Guild Wars 2

A big thing that the spvp community has asked for is new game modes. I understand that it must be hard for the devs to know quite how to balance a new game mode and also what new game modes would actually be fun.

A thought I have on this is maybe having an interim arena separate from tournaments and hot joins that rotates out different new ideas biweekly ish. This could mean 4v4 on the new deathmatch map so the devs could see how that would work. It would be fun to have a 2 week map where everyone had to use zerk amulets. It could be 5v5 deathmatch on a limited portion of current capture maps. These are just some ideas off the top of my head, but I feel like having a test arena that people could que up for and try new ideas could be a fun way to start introducing new game modes. If the game mode sucks, nobody cues for a couple weeks and you can scratch it off the list. I feel like this might not work practically but a “Fun House” with little differences from current setups.

Something I thought was funny:
I was playing against a team with a dev on it, and he was running regen banner warrior cheese – I complained that devs shouldnt run builds that make people quit the game. He said “There are plenty of hard counters for regen warrior. Decap engi does really well against it.” Bahahahahahahahahaha
So there you go – devs think that decap engi and regen war is the way things should be. Thanks for ruining a wonderful game Anet….

Rank doesnt mean anything – the point is that there is no reward, and even less so for the more experienced people who deserve more since they have played more. Rank is not a direct indicator of skill (especially now) but it used to be a decent show of how much you have played…. But I have played much more than a lot of people rank 50+ now. I agree these posts are everywhere, but they are here for a reason…. We are frustrated

I’m a little frustrated with the changes to this. It has made people care too much win/loss in hot joins, while taking some of the dieing population from tournaments. People will abuse the autobalance system even more now for wins, and now people dont even try new/innovative builds in hot joins. Its all cheese all the time. Cant even escape it in hot joins. All of pvp is dead to me now.

I am hopeful that there are big changes coming to the meta with the sigil/rune changes, balance and w/e is coming over the next few months. I have learned to be patient as far as real changes to balance are concerned. However I have a serious issue with how Anet has done rewards for pvp the entire existence of pvp.

The experienced pvp players are not really rewarded at all. If a rank 15 saved their glory with boosters they could have t3 racial armor (or dragon rank weapon from token), so that shows nothing. Anyone could get lucky with coffer and have high tier stuff… So gear shows nothing right now…. Then we look at rank…………….. This is very frustrating to me.

Rank was the only thing to show for experience in pvp. It was already weakened by Skyhammer farming which had no repercussion, and with all the updates applying more rank and bonus weekends and such, I feel quite conned. I have many tournament wins from long ago before the rank points were increased so dramatically. I am busy on weekends so I cant get the bonus rank points the random times you do them. So now I have people with half the tournament wins as me higher rank….. I worked forever to get to tiger and then was ecstatic to get to bear after months and months, since the tiger finisher is so underwhelming. Only now I have friends (I guess I am happy for them) who blazed through the 40s in 2 weeks…….. You need to reimburse previous tournament wins or something. There is nothing for experienced players to show. This is extremely disappointing. Why should I play pvp if the only thing to show (rank) is now lower than people who have half the experience I do? Fun? Fix the balance then maybe fun will be a factor.

As suggested, update some previous wins, and add new title/tiers.
Title ideas – All champ titles = Champion, 500 wins with class = Master X(Shadow etc) – All Master titles = Master, 1500 wins with class = Legendary X – All Legendary = Legend

My ideas….. You have me really vexed and not wanting to play pvp even more than before…. I will wait for balance. That hype better be something.

I do feel bad for the devs (particularly Justin), but as it has been said; this frustration is justified. It isn’t short sighted if it is in hindsight. We have been waiting forever for simple additions or changes. There are plenty of posts with great advice and ideas on how to fix it. The issues have been stated over and over – passive play, condition/aoe/cc spam, matchmaking, overall lack of balance, new game modes!!!!!

And yet over the last 9 months with countless posts describing issues and giving suggestions of what to change, we havent gotten anything. Just add a 2v2 or 3v3 deathmatch already. You dont even need to make a new map, just play on sections of the maps you have. We have waited for a long time for pve rewards we dont want and nothing else has changed. I understand these things take some time, and I dont necessarily think transparency or communication is the problem. The issue is that if you wait a year to put in one balance patch, you are inevitably going to fail. There is too much hype when you wait that long, and there is no way you will be able to live up to it. Destroy the current meta or start doing monthly balance changes to keep the meta on its toes.

