Guild Wars 2

Thank you Inscrutable at least somebody on the forums has a clue about what I was saying. The rest of you need to take some time to read about how to build as a teammate instead of just a solo Q hero.

Necros are not a frontline class. They get juggled by CC so easily on every build, so if you see a Necro defending a node you can pretty much guarantee they will lose, even the allegedly OP Minion Master build.

So that leaves midline and backline, which means that they need people on their team to fight on the node for them, and they have to provide more to their team than just condi pressure or max damage autoattacks.

Wells on Necro should be first and foremost on their minds in team play. Why Corrupt one guy’s boons when you can corrupt the entire point’s boons. Why give them the opportunity to focus you when you can drop Well of Darkness and they thrash around unable to hit you. After Well goes down, go Plague. If your teammates are so bad that they can’t kill anyone thrashing around at perma blind, then realize that. If you don’t want to get 1 shot in team play, then why aren’t you bringing something more tanky or building to be more tanky.

As for defensiveness, any class that has a second health mechanic that can be made much more durable by Vital Persistance and isn’t using it has a fundamental lack of understanding of the class. It’s a 10 point trait that turns you into an incredibly hard to kill SOB in 1v1, and even in group situations you are hard to focus, esp when your Spectral Armor procs.

Life siphon Wells are very strong, but, for some reason AoE support, control, life stealing, and, with Clerics ammy, the best AoE heal in the game are “not viable” /rolleyes.

I almost want to call the Necro community the NeQQromancers.

Nobody cares. If you want big 8v8s make a custom arena or go WvW

I think what we thought was power creep before is about to be shattered forever. The sheer amount of stat buffs they put in just the runes and sigils they have shown us already has me wondering how stupidly broken this “PvP Renaissance” (LOL Allie) is going to be.

Warrior is still gonna be broken as hell, even with the nerfs.

There aren’t any simple or effective solutions to the problems this game has in class matchup dynamics because Anet made the scope of what they can do far too wide.

Instead of drawing a line in the sand on power creep and establishing boundaries of what each class can do in PvP, Anet has quite intelligently decided to throw even more crap at the character building system and jack up runes and sigil stats even more.

So OP, none of those problems are going to be fixed because Anet has no idea what they’re doing.

Again, the Skyhammer Engi is the only real choice you have if you want to win on that map consistently.

It’s already bad enough that there really isn’t much choice in what you can run on other maps but when it all gets condensed to one class and one build?

Skyhammer sucks

These kinds of threads are probably why the devs don’t comment on this forum

It isn’t preferential treatment to reserve spots for players who have proven themselves as competitors. They’ve already earned their place.

It does need to be said, however, that this is what happens when you don’t have leagues and ladders. It gives white knight forum crusaders like Pyriall a pulpit to preach fairness and justice from when anybody who actually plays the game knows that the “privileged” players who are “being given a spot” deserve to be there and will be the main draw of the tournament.

If there are leagues and ladders, then there’s no crusade.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

i rem. during guild wars 1 top guild will run meta build but guild like the last pride will run balance build and still won. those kind of players are gone in gw2. they prefer playing OP build because they rather win honorless than not win at all.

GW1 had healers tho. GW2 is “build how you want” which ends up being a lot less organized. They traded customization for standardized classes, which can safely be said has backfired in a bad way for PvP.

Aenos,

One profession with one build is viable on that map. If you’re not playing Skyhammer Engi you’re meat. That’s why it’s a terrible map. It has nothing to do with this fantasy crap you’re puking out about challenging, situational, it comes down to do you have the Engi or Engis or not.

All this fairness and who gets to be in stuff is irrelevant.

Competitors compete. If you sign up and commit to competing, then whoever decides on the teams that gets in will weigh that based on how much information, if any, there is about what they’ve done. People who have competed in tournaments before, few of them as they are, would make the most sense as roster spots. Everyone else would likely be accepted based on how soon they signed up and where they are on the leaderboards. Why is that so difficult to understand?

Nobody would want to watch a bunch of random people who put names on a list get blown out.

It’s not rocket science. You’re just freaking out about nothing Pyriall. Your ranting makes me want to see you put a team together and compete to see how you do.

Qualifiers would just be a formality and everyone, including Blu, knows that.

Pyriall these “very good teams” you speak about wouldn’t have a chance against what’s left of the smoldering ruin that is the PvP community. It’s at its smallest and most bitter state ever, but they’re still better than the WvW and PvE heroes in every conceivable way.

Like it or not, competition excludes the people who either can’t hack it or would be an autoloss going in.

Who wants to watch 500-10 blowouts? I mean, the only way people would enjoy watching that is if there was a WvW or PvE team that ran their mouth publicly saying they’re gonna sweep the PvP noobs that got their kitten handed to them.

So there’s an idea and a challenge for you PvE and WvW heroes – call out these guys on a stream, say your team is going to beat them, and participate in the tournament. For sheer presentation value you’d get a spot and we’d all get to laugh at how badly you lose

I see a fundamental inability of some of the more vocal PvE and WvW players to grasp the idea that their place has to be proven before they get preferential treatment in a tournament that is not PvE or WvW.

Anyone who wants to exclude teams who PvP regularly or at a high level should get a team together, play them, and see why they’re getting that roster spot instead of them.

It’s like saying this year’s NFL playoffs should exclude all the division champions.

How does that make any sense whatsoever?

That’s competition for you. Any game is like that. Once the winning team smells blood they jump in for the kill /shrug

That’s why Helseth and Bear were popular viewing. Helseth took his criticism too far though, trying to be all Spartacus, which made Anet cry to Twitch to stop making them look bad.

