Guild Wars 2

Jumper.9482:

This dmg is so OP plz nerf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxp_CTaZDD0

Sidenote: I think Engie nades need more nerfing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7r5aT8gHaU

But don’t touch thief; thief is fine.

Funny how the “testing” is done on a static glass glass cannon thief… Hell, a critter have more defense/life than those.
Every single other profession in the game with a decent damage build could have wrecked that stationary thief as fast/faster than that.

The only decent damage build for guardians is greatsword (and this has been known since release so.. no news there!). And with zero mobility, weak defenses (which you get if you even try to go for a dmg build as guardian) and no great team utilities I would not count dmg guardians as a “hidden killer”. I am not expecting a buff, but not a nerf either.

I like how these kinds of threads pop up now and then. It’s like: Mesmer, warrior, ranger and thief is all broken, the Meta is still being formed and there is no true competetive PvP mode out there (I do not count a random tournament system as one, gief ranked matched and split queues already!) so the Meta can’t be forming as of now. Still people complain about one of the few classes that I personally consider being somewhat balanced.

/thread (just to be a dick, and copy the other posters who think that their opinion/post finishes the debate…)

gamefreak.5673:

Never for the love of any thing holy make us play on map with tons of underwater combat. I am not going into reasons why because i should not have to.

One really should not have to, amen to that!

Arheundel.6451:

muscarine.5136:

Because of you we had like 3-4 whine threads covering both this official forum and a community run forum, what a troll….

Potential strenghts? The title of your video is " Guild Wars 2 bug", you really think to be clever don’t ya?

I find it rather sad that you’re still trying to be clever, so you’re trying to promote this profession strenght?

Before talking utter non-sense,

Dude, seriously ?
Last time i tried to have a discussion with you it turned the same way, if anything you should consider choosing your words better if you don’t want people to react negatively toward you, you had it coming and it took a while before he lost patience.

I don’t even understand where is your issue here, this is something that requires discussion at the very least, and i’ll add on top of this that i already saw a few d/d eles who were able to maintain those boons for a very long time.

Bug aside i’d love to hear some real arguments as to why it is so essential for this build, at least make your case.

The starting point of my case is that I remember that we’re talking about a videogame, when I come here I drop all pretenses of a real life, I passionately talk about this elementalist profession…but some people really take this “passion” over the top.
People get personally offended for being called trolls? for real dude?…wow this is more than being a simple geek ..jesus.
This is a like soccer : “Fan A =My team is better , Fan B=No my team is better” there is no need for real name calling, a simple discussion over a video game forum and you start calling people “unstable” and more, nvm then I’m wrong you guys are right..end

It might be based off of how You decided to make your points? Let’s not forget who it was that set the bar for the discussion. And to jump from being very aggressive and calling people trolls (yes it is offensive) and being clue-less etc, to verbally shrinking down into fetus position and expressing feelings of being personally attacked is to me being a bit unstable. Sorry for pointing it out.

+1!
Good one, that video made me so laugh. Wonderfully apt example of what balance actually is
And even though it is made for World of Warcraft it oddly enough makes a lot of sense in Guild Wars 2 as well.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Arheundel.6451:

Rythgar.2896:

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

Rythgar.2896:

What is up with the “few CD’s”? It is a few CD’s.. Two coodowns for a ~93% upkeep alone is pretty sick. But keep dreaming your dreams if you wish.

Leave your biased point of view for a second and stop arguing and start debating.

My posts seem to bring a few of the more mentally unstable eles out of the woodwork.

The first thing I did when I discovered that magnetic grasp was a leap finisher and made this build was to challenge a competitive ele to some duels to test it (Prince, I believe he quit as he’s fallen off the leader boards). I beat his scepter dagger build, then we both had one victory in a d/d mirror match.

Elemental shielding is a great trait for D/D ele and if you use it you bet your kitten you’re going to try to land the ring of fire + magnetic grasp combo every chance you get. Protection is the equivalent of about 900 toughness and is the best way to run a berserker amulet build and not explode when someone looks at you funny.

Granted, he seems a bit unstable to say the least. And trying to have a discussion with him seems rather..unpleasant and frankly impossible. Since he will just call you clue-less and then start talking about subjects I’ve not even touched

And yes I agree with you. The protection boon is immensely powerful, and to get so much of a upkeep just from elemental shielding activation..There really is no reason not to try to get it off as soon as possible. It is not like: “use it and you will die or don’t use it and save it as a life-saver”. Which Arheundel seems to consider it.

I limit myself to discuss over this videogame..I don’t use internet to cowardly offend people in such awful ways, yes you may be clueless about aspects of the game but that’s about it.
I just wonder why you go out of your way to attack me personally calling me unstable and such, we’re simply debating about a videogame….god it’s like being threatened with a knife during a discussion about a soccer match…chill out man.
Nvm the best course of action is simply to report you and ignore this thread, all points have been made regardless

I find it funny that you call me a troll and then turn around and act all high and mighty like you’re the victim of some great injustice. I didn’t even specifically say anything about you, you can infer whatever you want.

Haha oh man, that was funny!
I don’t want you to feel “personally attacked” but I don’t think you can blame us too much about the “unstable” personality, since you went from jumping on the OP big time to accusing me of personal attacks etc. But if offense was taken I apologize.

And hey dude, beyond calling you a bit unstable we said nothing bad about you really. And the whole heated discussion is completely down to you. Do you expect you can troll, harass and shout out as much as you want in a thread and not expect something back?

But I am satisfied with leaving the discussion as a hopeless one, and just break it up Good call.

And in between these arguments I still think we did get our points out. The bug needs a hot-fix, like yesterday. And I am still very doubtful about the high upkeep for ele’s, especially for bunker ele’s.

