Guild Wars 2

GreyWraith.8394:

Can you cancel dodge by weapon swapping?

Why would you ever want to do that?

The biggest issue I have is that you don’t even have a choice. Once you are in Vault you cannot do anything. You lose control of your character, and there is a 1/4 second window where you are completely vulnerable. 1/4 second isn’t a lot of time for other characters, but on a thief its the difference between life and death. (not to mention you know exactly when the thief is vulnerable due to a giant telegraph).

Coming from someone who played staff as a secondary, the inability to cancel vault by swapping took away of a lot of creative combos. You could use it to juke your opponent, bait dodges, trigger traps. Like others have said, we didn’t even necessarily use it for the damage. It had some great in-combat mobility that is now lost.

This update literally only helped the people that spammed it, and took away some utility from people who used staff as an intelligent secondary. Staff cannot compete with shortbow anymore as a secondary.

I understand that, but vault already had counterplay because its evade didn’t last the full duration, and it was easy to dodge. Now you literally cannot use staff in thief vs thief because its a guaranteed steal+backstab for the other thief.

Some of us didn’t just spam vault over and over with bound. The tracking update only really helped the people that vault spam. Staff was a useful secondary until now.

Fenda.1398:

The only thing different regarding Vaults function is that it cannot be weaponswap-cancelled anymore.

Which is a horrible change. Now every thief that used staff as a secondary has to deal with a stupid clunky animation. Thief vs. Thief is now a farce. You can’t bait steal with a vault cancel. Instead your opponent now gets a guaranteed pulmonary impact+ backstab on you. No reason to use staff over shortbow now.

I don’t know what all Arenanet did to vault but it seems slower. And not only that, with the changes to vault, you can’t weapon swap mid-animation. Every leap IN THE GAME can be canceled by weapon swap, which allows for way more fluid movement in combat.

It is now the only skill that you CANNOT CANCEL no matter what. The evade only lasts 1/2 second and the animation is 3/4 seconds long. So now whenever you use vault, there is a telegraphed and GUARANTEED 1/4 second where you are completely vulnerable to stuns.

Every decent player can now time hit a vault without any way of avoiding it on the thief’s end. (e.g. you can’t cancel out of it if you see a warrior timing a killshot.) Thief vs. thief with staff is now impossible because every time you use vault its a free steal for the other thief.

Additionally, this takes away the ability to bait out dodges with a fake vault/ weapon swap because it locks you into the animation. The skill ceiling of staff has now been greatly diminished in favor of better tracking that was never needed. D/P +staff is now much more clunky and not fun to play.

Please revert the change and allow vault to be canceled by weapon swap.

Tired of unbalanced, boring spamfest battles? Tired of getting outplayed by auto-procced traits that took zero thought to use? Interested in quick thinking, perfectly balanced combat? THEN RPK IS FOR YOU

What it is:
RPK, or Rock Paper Killshot, is a fun and dynamic player made game mode that capitalizes on the principles of risk vs reward and outplaying your opponent; a chess match of abilities! THE MIND GAMES ARE REAL. Not only is it very well balanced, but it is fun to watch, easy to pick up, and fun to shout cast.

It was heavily inspired by Dragon Arena in Guild Wars 1.

What you need:

1. 2-10 Warriors split into even teams
2. A Rifle, Mace and Shield
3. Valkyrie Amulet
4. An open arena (Between spawns on Forest is great, and so is center node on Foefire.)

Rules:

1. NO ARMOR is allowed. (this is crucial!)
2. Everyone must equip a valkyrie amulet.
3. No Asuran characters are allowed, (turn on standard models in your arena).
4. All builds must be checked prior to the match for equality. It only works if everyone runs the exact same build.

Game Layout:

Teams will begin on either side of the arena in a line. After a countdown by a moderator, the teams may attack each other using all abilities at their disposal.

Once an enemy team has COMPLETELY stomped out the other team, the round is over. Teams can play to the winner of a best-of-five.

The Build: Everyone runs the same build!

1. Rifle, Mace/Shield
2. Valkyrie Amulet
3. Scholar Runes

Valkyrie amulet is used to prevent regular skills from doing too much damage (no precision), and gives the user a greater health pool for intense fights.

Utilities:
Defiant Stance, “Shake it Off”, Signet of Fury, Bulls Charge, Battle Standard

1. Defiant stance is a highly skillful heal in this game mode: use it at the correct time and you get a full heal, use it at a poor time and you lose a great deal of its effectiveness.
2. Shake it off is the only stun break, and there are a lot of ways to get CC’d, use it wisely!
3. Signet of fury for more adrenaline gain.
4. Bulls charge for a gap closer and CC (easily dodged, but effective when landed)
5. Battle standard is used for ressing teammates who go down, but it has a long cast time and you can’t dodge while using it!

Traits:

Discipline: Top, Middle, Bottom

The discipline trait line is taken to increase player damage and match dynamics. Fast hands allows players to swap quickly between weapon sets, increasing access to counterplay skills.

1. Crack Shot: Reduces rifle recharge and allows for greater adrenaline gain.
2. Destruction of the Empowered: Do more damage!
3. Burst Mastery: Do more damage!
   (***Note: we want to buff the damage of killshot very high to allow for high risk, high reward gameplay.)

Defense: Top, Bottom, Middle

The defense trait line is taken to increase counter play by giving the player reflect on blocks, and increasing adrenaline gain.

1. Shield Master: Reduces cooldowns on shield as well as granting reflect while blocking. (This is one of the core traits to this game mode!)
2. Sundering Mace: Reduced mace cooldowns, vulnerability for more damage.
3. Cleansing Ire: Faster adrenaline building, clearing vulnerability (Note, we did not want to give out any easily used defensive abilities like Last Stand. Rousing Resilience COULD potentially be placed here instead of CI.)

