Guild Wars 2

Because Dota is a better game…
It has people actually working on it, unlike GW2 team which focuses mostly on PvE
it has better matchmaking
It has a higher skill ceiling and a lower skill floor
It carters to much bigger audience
It’s better balanced and has more build variety

Also:
It’s a moba made by valve, most people have never heard about GW2 PvP
It’s free (you can’t play GW2 PvP without HoT)
90% of hardcore PvP players don’t give a kitten about rewards
Also it does offer you a lot of rewards during the compendium times and most ppl who play more than 2-3 games a week buy these

Math is in one of replies
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Regarding-Toughness/first#post6635393

Decide for yourself

Matchmaking factors things (as least wiki page claims it does) such as dishonor, games played, profession and the amount of time you haven’t played the game. I suppose that skill rating is only around 70-80% of the equation.
Also there are like less than 1k people in plat playing daily. Not sure if even that. What can you expect from an algorithm designed for much larger playerbases?
Such things can be only expected, as sad as it may be ;/

Sure, Idk why but I’ve actually watched through most of your video :P.
You weren’t really doing any obviously bad stuff. You’re playing mechanically rather well (although I only have a few hours on meta rev) and being in right places on the map. Here are some notes:
- Not sure If I’m right but I feel like you were looking more at your cooldowns and UI than at what was actually going on. You were sometimes wasting your high damage skills on enemies with blocks up. When fighting most classes with high heal/sustain/evasion or block uptime you should generally be saving your nukes till right after they use their defensive abilities. I guess it comes with experience but try to pay as much attention to enemies as you can. Trust me, after a few dozen hours of play your brain knows the cooldowns very, very well.
-It also seems like you trust your team a little too little. 2v1ing at close against druid for over a minute might not be the smartest idea. Yeah, they will sometimes kitten up and lose 1v1 that they have no right to lose but on average it’s best to help your team somewhere else.
- Around min 9 you were fighting off point knowing that you’ll die. In that case just get on point and squeeze in a few extra points. Yeah, if your team is up and fighting kiting 2 people is more useful, but other than that do try to go down on a point.
-You were chasing that thief quite a lot. Well, if it doesn’t work for the first 3 times it is unlikely to work at all.
- please do fight on points. You have a tendency to chase a lot. If you’re sure you can finish smb off, sure, go for it. But only then!
- a little too much panic blocking/dodging when no attacks are coming at you and enemies have just used the high dmg skills. But we’re all very, very guilty of that. I feel like maybe 50 ppl are good enough not to do that…

Ok, that was a long rant. You’re playing mechanically well and seem to have a good idea of where is your team and what they are doing. Your rotations were really good and you know where to be to make a difference. All your misplays were minor and made maybe 20-30 point difference. I don’t feel like at that point you can really do significantly more.

Try dueling with UI off with a friend :P. Try forcing yourself to look at enemies more. If you have to stop for a second to choose a good target or spot an opening, sure. Consistent DPS is gonna get healed anyway. Focus on points a little bit more. That’s all I’ve got :P

Hopefully I haven’t spoken any heresies against common Forum’s beliefs. If I have I’m sure everybody will let me know…
Just for reference: currently plat 3, rolling 56% lifetime winrate and likely above 60% winrate in the last 100 games with my main (custom, nonmeta DH).
I do hope this helps. WP and maybe see you in ranked :P.

~Nicolas

I fail to see your point zinkz ;/. Like what message are you trying to convey? That toughness is now bad? It has always been worse than vitality… That vitality is worse than it used to be? Perhaps, at least you can survive the spike dmg with it. That blocks and evades are the only way to go? Yeah, ofc they are, they have always been… It’s just that you need a way to survive nukes after you’ve used all your defenses.