People like Blu serve their purpose in the presentation of sport. People like that because its neutral, informative, and, every once in a while, exciting to hear. Anet likes that because he can be advertised without making them look anything but good. He knows enough about PR to never be challenged seriously by anyone as a caster until someone smoother comes along.

But

Competition demands color, which is why ESPN is so popular to this day. The “Not Top 10,” blooper reels, feature stories about one player running his mouth, coach meltdowns, dramatizing the events of a game, etc. captivate the audience.

I think Anet wants to aspire for another Grouch though, combining Blu’s PR usefulness with Hairseth/Bear’s competitive personality. People miss Grouch as a caster because he had that mix.

Helseth and Bear, however, haven’t been favored by Anet because they make them look bad when they criticize how the game is balanced. Grouch never went that far, he just subtly made a pass at it like, “Yeah Warrior is… uh… pretty strong right now!” which the audience knew meant, “Warrior is OP and everyone knows it but I’m on stream right now so I won’t say it like that.”

While Anet does need to realize that their game isn’t well balanced, can you blame them for not wanting their game to be publicly berated during a competition?

Who wants to Dool me?

Ya stats without documentation from any company or politician are worth nothing.

Anet prove your population got bigger and maybe a few people will believe you.

They are really strong in PvP because of the size of the points. Foefire they lose a little bit of that advantage at mid, which is why those fights last forever.

Spam Engi has been viable since Day 1 because of that and will continue to be in Conquest mode.

It’s also super easy to play once you get used to swapping kits. Don’t let people like O Eggs or Reevzy fool you it’s not an intelligent playstyle it’s just APM benefitting from the way Anet designed the game.

lol he doesn’t want to play skyhammer

It’s not hard to figure out. He needs to queue for team arena only to avoid getting sleepy on Dumbhammer

The patch isn’t out yet. They introduced a massive wad of power creep with the new stuff so your beloved Dumbfire will have new toys to play with.

I thought Necros hated Dumbfire…

Those re-reads just dance around the periphery of what the game needs. QoL is all well and good, as well as new game modes, but you can’t polish a kitten . It’s still a kitten .

The balance cycles keep letting the playerbase down because people want to main a class, but aren’t going to be able to if the patch dice doesn’t roll their way. People take their main seriously in MMOs.

If you’ve been an Engineer since launch or since beta, that class is special to you. Yet with how they’re not limiting the access of the player to the tools available, nobody’s place in PvP is ever stable. If you think of a really strong build on the class, people are gonna copy it and then Anet is gonna nerf it after months of being labeled a cheeser.

Example of Decap Engi. The traits and weapons have been there since launch. Nobody used them that way before. Now that they are, people are all complaining about it and now Anet has to nerf a strong build to shut up all the QQ. This is only due to the fact that every class is a giant stack of TNT waiting for the right mind to put together an explosion of dominating gameplay that kittenes everyone off.

Anet’s entirely open-ended customization philosophy is at fault for Decap Engi. You can’t blame the players for putting something like that together when there are no limits to what you can build.

Anyway, I thought of something that is a better compromise than asking for a revamp. Here goes

Each trait line limits the class’ access to weapons and utilities so that a character build cannot have all the best stuff in one build. Make sure GM traits are the best possible choices. You’d have to put at least 10 points into a trait line to get access to their weapons and utilities, and only the first four trait lines would grant this kind of access. Engineer would have kits included with their restrictions, and Elementalists fit perfectly with each option adding up to exactly 4.

This would not only let people keep their beloved customization, but prevent the monster builds that plague PvP from being as easy to make.

Every class would benefit from this. Runes, Sigils, etc. would not be limited because you pick those to support the build, not to define it.

Would June Dhuumfire have been possible if you had to put 10 points into Death Magic for Staff? Would Hambow have been as broken if you had to put 10 points into Tactics for Longbow access? If Water only granted Staff access for Eles and 10 Lightning only gave you Scepter mainhand, would Ele have dominated from launch to 6 months in?

oZii.2864:

I don’t know moba’s I do know Starcraft 2.

You reference Starcraft 2 as balanced when it is the same thing.

Blizzard makes the races, abilities, stages, units, buildings and cost and then give those to the players. The players then make the builds that win them games if those builds are consistently good then they become meta.

Usually a new strong meta build will win tournaments and skew the win ratio toward that particular race(see Stephano’s max roach) blizzard doesn’t hop in to nerf roaches they usually let players work through the meta to find a way to win despite forum QQ.

Blizzard didn’t tell people how to 4-gate rush, forge fast expand, 5 roach rush, muta-ling, the players figure that out but you cite that as a balanced game when it does the same exact thing as GW2 it gives you options customization. In SC2 you can counter on the fly not in gw2

Nobody is running the “David Kim” or “Dustin Browder” build in Starcraft 2 they are running stuff like "Idra"s 14 hatch ling-bane" people run player builds not dev builds.

I don’t understand how you can say Sc2 is balanced gw2 isn’t when your gripe with gw2 is customization when sc2 gives you way more options and customization.

The difference being that those options, as you stated, can be adjusted on the fly and you can scout your opponent to figure out his build order.

GW2’s customization problem comes from the fact that no matter what traits/weapons they tweak, every single metagame is going to have some incredibly broken build that everyone has to build and build around.

The pieces aren’t independent of each other on the classes. You aren’t locked out of specific weapon sets when you take Defense traits on Warrior. If you couldn’t run Longbow unless you had a specific traitline, that would be WAY different.

