Guild Wars 2

I quit playing months ago. I’ve been enjoying SC2/HoTS.

Just wanted to say that I appreciate you guys continuing to give feedback and beta test this game. Was wondering if you’ve managed to get any sense of when it will actually be ready for launch? I would consider playing it again once it’s actually released.

waka.9826:

If you bought this game just because they labeled “esports”, you should probably re-evaluate your life to be honest. IMO I already got my 60 dollars worth of gaming so I have no reason to be angry, and more FREE updates in the future as well. Why would I be mad just because I can’t make my “dream” of becoming a pro mlg 360 no scope gw2 player.

Really? I am currently playing SC2, because I appreciate watching the pros play and trailblaze, while I copy their builds and struggle to make the Masters league. I have no dream of being a pro gamer. I dream of games, like SC2, where I can play at my leisure, improve, and yet still enjoy even competition no matter my skill level.

My hope for GW2 — given that it was advertised as an “esport” — was either a casually competitive scene for a not-super-serious 5-man to work our way up the ladder or a strong solo queue ranking system if that did not work out. Neither panned out. My 5-man got too serious because the lack of competition meant that our average team could be a top team if we tried a bit harder. And there’s zero support on the horizon for solo players.

So, just because the game might have 60 bucks worth of content for one person does not make it insane or unjustifiable to purchase a product based on a specific representation. You don’t have to be a burn out college kid pinning your hopes and dreams on a future pro gamer career to want to play an “esport.” I’m pro in something very different than video games, that is much more lucrative, but I still love competition and can be disappointed that this game was a bust, no?

It’s disappointing that the game was advertised as something it is not. I became interested in the game after seeing the ESL showmatch cast by djWheat. And Arena Net plainly used the “esports” term to sell boxes, even though they knew it would not be esports ready at launch. As such, I don’t laugh at the folks that are disappointed that the term that Arena Net used to describe its game clearly failed to describe the item they purchased at launch.

Me too. Next time we meet, and you run away, run away from your zerg, and we can test whether all the cooldowns I saved to finish you net me a kill or not. Otherwise, I would be happy to hop into an empty sPvP server and confirm your “you can’t kill me, I’m a bunker” theory. Like I said — always looking to optimize my matchups and learn more about the game. Happy trolling, friend.

covenn.7165:

Anyways, not sure why we are arguing about something that wasnt even serious or why you are trying to make it serious. heh

I was not arguing. I was explaining to you objectively why and how I would kill you, despite your being a D/D bunker ele. I would remind you that you were the one that felt strongly enough about the experience that you posted, and I was responding.

I have no trouble killing most bunker D/D ele builds in WvW or sPvP using my more balanced D/D ele build. The fights often last a longggg time, but ultimately come down to well-timed interrupts, burst, and a bit of luck (namely, crits). (Eles with the signet heal are often harder to drop than glyph-heal eles, because I cannot interrupt and then immediately chill that large source of their healing, once I get them low.)

I realize you weren’t using all of your abilities, but you were also giving me more opportunities to kill you than most D/D bunker eles and also doing so more often, so it seemed it was only a matter of time, which is why I kept trying.

It’s possible that a D/D bunker ele that makes no mistakes is unkillable with a balanced D/D ele build. I spent most of my time in sPvP for the first few months, but I have not played the game much at all lately, so I’m behind the meta. In WvW, it’s super funky with the food buffs, fort buffs, battle buffs, etc. — I have no clue what an optimally played D/D bunker ele might look like or feel like fighting against.

covenn.7165:

To the ele running around trying to solo gank people (including me). I am a bunker ele…. you don’t have the damage on an elementalist to kill me period, even if you were in pure damage gear. After the fifth time trying you really should stop. If you want to do real damage 1v1, you might want to consider a different class or not attacking bunker builds. Edit: Oh and I wasnt attacking you back, even to CC you… Thanks!

