Guild Wars 2

Seriously Fights become so boring. They become less like fights and more like, watch me sit on this point and not die.

It’s even worse on this horrendous map for touneys this week. Freaking trebuchet… Nothing can die so the point gets given to whoever gets the first treb support.

I think sitting on the point and not dieing is EXACTLY why they go bunker. it wins

this is also why Anet will be doing the hole boon hate thing. so bunkers useing boons have a bit more of a weekness

I hope so. Was always super frustrating to use bountiful theft to steal 3 of their boons only to have then back up .2s later. But also how about things like bunker engi that get almost 300 heals per bomb they drop and you can’t not tank the bomb hits if you’re trying to prevent the guy from taking the point.

Pv kitten tarting to feel more like wvw now. A skilless tankfest that all you have to do is hold points and isn’t affected by who is the better player

Poor class design more than anything. Many classes aren’t given the tools to adequately compete so their only option is to stack on toughness and healing or not bother showing up. This then spirals out of control because other classes don’t bring anything to the table but burst, but even their burst isn’t sufficient against the amount of toughness, passive regen, and random healing to succeed; those classes don’t have a spec to function as a bunker, and they’re left out of the running entirely.

This is why boonhate is either going to be amazing or a total failure. If all it is going to do is provide a passive damage increase to offset toughness slightly, well that’s not going to be enough because classes like Warriors still don’t have the tools to properly compete let alone the damage issue. If they removed boons well then at least Warriors bring realistic utility to the PvP environment and they may be noticed from time to time.

Bunkers are necessary in PvP because of the lack of healers. Serious argument here.

Healers in MMOs increase the TTK dramatically, often allowing you to discern what an opponent is doing, their kit, class strats and ways in which to counter them. However with no healers, this game’s TTK is very very low – unless you go bunker. Having a player on your team that’s focused on support isn’t nearly as powerful as just going Bunker yourself and having access to almost the full array of boons.

Secondly, the way these sPvP maps are designed, bunkers are more than viable – they’re necessary. Capture and hold point style maps necessitate the need for a bunker.

This map is one of the few maps where bunkers arent that much of a problem in competitive play o_ó

I would argue that being hard to kill has more benefits due to the rally and downed state mechanic.

The control points are not the only factor. PVP in its current state will always favor bunker builds.

Another big reason is the crit damage cap being severely lower in sPvP, making dps professions less viable, while tank professions saw no such nerf.

A bunker isn’t sitting on the same node the whole match. He rotates to places where teamfights are happening to support. If you look at temple and spirit watch you will also see that bunkers tend to leave nodes often, as buffs/orbs are very important.

Because it’s the only way to survive against high-damage classes, the only classes that don’t have to go bunker are thieves and mesmers because they have stealth, Everyone else needs a way to survive or they’re a dead-weight for their team.

Simple answer: Guild Wars 2 lacks dedicated healers and has excessive burst. Many attackers have ability to cause massive (>20000) damage in just 2 seconds onto anything less than a full bunker. And if you cannot survive, you are a dead weight to your team.

Adding dedicated healers would need a complete rehaul of the system, so the only sensible choice to fix this issue is to reduce the amount of burst damage. I would say the amount of overall damage is okay, but the burst needs nerf. The problem is even worse in WvWvW, which allows consumables and 104% crit damage gear.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Simple answer: Guild Wars 2 lacks dedicated healers and has excessive burst. Many attackers have ability to cause massive (>20000) damage in just 2 seconds onto anything less than a full bunker. And if you cannot survive, you are a dead weight to your team.

Adding dedicated healers would need a complete rehaul of the system, so the only sensible choice to fix this issue is to reduce the amount of burst damage. I would say the amount of overall damage is okay, but the burst needs nerf. The problem is even worse in WvWvW, which allows consumables and 104% crit damage gear.

Pretty much this.
Non bunker vs. non bunker fights are over in about 3s average I would say. Sometimes more, when the few defensive utilities aren’t on cooldown, sometimes less when they are on cooldown, but I would say 3s is about the average.

That said, after 3s of fighting you have to wait 20s for respawn.
People hate watching the respawn screen.
People rather want to play more and respawn less… so they go bunker.

i don’t think that toughness is the problem, in fact it doesn’t scale comparatively to dmg or healing. the problem with bunkers (guardians – elementalist- some engi’s) is their amount of boon saturation. I believe that protection, which reduces 33% damage, is a little bit too strong.

