Guild Wars 2

seriously how can you even think about hosting tourneys when the current balance is just a blatant joke?

coming back from wildstar pvp to play some queue matches just to get frustrated…

many builds are just not balanced…

hambow is still omnipresent and way too strong even in full soldiers…
10k eviscerate on a light armor class with full soldier, 15 might stacks, offhand torment 15k damage lol.
longbow #3 6k aoe crits pls
cond warrior? np if you’re an ele. if you play a class with few cleanses you’re as good as dead.

same for d/d ele with celestial, 20k burning damage in a fight, 3,5k-5k burning speed and fire grab
hello runes of strength, while they are decent for some classes they’re totally broken on others. reduce max might stacks in pvp to 10 or 15. reduce 6th 7% dmg to 5%.

thief is too much damage with too many evades/gap closers. there is no downside at all except the low hp pool. s/p pw spam was reduced because s/d is superior, not because the lame initiative nerf was good. thieves destroy the game for other damage dealers because they are a) faster, b) harder to kill, c) make range kiting useless because they can inf strike + steal and your distance is gone.

necro is dead, cond necro, power necro. minion necro is still easymode although the other specs need way more skill compared to this one…

engi lolkicks you around with turrets while getting boons, heal blast finishers and sustain damage. you cant kill what you cant touch. hi balthazar runes and condspam.
power engi is fine.

spirit rangers, still just a sad AI spec but at least one which isnt op anymore (because all the rest is just stronger).
power ranger? i dont know because i didnt see one.
ranger in general, bad because everything else is better.

bunker guard still #1 bunker and a must have for pvp. other bunkers have no chance.
medi guard, very annoying to play against with the amount of leaps/blinds/blocks/ports it has access to, fun if you play it.

mesmer? i just really hate the stupid AI everywhere… but i dont think mesmer is op in any way (except PUcond which nobody cares about in tPvP) gw1 mesmer > gw2

there are still many useless traits/weapons/skills, make them worth using.

and not to forget: skyhammer why are you still here?

this might look a bit like a rant thread. well it is a rant thread. most of those specs have been broken for a long time and still nothing has been changed….

hope we will se some balance patches till TOL2 or at least Gamescom… but hey at least we get living story 2…

I agree with most of what you said, the announcement of a tourny at gamescon is an absolute joke. I can barely have fun playing it anymore let alone watching bunker wars 2. I have absolutely no idea what they’re trying to do because I can guarantee you that unless they do something totally unexpected it will be a huge failure. GW2 already has the lowest twitch viewership out of any game i’ve played. Runescape has 10x+ the viewers GW2 gets haha. No one wants to watch this kittenty game when anet puts hardly any effort into pvp and barely listens to their playerbase…

I can live with everything but might stacking …

need to nerf the rune or get the cap down to 10 – 15…

plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

the damage output of some tanky builds is too high right now. they really need to ajust some stuff before those tournaments.

No trinity, no legit balance

blitzkrieg.2451:

No trinity, no legit balance

Even with the trinity, we’d still have posts about how overpowered certain things are.

blitzkrieg.2451:

No trinity, no legit balance

Because in the original GW using blackout on a monk to pretty much nullify a teams healing was balanced.

Benjamin.8237:

Because in the original GW using blackout on a monk to pretty much nullify a teams healing was balanced.

It was if your team wasn’t filled with a bunch of scrubs. “HEY! I’M WALKING UP TO YOU NOW. YOU BETTER NOT INTERRUPT ME OR CAST ANY CRITICAL PROTECTION SPELLS BEFORE I USE MY BLACKOUT!”

Chicago Jack.5647:

Benjamin.8237:

Because in the original GW using blackout on a monk to pretty much nullify a teams healing was balanced.

It was if your team wasn’t filled with a bunch of scrubs. “HEY! I’M WALKING UP TO YOU NOW. YOU BETTER NOT INTERRUPT ME OR CAST ANY CRITICAL PROTECTION SPELLS BEFORE I USE MY BLACKOUT!”

