Guild Wars 2

This last month and a half have been very confusing to me. The majority of PvP players agree that the condition meta isn’t fun and needs to go asap. The thing is we already have the tools to try and change the meta ourselves without the need of a balance patch.

Warrior is the answer.

The class has several build that are absolutely perfect for destroying condition based builds, yet no high ranking teams seem willing to use them. What’s even more baffling is how the same people who are saying how much they hate the current meta are now claiming that the class that can stop them is OP. This may just be a case of a very vocal minority making a lot of noise; that being said it still doesn’t excuse the lack of use Warriors are still seeing.

Even if you think Warrior is OP, which I don’t, why are you unwilling to use it yet it’s fine to use Necromancers and Spirit Rangers? Why not try taking 2 Warriors in place of 2 condition users? Building to beat the enemy team is how you create a more dynamic and constantly shifting meta. Hopefully, if we saw more teams with Warriors curb stomping condition teams that would lead to them bringing something like a Mesmer in order to counter Warriors. What was common in GW1 was that Hammer Warriors who know how to quarter knock could lock down a high value target like a monk, so teams had a Mesmer with skills that forced the Warrior to back off.

It feels like the balance team is attempting to indirectly nerf conditions by buffing Warrior. This is a great strategy in my eyes so long as they avoid too much power creep. Too many players want to be able to have a fair chance to win against any build, this is not only practically impossible but not the best choice if you want a shifting meta. A Rock-Paper-Scissors approach would make the game much easier to balance and would allow for more team diversity.

Imagine that conditions are scissors, CC Warriors with Zerker Stance, Dogged March, and Cleansing ire (notice how much they invest) have become rock. So what’s paper? Mesmers, just like GW1. They have access to so many escapes that CC is all but worthless, and that’s fine. The balance isn’t perfect yet but if they keep this sort of balance philosophy I could see Warriors and Mesmers becoming an important part of any team. In a perfect world every class would have access to a rock, paper, and scissor build without being able to have elements of multiple without having significant weaknesses as well.

Instead of demanding that ANet keeps patching the game, lets try and change it ourselves and make their job easier.

EDIT: Here’s the most recent SotG

The large majority of players do not even read these forums regularly. So how do you propose some kind of gamewide cooperation of all players? Never mind the fact that it is not our job to make the devs life easier.

I personally hate warriors more than necros. But I hate spirit rangers more than warriors. Stun warriors w/ healing signet are pretty imbalanced.

We have to fight cheese with cheese!

Then we have to find someone who is strong against warriors.XD

Kwll.1468:

The large majority of players do not even read these forums regularly. So how do you propose some kind of gamewide cooperation of all players? Never mind the fact that it is not our job to make the devs life easier.

I like to go to Anvil Rock and talk about this as well in addition to reddit if the subject pops up, although it’s mostly PvE guys and the esports subreddit doesn’t get a ton of traffic. A lot of high ranking players do read this tough, and they’re the ones that can help change things at the higher level of play so that it changes the lower levels.

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I personally hate warriors more than necros. But I hate spirit rangers more than warriors. Stun warriors w/ healing signet are pretty imbalanced.

How are they imbalanced? They are strong vs conditions and weak vs anything with a plethora of escapes/protection/stability. Healing Signet is terrible if you keep poison on the warrior, wait until they cleanse it then reapply it again. High burst can also totally nullify it as well, S/D + S/P Thieves do this well. They can micro stun and deal massive damage then steal any sort of stability while teleporting out of any stun. That’s Rock-Paper-Scissors.

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Define high level play? I see warriors all the time in team queue. Not sure about soloq.

First advice: use Rune of Melandru.

-25% stun time means Skull Crack will stun you for 3 seconds, right?

Last time I played, to swap weapons you need 0.5 seconds (seems like a bit of “lag”, even if IMHO it shouldn’t be removed) If Skull Crack only lasts 3 seconds, warriors have only 2.5 seconds of 100 blades. Remember that the most of the damage is dealt by the last part of it. It will probably be around 50% damage reduction.

This means Skull Crack → Hundred Blades combo will be much less effective.

Alas I have no idea about universal ways to kill them faster that are as easy as this.

BurrTheKing.8571:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I personally hate warriors more than necros. But I hate spirit rangers more than warriors. Stun warriors w/ healing signet are pretty imbalanced.

How are they imbalanced? They are strong vs conditions and weak vs anything with a plethora of escapes/protection/stability. Healing Signet is terrible if you keep poison on the warrior, wait until they cleanse it then reapply it again. High burst can also totally nullify it as well, S/D + S/P Thieves do this well. They can micro stun and deal massive damage then steal any sort of stability while teleporting out of any stun. That’s Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Rock paper scissors is an imbalanced game. And I appreciate your post, but warriors have been the answer for awhile against stability lacking condi nukers; but they are just as cheesy with access to 3s stun on 10s cd—really good healing, really tanky, and can dish out a good amount of damage with either condis or extra damage when opponents are stunned. Goodness, I know guard isn’t all that hard to play but at least I have to time everything fairly well to survive. Miss a stun? Let’s just use it again. Gotta heal? Nope, mine’s passive. Give up dps for def? Nope, I can still have a lot of sustain while being super tanky. If banners ever get buffed, they are gonna be worse than spirits because they can’t be destroyed.

