Guild Wars 2

Look, we all have that one class that makes us want to tear our hair out. That ONE class that ruins an otherwise perfectly enjoyable game mode. Some dislike Burn Guard. Others dislike Condi Thief. Others dislike Condi Mesmer. The point is, when I que up into a ranked match, I want to know what the enemy team is queing in as. I want to see a basic set of symbols to let me know what cancerous meta builds devoid of enjoyment and fun I’ll face. 3 Mesmers and 2 guards on the enemy team? Sweet! I’ll just dodge the que, take the dishonor and save my entire team from a frustrating mess of garbage. I would willingly lose rank to avoid these relatively rare and soul crushing matchups.

Something else we could use? The information that spectators get. When i spectator a game, I can click someone’s name and a little icon pops up. If I press it, I can see what ammy, runes, traits and weapons the player has on. Why isn’t this knowledge visible to ranked players? If the enemy is running 4 condi reapers, shouldn’t I be allowed to know that and swap an ability or two for added cleanse? In an enviroment where trying hard and winning matters, why am I prevented from knowing what I need to know to tweak my build to get the most out of my character, skill and knowledge?

Anet. If you have no plans to deal with this condition meta, at least toss your players a bone and let us know when to go all in on condi cleanse. It’s frustrating to fight some of these brainless condition builds with little knowledge before the battle starts and we can no longer swap ANYTHING. Some matches become unwinnable because I don’t have enough stability/cleanse/stunbreaks to deal with their team. If I can’t even stand on the point, how am I supposed to stop them from taking it? If I happen to see two warriors, chances are I’ll want to take another stun break or stability to deal with their cc spam. BUT OH WAIT! It’s a set of CONDI warriors! Now my stun breaks are worthless and my condition cleanse is lower than normal, making me an EASY kill. OH? What’s that? They have two thieves and I’m on my Ele? Naturally, I’d want to take something to save myself from getting oneshot by a power thief! BUT OH WAIT! It’s a set of CONDI thieves! Now my abilities/traits that reduce physical damage are LITERALLY WORTHLESS.

You seeing how the lack of information can make this frustrating meta even worse? NOT knowing is horrible. It does two things to the meta: 1) It makes everyone run builds that can do a little of everything. 2) It discourages builds with any flaws that could otherwise shine if the player knew they wouldn’t have to worry about XYZ.

Hot Boy.7138:

I think they should make certain amulets available per class.
For example, not every amulet is OPed on every class. I believe this would increase more diversity instead of just banning a certain amulet that is too strong on one class from an entire game mode.

I like this idea. If done well, it could address the issues of some classes having easy access to both types of damage on one ability (Mesmer Shatters, for example)

I don’t think the concept of having abilities that do their damage over time being a BAD thing. It’s, in most cases, no different than abilities that frontload their damage and provide different ways to dps. So why is this an issue for PvP?

Several reasons. Some of them are circumstantial, while others are unintended side effects of the debuff removal system. So let me explain why these all weave together to make some the most frustrating moments in sPvP:

The debuff system worked fine in PvE. It was DESIGNED for PvE from the beginning, so little surprise there. It removes debuffs in the order that you would optimally want them removed in most situations for PvE. The problems became more obvious during HoT: the system ignores intensity and duration. It removes in order of what it considers “problematic”. This means, if you have 900 stacks of poison lasting 5 minutes each and a stunned debuff, the system views the stun as worse. This is obviously problematic against monsters who apply a lot of damage through conditions and soft cc at the same time, but the massive problem becomes present in PvP. Because the system IGNORES severity, classes that can apply a wide range of different debuffs quickly and spread out their damage this way tend to be the problem makers. Why? Some classes struggle to get access to debuff removal, and this removal can sometimes cleanse the soft cc that isn’t even the thing killing them.
tl;dr: Condition Removal becomes mandatory, but not necessarily useful. It becomes less of a temporary answer and more of possible answer. It removes build diversity and forces specific play options.
Suggested Fix: All Utility skills need to remove at least 1 stack of conditions OR have vastly reduced cooldowns to make them worthwhile options to pick over condition removal.