So, because of this excessive freedom to build how you want to, each class’ best stuff gets combined, measured, and checked off by the playerbase through competitive play. The wheat is separated from the chaff, and what’s left are monstrosities like Hambow, Spirit Ranger, Dumbfire Necro and S/D Thief (in their heyday), etc.

That’s like being given 2k minerals and 1k vespene at the start of your SC2 match because you’re Terran. How stupid would that be? Just as stupid as there being no build limitations in this game.

You brought up an excellent point about balance in that game too. SC2 is largely self-balancing. If people are bringing a bunch of roaches every match, then you’ve got to build more detection with air and/or armor penetrating units.

In GW2 that isn’t possible since classes are locked at the start of the match, and even more impossible because roles are determined by the players not the developers.

SC2 Units have a specific purpose. GW2 classes have a range of potential purposes that is too wide and too easy to merge into multiple roles. That eliminates the diversity that would make people more encouraged to main a class in PvP, and makes stale metas that people get tired of after a couple weeks, and last for months while Anet tries to figure out who’s QQ is legit and who’s isn’t.

They built the game to be way too customizable, so much so that the competition becomes the total opposite of the idea of playing the class you want. If they want people to take PvP seriously, they need to limit the scope of each class enough to prevent the cycle of OP BS.

The cycle is never going to end.

There are so many options that it’s inevitable that every single patch cycle is going to have broken builds and specs.

All the Skills and balance and Community teams are doing is making sure you guys feel like you’re listened to and adding stuff that makes you go “OOOH SHINY”

Exactly proving my point.

They’re just watching to see what you complain about other people using and then changing out some of the buffet table’s food for something else that might be as popular but hopefully a little less so.

They don’t want balance. You have to actually work for balance. How are three or four people going to balance a game this open-ended and customizable?

That was never the intention. They are delegating that to you by giving you so many options.

If you think it’s bad design I completely 2101239048% agree with you. It’s lazy. It’s sleazy corporate delegation. It doesn’t aspire to greatness or anything greater than what you find in a shopping mall.

Whole bunch of options. Almost all crap. A few of them will be excellent, but you have to really know the game to find them.

When the evidence of an apathetic player base, endless threads of QQ, and the experience you’ve had adds up to a simple, and thus superior, solution it’s hard to pay attention to apologists that think everything’s fine.

It’s like saying the US economy is upwardly mobile. It isn’t. It’s a massive oligopoly where the wealth is more stratified than any civilization in human history bar none running far away from 2nd and 3rd place.

Trying to explain that to most people is a waste of time, but the comparison is relevant nonetheless.

There are too many options and most of them are steaming piles of crap in this game. It kills competition because you think you have a choice but you don’t. Most people are turned off by that. They wanted variety but are back at square one and have to start copying the meta or die with their ideals repeatedly.

If you can’t realize that, then your head is stuck about 2 feet in the sand.

You can get mad all you want, the truth is Anet isn’t responsible for what you do with the options available.

You are.

You created Decap Engi, Hambow Warrior, Spirit Ranger, S/D thief, S/P Thief, D/P Thief, Dhuumfire Necro, Bomb/Nade Engi, and all the other stuff that you don’t like.

I’m not saying it’s the player’s fault the options combine to be more dominant. That’s what winners do – they win. They build smarter, faster.

Anet doesn’t aspire to excellence in balance. They aspire to excellence in profit and pleasing the larger playerbase.

Balanced games punish stupid and slow. People don’t like being punished. They like Quaggans, Quaggan backpacks, shiny suits of pixelated armor, music, and storylines that are stuffed with cliches.

If you like balance, go play Starcraft 2. You’ll get slaughtered if you suck and even when you stop sucking, someone will roflstomp you because they scout better, have much higher APM and make better decisions.

Balance makes people feel inadequate. So Anet has delegated that to you so when things aren’t fair they can’t be totally blamed for it, and tweak things so you feel better about your inadequacy in building your character.

If you aren’t running apex predator builds you have no one to blame but yourself. It’s stupid not to.

That’s just a reaction nerf, and only because the forum was flooded with QQ. They nerf things based on how much certain builds make getting feedback more annoying.

If they have to wade through “WAAAAHHHH” threads to get to the stuff they want, they write down the builds, go troll around with it with their cheat codes in their servers, maybe spend a meeting or two talking about it, then nerf it after seeing if people can figure out a counter themselves.

Dhuumfire was complained about from the start and it took them how long to nerf it? Automated Response has been despised for months and now they nerf it? Warrior, Decap Engi, etc. etc. etc.

This is because they have to see a trend over that time. They’re just maintaining their system, not optimizing it.

Here is a picture that can explain why this idea is better.

If you look at the landscape you have a whole bunch of people who suck and don’t have any chance of getting into the top tier. They play crappy builds, get mad that their crappy builds suck, and their teammates don’t say anything, ping the map, etc.

When you get to the top of this triangle it isn’t much of an accomplishment because you have such weak competition. All you’re left with is the very few other people who figured out the right builds and strategies. You get bored and leave, which is what most of the teams have done.

This triangle is really huge horizontally, but tiny vertically. This game’s entire PvP history is represented by this triangle, where options are many, but upward mobility is very rare and once they get there they get bored or tired of it.

The second triangle is the proposed method of getting rid of bad options, and replacing it with a more competitive system that pushes people into being more effective. Less horizontal size, but more vertical size.