I guess I’ve posted some useful info earlier and there is no point adding anything. I feel like smb is desperately trying to prove me wrong for the sake of it despite pretty much repeating what I said in my first post (except for the powercreep stuff)

They solved this issue by overnerfing most builds, making more than half utility skills practically useless and nerfing alternative builds some more. So now we have maybe 2 or 3 playable builds per class and some slight variations of them while everything else has no hope of ever being touched in any “competitive” play.
This is a sad fact but I guess that if they don’t want to have a real balancing team (and they wanted to go e-sport, heh) that’s about the only solution…

Also a lot of balancing complaints come from the fact that with current meta we have pretty much a rock paper scissors scenario. Rock mains always happen to be complaining about paper and then somehow paper keeps telling everyone how broken scissors are. So please, do try out at least a few different builds before complaining about balance.
Also Also: the game is more or less balanced only in platinum and above. There are indeed quite a few “noobslayer” builds that do really well, but only against players who don’t know the timings and are bad at using blocks/dodges etc.

These are the issues of pretty much every game. Especially if there isn’t any proper balancing team to speak of. I’m not a godlike player by any means (just going between plat 2 and 3) and I don’t know many skills and interactions in the game but I somehow I end up shocked after every PvP patch notes. Shocked with how horrendously bad and senseless some decisions were, just to clarify.

It’s a pity but PvP is still lots of fun and there is enough build diversity to find something for nearly every playstyle. The amount of skills and combinations isn’t really a problem in itself, most of them have such a small impact on the build that as long as all of them are kept on a similar powerlevel everything is fine. I don’t see how 9 classes with roughly 70 passives per class are a problem while games like Dota 2 manage to maintain 20% winrate range (or even 10% around above avg mmr) with 100+ heroes with a few playable builds and archetypes for each one. And that’s with 2-3 big, game changing patches a year

zinkz.7045:

This is so hilariously wrong.

That it scales evenly is irrelevant, it still becomes less effective if damage powercreeps because at the same toughness you will take more damage even though it gets reduced at the same ratio.

Yes, and it also prevents more damage because that’s how division works. You can also argue that vitality became less effective due to a power creep. Toughness, math wise and against power builds, is basically worse vitality that allows you to heal faster.

I cannot see how your statement wouldn’t apply to vitality as well if you understand how damage calculation works.

If you have any doubts see the math in one of the replies above.

(and no, powercreep actually makes things like toughness and vitality more relevant, they both increase your effective HP and prevent you from being “instakilled”, vitality just does it better for every class except necro)

~Nicolas

Abilities that apply condition damage deal usually around 2-3 times more dmg (total) than power builds. However, even if they hit they have a chance to deal exactly 0 condi dmg because of cleanse or resistance. Balance kept
Some builds are really strong against condi dmg (guardians, eles, druids) while other are really weak (revs and thieves). On average condi is about as strong as power but less versatile. Also conditions are rather weak in teamfights due to many, many Aoe cleanses.
I just feel like some people are really against sacrificing some fun/dmg traits and utylity for cleanse and then complain because they don’t have a good way to remove condi. Others just don’t want to accept that GW2’s 1v1 is basically rock paper scissors with extra steps.

As to cleansing only 2-3 condis: just pay attention to the order of condis applied, it works every time 80% of the time.

Guys, stop this power vs condi complaining wars. It’s annoying. The game balance is in an OK place right now, except for low build diversity. If it wasn’t there would be only 5 or 6 builds in top 100…
They are both good for different things and suit different playstyles. They both can be abused by different team comps and builds in different ways and in different ranks.
That’s the end of it!

Hey guys! Hey ANET!
So, we have an LFG mentoring tab (which nobody uses) so why not make something like that for PvP. There are quite a few experienced players who find it fun to hang out with newbies, teach them how to play their builds, explain map strategies and rotations, give some friendly advise on dos and donts.

I’d love to see such a system in play. It should be easily accessible and really visible. Something that’s really hard to miss and shows up during the UI tutorial when a player enters PvP lobby for the first time.
As long as a player is willing to accept advise, learn and communicate they can easily get to a reasonable rank and thus increase the ever shrinking player base. A system like that would enable these players to learn quickly. It would also vastly help to integrate PvP community and lower the toxicity.