Your confidence is misplaced. Based on how you were playing last night (whether seriously or not), you gave me several opportunities to kill you. After I realized your “I’m a bunker” schtick, I was saving almost all of my key cooldowns (gap closers, interrupts, and burst), because I realized you were letting your health get dangerously low even when I was applying only light pressure.

Yup, my WvW gear is not optimized for bunkers (or anybody for that matter, since I don’t really WvW much). Yup, you were not attacking (probably smart not to multi-task immaterial damage). But nope, I did have the damage to kill you under the circumstances, but not the suicidal urge to roll the dice and chase after you into friendlies each time you ran away.

In general though, your right that it is a significant challenge for even a glass D/D ele to kill a skilled D/D bunker ele. But based on what I was seeing, I was not convinced you were that, so I kept trying. Maybe you are, though. Happy to hop into an sPvP server and tool around — always looking to improve and learn new things.

Taym.8326:

The most obvious of these is short duration quickness from the ranger to quickness stomp which just barely covers the full stomp time. This is similar to starting quickness midway through a skill which will not haste the second half of the ability causing you to lose part of your quickness. The problem is when the quickness runs out mid stomp the ability reverts to its normal timer, and has the miss aligned animation and stomp time.

Freaking Ranger quickness stomps. You have to be fast on the keys to pull it off without delaying the stomp, but it can be done if you immediately start the stomp (and I mean immediately) after pet swapping. Even then, I’ve had lag hiccups prevent the stomp from working perfectly. :/

Kind of wish the game handled this differently, so that the animations always aligned.

I am writing to compliment you for playing with your combat log open while you record. Surprisingly few players do that — kudos.

I think that you have to “crit” to get certain weapons and gear using certain recipes — at least that’s the term that I’ve heard used.

Never played DAoC, but heard it was amazing. Still, can we get at least a little love for Ultima Online?

Sifu.6527:

Please excuse me. I forgot to mention that I posted under another name in this thread. My point is, Ele aren’t hard to play.Using the rotation I mentioned will let you win most fights vs decent/average players since it comes down to who can last longer.

Agree with that, for sure. But I would argue that none of the classes are hard to play if your goal is to beat decent/average players. Although, perhaps it is more likely that a decent/average player who masters an Ele can beat other decent/average players who are playing a different class, which would explain why it was FoTM, but might not necessarily suggest that the class is overpowered (unless we are balancing around decent/average players).

Sifu.6527:

Atlas.6901:

Sifu.6527:

When I said set rotation, I mean rotation like these.

RTL—->updraft
BS——>ROF/DB
MS—->EQ
Water to heal

When to use them is up to the player. Nonetheless, a set rotation like any other (e.g. 100B+WA).

Two-ability combos are hardly “rotations.” And even these two-ability combos don’t work as well against good players, unless you’ve intelligently drawn out dodges and defensive CD’s without using them, so that you know you can get away with the combo (or unless you jump a fight where somebody has no cooldowns).

At this point, how many folks don’t know to dodge when they see RTL coming? For that reason, I often RTL (shorter CD) to bait a dodge, ignore Updraft, and instantly BS a target on the move — good, but not killer damage, but it gives you the upper hand to set you up for a later combo (and avoids burning all of your interrupts when they got to heal and have no dodges left).

Fighting games have combos too, but I would hardly consider those standard “rotations.”

Ah so you do follow the set attunement rotation from Air-Fire-Earth…my point exactly.

Actually, that wasn’t your point. But excellent job making a new one and then proceeding to over-generalize. Obviously Air → Fire can synergize very well together, but that doesn’t mean that you always follow that attunement swap necessarily. You only have two interrupts as D/D, so there are plenty of situations where you might skip Air to go into Fire and save Updraft to interrupt the heal. What exactly are you trying to prove?

