Guild Wars 2

Hello from casual silver! I’ve personally been having about a month break, since the PvP got kind of boring. Matches started to blend together, run from point to point or stand whole game at the point fighting enemies running towards you. GW2 PvP is pretty fast, furious and straightforward, I don’t mind that, but that also makes it almost impossible to have “memorable” matches. When the deciding moment is “2 people ran to B instead of A” it’s not very exciting =)

I play actively 3 different professions and 2 “every now and then”, but the lack of viable builds in each professions was starting to get boring. Of course I made some tweaks and whatnot suitable for my playstyle, but generally the changes didn’t even affect that much to my gameplay. It would be nice to actually do something else for a change with my Elementalist than smash my “BeeGees” rotation. (“Stayin’ Alive”, see =D )

I tried some out-of-the-meta -builds, but I think I wasn’t very good with them. Also I feel the meta builds are very optimized, so it felt like I was having a “your build is not very effective…” text on my screen all the time.

But I think while the skirmish-type PvP can get boring if done too much in too small timeframe, it’s also good for “log in, have a couple of fights, log out” type of playing. But in my opinion it does get repetitive easily if you tend to play a lot when you start playing.

edit: It seems there have been some changes after I went to a break and there are more “viable” builds around. It still seems that they aren’t that much different from what was used before, but it’s a start!

You’d need some luck, but if you got fast professions with you, you could just out-rotate those DHs. Watch them crawl around the map while points keep getting capped behind/front of them.

Besides they drop pretty easily under some CC, pressure and burst after when you got one CC up. Sure it’s painful to duel one or kill one hanging around with auramancer, but not impossible if people would stop throwing CC randomly to every direction and would actually watch what their teammates are doing with their skills.

I agree with you at class stacking though. But it is a compromise between queue time, stacking classes and finding players at same MMR range. I do log onto my DH sometimes, if it looks like it would have a good spot, or switch from DH to some other prof, but I do play 3 profs decent (I mean decent comparing only in my gameplay =D ) and one badly (badly enough I just practise in unrated, because it’s seriously horrible to watch).

Of course if you’re a thief there’s not much to do with meta build, dunno if non-metas can handle them better. At least P/P has a chance since mostly DH don’t know how to handle it. I know I had to actually go and learn how to play against P/P. But you can’t really blame the game, if you play only one profession well, since you CAN swap and you CAN go and learn other professions.

It’s not very fun to watch, can’t really tell what’s happening in fights.

In comparison: I have friends, that never even tried Dota2, but watch tournament games and “dota fails” from youtube, because they can actually tell what’s happening in them even if they haven’t played the game. Even more now after some changes.

I’m not saying that GW should take the same direction, but unless it does, the only ones watching whole thing are players that want to be better in PvP, it’s not really a big audience to start with. I like PvP, but I’d rather read my tips from forums than watch the stream. Even if I don’t play dota2 anymore, I still watch games and tournaments because they are fun, so in my opinion the difference in “watchability” is just so vast. I even enjoy watching CS tournaments and I don’t play FPS games.

I’m not really sure if it’s worth trying. I think you’d have to undergo too many changes to whole gameplay until it would break through. That’s of course just my opinion as (average?) esports consumer.

I’m honestly not sure if this is sarcasm or not. But I guess I’ll take it as not.

Matchmaking is the worse than in any game I’ve ever played. I like the pips as participation rewards, mostly because matchmaking makes winning really a luck based game. I have hard time even bothering to que though, since it’s basically 50/50 if you get 10 winning or losing streak next.

It’s actually so bad, that even in winning games it doesn’t matter if one player is afk or not. Maybe it’s different in other tiers, but in silver 1 ranked or unranked it’s around 2 or 3/12 games where loser gets over 300 points. The majority of matches the winners just facerolls around from start to end. Even if I try my best and feel like I’m doing ok, the impact never is enough to win the game, if we are winning, the enemies die so fast I don’t even get to hit them. It’s so much “fun” that basically only reason to play is for rewards.