Arms: Top, Top, Top

The arms trait line contains some of the most crucial traits in the game mode.

1. Berserker’s Fury: More damage and more adrenaline. (not much more to say).
2. Unsuspecting Foe: 50% crit chance on stunned foes! This trait makes it to where you can inflict great damage with abilities besides burst skills, IF you manage to land a stun. This is why we took the Valkyrie Amulet.
3. Burst Precision: 100% crit chance from burst skills! All of your killshots will hit 15-18k, and all of your skull cracks will hit 5k.

The traits in this build are completely designed around high risk, high reward gameplay. Each ability has a unique counter, making it extremely balanced offensively and defensively.

Why it works:

1. Its really fun, its easy to pick up, easy to follow (shoutcasting!) and it is very balanced.
2. To make a long story short, there is a counter to everything, and everything has a counter. The entire point of this game mode is to outplay each other, without any cheap mechanics. It can be played 1v1, or it can be turned into a very complicated team game.
3. Every skill that does sufficient damage requires creative thought to land, and every defensive ability can be turned offensive. This is a game mode BASED ON SKILL

Here are a couple interesting combos that have arisen while playing this game mode:

You bait the enemy into a killshot and reflect it with mace 2 or shield 5 at the last second, only to have your opponent reflect it right back at you! Double reflect, dodge!

Your teammate is forced to use his stun break, but gets knocked down after wards and the enemy is about to killshot them. What do you do!? Step in front of your CC’d teammate with shield 5 to reflect the killshot back at the enemy!

Q&A Section:

Q1: Won’t everyone die too quickly to damage?

A1: No! There are a ton of ways to avoid damage in this game mode, and there are tons ways of supporting allies! You must work as a team. If an enemy is killshotting one of your teammates, THEY CAN’T MOVE, killshot them back!

Q2: Won’t teams just play completely defensively and never die?

A2: This would be an issue if it weren’t for the fact that offense and defense in this game are so connected. It takes risk to win! Defensive teams will never be able to output enough damage to kill the other team. And sooner or later, a team will make a mistake, which brings about interesting gameplay.

Q3: Won’t the team that gets the first kill always win?

A3: Absolutely not! The downed state brings about very interesting mechanics. Most of the time, it is too dangerous to stomp out opponents. There is an interesting dynamic that happens during a stomp. One team must find a way to get their teammate up while avoiding damage, and the other team must find a way to execute a kill while avoiding the other team’s damage. Vengeance also plays a major role!

It is also not unheard of to 2v1 in this game mode if you outthink your opponent. Comebacks can happen at any time!

Conclusion

Give it a try! Get some friends together and play this game mode! It is very easy to get going, and very fun to play. Get in teamspeak together and coordinate plays! Before long you will all be laughing and talking about strategy. There are literally hundreds of different amazing plays that can happen in this game mode. Go for it!

Please feel free to comment about any changes you think should be made. Keep in mind, everything has been fleshed out already, and there are very specific reasons why certain traits weren’t chosen.

Also, feel free to suggest a new name for the game mode. Thanks!

Mail me in game and we can get some matches going!

I don’t think astral force is in a terrible spot right now. But please, JUST STOP CHANGING IT.. PLEASE.

There is zero continuity with how it works week to week, and its awkward having to master a new play style every time I log in. Why even bother learning a class when they completely overhaul its main functions every single week.

Yes, everyone and their mother could generate astral force pre-nerf. So yeah, it probably needed a nerf. But I seriously just want Arenanet to let AF sit as it is for awhile and let us get used to it. Its so kittening annoying. Stop knee-jerk nerfing/ changing things (I’m looking at you staff auto) ESPECIALLY before you have even seen good teams play with it in a tournament (no ranked atm).

Rant over.. :P

After playing a healing druid build in sPvP for a few hours, I think it is safe to say that most of the posts on the forums were an overreaction. I’m having just as much fun if not MORE with Druid than BWE3. (I can’t say anything for people trying hybrid builds though, because I’ve only used staff/gs.)

Astral Force is NOT as bad as people are saying. I almost always have it charged when I need it. No, you don’t get to open up fights with it, but it is very easy to build, and it feels way less spammy now. I actually like what they have done with it.

The only thing I wish Anet had done is put a permanent stun break on one of the sigils (by that i mean stun breaks regardless of if you’re in CAF or not.) I would love to be able to make use of the CC given by the glyphs, but giving up some of the other skills is too much of a downgrade. I’m a firm believer that druid needs two stun breaks because for healing druid, you’re always in the thick of the battle.

Bottom line is, Druid is VERY much viable in sPvP, and I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If anything, I think the skill cap is higher now which is a good thing. CAF feels way less like a permanent upgrade that you can go in and out of whenever you want. You have to use it way more situationally and wisely.

This is a great idea. They don’t even have to come up with new jewels. They can literally just use the old ones from before.

Just make a corresponding jewel for each amulet currently in existence, and distribute the 700 stats in a balanced manner. That way people will be able to customize their stats slightly more.

If they do not choose to do this, eventually they’re going to have to add a ton of amulets with different stat distributions. This was already mentioned, but making a clerics build (amongst other amulets) on a low hp class will be nearly impossible because 11k hp just isn’t enough.

tom.7468:

Thats why i play ranger in pvp
I also love how players say haha noob ranger go play a meta build 1 minute later they are dead on the ground and say omfg your build is no skill.

Still doesn’t change the fact its a no skill build LOL.

Well I think it is pretty obvious what the community wants. Even for an unofficial poll, 91% of 1000 votes is pretty convincing lol, and I bet it would be the same percentage if you took a poll of the entire PvP population.

I’m glad you made this because if you hadn’t, I would have. As soon as they said Stronghold would be in the same queue as Conquest I was shocked.