Situational Problems. These are more class specific, but also extend to conditions as a whole and the current set of amulets available to players in sPvP that perpetuate this absurd issue.
Issue 1: No stat reduces the damage of conditions outside of food buffs or rune set effects. This means, unlike physical damage, condition damage will deal unmitigated damage to most targets. If we assume conditions and physical skills end with roughly the same damage over time as physical skills, this makes conditions the vastly better option.
Issue 2: Amulet Choice. I’ve watched metas rise and fall, but I can safely say HoTs is one of the most imbalanced in terms of stat choice. The range of amulets is small. Bunker Amulets are gone. Toughness is an increasingly rare stat. So why is this an issue? Expertise being combined with powerful, synergystic stats. Viper is the biggest offender of any amulet meta I have ever seen. The player gains physical damage, physical crit chance, condition damage and an increase to the duration of those conditions, which increases damage. This opens up builds that have both high physical burst AND high condition burst, which vastly narrows the amount of counterplay to these builds. A Warrior running 20 seconds of resistance, passive Ignore Pain AND active Ignore Pain can still be bursted down by a CONDITION Mesmer/Thief/Guard. Why? The Condi guard can drop one of the more powerful DH power traps in and their natural burn rotation will force the enemy to either avoid taking massive damage from the trap and run from the guard, or try and fight a class based around massive survival and burst damage in their rings of death. Much like the Cele Amulet meta, the Viper amulet simply needs to be removed. It gives too much power with too little drawback. It allows players to exploit the unmitigated condition damage AND use power skills to make their bursts far worse than they should be. I don’t mind a class that builds for different forms of damage. However, those damage types should be EXCLUSIVE. If you want to use conditions as your primary source of damage, you should be restricted to using ONLY conditions for your damage.
Issue 3: Another post has addressed this, but simultaneous abilities have also led to the current condition-focused meta in sPvP. Being able to both stab an enemy for a large chunk of physical damage while they’re sitting in a field that pulses damaging conditions WHILE applying conditions from your attacks and other sources of damage all at ONCE is making this feel worse.
Issue 4: Condition Chronomancer and Condition Daredevil. These two stand out above the rest, at least for me, as the most frustrating classes to fight. Can they be killed? Sure. So can a bunker elementalist with a constant 25 stacks of might and a cele amulet. That doesn’t make it FUN. Chronomancer is a waiting game. You have to WAIT for them to stop blocking/being invulnerable/evading to hit them. It’s like whack-a-mole, except the entire time their illusions and phantasms are unloading conditions all over your face. If you turn to ignore the mesmer and kill their illusions, the mesmer can simply shatter them, doing a high spike of physical damage AND condition damage. The Thief? You’ll be lucky to hit it. The Condition Thief will apply a wide range of conditions, making removal difficult, while evading the entire time. With the recent changes to sword, it is now nigh-impossible to kite a thief.

Tl;Dr? Viper Amulet needs to be removed. Changes to the Condition Cleanse mechanics (at LEAST in PvP) and various slight nerfs to classes would be wonderful. Having Chronomancer’s block stop after a few hits, etc. I would love to hear some of your own (reasonable) ideas for changes.

I’m tired of waiting for Anet to balance PvP. It’s not going to happen. Chronomancer by itself, with its 30 seconds of endless blocking/invul/reset/invul/blocking/evade/teleport/blocking/invul/evade/blocking, MORE than proved that. So I propose a simple solution:
Let me blacklist a class I don’t want to see. Let me go into a game KNOWING I won’t have to see the class that makes my veins boil like molten magma and flat out ruins the entire experience for me. I would HAPPILY accept a kittening 40 minute que if it means I can play a game that I enjoy.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this desire. Ranked doesn’t have to be a cesspool of pain, suffering and metabuilds. But it is. So let me block the one I hate the most. I would happily sink 1k dollars for this feature.
OR
Invent a draft mode, similar to MOBAs. One class will be banned by each team, then the player is allowed to pick their characters one after the other. This would not only VASTLY improve matches in general (Giving each team time to convene, talk about a plan and possible comps) and unite the players in a way that matchmaking currently doesn’t. Right now? You’re tossed into a RANKED match, a gamemode where teamwork matters, with a minute to prepare and plan. A SINGLE minute.

Also, PS. There needs to be some sort of rank requirement to play Ranger in ranked. I swear half of them are bots with how horribly they play. Whoever gets the dumber ranger loses the game. What a fun system we have in place.

Multicasting is indeed a problem, but so are the conditions themeselves. Changing the professions can only do so much. If I could have my way, I would simply REMOVE damage from conditions and make them status ailments that had an impact on combat without doing damage. An example?
Poison: Prevents any and all sources of healing until it is removed.
Bleeding: Replace Crippled.
Conditions that IGNORE defensive stats will never work well with ANY combat system. Surprise Surprise, condi is roiling out of control in a defensive/stunbreak heavy meta.

Ignoring all else, BURNING as a debuff needs to be massively reworked, on both the damage and stacking side of things. For a debuff that does so much damage with just one stack, having it be able to reach upwards of 15 or more in plain stupidity no matter how you look at it. Either cap it like you do boon durations or remove it. This isn’t rocket science.

I’m not even going to WAIT for Blade and Soul to drop this kitten. GOOD BYE, Guild Wars 2. Not even kittening once could you do PvP right. It’s a joke. It truly, really is.

The Player Vs Player in this game is beyond a complete joke. Several class mechanics make little to no sense to begin with, and mesh horribly when put together with a mosh pit of chaos.

Invisibility in this game is boring, uncreative and plain annoying. Not only does striking the target NOT reveal them, but it interrupts the flow of combat due to the length of these invisible skills.

Mesmers. Whoever created this class has more than a few things wrong with their head. A class that has invisibility, every buff and debuff in the game, create images of themselves and STILL have damage on par if not better than most classes in both sustained AND burst situations? God, i wonder why structured PvP is flooded with Mesmers. Does it have something to do with the fact they’re flat out amazing and overshadow most classes? To test this theory, I went into a room with a level 1 Mesmer. Never played it before in my LIFE. No guides. Just me slamming my faceon the keys. The damage was obscene. I was unable to die. My healing, Evasive Skills and damage just flat outdid anything the enemy team had.