The community can be nice, it can be bad. I guess generally a little bit nicer than in other games I’ve played. Well maybe a lot nicer, really.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Only in MMORPGs in a competitive environment is this a problem. This is because most MMO has to fits balancing issues into a long list of things that make them money, Power Creep Expansion, DLCs, Micro-transactions, Character Slots, constant bug fixes of Expac content. Balance don’t make a MMO company money it just cost them man power and resources, that could be spent on things that’s going to make them money.

That why in MMO meta usually sets in stone for 3 to 6 months or longer and broken things are left unchecked. To put it simply balance don’t sell in a MMORPG like is crucially sells a competitive PvP eSports shooter, or MOBA, which has balance patches every 2 weeks or sooner and detailed explanation for they balancing decisions.

And yes Metabattle does not decide Meta here, ANet does and only can. The people at Metabattle just do the math on what ANet gives as and come up with the Most Effective Tactic Available, balanced or not, then go back to working on PvE, gem store items, fixes and quality of life changes with current Xpack/s, or the new upcoming Xpack for the next 3 or more months.

That is true, GW being rather PvE oriented game, the PvP plays only a small part in this. In PvP games, Dota being a good example, the balance is basically the whole game. There are of course many ways to play, tactics and counterplays, but some ridiculously strong item/ability synergy will be nerfed or addressed in matter of days usually.

Tho I don’t think GW has any very strong..things. Like something that can carry games easily to win, I know some professions can have a very strong solo impact if played right, but I’m prone to think that isn’t the case in higher levels of play really. I haven’t been watching any streams, since it’s so hard to understand what’s happening. I can dodge Pudge fakecast hook, but I can’t spot any animation in this game even after 400 games…I haven’t really paid much attention to it either, I just quit one very competitive game and generally just want to chill and have fun.

I think having a 5-man premade ranked would be interesting. I never played it myself and it’s so weird, that it was replaced by solo que, instead of implementing both. I guess there wasn’t time or interest actually make both worthwhile, maybe offering different rewards or whatever. I could see some interesting ways to play 5-man premades, since you still in the end don’t know, what will be thrown against you. Also I guess the queues would be either long, or the matchmaking just a mess. I think the current rewarded for playing system is to lure people into ranked PvP, I could be wrong too.

The thing is, that there will always be the “optimal”. You can balance things forever, but there will always be a build that gains the most in terms of synergy between traits, weapon sets, runes…

The meta is really a mix of what professions and what builds people play, it arises from the most effective builds, yes, but it would be impossible to balance things so that something like 5 builds would be as effective. Think about it like this: every trait and weapon skill in the build is a variable, if you change one variable, it changes the relations of that variable to every other variable. It changes how well that variable plays in synergy with some other variables, it changes how well it plays against some other variables.

The optimal doesn’t necessary mean, that the build gains the most effect of all available options, it is also affected of what is excepted other people to run as well. If no-one plays condition build, then nobody would run with condition cleaners. Then suddenly somewhere comes condition heavy ranger/necro/ele and just blows everyone up, more people start running condition damage, since it’s not excepted, the meta changes and now you actually need condition cleaners, because it’s the new normal.

Metabattle doesn’t decide what is the meta, it just tells us what is the current meta. And even then there are players who don’t play meta builds and they excel in it and go high.

If we played as team of five, we’d need to build the team and builds so that they all compliment each other and fill the decided roles. With solo and duo que best we can do is to “assume” what kind of team we will face, which is the meta.

But bottom line, there will always be the optimal, it may and will change from match to match and even if you play the best meta build available, the opponent might not. Just like kevlar is good against bullets, it’s not that much of a help against knives, but if you suspect everyone running with guns instead knives, it’s better to wear a kevlar instead of slice protection.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Or you could just buy the game. What’s it cost now? Like a tank of gas?

Tank of gas costs around 60-75$ in Finland (12 gallons). Not related to the topic at hand so much, just found that a little bit subjective as comparison =D

Yeh the off hours probably are part of the reason why this does happen.