I will say that it’s much easier to get into a combo/rotation mentality in WvW, because most players are not very good at 1v1. In an sPvP match against good players (particularly players you know), the standard combo/rotation rulebook may have to go out the window. That’s true of thieves also, at least how they tend to position and play weapon swaps, although the steal → CnD → backstab is pretty consistently used at some point during the fight. That combo is easier and more effective (invisible) than most of what the ele gets. :/

Sifu.6527:

When I said set rotation, I mean rotation like these.

RTL—->updraft
BS——>ROF/DB
MS—->EQ
Water to heal

When to use them is up to the player. Nonetheless, a set rotation like any other (e.g. 100B+WA).

Two-ability combos are hardly “rotations.” And even these two-ability combos don’t work as well against good players, unless you’ve intelligently drawn out dodges and defensive CD’s without using them, so that you know you can get away with the combo (or unless you jump a fight where somebody has no cooldowns).

At this point, how many folks don’t know to dodge when they see RTL coming? For that reason, I often RTL (shorter CD) to bait a dodge, ignore Updraft, and instantly BS a target on the move — good, but not killer damage, but it gives you the upper hand to set you up for a later combo (and avoids burning all of your interrupts when they got to heal and have no dodges left).

Fighting games have combos too, but I would hardly consider those standard “rotations.”

What class are you? You can win those fights once you get used to the mechanics. Just have to know when to keep applying pressure, know when to stomp, and know that sometimes the revive will occur but you can punish it hard if you have the right tools, so even if the 1v2+ continues, you will have the advantage.

Azaruil

Sure, an ele can simply stick to a rotation and make sure he gets “booned up”, but a good ele wont always follow a strict rotation. An ele has a good variety of skills to use and will use those skills according to how the fight is going and what is needed. .

Yup. Definitely need to mix things up, count dodges, and time abilities against a solid player in 1v1. I jumped into WvW recently after getting bored of almost exclusive sPvP, and the bottom line is that most players do rely on very standard iWin rotations (on all classes) when they enter a 1v1. Too much mindless zerging perhaps? D/D ele is no different, unless it is well played. Thief damage rotations are much more mindlessly effective than D/D ele, though, because you can’t dodge something you cannot see (Steal + CnD).

Atlas Ele

Nice, thanks. I plan to solo queue, unless the game does not support any legitimate rankings for solo players, in which case I will continue playing Starcraft 2 to prepare for the expansion, like I’m doing now while GW2 flounders.

Can you link it, please?

I’m not sure I agree with that. With the portal on a longer cooldown now, you can bait its use, and then if you are slack on mobility, you might find yourself in a bad position.

When we were playing at launch and before portal caught on completely, we relied on mobile roamers and off-point positioning for quick collapses. Granted, the competition was easier then because there were no paids and the only way to play good teams was to coordinate queues, but better mobility, scouting to call quicker rotates, and initial positioning compensated for the lack of a portal. Maybe the portal is optimal, but I wouldn’t be so quick to judge.

(My knowledge is dated though, and I have almost no QP, so my opinion is irrelevant.)

Where did you read that there would be a 1-team vs. 1-team ranked?

Fine, then try this: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/62545-fiery-dragon-sword-in-pvp/

Google is your friend.

Roll an Ele. Select Fiery Greatsword as your elite. Enjoy.

Hard to take anybody seriously who claims to be serious. If one really wanted to be pro at a video game, they would have ditched this title a long time ago. The dudes sticking around are either casuals who enjoy the light competition from the few remaining teams and occasional decent pugs or delusional dudes hoping that GW2 will somehow become an eSports success over night and they will have a leg up on the actual pro gamers who start playing the game.

It’s also hard to conceptualize a world in which balance is dictated by the few top-level casuals (pretending to be serious) at this stage in the game’s life. If there was a real pro scene, I can understand not wanting to balance for the common denominator. There isn’t. As such, I can’t really bite on the learn-to-play argument. Why make a small community smaller by forcing lower level players to learn every nuance of the game before they can enjoy playing it?