Danto.6748:

1. There was no rage from any of us about the timers. The only thing we wanted to point out was that it would make it a lot harder for newer players to get into the game without spawn waves, which is true.
2. This new feature will severely damage the PvP streamers and their teams.
3. This feature will prevent any “big plays” scenarios, which are partially what fans would be attracted to.
4. The game will become a lot more boring, to play and to watch.
5. There is an inbalance with and without this feature, but the gains from not having this feature are better than having it. For some professions it’s a good thing, for some other it isn’t in both cases.
6. Nobody is on a high horse here, we are just very alarmed.

Case in point, a player as I described would pretty much respond the exact same way you did.
1: Raging might have been a bad choice of word, but you “top players” cried out, loud! Claiming it would ruin the game, and oh how wrong you were. The only ones experiencing problems with ress timers are the teams still stuck on the pre-patch meta setup.
2: So, don’t stream? It’s not like you get a lot of viewers any ways.. You talk a lot about that e-sports has to be fun to watch. And I just can’t see the fun in watching you practice day out and day in. The things worth to watch would be tournaments/show matches.
3: Big plays? Do you mean zergs? I personally so much more prefer to watch a good 1vs1. Or a team outsmarting the other team. Besides, with the ability to swap abilities, traits and weapons constantly (while out of combat granted) it would be so incredibly much harder for a viewer to follow the matches. Would be a mess to try to keep up with the teams constantly changing tactics and setup.
4: More boring to watch? No I doubt it, since people actually will be able to try to analyze the matches, follow with the tactics and setups this way.. More boring to play? So the fun for you is to run around trying to predict what your enemy changed for abilities/traits so you can change yourself, to try and counter it? Yeah..sounds fun and not at all random.
5: You just mentioned like one of the most fundamental physical laws..There is always two sides to one coin. Of course there is pros and cons with every feature, and this one might very well be very con heavy with you “top players” current meta. Granted there might be a scenario where we can’t find a balanced meta with this change either. Haven’t even touched the game last weeks so can’t speak too much about the change yet.
6: How can you be alarmed about a change before you, the community and the game have had a chance to adapt? Step outside of the box (which you yourself ((top players)) claim you are so good at doing..) and change up the meta and adapt your setups to it.

And the whole argument “Oh with this change you will have to sacrifice something, like mobility for burst or survivability for mobility etc.” is just so hilarious. It’s being used like that is not how it should be! Of course you should have to sacrifice certain things for some things. I personally was bored with the tedious work with changing weapons/traits just to try to get that extra swiftness or the small advantage a trait change gave you in a certain encounter/map etc.

Jax.5261:

I see what you’re doing stop it, nobody wants underwater maps in rotation.
Every single person I’ve talked to has said if underwater maps get into rotation they’re quitting. My entire guild, pretty much my entire friends list, me, etc.

If you listen to your player base once, which probably means you’re just going to go ahead and do whatever the hell you want, DON’T DO IT.

+1

MrQuizzles.6823:

The problem with keeping protection up 100% of the time is that it means switching attunements and using combos as soon as you can perform them. The rotation required to keep it up is, by itself, fairly vigorous. This locks you into certain patterns while fighting, which isn’t always the best idea. Indeed, going into Water attunement just for Frost Aura is probably not a good idea. We want to be able to save that bit of burst healing for when it’s needed.

In a practical fight, it’s probably not going to happen. We should be switching to our different attunements at our discretion rather than blindly forcing ourselves into this rotation and very potentially locking ourselves out of valuable skills in the process.

Eles can give themselves a lot of protection, yes, but I don’t think many will be keeping it up 100% of the time in any practical scenario.

I agree with you somewhat, but your whole point of view is a fighting style that adapts to what your enemy does. Why not do your thing and force the reaction out of him/her? This would demand a lot more knowledge of all the professions and being able to staying several steps ahead of the enemy player, but still makes it very very valid. And as a bunker your job kind of is..to survive. And keeping protection up is a big part of it. Not everything is about avoiding/negating the enemies attacks.

Yezhik.2071:

I kind of have to agree with OP… …..

…..Who cares about underwater combat?

Apparently ArenaNet does.. What a fatal flaw that might turn out to become.

It just feels like their reasoning must have been something like:
-Guys, we had to release prematurely, the PvP is no where near what we wanted/needed it to be, and still just keeps falling behind the curve. We must start addressing this issue immediately. What is the worst part about PvP?
-Underwater combat for sure, it seems like no one enjoys it, it does not work at all and the only map which really has it as part of it’s demographic is avoided until oblivion, and the people who can’t bother with avoiding it just stays the hell out of the water..
-Right, the goal is clear enough boys! We will fix..Underwater combat!
-“applauds from the Anet employees”.
-“screams from thousands of PvP players seeing their dreams of actual PvP being crushed”.

To be honest Danto, this is pretty much Exactly what you and the rest of the “top players” said about the new ress-timers. You raged, claimed the competitive scene dead etc for a week or so, then you all magically turned around and ended up praising it in the GW2guru broadcast with Jonathan Sharp.

So forgive me if I don’t lay much trust in your sheer theorycrafting conclusions and early hand experience. And no, I don’t consider you top players having the right and obligation to decide what changes/balances will be done. You are allowed your opinion and due to the amount of time you spend in competitive (eh, as close to competitive as one can get with barely any ptPvP community) PvP you might more often than not be on the right track of things, but that does not make your opinion the rule of which to follow.

Just want to end my rather harsh post by saying that I think some of you top players seems like nice guys, and surely are good players. Better than me by a far stretch. But I am getting fed up with this “we top players” talk.. GW2’s top players just seem to fall short in my eyes. Out of all the e-sports/really competitive games I’ve played I must say that GW2’s top players is amongst the most arrogant and inflated ones. Take it down a notch please. I don’t mind hearing your opinion, just the part about how it is your divine right by playtime/experience to decide the development of the game.