The meta seems to have been defined by what teams like Team Paradigm, TCG or CC were playing but now that those teams don’t play as often or stream as often, the “meta” is no longer clear for the masses.

This thread would have been great last month or two months ago. People already know that Warrior’s counter the current meta but it’s already too late. The classes have now been called out for nerfs and nerfs are incoming.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

BurrTheKing.8571:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

I personally hate warriors more than necros. But I hate spirit rangers more than warriors. Stun warriors w/ healing signet are pretty imbalanced.

How are they imbalanced? They are strong vs conditions and weak vs anything with a plethora of escapes/protection/stability. Healing Signet is terrible if you keep poison on the warrior, wait until they cleanse it then reapply it again. High burst can also totally nullify it as well, S/D + S/P Thieves do this well. They can micro stun and deal massive damage then steal any sort of stability while teleporting out of any stun. That’s Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Rock paper scissors is an imbalanced game. And I appreciate your post, but warriors have been the answer for awhile against stability lacking condi nukers; but they are just as cheesy with access to 3s stun on 10s cd—really good healing, really tanky, and can dish out a good amount of damage with either condis or extra damage when opponents are stunned. Goodness, I know guard isn’t all that hard to play but at least I have to time everything fairly well to survive. Miss a stun? Let’s just use it again. Gotta heal? Nope, mine’s passive. Give up dps for def? Nope, I can still have a lot of sustain while being super tanky. If banners ever get buffed, they are gonna be worse than spirits because they can’t be destroyed.

Missing a stun is one of the easiest ways to lose as a warrior. Most actually have a 7.75ish CD due to traits but that doesn’t mean you use the skill on cooldown. Waste a stun on a target with stability? Enjoy dealing no damage and making the regen from Healing Sig even less effective because you’re being attack in addition to now have no decent regen from adrenal health for a while. You may not even get back up to full regen by the time it comes off CD. Mace isn’t even as popular as Hammer/Longbow now and the stun from that is even shorter and easier to see coming.

Even now I’m finding Necros and Engis to be much harder to kill because they are bringing more and more counters to me. It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming a fair fight but they are sacrificing more offensive tools to do so which is great.

Warriors still can’t bunker anywhere near as well as Guardians. It’s not even Protection, it’s the number of blocks and invulnerability that they have access to as well. Once again that’s fine, Guardian is another one of those classes that will probably always be on a team unless another class like Ele or Engi gain the ability to bunker just as well.

Also, imbalances aren’t all that bad if it isn’t game breaking, which I think most would agree warrior is not that because there are counters. Here’s a good video showing how imbalance can keep things interesting:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

Dirame.8521:

The meta seems to have been defined by what teams like Team Paradigm, TCG or CC were playing but now that those teams don’t play as often or stream as often, the “meta” is no longer clear for the masses.

This thread would have been great last month or two months ago. People already know that Warrior’s counter the current meta but it’s already too late. The classes have now been called out for nerfs and nerfs are incoming.

The state of the game didn’t really hint at any major nerfs though. I think they REALLY want to force the playerbase to set the meta. Everything Mr. Sharp said when it came to balance lead to “we what to see what the players will do.” I’ll be fine with a bit of a Warrior shave if it comes along with condition shaves as well, but Warriors should remain the counter-condition class. It’s a good way to make sure that while conditions may be viable, they won’t totally dominate like the past. Warriors should remain the foil to conditions just like certain Mesmer builds will be the foil to melee.

Right now I think each class needs a few well defined roles for PvP, I don’t think every class needs to be able to do everything. Not every class needs to be strong 1v1 if in return they gain superior team support. They can continue to give each class more roles but all that can come with time.

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play…. I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta… Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because the skill floor is so low right now making it not rewarding whatsoever. It still involves the fact that the specs are OP also but its mostly to do with the cheese specs that’s why teams such as tp are taking breaks.

So people just magically stop playing the empirically best meta builds? Are you stupid?

Lol at warrior not op xD

Here’s a good video showing how imbalance can keep things interesting:

That video is so full of vaque kitten. Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true.

Master of Timespace.2548:

So people just magically stop playing the empirically best meta builds? Are you stupid?

Lol at warrior not op xD

Here’s a good video showing how imbalance can keep things interesting:

That video is so full of vaque kitten. Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true.

The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet. Also, it’s supposed to be vague as to relate to as many games as possible. Counter their statements if you think it’s wrong, don’t just say “Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true” because that doesn’t prove your point at all. If you want people to take you serious actually defend your view rather than defacing with no evidence.

The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet. Also, it’s supposed to be vague as to relate to as many games as possible. Counter their statements if you think it’s wrong, don’t just say “Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true” because that doesn’t prove your point at all. If you want people to take you serious actually defend your view rather than defacing with no evidence.

I just don’t agree at all to what he says. Doing what he says would end up into a game with whack a mole balance, hard counters, cheese builds (he seems to think those are good idea… ) and generally rock paper scissors type situations. None of those are what I desire. Also, he doesn’t even check his facts: chess is greatly biased towards white.
Oh, lol @ “The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet”. So game design is a science now? No wonder the modern games are so pale.

apt.9184:

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play…. I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta… Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because low tier players can compete with higher tier players because of cheese specs carrying them.