That^. Also as soon as you used blackout it would be very obvious, and that mes would get shut down the rest of the game.
Topic: They did this for pax too remember? Balance doesn’t matter to anet; they’ve showed us that. Ironically there seems to be a slight balance of the imbalance. Enough things are OP that they counter each other. Team Comp > everything else.

Benjamin.8237:

blitzkrieg.2451:

No trinity, no legit balance

Because in the original GW using blackout on a monk to pretty much nullify a teams healing was balanced.

reroll Mo/R – pick distracting shot – see mesmer coming – weapon swap – interrupt blackout – GG

Wildstar PvP is a joke. There’s no balance whatsoever, it’s worse than GW2 by far.

Don’t be mad because you get killed by a hambow Warrior. Learn to dodge & play.

tichorum.2415:

Wildstar PvP is a joke. There’s no balance whatsoever, it’s worse than GW2 by far.

Don’t be mad because you get killed by a hambow Warrior. Learn to dodge & play.

lol ok so i dodge the first earthshaker. warrior says LOLWUT i still have my adrenaline because this game rewards poor decisions and skill spam. so three seconds later, i dodge the second one. Warrior says LOLWUT now i get to pindown combustion shot you so you take 6 stacks of bleeds plus burn while i shoot exploding arrows into my cap point sized fire field for MOAR might stacks. Never have i seen a game that rewards poor game play like this game does. The same goes for stealth skills not breaking stealth when they are blocked/miss/evaded. Nothing like having the game say “oh what you chose poorly when to use your best skill? thats ok just try again real quick it’ll be fine”

You don’t just stand still and dodge though. You use your own abilities. You can’t avoid everything and win 100 to 0.

You Can kite. You Can use your abilities to CC.

baddies complaining about balance bc they dont know how to play yet again

funny how people still try to pretent that some builds are not broken but fine. and always the same lame argument: people dont know how to play.

the pvp forum always makes me laugh.

tichorum.2415:

You don’t just stand still and dodge though. You use your own abilities. You can’t avoid everything and win 100 to 0.

You Can kite. You Can use your abilities to CC.

please explain to me how to kite around a point that has a burning field in it’s entire width like 50% of the time? Burning that does significant dmg even when the warrior has 0 condition dmg in his gear because his 20 stacks of might bump it up for him? The problem with hambow is not necessarily the build itself. The problem is that hambow is literally the Perfect build for fighting in a small confined circle. There are simply too many powerful and perfectly effective moves in this builds aresenal for fighting on a point. Yeah, I can dodge a couple, maybe get lucky and get a pushback for a second, maybe blind/block him once or twice, but the fact of the matter is, while i’m doing these things he still contests the point, regens health passively, and has 2 or 3 skills queued up and ready for me to run out of dodges and defenses. That’s why you really only see hambow in pvp, because in ANY other setting, its really not that strong. But when you must fight the warrior in a small little ring, its a terror of a build no matter what the opposition brings to the table.

Black Scoutsman.5830:

tichorum.2415:

You don’t just stand still and dodge though. You use your own abilities. You can’t avoid everything and win 100 to 0.

You Can kite. You Can use your abilities to CC.

please explain to me how to kite around a point that has a burning field in it’s entire width like 50% of the time? Burning that does significant dmg even when the warrior has 0 condition dmg in his gear because his 20 stacks of might bump it up for him? The problem with hambow is not necessarily the build itself. The problem is that hambow is literally the Perfect build for fighting in a small confined circle. There are simply too many powerful and perfectly effective moves in this builds aresenal for fighting on a point. Yeah, I can dodge a couple, maybe get lucky and get a pushback for a second, maybe blind/block him once or twice, but the fact of the matter is, while i’m doing these things he still contests the point, regens health passively, and has 2 or 3 skills queued up and ready for me to run out of dodges and defenses. That’s why you really only see hambow in pvp, because in ANY other setting, its really not that strong. But when you must fight the warrior in a small little ring, its a terror of a build no matter what the opposition brings to the table.

lol you dont engage hambows on ponit

Jekkt.6045:

funny how people still try to pretent that some builds are not broken but fine. and always the same lame argument: people dont know how to play.

the pvp forum always makes me laugh.

everythign has its counter if you dont want to play the most efficient builds then find a new game

Black Scoutsman.5830:

tichorum.2415:

You don’t just stand still and dodge though. You use your own abilities. You can’t avoid everything and win 100 to 0.