Hard not to read this thread merely as a tryhard Mesmer who wants to continue to be relevant by playing an indispensable class.

Not entirely sure what you mean by “cheap.” But from your example it sounds like your “cheap” is very similar to what some players refer to as cheese (a 6-pool from Starcraft being the classic example). Cheese is often irritating, but not overpowered, although it certainly can be if there are no viable, effective counters (for example, SCV rushes in early SC2 beta, which I understand were instant win against Zerg or Toss).

Trash talk in game is fine when used for the purpose Sprawl described—usually a /say comment instead of a /map comment. However, simply talking kitten (which in my mind is different than trash talk designed to throw off your opponent) is simply unsportsmanlike, whether in-game or out-of-game. (Some may argue that trash talk is also unsportsmanlike, but I agree with Sprawl that it has its place.)

There isn’t that much kitten talking on these forums, but among aspiring “pros” or even just serious competitive gamers, there really shouldn’t be any whatsoever. Also, there is plenty of kitten talking among these “serious” teams in-game that cannot possibly be described simply as “trash talk.” (Although maybe they cleaned up their act since I stopped playing, not sure.)

That said, there is no place for pros or serious competitive gamers in this game right now, so if you need to talk some trash or even just talk pure kitten to spice things up and give the game some meaning, go for it.

DevilsGlare.7658:

EU guys, I propose this….
3 matches in your region, 3 matches in ours.
Whatever team holds the highest point difference in a match (500-100 lol) at the end of the 6 games chooses where they want the final match to go down at. (Assuming both teams won 3)
It’ll be done in frees running sync que so we can get past the timezone issue and we will do it on a weekend.

You got called out EU.
What is going to be the next excuse?

Well played, sir. NA team calls out EU. There’s really no excuse for, at a minimum, Ace’s team (SS) agreeing to come play. If there’s any concern about server transfers, I’m sure we can arrange to have some accounts set up to facilitate the matches. Looking forward to watching these teams go at it on steam — there haven’t been any worthwhile rivalries in this game for months.

Edit: I would add that most people are likely back from holidays, particularly video game lifers, so really there shouldn’t be any reason you can’t do it this weekend, right? RIGHT?

Looking forward to seeing some of these EU v. NA games on stream. Is that ever going to happen? It really should not be that difficult to coordinate some weekend sync queing at a mutually convenient time.

I’m an NA player, but my money is on EU. With a few exceptions, the “top” NA players seem to be mostly average players that simply kept playing after everybody else realized that this game was dead and moved on to do other things until it was fixed. Not sure if that’s true on the EU-side of things, but at least I know who SS is, a group which has been solid since launch, even without Erho.

Taking down some top EU teams would certainly prove that our NA players are not just afterthought scrubs pug stomping casuals in a dead game. Let’s see it!

By individual skill gap, I don’t mean 1v1 necessarily, I am simply referring to what you need to do to play your class effectively individually. I agree that the skill-cap is greater on a team-wide basis, absolutely. That’s always true. You can take various small skill caps, multiply them across a team, and all of a sudden, you have a significant skill ceiling.

From an individual profession perspective though (again, not necessarily 1v1), I don’t see it for the reasons I already explained. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong, but based on my experience, if you have the right build and some time to play it, you can pretty close to maximizing a class’s effectiveness pretty quickly. To the extent there is a skill cap at a high level, I’m not sure the skill cap is material, that is, actually makes a difference. I am sure there are some Guardians that are better bunkers than others, but if that only makes a difference 1 out of 100 times, then it becomes almost irrelevant.

And although I sort of dropped off right around the time QP’s came out, I was playing with top teams consistently throughout launch. I really do not think that is relevant though to be able to form a basic opinion about the individual skill gap in this game. But if it is, then I suppose I’m not qualified to post at this point, so please disregard my concerns. I don’t plan to play this game again seriously until it gets a modicum of competitive support, so I guess I’m mum until then.