Stronghold is going to take completely different strategies and team compositions than conquest. Teams should be able to choose to play stronghold or play conquest. If you were to keep them in the same queue, it would be like mixing up teams who want to play GW1 GvG and HA. It just doesn’t work with specialized team comps.

I urge ArenaNet to rethink their decision. I can’t even express how much of a bad idea this is. If you have your team equipped with Stronghold builds, they should NOT have to switch their builds and game plan/ mind set because a map vote didn’t go their way. There NEEDS to be a separate queue.

The community asked for Guild Wars 1 style GvG WAYYYYY before the WvW community came up with a 20v20 deathmatch ‘GvG game mode’. If you want to play zerg vs zerg, then stick to WvW. If you want to play coordinated GvG with in depth mechanics where only good players can succeed, then you’ll have to play REAL GvG GW1 style.

butch.8136:

Thats not the ‘real’ gvg. Google gw1 GvG for the ‘real’ GvG.
This will be a Moba meets gw1 GvG gametype.

This.

GW2 GvG as you know it is nowhere near as fun as smaller group GvG. Trust me. You can continue to do your 20v20 in WvW, but its time for the true GvG game mode from GW1 to be revamped into what they announced.

GW1 GvG was the pinnacle of MMO PvP. Hopefully Stronghold can do it once more.

In my experience, it is better for a thief to +1 fights. And by that I mean, they should jump into even fights and end it quickly so that their team can win the fight without having to commit more players than the other team. So in other words, thieves are Solo roamers, until they get into other fights and quickly end them.

Should a thief stand on a node? No. Should a thief be a part of team fights? Absolutely. Thieves need to land burst damage on the opponent’s damage. (Kill off the other team’s thief/mesmer first). A thief can bring defense to their team in the form of offense by harassing the other team’s low armor rating professions during team fights.

It seems like you are doing a good job of watching for opportunities to decap the enemy’s nodes. That is good, but it sounds like you need to work on your speed of movement! A thief should be uncatchable (except to other thieves). Are you using shortbow? Are you using shadowstep+shadow refuge+1 optional for your utility skills? With those three things, no one should ever be able to catch you.

Bring weapon sets that have utility!

Sword/ Dagger is a great weapon set because it provides 1. Mobility, 2. Evasion, 3. Damage.

Dagger/Pistol is a great weapon set because it provides 1. Gap Closing, 2. A lot of Stealth, 3. Burst damage.

Shortbow is great because it has 1. INSANE mobility, 2. Cleave for downed bodies (AoE damage+ poison) 3. Evasion

I highly recommend bringing D/P and SB or S/D and SB!

A good thief will end 1v1s quickly, use mobility rotate to other fights quickly, realize good times to decap the other team’s base, and basically provide map-wide support burst damage.

GhOst.4019:

Elegant Avenger.8042:

It worked just fine in Guild Wars 1 so don’t tell me it would never work.

First of all….re-read my post. I did talk about your “Roster”. Unless you reward only the top 5 teams or something, there will be selling. There is always extra spots open (as I stated in my post while talking about your “Roster” that you ignored).

Second of all…This did not work in GW1 as there was a TON of spot selling, and as the devs stated a few months ago; it is the MAIN reason that they will never entertain this idea again. It defeats the purpose of trying to reward only those who actually worked for it.

First of all, you edited your post, and you did not mention the PvP roster idea before so. Second of all, I know people sold spots in Guild Wars 1. Guess what? The people who bought the spots were easily identified and were known to be bad players. Third, the top guilds in GW1 didn’t sell spots, and usually only let close friends in to maintain prestige.

Also, the rewards in GW1 were much different. They were permanent (i’m talking about gold trims), which allowed a guild to disband but still sell rewards. The rewards in GW2 should not be permanent, and instead should be handed out at a single time at the end of each season.

GhOst.4019:

So don’t rank or reward Solo players that this is all they do in game and work their butt off? Not everyone wants to be on a team. Also this has been suggested and shot down, never to return. Players would sell guild spots to the highest bidder just so they can make some cash. People pay high end to get those exclusive rewards that they didn’t actually work for and therefore diluting the whole system. This would never work in any way, shape or form. You want team rewards? Play/ win tournaments. That is why they are there. Then your name goes onto an exclusive in game PvP Champion board for recognition.

You obviously didn’t read my PvP roster idea, which would make it impossible to sell the rewards to even more than a couple of people. There would be enough room for subs, and thats about it. The people who do sell their guilds out will be mocked, and that guild’s reputation will be gone as soon as you see a noob repping it. Something tells me top players would rather have their reputation/ prestige in tact than a few extra gold.

It is MUCH harder to accurately hand out rewards/ranks to individuals in a team based game. If you gave out rewards as a one time thing every month, then people couldn’t sell rewards they already won. They would have to accurately predict that they’re going to win in order to sell them. It would be much more difficult to sell rewards if they aren’t guaranteed, and the most you could sell them to is maybe 2-3 people.

Team based leaderboards worked just fine in Guild Wars 1 so don’t tell me it would never work.

And finally, ArenaNet doesn’t have to get rid of the individual leaderboards. In fact they could use the current system to develop the team leaderboard (with the PvP roster idea.)

Make the leaderboards team or guild based instead of individually based.

Reasons why this is a good idea:

1. You can build prestige as a team by winning tournaments and have your guild name displayed publicly.

2. Rewards for seasons can be given out to the active PvPers in the top few guilds, instead of just blanket rewarding the top 250. (This opens up a whole list of easy-to-implement guild-wide rewards.) Or perhaps you could add a ‘PvP roster’ to each guild (similar to the current rank structure) that is limited to a small, finite # of players. Then only those on the PvP roster would get the season rewards and it would prevent guild invite selling.