TL;DR: No offense but get down from that horse of yours, chillax a bit before making rash doom conclusions. Also, this might be a balance for the worse, I am yet to decide my opinion on it. Although I really see where Anet wants to go with this. And I think the ramifications you mention is a bit on the extreme.

Arheundel.6451:

I assume that for LOT of players you mean yourself…..

Constructive criticism there, way to go!

@OP I have to agree that I am less than pleased to see the wide difference between PvP and PvE attention from Anet. But I can only see it as that that Anet blew their budget, had to release the game and now does anything and everything to try to get as much revenue as they can to satisfy the higher ups and stock-holders. Let’s face it, we are a minority and as a minority we tend to get the short end in rough times.

But I would not go so far as to say that the PvP is dead, or the game is doomed or anything. It currently just means that they have a good combat system (granted that is the Only core feature they have..but also the most important one) and will probably implement the rest with time. With enough care and genius from the developers the game can still be a very successful PvP game, and perhaps even a E-sports game. But only time will tell, a lot of time!

Arheundel.6451:

Rythgar.2896:

Arheundel.6451:

Xom.9264:

So you pointed out a major OP bug and get called a troll. Right bet if you pointed out a major OP bug from a class these people dont play they would be demanding fixes.

Keep up the good work Cosmic I understand you dont want ele as your main class to become fotm due to a bug.

The post about the bug was not intended for this thread, the OP has been called a troll for the first post, which contain no informations regarding any bug

The OP is generally spreading disinformations and increase the amount of complaint as consequence:

I find it kind of funny that you accuse the OP for wanting to inflame the forums with hate, arguing etc etc. But you are really the only one taking the bait…Give it a rest already!

@the issue at hand: To blow a few CD’s to get 100% protection upkeep is a trade I would do any day. You do know it’s 33% decreased damage taken right?.. This is broken even without the bug, IMO.

Feel free to blow “few CD” to obtain your 100% protection upkeep, once you face decent players..you’ll realize how clueless you are

What is up with the “few CD’s”? It is a few CD’s.. Two coodowns for a ~93% upkeep alone is pretty sick. But keep dreaming your dreams if you wish.

I am not sure if it should be changed, not sure it is OP or not. All I know is that the community spent the better part of the time after release raging on how super strong the Guardians were with their ~100% protection upkeep. Can’t understand why the same does not factor to ele’s. Especially taking the rest of their survival/support options into the picture..

Leave your biased point of view for a second and stop arguing and start debating.

Cosmic Teapot.9162:

gamefreak.5673:

Ele’s can almost have regeration and protection up almost all the time now with this patch

Ele’s could always maintain high/100% protection uptime. The nov. 15 patch bugged out one of our leap finishers which took away a large chunk of d/d ele’s protection. Now that it’s fixed it’s back to the way it’s been since release. There is currently a bug that was introduced with today’s patch that is granting a ridiculously high amount of protection, but I assume it will be hotfixed in a day.

You assume much, my good sir!

We waited for a hot-fix to the block bug on guardians for months (or was it “just” weeks?), to mention one.

Granted, Anet might be human enough to learn from their mistakes, but I would not hold my breath. I learned that from my own past mistakes..

official.4658:

so basically all i have to say is more and more i realize these guys at arena have no idea what they are doing. But heres the kicker more than half there staff are all on vacation for the whole month while they leave the game worse off then before.

Granted, the gaming community is a rather fluctuating group of people, but there is a very harsh limit to this, one with very fatal consequences.

I already know lots of people who have already put GW2 behind them for good, simply because the very part of the game that the game was advertised upon was so lacking at release that it might as well not have been there. And we recently got to hear that it will not be represented in any kind of way that can be called satisfactory until roughly (at it’s earliest) half a year after release.

Can’t really blame people for not being patient with that time span. I honestly think that the game will survive on it’s PvE player base, and that some new and old (with old I mean players that left GW2 long before present date) players will come back when the PvP core features are implemented. But I doubt that many of the ones that stuck around all this time will be playing at that date. I personally have been having a break for the last month and aren’t even sure I’ll be coming back in February. Too damn many good games out there for it, to be honest.

rmBossa.4621:

Most people have actually expressed positive feed back with the balance changes, to the tune of everything slowly getting balanced instead of sweeping up and down changes every patch.

And to have that on the forums of an mmo is pretty incredible imo

As for the needed additional content, they never said it was coming this patch. So while that may not be comforting at least you knew it so you could make an informed opinion on whether to stay or go.

I think anet knows they can get by for a little longer and so they will. Its business.

Not read about the ele’s getting infinite protection have you? And here the community thought that bunker guardians was OP before, commence the era for bunker ele’s (again..). But that is neither here or there.

What I think people are disappointed with/feel let down by is not the few actual changes they did, but rather that 80%+ is Underwater related. It personally feels like: “Hey guys, we will fix the Hell out of this part of the game, never mind that it is a part of the game that barely anyone enjoys and partakes in..Stick around another 2 months for some real changes, kkthxbai!”.

//Let down hardcore PvP:er.

Have to agree with all being said here!

I was a bit disheartened to hear that we wont see any real implementations of Key features to PvP until Jan-Feb (about half a year after the release of the game…) but promised myself I would just take a break and pray for some nice Meta balance and bug fixes in the promised “huge balance patch” in december.