Because all damage all the time is mindless and has no depth, it’s over in 3 seconds for all the ADD kiddos out there. If anything burst damage is to blame for most everything that is complained about in PvP (conquest being the other big thing to blame).

Many people prefer a game of chess in their PvP with plays and counterplays, strategy and depth. Others just prefer damage because anything over 2 seconds is longer than their ability to retain cognitive thought and would cause their brain to explode.

randomfightfan.4091:

Seriously Fights become so boring. They become less like fights and more like, watch me sit on this point and not die.

It’s even worse on this horrendous map for touneys this week. Freaking trebuchet… Nothing can die so the point gets given to whoever gets the first treb support.

Wha? You complain about bunkers, and then you complain about the 1 map that has a secondary objective (treb) that is a hard counter to said bunker. Make up your mind.

Lol, does the OP play PvP?

Here is the formula to winning: Cap 2 points. Hold Them. Win.

Bunkers hold points.

Braxxus.2904:

Because all damage all the time is mindless and has no depth, it’s over in 3 seconds for all the ADD kiddos out there. If anything burst damage is to blame for most everything that is complained about in PvP (conquest being the other big thing to blame).

Many people prefer a game of chess in their PvP with plays and counterplays, strategy and depth. Others just prefer damage because anything over 2 seconds is longer than their ability to retain cognitive thought and would cause their brain to explode.

GW2 != Chess.

No strategy or depth in needing to hold 2 points to win.

I have been wondering about the whole boonhate business… Don’t necros have some lovely methods of dealing with peoples boons? Mesmers to an extent but necro’s get the nastiest boon manipulation in this game… Seriously… Teams need to bring a necro to deal with the bunkers… Nothing more….

jportell.2197:

I have been wondering about the whole boonhate business… Don’t necros have some lovely methods of dealing with peoples boons? Mesmers to an extent but necro’s get the nastiest boon manipulation in this game… Seriously… Teams need to bring a necro to deal with the bunkers… Nothing more….

How does that beat D/D Ele, which is probably the best bunker in the game?

Ya playing bunker is really boring / boring to play against, the only thing in the game atm that ive been able to kill them with is a thief running assasin signet + haste + stun poison and preacasting cnd then stealing into a backstab into heart seeker spam, any other class i try to glass in they have enough time to pop defensive abilities and just heal heal heal, and about 10 seconds in a bunch of their buddies come and you either run away or die.

I think 2 glass thieves assisting off each other kitten everying and 3 bunker eles sitting on objectives never dying would be a pretty good team.

clay.7849:

jportell.2197:

I have been wondering about the whole boonhate business… Don’t necros have some lovely methods of dealing with peoples boons? Mesmers to an extent but necro’s get the nastiest boon manipulation in this game… Seriously… Teams need to bring a necro to deal with the bunkers… Nothing more….

How does that beat D/D Ele, which is probably the best bunker in the game?

Well necros have more than 1 tool to convert all boons to conditions… Well of corruption and corrupt boon… Time those right… I would bet the d/d bunker ele is screwed… But I think in general everyone can agree that the d/d bunker ele gets too much wrapped into one package even after the “nerf”

I run well of corruption and corrupt boon on my necromancer.

The issue’s i find with it are, corrupt boon has a long cooldown and misses alot. Additionally certain boon bunker classes easily clense conditions and reapply their boons almost instantly.

I do find that a necro with corrupt boon works alot nicer against ele than guardians though.

clay.7849:

Braxxus.2904:

Because all damage all the time is mindless and has no depth, it’s over in 3 seconds for all the ADD kiddos out there. If anything burst damage is to blame for most everything that is complained about in PvP (conquest being the other big thing to blame).

Many people prefer a game of chess in their PvP with plays and counterplays, strategy and depth. Others just prefer damage because anything over 2 seconds is longer than their ability to retain cognitive thought and would cause their brain to explode.

GW2 != Chess.

No strategy or depth in needing to hold 2 points to win.

I did not speak about GW2 specifically in what you quoted either. It was an analogy used for the nature of DPS only vs DPS+Mitigation+CC+etc.