[Thought: Maybe the MMR of those few players one the PvP roster (no more than 10-15) would be averaged to determine the guild MMR/leaderboard rank?]

3. People will have more incentive to play on a team instead of worrying about their individual rank.

4. You can go and play ranked matches with your friends who don’t PvP as much. This is done by creating a smurf guild/team. As a result, you don’t have to worry about ruining your rating by playing matches you aren’t taking as seriously.

5. It reduces individual egos, and promotes guild pride. (Yes I know that it may cause some elitism by ‘being in the top guild’ but the current leaderboards already seem to do that anyway.)

Thoughts?

style.6173:

@OP:

It doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people enjoyed solo queue and the solo rankings. A combined leaderboard makes zero sense.

Also, I’m hoping that the matchmaking is working itself out. Right now it is horrendous. Embarrassing to put it nicely.

Fair enough. But I can’t imagine why anyone would miss solo q leaderboards that much, considering how much drama they caused without actual show of skill.

A combined leaderboard, although not always balanced, is very similar to as if someone just formed a PuG and played ranked matches. Many other competitive games out there are like that.

But thats also why I have always felt that leaderboards should be guild/team based, and not individual. But thats another thread.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Solo people that just wanna play a couple of matches, should not have to suffer boredom and arenas filled up with wanna be elitists facerolling each match.

Why is that limited to ranked matches though? Why does everyone feel the need to join ranked matches by themselves and expect anything different than the outcome of pre made vs solo.

Besides, the queue times for unranked are super short, and if you’re only playing solo, then you’re likely pretty casual anyways.

Kako.1930:

Do you get the same amount of rank points/points toward the reward track for unranked matches though? Just curious…

I was under the impression that you did. But I’m not sure!

Play unranked arenas. They are LITERALLY exactly like solo q, except you don’t have leaderboards.

If you want to play by yourself and be paired up with randoms, then you should just play unranked matches. If you run into a full pre made in unranked (however extremely unlikely) YOU WONT LOSE ANYTHING FOR IT. I don’t get what the big fuss is over.

No one even cared about the solo queue leaderboards anyways. What does it actually show? You had a win streak because you were lucky to get a good team comp? You avoided 4v5s? Solo queue DOES NOT need a leaderboard.

If you’re going to join ranked matches solo, then you should be prepared to lose and not complain that you didn’t face other solo q’ers. Because ranked arenas were designed for TEAMS, not solo q.

Its like people joining competitive ranked matches in GW1 Guild vs. Guild with a PuG but only wanting/expecting to face other PuG’s. ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Does this mean that if you end up facing players from the top of the leaderboards, you have a lot more to gain than to lose? Or vice versa; if you’re at the top, you can’t gain much but you can lose a lot?

It was always fun to see a GW1 match where the underdog won, boosting their potential, but really hurting the top team’s ladder rank.

Additionally, are you going to show ladder points on the leaderboard, or before/after games on a pop up? Similar to GW1, we could see the opposing guild’s name and rating. It would be nice to see the other team’s average rating before or after a game to know what we’re up against!

“We can’t peel for you because some of us are 2v4 on point.”

looks at point on map……Outnumbering opponents 3v2 owait.

“But dooood i waz gifing u lyke 2k heal vry 2 secendz.”

outside of range of empowering might lel

Too funny.

#toxiccommunity

Yeah, for sure Jebro! I love them both Its really a matter of play style preference.

Joonks.7501:

musu.9205:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma
It’s free lyssa rune within 35s cd when untraited on a class which highly counters mesmer .
why this is reasonable ?

I wish people would stop saying “thief counters mesmer.” That’s simply not true. No one profession counters any other in this game. What you meant to say was “this specific thief build is very effective against this specific mesmer build.”

If you’re having problems against thieves, then consider changing your build to be effective against them. Of course that might lower your effectiveness in other areas, but that’s the trade off.

Lol. Thieves counter mesmers EASILY, and in my opinion, they’re the hard counter to them. A lot of mesmer skills require a target to be used, so many skills can’t be used while a thief is stealthed.

There are plenty of counters built into the class. If a thief runs d/d then they can just CnD on the clones. They have so many ways avoiding a mesmer’s damage too. Along with this, their short bow auto attack bounces off the clones, giving them extra hits and killing the mesmer’s shatter damage. Most good thieves can beat a mesmer by using short bow 90% of the time.

Really the only chance a GOOD mesmer has vs a GOOD thief is if they predict their backstabs/ cluster bomb bursts using distortion or blurred frenzy, or if they somehow catch a thief (who has plenty of evades) with a full shatter.

Thief in the past has PREVENTED teams from running a mesmer, because thieves counter most glass cannons, especially mes. And yes, i’m talking about glass cannon mes and glass cannon thief, because those are the only viable builds they have in high level play.

CI is ridiculously good. Don’t let CS tempt you, CI puts so much more pressure on the enemy especially with the mantra interrupt.

Most people will instantly use stun breaks when they get interrupted, but that doesn’t really help them if they’re immob’d because they still can’t dodge. Use CI to set up phantasm hits and shatters and you’re golden.

If you have halting strike equipped, interrupt one of their key skills, and then use phantasmal zerker, you can do a total of like 7-8k damage easily from TWO cool downs. Or if you use pistol, magic bullet them after casting your duelist. You can really do a lot of damage with bountiful interruption, strength runes, and halting strike.

A couple of these may be slightly more difficult to implement, but here it goes:

1. Maybe if they could change the score board to reflect how much you helped your team instead of having a meaningless personal score.

Things that they could do:

- Add in a kill/ death counter (which could be for individuals or entire teams e.g. LoL or DotA)

- Damage dealt/ Damage received to let people know what they need to work on.

