Guild Wars 2

so It’s almost season 3 now and with the latest balance patch the same 4/5 classes are still meta since season 1-2. Pretty much its always Mes, Rev, Engi, and sometimes druid/ele and rarely thief. Necro got knocked out this season and Guardian/Warrior are obsolete.

Whats lame about most of the top classes is that they are running the exact same builds throughout each season – slightly modified of course.

http://academygamingnet.com/guild-wars-2-class-tier-list-april-27th-2016/

The focus of every meta build always revolves around tanky specs – (picking Wanderer’s amulet or Mercenary’s for that Toughness and Vitality.) – and this makes sense as the game mode revolves around capping and HOLDING points. Additionally downed state mechanics encourage you to have enough sustain that you can actually finish an opponent off.

So what we see each season in pro-league is around 3-4 tanky classes an ele, an engineer and sometimes a mesmer who are meant to stand on points and hold them and finish off downed opponents because they can withstand the dmg to do these tasks.

The other 1-2 classes are burst classes usually filled by rev and thief and sometimes mesmer. They roam around the map and help team-mates defend or assault on/near points to get enemies into downed states but they usually don’t finish opponents off unless tankier team-mates aren’t around.

So would be nice if perhaps some of these specs had defensive CD’s removed or totally revamped. Perhaps add in new sPvP maps that don’t revolve around capping and holding points.

Remove downed state from the game entirely is also an option, although, even though this mechanic is what makes Gw2 unique among mmo’s, it still promotes a tanky meta or manipulation of mechanics that revolve around raising downed teammates (such as search and rescue from druid in season 2).

Additionally, adding new skills or new functionality to existing skills might really make it a lot more exciting.

Would be nice if season 3 was different from the last 2 seasons.

I still think the meta is going to change.

There will be less necro stacking.

Thieves got decent buffs.

They strengthened areas that counter ele in team fights pretty well IMO.

I think you will see a less stale meta this season.

I can’t really seem to recall when it happened, but do you remember that time just after the marauder amulet was introduced — but everyone was still running berzerker. People would blow up in seconds, and it was always a battle of initiative / hitting first. There were so many people complaining on the forums, it was crazy. But personally, I had a really fun time with it.

I decided to run a CC-y zerker gadget engi with AED. I remember it as being one of the most crazy, but fun times I’ve ever had (despite people raging that pvp was “too stressful” then.)

I agree that the meta needs to be changed, especially for the pro league. I mean, you can play anything in ranked as long as you are good enough and you will do well but it does get rather boring having to see the same/similar classes in pro league games. The games themselves are really fun to watch but I would love to see warrior/thief/guardian played seriously in high level pro league game because I haven’t seen that at all (thief and guard maybe once or twice but never warrior). The pro league compositions for the second half of the season for almost all teams will probably be Mes/Rev/Ele/Druid and then anything except guardian as the 5th class. That is OK seeing as we will see pretty much every class at least once but still, the strongest classes have been the strongest since season one except maybe necro.

As for ingame ranked, even though I said anything is viable if you are good enough, the weaker classes need to be stronger because people will usually just play whatever is most powerful rather than sticking with their class and playing very well no matter how weak their class is at any given time. Warrior and thief got a decent buff and will see a bit more play in ranked but still, I feel that more needs to be done to make these classes viable in high level play.

Sticking to my guard for a third season. It hurts watching classes screw up horribly in combat and still be able to beat down my guard. But oh well I get over that and beat them down even harder if needed the next time.