But oh boy was I in for a let down? Under no circumstances would I call this a huge balance patch. Or well, perhaps if the “huge” part is to describe the % of the patch that was dedicated to balance..but I don’t so. And to see that almost every single profession fix/balance was to underwater abilities..Honestly? We have one out of four maps that even see any small resemblance of UW combat, and that map is pretty much hated by the PvP community, and the UW combat is avoided almost to obsession!

TL;DR: Great work on not even delivering on your promise of a “big balance patch”. It just stung enough to make me doubt that you (anet) can deliver on the key features in February. Even though it will be roughly half a year after release.

Arheundel.6451:

Xom.9264:

So you pointed out a major OP bug and get called a troll. Right bet if you pointed out a major OP bug from a class these people dont play they would be demanding fixes.

Keep up the good work Cosmic I understand you dont want ele as your main class to become fotm due to a bug.

The post about the bug was not intended for this thread, the OP has been called a troll for the first post, which contain no informations regarding any bug

The OP is generally spreading disinformations and increase the amount of complaint as consequence:

I find it kind of funny that you accuse the OP for wanting to inflame the forums with hate, arguing etc etc. But you are really the only one taking the bait…Give it a rest already!

@the issue at hand: To blow a few CD’s to get 100% protection upkeep is a trade I would do any day. You do know it’s 33% decreased damage taken right?.. This is broken even without the bug, IMO.

This is definitely a mesmer worth picking up guys! She’s a good chap, experienced and talented. Good luck to you Travee!

With regards from Remos Vell.

Seether.7285:

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

it makes perfect sense. i said this exact thing in my advanced post for a new playlist.

but can you explain to me how custom arena will be better then an advanced playlist(in terms of getting new teams ready to compete)? it seems that my idea that was backed by a lot of ppl was just overlooked or not replied to.

custom arena wont be good for new ppl to get better they wont put in the effort yes the great teams will maybe use it if they dont want to enter a tournament.

advanced is easy and with most ppl being lazy they want to just click it and play. new teams wont go through the effort unless they see there new team is good enough to put that much work into.

Your “advanced playlist” is really just patchwork over a bad system and it would be much better to axe the whole tournament system and go with single/duo queue and premade queues both with ratings rather than have something that slightly improves on a broken system.

Seconded, partly.

I see no reason to scrap the tournament system, since it can be used for the daily/monthly tournaments. But to have it as the “go to” game mode, with ratings and Matchmaking implemented, I just can’t see how it will work.

This has been requested by the community since the first beta weekend but it seems like Anet loves their game breaking mechanics too much

In my opinion the quickness abilities bring nothing but hate and unbalance. Any idiot can pop quickness before doing their 2 button mash of a burst. But what the quickness does on the whole “counter it” side of the matter is that it complicates it a hundred times over. Quickness ruins builds that is just fine in theory/on paper. Why add steroids to a adrenaline fight?

Remove quickness and I dare say that the complaints about burst would drop by 90%. Burst would still be a high amount of damage under a short amount of time and longer frequency, but would actually be manageable. Not the case now. And near every imbalance thread is about how a thief or warrior can dish out 1-3 times your HP in 1 quickness, these would vanish the same moment quickness did.

cesmode.4257:

Jonathan sharp even referred to casuals as “noob”.

This is the second or third time I see you making this statement. And I just have to clarify following to you, since you don’t seem to know it: Noob is a player that is generally “bad” at a specific game or overall. While Newb is a player that is new and henceforth “bad” simply because he is new.

You have, as I’ve mentioned, used as a statement against Sharp that he called causals noobs, which is just wrong. He used the term newb and casuals to describe the less experienced/skilled/newer players. So where you see an insult there actually is none. And if my memory serves me right he actually clarifies this atleast one time in the interview. He goes like “the newbs, I mean the more casual players” or “the newbs and the casual players” etc.

Oh and by the way, just want to point out that I (as a mid-tier player) would much more prefer Arena Net to balance/tweak the game from the professionals point of view/feedback. Because that is where the trustworthy analysis’s will come from.

Want examples? Just go to any successful e-sports out there, like SC2. When the SC2 HotS beta came out every single sc2 pro gamer got a key. And it is not because of some dark, ominous reason. It’s simply because Blizzard knows that the pro’s feedback is near invaluable, and the more they can get the better.

Gonna agree with people wanting you to leave it in. It will just be too kitten horrible to have to go back to the ugly team colors after experiencing this change.
And the whole “confusion” with what team you are on must be trolling..For crying out loud, you have huge banners at your spawn colored in your team color. Throw one eye at those when you enter the game/spawn and just dedicate 1 brain cell to remember it, done!

NevirSayDie.6235:

The OP’s suggestion wouldn’t even hurt guardians at all, it would just make other professions able to spec to bunker as well. Considering the number of paid teams that take two guardians to every match, I’d say it’s worth considering.

As a bunker engineer, I’ll freely admit that I do use the protection on being cc’d trait, which is quite good since we don’t have any stability. But if protection gets nerfed and toughness gets buffed, I won’t lose any effectiveness at all, and neither will guardians, because bunkers will always use high toughness.

You are probably right (minus about the 2xguardians. I rarely see paid teams go with two guardians, and it’s never more than one of them that is bunkering then..).
I guess it is a taste kind of thing. I prefer to rely on me using abilities and being able to mitigate damage very effectively for a short amount of time rather than to always, constantly mitigate a small amount of damage.

While we are pitching ideas I would like to propose a decrease in thoughness (would help with how casually people throw around the “bunkers are too powerful” argument I think) and increase in protections effectiveness (not duration mind you).

Evan Lesh.3295:

Apologies, this feature wasn’t suppose to go out in today’s patch. This was intended to come out with the next patch along with a UI drop down to change how you want team colors to work. The new default setting is WvW style coloring (enemy only has team colors), but you will also be able to make everyone, or nobody team-colored. There will also be UI changes to reinforce what team you’re currently on, so hold tight, apologies again!