Mufa.1326:

The better you become the less you should spec in a way that your defensive mistakes are forgiven and put more into offensive capabilities (supposedly your survivability will stay high due to skill but now you will be able to kill more opponents and kill them faster).

Good comments, of which I pulled out one nugget. I agree with this completely, and as I mentioned briefly, I do think that the game’s skill gap is most evident when you see glass cannons playing effectively because they do manage to effectively use their defensive cooldowns, where a failure to do so means death.

I think my basic point is that it should be more difficult to spec in such a way that you aren’t facing certain death if you screw up. If you are glass, and you screw up, you should die. But if you aren’t glass, and you screw up a few times, you should also die. As is, the game seems to be balanced so that you can make a hell of a lot of mistakes and keep on trucking. Granted, maybe you sack damage to be able to avoid dying. However, if you can constantly reset fights, then you basically get infinite tries to either get it right or force a stalemate. And that seems like a problem.

Follidus.8027:

1. No player or team in this game is anywhere near reaching the skill-ceiling in this game.
2. I don’t see your name anywhere on the QP ladder
3. Where does that put you in comparison, and how can you say the skill-ceiling is low?

1. The post was specifically focused on increasing individual skill gap, not team-based skill gaps. There is a huge difference between those two concepts. If you think this game has a individual high skill ceiling as designed, you are delusional.

2. True. I am not currently playing on an organized team, which makes it hard to gain QP.

3. Irrelevant. See above. How can I say the skill ceiling is low? Re-read my original post, which explains my views on the issue with individual skill gap in this game.

Your post is not mean, just idiotic. Anybody who has ever played a real competitive game, including games with complete joke competitive communities (like most FPS titles, sans Counterstrike) view GW2 right now as beyond irrelevant. So, while you might be proud of your QP accomplishments and think you are therefore an authority or guiding light for GW2 skill-based commentary, you might table your urge to pat yourself on the back and actually consider the content of your posts.

For all you know or don’t know, I could be a very skilled gamer who has played various titles competitively at a very high level, albeit mostly FPS games, and a person whose vast experience qualifies me to comment, even if I do not currently have the time, patience, or desire to grind QP points.

In any event, here’s the basic point broken down for you (because you might be too dense or blinded by your self-deluded view of your personal accomplishments to digest this otherwise):

In my view, reactionary defensive play has the greatest prospect for creating a robust individual skill gap given the current game design (which does not focus on rewarding skill shots and other difficult offensive play). However, defense is trivialized when classes have an over-abundance of it, such that the margins for error are so high that most players (beyond the top 1-3%) can either maximize or come close to maximizing defensive effectiveness. Therefore, one solution would be to take a close look at defensive cooldowns to determine whether they should be toned down, so that players will be punished more severely for failing to identify the proper times to use those abilities.

You can debate the merits of the point, but honestly dude, tossing QP into this debate is sort of the pinnacle of d-chery. If that’s what you were going for, gratz.

You can see the defensive cooldown skill gap most at work with glass cannon builds, actually. As a glass cannon, you dodge at the right time or die. Noobs cannot pull off running a Zerker’s, where experienced players can.

However, there is a major defensive-based skill gap issue when a class has so many defensive utilities, that they can literally botch half of them and still enjoy a fight reset. By fight reset, I mean that they are literally able to get back to full health through healing, while their defensive abilities come back off cooldown. Now, if only a super skilled player were able to accomplish this, great. But currently, it’s fairly easy for a much larger percentage of the player population to achieve these fight resets even when playing badly.

I do definitely concede though that you can experience just how great the defensive-based skill gap is by playing glass cannon, but right now, the risk-reward from going that route just isn’t there because you can go full glass and because the game has such a defensive-bent, it can still at times be difficult to punish players that are not effectively using defensive cooldowns.

Savage 2 gets my vote. Too bad the game died and was exceptionally rage inducing.