What are by the way considered the general peak/off hours in PvP and what timezone? I play at NA server and live in Europe so I’m having a hard time getting my head around that. Besides isn’t there like…5 hours apart from east to west coast?

Thief seem to require somewhat more tactical awareness than for example the said DH. You could “do fine” just spamming mid as DH for the whole game, or even just standing at one point from start to end in some cases.

As thief you you have to keep on moving, if you don’t move to right places you’re probably just being useless. Also you have to understand which fights you can take and which not, as someone pointed out, weighing the the results of actions.

I have recently started to play my thief in PvP and as a rather unseasoned player I find it a good practise in my way to understanding the rotational play. When I play DH I just run somewhere, start dishing out damage and that’s pretty much it, some times a random 1v1 or stalling for backup. A good thief can carry so hard (at my scrub level thank you) by rotating and being able to blow someone up casually while passing by.

Just learning the ultimate damage burst moves isn’t that helpful. I’ve fought some thieves, that can do the burst at start, and when I don’t die they dance around clearly not having any idea what should happen next. There are of course people, that get blown up by thief, log into theirs thinking “well that is easy, I can do that”. After couple of losses they realise, as did I , that there’s really much deeper gameplay that doesn’t even revolve around doing damage.

Yes. First I thought it was just me having a bad day, which resulted loss, which resulted even worse gameplay. Then on a good day couple of wins, better drive, more wins.

But I’m actually starting to think that it’s not even me and my bad and good days. Lately other players have been pointing this out too. At good days I get games, where my team just dances on enemy’s grave and I feel like I don’t even need to do anything and we’d still win. At bad days the games can seem impossible to win.

Also it’s almost always Win streak, loss streak, win streak, loss streak, hardly ever 2 good or bad streaks in row. Also having mixed days seems to be very rare. For me it feels like the game is forcing me to 50/50 win ratio, but that’s probably just me and my foil hat.

Though it would be funny if the code had some bug where it throws people with loss streak to same team resulting super bad morale which isn’t exactly helping to win the games . Well, “funny”.

ReaperJr.5967:

Rokkis.8901:

I have a question!

As support ele how I’m supposed to be useful when our team can’t kill necro 3v1 in mid and there’s one more necro on the other team. And of course there’s 3 other players.

We had the game at start, but after the opponent figured out that “ele is a nice target” I got focused so hard that even using Water Overload meant I’d die before it could even finish.

I mean what are we even supposed to do when everyone is trying to kill you while your team is melting away because random conditions and damage? Trying to cleanse while 2 condi necros spamming stuff while immortal sometimes makes me feel that it’s not even worth trying. It doesn’t really matter if your whole team gets wiped in 5 or 10 seconds, we lose anyway. Or are we supposed just split everywhere, but what’s my role as group support if we just split in two groups? Run with other and hope for the best?

I’ll tell you..sometimes the drafts just are bad enough that the only way to win is for hope for other team go afk or be completely pawless blind kittens with 38kbps modem.

When you are under focus, you try to kite and use the terrain to your advantage. Also, time your defensive abilities well. For example, obsidian skin before dropping water overload. Or lightning flash to a hard to follow terrain before using wash the pain away. Because when you are under pressure it means your teammates aren’t, so you can drop all your heals for yourself.

Thank you for your advice, I’ve been trying to follow them and it’s been helpful. I got finally some consistency at my playing under pressure, though sometimes I face a premades and if they’re good, they drive me to defensive and then blow up the guy next to me =)

Thank you everyone for the answers, those really shed some light on my issues, even if I didn’t ask anything specific. I really like mesmer, I feel almost immortal in PvE and in PvP I die around 2 seconds on everything but very, very bad players. Big purple bubble of “do not attack” is kinda big indicator that mesmer is about to get killed soon. At this point I pretty much admit that mesmer is hard, I suck at it big time and I probably should sit down for couple of hours and read again all the specialisation traits, there are so much of “when you do this then this will happen why this also happens” embedded to them.