Awesome stuffz Evan, like this a lot. Since the old (old-new? current?) system just renders dyes useless for PvP players! A bit funny though that something like this just “happened” to get in with the patch, kind of wonders how much of a stress you guys are under.
Hey, atleast now you know that it works! Let’s just hope that the UI implementations work smoothly as well

While we are talking about these “smaller” tweaks to the system that the community are requesting, could we please “happen” to get a new glory point reward system as well? Would be much appreciated by all team/support players out there!

juno.1840:

Some applications of protection require no skill at all. The only example I can think of right now is the Guardian hammer auto-attack chain. You get protection from the symbol created on the final attack. Protection in this case happens simply from auto-attack and is not really something you’re going to “time” to skillful perfection.

Other application like “Hold the Line” and a traited Virtue of Courage can be applied skillfully.

Very true, but you solely use hammer for CC wars. If at all. I will not run around like a chicken to try and land three slow attacks in row just for ~1 second (?) of protection. And when used that way it is highly ineffective most of the times. Besides, the shorter the duration the less likely it will effect any hard hitting attacks.

Arkanis Drako.5169:

Eurantien.4632:

So how good is protection? Because this post got me thinking and Guardians can have +80% protection duration which equates to almost infinite protection. Thoughts?

Protection reduces incoming damage by 33%, which is quite a lot.

I like the idea to buff toughness and nerf protection, because protection is not equally distributed among the classes, while every class has access to toughness.

I think the classes were supposed to be roughly equal, while still being unique
to bring forth a variety of different playstyles for each class.

For example defensive elementalists and offensive guardians, which is possible at the moment.

A warrior could never be as defensive as a defensive elementalist because warriors
lack the protection boon. The extra toughness they have has little impact, which is the case for the guardian too, but guardians have many healing skills and many skills that grant protection.

Thiefs don´t need to rely on protection, because they can stealth to escape damage, but by buffing toughness they would have the choice to play differently.

It´s not like the boon would be removed from the game entirely.
A guardian granting protection would still help their group and themselves with protection the same way they did before.

So even by changing protection and toughness in the way they reduce damage,
the different classes would stay unique.

The difference would be that classes are less dependent on the boon, if they can put points into toughness to be more defensive if they want to.

@Eurantien: Ehm, what kind of specc are you playing? Or is it simply so that you haven’t been playing since day two? Because boons got nerfed to the ground. I laugh when I see a boonguard these days. You can get up to a semi-decent amount of protection, but on the sacrifice of pretty much Everything else. Please keep up with the game and keep facts true.

@ Arkanis Drako: You are free to have your opinion, so wont discuss that. And you are right that not all classes have the same access to all things. And that is kind of the whole meaning of all this “professions” thing. Otherwise we could just have one class..if they are all gonna have the same things.

There should be professions that excel at defense, there should be professions that excels at burst, condition damage etc etc. Why else bother with the whole system? For the looks?..

And please, the day I as a guardian get the same mobility and burst/damage availability as a warrior I will happily give him access to a few seconds of protection.
All this ranting about how incredibly OP bunkers are, especially guardians, and how game breaking burst is etc etc has to stop. There is needs for balance, yes! But there Always will be, get used to it. Welcome to gaming!

The image that guardians are invaluable and OP derives from the past, when the so called boonguards reigned supreme with near constant protection, retaliation and a 33% upkeep block (more famously called “the block bug”). All these things are nerfed/fixed.
Boons are really not that valid any longer, and the bug is fixed since long. Can we please get past this?

P.S. and just to prevent a retaliation on this post: I know that it was not all about guardians, but more about the protection boon. But guardian Was targeted a lot, and constantly is and I’m tired of it. And the other professions that can use protection (mostly ele/engi) works pretty much the exact same way as guardians in that concern. D.S.

Chriswck.6490:

I admire a few of the noble and patient souls here.

---

“If my healing spring is working why aren’t others and myself being “cured” of conditions, why do they continue to “stack” rather than “heal”?”

There are builds where thieves can apply stacks of bleeding quickly, and it is possible that they are “stacking” much faster than you are “healing”.

+1! I almost got a brain aneurysm after the first posts. Gold star you Aragiel and co that can keep calm for long enough to post a civil reply to this guy.

It will most likely be voted the most pointless but still funny/infuriating post of 2012 though

Dodge conditions..rofl!

Zosk.5609:

But to be specific, a Guardian with Shield equipped is going to use his Shield to gain protection pretty much whenever it cooldown is up and he’s taking (significant) damage…. not exactly rocket surgery here. You could probably just spam it honestly?

Just proves to me that there is no point in arguing with you. You clearly have your mind made up, no matter what anyone say. I would not like to play a game you made my friend. Since you apparently considers skill being irrelevant and not a part of gaming.

And no, you are wrong. I play as a guardian and some times run with shield. And I never just “use it when the CD is off” to get protection… I Only use it when I am/think I am getting bursted/going low and needs survivability. And more often than not I don’t even use it on my self, but for bigger team fights where every one is taking damage/some one is being targeted.

/leaves the discussion.

Zosk.5609:

Idea is that mashing counter button when you think you see lots of damage coming is some super-skillful skilltastic skill!!!!….but building a toons gear and stat is just mindless, I guess! We can’t have the game requiring multiple types of thinking and different sorts of skills, that’s insanity!

Whenever somebody makes a constructive criticism and you start going on about “skill” or tell them to “L2P”…it’s a sure sign you have absolutely no point.

Zosk you are right in some regards. The theorycrafting behind the really good builds takes somewhat of skill, and time to say the least. But to keep your head cool in a 2vs1, 4vs4 (or alike) takes quite some as well. And then you have to know what to look for, and actually be fast/decisive enough to use it before it’s late etc. Can’t say that that doesn’t take a kitten-load of skill either?!