You Can kite. You Can use your abilities to CC.

please explain to me how to kite around a point that has a burning field in it’s entire width like 50% of the time? Burning that does significant dmg even when the warrior has 0 condition dmg in his gear because his 20 stacks of might bump it up for him? The problem with hambow is not necessarily the build itself. The problem is that hambow is literally the Perfect build for fighting in a small confined circle. There are simply too many powerful and perfectly effective moves in this builds aresenal for fighting on a point. Yeah, I can dodge a couple, maybe get lucky and get a pushback for a second, maybe blind/block him once or twice, but the fact of the matter is, while i’m doing these things he still contests the point, regens health passively, and has 2 or 3 skills queued up and ready for me to run out of dodges and defenses. That’s why you really only see hambow in pvp, because in ANY other setting, its really not that strong. But when you must fight the warrior in a small little ring, its a terror of a build no matter what the opposition brings to the table.

Okay, I see what you’re saying. But you need to adjust your playstyle.

A Warrior needs to fight basically-on-top-of-you to fight you. They have longbow which has 3 useful skills (aside from blind) that do damage and greatly affect a fight. Aside from that, the longbow attack is abysmal. So when they switch back to melee weapons they are forced to leave their confined area and attack you wherever you may reside.

Because of this you should fight off of wherever the combustive shot lands. Even if it’s off point, that is fine!! If he caps it, okay, who cares? You’ll win 30-60 seconds later and take it back, nothing is lost but some points you’ll easily regain.

As for kiting, every ranged class can kite; go watch Helseth’s video about kiting as a mesmer. It’s extremely informative to even myself who doesn’t play mesmer. It helps you think outside of the box about how to utilize all of the area/space around you to kiting advantages. If you’re melee, odds are you have a ranged weapon.

Playing as a…

Warrior – You have the same advantages he has; outplay him
Engineer – It’s to your advantage to fight on point a decent amount of the time (especially with bombs)
Thief – Shortbow spam the Warrior is able to mitigate your s/d or d/p damage; when he swaps to longbow? Utilize your F1 ability for when combustive shot isn’t down and burst as he isn’t able to mitigate your burst aside from Endure Pain (in which you bail until it’s gone); I’m no expert thief but if you’re looking for more experienced advice about it talk to Caed, Aeroxe, or Toker, just to name a few
Guardian – Most guardians won’t die to a Warrior in a 1v1 in a limited amount of time; usually they have help arrive by the time they start getting weak

I DO agree Warriors are Really Strong, but I don’t think they’re overpowered. I think they’re top tier, but if they are nerfed then so shall Celestial amulet as a whole to affect Engineers and Elementalists (both are just as strong as Warriors right now, if not stronger). Combustive shot got a nerf already, as did Healing Signet. Warrior isn’t at an unbeatable state right now, though.

no they just need to reduce the max amount of might stacks in pvp. its that simple.

Naturally, all might stacking QQ gets put on Warriors.

tichorum.2415:

Black Scoutsman.5830:

tichorum.2415:

You don’t just stand still and dodge though. You use your own abilities. You can’t avoid everything and win 100 to 0.

You Can kite. You Can use your abilities to CC.

please explain to me how to kite around a point that has a burning field in it’s entire width like 50% of the time? Burning that does significant dmg even when the warrior has 0 condition dmg in his gear because his 20 stacks of might bump it up for him? The problem with hambow is not necessarily the build itself. The problem is that hambow is literally the Perfect build for fighting in a small confined circle. There are simply too many powerful and perfectly effective moves in this builds aresenal for fighting on a point. Yeah, I can dodge a couple, maybe get lucky and get a pushback for a second, maybe blind/block him once or twice, but the fact of the matter is, while i’m doing these things he still contests the point, regens health passively, and has 2 or 3 skills queued up and ready for me to run out of dodges and defenses. That’s why you really only see hambow in pvp, because in ANY other setting, its really not that strong. But when you must fight the warrior in a small little ring, its a terror of a build no matter what the opposition brings to the table.