It seems like an easy thing to implement and could be extremely helpful and effective.

What do you guys think? I want your opinions! Also, upvote the hell out of this post if you agree!

~Nicolas

Ok, let me show you the math since there are so many arguments based on your own experiences .
Buffed glass canon thief build’s backstab (critical dmg) according to the formulas here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation
2500 power after buffs; 200% critical dmg; 25% extra dmg from traits and such
1000(weapon) * 2500(power) * 2.4(skill mod) * 2(crit) * 1.25 (trait modifiers and vuln) = 15 000 000
A lot, right?
Well, that’s 15 mln damage against one armor enemy. Most players do wear armor. So we divide this value but the total armor. Let us see check the final dmg against some values of armor listed below. I’ll show just a few examples below since I don’t have a whole day:
Light armor:
No extra toughness: 1888. Final dmg: 7,945
Demolisher Amulet: 2448. Final dmg: 6,127
Knight Amulet: 3088. Final dmg: 4,858
Knight Amulet + rune + 200 from passives: 3463. Final dmg: 4,332
Now for the Heavy armor:
No extra toughness: 2167. Final dmg: 6,922
Demolisher Amulet: 2727. Final dmg: 5,501
Knight Amulet: 3367. Final dmg: 4,kitten
Knight Amulet + rune + 200 from passives: 3742. Final dmg: 4,009
Crazy warrior stuff: (aprox) 4500. Final dmg: 3,333
Shiled grants you only 59 armor so we’ll just ignore that

Note that these values can still get reduced by protection and various passives. Weakness can also nearly half enemy’s DPS and is especially potent against builds reliant on crit.

As you can see heavy investment in toughness isn’t necessarily very worthwhile as it is basically a diminishing return statistic. However, getting Demolisher amulet and possibly some extra toughness from passives/rune can reduce incoming dmg by 20-30% (23% for just a demolisher amulet on light armor). It’s roughly the same as having 25k life instead of 20k except the healing is more beneficial.
Yes, toughness is a little underpowered. Is it totally worth picking for some classes like necromancers? Totally!

edit: some spelling mistakes and such

edit2: so, regarding vitality: it is sadly nearly always better as you’re trading actual 5.6k life for effective ~4.2k life. While the healing is more effective so are the conditions. It is still better than vitality for some necro builds and is a good stat to supplement vitality for defense.
The only solution I can see that wouldn’t need rewriting all the formulas is lowering base armor/toughness and decreasing all dmg in game accordingly. Anet is never gonna do it thou so we’re left with simply picking vitality.

As far as I know toughness is working fine and it’s quite useful against power builds. However, the game has been designed around damage mitigation such as blocks, dodges, evasion, invulnerability, blinks, and various buffs and debuffs (protection, weakness, blind etc.).
As to my knowledge it is impossible to get 3861 toughness in PvP I assume you mean armor.
You can see how dmg works in this link to the wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage
As you can see the dmg is divided by your armor making toughness somewhat of a diminishing return stat.
That combined with the fact that most power build have DPS (against 2k armor) reaching 5-6k with spike dmg up to 15-20k dmg in just over a second makes face tanking impossible . I do agree that toughness is a little under powered but it still gives you enough of an edge, especially on the light armor classes, to be worth picking up for some builds. You can mitigate large amounts of damage with it but it will never be, nor should be, as efficient as a well timed dodge or block.

~Nicolas

(edit: accidentally posted an unfinished reply and minor spelling errors)

Hello GW2 team, Hello fellow PvP players!