The problem with your argument is that, while theorycrafting a new build takes time and knowledge of the game, it is still just you, sitting there with a spreadsheet or your trait/skill window in the mists thinking/testing for hours and hours. While to learn how to/when to use those few seconds of protection (to negate heavy burst/a death, not just to..use it) takes much more from your end. Besides anyone can go onto the forums and copy the latest “go to awesome” build for your class, and then copy it safely in the mists. While on the other side of the point you Can go to the forums/streams and see how other people do activate protection or even ask a good player, but to actually Do it in the heat of battle is a bit harder.

Bottom line, the knowledge for both parts is obtainable as easily/hard. But to actually implement/execute the protection is A lot harder than to copy a build in the mists.

Besides, if thoughness is the “go to” thing for defensive builds then there is no countering it for the enemies by skill. While if it’s protection you (as a enemy) can always bait it out, and then wait 3 seconds and Then queue the burst.

This (atleast my post) is not about “L2P”. It is simply about the fact that protection has a lot more inherent skill in it self. You could say that protection actually has a learning curve while thoughness has none. And therefore protection should be able to be a lot more rewarding.

This will make protection even less worth picking up.

The way I see it is: Thoughness is a crappy static score that will help you without needing any kind of attention/skill. It’s always there mitigating damage. While Protection is a buff that you have to activate or have activated some way, with a rather short duration. Meaning that you have to actually time it for when the damage is incoming.
With that said, we still need the thougness as a stat to be able to go for more survival heavy builds etc. It is key for speccing/building your class. But should in no way be strong enough to render our damage mitigation abilities useless.

Don’t make this game into a “kitten game for kids” please. You should need to actually use a brain cell and time your damage mitigation etc.

Oh no, not another kitten drama queen

Me and my mates are Guild Wars PvP players and we still play Guild Wars 2 PvP so.. I guess we broke your argument at the very first point?

So bored by the “oh my god, the game was not perfect when it released, I will give them 2 months to program thousand and thousand columns of code and then rage about it on the forums” style of threads.

And no, I am still upset that the game was rushed into release before PvP was even close to done, but the combat is still amazing and if you dislike the current meta/lacking features just leave for a few months and check back later. It’s not like I think they Wanted to release it this lacking..

Phira.3970:

And how about the majority of the sPvP community that already left? Oh, hey I heard GW2 just tweaked Eles a bit. Let’s go on back to GW2 and play! (Sarcasm)

When you have just about the entire PvP community saying the sky is falling, you know something is extremely fundamentally wrong. Adding a couple of features on top of a system that doesn’t work initially won’t fix it.

Oh the drama.. “The whole community” have not left the game. Some have quit sure, some have went over to PvE sure. But I dare say that the vast majority of the players are still there.

And I disagree, I doubt they are out there just sitting on their bums waiting for a dramatic, game changing (read game breaking) “innovative” patch. They have either moved on to other games and/or are just waiting for the problems they disliked to be fixed.

Cautious balance fixes/adding working features >>>> Rushed “innovative” changes.

Fourth.1567:

MaXi.3642:

good question, i was thinking about the same… if they want to add ratings to tournaments, wouldnt it be a bit unfair to give same rewards for winning in low rating and in high rating? or what about wait times? its sometimes a bit long even now, what if they add rating? waiting for 8x 5 players with similar rating seems to be quite scary to me…

This is what I worry about with the current tournament system. I don’t think a tournament system goes well with automatic matchmaking. Requiring to pull 8 teams together that are close in ranking and then distribute rewards that represent that skill bracket just feels clunky. For that goal a ladder would be a better fit. Plus ranking on a ladder is a much better representation of skill than QP.

As much as Anet thinks players want a matchmaking system I think they are misinterpreting the implementation of that system. Players want a ladder with matchmaking not a tournament system with matchmaking. Save the tournament system for daily and monthly tournaments, allow players to participate in a ladder when there isn’t any daily or monthly tournaments in progress. That is just much more casual friendly without breaking up the community across different tournament brackets. Queue times will be shorter, a solo vs premade ladder can be implemented, rewards are more controlled, ranking of players is based less on time and is more related to skill and there isn’t a need to farm tickets.

Nothing more than +1 x100 on this one.

This has been stated over and over on the forums but it just seems like some people ignore the issue and Arena Net just doesn’t pick up on it.

I can not see how a rated tournament system can work at All with the current population. And even If we get back most of the players/get new players to PvP, the rank differences will need to be bigger than I’d like them to be to get 8 teams togheter.

Tournaments are a awesome system for higher intervals, but it kind of sucks for the “go to” system for PvP. Keep it for Dailies/Monthly/Yearly. And implement a ranked match system instead. There is nothing beneficial with tournaments over ranked matches. Rather the very opposite.

P.S. I know about the “Can’t really talk about it, but yes.” reply from Mr. Sharp about ranked matches, but as stated above. It should not be a “upcoming future”, it should be the very next thing coming out with ratings/Match making. D.S.

Frozire.4972:

Hey,

First allow me to apologize for not being able to stream it tonight. We managed to get the footage recorded locally and is uploading it right now! Expect this video to be up very soon!

Note: I will update you guys with the link.

Awesome, thanks for the update Frozire!

And don’t sweat it about the “failure”. It happens and is kind of expected. No great loss since you managed to get it up so fast.

They nerfed the downed state hard with the last patch. If they nerf it any more they can just remove it completely. And if they remove it they can just as well fire their whole PvP force since I (and most I know) won’t stick around past such a huge mistake.