To work on lessening passive play make the active play stronger and passive skills weaker. “But healing signet wont be viable without it being super strong” Good. Any high tier pvp play/players should want control over when they heal not just a little regen passively. Healing sig could still be viable if the passive was drasticly reduced and the active effect was increased. Spirits and minions need immidiate nerf as well, as they dont focus at all on skilled ability. Make the activated effects of each stronger to encourage reactive play, but dont allow the player themselves to do practically 0% of the work. Pets are fairly weak and therefore dont need a nerf necessarily, but I would argue that they need to reflect the rangers stats better, and be more reactive and less clunky. The pet skills realistically take over 2 seconds to actually get off in a fight. This is not at all reactionary fighting. The rest is semi-passive/luck (if you know your pets rotation you can time some things)

Bringing in a new game mode would obviously help – this has been mentioned countless times. Do it already anet. You have had a year and a half, and it wont even require much. You could use parts of existing maps and have 2v2 or 3v3 deathmatch and things would get much better immediately. Simply having a 2v2 setup would help differentiate the higher tier players because you would be able to see all of what was going on and utilize burst, dodge, heal etc in a more timely and skilled fashion.

Seriously though, just add 2v2 and get the kitteny kitty cat kit rid of all the immune skills. It kills all of the fun when you literally can do 0 dmg to someone while they go to town on your face. That does not show skill. – Yeah I know, kite, dodge, and immune more and I’ll be fine.

As far as pvp rewards and not doing something about skyhammer farming etc…. It never rewards the true pvp players as much as the pve and casual community, but that is their way of hopefully getting more people in. It is frustrating, but hopefully someday they will give us a sticker that says “Way to go sport” or something equally condescending and useless.

It is no secret that the pvp community is basically gone and those that are left are frustrated. As many have stated, the mechanics of the game a very fun, but the reality of the actual matches is purely irritating. Very rarely are the winners determined by actual skill level; normally we find either a large mismatch in ability between the two teams (gg anet) or one team plays full cheese and another is unwilling to sacrifice having a complicated entertaining playstyle to win. I particularly fall into this latter category, and this is my biggest issue with the game and what led to having such a low population and in turn a poor matchmaking system: balance.

Duh the game is unbalanced, I am not bringing in anything new there. I am also not saying much new as far as anets failure to bring in balance changes enough. Every 2 weeks you do something for pve; if you are going to say your strategy is to shave balance here and there, you should be doing this biweekly as well. Shave 2% of healing sig every 2 weeks until its not out of control etc (very basic example). Either way, you cannot “shave” balance when you do it once a year. Your options are to actually do what you want – small balance changes at least monthly, or totally shake the meta to bring about new builds and competition.

If I were not close to finishing my last champion title I wouldnt be in pvp at all, but alas I have some desire to complete this… But playing against 4 warriors and a decap engi is no fun when there is no actual skill dividing the winners and the losers.

I am not that fantastic at this game, but I would like my losses to actually be because I am not as skilled, not because everyone on the other team is a warrior or because I have two rank 5s and they are all rank 55-70. (rank does indicate some level of experience – not entirely – and should be some bit of a factor in mmr)

Big issues – immune (remove this from pvp), settlers amulet (remove from pvp – helps not need immune to condi bs), aoe, cc and/or condi spam in general (this is a bit of a mess), and passive play (spirits, healing sig, pet/minion/phantasm)

Aoe and cc skills need to have correlated increase in cooldown. I would prefer everything to move towards eles, not have eles buffed up to warrior level. Ele vs warrior is a great example of obvious misbalance – pin down vs staff #5, dogged march vs similar ele trait (adept tier w/ regen vs master tier no regen), large (35-45 sec) cd on ele cc skills vs warrior cc skills(7-25 sec), cast times of large skills and clarity of animations is another obvious issue.

Along with actually balancing cooldowns for cc and aoe (make them larger cds), conditions are something that needs addressing.

First of all, I would suggest having zero (0) skills with auto attack that apply conditions unless they have a clear animation and longer cd than other aa skills.

Second, zero (yes none) skills with multiple condis added in a single skill.