All these anti-bunker threads are is the same old complaints coming from PEWPEWZOMGBURSTDEEEPZ! players in every MMO. Also while GW2 might not be chess, it would be even LESS chess-like without bunkers to mitigate the absurdity of loldamage bursters running rampant.

Eclipses.7152:

Bunkers are necessary in PvP because of the lack of healers. Serious argument here.

Healers in MMOs increase the TTK dramatically, often allowing you to discern what an opponent is doing, their kit, class strats and ways in which to counter them. However with no healers, this game’s TTK is very very low – unless you go bunker. Having a player on your team that’s focused on support isn’t nearly as powerful as just going Bunker yourself and having access to almost the full array of boons.

Secondly, the way these sPvP maps are designed, bunkers are more than viable – they’re necessary. Capture and hold point style maps necessitate the need for a bunker.

Somebody give this guy a nice brew

Eclipses is exactly right, and there isn’t anything more to it than that.

It’s the reason why there needs to be at least one other game type, but everyone gets on my case as if it’s blasphemous to mention the suggestion of another game mode.

Reality is that higher TTK allows for good plays and the ability to set yourself apart and above others through skill. If you can get killed in .5 seconds, it doesn’t matter how good of a player you are. That’s why those classes who can actually be tanky, go that route. They may not realize it, but that’s why they end up doing it.

The problem with GW2 is that being tanky requires you to have access to healing (on top of your #6 skill) and boons (if your class has no access to these, you really can’t be tanky and if you can’t be tanky you automatically opt for dealing as much damage as you can in as little time as possible, in order to be able to survive by killing the other guy before he kills you).

The status quo, however, is really badly designed for a game in which self sufficiency is not just a perk but essential (due to limited synergy and the lack of functional roles that would enable team mates and lead to team work) and that’s why the developers need to fundamentally change the mechanics of this game by firstly allowing each class to have similar survivability in a particular spec and secondly by reducing the burst damage and the survivability at both top ends of the spectrum).

This is what successful and competitive PvP demands and common sense dictates.

Oni.5429:

This map is one of the few maps where bunkers arent that much of a problem in competitive play o_ó

Pro alert! I know more then you do! Well you are not quite saying that lol. Try solo queuing some time it might change your opinion on some things. You can’t expect this game to be balanced around the most competitive teams for one thing there are like 2 of them.

Braxxus.2904:

clay.7849:

Braxxus.2904:

Because all damage all the time is mindless and has no depth, it’s over in 3 seconds for all the ADD kiddos out there. If anything burst damage is to blame for most everything that is complained about in PvP (conquest being the other big thing to blame).

Many people prefer a game of chess in their PvP with plays and counterplays, strategy and depth. Others just prefer damage because anything over 2 seconds is longer than their ability to retain cognitive thought and would cause their brain to explode.

GW2 != Chess.

No strategy or depth in needing to hold 2 points to win.

I did not speak about GW2 specifically in what you quoted either. It was an analogy used for the nature of DPS only vs DPS+Mitigation+CC+etc.

All these anti-bunker threads are is the same old complaints coming from PEWPEWZOMGBURSTDEEEPZ! players in every MMO. Also while GW2 might not be chess, it would be even LESS chess-like without bunkers to mitigate the absurdity of loldamage bursters running rampant.

The bunker play style is current over-powered period. What would win a match five bunkers versus five dps? Im betting on the bunkers especially since some bunkers can still do quite a bit of damage. Right now every team basically has to have one bunker to win. You can easily win matches with zero glass cannon dps. The arche-type is too strong over-all. I play a guardian bunker. Defending stuff that is op will not help the long term health of this games pvp. Its basically already almost dead. They sold us this game as basically roll with what you want and you can be competitive. That is not close to the case.

Kwll.1468:

Oni.5429:

This map is one of the few maps where bunkers arent that much of a problem in competitive play o_ó

Pro alert! I know more then you do! Well you are not quite saying that lol. Try solo queuing some time it might change your opinion on some things. You can’t expect this game to be balanced around the most competitive teams for one thing there are like 2 of them.

-He does solo queue
-It’s not about being condescending
-If players have found a way to handle a problem then it can’t be considered a problem

However, it’s worth noting that when the community is so small it’s hard to speculate on what all the possibilities are for balance since whatever meta there might be is heavily influenced by personal preferences – we just know that there exists a solution for something players are complaining aboot.