Because of this you should fight off of wherever the combustive shot lands. Even if it’s off point, that is fine!! If he caps it, okay, who cares? You’ll win 30-60 seconds later and take it back, nothing is lost but some points you’ll easily regain.

Except you’re wrong here. The warrior doesnt have to go fight you at all! he can sit right there in the point passively regening health and popping defensive abilites and dodges while you sit there bashing ur head against the wall doing nothing to help your team win. The only way to get him off the point from here is to have help, at which point the warrior has won by making 2 of the other team deal with him.

And lets just say for the sake of argument, that you are playing a class that can out dps the warrior from off the point in 30-60 seconds (i would say that’s a tough challenge but i digress). The hambow build doesnt have to let you off the point. With ranged control skills like the soft cc and the hard CC’s that they have, once you have used your defensive abilites and dodges, the warrior puts you where they want you. Not every class can disengage at will like a thief can.

Look, I’ve beaten hambows before with a variety of classes. The fact of the matter is that this particular build brings so much more to the table than any other class with the most amount of forgiveness for poor skilled gameplay. Am i saying it needs a nerf? I dont know. I’d like to say bring up all other classes to this level, but then you have power creep to worry about. I just feel like anyone who sits there and tries to defend this build as not being ridiculously strong in every way possible (teamfighting, CC, Dmg, Sustain, on and on) is someone that is clinging to a playstyle that makes them feel like they are better than they actually are. That’s not to say that people who play hambow are not good players, because some of them are. But those are the players who can admit that the build is broken.

tichorum.2415:

Naturally, all might stacking QQ gets put on Warriors.

its not just warrior. its every class with high access to might stacking and conditions on top of a power build. naturally thats warrior and ele.

you can also mightstack on a power necro, you will get around 15 might stacks and thats it. you dont have perm access to burning, thats a big difference too.

what i find most eye opening is that you’re coming back from a game thats been out a couple of months and noticing the severe balance issues in this game which has had years to level out some form of balance.

seriously Anet, how can a brand new game be far more balanced than yours?!
what exciting excuses can you come up with?
what distant patch can you tell us to wait for?

Going off topic a bit from what’s currently being discussed, I think bashing the tournament for this is a bit unfair. Grouch confirmed this via a post today, and this is something that I have been saying for a long time. When they run events like this (Gamescom) and ToL it doesn’t take away from the balance team or PvP teams that are working on the actual game itself. There are third parties (like Mistpedia, ESL, and DPS) and actual devoted people at ANet working on these events.

Some of the more hardcore players and community members have been starving for an event like this to stimulate the stagnated PvP scene for months now, and Im sure a lot of them along with myself are extremely appreciative they are finally doing a live event. Im positive balance and pvp development would continue at the same speed regardless of if a tournament was happening or not.

On the “why should we have a tournament when the balance is kitten” note, I don’t agree with the point at all. Starcraft tournaments don’t get put to a complete halt because David Kim refuses to nerf Protoss, and Im sure similar balance concerns were around during large DOTA / LoL tournaments.

The biggest thing I want to put it is that yes, the game is not perfect, and there are outstanding balance issues, but from my own point of view if we were to have a LAN event I would much rather have it in this meta than in either of the previous two balance iterations.

Just my 2c on the matter.

BLUna.7928:

Going off topic a bit from what’s currently being discussed, I think bashing the tournament for this is a bit unfair. Grouch confirmed this via a post today, and this is something that I have been saying for a long time. When they run events like this (Gamescom) and ToL it doesn’t take away from the balance team or PvP teams that are working on the actual game itself. There are third parties (like Mistpedia, ESL, and DPS) and actual devoted people at ANet working on these events.

Some of the more hardcore players and community members have been starving for an event like this to stimulate the stagnated PvP scene for months now, and Im sure a lot of them along with myself are extremely appreciative they are finally doing a live event. Im positive balance and pvp development would continue at the same speed regardless of if a tournament was happening or not.