Here is the main reason that GW2 currently has a low skill gap and low skill ceiling: Failing to properly use your defensive cooldowns is far too forgiving in this game.

Because professions have so many defensive and escape tools, you can get away with mindless dodging, blocking, and blinding, and often mitigate enough damage through uncaring use of defensive cooldowns to then pop your heal and reset the fight. As a basic principle, if you are using your dodges to mitigate 1-spam that barely scratches you, but then are eating the damage from longer-cooldown offensive abilities, you should die. But currently, as long as you are running a balanced build or a bunker build, you can get away with using defensive abilities at idiotic times, but nonetheless staying alive long enough to heal and reset the fight. That’s abhorrent from a skill-gap perspective.

It is clear that Arena Net does not view offense as a major source for creating skill gaps. Skill shots are not rewarded appropriately. AI is capable of doing massive amounts of damage. And the easiest offensive classes in the game require very little effort to pull off effectively. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this design. It has instant appeal to new players who typically care more about offense than defense, so it makes sense to have a fast learning curve and low skill ceiling on offense.

But defense should be a different story in this game. Defense actually creates opportunities for reaction-based play by reading animations and responding appropriately. Defense requires a rich understanding of multiple classes. The sort of intelligent, reaction-based play that you can achieve defensively is exactly what you need to increase the skill-gap and skill-ceiling in this game. But then Arena Net gave classes way too many dodges, heals, blinds, blocks, and invulns, so that you don’t actually have to think about what your opponents are really doing, you can basically just play your own healthbar and stay alive.

But the good news is that it can be fixed.

I think that’s because the reduced the hitbox on the treb (the area of the treb that you can target and damage) to prevent AOE’s like Meteor Storm just decimating it (because every meteor would hit because of the large hitbox). Try focusing right at the base of the treb, and you should be able to damage and select it easily.

Other than that, how was/is it broken?

Fair point, and if you leave the game for any reason and come back in, you should start with full respawn, before you get to leave spawn. (Sucks for disconnects, but it avoids the cheesy tactic of leaving immediately when you are downed and know that the other team will bleed you out.)

You are so mad, and it’s clear that you are an Ele who has problems with the Thief. You now try and mask that behind a veneer of logic, but you already tipped your hand. That’s why I called you out. I did not want to turn this into a “don’t nerf Ele, nerf Thief” point, which is what you are trying to do. There are plenty of those threads elsewhere, and I don’t care to get dragged into them. Great, you think that the current Ele sustain builds are somehow balanced. I play Ele and disagree, as do most other players who don’t play Ele. Now move along (and go practice).

Edit: Oh man, your post history is rich, and telling, and confirms that my analysis is spot on. There are so many nuggets in there to prove my point, but I just wanted to pick one from you…

The Lead Balance Dev plays Thief. His friend or next in line down the totem pole likely plays Ele.

Its not insanity, it is just Bias. Pure and simple. Developers are people with Bias. People in charge of multiple class balance that are specific class fans will 100% of the time favor that class in all development decisions. They do this subconsciously so there is no possible way to prevent it. Human nature is Human Nature.

Talk about bias… Seriously annoying when legitimate threads get deconstructed by kids on crusades. (Also, I think your are just flat wrong — Jon seems to main Warrior, and I usually see Chap on Necro… LOL.)

You miss the point that you are obviously not as good at the class, as maybe you think you are, and it’s incredibly strong, notwithstanding the small health pool (which you exaggerate). Furthermore, the healing issue isn’t just for the Ele, it applies to other classes also. The basic premise is that damage/time should be higher than healing/time (or defense/time — however you want to look at it), averaged out across engagements of various skill levels. Ele is definitely one of the classes that needs a look in this specific regard. As do Guardians.