Winning here matters because your competition is going to be tougher. They don’t have troll builds to implode their team with. They don’t have crappy matchmaking that can’t be organized because the classes have no identity. Winning with that climate is entirely skill oriented, not build oriented.

Axis A represents the top of the hierarchy. B and C measure the horizontal distance of the lower tier.

In the first triangle, the horizontal size is too large and ends up making the difference between low and mid tier negligible. This is why builds like Spirit Ranger and Hambow are so dominating – they are far superior to the other crap options and their vertical size jumps past both of those tiers simultaneously. They look overpowered when they are just better.

In the second triangle, B and C have been significantly reduced because the crap options have been filtered out. The middle and higher tier are strengthened while the lower tier has less confusing and counterproductive ways to shoot themselves in the foot.

Of course, there would still be plenty of people who do that to themselves anyway but there are always AFKs, alt tabbers, ppl mooching on stolen internet connections, kids who can’t be on for a whole match because their parents kick them off, etc. etc.

I haven’t been responding to you Cogbyrn because Chaith is on the best team in NA. If it isn’t it’s 1a.

His opinion matters more to me than yours because he’s actually playing at that level. I have no idea who you are, and you confused me with your Dota 2 response.

Yes, Dota 2 has an enormous amount of different Heroes. The game was designed for there to be options, but instead of each class being the equivalent of dozens of heroes, each of the heroes are just one hero.

There isn’t ambiguity with that game design. Skeleton King and Dragon Knight are both Strength Heroes, but totally different in strategy. Faceless Void and Drow Ranger are both Agility Heroes, but totally different.

You can definitively advise people on how to play those Heroes because there is a clarity about what they can and can’t do in their design. Professions in GW2 are not.

Warriors can perform 6 different roles, at least. One of them, the Hambow bruiser, is dominating PvP and has been for months. All I’m proposing is to get rid of the lesser options and reduce a mountain of crap into, at most, 2 options that can create the same type of clarity we see in Dota 2.

This clarity is what motivates so many people to learn Dota 2. It’s a challenge that actually rewards learning it with a mid and higher tier that is much more competitive.

This lack of clarity in GW2 is what only encourages a very small minority of excellent players to keep playing, and frustrates the majority of people who play PvP with any measure of effort.

Also, that statement about the match being over at the start shows a complete lack of understanding of how this idea is superior to the current.

When there are balanced team comps, which this creates, you don’t know who’s going to win at the start. There’s no way to predict that. Right now, matches are over at the start far more often than not, which is why the best team’s win 70% of their matches.

I’m suggesting to take the equivalent of having every team with a Spirit Ranger, Hambow Warrior, PW Thief, Bunker Guard, and Bomb/Nade Engi and making it the standard. That would make matchmaking a lot more competitive wouldn’kitten

If everyone played with those builds and nothing else, then there wouldn’t be a gaping chasm of difference between the players’ starting value. Their ability to use those builds, like in Dota 2, would determine the winner.

Are you a better PW Thief than the other one? Then you’ll gank people, stay alive, and tip fights in your team’s favor.

I do realize, however, that there has to be some compromise to just one build per class. That is way too much of a departure from GW2’s silly ideology that “you can play how you want.” That’s why I mentioned two trait lines, which would encourage a choice between two weapon builds.

GW2’s not competitive enough. Can you two at least admit that?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This game was designed for the players to balance the game, not the developers.

Think about it.

The traits, weapons, utilities, elites, runes, sigils, accessories, and all the different stats all point to one thing.

Customization.

That customization sets the table with an all-you-can-eat buffet and all these guys in the Skills and Balance team do is shift how much some of the food gets eaten.

They are reacting to what you are doing because you are the ones balancing the game, not them.

They don’t want to limit your options. They don’t want to organize the game’s builds and choices.

They don’t want to impose on you. They can’t take responsibility for how the meta shakes out because it’s up to you, not them. They gave you options, and you decide how to use them.

You might get mad after reading this, but you’ll realize that this is the truth soon enough.

The Skills and Balance team are just maintenance guys. They do not aspire to balancing the game because it’s not their job. They just make sure the stuff works as intended and make changes to the game as the feedback over a long period of time points toward.

If you want balance, play a game that is designed for it. Guild Wars 2 isn’t. Starcraft 2 is. Mobas are. Trinity MMOs are.

Class Balance isn’t their problem. They only opened this forum to more easily get feedback for themselves. They have no aspirations to make PvP competitively balanced, WvW more inclusive for the less used classes, or any of that stuff.

All that jazz is your problem.

I. Like it or not, every competitive game looks to the people who win the big game or the most as a starting place for their own builds. It’s not really a responsibility that anyone chooses it’s the most economical choice between thinking of a build yourself and starting with a build that has already won.

II. Obviously Anet matchmaking would have to change too. I thought that was implied in my original post, where the current “throw people in a match because we don’t have a way to balance teams in queues” is replaced. Yet another example of why the classes need specific purposes.

How do you fix matchmaking as it is right now? If a Warrior can be a burst, tank, condi tank, condi burst, support, or bruiser how do you define the class? With all the variables how do you narrow it down? Trait choices? Amulet?

Matchmaking will always suck until the classes can be organized and queued for specific roles or a specific range of roles.

This method would make matchmaking 1000% better because each class wouldn’t be so ambiguous. An Engi would be a Hunter. Period. You wouldn’t have to make a bunch of BS excuses as to why you can’t balance teams in that environment.

III. Counters are vital for a competitive game. Allocation and deployment are the strategies. This has worked for Starcraft competitively for more than a decade. If you go bio on Terran, expect your Zerg opponent to bring Banelings. If you go heavy Muta on Zerg, expect anti-air.

