Guild Wars 2

If you’re here for the competitiveness you’re in the right place. People are very competitive, already I’ve seen people discussing builds and theorycrafting the best setups. I’ve even seen people in heart of the mists discussing the merits of various sigils. SPVP queues are full up, tourneys are fairly quick (although there are some people that miss the ready button sometimes) and WvW seems to heat up every evening. Sir, if you were looking for the competitive spirit, I would think you could find it in any place designed for that spirit in Tyria.

Now, if you’re here for fairness and balance – you’re in the wrong place. You’re better off in a game of pong. That’s a statement taken to the extreme, not a troll. What I mean by that is, you don’t hear top athletes complaining about stuff being unfair. Mr. Pistorius, the illustrious paralympian, made a comment about the winner of a race he was in. How the person’s running blades were supposedly giving him an unfair advantage. What did he do next? He apologized because it was not in the spirit of the sport. A sport that is highly competitive I might add.

Before you jump the gun on saying that there’s arbiters and organizations that govern the fairness of the Games – let me preempt you in saying that in GW2 that’s ArenaNet. If they consider the state of the game “balanced enough” that’s what you’ll have to live with. If you want to win more, you play what’s most powerful. If you’re willing to lose more but have more comfort, you play what you like. That’s how PvP has worked, works and will continue to work.

Top players in Dota 2 and LoL have preferred roles / champs, but they don’t complain when they can’t play their top one. They simply play what’s the best for the situation, the team and the meta. As a result, you may see some HS spam players and some quickness spam. I’d suggest taking the OPness of that as a cue for you to see if those builds are worth persuing yourself. You can start a char and run one of these builds today if you wanted.

Everybody’s complaining about the sharks but seriously, they’re there for a reason. Without them, ruins would be a darn flickerswitch. It would force the fight to there because it’s so close to all of them. Frankly, the sharks help to emphasize that:

1) Ruins is important, though uncomfortable to attack. If you leave it, you’ll feed the enemy points because you couldn’t be bothered to get over yourself. If you take it early it helps a lot.
2) If the enemy is defending ruins, they’re down a couple guys. Any team fight is in your favour because you have your full team there. Take both ground objectives and get aggressive.

Frankly, the sharks aren’t that bad. I’ve had at least two matches where a decent ranger and me, guardian, took out the lot and still took the point from a defender. I can’t speak for skill but it’s entirely possible.

It’s a challenge, just like stealing the buffs in Forest of Niflhel. Rise to it and get aggressive.

Agreed, the downed state for Warriors for example is out of line with what other classes get. The same goes for thieves whose tele ability is on a short enough cooldown to be able to lengthen the process of killing them to the point where it’s common that reinforcements arrive … from the other side of the map. Meanwhile, guardians smile and get to bash enemies back once before they get smashed. Oh, and there’s the symbol heal thing, but that doesn’t come off cd until well after they’ve impaled you.

Not sure how these differences are supposed to encourage competitive play.