2. Somehow allow people to vote for players who they think contributed the most and give these players extra rewards. (Not sure how this one would turn out, but I think it would prevent a lot of trolling/ arguments and make people want to play well and improve!)

3. Prevent more than double class stacking in solo queues (you cannot have more than two of the same profession on each team.) Because lets face it, it gets pretty annoying fighting 4 Hambows (insert meta build here) every game. Even if it caused longer queue times for the people playing these classes (which it shouldn’t unless a class is REALLY REALLY overplayed/ op.) I think this would encourage people to branch out and try something new.

First off, I would just like to say that I completely agree with Ender.

I believe ArenaNet needs to promote more balanced builds; not ones that turtle around holding nodes, not ones that do insane burst, and not ridiculously tanky ones.

They need to place more focus on rolls that require sacrifice to attain effectiveness. Currently, specs like Hambow warrior sacrifice very little to gain A LOT. (I think a lot of this has to do with the way might stacking works, and how it gives classes access to both condi and power.)

Unfortunately, I feel like some of the combat mechanics allow players to run more forgiving builds that are still highly effective in the upper tiers of PvP (not to say that these teams couldn’t play with a high risk build at a high level).

I believe that there is a very serious issue with how risk is rewarded in this game. Players who are running more glassy builds have their potential reward taken away when extremely tanky builds can put out as much or more pressure on them in return. The whole strategy of a bursty comp is to be able to put pressure on the other team to kill them quickly. But that strategy is negated by some of the builds we have today because they do not require sacrificing defense.

I think a lot of these issues are rooted in the Conquest game mode.

Just my 2 cents.

Try using lyssa runes! They work pretty well as a mesmer because you can get a full condition cleanse by using your elite. Also, they will sometimes randomly proc protection or regen when you heal which can be really nice.

You could also look at a number of other rune sets, but honestly you should be fine with what you have.

I don’t mind it being exclusive. There are plenty of things in PvE that are exclusive that PvPers now cannot get.

It is just slightly unfortunate that they had to remove glory so early.

This update looks fantastic for upping the amount of people in the sPvP community and improving the quality of life/ rewards of PvP.

Now that sPvP rewards will be better, I think the next step is to look into developing a better environment for hardcore players. I think that we desperately need a Guild Ladder that displays TEAM names, with monthly tournaments. Just like in Guild Wars 1.

I think that end game PvP should be building guild prestige through monthly tournaments and the Guild Ladder. With more people in the community, it should be much more competitive than it is now.

somsom.5201:

jcbroe.4329:

So let me get this straight.

Players who have been playing the game and winning gold from PvP should have the resources to be able to purchase any new traits and the intellect and experience to know whether or not any build they would want to play will even need the trait.

New players will log in, see that there is some sort of progression to be able to use everything, and psychologically be encouraged to play a few hotjoins to earn the resources to unlock the traits and experiment with them so that instead of logging in, seeing everything unlocked and ready to go, and then immediately queuing into Solo Que or even Team Que, they are encouraged to and feel as though they need to play a few games to unlock everything they are going to want to use, while gaining more experience in the process, and therefore aren’t queuing into a game and potentially hindering a more competitive game mode.

It seems like this should be everything that the competitive community has been asking for, discouraging new players from “ruining” more competitive game modes through some sort of need to make it through an introductory phase of PvP, while players who currently have experience should have all the resources they need to continue to play the game completely unhindered.

It’s the same model that many video games that are successful have implemented and the outrage against it seems completely unjustified. Yes, sometimes companies have to change their business models, and if that’s what’s bugging you, then tough, but it’s something that needs to happen sometimes in order for a company to be more successful.

If anything, this will make it WORSE, as new players won’t have access to those traits, which further puts them into a position of lower standing/obvious “new player”-ness. You’d think ANet would want to DECREASE the hateorade around here, but nope, they go and make it even worse.

I’m not sure you understand. I can think of several games that use this model and it works perfectly. If you are a new player and expect everything to be handed to you, then you are atypical. Part of the fun of being new is unlocking things and testing out builds. It gives a sense of accomplishment when you unlock things and learn trait combinations when you first start playing.

jcbroe.4329:

So let me get this straight.

Players who have been playing the game and winning gold from PvP should have the resources to be able to purchase any new traits and the intellect and experience to know whether or not any build they would want to play will even need the trait.

New players will log in, see that there is some sort of progression to be able to use everything, and psychologically be encouraged to play a few hotjoins to earn the resources to unlock the traits and experiment with them so that instead of logging in, seeing everything unlocked and ready to go, and then immediately queuing into Solo Que or even Team Que, they are encouraged to and feel as though they need to play a few games to unlock everything they are going to want to use, while gaining more experience in the process, and therefore aren’t queuing into a game and potentially hindering a more competitive game mode.

It seems like this should be everything that the competitive community has been asking for, discouraging new players from “ruining” more competitive game modes through some sort of need to make it through an introductory phase of PvP, while players who currently have experience should have all the resources they need to continue to play the game completely unhindered.

It’s the same model that many video games that are successful have implemented and the outrage against it seems completely unjustified. Yes, sometimes companies have to change their business models, and if that’s what’s bugging you, then tough, but it’s something that needs to happen sometimes in order for a company to be more successful.

+1 Perfect post, couldn’t say it any better.

Also to clear up all of the misconceptions. ArenaNet already said you can buy these new traits with GOLD which you should have plenty of with the new reward system.

The more traits that they add, the more build diversity.

Also, adding traits that buff skilled play is nice too. See the new Mesmer GM for an example.

It doesn’t matter as much if an OP build arises if they make the truly optimal builds require more skill.

isolatedchimp.2510:

Elegant Avenger.8042:

I actually don’t mind having to unlock new traits USING A CURRENCY THAT IS OBTAINABLE THROUGH PvP.

