Guild Wars 2

Hey there =)

Dont know about you guys but I find sPvP “slightly” annoying and frustrating. I’ve played a lot of games and I’m a heavy pvp player, usually play support or tanker classes. I’ve come to GW2 since there was no healers (in the classic sense) that made it interesting to try out. After a few rounds I’ve noticed an interesting “standard” in pvp:

1. No “Holy Trinity” – While its a new and interesting system, it has its flaws. What is your role? What you can do? Anything. On paper. In reality you are either a heavy dps or a bunker. Support is not existant since its bleeding from so many wounds its just not worth it. Especially in a Hot Join. Its rather bland tbh. No tactic or strategy involved. Just who can busrt down the other one faster. We have rolls (yeey xD) but thats really limited control to keep dmg flowing.
Every class can do whatever they want. Again on paper. Most classes have only 1-2 working builds. They play next to eachother not with eachother. Huge difference.

2. Team play thats lacking team play – This is the first game where I feel that there is no actual “team” play involved in spvp. I love to play team games, however its extremely frustrating, that the whole “teamplay” involves moving in a big blob and kill everything unfortunate bumping into it. Ok, there are other games where this happens too (like Warhammer) but at least there I could play in team, since I knew who had what role + could rely on a pug member to some extent. Here ? No xD
sPvP dont really encourage people to play together.

3. Welcome to Bunny Land! – When I played my very first pvp matches I wasn’t able to help myself that it feels/looks hilarious. Everybody is rolling-jumping-leaping-evading on the screen, it makes me feel like I’m watching a circus show xD Add the lot of fire/explosion/spell effect/smoke screen/ect + the clones of the mesmer(s) present and you really start to feel you are watching a Cirque de Soleil show :P Its just kitten annoying to actually able to see anything in this mess and time the rolls/skill you’d need to avoid death x)

4. Professions and balance – Its nothing new I guess. Its an old topic in the game + on the forums that there are some faceroll classes and some weak classes when it comes to pvp environment. I wont start with the thief and mesmer, you guys already know all about it. They are quite powerful. Period. The only rule is the faster you can kill somebody the better. Some classes excel in this. Some just… not. Engi + necro cant burst down anything as fast as a thief or a gs warri or mesmer could. Maybe thats why I see them rarely.

5. Armor class is just cosmetics – This was the part that made me puzzled the most. Wearing heavy, medium or light armor wont change a thing. The small amount of difference they had in stats is so minimal it just wont make an impact. A dps specced guardian could be as low on armor as a thief or necro. It wont matter. IF you spec to it yea, you can be hard to kill. But its a rather bad concept that a heavy armor user and a light armor user will be on the same survival line if they spec for dmg. I’d expect a heavy armor to mean something. Not just be a cosmetic fluff :/ One would think its there for a reason ^^;

6. sPvP maps are not favoring long range encounters – Speccing for long range (900-1500) is rather pointless in spvp. As the maps are designed + there are just so many gap closers (and not too many gap keepers) its rather easy for a melee to get in close and personal. Oh… and if you have a crit build, you just use the condition remover sigil (60% chance on crit to remove a condition) making ranged combat a “bit” questionable at best.
Not to mention, melee abilities always hit harder, so there is little merit to range. And I havent even mentioned stuff that completely ignore cripple like leaps, teleports, ect. And if somebody comes up with “needing better CC options means you are a bad player” thats complete bs. I dont have problem with competetive pvp play, I love it. But if I’d like to play only ranged then make it possible I could keep the distance with skills I can use. If I use it badly than its my bad. But I find that a 3s cripple on a weapon is anything but not CC. I’d need to sacrifice utility slots to keep somebody at range, usually with long CDs (40+sec is an eternity in pvp lol) and some classes dont even have additional relyable CC options in their utility. As an engi for example, on paper I have some options, but most of them can be countered/ignored (glue shot, slick shoes) quite easy with dodge only (net shot, net turret, glue shot) or hamper myself roo (rocket boots).

Ok, I end my wall of text rant :P Flame on ^^
Puts up protective gear

Interesting points but I feel they’re all superficial and don’t really address what’s really wrong with PvP.

The whole point of competitive gaming is to test skills outside the realm of the game and GW2 doesn’t do that.

For example professional Poker isn’t really about cards it’s a game of psychology, game theory, and probability; the rules of Poker just serve as a medium to test a player’s ability to utilize those skills.

GW2 PvP on the other hand only requires players know what the game’s broken stuff is and exploit it.

To me all the things that you listed are just symptoms of a much bigger problem.

To sum up all the problems with GW2 pvp simply. Everyone is supposed to be a hybrid, But anyone can go 100% conditions or crits, but at best 10% anything else. All the control or healing or anything other than damage are on very short timers and with no control or damage mitigation from other players other than yourself, combat becomes a dps zergfest.

Also they nerf CC every chance they get, its almost like they are trying to make the zerging worse than it already is. When WvWvW is a Zerg and Entire Servers are Zerging the other side something is fundamentally broken with your skill/spec balance.