I want to share some feedback on the new 2v2 mode and Hall of the Mists map.
Many players have been waiting for a 2v2 or 3v3 mode for a long time. Not all of us have full teams or enjoy conquest/stronghold mode all that much. Some of us prefer to simply fight other players without being forced to prioritize rotation and point control.
This makes a mode such as a 2v2 deathmatch really awesome and a nice little break from conquest. However, I do believe that while the idea is great and the addition of this mode is a really good step for the game I have many issues with the way it has been implemented.

1. Custom Arena Only:
For most PvP players and even many WvW and PvE players Custom Arenas are places to try out new builds, check some interactions or duel with friends. They are good places for practice and learning. As such skill level in custom arenas is much lower than in a ranked environments and experienced players are unlikely to come across any real challenge. Additionally Custom Arenas usually have less than a hundred players at a time which makes it really difficult to find players for 2v2 arenas. These two issues made the game mode almost completely dead one day after its release.

2. Impact on the game and competitiveness
I’ve been awaiting 2v2 for a really long time and with much excitement. It offers a completely unique experience and potentially a very different meta, focused more on synergy than power of each individual build. This is a perfect opportunity for experienced players to try out new build combos. They might eventually end up bringing them to different game modes, vastly increasing build diversity in general. Sadly, with no competitive option for the 2v2 Deathmatch this opportunity is lost. There are no tournaments, 2v2 ques or ranked games to speak of. Given the very competitive nature of 2v2 I find that odd. I do realize that you don’t want to bring the mode to core PvP before you make sure it is working correctly in terms of map, mechanics and balance. However, very few people are going to play it and test it properly unless you add it to the core, matchmaked PvP.

3. Map design
I have to admit that I highly dislike the 2v2 Deathmatch map. It’s layout, while designed to allow ranged and mobile players to take advantage of, actually promotes a lot of toxic behavior. Many builds with a lot of sustain can simply run around the side pillars or the piles or rubble to juke and avoid most of the attacks. It promotes toxic strategies and makes playing against certain classes (such as warriors, elementalists or druids) very annoying.
Middle of the map is also very narrow, allowing for some larges aoes to completely cover it which stalls and often refreshes the fight. While this allows for some support builds to shine it also makes fights clustered and less readable. Moreover, this causes some issues with the camera, making it zoom in and out quite often.
Overtime promotes fighting for high ground as during the last seconds players have to walk through the damaging AoE to get to the platforms. This gives ranged players a great advantage and makes some builds insanely powerful during the overtime. I’m pointing that out since I’m not sure if it’s intentional design.
Lastly the spectator point is really weirdly positioned and is absolutely useless. It should be high above the battlefield to provide useful, clear view, not at a player height level.

This concludes most of my complains. I think that mode in itself is great. I’ve been awaiting this feature since launch and was really eager to try it out. Sadly I was unable to find games consistently and due to the nature of Custom Arenas. The ones I entered were very once-sided and disappointing.

…

TL;DR
I’m really, really happy that the mode was added but the implementation was really poor imho. Lack of matchmaking and no competitive mode(ranked/unranked/tournaments) using 2v2 made it dead within hours after update. It’s really difficult to find games and they end up being extremely quick and one-sided. Pillars in the map and shape of the damaging AoE during the overtime might promote some toxic strategies. Narrow passage badly affects the camera and fight readability. Spectator point is pretty much useless.

QUESTIONS:
To the dev team:
Are you planning to eventually add 2v2 Deathmatch to ranked/unkranked as a game mode, similarly to stronghold?
Is there any hope for some changes being made to the map?
Are you planning to flash out the very competitive nature of the mode with tournaments/weekly rankings/leaderboards or a similar feature?
Are you planning to do some balance changes in 2v2 such as allowing only one of each class in a party?

To the players:
Have you enjoyed your games in this mode so far?
Is there anything you really dislike/miss from the 2v2 Deathmatch?
Are you using your regular or meta builds or are you trying to come up with new synergistic build combos?
Is there anything I missed or you disagree with in my post?

Thank you for reading through this awfully long post :P
May the ranked be with you!
~Nicolas