We’ve had this argument before, no class in this game is that hard to play. Every build tends to have some sort of gimmick behind it. Even Engis and Eles have very clear combos that you aim to pull off the only initial challenge is the sheer amount of skills and that doesn’t take long to get over. I still maintain that Warriors are heavily dependent on managing their utilities and long cooldown skills effectively, one misuse of a key skill and you’ll find yourself in a bad spot. This is especially true with the condition removal/mitigation skills. Other classes have this as well but with Warriors being melee with no access to stealth or some of the mechanics Guardian has makes it have bit of a learning curve.

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play? I used to think Engi nades was hard to use but after a while I found that it wasn’t that bad once you get used to the travel time, and in the end all your doing is pointing and clicking. This game isn’t Counter Strike or any other game considered to have a high skill ceiling. At the end of the game this is 2rd person MMO combat, it can be fun but it it’s more about teamwork than it is about the difficulty of playing your class.

Master of Timespace.2548:

The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet. Also, it’s supposed to be vague as to relate to as many games as possible. Counter their statements if you think it’s wrong, don’t just say “Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true” because that doesn’t prove your point at all. If you want people to take you serious actually defend your view rather than defacing with no evidence.

I just don’t agree at all to what he says. Doing what he says would end up into a game with whack a mole balance, hard counters, cheese builds (he seems to think those are good idea… ) and generally rock paper scissors type situations. None of those are what I desire. Also, he doesn’t even check his facts: chess is greatly biased towards white.
Also, lol @ “The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet”. So game desgin is a science now? No wonder the modern games are so pale.

It wouldn’t lead to whack-a-mole because there would be hard counters to everything, it would be more about slightly nerfing or slightly buffing so that nothing turns the scale too much, but there’s enough slant that things change. If you don’t want Rock-Paper-Scissors (from now on RPS) then what do you want? I can’t name a single game like this that has managed to have some sort of perfect balance where one class always has a fair shot vs each other. That would not only be impossibly hard but would make the game really dull. RPS style balance at least guarantees some sort counter is always available unless something is gamebreaking levels of broken.

We’ve seen in the past how bad things become when we let classes become too well rounded, there always needs to be some sort of Achilles heel.

BurrTheKing.8571:

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play?

Compared to the current warrior, everything.

Not directing this at you specifically Burr, but I reckon a lot of people really ought to play a variety of classes before suggesting how to balance the game. If you did, you might see that the warrior is among one of the easiest to play right now.

Anyway, I think that having one specific class to counter an entire build type isn’t a good way to balance a game. Rock paper scissors is also especially bad for the game when considering solo que.

BurrTheKing.8571:

apt.9184:

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play…. I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta… Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because low tier players can compete with higher tier players because of cheese specs carrying them.

We’ve had this argument before, no class in this game is that hard to play. Every build tends to have some sort of gimmick behind it. Even Engis and Eles have very clear combos that you aim to pull off the only initial challenge is the sheer amount of skills and that doesn’t take long to get over. I still maintain that Warriors are heavily dependent on managing their utilities and long cooldown skills effectively, one misuse of a key skill and you’ll find yourself in a bad spot. This is especially true with the condition removal/mitigation skills. Other classes have this as well but with Warriors being melee with no access to stealth or some of the mechanics Guardian has makes it have bit of a learning curve.

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play? I used to think Engi nades was hard to use but after a while I found that it wasn’t that bad once you get used to the travel time, and in the end all your doing is pointing and clicking. This game isn’t Counter Strike or any other game considered to have a high skill ceiling. At the end of the game this is 2rd person MMO combat, it can be fun but it it’s more about teamwork than it is about the difficulty of playing your class.

Maybe “high skill” isn’t the right phrase for it, but the risk-to-reward ratio is certainly not even between builds. I think that is what people mean when they say that some builds are “hard” or “easy.”

In other words, a build seems “easier” to play when you can mess up a good amount and still beat your opponent, who made far fewer mistakes.

For example, if you want to play a burst ele (and put out about as much pressure as a valk CC warrior), you are so squishy that you will die in a few hits. With a zerker jewel, a backstab + autoattack chain from a thief will kill you. A s/d thief will kill you with a few autoattacks or larcenous strikes. A shatter mesmer’s GS phantasm will take you down below half health in pass. This makes the class risky, or skill-intensive, to play. You need to always be aware of your surroundings (including the possibility of stealthed mesmers/thieves) and think ahead. You also need to be very, very fast on hitting your lightning flash (or arcane shield if you run with that as well). If you mess up, you will almost certainly die.

If you play the current valk amulet + unsuspecting foe CC build, you can afford to make many more mistakes. A backstab from a thief will take off about 20%-25% of your health. While you should obviously still pay attention and react quickly, failing to do so won’t guarantee your death.

Conversely, missing an updraft/earhquake on an ele puts the skill on a 40s cooldown. Missing a gale (focus air5) on an ele puts the skill on a 50s cooldown. Missing a skullcrack on a warrior means you have to wait 8s to try again. This, combined with the survivability issues discussed above, means you can miss more skullcracks as a warrior than you can miss earthquakes/updrafts/gales as an ele.

The complaint about this meta is that these “low risk” (i.e. “easy to play”) builds seem to be more rewarding than the “high risk” (i.e. “hard to play”) builds. Necros, spirit rangers, and phantasm mesmers in particular come across as being particularly low risk, high reward. While current CC warriors may counter necros and spirit rangers, they only exacerbate the whole “low risk, high reward” problem that people have.