Edit: Please do note that I spend a lot of time on the Ele, and I do not think that the class in general is grossly imbalanced. For example, I think that certain Ele skill shots should hit harder than they do, because they can be hard to land (and easy to avoid). Ele could use some upward tweaks in other areas in my opinion, but the sustain builds seem slightly out of line at the moment, which is my only point, regardless of what bad players who can finally survive for a few extra seconds might think.

What on earth are you talking about? Are we even playing the same game, or are you just this dumb? Sorry, I normally try and be productive when I post, but some people…

I see you edited your post to make clear that you don’t want them to touch Ele healing and have issues with Thiefs. That alone makes me wonder about you… In your hands, it may feel like the balance is just right on the Ele or other high sustain bunker, but in the right hands, 1v1 take wayyyy to long to resolve and defense is greater than (and easier than) offense, which is not the way it should be.

Sorry if I struck a nerve. That’s what is not fun to me — what Fourth was asking about.

Edit: I also have to add that this idea that if you “catch the Ele outside of Water Attunement, he is done” concept is — to use your term — laughable. On D/D, with 30 Arcane, energy swap sigil, traited vigor on crit, intelligent use of my defensive cooldowns, LOS and other basic tactics, and the pressure I can maintain throughout a fight to take the pressure off me, I can usually get back into Water Attunement when I need to. You make it sound so simple, when really, it’s a delicate dance, both for the Ele and the person fighting the Ele, not just “out of Water, faceroll keyboard, win.” If you are losing when that happens, you’re doing something seriously wrong.

Because being bored at work right before the holidays and posting on the forums is the same thing as practicing for roughly 35-40 hours per week, including on weekends…?

Check how often I’ve posted on weekends, lol.

(Edit: Oh, you’re the dude who got his stuff in a wad when I made fun of the Naga. Now I see why you took a random swipe at me. Always nice to see the fan club sticking around.)

sPvP perspective incoming:

I used to use my focus situationally in sPvP, but not since ANet locked weapon swapping. Burst rifle engis used to be way more popular than they are now, and it was awesome for countering that. Likewise, it was good against power SB Rangers, but those guys are more rare, often favoring some condi/power hybrid with traps and hard-hitting pets, where the destroying/reflecting projectiles is not quite optimal. Losing point presence with Earth 5 has always made Focus less useful than other bunker builds, because you will j ust straight hand over the point if you use the ability on CD (and can just take Mist Form instead).

Still a really fun weapon set to mess around with, but the loss of mobility, coupled with the lack of strong counters for the current meta have made it a bit of an afterthought at the moment.

I was actually okay with them facing solos against premades, at least putting them in the same pool, as long as you had an individual solo ranking. You would be rated against other solo players who have to face premades roughly as often as you do (randomized over a large enough sample). While it would be better to have a pool purely of solo players, that might not be possible given the tiny community.

The crazy thing, as I understand, is that you might just have one rating, whether you play solo or with a premade. To me, that is just bat kitten crazyyy. I mean, how hard is it to compare your W/L when solo queing against other players’ W/L when solo queing and to come up with a ranking?

Hah, I appreciate the more dramatic title, but you might consider something more to the point. “Arena Net hates solo players: No rating for solo queue planned.” Something like that is sure to get the attention of players like us who may be burned out (or lack the time) for serious team play and will only continue to support the game if we are able to solo queue and have something to show for our efforts. (Rather than some kitten rank, which is below that of bad premade players, simply because they don’t have to deal with always playing with a pug.)

I think you need to look at the reason why the stalemates occur. If healing/time > DPS/time, then you have a stalemate. Otherwise, healthbars will slowly drain, even if a 1v1 takes a longgg time to resolve.

I’ve been thinking about this problem, and the main issue seems to come from long-term healing sustain builds coupled with additional defensive utilities. With these builds, your 6-healing ability is basically used on cooldown to erase whatever damage occurred for that period of the fight. Unless your opponent is ridiculously skilled, in a bunker v. bunker fight, you are probably overhealing the damage they caused during that period.