Third – make the condis matter in their own way and require more skill to utilize appropriately – minimize stacking duration of condis to promote skilled timing not spam 3 poison skills in a row (or immob etc)
Ideas for condition changes
— burning huge dmg with high cd on skill, no auto proc from crits, no aoes
—poison very little if any dmg – just reduce healing ability (maybe by more)
—chill decrease movement 33, recharge of skills 66
—cripple decrease movement 50% over longer time
—immob huge cd no stacking duration
—bleeds stack to 15 rather than 25 – full stacks does significantly more dmg
—torment does actually negligible damage standing still but does 5* dmg when moving
—remove all stacks of confusion when casting – does large dmg with short duration (skilled play would involve throwing confusion on immediately before opponent cast and actually promote not casting when confusion is on you)

This already was an annoying issue, but now with the pvp rewards its even more annoying. The people who exploited are now going to be the most flashy looking people in pvp even though they havent shown real skill or gained real experience in the game. I know it is past the point where they will do anything, but ANets lack of response even on the forums (where they are regularly decently responsive) is unacceptable. You took forever to do anything, when you finally come out with solutions they effect the entire pvp world just to try to deal with one exploit, and when you finally reward pvp in some way, you do it in a way that caters to pve players and skyhammer farmers. Terrible.

I agree with the OP. The system does not work appropriately. Rank does matter if they are below rank 10. You cannot tell me that a rank 10 can be anywhere near a rank 30-50. Skyhammer farmers excluded, because these folks arent in tpvp that much anyway. I simply do not understand how in solo and team que, people ranked in the top 1000 can be put with rank 1s on the same team. Seriously. That should never ever ever happen. But it does. Every day.

My experience still has the system deciding over 50% of the matches. One team will have a couple terrible members and it’s gg from then on. I’m aware that I am not on the top tier or players, but putting rank 1s on my team and having the other team all 30+ should just not happen ever.

Side note: the leaderboards are straight crazy. I don’t pretend to know the system itself, but the results are terrible. I have won 9 of my last 12 in solo que, and gone down in rank. I have lost my last 3 in teamque and gone up in rank. One day i won 6 straight in solo and went down from 95% to 92%….. Like I said I dont know the math behind it, but my personal experience with lb is that they tell us nothing. Really nothing. I am above people on team that I know i am worse than, and below people I know I can beat.

Lock sub rank 5s out of tournaments please. And there is something wrong with your system, you cant just tell us all that our mmr is low, we are going to get with people with equal mmr – that is lazy business there. There is a problem that needs to be fixed from your side Anet. rank 45, 39, 35, 1, 1 (3 top 800, other two not ranked) vs all 30+ with people in top 50…… Again, I don’t know how your system functions, but I do know that something is wrong on Anet’s side

The pvp community has waited for months, watching new content come consistently for pve and wvw. We have posted our concerns/ideas/criticism on forums, getting responses like “This is something we are working on” from the devs. I dont doubt you are working, but very little work is being completed……….

With this patch………….. You have got to be infant catting me. This is such a steamy, moist, sloppy bucket of kitty. A few nice additions for sure, a little bit of balance, but for us to have been waiting for this long with hopes that things would get significantly better…. Not cutting it. So many issues not addressed..

Skyhammer is still being farmed…. I don’t even need to go into how that is unacceptable, there are plenty of forums dedicated to that. I don’t even care that much about rank, but that is the single thing pvp people have. That’s it. “We’re working on it.” – It has been mentioned many times, pull SH til you fix the system, and even though you don’t want to ban people, you really should ban the people taking the most advantage.

The tournament system is still a wreck. If there was a bigger community I don’t think it would be as much of an issue, but there is still a concern with (in my experience) over half the matches in solo que(and team if not in full group) are decided by the teams the computer generates. Sometimes in my advantage, other times not. Either way it is not satisfying gameplay and something needs to be done.

Obviously you need new game types. That would solve so many issues, and the excitement of a new game would hide other problems

As far as balance is concerned, you have a decent idea with shaving, but you need to shave more often. If you let your beard grow 8 inches long giving it a little shave isnt going to clean that face. At least half this ammount of balance should be in all of those biweekly pve patches until things are relatively balanced.

How the flying kitty did you not change warrior healing signet? Imo it is the stupidest skill in pvp right now. Other classes have healing signets that give healing per attack or spell or cure conditions passively. That makes sense. The warrior healing signet promotes a hands off play style that drives me crazy. If you are going to make something so OP, make it something that is hard to use, not something passive. I can’t get the point across just how stupid the warrior signet is. And after months of waiting……. you didnt fix it.

Not to mention berserkers stance still being an amazing op bug making you immune to some conditions entirely….

We could point out specifics forever….

I love the mechanics of this game, I will continue to play the game(though considerably less) but the amount of work that gets completed and implemented in pvp is disheartening. There are giant problems that are starting to pile up, and when the finally our aid arrives, they arrive to apply antibiotic ointment and gauze up the gunshot wound in our arm.