Guild Wars 2

i am not hopeful for this game on the spvp end at all because of the way the main features (professions and combat) were designed. currently the professions set up and combat mechanics are passable for open world pve. wvw is mostly about (numbers) zerg vs zerg tactics and not professions. dungeons and fractals are a die/rez, dps spam, do this trick at this time to win and bring anything experience. the oversimplified ways professions and combat were designed become somewhat acceptable while participating in the above activities. in spvp it is a whole new ballgame because the profession and combat system vs profession and combat system highlights the fundamental flaws, limitations and shallowness of things.

imo, if the core of professions and combat remains limited to certain builds, capable professions and set ups, an extremely small number of “powers” at hand/ready (#1 spam and long cooldown combos) and lack of “power” customization (outside of gear), no amount of nifty features or rewards will attract and maintain a larger spvp crowd.

obviously improvements and additions will be made and y’all can niggle about this, that and decimal points, but ultimately things won’t change drastically enough for professions and the way combat unfolds to make a much of a difference to spvp.

Well, there will probably always be certain builds that outperform others, but they can change somehow. The meta so far has just had tweaking to the good builds, a guardian is always some kind of bunker, mesmer are glass, thieves are glass, warriors are glass, engineers has been bunkers, rangers has barely been played. Elementalists, however, have had viable glass builds but also viable bunker builds so that’s probably the only profession that has had viable options.
I dont know exactly how to change it, I think overall weapons needs to be looked through, each profession has some weapons they never use… and the devs should think about why. I liked the idea of weapon swapping when first hearing about the game, but however it didnt turn out as flexible as I thought since strong builds makes each professions locked with certain weapon builds, and add to that traits build it’s kind of boring now.

pinkglow.3429:

Well, there will probably always be certain builds that outperform others, but they can change somehow. The meta so far has just had tweaking to the good builds, a guardian is always some kind of bunker, mesmer are glass, thieves are glass, warriors are glass, engineers has been bunkers, rangers has barely been played. Elementalists, however, have had viable glass builds but also viable bunker builds so that’s probably the only profession that has had viable options.
I dont know exactly how to change it, I think overall weapons needs to be looked through, each profession has some weapons they never use… and the devs should think about why. I liked the idea of weapon swapping when first hearing about the game, but however it didnt turn out as flexible as I thought since strong builds makes each professions locked with certain weapon builds, and add to that traits build it’s kind of boring now.

Yes the main problem is an overabundance of useless traits, utility, and skills. They mostly all sound good on paper, or make a newbie go “Wow!” but in practice they are all either too situational, broken, or just weak. This leads to one or two paths for each class, and low diversity in pvp.

Also maybe they need to separate pvp from pve more, which will allow them to better balance the game. They should create pvp-specific trait trees, which include existing traits and new traits that are specifically designed to be viable in pvp. They also need to look at either making pvp specific utility, or really work on buffing some utility skill. There are just too many useless utility skills for pvp.

Yes, there is certainly room for a lot of improvement.

1. Combo fields often apply redundant effects. While cool in theory, who needs a burning combo field when the Guardian’s auto attack is already applying Burning. Same applies to Poisons and various other effects. The only combo fields that seem somewhat useful are the ones applying Boons to the group (Retaliation or Might for example) and the Healing ones (Life-Leech/Water).

For a deeper combat experience you need to make combo fields more important and meaningful.

2. Limited abilities – Looking at Thieves for example you can disqualify roughly half of the abilities instantly from any PvP environment. All traps and almost all Venoms for example can be categorically ignored. Venoms are often redundant and the traps just weak. Other classes have similar issues I assume. That essentially leaves a choice of maybe 10 skills, half of which can again we ignored because of build synergy (example Caltrops in Power builds).

3. Weapon set – I’m going to reference Thieves again, because they’re extreme in this regard. They have essentially 2 ranged weapon, one single target, the other AoE. They have 2 melee weapon sets, one Aoe and one single target. They have 2 basic play-styles, burst or condition damage.

This really limits the choice and flexibility of the profession. Not only that, it also means that every play-style is very limited. Melee Condition Damage is essentially about spaming Death Blossom, ranged Pistol Condition Damage is essentially about spaming Sneak Attack.

We really need more combat depth in this regard. Some professions more than others, but it’s a general problem.