The downed state and how it works is one of the very key features in GW2 PvP. And one of the bigger reasons to the good team oriented gameplay the game has.

Vayra.3290:

Rythgar.2896:

I would like to spin it the other way around. Why is it so that only allies can pick up frost bow or hammer etc? By logic there is no reason that everyone should not be able to pick it up. This would even add more of a element to these conjure abilities since you have to weigh it’s use against the risk of giving a enemy the same utility. And perhaps you actually would need to announce it, making sure that both you and a team mate uses it.

In my very own opinion I think all conjured items should be designed as the pigs forage skill.

If that should be the case they would need to be buffed massively as right now they are 100% worthless.

The problem with that buff would be that the enemy could get the awesome conjured weapon as well. But yes, I agree. Conjured weapons are just not worth it. On none of the professions that can use them.

Bohab.7825:

I get it from experience of playing hot joins. I am that player I describe in my post. I have played many games and all too often some headstrong tPvP will join and be pissed at me claiming I would never have what it takes to tPvP. They have no respect for my talent as a player just because I’m in a hot join game. To have that mentality makes them look completely ignorant. Are all tPvP players like this? Of course not! But keep in mind I’m speaking on behalf of the topic of this thread.

You and the OP is the very first to ever mention/say this as far as I know. So I’m gonna guess it is a very rare thing. Feels kinda weak to rant at the whole tPvP community because some/a few people who consider themselves being “cut of better cloth” down-talks you :p

Still, always a first for everything!

I am sure that you guys, as players in some of the more serious competitive teams, have a pretty good idea what questions is wanted out of the community about the current PvP state of the game. But just in case I will add some points that me and my team considers being some key topics/questions:

1: Can Arena Net narrow down the whole “it is being worked on”/“coming soon” about the very core features for PvP. With these features I mean private servers, observer mode, ranking/matchmaking etc.
2: What is Arena Net’s stand point on balance. Will they keep doing it the slow and careful way they have up to date or will they fall for the pressure of the community and make hasted and big changes?
3: What is their stand point on bunkers/glass cannons? Will these be kept in the game within balance or will they start moving towards removing these builds completely?
4: Can we get a statement from Arena Net about the recent interest ESL.eu made about picking up GW2 for their amateur league? Will this impact their work in any way? Will they support this side by side with the community?
5: Do they have any plans/thoughts about how to make PvP feel more rewarding/progressing? With the current (and Good!) lack of gear/level grinding in PvP it does leave a bit of a missing feeling of progression. Glory ranks just does not cut it.
6: What is their thoughts on the current tournament system? I don’t think I am alone to not think that it can support a ranked/match making system. Plans on moving away from that as the “go to” play style?
7: What happened to the Gem lottery. I personally don’t mind that it does not seem to work (considered it being a lame and weak attempt to get people back to P tournaments). After 2 weeks+ of paid tournaments my team has still to win a single lottery. Will this be scrapped or repaired?

I have probably missed a load of things. But this is what I can think of now, and hence should be the most important in my opinion.

With regards Rythgar Vell

@ Bohab: I did not read the whole wall of text, so I am sorry if I am taking you a bit out of context. But where do you get this part “I am also tired of tPvP players coming in to hot join claiming to be so great in comparison and how no hot join player would ever “last” in tPvP.” from?

Granted I don’t hot-join much these days. But I have yet to see a single person go on like this in hot-joins. Kitten me, I’ve been in hot-joins for up to an hour with the same people not seeing a single word uttered in /team or /map.

Yasha.5963:

BTW, one poster said only 1% of the initial player base is left doing pvp. Is that really true? How could he know that?

He has no way of knowing this, he is just pulling it out of his kitten to make his post look more valid. While the hot-joins have cooled down quite some the tournaments are still up and running lively (in EU atleast). Kitten me, the free tournaments is instant popping around/at prime time, and paid tournaments can be instant to minutes depending on if a tournament did just end or just started.

All these “PvP is dead, the GW2 PvP is doomed blah blah blah” is just that, empty words from doomsayers. They should be given as much reliability as the IRL doomsayers.

Aragiel.6132:

Btw.. with hot-join and in general roamers are better rewarded than defenders.
At this point i would just gave same ammount of glory to every member of team. For example – you can have “team glory pool” and by doing thigs like defense / killing etc.. you add points to this pool. At the end of the game you take 5 players.. and divide the glory pool in between them.
That would actually promote TEAM play instead of zerging. But i see there are also issues for hot-joins like what if you join at the end of the game? should you get full reward etc? but thats still managable. The problem is.. people get glory for playing bad instead of focusing on what is objective.

This idea is a couple of months old, but still as valid. Especially for people that take on the role of the less famous point holder. The roamers/point cappers get all the points. While the support/point defenders can end up getting nothing more than the initial 10 points. Hilarious way to award zerg and punish teamplay.

I would like to spin it the other way around. Why is it so that only allies can pick up frost bow or hammer etc? By logic there is no reason that everyone should not be able to pick it up. This would even add more of a element to these conjure abilities since you have to weigh it’s use against the risk of giving a enemy the same utility. And perhaps you actually would need to announce it, making sure that both you and a team mate uses it.

In my very own opinion I think all conjured items should be designed as the pigs forage skill.

Thirsty.2875:

Wintersday starts in 2 weeks and a day. The last balance patch was almost two weeks ago. The last major patch included both thief nerfs and ranger buffs, not claiming they are balanced but they are clearly working on it.

Agree. I prefer the approach that Arena Net seems to have rather than the way most previous MMO developers have had (for example Blizzard). Nothing is getting fixed with quick, drastic and big changes. The more drastic balance changes are being made, the bigger is the risk of the balance being even more broken and hence even harder to fix and so on it will go. Into the death spiral of balancing we go.