Thieves. They are in such a pathetic state it makes me laugh. Not only are they unable to kill any decent player in the game 1v1, they are amazingly easy to kill unless they abuse stealth to the max. Which, of course, makes them both a boring class to fight AND play. Not even in PvE is this class desired for anything outside BATTLE RESSURECTIONS. Every MMO in recent memory has UTTERLY failed at making a glass cannon stealth class that quickly kills enemies. They always fall into this useless spot of doing not enough damage AND still being easy to kill.

Rangers. Oh, GOD. This JOKE of a class. In addition to having the longest range out of any class in the game, they have little to no skill requirement and have the cliche pet STAPLED to your character. You can’t unsummon. You can’t even KILL IT. So, in keeping with the mindless Ai of your undying, immortal pet, you, too, as a ranger, are mindless when playing. Every button you press does damage. You just mash whatever comes off cooldown. There is no aiming. There is no damage falloff due to long ranges. There is NOTHING interesting about this class. If you’re tacking on a ranged character JUST to fill the role, you’re doing it wrong. And TRUST me, Anet did Rangers WRONG.

Elementalists. Oh JOY. The FUN part. I do have to wonder what Anet thought when they were making this piece of garbage. “Let’s give a class the ability to swap between amazing CC, Healing and Burst Damage on a very low cooldown. We’ll also give it amazing defensive and evasive abilities so fighting it becomes as annoying as fighting a Mesmer. But hey, they can only use ONE WEAPON, so it’s balanced, right? 4 Weapon Bars isn’t as OP as two! … Wait?” Pro PvP teams have anywhere from 2 to 3 of these god kitten things. They’re a kittenING REQUIREMENT for a PvP team because of how absurdly strong they are. They have HUGE AoEs, HIGH burst and are HARD TO KILL. OH, don’t worry! They have a key weakness! COOLDOWNS. You know, THE SAME AS EVERY OTHER CLASS IN THE GAME. I also heard they have another weakness: When they lose all their HP, it is rumored that they die. Don’t take my word for that though.

Am I the only one getting tired of being forced into one of two builds for PvP as a Thief? The MAJORITY of our utility skills are completely unused. For a class as dependent on timing and quick wit to survive as a Thief, their playstyle options are… Really limited…

I have tried virtually every possible build for a thief imaginable and used a large amount of gold/time to test them. Dual Pistol Ricochet. Venom/Venom Share with all weapon combinations. TRAP THIEF (Was that ever even a thing?!). Even Signet Thief left much to be desired. Condition Damage is laughable and nigh pointless.

Refuge, Smoke Bomb and Shadow Step/Infiltrator’s Signet are so good it makes everything else obsolete and pointless to even consider. Stealth is unsurprisingly the king and main focus of Thieves, along with Steal.

My point is… Don’t Thieves, after being beaten with the nerf bat, have VERY few options left to them for viable builds? Thieves are supposed to be stealthy and tricky. Why don’t they feel that way? They feel like squishy, easy-to-predict cowards.

If any of you have managed to create something fun or outside-the-box that works, let me know. I’m starving for a new way to play my thief.

Since when was it not hard countered by a decent player? Almost every profession in the game has an EASY way to get us out of refuge, from Terror to plain bullkitten knockbacks.

I will say this about Mesmers. They are not “OP”, but they are the most obnoxious and annoying class in the game. Handsdown. Killing them is nightmarish and frustrating if they are good, and, they remind me too much of Phantom Lancer from Dota 2 for me to EVER like one. Something about having multiple copies of yourself doing damage while you kite is just an annoying class mechanic, not to mention how buggy the clones can get. I’ve popped stealth and run off, and the clones will just follow me in melee range half the time, even if they can’t see me. My stealth fades? Instantly, no matter where they are, are back on top of you. Forget juking or hiding from a Mesmer.

Case and point? New Players. How do you expect a new player to get into a game when they go up against a class like a Mesmer? They don’t know how to fight it, end up getting frustrated and, to be honest, don’t feel like it was fair. “There were so many of them! How do I win 4v1?!” I hate when games have classes like this. Sure, endgame when everyone knows what to do? Average class. At the lower levels? Not so much. Classes that have a LOT of utility tend to be a LOT stronger in the hands of a really good player who knows how to abuse it, and that’s exactly what Mesmers are. Look at WoW’s Frost Mage. Look at Tera’s Sorcerer. All of these have either high mobility, strong defensive buffs and/or lots of control and utility. And ALL of these classes are extremely strong duelists.

The problem is the utility, but in a game where EVERY class has something that makes them overpowered or “Imba”, it’s hard to balance a class without destroying what makes it unique. Because, let’s be honest, what makes most of these classes unique is also their strongest points. Guardians are impossible to kill. Warriors and their scary burst. Rogues and their one-shot combo. Hunters and their range. Eles and their, well, elements. The list goes on, but you get the point.

Moral of the story? Nerf Frost Mages.