2/5 of the traits we have available serve no purpose other than to slow combat to a crawl – toughness and vitality (don’t those also normally give you boon duration?). All I know is that I think it’s stupid for someone to be able to dump almost all of their trait points into being boring.

The amulet removal idea is actually pretty solid IMO. Or go back to the old system with rings and amulet for more varied stat allocation.

rings + earring + amulet and nerfing protection to 15%, buffing toughness, making toughness effect conditions.

although toughness would have to be buffed a lot, i just think crit % should just be removed in spvp. people running quickness builds are just trying to kill someone in 2 seconds… no player should really have that kind of mentality.

mbh.8301:

2/5 of the traits we have available serve no purpose other than to slow combat to a crawl – toughness and vitality (don’t those also normally give you boon duration?). All I know is that I think it’s stupid for someone to be able to dump almost all of their trait points into being boring.

2/5 of the traits we have available serve no purpose other than to reduce combat time to 2 seconds or less – power and crit (don’t these also normally give you crit damage?). All I know is that I think it’s stupid for someone to be able to dump almost all of their trait points into being boring.

Because it is effective.
1) Crit damage is absurd and was so not necessary to implement.
2) Quickness lol wot
3) Healing power + toughness and heals/prot? Lol wot. so good.

Each side of the equation has ridiculous strength.

It will be always rock, paper, scissor game. If you can feel or grasp it, try to view what each role have for weakness and adjust accordly.

Meta-game your team and enjoy it. And I will not reveal what is the counter bunker type, try to find it au lieu of whining.

Jour

Jourdelune.7456:

It will be always rock, paper, scissor game. If you can feel or grasp it, try to view what each role have for weakness and adjust accordly.

Meta-game your team and enjoy it. And I will not reveal what is the counter bunker type, try to find it au lieu of whining.

Jour

aka, he doesnt know

Valkyriez.6578:

The amulet removal idea is actually pretty solid IMO. Or go back to the old system with rings and amulet for more varied stat allocation.

This, i’ve been saying it forever. You get enough stat allocation from traits, and can still make yourself more difficult to kill or do more damage through traits and master trait. Give everyone the + all stat amulet worth of stats and call it a day.

Because you have no Pow/Pre/Tuf gear so you can choose to only go condition, burst, or bunker. That is literally the reason. I’ll explain below.

If you go Pow/Pre/Vit for balance then you’ll still get shredded by burst. You can choose a Pre/Tuf combo or Pow/Tuf combo, but your damage will be pathetic since you lack either Pow or Pre.

Or, you can go Pow/Tuf/Vit and counter both Burst and Condition.

Basically…

Ideally you should have these 5 type of builds:
Burst (Pow/Pre/Crit)
Condition (Various) [is a wildcard since you only need 1 stat from the gear]
Vitality Balance (Pow/Pre/Vit) [beats condition, loses to burst]
Toughness Balance (Pow/Pre/Tuf) [beats burst, loses to condition]
Bunker (Pow/Tuf/Vit) [ties everything]

As it is now, you have no Toughness Balance gear. So, if you want to beat Burst then you have to go Bunker. The counter to Burst should be a balanced build with Toughness, but such a build does not exist in sPvP.

It’s almost like a 5 pronged game of rock/paper/scissors. Only problem is that Burst builds don’t have to compete with Pow/Pre/Tuf builds.

So you effectively section everyone off into Bunker, Burst, or Condition. Burst is obviously more popular, and so you have mostly Bunker/Burst and less Condition. This makes a Vitality Balance more likely to get crushed, so even more flood to the polar ends of Bunker/Burst.

Imagine if you added Pow/Pre/Tuf. Instant meta change. In WvW at least, it’s a lot different in small group encounters. You still have bunkers, bursts, condition builds, but the majority are balanced between survival and damage. You see a lot more with Pow/Pre/Tuf, making condition more popular and reducing the amount of bunker/burst together.

At least, that’s how it was when I stopped playing a month ago.

The nice thing about spirit watch , is that its a map that doesnt realy require a bunker.

OF course you can make good use of a bunker there, but its not required.
And you can work around a bunker as well, going for the other points/running orb.