I think Arena Net needs to take a look at the healing co-efficients as modified by amulets and the healing stats for all abilities that grant gradual healing over time. Right now, the rule seems to be that if the defensive player makes a few mistakes, but is running one of these bunkery, high-sustain healing builds, a 1v1 still might not resolve. Alternatively, if a DPS makes a single mistake (including timing a burst that gets blocked by a lucky aegis or a random dodge from a high-vigor opponent, who is just dodging on cooldown), then it definitely will not resolve.

The presumption needs to be flipped. A player should be able to miss out on some DPS as mitigated by defensive utilities and dodges, but still be able to do slightly more damage/time than the other player can maintain healing/time. Further, healing from the 6-ability should be by far and away the major source for heals — a burst heal ability that can be interrupted or impacted by a well-time poisoned.

Right now, these low health pool high healing builds are viable because they basically result in an infinite health pool. That needs to change first and foremost in my opinion.

Edit: Instead of messing with the healing co-efficients, which could have an impact on PvE (not that I care), they could also consider playing around with gear modifiers with heal stats to try and tone down the healing over time.

Agree with a lot of the comments in this thread.

First, downed state is a gimmicky mini-game. When you first start playing, it’s annoying because it has absolutely nothing to do with 90% of combat. Then you learn it, learn all of the cute tricks to stomp and revive, and you tolerate it (or maybe even like it). But it does not change the fact that it’s a side show that often steals the show, when it shouldn’t.

Second, long sustain builds are not fun. In my opinion, healing outside of your 6 ability, should be fairly limited, yet most classes have ways to maintain fairly constant healing, which when combined with a healing amulet, energy sigils and other traits to increase vigor uptime, evade abilities, and other defensive utilities and skills, makes fighting these classes incredibly frustrating.

Defensively, a player can make a lottt of mistakes, essentially just dodge on cooldown, and yet still maintain massive sustain through constant healing. I main on a dagger/dagger Ele who runs Valk’s, and I know it’s dumb… I’m not sure intelligent use of Poison is the solution either, because the sustain is so strong (along with condi removal), that it barely seems to register. Plus, the skill required to time Poisons or Immobilizes between condi removals to effectively counter the sustain from this healing seems much higher than the skill required to run these defensive builds.

I would nerf the sustain through healing hard, so that most healing comes from your interruptible 6 healing ability. Low vitality, high healing builds are just way too strong.

Utility swapping seems fairly naturally balanced, because you have to wait for the other utility to come off cooldown before you can swap. The one exception are signet utilities with passives that apply out of combat (specifically, speed signets). If you pop one of these in, they should probably start on cooldown, otherwise you can just constantly pop in the signet for the passive between fights to improve mobility, which I assume the lock-down changes were partly designed to prevent.

The playtimes of serious teams in this currently dead game (competitively) never ceases to baffle me. Gone are the days of Sunday – Thursday, 3 hours/day tops, I suppose. You nerds really should take the weekends off and at least try and find girls.

Good luck with the Mesmer.

This needs more attention, including through a more catchy thread title. There needs to be separate rankings for solo queues and pug queues, even if you ultimately throw everybody into the same game pool to reduce wait times. Somebody mentioned that HoN does not have separate rankings, but doesn’t HoN have like 1/1000th the player base of LOL (and a much kittentier community), even though arguably it’s a better game. Just saying… :/

Being Top 10 QP may give you unique insight into what top teams are running, but unfortunately, it does not reduce your bias. I’m sure Arena Net has backend analytics that are more accurate than players’ gut assessments (I hope). And I hope that once we get some ranked games, and eventually stats, we’ll have more concrete information to sink our teeth into.

Sprawl.3891:

the problem is easier classes perform equally well if not better than “harder” classes/specs

Yup. This is the number one problem with this game. They took the hard classes and balanced them at their skill cap against the skill cap of classes that at least 75% of the population can easily max out for effectiveness.