I take the condi build is chronophantasma in metabattle? I’m running with that and so far I feel that my damage is real lackluster. Even if I spend whole game in fight shattering my buttocks out I rarely can break 200k. I don’t run it with sword though, I did at start, but it got me killed enough so I just switched over to scepter and decided to avoid melee at any costs.

First game today, game instantly popped after clicking to queue. Lost 500-20.

Now mostly my games are very one-sided, Normal is to have 500-100 loss or win, I’ve been trying to track the results a bit and around 2/12 the loser gets over 300 points. The games are almost always one-sided from the start. I haven’t seen something like comeback in two weeks or so.

Well, you’re actually right. Some do have “viable” core builds, but unless you have the opponents “not playing meta” you’ll be just consciously gimping yourself. But hey, people paid for their elites, so it would be unfair if f2p accounts would be on par in any way.

I tried with thief….I’m sorry for all the teammates, made me hate the thief so much even with Daredevil I’m honestly disgusted of that prof.

I have a question!

As support ele how I’m supposed to be useful when our team can’t kill necro 3v1 in mid and there’s one more necro on the other team. And of course there’s 3 other players.

We had the game at start, but after the opponent figured out that “ele is a nice target” I got focused so hard that even using Water Overload meant I’d die before it could even finish.

I mean what are we even supposed to do when everyone is trying to kill you while your team is melting away because random conditions and damage? Trying to cleanse while 2 condi necros spamming stuff while immortal sometimes makes me feel that it’s not even worth trying. It doesn’t really matter if your whole team gets wiped in 5 or 10 seconds, we lose anyway. Or are we supposed just split everywhere, but what’s my role as group support if we just split in two groups? Run with other and hope for the best?

I’ll tell you..sometimes the drafts just are bad enough that the only way to win is for hope for other team go afk or be completely pawless blind kittens with 38kbps modem.

Try PvP. Reroll to ~anything else when you get bored losing in solo que.

Azukas.1426:

Just out rotate them and use your portal plays. You will beat the bad DH’s if you are really good on mesmer, but general rule of thumb is avoid.

Wait, is there actually some profession you shouldn’t avoid as mesmer?

“they’re currently the only profession that can carry low Ranked players into higher tiers”

I haven’t played ranked (at all) and I consider myself as noob in this game, I’ve played mmorpg PvP for 5 or so years tho, so I shouldn’t be in the worst spot either. Dunno how much my opinion actually matters but…. I basically can’t win a game as mesmer, if I win it’s despite me, not because of me.

Now elementalist, that’s a different story. I’ve won nice 50 games out of 62 ( I love statistics in general!) so I suppose I should do a little bit better with mesmer than losing or getting carried. Or maybe I find elementalist more natural due the excessive amount of dota2 as Invoker, but it’s the same with Ranger and Guardian. I’ve read guides, learn my skills, my build…like I should. Even so I feel like I’m just easy target with easily avoided shatter damage, throwing some boons which have hardly any impact on the game.

It’s an anecdote, I know, but I’m having a hard time seeing bad player getting carried through lower tier because they play mesmer. Dang, even if I see mesmer on the playfield while playing any other character I’m like “hey, that’s a free kill!” and they usually are.

Greener.6204:

I’ve never seen that. Perhaps you can pass on to Anet the time when this occurred, and the location you were at (I’m hoping you have the mini-map and clock in the rest of the picture). That way they can take a closer look at what may have happened.

Found it. You completed an event during this time. Unidentfied dye is a map bonus reward

Thank you for your fast answer. Due to that I managed to get back to that place and submit a bug report from there with a screenshot showing the chat window.

Haven’t reported bugs before, but at least now I know how to!

Edit: Oh, I guess I did. I somehow had missed that completely. Shame on me…

As the topic says. I was doing my mining, nothing special, Brisban iron nodes as usual and had Unidentified Dye drop from normal Iron ore node.

I didn’t know that was even possible, I’m tempted to think it shouldn’t be. So anyone else had this or anything similar to happen?

Yesterday I fell through ground under the map at Verdant Brink. My existence is breaking the game it seems.