On the “why should we have a tournament when the balance is kitten” note, I don’t agree with the point at all. Starcraft tournaments don’t get put to a complete halt because David Kim refuses to nerf Protoss, and Im sure similar balance concerns were around during large DOTA / LoL tournaments.

The biggest thing I want to put it is that yes, the game is not perfect, and there are outstanding balance issues, but from my own point of view if we were to have a LAN event I would much rather have it in this meta than in either of the previous two balance iterations.

Just my 2c on the matter.

i know that it is not the balance team working on the tournaments.
if they host tournaments i want the game to be balanced. cmon if you want #esports, idc about LoL or starcraft, gw2 should aim for being better.
and 3rd, the berserker/quickness meta would have been way more enjoyable to watch than the current tank meta. especially the us meta, remeber?

Hang on op, so every class is op (except rangers)? Doesn’t that mean the game is actually balance?

And all you have done is list the most efficient builds. Of course ppl are going to play what works best. That’s what a meta is.

Sube Dai.8496:

Hang on op, so every class is op (except rangers)? Doesn’t that mean the game is actually balance?

And all you have done is list the most efficient builds. Of course ppl are going to play what works best. That’s what a meta is.

im saying that power creep is at its best. i listed all the classes i met in tPvP and my thoughts on them.

i did not name any OP classes, i just listed builds and what they do.

if you want any op stuff here we go:

runes of strength + soldier warrior. 4,5k earthshakers, 10k eviscerates against dps players. 500 burn ticks. damage + 3000 armor + cc + 300 hp/s is what makes it op.

runes of strength + celestial ele. the damage is lower compared to hambow but you can achieve higher cond damage because of celestial. with 25 might stacks my conditions tick for 680 on burning and 250 if i use doom sigils. at least eles dont have 3000 armor and 24k hp.

evades and the damage they do on thieves. such skills should be either or. gap closing a thief has access to. evades + gap closing paired with high damage is what pushes other dps classes out of the meta.

although enigs are not taken much anymore for teamfights they are too strong with runes of balthazar. without them they would be “fine”. bomb/nade spam is another problem as conquest mode encourages on point spamming. what i dont like about bombs is the short cooldown they have compared to something like ranger traps which take a full util slot when bomb kit takes 1.
IP passive needs to go. dhuumfire was changed so its only fair to change IP too.
turret engis. very hard to kill and very hard to stay on point. compared to old decap builds the turret engi also brings sustained damage. the new grandmaster trait with the boons made this possible..

might stack cap should be decreased to 10 or 15 in pvp.
balthazar runes need to be changed.

Here’s my problem with the game. Why can a warrior run 6 in defense traits and run soldiers amulet but still hit 8k+ easily and be tanky but a thief(running a competitive build, not a 1 shot build that is a one trick wonder) hit 4-6k CRITS if we’re lucky and have a fraction of the warriors survivability. doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s what I don’t get about tournaments:-

The most skilful teams/players will always win the tournament, come 2nd, 3rd etc…

So any tournament offering decent prizes, like legendary weapons, precursors is going to be generally won by the same group of players over and over again.

This ‘pool’ will consist of the same lets say 50 – 80 players. Who perhaps represent 0.001% of all players who play GW2.

So what’s in it for the other 99.999% of GW2 players?

AFAIK…nothing. So why push tournaments so much?

Meglobob.8620:

Here’s what I don’t get about tournaments:-

The most skilful teams/players will always win the tournament, come 2nd, 3rd etc…

So any tournament offering decent prizes, like legendary weapons, precursors is going to be generally won by the same group of players over and over again.

This ‘pool’ will consist of the same lets say 50 – 80 players. Who perhaps represent 0.001% of all players who play GW2.

So what’s in it for the other 99.999% of GW2 players?

AFAIK…nothing. So why push tournaments so much?

Interesting point of view, but it should also be an incentive for more teams to practise and increase competition. Unfortunately a 1 time tournament won´t make many people stick together as a team. We need some reward for a constantly ongoing competition like leaderboards with rewards so good that everybody wants to be in the top 100 for example.