Julival.4318:

As I said tpvp is not a true pvp either, killing npc and capping points its not really pvp.

Could kind of not be more wrong. PvP is the genre of gameplay that represents any kind of Player versus Player. So while you do fight against NPC’s and have to capture points the very core feature of it is still to kill players. It’s just that you actually have to use tactics and be smart about it with this new style.

With your reasoning games like SC2, LoL, HoN, Dota etc etc is not PvP games. The term PvP does not derive from the MMO style of team deathmatch, just FYI.

I am all for free speech and whatnot.
But with that said, what the kitten is the reason for this post? Is it just the OP getting crushed in hot-joins needing to vent some rage or is it that he can’t win free tournaments with pugs that is the root cause for this?

And to be fair, I have yet to see a single one of the members of the top teams go out and brag (for lack of a better word) about their skill.
And I am pretty sure that although teamwork and communication is key in PtPvP I doubt the team will win because of it, personal skill is still the very key to success.
You can communicate and back each other up as much as you want, if you lose the fights you are gonna lose the match.

This is kind of the reason why so many (including me) consider the PvP communities being the whiniest bunch of babies on the internet..(no offense, just personal opinion).

Zosk.5609:

The state of hot joins/scenario/battlegrounds/whatever and WvW is much more important to the overall health of the game than tournaments.

I know a lot of you have fantasies about this game becoming basically a MOBA or “e-sport” but let’s be real….right now probably 90% of the players giving them money are spending 90% of their time in PvE? That’s just a number pulled out of my rear end but I think it’s a good estimate.

Hot Joins and WvW are also one of the two paths of getting tournament players (the other is recruiting from HoN, LoL, etc) so you should probably be concerned if they are increasingly not fun if you want more tournament players?

Considering that WvWvW in no sense can be seen as PvP as we are discussing it here I don’t see how that counts, other than that some sPvP players still enjoy it and the other way around.

And about hot-joins; The problem that people get in it is not based of off imbalance or even skill, it is just due to the way it’s built and being played.
I in no way expect a 8vs8 (because let’s face it, no one is playing the 5vs5, less points to get there) completely un-organized “zerg fest” to be a good representation of a games PvP.
People just need to let go of the idea that ArenaNet will, can or should balance it around a zergy hot-join smash fest. Balance has to take place on the very top of the skill ladder, where you Know the class is being played at it’s best (as close to the paper that is practically possible) to actually see if something is balanced or not.
You don’t balance anything around the casuals, since they in no way can push the professions to their limit, giving reliable data.

Also, a last note; In the current state of the game it is nearly impossible to meet a random player and say “Hey, we are more or less equally skilled. Care to duel?”. Until we get a decent way to measure skill in-game there is just no way to credit data as reliable.
If I currently beat the living kitten out of a engineer with my guardian, there is just no way of knowing if it was because the classes are imbalanced or if it’s just our skill-difference. Gonna flag all those “nerf X because I had no chance on my Y” as people getting their kitten handed to them by either their lack of skill or the other player simply being better. Because when it comes down to it it is so much easier to say “Nerf! nerf that class, it is so OP!” than “Oh crap, he was a lot better than me..”.

Niptease.8971:

The negativity revolving around around Gw2 PvP, especially the notion of it not becoming an esport, is absurd. I know I’m not alone. I think Gw2 has great PvP (specifically tournys). Everyone complains about balancing, but i think that issues regarding this are honestly minimal. I think Gw2 is on the right track to becoming an esport, and this is a good sign.

Agree to 100%. The core PvP is amazing, the balance is almost as good as one can ask for. It’s “just” the core, key elements for e-sports/competitive gaming that’s missing, which is too bad but should hopefully be remedied soon.

Also, just want to get this out here. The complaints/whine about imbalances and how the PvP is broken and no one plays PvP any longer can just come from the people kitten on sticking to hot-joins. Because that is the single only place where you can actually find it.
Oh, and my team just finished it’s evening of tournament play (although free ones, lacked our fifth) and they popped like crazy! I mean instant pops all night long. Sure it is around prime time, but prime time is just that.. the time when the vast majority can play the game.

Want to finish of my unintentionally long post by saying “Hellz Yes!” to a GW2 League in ESL. Even if it’s just a amateur league. Can’t really expect them to throw us into the Pro’s/IEM right away.. And I think the community is ready for it, we just need the key elements for competitive play. hint ArenaNet hint

It happens from time to time on my team as well. It seems to mainly be on Kyhlo and Foefire (although, it might just feel that way since those maps have more announcements going out).
I have yet only to notice it in tournaments (although, I rarely play hot-join and when I do it’s more often than not to let my mind drift or for duels) and it’s both the text missing and or the sound missing (always the sound, some times the text I think). Does not seem to be anything leading up to it, and does not always affect the whole team. Might be location based tho, since it seems that people around the same spot (for example a point) don’t get it, while someone on another location of the map does get it.

Answers your questions, and is pretty much all I can think of. Does not happen very often either. But can be really irritating, especially when it’s “lord under attack” or “incoming”.

Riselight.3695:

When 50% of the players in a match is a thief, and the other 50% is a mesmer. Oh wait there was one person not a thief nor mesmer. It was an elementalist and it was me…
Maybe you could offer players a class change scroll, so I could become one of this two OP classes as well

I did a few hot-joins/free’s yesterday and although thief is a very popular profession I saw at least as many rangers in there. And warriors are not far behind. Then comes the rest rather evenly spread.

Bear in mind though, that this is from a few random games the last couple of days. I have done no survey or data collection. Which I doubt the OP have done either by the way.. There will always be a “profession of the day”. It’s how the gaming world works.

You, good sir, is now my idol! Best thread of the year!