This is not the same as when they added the healing skills that required skill points. I definitely disagreed with that. But you won’t even have to play PvE to unlock these new traits because PvP will reward gold. This honestly won’t even be a big inconvenience to anyone who takes PvP seriously after the first day.

When I first began playing GW1, it was exciting to unlock new skills using Balthazar Faction. So in this aspect I completely agree with Arenanet. I know it may seem like a pain to older players, but trust me when I say it is way better for newer players. In the end, this actually benefits everyone, because newer players won’t have as much stuff thrown at them. And I repeat this is nothing like the healing skills that cost SKILL POINTS.

Are we really crying over a few gold when this type of system improves the progression for players who are new? Seems like people are complaining about not getting instant gratification at the sacrifice of forming a better community long term.

TL;DR

This really won’t have much effect on veteran players because they should easily afford them. But it will allow better progression for new players which will improve the transition and also grow the community.

You forget that characters created after the patch will have to obtain those traits. Meaning that a “vet” player making a new character (which so many of us do since we have limited slots) will have to grind for those traits since they are character bound. So your argument that having limited number of traits helping the new player doesn’t apply in this situation. I’m not even sure it even really applies to the new player either since they would still be clueless but with even more of a limited selection.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say this would make ANET more money because we’d have to buy more character slots since we can’t create and recreate characters in a single slot anymore. The more sensible side of me thinks they didn’t create this new system just to sell slots but rather that it was a nice side effect.

If ANET really felt that progression was needed in PVP, there are far better ways of doing it. And they wouldn’t have wanted to delete ranks in the first place. Sure, I can live with having to unlock traits for now, but when I decide to take a break later on and then come back and find that I have to unlock other stuff (which you know they WILL add because what’s the point of progression if there isn’t more of it later) then I’ll just get discouraged at how behind I am and probably just won’t bother.

They just said that all of the current traits will be immediately unlocked by all PvP players and new characters. You will only have to buy the second grandmaster traits if you make a new PvP character after the new patch.

But do you REALLY re-roll that much? I’m a very experienced player, and I only re-roll an account every few weeks. I keep 3-4 characters the same professions. If you actually play all 8 professions with regularity, then thats great.

Having said that, the ideal situation would be that you only have to unlock them once per account, which would allow for new player progression, but also make it easier on veterans who want to re-roll.

I actually don’t mind having to unlock new traits USING A CURRENCY THAT IS OBTAINABLE THROUGH PvP.

This is not the same as when they added the healing skills that required skill points. I definitely disagreed with that. But you won’t even have to play PvE to unlock these new traits because PvP will reward gold. This honestly won’t even be a big inconvenience to anyone who takes PvP seriously after the first day.

When I first began playing GW1, it was exciting to unlock new skills using Balthazar Faction. So in this aspect I completely agree with Arenanet. I know it may seem like a pain to older players, but trust me when I say it is way better for newer players. In the end, this actually benefits everyone, because newer players won’t have as much stuff thrown at them. And I repeat this is nothing like the healing skills that cost SKILL POINTS.

Are we really crying over a few gold when this type of system improves the progression for players who are new? Seems like people are complaining about not getting instant gratification at the sacrifice of forming a better community long term.

TL;DR

This really won’t have much effect on veteran players because they should easily afford them. But it will allow better progression for new players which will improve the transition and also grow the community.

Now I know game development takes a long time, but aren’t there changes that can be made in a better time frame? For instance, certain skills/ runes that are bugged or obviously over powered.

Why can’t we get hot fixes? I know all you’re going to say is “it isn’t as easy as just changing a couple of numbers.” But to me that is a lame excuse. Making skills work the way they were intended shouldn’t be a difficult process.

Additionally, it just seems to me like PvErs get constant updates with awesome rewards, but PvPrs rarely get feature updates with little to NO rewards. Why is this? I feel like PvP is WAY overdue for a good update with good content. I’m not just talking skill balance.

Why didn’t you guys copy Guild Wars 1’s guild system with an actual TEAM ladder (a ladder that shows your team’s name and not individuals to promote guild prestige)? Why didn’t you guys copy the monthly tournament design? Why did you have to implement a boring game mode when you had an e-sport quality game mode in GW1 GvG? I feel like Arenanet just tried to fix what wasn’t broken. Right now there is literally zero reason to continue playing PvP except for goofing around with friends.

Listen, I know it isn’t easy to develop things quickly, but can’t there be updates that come in a timely manner? We shouldn’t have to wait in a stale meta for 4 months just to get a few small skill tweaks.

Anyways, thats just my 2 cents. I’m not trying to rant or anything. I just think this game had so much potential for being competitive but it was blown by not having fundamentals in the game at launch. Now the community is all but dead.

Awesome video and well played! I really liked all of the different aspects of your video and how you showed fights where you actually lost, because lets face it, we don’t always win.

One thing I noticed was that sometimes you could have cleansed way earlier with Contemplation of Purity. In some fights you probably could have avoided a few thousand damage from conditions if you watched your cleanses a little closer. Removing conditions at the right time will definitely help you up your game even more!

Aside from that, I really enjoyed your video! Keep making more

style.6173:

GvG in PvP is too basic. There is not enough strategy with the limited number of players on a team and equipment choices.

GvG in WvW is much more fun when you do a 15v15 or 20v20. It adds a whole different level of strategy.

You said that GvG in PvP does not require enough strategy, but Irene just explained the complex nature of GvG (similar to how it was in GW1). 15v15 and 20v20 are good for WvW guild battles, but DO NOT have the potential to be e sports. The skill cap to play well with a WvW guild in a guild battle is not that high.

