s most important to test.

As for community building, duels won’t do that. Server renting will do that. Having a server with a name, that someone owns, that everyone else can come back to visit on a regular basis, that builds community. What’s important is to have a place where people can always go regularly to meet. With duels, you’re just going to be thrown into some matchmaking with one other person, and as soon as that fight ends, you’d get thrown into another one. That’s how ANet would implement it, anyhow.

Also, while I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible substitute, there’s an area in the Heart of the Mists where you can 1v1 each of the classes, but AI controlled.

I like the idea of there just being an open little 1v1 area in the HotM itself, where people can test their builds against one another, for everyone to see. It’s an important training mechanic in any game like this. Unless ANet is concerned people may get upset during duels and have their feelings hurt. We players need to be held and burped at least five times a day, after all. Yes, irony.

You can NOT base efficiency in duels. Becoming an effective player is more than just duels. Things I’m talking about isn’t limited to putting food to the table in team fights mind you.

I can probably give you an idea why there’s no dueling here.

Dueling was pretty much laughed at in guildwars one because it was a team game, they probably thought it would be nearly the same here. It’s probably hard to understand this if you played a game like rift because there was dueling in it.

However guildwars 1 is on a whole different level teamplay wise than any mmo I’ve played that made it this way, including this one. In this game I just don’t even feel part of a team really, I feel like we are just the same color with a similar objective but aren’t really even a team.

Kyzen.7452:

Pvp is balanced around 5v5 not 1v1 when Duels come in they will be more crying about how a class or build is overpowered

You will encounter more 1v1’s then you do solid 5v5s or atleast from what I’ve seen so far it’s been that way. This is why some people think dueling is important, because it seems like a 1v1 game more than anything.

Duels were laughed at in 1v1 because you could cater your build to completely shutting down certain classes. A melee anything versus most casters, for instance, is basically a sure win, simply because melee is punished so severely in GW1 with blinds, CCs of all kinds, hexes and a myriad number of conditions. Even ignoring that one kind of matchup, if you see a profession type, any good player can instantly throw up a generic build that will kill them, with almost no questions asked. GW1 was NOT a game where you could 1v1, outside of really specific situations, assuming people are running around in all-purpose builds. Obviously GW2 is not that complex.

Plague.5329:

Duels were laughed at in 1v1 because you could cater your build to completely shutting down certain classes. A melee anything versus most casters, for instance, is basically a sure win, simply because melee is punished so severely in GW1 with blinds, CCs of all kinds, hexes and a myriad number of conditions. Even ignoring that one kind of matchup, if you see a profession type, any good player can instantly throw up a generic build that will kill them, with almost no questions asked. GW1 was NOT a game where you could 1v1, outside of really specific situations, assuming people are running around in all-purpose builds. Obviously GW2 is not that complex.

Yea you could buildwars, but your ability to 1v1 held no relevance at all as to whether you could play gvg or even arenas for that matter. A warrior vs warrior in 1v1 running gvg builds won’t be playing around what he has to play around in team fights blinds, blurred, ip, reckless haste, guardians, aegis, prots/heals, spiking, empathy, cripple, snares, diversion, weakness, responding to splits, positioning, pressuring targets, just so many things that made 1v1 skill not even a serious part of the game.

I bought an mmo, specifically guildwars for that team pressure/spiking/pressure certain targets then spike another/control/balanced team fights on even playing fields gameplay. I’m also far from alone on this.

If I want to buy a game for 1v1 I’d play tekken online or something.