What I would personally prefer is to give warriors, rangers, necros, and mesmers high-risk builds that outperform their low-risk builds when played competently. This gives players something to strive for and incentive to improve.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. Thanks for considering these thoughts.

Two things:
1. People are always hesitant try change what is working almost perfectly (condi-spam).
2. I dont believe there are too many players left that actually care enough to theorycraft an entire team-setup, and then practice with it for an extended period of time.

KrisHQ.4719:

Two things:
1. People are always hesitant try change what is working almost perfectly (condi-spam).
2. I dont believe there are too many players left that actually care enough to theorycraft an entire team-setup, and then practice with it for an extended period of time.

Do you want to? I’d be willing to work with someone who wants to make a counter-meta team.

BurrTheKing.8571:

KrisHQ.4719:

Two things:
1. People are always hesitant try change what is working almost perfectly (condi-spam).
2. I dont believe there are too many players left that actually care enough to theorycraft an entire team-setup, and then practice with it for an extended period of time.

Do you want to? I’d be willing to work with someone who wants to make a counter-meta team.

I’m always trying to come up with counters to the meta and sometimes I find the answer without knowing it. I’ll definitely be up for forming a team with such a goal. I’m on EU.

My greatest worry is not the nerf of Healing Signet or anything like that, it’s that CC gets nerfed back to the point of uselessness. If things shift back to a power meta and our CC/toughness is nerfed, thief will once again look much more attractive to have on your team. CC is the one thing that Warrior does better than any other class (Guardian has different kind of CC from what I’m referring to).

Warriors could probably switch back to GS+LB DPS, but is that better than what a Thief is able to do? CC wasn’t all that viable until Hammer was buffed, I could live without the Mace (Ironic, considering how many views my Mace/Shield + GS build got) but Hammer is my babbeh. I would accept some shaved to Healing Signet and the like but ONLY when the condition Meta is behind us. I want to have faith in ANet but I feel like too many shaves to Warriors will put as back into “lol free kill” territory.

As for RPS balancing, when people say RPS they don’t mean that there’s only 3 option just that everything has some sort of counter. It ensures that if something gets overbuffed there’s still something in the game that can beat it until it’s fixed. Works good for many MOBAs, and it’s obvious that ANet took a lot of inspiration from games like LoL and DotA whether you like it or not.

GW1 had a lot of RPS going on. Warrior with Hammer locks down monk, Mesmer locks down Warrior, so you need to keep the Warrior alive or kill the Mesmer – often with a Ranger (in GW1 they were very interrupt based, something they should have kept in GW2) or an Anti-Caster Mesmer. Don’t get me wrong GW1 always had some sort of meta build for each class but the dynamic between the classes has very clear strengths and weaknesses.

ResJudicator.7916:

BurrTheKing.8571:

apt.9184:

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play…. I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta… Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because low tier players can compete with higher tier players because of cheese specs carrying them.

We’ve had this argument before, no class in this game is that hard to play. Every build tends to have some sort of gimmick behind it. Even Engis and Eles have very clear combos that you aim to pull off the only initial challenge is the sheer amount of skills and that doesn’t take long to get over. I still maintain that Warriors are heavily dependent on managing their utilities and long cooldown skills effectively, one misuse of a key skill and you’ll find yourself in a bad spot. This is especially true with the condition removal/mitigation skills. Other classes have this as well but with Warriors being melee with no access to stealth or some of the mechanics Guardian has makes it have bit of a learning curve.

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play? I used to think Engi nades was hard to use but after a while I found that it wasn’t that bad once you get used to the travel time, and in the end all your doing is pointing and clicking. This game isn’t Counter Strike or any other game considered to have a high skill ceiling. At the end of the game this is 2rd person MMO combat, it can be fun but it it’s more about teamwork than it is about the difficulty of playing your class.

Maybe “high skill” isn’t the right phrase for it, but the risk-to-reward ratio is certainly not even between builds. I think that is what people mean when they say that some builds are “hard” or “easy.”

In other words, a build seems “easier” to play when you can mess up a good amount and still beat your opponent, who made far fewer mistakes.

For example, if you want to play a burst ele (and put out about as much pressure as a valk CC warrior), you are so squishy that you will die in a few hits. With a zerker jewel, a backstab + autoattack chain from a thief will kill you. A s/d thief will kill you with a few autoattacks or larcenous strikes. A shatter mesmer’s GS phantasm will take you down below half health in pass. This makes the class risky, or skill-intensive, to play. You need to always be aware of your surroundings (including the possibility of stealthed mesmers/thieves) and think ahead. You also need to be very, very fast on hitting your lightning flash (or arcane shield if you run with that as well). If you mess up, you will almost certainly die.

If you play the current valk amulet + unsuspecting foe CC build, you can afford to make many more mistakes. A backstab from a thief will take off about 20%-25% of your health. While you should obviously still pay attention and react quickly, failing to do so won’t guarantee your death.

Conversely, missing an updraft/earhquake on an ele puts the skill on a 40s cooldown. Missing a gale (focus air5) on an ele puts the skill on a 50s cooldown. Missing a skullcrack on a warrior means you have to wait 8s to try again. This, combined with the survivability issues discussed above, means you can miss more skullcracks as a warrior than you can miss earthquakes/updrafts/gales as an ele.

