Guild Wars 2

i would like to open a discussion about picks and bans, and how it could spice up the meta.

many people that follow popular esport games might be familiar with the term Picks and Bans and what they mean.

in mobas you generally have the hero/champ draft at the beginning of a competitive match where both teams get to decide what heroes they play or what heroes are not allowed in the match. a Pick can act in a similar way than a Ban, you reserve a certain hero/champ for your team and stop the enemy team from playing a certain hero/champ, or you simply ban it and it will be excluded from the whole match.

now in guild wars it would be a bit hard to do with classes but maybe in the future when we have a halthy amount of elite specialisations it could be done that way…

Traitlines

how would it turn out if teams would be able to ban 1 full traitline of 1 class for the enemy team? for example, team A decides that team B is not allowed to play shadow arts and team B decides that team A is not allowed to play water magic.

while it would be interesting and could help with disabling certain overpowered builds it also has the potential to totally negate a whole class and would come close to banning a whole class. so if you basically banned the most important traitline of a class you render it useless. another problem is that while you could ban the fire line of an elementalist and that person switches to earth instead doesn’t mean that a thief without trickery would work as well; there is not enough viable build diversity to do so.

Runes

runes might be the best way to introduce something like Picks/Bans to gw2. you ban 1 rune that the opposing team is not allowed to use and you could even go that far and only allow 1 rune of a kind per player, meaning Team A is only allowed to run hoelbrak runes on one of their players, not on 3.

runes are not build distinguishing enough compared to traitlines so banning runes would not be as harsh.

one problem i see with this system is that there is a limited amount of useful runes and very often you see people running with vamp/hoelbrak/strength/pack and that’s it.
on the other hand it could make people look out for alternatives and even encourages arenanet to buff some runes or even introduce new ones.

Amulets

i found this to be the least positive way for Picks/bans because there are not enough amulets and out of the existing ones 75% of them don’t get played at all. the most amulets you see nowadays are marauder, celestial, rarely carrion and rarely cleric.

everything would end in people either banning celestial or marauder, turning a match into a full bunker of full glass cannon fight…

another problem is that some classes can’t afford to not run their best amulet. while a guardian could theoretically run cleric or carrion (even marauder) and be beneficial to his team, a thief can’t rune anything else than marauder because of 1. the health pool and 2. the effectiveness of builds; same problem like with traitlines, there is not enough viable build diversity.

the picks/bans would only apply for tournaments, not normal queue matches.

now what would interest me is the opinion of people that host tournaments or shoutcast. would something like Picks/Bans be healthy for the competitiveness of gw2 PvP or would it do more harm than good?

what do you think would be the best way to introduce them? traitlines, amulets or runes?

not only hosts or shoutcasters but everybody, feel free to express your thoughts and try to stay constructive.

this is only a theoretical discussion, i am by no means asking to introduce Picks/Bans in this thread.

Don’t think it is good idea unless Anet actually manages to make every class to have few tournament viable builds (which won’t happen due to lack of ressources/interest).

League has a lot of champions, i mean, A LOT. Some classes in gw2 have barely even 1 viable build. Banning 1 set of runes even more traitline might mean no of such class in game at all.

Bottom line, yes, everything is possible if Anet implements the requirements for it but you know how the history was so far… or any mmo for that matter.

Hate the idea of picks and bans. It wouldn’t accomplish anything other than infuriating players.

I have to be honest I am shocked this game is even on ESL.

why, gw2 is imo one of the best pvp games out there, surpassing many popular games in complexity (not that it matters). it has its flaws.. and they can be overcome. gw2 actually deserves a lot more attention than it gets. maybe with the expansion and leagues.

oh and if games like rocket league are on esl then there is no reason for gw2 not to be there aswell

This isn’t a MOBA.

I’m not in favor of restricting runes/amulets. Let people pick from the currently available ones in PvP.

If anything, I’d like to see no more than 1 of a specific class on a team. That would only apply for the pro league. Anywhere else, people can class stack however they want.

I would accept a minimum level of restrictions made to the other team if the change actually contributes to a more balanced and surprising matchup.

To do this, a team could only “Ban” ONE of the following:

- 1 Sigil —-—> there are always more than 1 choice in every build and it can tone down a build just a little bit but not enough to make it less viable.

- 1 Trait (btw, a full traitline is too much!) —-—> the same as above.

- 1 Rune —-—> Yes, I agree with those who are going to say it makes a huge impact on builds…. but we all know runes are one of the main balance issues in the game and there are also good alternatives for the same build without changing its role/playstyle… unlike amulets.

There is no way to ban anything.

In MOBA, if you ban a hero, you ban a hero. There are 50 other heroes to choose from.

If you ban a trait line/amulet, that is like banning 50 heroes out of the 50 heroes.

runeblade.7514:

There is no way to ban anything.

In MOBA, if you ban a hero, you ban a hero. There are 50 other heroes to choose from.

If you ban a trait line/amulet, that is like banning 50 heroes out of the 50 heroes.

I agree… but if you ban something that has multiple alternatives without damage to your build…. why not?
Read my post above. If you still don’t agree with me, than I would say you just “want that build because it’s the best at what it does” and there won’t ever be 2nd choices, which means there will always be few options for each role.
But that’s just my opinion.

style.6173:

I’m not in favor of restricting runes/amulets. Let people pick from the currently available ones in PvP.