Atherakhia.4086:

Poor class design more than anything. Many classes aren’t given the tools to adequately compete so their only option is to stack on toughness and healing or not bother showing up. This then spirals out of control because other classes don’t bring anything to the table but burst, but even their burst isn’t sufficient against the amount of toughness, passive regen, and random healing to succeed; those classes don’t have a spec to function as a bunker, and they’re left out of the running entirely.

QFT.

I’d say the extreme burst of thieves gave birth to most of the bunker builds. People getting tired of going down in one second tried to counter.

I started running bunkers not too far into the game because of the burst of nearly every class, not necessarily just thieves. Plus you kinda want to stay alive to stand on the nodes.

Thieves have always been one of the easiest for me to deal with, well at least the first maybe second attempt then my defensive stuff was on heavy recharges and I was free to kill if I didn’t down them.

Kinda sucks being defenseless.

The battle of khylo is the best bunker destroyer map there is. If your having a problem with there trebuchet then take it out.

OGDeadHead.8326:

QFT.

I’d say the extreme burst of thieves gave birth to most of the bunker builds. People getting tired of going down in one second tried to counter.

Or the extreme burst of thieves is here to give them a chance to one day burst the bunkiest of the bunker classes and causes problems because it ends every other fight against balanced builds in 3s.

So the root of the problem isn’t the thief burst, it’s the bunker itself.

Cus if no one goes bunker, bursts will be the one build ppl going to?

daydream.2938:

The nice thing about spirit watch , is that its a map that doesnt realy require a bunker.

OF course you can make good use of a bunker there, but its not required.
And you can work around a bunker as well, going for the other points/running orb.

ironic statement. Whos the best at running the orb? A bunker
Whos the best at holding the other points? A bunker.

Bunkers are popular because SPvP is badly designed.

It isn’t a game of “Players versus Players” it is a game of “stand in the circle”.

It all comes down to the burst causing the problems.
Thief/Mesmer burst is absurdly high. Getting caught with a HB means you’re bad, but it also has burst that’s rediculously high.

Spec’d right dps guardians can melt 20k hp in around 2.5 seconds. So on. Primarily the issue is the fault of thieves/mesmers though. If this absurd level of burst didn’t exist then the bunker wouldn’t need to exist like it does now. When stupid high burst damage exists though, and some classes don’t have the innate defenses like thieves/mesmers to take advantage of glass cannon builds the only other option is to bunker as hard as you can.

TLDR: It’s the fault of burst that forces bunkers to exist. Blame thieves.

Alarox.4590:

Because you have no Pow/Pre/Tuf gear so you can choose to only go condition, burst, or bunker. That is literally the reason. I’ll explain below.

This is a big reason. Everyone complains about game mode, certain professions, etc, but the bottom line is that amulet choice limits builds. The “balanced” amulets don’t really work for any builds. Has anyone ever run a celestial amulet build? Of course not.

I’ve recently been trying some WvW and I’ve really enjoyed how flexible the stats are. (of course, finding a decent skirmish is pretty rare, but the point is the stats). I can work my gear stats to get equal parts power and precision up to about 3200 attack and 50% crit chance and 25% extra crit damage, and still have 2700 armor. In PvP, if I want ANY working combination of power and precision, I must have zero toughness.

This has been brought up dozens of times and every time it gets shot down by multiple people saying, “toughness/vit/healing would ruin the game, don’t allow any new stats!” No one in their right mind is suggesting an ultimate bunker combination. But some better balanced combinations would really help.

Regardless of how bunkers came about they will not be going away. Even if you tone down the burst builds of several classes bunkers are here to stay. Why? The builds win games in tPvP. Toning down burst builds but keeping bunkers as they are just makes bunkers even more powerful. The problem is balanced builds do not exist because of both burst and bunker builds.

From an spvp persperctive- you go either glass cannon or bunker, and if another class does the glass cannon better than yours, you have to go bunker or risk becoming an easy kill. No one likes to die continuously.

Well Every map is cap the point so why not ?

Zinwrath.2049:

daydream.2938:

The nice thing about spirit watch , is that its a map that doesnt realy require a bunker.

OF course you can make good use of a bunker there, but its not required.
And you can work around a bunker as well, going for the other points/running orb.

ironic statement. Whos the best at running the orb? A bunker
Whos the best at holding the other points? A bunker.

At running orb, maybe, not necessarily at running between points. Holding them yes, not running betweem them, cause if someones there u gotta be able to win that fight in a reasonable timeframe.