Blackjack.5621:

Meglobob.8620:

Here’s what I don’t get about tournaments:-

The most skilful teams/players will always win the tournament, come 2nd, 3rd etc…

So any tournament offering decent prizes, like legendary weapons, precursors is going to be generally won by the same group of players over and over again.

This ‘pool’ will consist of the same lets say 50 – 80 players. Who perhaps represent 0.001% of all players who play GW2.

So what’s in it for the other 99.999% of GW2 players?

AFAIK…nothing. So why push tournaments so much?

Interesting point of view, but it should also be an incentive for more teams to practise and increase competition. Unfortunately a 1 time tournament won´t make many people stick together as a team. We need some reward for a constantly ongoing competition like leaderboards with rewards so good that everybody wants to be in the top 100 for example.

Rewards won’t help nor make the good players come back. At best they will come back for 1month and realize again how boring is conquest mode.
A total rework of PvP & some classes mechanics is needed to make it competitive (conquest mode is nowhere close to competitive).
I still have more fun watching old vids from 2006 GvG in GW1 than I had watching the past ToL final full of asura and passive/defensive plays

Sube Dai.8496:

Hang on op, so every class is op (except rangers)? Doesn’t that mean the game is actually balance?

And all you have done is list the most efficient builds. Of course ppl are going to play what works best. That’s what a meta is.

There are top builds that are semi-balanced with each other, however there are FAR more builds that are not anywhere close to those top builds. It’s not even a matter of efficient as that implies all builds can get the job done one is just slightly better at it. No, instead it’s closer to completely broken than it is efficient. Try playing a Vampire necro/thief, trap thief, or venom thief to name a few against any of the top builds. You’ll quickly see that they aren’t even in the same realm even when not fighting for a capture point. ArenaNet should be absolutely ashamed of the balancing they’ve done. Yay! 10% of the builds are balanced against each other and completely decimate the other 90%! Sure it took 2 years and at launch it was probably closer to 15%, but lets have some tournaments!

The celestial change was hilarious. As if this game needed more builds which were forgivingly tanky but yet can kill anything 1 on 1 in quick time.

BLUna.7928:

Going off topic a bit from what’s currently being discussed, I think bashing the tournament for this is a bit unfair. Grouch confirmed this via a post today, and this is something that I have been saying for a long time. When they run events like this (Gamescom) and ToL it doesn’t take away from the balance team or PvP teams that are working on the actual game itself. There are third parties (like Mistpedia, ESL, and DPS) and actual devoted people at ANet working on these events.

Some of the more hardcore players and community members have been starving for an event like this to stimulate the stagnated PvP scene for months now, and Im sure a lot of them along with myself are extremely appreciative they are finally doing a live event. Im positive balance and pvp development would continue at the same speed regardless of if a tournament was happening or not.

On the “why should we have a tournament when the balance is kitten” note, I don’t agree with the point at all. Starcraft tournaments don’t get put to a complete halt because David Kim refuses to nerf Protoss, and Im sure similar balance concerns were around during large DOTA / LoL tournaments.

The biggest thing I want to put it is that yes, the game is not perfect, and there are outstanding balance issues, but from my own point of view if we were to have a LAN event I would much rather have it in this meta than in either of the previous two balance iterations.

Just my 2c on the matter.

Some points to disagree with what you said:

1, Previously when PAX was due they intentionally didn’t balance for that reason.
2, It still does take resources away from development. If an events manager is in the pvp budget then this is taking resources away from hiring a programmer who can start to code ladders and things (or whatever hasn’t been started).
3, Do they really need someone to coordinate pvp events? This seems ridiculous given the fact that there are about 20 serious players in the EU.

I say there are 20 serious players and I don’t think we have gone much over that in over a year. There are about 4 (?) try-hard teams who are going to try and win and design tactics/comps to win. I really don’t think there are more than this. So to put any resources into these tournaments for 20 players (out of 4million who bought the game) is totally absurd.

And it doesn’t even inspire people to play. The games are boring to watch because everyone is just a bunker so you have games where nobody dies for ages. There are no “big plays” really. People don’t get punished for mistakes. It is lame.