The complaint about this meta is that these “low risk” (i.e. “easy to play”) builds seem to be more rewarding than the “high risk” (i.e. “hard to play”) builds. Necros, spirit rangers, and phantasm mesmers in particular come across as being particularly low risk, high reward. While current CC warriors may counter necros and spirit rangers, they only exacerbate the whole “low risk, high reward” problem that people have.

What I would personally prefer is to give warriors, rangers, necros, and mesmers high-risk builds that outperform their low-risk builds when played competently. This gives players something to strive for and incentive to improve.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. Thanks for considering these thoughts.

This absolutely hits the nail on the head and sums up the current problem and my exact thoughts on this current meta. Low Risk builds should never out-perform high risk builds, that is just plain unbalanced.

BurrTheKing.8571:

My greatest worry is not the nerf of Healing Signet or anything like that, it’s that CC gets nerfed back to the point of uselessness. If things shift back to a power meta and our CC/toughness is nerfed, thief will once again look much more attractive to have on your team. CC is the one thing that Warrior does better than any other class (Guardian has different kind of CC from what I’m referring to).

Warriors could probably switch back to GS+LB DPS, but is that better than what a Thief is able to do? CC wasn’t all that viable until Hammer was buffed, I could live without the Mace (Ironic, considering how many views my Mace/Shield + GS build got) but Hammer is my babbeh. I would accept some shaved to Healing Signet and the like but ONLY when the condition Meta is behind us. I want to have faith in ANet but I feel like too many shaves to Warriors will put as back into “lol free kill” territory.

As for RPS balancing, when people say RPS they don’t mean that there’s only 3 option just that everything has some sort of counter. It ensures that if something gets overbuffed there’s still something in the game that can beat it until it’s fixed. Works good for many MOBAs, and it’s obvious that ANet took a lot of inspiration from games like LoL and DotA whether you like it or not.

GW1 had a lot of RPS going on. Warrior with Hammer locks down monk, Mesmer locks down Warrior, so you need to keep the Warrior alive or kill the Mesmer – often with a Ranger (in GW1 they were very interrupt based, something they should have kept in GW2) or an Anti-Caster Mesmer. Don’t get me wrong GW1 always had some sort of meta build for each class but the dynamic between the classes has very clear strengths and weaknesses.

Well dps was good but I think if they just ether increased our damage output or give us 100 percent quickness then we will be viable with power. If they keep zerk stance too that will really help zerk warrior.

new meta: everyone use only the default traits/gear

BurrTheKing.8571:

This last month and a half have been very confusing to me. The majority of PvP players agree that the condition meta isn’t fun and needs to go asap.

I’m going to be weird and say the current meta is not a condition meta anymore, after the nerf of spirit ranger. It is a cc-meta. Think of every popular build: terror necro and stunlock warrior especially. Yeah, dhuumfire is good, but that’s just what gives necros the damage to 1v1 a bunker over a period of time—something we all wanted to happen anyway. Torment is negligible. The thing that makes a good necro nearly unbeatable is terror. Warrior regen is good, but not a ton better than guardian or engineer. It’s cc that makes stunlock warrior either the first- or second- most popular build, not sure which.

To a lesser extent, fresh air ele, condition engi, S/D thief, and most ranger builds rely heavily on cc. We keep saying “condition meta” but I don’t think that even reflects reality any more. Sure, conditions in general are better than zerker amulet builds in general right now, but that’s about as far as the “condition meta” goes.

NevirSayDie.6235:

BurrTheKing.8571:

This last month and a half have been very confusing to me. The majority of PvP players agree that the condition meta isn’t fun and needs to go asap.

I’m going to be weird and say the current meta is not a condition meta anymore, after the nerf of spirit ranger. It is a cc-meta. Think of every popular build: terror necro and stunlock warrior especially. Yeah, dhuumfire is good, but that’s just what gives necros the damage to 1v1 a bunker over a period of time—something we all wanted to happen anyway. Torment is negligible. The thing that makes a good necro nearly unbeatable is terror. Warrior regen is good, but not a ton better than guardian or engineer. It’s cc that makes stunlock warrior either the first- or second- most popular build, not sure which.

To a lesser extent, fresh air ele, condition engi, S/D thief, and most ranger builds rely heavily on cc. We keep saying “condition meta” but I don’t think that even reflects reality any more. Sure, conditions in general are better than zerker amulet builds in general right now, but that’s about as far as the “condition meta” goes.

I agree — CC seems to me to be the meta right now, at least in solo-queue. But I don’t think the other classes you described are really CC-heavy.

Fresh air ele is definitely not a CC-heavy class, though; nor does it really rely on CC. Fresh air ele instead relies on repeatedly spamming instacast 2k hits via static discharge & lightning bolt, and then bursting w/ more instacast skills via arcane wave+blast. The CC potential is pretty mediocre — earthquake is on a 40s CD and updraft is on a 40s CD.

S/D thieves have a 1s immobilize and bas venom, but they mostly rely on having high, steady autoattack damage and a ton of evades. They don’t need CC to land their nukes because they don’t really have any “nukes.”

Rangers have a few interrupts that they ideally save to stop heals. They don’t really rely on CC to land any big bursts, at least as far as I’ve seen.