If anything, I’d like to see no more than 1 of a specific class on a team. That would only apply for the pro league. Anywhere else, people can class stack however they want.

This. Tournaments and leagues should limit your team to one class per slot. No doubling/trippling up on eles anymore.

i know that banning a traitline or an amulet is not an option, i also addressed that in my original post, so i’m not pro-banning one of those.

the conclusion i came to was that if anything would be bannable without hurting builds too much are sigils and runes.

you play air/fire but fire is banned? you pick blood instead.
you play strength runes but they are banned? you pick hoelbrak instead

for runes there is always (most of the time) an alternative and by banning runes everything could become more interesting (some tournaments already started banning vamp runes). it also gives arenanet an incentive to buff other runes that don’t see much use without having to nerf other runes and it helps with ingame balance. do you feel like a certain rune is totall out of hand right now? ban it.

i know that this is not a moba but then again that statement doesn’t mean much at all.. you don’t have to be a moba to have bans.

i’m simply talking about possibilities

esl is already banning more than 2 classes of the same kind which is imo a fair number. only one can be too restrictive.

Jekkt.6045:

i know that banning a traitline or an amulet is not an option, i also addressed that in my original post, so i’m not pro-banning one of those.

the conclusion i came to was that if anything would be bannable without hurting builds too much are sigils and runes.

you play air/fire but fire is banned? you pick blood instead.
you play strength runes but they are banned? you pick hoelbrak instead

for runes there is always (most of the time) an alternative and by banning runes everything could become more interesting (some tournaments already started banning vamp runes). it also gives arenanet an incentive to buff other runes that don’t see much use without having to nerf other runes and it helps with ingame balance. do you feel like a certain rune is totall out of hand right now? ban it.

i know that this is not a moba but then again that statement doesn’t mean much at all.. you don’t have to be a moba to have bans.

i’m simply talking about possibilities

esl is already banning more than 2 classes of the same kind which is imo a fair number. only one can be too restrictive.

but it is also boring to watch when basically every team runs 2 eles. I’m hoping that will change after the HoT release.

ha… yes it will change. They will just run 2 Chrono.

and about your pick and ban:
Your Idea shows, that you really like the game. But you can not use things from other games everywhere.

Bad idea.

Pick/Ban works in LOL because there are so many heroes which adequately fulfill one of the few clearly defined roles. There are also pretty standard team compositions when it comes to roles. It’s also necessary in LOL to stop the game from being completely repetitive.

GW2 isn’t anywhere near as rigid when it comes to roles for a build. For example, if you banned some crucial part of a thief, it completely changes strategy and tactics because thieves could no longer back-cap or +1 fights nearly as well. As you said, runes have the least impact, but by the token, a pick/ban system for runes would have equally as small an impact, to the point that it wasn’t worth it.

If you want diversity in GW2, it’s not too difficult:

1. Allow more stat customization. The PvP amulet system is far too rigid. Many builds work best when they have 4 or 5 stats in different ranges. The current system doesn’t allow for that, so only DPS with escapes and celestial with might stacking are prevalent. Getting a small amount of toughness on DPS builds would help them out tremendously against burst.
2. Address Celestial + Might Stacking The downside of celestial is that its power damage is extremely low, even for sustained damage. However, if you can might stack reliably, that problem goes away, giving you the benefit of reasonably balanced stats (see previous issue). And with the condi system re-work and healing power becomes more appealing, it may be time to lower celestial’s stats a little.

The rest of it just depends on ANet addressing skills or combinations of skills which are a little too good.

Exedore.6320:

Bad idea.

Pick/Ban works in LOL because there are so many heroes which adequately fulfill one of the few clearly defined roles. There are also pretty standard team compositions when it comes to roles. It’s also necessary in LOL to stop the game from being completely repetitive.

GW2 isn’t anywhere near as rigid when it comes to roles for a build. For example, if you banned some crucial part of a thief, it completely changes strategy and tactics because thieves could no longer back-cap or +1 fights nearly as well. As you said, runes have the least impact, but by the token, a pick/ban system for runes would have equally as small an impact, to the point that it wasn’t worth it.

If you want diversity in GW2, it’s not too difficult:

1. Allow more stat customization. The PvP amulet system is far too rigid. Many builds work best when they have 4 or 5 stats in different ranges. The current system doesn’t allow for that, so only DPS with escapes and celestial with might stacking are prevalent. Getting a small amount of toughness on DPS builds would help them out tremendously against burst.
2. Address Celestial + Might Stacking The downside of celestial is that its power damage is extremely low, even for sustained damage. However, if you can might stack reliably, that problem goes away, giving you the benefit of reasonably balanced stats (see previous issue). And with the condi system re-work and healing power becomes more appealing, it may be time to lower celestial’s stats a little.

The rest of it just depends on ANet addressing skills or combinations of skills which are a little too good.

thanks for your feedback, that’s what i was looking for.

i agree that the effort for rune bans would be far too big for the impact and amulets/traitlines are just not a possibility.

as for the amulets.. i have been asking for free stats customization for a while but i don’t think it’s gonna happen. so when grouch asked what new amulets we wante (on the mainpage atm, so feel free to post there) i suggested multi stats amulets because i feel they would have the most impact and benefits.

the thing about celestial is that while it can be extremely strong on the right classes it can also suck kitten other classes. ever seen a celestial thief? no? neither have i.