If comps are similar, then whoever uses them better wins. So I’ve already detailed that comps would be 80% similar with a 20% difference of the last member that tilts the team comp in one of the four ways. That’s just enough variety for sustained queueing to not be boring, and little enough customization to ensure that you aren’t bringing a comp that could be dead on arrival.

Retreat is not a bad thing. While distasteful to the chest thumping, it can protect your team and redirect resources where they can make a difference.

In the previous example, let’s say the Engi was waiting with their Ranger expecting the push. You, the Warrior, and the Assassin, the Thief, don’t push but instead go to mid, where it’s 3v3. Now it’s 5v3, your side, because they sat on home waiting for the push. The Engi that was waiting shows up but it’s too late and now you have a two cap.

The Warrior breaks off to attack the Ranger, who desperately tried to go far hoping that nobody would send someone to your home fast enough. The Thief, knowing that he has time, comes over to gank the Ranger.

IV. No this game is nothing like how you describe. It might be where you play, where comps are intelligent and the players know how to use them.

The rest of the game’s community is filled with crappy builds and crappy team comps because there isn’t any matchmaking, there isn’t any class identity, people rage quit once the other team gets a two cap, and spend more time QQing than contributing.

There has to be some organization to PvP if the higher quality competition at the top is the standard, not the exception. Freedom to build at the expense of the team makes getting to killing PvP at the lower and middle tiers. Delegating the responsibility of balancing teams to the players is the worst decision I’ve ever seen in a PvP game mode.

Why wade through all that crap?

“Having the proper utilities & traits alone isn’t going to introduce a role to anyone.”

Obviously this would have to be introduced to people and the general strategy laid out for each class and their options. It wouldn’t just be boom! you can’t run anything but this now good luck.

“Who decides what is useless in PvP and should be off limits to PvPers?”

Uh you guys do. All you players who compete at the highest level. What you decide to play and how you decide to play it establishes the metagame. If you’re concerned about stepping on people’s toes why don’t you run PU Mesmer, S/D Thief, Spirit Weapon Guardian, Axe/Shield GS Warrior, and Fresh Air Ele?

Because those builds suck

Wouldn’t the game be better off without those builds confusing and frustrating new players? If their choices are better, won’t they be more effective right away? Won’t that make competition more intense?

Why have the circus of noob builds at all? What’s the point? I mean, besides getting an autowin because they are so unprepared for the match.

Finally, your example of 4 assassins shows you didn’t read that there would be one of each role plus one that you choose as a team to complete the 5 members. If it’s a queue it would be random.

Every team would have a balanced comp with just a bit of individuality to add a challenge of how to deploy people. There would be dozens of choices to make throughout the match.

Hunters would have to be looking for the best place to contribute for their team, as do Assassins, but with the tension of risk. If an Assassin goes far to go with his Duelist after capping close to gank their Duelist, what if their Hunter comes over? That’s a better fight for the other team. So he’d have to look out for their Engi or Ele and if they see one, call off the push.

Duelists fighting 1v1 would be balanced to be the kind of stuff that would be prime time shoutcasting. Is that Warrior gonna get that stun off? Can that Ranger bait him into using Zerker stance so he can save his condi skills right after? Oooh that was a clutch dodge!

Support – Assassin – Hunter teamfights would be really interesting. Assassins would be the X factor, looking for a way to tip the fight in their team’s direction without overextending. The Hunters would be putting as much pressure on the enemy Support as possible in a war of attrition, with the most devious and lethal Assassin finishing them off. Supports would have enough CC to help facilitate their goals, like a clutch Necro fear or Guardian knockdown.

That would be so much more interesting to watch and play than Build Wars 2.

First, the ease with which the roles would be introduced would be far easier than currently. As I’ve said before there are so many variables to building a character that these new roles would do away with because they don’t matter anyway. A narrow purpose makes it easier for each role to decide what to do, but doesn’t give them the experience or skill to successfully implement it.

For example, let’s say as a Thief your Assassin build is the equivalent of a choice between D/P SB and S/P SB, Zerker in each, eliminating the dagger offhand and pistol mainhand. Your utilities are condensed from the mountain of crap we have now to signets and shadow steps. Wouldn’t that be 10000x easier to figure out for someone brand new?

Now because those builds would be the only two builds that a thief could pick, wouldn’t Anet have an easier time balancing them against the other classes? These classes who, in the immaculate words of Doyourbestbear, have had their “Bullkitten Mountain” reduced to two competitive builds?

Now I get it that some people would get bored of that, but if they picked the roles and builds in a balanced way, then you have to push yourself to beat the guy who isn’t thinking about his build, but whether or not he’s playing it better.

The teamwork would be a hell of a lot easier to start up and keep together because you don’t have to worry about some kittened build coming in and screwing things up like you do right now. GW2 PvP players have to weigh so much more information than is necessary to compete that it kills the desire to compete in the first place.

You don’t try to reinvent a Champion or Hero in LoL/Dota – you master it and do what it’s designed to do. Right now, no class in GW2 has a designed purpose, and people just follow what the best players play, which only encourages the very thing I’m suggesting – establishing a set of competitive builds.

The problem, though, is once things start to settle down, then some monstrosity rolls along that screws up that balance and kittenes everyone off because now the pieces have to be figured out, measured against one another, again.

These monstrosities happen because the stability created by a metagame has always excluded classes because Anet didn’t give Class A enough resources to compete. Then they give them too many resources and it turns them into the new FotM, screwing it all up just because of QQ and their inability to plan these things out.