Engineers can be built to be CC heavy, so I’ll give you that one. But even then, CC engineers don’t need the CC to land condi bursts, they use it to neutralize points.

Yes, the sooner we get rid of this silly lazy condition meta the sooner we can get back to a silly lazy direct damage burst meta.

transtemporal.2158:

Yes, the sooner we get rid of this silly lazy condition meta the sooner we can get back to a silly lazy direct damage burst meta.

Or the devs can actually find the middle ground. That I’m not too confident about.

kirito.4138:

new meta: everyone use only the default traits/gear

Support this! +1

For now on, everyone should only use Celestial Amulet!! #BalancedMeta

ResJudicator.7916:

BurrTheKing.8571:

apt.9184:

BurrTheKing.8571:

waka.9826:

Warrior is the answer? Warrior is the meta.

Then why do we see so few in high level play? Most of the Warriors you see in SoloQ are new to the class and aren’t good at it yet/aren’t built right. As for hotjoin, nothing there matters.

Dude get it out of your head warrior is not hard to play.... I see so many warriors now in high tier tourneys that perform near my level (been playing warrior since the start). Your suggesting what is already in the meta... Although pretty much all classes in meta are not to hard to play. The reason people are complaining is because low tier players can compete with higher tier players because of cheese specs carrying them.

We’ve had this argument before, no class in this game is that hard to play. Every build tends to have some sort of gimmick behind it. Even Engis and Eles have very clear combos that you aim to pull off the only initial challenge is the sheer amount of skills and that doesn’t take long to get over. I still maintain that Warriors are heavily dependent on managing their utilities and long cooldown skills effectively, one misuse of a key skill and you’ll find yourself in a bad spot. This is especially true with the condition removal/mitigation skills. Other classes have this as well but with Warriors being melee with no access to stealth or some of the mechanics Guardian has makes it have bit of a learning curve.

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play? I used to think Engi nades was hard to use but after a while I found that it wasn’t that bad once you get used to the travel time, and in the end all your doing is pointing and clicking. This game isn’t Counter Strike or any other game considered to have a high skill ceiling. At the end of the game this is 2rd person MMO combat, it can be fun but it it’s more about teamwork than it is about the difficulty of playing your class.

Maybe "high skill" isn’t the right phrase for it, but the risk-to-reward ratio is certainly not even between builds. I think that is what people mean when they say that some builds are "hard" or "easy."

In other words, a build seems "easier" to play when you can mess up a good amount and still beat your opponent, who made far fewer mistakes.

For example, if you want to play a burst ele (and put out about as much pressure as a valk CC warrior), you are so squishy that you will die in a few hits. With a zerker jewel, a backstab + autoattack chain from a thief will kill you. A s/d thief will kill you with a few autoattacks or larcenous strikes. A shatter mesmer’s GS phantasm will take you down below half health in pass. This makes the class risky, or skill-intensive, to play. You need to always be aware of your surroundings (including the possibility of stealthed mesmers/thieves) and think ahead. You also need to be very, very fast on hitting your lightning flash (or arcane shield if you run with that as well). If you mess up, you will almost certainly die.

If you play the current valk amulet + unsuspecting foe CC build, you can afford to make many more mistakes. A backstab from a thief will take off about 20%-25% of your health. While you should obviously still pay attention and react quickly, failing to do so won’t guarantee your death.

Conversely, missing an updraft/earhquake on an ele puts the skill on a 40s cooldown. Missing a gale (focus air5) on an ele puts the skill on a 50s cooldown. Missing a skullcrack on a warrior means you have to wait 8s to try again. This, combined with the survivability issues discussed above, means you can miss more skullcracks as a warrior than you can miss earthquakes/updrafts/gales as an ele.

The complaint about this meta is that these "low risk" (i.e. "easy to play") builds seem to be more rewarding than the "high risk" (i.e. "hard to play") builds. Necros, spirit rangers, and phantasm mesmers in particular come across as being particularly low risk, high reward. While current CC warriors may counter necros and spirit rangers, they only exacerbate the whole "low risk, high reward" problem that people have.

What I would personally prefer is to give warriors, rangers, necros, and mesmers high-risk builds that outperform their low-risk builds when played competently. This gives players something to strive for and incentive to improve.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. Thanks for considering these thoughts.

*slow clap*

BurrTheKing.8571:

KrisHQ.4719:

Two things:
1. People are always hesitant try change what is working almost perfectly (condi-spam).
2. I dont believe there are too many players left that actually care enough to theorycraft an entire team-setup, and then practice with it for an extended period of time.

Do you want to? I’d be willing to work with someone who wants to make a counter-meta team.

Had you asked me two months ago I would have been shouting “Yes! Let’s do this”.
But I’ve grown tired of GW2 for now, so I’m just browsing the forums now and then.
I didn’t feel like skill mattered, and didn’t really feel like I could make a difference. I had trouble winning 1v1’s against people who had only played the game for 1 month, if they were running Spirit Ranger etc.
(I main Ele)
But I’ll definitely keep an eye out for any changes in the meta and/or counter-metas

Because playing bursters is hard and it’s better to cry OP and ask for video proof than to try and counter the counter.