2, 4 and 6 is imho more a player-issue; by that I don’t mean OP, but players that can’t seem to cooperate in general. I am not sure there is a cure for that … I am just baffled that there are so many, that seem to think, that the buffs and peels are only for themselves.

Good points =)
Actually I dont play pvp since Beta or Launch so I cant tell the in-depth problems with the core of the issues in it, but certainly the things I’ve listed are really striking out even after…. say 4-5 rounds of game. I think that tieing the gamers hands to be forced into one or two ways to play is not something anybody would like for a longer time.

And yea, too much CC can also ruin the game (prime example is WAR’s early stage and even sometimes up to this point too), but here I feel I just push out dmg, focus down a player. Just zerg vs. zerg with little to no brain activity needed to execute it.
Some classes only need to spam 1-2 then they are set (100b or heartseeker anybody ? :P).
What I always loved in PvP, is that it challenged my skills, my reactions, my brain. How well I can out-play somebody or not was the borderline between a good or a bad player. Here… I just feel frustrated.

On the support part: I’ve played a healer 24/7 in other games. Here… its not working, mostly because its not intended to work (no holy trinity right ?). Still, the other support options (mitigation, reflect, absorb, ect.) are always a sub-par choice at the moment. I dont feel that there is actually any need for it aside of tournament and other pre-made group play. Its hard to keep somebody alive (be it mitigation or anything similar) when most of the protective stuff has only 3-4s duration. Most smart players will just wait that small time. Than… when the ability gone on a long CD (25-40s+ up to 120s) they can just go back to what they do. Hard to mitigate dmg when ppl. do 4-5k per hit, critting up to 10-12k a hit. And they do this in such a quich succession, I can hardly follow. And no, rolls dont help. When you used up your 2x rolls, your defence CDs, you are pretty much dead if the opponent(s) is still brething.

1 and 3 make me think this is not the right game for you.

Players playing next to each other and not with each other is exactly it.

In WoW, if I was playing my healer, I’d stick to certain players. And they’d stick to me. It was an unspoken bond that we should casually group up. Sure, we’d split up often, but we were a PuG. We just played up the synergy.

In GW2, people played like that in beta. People tried to compliment each other. But it quickly degraded into numbers vs numbers.

Play with guildies and friends, it is a non-issue. Play with randoms, you’ll notice how solo we all are. But it isn’t really an issue with the PvP. It is an issue with how “fun” it feels.

Support in this game is just entirely too weak. The cooldowns I agree with, to prevent “healers”, but not the weakness of the support. The Guardian 30 skill point elite is just plain weak at healing. It has 1 powerful skill, and condition removal (very great stuff), but the #1 skill is meh. Dropping med kits as an Engineer is meh, just negating 1 attack. Elementalist water is meh.

Sure, those tiny heals can save your team or you, but you can’t build around that chance. Support is just an accidental byproduct. Burst Burst Burst is it. And how well you can negate theirs while ensuring yours.

It makes pvp a bit too direct and too much a zerg. Fun is a bit too simple. The “holy trinity” kept a certain wild card to encounters that GW2 lacks. No need to bring it back, but do allow balancing to make burst less valuable and defense and support more so.

Boloth.6879:

GW2 PvP on the other hand only requires players know what the game’s broken stuff is and exploit it.

Finally somebody who gets it.

I can pick Mesmer and use the exact same rotation vs every profession of every build and win 95% of fights. This rotation, mind you, took about 15 minutes of playing Mesmer to figure out.

I’m almost rank 30 now and my strategy hasn’t changed since rank 3.

By no means I’d change the “no trinity” stuff. Actually I liked the bold idea of kicking the usual archetypes out of the window and try something new. Thats why I picked up GW2 in the first place. Sometimes you are tired of the same old stuff done over and over again.

They really have some intereseting elements going tho. The dodge is a nice new tool, adds a small skill into the game. Its up to you how well you can dodge or not, however limited it is. Its there.
However, I find it bland to rely only on dmg to win a game. Its just too… boring and one sided. The trinity gave us a standing point. We knew if a tank had a healer backup its gonna take a while to take the duo down. It would be nice to see something similar in this game. Clear roles. Not the trinity. But roles. Right now its only damage-damage-damage. If you want to help your team… well, you can reduce the incoming dmg by 33%, block one attack, reflect. All these are on too long cooldowns to really make a difference. When 4-5k dmg spikes are flying all over the place, 3-4s 33% dmg redux wont really change a thing, especially on a low duration.

What I really miss from this game is that I cant feel that I can connect to any of the pugs. I fend for myself only. If I chose to help out then its ok, but dont take it granted that it will be returned.
Whats annoying me is that chosing a supporting role actually punishes you. You lack dmg and usually survival in favour of support. Means, you cant kill anybody and survive only for 2-3 hits longer. And since they nerfed bunker specs last time, its only DPS world again ^^;

Still, the pvp here needs a bit getting used to. Its faster paced, nearly all skills are instant cast or low cast animation (1-2s-ish) and the rolling is another tool aslo ^^