The coordination between 5-6 people needing to counter the other team is much more strategic and hard to pull off. I realize that WvW GvG takes a lot of logistical coordination, but timing blast finishers and staying together really isn’t that challenging. I’ve also already explained that GvG in WvW is almost impossible to watch. Besides, the point of this thread wasn’t to try to get rid of WvW GvG, so maybe we should keep it on topic.

Jinx.7258:

The individual skills matter to the outcome of the fight. If players are failing to do what their meant to do in the group fight,everyone suffers from that. Its not only about healing or blasting fields but how everyone is position,rotating skills and following commands. Everyone’s individual skills give the final outcome of how skilled certain group of players is, this is where you cannot be carried by the rest coz if you keep dying stupidly, you’ll keep making your allies ressing you and potential get them killed or simply ress your enemies.

GvGs have more LIVE viwers on the set than any stream of spvp tournament has on twitch. Believe it or not, many players/guilds are being asked (politely) to leave the map so the GvG-ing guilds can have all their needed members on the map. And the visibility in big fights is one of the very main issues why this game mode, GvG, isnt going anywhere and shows the lack of support. On the other hand, everyone who is aware how GvG fights work can have quite a good overview and thus shoutcast and comment on a GvG fight (Im not making this up,its already being done) if spectating someone (for instance, watching stream)

The beuaty of the GvG fights is that they last long and the coordination between the players make the difference in the choke moments. Not sure if you aware of this but nowadays GvG guilds have 4-5 players that are running solo-target builds and are in seperate group with the goal to nuke down those spliting or make them split. Creating troubles for many trying to position or live over for few seconds on low HP. One of viable traits of the GvG guilds. Just to add that simple 10v10 on Foefire can last for ~10 mins with quite some epics moves on both sides.

More thought are being put into preparing for ANY GvG than spvpers preparing for conquest match. I woudnt say the diversity in the builds is that big tho.

My 2c.

Ok I can respect that. I mean, I’m not trying to take anything away from big guild fights. It is just that GvG has always kind of been Guild Wars’ “thing” in a sense. The specific form of GvG in GW1 is what made the game great. I can totally see how those WvW battles are fun. They’re just too difficult to follow (not because I’m lacking experience, but because it isn’t a spectating sport), making it hard to track the good plays and clutch moments.

Smaller group GvG was like GW1’s best aspect, and unfortunately they didn’t carry it over. So understand that it is hard for some of us veteran players to accept what WvW’ers call GvG because it is completely different than what it was in GW1.

I’m sure there are parts of WvW GvG that take skill, but GvG in GW1 was like its legacy. I would love if Arenanet introduced this game mode, but continued to support the WvW community and their form of “GvG”.

Coming from a Mesmer, nerf PU and mindless Phantasm spam. It isn’t fun for anyone. (I don’t know how either of these work in PvE, but in sPvP and WvW they are a problem)

Then buff or don’t change the highly active builds like Lockdown and Shatter.

I don’t know about other Mesmers, but I get tired of people always assuming you’re playing PU. It is a stupidly easy build and highly effective. It gives the rest of us a bad name, and therefore needs a nerf.

The end game in sPvP is to get better than everyone else. Master your class and become an expert in this game’s combat.

Then you can take that skill to PvE and WvW, and suddenly everything becomes easier. And in WvW, you will be able to beat most people and sometimes win 1vX’s

LotuS.4378:

Im not sure why people want to make GvG in sPvP with system of 6v6. This is quite boring, still in fact 6v6 is more like self skill insted of group skill. GvG that is on going in WvW (15vs15 / 20v20 ) is much better for watch, of course maybe for spvp fanboys is zergs, but still require much more teamplay from guild, fight is much faster, and there is at least 100+ active guilds who want to practicipe on it.

sPvP stats on 6v6 in most cases making you to have most of builds on zerk, so even if you have 6 classes, and you can double it, its quite boring, since there will be all the time the same tactic,strategy,setup. In WvW GvG you can have much more rotaction on classes, and more builds that are viable for that. Ofc on e-delusion sport, WvW GvG dont have a chance, but STILL any GvG on twitch.tv in WvW have much more audience that any spvp gvg/tournament.

Anyway haters, come hit me. Play your GvG spvp 6v6 which is boring as hell, and yes i was watching one of this GvG 6v6 – after 30 sec it makes me wanna quite this game – same setup, same tactic, everything was the same (even builds) lol

btw i spend 80% time on WvW, playing like 2-3 games spvp per 2 days, and im (or was yesterday) 12 on ranking. Im spvp god? populaction of spvp is that small, or that bad.

Sorry but I’ve played in coordinated WvW groups and although it takes group wide coordination, it is difficult for ANYONE to see individual skill, which is why it doesn’t get taken as seriously as it could.

And I completely disagree with you that WvW GvG is fun to watch. Its obviously a zerg fest. You can’t call out any big plays except “Now they’re stacking might, now they’re pushing, now they’re blast combo-ing, oh look we have a downed body.” I don’t know if you have ever seen a proper GvG in GW1, but they were amazing to watch. Seeing teams split up and push for the lord, last minute ganks in the Lord pit, and slowly beating up the other team into submission were really fun tactics to watch.

Now, to the OP, I think GvG could work in sPvP. Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t ever implement GvG to begin with. It DOES work with the system because fights between good players can last longer than Arenanet thinks (see the 2v2 tournaments casted by blu.) Additionally, it’d take way more complex team coordination when it comes to splitting and trying to be more aggressive than your opponent.

And as you said, it would promote players making more builds and branching out from bunker/condi point spam. Professions get quite a bit less spammy when you spread them out and encourage small fights and team pushes. They are no longer fighting over a small point, they are fighting to gain map control and push the enemy back into their base. This takes way more thought and coordination between teammates than the current conquest mode.

This thread deserves more attention, great post.

Swagg.9236:

PowerBottom.5796:

So? GW1 had tons of lame Teambuilds as well – it was part of the game.