Someone needs to step up and stomp condicomps with a pure countercomp. Stomp the current condimeta with double warr or warr+thief and allow the next countercomp to develop. So we’ll have another countercomp developing to stomp the previous one.

As I said in another thread, S/F ele, S/D&D/P or trickery S/P thief, mesmers are solid choices against that “OP” CC meta. But nah, nerf plz, warr == freekill.

1v1 balance isn’t that important, for example phant mesmer is still the most ridiculous 1v1 spec, but it has few usage in tournaplay.

I like ResJudicators idea, but do you have any ideas how to implement a high risk/high reward build for a warrior, that at the same time doesn’t get outperformed by ele/thief/mesm due to class mechanics?

This should pretty much hint that warr should be imba damage that can’t be even compared to other classes when warr is glass and in melee. Since warr has no teleports/stealth, no 600+ range bursts and no massive boonstacking. I guess quickness prenerf the 100b cheese was kinda like that. GS/Sw+Sh with rage sigil and possible triple quickness was high risk (gets oneshotted by backstab thieves, bad ability to escape, bad heals, around 10-20 secs of staying power before melting) and high reward (onecombod pretty much anything that got baited out of stunbreaks/dodges).

I’d like to hear the ideas about the role of a high risk warrior that doesn’t involve CC specs like they currently are.

I do use warrior. I use a condition spec.

Condispec warrs are scary 1v1, but useless in teamfights.

Why do metas even exist? The reason why metas, as a phenomenon, exists, is because they tend to be the most efficient way of winning. It just works. The current meta happens to have just the right amount of strategy and class synergy that tips the odds of winning in one’s favor. That is why metas exist.

This is also why we do not forcefully change the meta ourselves. There is no reason to change the meta, unless you’d like to have your win chance lowered. The only time the meta really shifts is when balance changes take place.

I have seen this another game, Dark souls. The community invented it’s own rules to avoid current meta.
1) Limited your lvls to 120
2) no healing.
3)no excessive spam rolling
4) no ganking
5)use spear thoughtfully..not spam
6) bow first
7) no gloating

If anyone did ever use a heal, or spam rolling, or stick and moved with spear (Which was all perfectly legit.) People destroyed your gamer rep. After months of playing it I got into a routine of changing armour everyday, changing weapon every duel, changing one handed stance to 2 handed stance every match, always bowing. No chatting. Only using polite emotes. I eventually got to position 3 on their leaderboard and my gamer rep went from 5/5 to 0.25/5..even playing by community unofficial standards, someone always felt I wasn’t playing according to the unwritten rules. If you looked at all top 10 players, all of them had a rep of under 0.5 stars.

It is just better the game itself set the rules/perimeters/balance..otherwise it can and will turn ugly with an ethos of sticking to “Community standards”

In the current meta players would foo-foo you for;
1) Too much regen
2) Too much stunlocking
3) Condi spam without thought
4) using Asuran models
5) Exploiting too much evade
6) Irritating stealth chaining
7) Using candy cane skins against similar armor colours to confuse
8) Lining up double iduelist.
9) Too much bunkering.

As you can see, best let the dev’s place thoughtful balance,than let players shift it on their own.

Should’ve been watching gw2pvptv when Powerr and Grouch streamed earlier. Powerr ran 3 different specs on 3 different professions and all happened to be extremely effective against the condi builds he knew he would be facing. One of them cleansed 6 conditions from your team every 10 seconds, another cleansed 3 conditions per nearby player on your team (including yourself) every 10 seconds, and the third was the standard stuns and stances cleansing ire hammer warrior.

Of course everyone in stream chat was laughing about how nonviable the first two builds were while he repeatedly won games and fights.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2pvptv/b/459590680

GeoPro.7530:

BurrTheKing.8571:

What class/build would you claim requires a lot of skill to play?

Compared to the current warrior, everything.

Not directing this at you specifically Burr, but I reckon a lot of people really ought to play a variety of classes before suggesting how to balance the game. If you did, you might see that the warrior is among one of the easiest to play right now.

Anyway, I think that having one specific class to counter an entire build type isn’t a good way to balance a game. Rock paper scissors is also especially bad for the game when considering solo que.

Of course its a horrible way to balance a game. There are 8 classes so how can it be good game design to ever have something that is only countered by one class when the group size if five. There should be enough counters to everything that unless you are very unlucky a counter should randomly be expected to be in any match the large majority of the time. Its just common sense. Unforutnately common sense is severely lacking on these forums.

This community’s got a weird definition of meta. It is kind of an esoteric prefix, so I can see where people are coming from.
Using the traditional definition or translation of “meta” the metagame is an ascended concept to the game. The metagame got as much on the game as metaphysics got on physics. Creating a team composition and strategy using the strongest classes and mechanics happens inside the game, not ascended from it.
There is a difference between standard play and metagame. Of course the most teams will use the strongest classes and mechanics, so the strategies of most teams will be similar, which is considered standard play. The metagame can be different each match. Often it means strategizing using the context of the match. If you f.e. know that your opponent loves cookies, you will mention cookies continuously throughout the match, so your opponent can’t play his best, because his saliva is flooding his keyboard.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Master of Timespace.2548:

The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet. Also, it’s supposed to be vague as to relate to as many games as possible. Counter their statements if you think it’s wrong, don’t just say “Just because someone made a video about it doesn’t mean its true” because that doesn’t prove your point at all. If you want people to take you serious actually defend your view rather than defacing with no evidence.