That. Isn’t. Fun. Never has been and that’s the spiral of WTF that is GW2’s PvP.

Frustration does not mix with competition unless it’s because they know they didn’t play well enough. Having to build well enough only compounds that and irritates what is already frustrating further.

The lack of clarity and purpose to the classes makes it impossible for PvP to flourish. It’s just who can build a more effective class or team composition, not who is actually good at them. If the roles were narrow, there would be no question about who is the best and who isn’t.

Mobas are not easy to figure out at all for a new player or someone who hasn’t seen them before, but they can be explained pretty effectively in pre-game and during the game.

This suggestion would make GW2 PvP really easy to explain, but the players would have to be really good tacticians to win consistently. The second role would be the intrigue before each match, wondering how much more of one role they want to specialize in as a team.

While I get it that you believe that the balance is good, Chaith, where is everyone else? The community has pretty much fallen apart and many have said that it’s irreparable at this point. New players don’t make teams, they just farm gold and their dailies. People don’t care about PvP in this game, save for a few dedicated teams.

EU used to be the lifeblood of the PvP community and now its falling apart too.

This isn’t working.

I don’t mean a PvP only MMO. Never said that.

I meant an MMO that has all the bells and whistles of the PvE, raiding, etc. but with a PvP game mode that can become competitive enough to attract Esports and cash tournaments. Real ones not what we’ve seen in this game’s attempts at it.

At least nobody would be put on the bench for months at a time that way.

Ele players have no reason to queue up right now unless their team builds around them, if they even have a team. That’s completely unacceptable.

This system would eliminate that problem and any potential for a future patch putting a class on the bench. Sure, some people would say that one Duelist is better than the other, but it wouldn’t take much to fix that if it were actually true.

You can’t have “freedom to build how you want” and competition at the same time. It’s not working.

“Skill with the class” is a WvW and PvE thing. Skill with the best possible builds, as Chaith described, is what is going on at the top of the game anyway.

Why give people the illusion of choice in the matter? There isn’t any choice. It’s either best builds and best teamwork / timing, or you get beat. Period.

Duelists would be able to kick anybody’s kitten 1v1.

Assassins would just be able to either catch you off guard if you’re new or lagging, or seal the deal if you’re already in a fight with another Duelist. They wouldn’t be able to gank Duelists by design, only the best of the best would be able to.

Appearances are reality though. When you log in for the very first time, what you see is a massive pile of information that doesn’t really make sense until either someone walks you through it or you play long enough, and get beat up long enough, to figure things out.

On top of that, quite a few people expect there to be more competitive builds than there are. This is what happens when you give them too many options – they expect it to be all socialist where you can bring whatever build you want and it will work well enough to win.

Take PU Mesmer for example. It’s a terrible build for Conquest, but people still run it because it can kill people pretty well. They complain that this build should be viable, but do not consider how useless stealth is for point fighting and how a Warrior or Ranger do it better overall. The option is there, they take it even though it’s just a Volvo, not a Lamborghini.

Every competitive game is going to have a hierarchy, and what I’m suggesting is to do away with all the useless junk that doesn’t make it into competitive play in favor of a system that gives everyone a Lamborghini instead of having to build one and risk bringing a Pinto.

That way your time playing this game isn’t spend wondering if your build is optimal enough, but whether or not you are in fact driving the Lamborghini better than the other guys.

It’s keeping it simple.

Classes in this game aren’t balanced they’re maintained. They want you to figure out for yourself what’s best to play, that’s why they did the equivalent of the Federal Reserve throwing trillions into the economy in this patch.

These new runes and GM traits are there for you to sort out and redefine the classes yourself. Anet doesn’t really care one way or the other what you play, so long as the system works enough for there to be potential for each class to contribute.

They aren’t aiming for balance. They want you to balance the game for them with your building creativity.

It’s the laziest approach I’ve ever seen to game balance and no wonder the HotM on every server is empty.

The truth, however, is that you can’t even begin to be competitive in those high level matches without at least two standard builds on your team.

I respect the fact that you created your build from scratch, but the fact that there is a Spirit Ranger, Bunker Guardian, and a Hambow Warrior on your team speaks to the inability of the playerbase to escape the truth that you have to pick the most efficient options. The riskiness of your build doesn’t work in a setting without good support and rotation, just like SupCutie’s Mesmer build isn’t any good without teamwork and proper use. While those kind of builds are what celebrate the potential of this concept, the truth is most people are never going to see that world within the PvP game. Their random teammates simply don’t give them the foundation to push the limits.

All I’m suggesting is to take an organized, competitive system of roles, condense the classes into fitting into a puzzle of those roles that doesn’t exclude classes. These roles balance against each other naturally and without any potential to become overpowered if handled, as you say, restrictively.

I realize that there would be differences between classes in this suggestion, which might lead to “viable option A” vs. “garbage B,” but the subjective nature of “Ele isn’t viable” right now is so prevalent that Anet really can’t figure out how to fix it without making Ele broken again.

In the system I suggest it’s a lot more clear – does Ele track down and deal with Assassins effectively enough? Can they reinforce mid to help Support effectively? Those are easier questions to ask and answer than the dozens of questions that would have to be asked in the current system. They’d be able to patch more quickly and efficiently with a more narrow system, promoting a more satisfied competitive community that sees that their concerns are being addressed promptly.

Just because the system starts narrow, doesn’t mean it can’t be expanded upon and made more complex too. Maybe this is just a spitball idea (it is) that could be iterated on and built upon.