If there’s no possibility of making insane Lamerbuilds like NecroSpike, IWAY, Rangespike and stuff like that, I think theres something missing. Yes; we all hated those builds in GW1 and being a Player that always wanted to win “the right way”, I’ve almost pulled out my hair a couple of times cuz of those builds; but it made the Meta interesting and forced ppl to be creative and come up with new strategies etc.

• In GW1, degen alone wasn’t necessarily a viable way to kill an opponent most of the time (either via hexes, conditions or a combination of the two).
• In GW1, there weren’t instant-activation passive procs everywhere. Players could actually see everything happening and triggering.
• In GW1, we had the “holy trinity” to deal with gimmicky spike team compositions like R-spike or even condition spam. IWAY and SWAY were nerfed. Necroway was sort of bandaid-nerfed with that weird update to protection prayers (although, that took ages). The reason R-spike stayed around for so long was because it was more fair than the others. R-spike required line-of-sight, it could be mitigated through protection prayers and blocks, and it also had a distinct cool-down on the spike around which the opposing team could play. There really wasn’t anything anyone could do most of the time against the other three gimmick comps. That’s the trick: in GW1, you actually had to land spells/attacks consistently and in a timely fashion in order to bring down an opponent.

• GW2 doesn’t have the “holy trinity” to deal with skills/skill spam that not only deals damage but that may also render an opponent helpless to either defend or retaliate with damage.
• The current GW2 condition-meta promotes mindless, ranged skill-spam that front-loads conditions onto low-recharge, fast-activating throwaway skills and rewards the condition player for spamming skills and then running around while auto-attacking for the rest of the encounter. Since there’s no one to remove conditions for you and condition players get conditions for free almost instantly and on incredibly short cool-downs, it just burns players out far more effectively than if the condition player just invested into power.

GW2 has made power less effective than condition damage. By doing so, ANet has undermined the usefulness of dodging, positioning and timing that was supposed to be the fundamental base of GW2 combat.

ANet needs to make power-based damage king in GW2. It’s the only way to heal this game’s pvp as it stands right now.

This.

Have you noticed that when people are playing high power builds, you actually have to be creative and outplay each other? As opposed to mindlessly spamming AI and conditions that don’t really require any timing.

Direct damage has a much higher risk/reward ratio. The problem is, Arenanet has not implemented enough risk with numerous builds.

In my opinion, players should have to make quick decisions, or face the consequences and NOT get consistently bailed out by crutches and cheesy mechanics that require little or no thought.

I completely agree with this thread, and was planning on mentioning a possible 3v3 or 2v2 game type had you not posted it prior.

I would like to say, however, that I think 3v3 is more ideal than 2v2 for arenas. This is because once someone is downed in a 2v2, there isn’t much the other person can do except for try to res. In a 3v3, you could have someone CCing and another rezzing, which I believe would promote much more coordinated gameplay.

Additionally, I think with 3 people you can develop more complex builds and really start giving each person a role. In my opinion, 3 people can build off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses better than 2.

I’d also like to add that they could totally put this in as a hotjoin mechanic, but they would also need to make it a competitive tournament game type where teams can pick their players.

I’ve always believed that when it comes to gw2 pvp, all of the big plays happen on a more personal level. If Arenanet could implement this game type, we could really start to see some highly competitive teams come forth and possibly have “GvG”.

I would highly recommend hydromancy or one of the other sigils that does damage on weapon swap. I consistently crit for 3-4k on my zerker guardian, so I think these sigils are overlooked when it comes to the damage they do.

They probably aren’t the best for pve though. I was thinking in terms of WvW or sPvP.

100% agree. This sounds 1000x better than what we have. It would actually promote good play by smaller groups of people. The only problem I see is huge guilds forming and killing everyone. But then again, 20 good players can destroy a zerg, and a big guild cant be everywhere at once.

I’m not trying to troll. It’s just my opinion. I realize that these fights take some coordination, but it seems more like a hive mind fight. I can respect that, it looks fun.

But it is kind of a slap to the face for all of the highly coordinated PvP GUILDS who face each other in tournaments. To me, that is what GvG is. I don’t think chasing around a guy shouting directions into his mic can really be considered GvG.

GvG already exists in sPvP lol. What I see in these videos is more like zerg vs zerg spamming skills on your opponents.

I don’t know if anyone can REALLY tell what exactly is going on in these fights. It seems like it is stick with the swarm and auto attack as much as possible.

GvG should be highly coordinated group of a few players in my opinion. And I agree with someone who posted earlier about how Guild Wars 1 did GvG. I don’t know if you can really call this guild vs guild because guilds already face each other in sPvP, and they are WAY more coordinated than this.

On that note, I think they need to have a Guild leader board so you can keep track of who wins matches. But it should be smaller groups of players. Not 20 vs 20 where no one can actually make distinct plays on purpose.

Daecollo.9578:

Zenith.7301:

Daecollo.9578:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The big problem with the OP’s suggestion is that it is trying to get rid of everything that makes conditions worth using in the first place. Not to mention that conditions already necessitate precision for procs, and also necessitate toughness and vitality to survive long enough to take effect.

Not true, a condition player can still kite/use his conditions to keep people away from him. He does not need to melee to deal good damage.

What a lie lol.

You can’t kite a half decent thief/warrior. They have way more gap closers and cripples than you have gap openers.

mace/shield+greatsword warrior can just ride the necro 24/7 until the necro dies. It’s a total lockdown.

LOLOLOLOLOL………

I am suprised you could type that with a straight face.

Looks like you never heard of chill

Last time I checked, chill was a very short duration, long cool down condition. Melee classes wont have long term difficulties against chill because of their condi removal. Plus it isn’t even hard to train someone as a thief or warrior when you’re stun locking them like crazy.