I just don’t agree at all to what he says. Doing what he says would end up into a game with whack a mole balance, hard counters, cheese builds (he seems to think those are good idea… ) and generally rock paper scissors type situations. None of those are what I desire. Also, he doesn’t even check his facts: chess is greatly biased towards white.
Also, lol @ “The guy knows a hellva lot more about game design than you do I’d bet”. So game desgin is a science now? No wonder the modern games are so pale.

It wouldn’t lead to whack-a-mole because there would be hard counters to everything, it would be more about slightly nerfing or slightly buffing so that nothing turns the scale too much, but there’s enough slant that things change. If you don’t want Rock-Paper-Scissors (from now on RPS) then what do you want? I can’t name a single game like this that has managed to have some sort of perfect balance where one class always has a fair shot vs each other. That would not only be impossibly hard but would make the game really dull. RPS style balance at least guarantees some sort counter is always available unless something is gamebreaking levels of broken.

We’ve seen in the past how bad things become when we let classes become too well rounded, there always needs to be some sort of Achilles heel.

If I would want rock paper scissors, I would play just that, rock paper scissors. However, I do not. I want an environment where each build has their weaknesses and powers, but where no A vs. B is an automatic win for A.
It doesn’t have to be entirely fair. It’s still okay if a spec has SOME edge over another, but it should never be an automatic GG such as d/d ele vs. s/d thief is atm.
Also, in many other games that have have" rock paper scissors" issues when it comes to the fights, a player with enough experience can often avoid the bad fights (with no consequences) or there are other factors that make the RPS game otherwise interesting. Say when roaming in WvW, you can most often avoid the fights that you know you can’t win. In Eve Online running the better specs comes with an increased risk as better ships are more expensive to lose. You can also avoid the bad fights if you have experience and know your surroundings.

RPS style balance at least guarantees some sort counter is always available unless something is gamebreaking levels of broken.

But that turns the game into a coin flipping scenario where predicting the enemy build is more important than actually fighting it. Any game that has true RPS balance is necessarily full of fights that are lost before they even begin. That is why people who bought an action game probably don’t want such balancing.

Or there might be other kind of balance, like ground based.

Example: in TF2 the Heavy is unstoppable. IF he can fight by his own terms. But he needs spin-up time to fire. And has a very low range, is extremely smal and has a great hitbox. The Sniper has low health and low damage in direct fights. But he is the Heavy’s bane, because of the precision rifle.

To kill a sniper or any other enemy, a Heavy has to flank him first. No matter the enemy he faces, there is one particular situation that will se him victorious. Same goes for the Sniper. Each one tries to force on the other the best fight for him.

Sorry Warriors are more a problem them spirit rangers were, when it takes 3 players to drop a bunker warrior below 90% health there is a problem.

DevO.9854:

Sorry Warriors are more a problem them spirit rangers were, when it takes 3 players to drop a bunker warrior below 90% health there is a problem.

It’s crazy hyperbole like this that makes A.net’s job more difficult. 3 players will absolutely wreck a warrior. Even two DPS classes can reliably overcome a warrior’s ~500-600HP/s regen if they coordinate their spikes.

ResJudicator.7916:

DevO.9854:

Sorry Warriors are more a problem them spirit rangers were, when it takes 3 players to drop a bunker warrior below 90% health there is a problem.

It’s crazy hyperbole like this that makes A.net’s job more difficult. 3 players will absolutely wreck a warrior. Even two DPS classes can reliably overcome a warrior’s ~500-600HP/s regen if they coordinate their spikes.

Except for the fact that they can make themselves immune to 50% of most classes damage output have a lot of stability and super good condition removal. Oh and on top of that they do really good damage themselves. That is the same issue everyone had with Bunker ele’s and both ranger bunker types right?

DevO.9854:

ResJudicator.7916:

DevO.9854:

Sorry Warriors are more a problem them spirit rangers were, when it takes 3 players to drop a bunker warrior below 90% health there is a problem.

It’s crazy hyperbole like this that makes A.net’s job more difficult. 3 players will absolutely wreck a warrior. Even two DPS classes can reliably overcome a warrior’s ~500-600HP/s regen if they coordinate their spikes.

Except for the fact that they can make themselves immune to 50% of most classes damage output have a lot of stability and super good condition removal. Oh and on top of that they do really good damage themselves. That is the same issue everyone had with Bunker ele’s and both ranger bunker types right?

50% of whose damage? Endure pain negates standard damage, berserker’s stance is condition hate, but neither of these have high up time, and if baited, lead for an easy kill. Warriors are only hard to kill if you’re wasting damage trying to burst them while they have blocks up or something.

If people want to change the meta, they should run anti-meta builds and teams and enjoy the easy wins till people copy off them, thus establishing a new meta. The only reason the meta is so slow to change in Gw2 is because people are lazy and don’t feel the need to innovate, or don’t want to run builds that require some more effort.

There are builds people are just now figuring out that are old as dirt and still effective, yet weren’t run at all prior because it wasn’t as face roll as something else. Engineer is a profession that was always viable, but it wasn’t until you could spam nades with hgh that people even bothered, even when nade spam builds have existed and worked from early in the game’s life. It just wasn’t easy enough.