And for the record I stopped playing this game a long time ago because even if I got to the top, it would be playing the same teams with the same people over and over, pretending that there’s something there when there isn’t. This game will never be a respectable competitive game until the Devs realize that their wad of Customization simply doesn’t cut it.

Mastering something doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel – you just take a fast car and drive it better than the other guy. If they took this concept and built it into GW2 PVP I guarantee you the population would explode and new players would buy the game ready to play PvP

There are a huge number of MMO players who want that one MMO that can actually provide a competitive PvP game. They drift from MMO to MMO because that’s what they really want, but nobody’s been able to pull it off. These companies are scared of committing too much to it because they think it will backfire, but once a company figures it out they’ll have the next era of MMO dominance after WoW dies out.

Chaith.8256:

It’s a bit late to completely re-structure the entire profession design philosophy. Also, I would like to point out that re-structuring so that each profession is limited to 1 archetype is an extremely unnatural approach to MMOs.

I understand what you’re saying – each profession has certain narrow trait usages of traits & utilities across game modes.

If anything, I think that we should adhere to the system in place even further, and do a balance patch that focuses on enabling all of the professions to have a build that embodies a chosen ‘major’ in Support -or- Damage -or- Control, with minors in the other two. This is the true GW2 design philosophy.

( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat )

Unfortunately, I think there is a lack of congruence with the GW2 combat design philosophy.

IE: Viability of professions who major in support, such as Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Necro. Or, the viability of professions who sacrifice a major in damage for a major in control, for example.

Obviously, in PvE, the encounters are so easy, and there is so little control needed, it’s a DPS fest. Take steps to eventually change this, and allow GW2’s self-declared ‘roles’ of a combination of Damage, Control, and Support, to bring something to the table when one aspect is specialized in.

In PvP, which has a much higher focus on competitive builds, the lack of role diversity is the strongest.

Nothing weird about one class having 1 archetype. FFXIV does this and it does it very, very well.

You’re kind of proving my point with how you’ve come full circle about PvP build diversity. Why aspire to diversity when the system is designed for it and still doesn’t happen. There’s no point. It’s a waste of resources to keep that contraption going in PvP. People are going to pick the most efficient way to play the game and leave the garbage behind.

The problem with that “major” idea is the player base doesn’t really care about that at all. They will cherry pick what’s going to do the best overall, not specialize because the game lets them do what they want.

If GW2 was released with a Specialization system or something in the Traits that made you pick Support, Control, or Damage builds that’d be different.

I’d rather have one fully supported game mode that’s fun and competitive than a whole bunch of crap. The QQ is not the player’s fault it’s Anet’s for making the game so easy to cheese at.

I know the post was really long, but think about how much more fun Conquest would be if you had that kind of counterplay going on.

Even if the game modes come, this wad of options approach isn’t going to make those game modes work. That’s probably why they haven’t released them because they know that there would be god tier builds from day 1. TDM is going to be a thief’s world and no one else’s. It’s not rocket science.

That’s why Skyhammer is so unpopular. Certain classes can dominate because their pool of options leads to a much stronger outcome than the others’. Spirit Watch was a joke because of the same problem. Crapricorn was awful because of how Underwater Combat is severely Warrior, Ranger, and Mesmer favored.

Ironically, this kind of PvP would take LESS work to balance, and create MORE competition. Just tweak a few of the classes’ numbers every month or so and you’ve got a thriving, self-regulating Conquest mode that rewards skill.

V. Role of Downed State

How does rezing figure into the picture? Support and Hunters would be most responsible for this aspect, since they are designed to reinforce and scale with greater numbers. Assassins and Duelists can’t be empowered for that because they’d be too strong and invalidate the other roles.

Support could have more immediate and powerful res skills, like a casted res that brings the teammate back from range. Hunters could trade a bit of firepower for faster rezes with Traits if they want to help in that way.

VI. Traits

These would be significantly reduced to two trait lines that have to do with the primary role and utility. The choices would be more about the weapon set and utilities for the primary role.

Utility would determine how versatile or further specialized the class is. A Hunter could help with downed state as a light support, an Assassin could improve their movement speed vs. their attack speed either moving to points more efficiently or getting that kill faster. Support could introduce CC where there wasn’t any, add boons, or a debilitating condition where there wasn’t one.

The narrow choices are, again, a theme because the choices should matter.

IV. How Classes Would Have to Change

This is the big one. The builds available to the classes would have to shrink substantially.

Duelists would have to lose group utility of any kind. Warriors would lose Shouts and Banners, Rangers would lose Spirits and Shouts, and their available pool would focus on winning duels on points. The choices of weapons would eliminate AoE since they would be focusing on killing the player alone. They would have strong defensive cooldowns that make it hard for anyone to gank them, so Endure Pain type skills are important, if not vital for them. They would have knockbacks, launches, etc. to grapple with, and “money shot” skills to seal the deal with.

Assassins would also give up any group utility and would have to give up the entire concept of doing condition damage. No more PU Mesmers, P/D Condi Thieves, or Phantasm Mesmers. There would also be no Shadow Refuge, Veil, or any of that group stealth cheese. Their builds would focus on getting from A to B as quickly as possible, getting a money stun or knockdown and doing massive damage. The focus would be narrow, but the challenges would be many. They’d have personal stealth and movement boosts, but, like Duelists, would not scale with numbers without Support.

Support would not do very much damage at all. Their role would be to turn the battlefield into a much friendlier place for their team at the expense of being fragile and weak in small fights. If a Hunter or Assassin joins them, however, they can supercharge their offensive and inflict CC and/or conditions that line up the killing blow. They’re like wingmen. The idea of a “Bunker” would have to die. Support has to come at a price – so they’ll be fragile and easy to kill if the team’s Hunter isn’t paying attention and helping him out.

Hunter would be fast, and have the radar effect that would make him the best equipped to protect his Support and kill Assassins. Their combat would focus on speed, denying the opponent their movement, lowering physical damage through Chill, Weakness, and Blind, and do damage in a combination of AoE and Single Target, but in a limited way. The AoE would be there to take down clones with, so that the Mesmer can’t keep his advantage or make a Thieves’ Guild less effective. They wouldn’t have defensive cooldowns, so a Duelist will beat them by extending the fight well past their survivability. An Assassin can gank them if they aren’t careful, but will have the tools to extend the fight and make the Assassin run away if he wants to live. Support won’t be able to hold up against him because they’re too flimsy.

This is an idea to make PvP Conquest a more exciting place to fight and for PvP to be entirely separate from PvE and WvW’s goofy Customization system. This is a radically different idea than most, but, if implemented, I believe would make GW2’s PvP much more interesting and competitive.

I don’t care if the Devs consider it or not. They only consider what the community supports in overwhelming fashion. This suggestion is for YOU, the player, to consider and support or criticize because ultimately the Devs are slave to your desires.

I. Definitions

Focus
Game balance in GW2 where each class has a defined role that only one other class can do. Each class is sought after based on roles and the competence of the player to accomplish those roles. The roles ought to be easy to learn but difficult to master, so that new players aren’t alienated and veterans aren’t bored of how easy it is.

Customization
The current game balance of throwing an enormous wad of options at each class, of which only a small fraction will be used. The roles are unclear, because they are supposed to be decided upon by the playerbase, not the developers. Build becomes more important than skill, because your ability to pick the best possible options in each slot matters more than your execution of them.

II. Why Customization Sucks

In a competitive environment, the ideal is to be able to respect your opponent and accept the outcome of the contest as “fair enough.” It is currently impossible for anyone to respect their opponent because their build is a lot more important than how they use it.

If you aren’t bringing at least one Hambow on your team you’re going to lose. Period. If you bring an Ele you are more than likely going to lose. Period. If you bring a Necro he’s a free kill without peels. Period.

This is what happens when you throw wads of options at the players – they will only pick a few of them and dominate with them until the devs introduce another set of options to dominate with.

If anything, Customization discourages competition rather than encourages it because once you’ve figured out the dominant build it’s pretty much over. Unless they use the same build, you’re going to beat them repeatedly.

This upcoming patch is not going to fix this problem. It will, if anything, irritate it further by creating yet more monster builds and exclusion. Elementalists might come back, but it will be at another classes’ expense – possibly Ranger’s.

This is a terrible competitive environment, and encourages PvP to just be a place to farm gold and get gear faster than repeated dungeon runs.

Is that acceptable?

III. What Focus Requires From Classes

First, to accomplish this vision, classes need to be looked at with a narrow vision rather than a broad one. The total package must be broad but the pieces smaller, MUCH smaller than they are now.

If the favored mode is indeed conquest, then each class needs to fulfill its role in that game mode in a specific way that no other class can.

Here are four roles I think the eight classes could be built around, with the 5th member providing more of one of the roles to add an additional strategic layer that differentiates each team’s strategy.

1) Duelist – focuses on single engagements and point control. Their goal is to kick someone off the point and kill them, but require help if they are outnumbered because their abilities are limited to handling that single opponent.

Ideal professions: Ranger vs. Warrior.

2) Support – focuses on team engagements and scaling their fights with size. Their goal is to either give their teammates a boost in an area or make life hell for the other team in that area. They are quite vulnerable if left alone, however, and require help if they are cornered.

Ideal professions: Necromancer vs. Guardian.

3) Assassin – focuses on speed and fast time to kill. They use stealth to sneak up on people and sucker punch them, quickly changing the tide of battle if they are successful and throwing airballs if they screw up. It’s a very challenging role that will attract the most elite technician players, and will frighten your opponent if executed well.

Ideal professions: Thief and Mesmer.

4) Hunter

These classes focus on killing Assassins and controlling the map. They would have the unique ability to have a radar effect on their map that lets them see enemy icons in a wider radius. Their priorities are their challenge, and, like Assassin, are not an easy role to do by any means. If they screw up they’ll win pointless fights that put the team behind and get snowballed. They are the shot callers on their team, having more information than anyone, but have to act on that information decisively.

Ideal Professions: Engineer vs. Elementalist

DOOOD.

That’s a kitten quick way to get totally inebriatatersaladed

lol the backstab guy has graced us with his presence. watch out there’s a teef behind you

Nobody likes Baddiemancers anyway

Arganthium.5638:

Relentless.7023:

Why do the worst thieves end up being the ones puking bullcrap about the state of their class on the forums?

I guess they need to be carried by Sword 2 to get carried by their teammates. Pathetic

It’s funny that people like you say this, because there have been many “top” thieves- such as Jumper and Caed- that have complained about the balance of the thief or the balance of the game in general.

It’s also amusing because your stereotype means that thieves should never, ever be buffed, i.e. the ones asking for buffs are just “bad thieves” and should be ignored.

I just ran D/P Trickery tonight and the initiative gain is pretty dope. Your “claim to fame” is a S/D build which tells me exactly what your sig says “retired.” Baddie is baddie.