Guild Wars 2

Depends on what you want from the game. If you want PvP, then Overwatch by a long shot.

Broadly speaking, if you want PvE, you got 4 big MMOs to chose from: Gw2, WoW, ESO, FFXIV – you won’t chose wrong with any of em.

I think there are two main issues with the game.

Firstly, there is no new in-between content. You either have the map meta events, which are way too casual to be consistently repeated and you have raids. There have been countless posts as to why people don’t want/can’t raid, some of them whining, some of them legit, but at the end of the day if you want to do something decently challenging without the hustle of organizing 10 people, you have 0 options.

Secondly, the huge content drought. I just can’t believe they haven’t added at least 3-4 fractals until now. Or at least try to revisit the idea of dungeons. Since the game has no treadmill there’s little incentive to revisit old content too.

After repeatedly failing raid attempts due to organizational issues, I played the game less and less. I don’t know how ESO can release dungeons, zones, good story, new weapons and armor, new features and what not, every 3 months, but Gw2 can barely squeeze out 3 raids in 8 months.

Cynz.9437:

echo.2053:

Fun Fact: OW levels are as indicative of “skill” as GW2 SPVP ranks. Good try guy.

Hipsters going to keep on hipping.

At this state of the game it kind of does indicate experience since game is new and only doesn’t apply to people who played in beta. In GW2 levels became meaningless because game is almost 4 years old.

Who would you prefer to play with in gw2: with someone who has done 20 matches or 5k matches?

You can’t compare the 2 games. Firstly, prior experience in other FPS games will translate to Overwatch, enabling you to carry your team with most heroes – one good player can score a team kill – in Gw2 you’re lucky if you win a 1v2. Also you can group up for bonus XP and play against AI to lvl 100 if you want, so levels really don’t mean a lot.

There’s absolutely nothing that Anet can do to remove whining.

Funny thing, on the Overwatch forums at launch, you could see the exact same threads as on this forum: nerf x, matchmaking is kitten, let us have soloQ, I’m on a x losing streak, class stacking etc. Most of the PvP process is done better there: from balance to matchmaking, not including extra features like avoiding or preferring players and the option to play with the same players after a match is over.

But people still complain. You can’t win.

The only good part is that you can weed out the obvious liars and bad players from the complaints – all your individual statistics are public as shown here.(I know I’m a scrub)

If we’d have something like this for ranked, added with some match statistics, you’d know how many of those complaints are valid or coming from experienced players.

TL;DR: People will complain no matter what, with some player and internal statistics at least we’d know who to ignore.

AliamRationem.5172:

MMOs are based upon repetition. GW2 is not and has never been an exception. If you can only play through events once before becoming bored of them, you are playing the wrong type of game.

If your issue is that you don’t like the HoT maps in general, then the mastery system is only an issue because it forces you to spend time in the HoT maps. But as you say, you don’t like them anyway.

I happen to like the maps, but I also dislike the mastery system in some ways. I definitely agree on adventures. I just don’t like them and have no interest in playing them. I don’t think the requirement is necessarily unreasonable as implemented, however. But I also wouldn’t mind if they added a workaround. So I’m with you there.

I agree that MMOs are based on repetition. Just like pretty much any other online game out there Problem is, the repeatable content is either challenging or has a clear long term goal. I like the HoT maps, but they have neither – after I’ve finished the meta events a couple of times, I got really bored of them, mainly because they’re very easy. As for long term goals, Gw2 in general has none, except fashion. It’s good that they tried to innovate the whole PvE experience, but in my humble opinion, a couple of good dungeons would have crated a much more well received repeatable content.

AliamRationem.5172:

Where I diverge is that I appreciate how they incorporated the mastery system into the exploration of HoT. Where you simply wish to complete the events and move on, I wanted to explore until I knew the jungle through and through (I haven’t gotten there yet! But I’m making steady progress!). While I gained experience running events, I was also working toward this other goal.

Obviously, we aren’t going to see eye to eye on that. But love them or hate them, the HoT maps offer something that you can’t find in core Tyria or in any other game I’ve experienced. And I think the mastery system fits in nicely.

Honestly, that was also my initial thought. I completed every event I could find in core Tyria, tried to explore every nook and cranny. I wanted to do the same for HoT as well, but I’ve stumbled upon gate after gate. After doing the events over and over again, I stopped because it stopped being fun and it started being a chore.

The biggest offenders in my book is the fact that you gain progression towards them only in a very specific place(the exact same place you’re trying to improve with them) and the fact that they’ll be completely outdated by the time the next expansion is out. These two elements make them feel more like a grind than a progression. It’s not about how long it takes, it’s about how you do them. It’s the biggest burnout I experienced with this game.

I’ve been playing ESO lately due to the content drought and their Champion Points system made me see why I wasn’t enjoying masteries. It’s like an account bound big skill tree with passives. I gain progression towards them doing story, dungeons, exploring, raids, dolmens, dwells and even PvP. You also have a real sense of progression because they apply to all current and future content. And most importantly, I can explore every bit of the world, because the only gate I encountered, is my skill.

Don’t get me wrong, I want the mastery system to stay, because it’s a breath of fresh air compared to the classic level boost – the issue here is that the classic method works every time, while masteries have failed(in my opinion) to deliver what they intend to: meaningful progression. I just hope they learn from HoT and add as few gates as possible and more interesting masteries, like gliding.

Razor.9872:

Sardath.8524:

Grind or no grind, the masteries have been implemented awfully. Why would I care or try to grind them after I completed all the meta events on the four maps? What’s the point in trying to get extra accessibility/qol improvements on a map I’m bored of playing? Tie this up with the immersion breaking/mobile phone wannabe games called adventures and you’ll make plenty of people upset.

I don’t get it. There is no point in trying to get extra accessibility/qol improvements on a map that you are bored of playing. So why would you grind for them? They are just there for those who wish to have them and are willing to continue experiencing the jungle/raids to do so. What is the problem?

I’m not. I’ve stopped playing all the HoT maps after I’ve experienced the meta events. That’s the problem. They are gates to parts of content you already experienced. They should incentivise you to play, but they don’t.

Grind or no grind, the masteries have been implemented awfully. Why would I care or try to grind them after I completed all the meta events on the four maps? What’s the point in trying to get extra accessibility/qol improvements on a map I’m bored of playing? Tie this up with the immersion breaking/mobile phone wannabe games called adventures and you’ll make plenty of people upset.

Those are not the only issues that affect population, unfortunately. Even though the game mode is fairly balanced at the moment:

- there are very few builds; even if you change something(utility/amulet/weapon), you are still stuck with the elite specs, so nothing in the playstyle feels different

- related to the above, there are a ton of trash skills and traits, which further cause frustration

- the useful skills and traits promote passive gameplay, which is boring to watch and to play

- the only playable mode is conquest which is boring to watch and after a while, to play as well; added to this, stronghold(which had a lot of potential) was left in the dust

- and one of the biggest offenders in my book: lack of exciting ways to reward skillful play during a match; there is a lot of spam(both defensive and offensive) which leads to a boring game of attrition; also due to this, a player’s ability to carry his team is limited – but rarely can you turn the tide for your team and even if you win a 1v2, it’s oftenly due to your opponents lack of skill, not due to your skillful play

Most of this things became more obvious after I bought Overwatch. Never had this much fun in a PvP game in my life, probably never touching Gw2 PvP again(until they fix stronghold). Until then, PvE.

Because this game is filled with people with a severe case of Dunning–Kruger effect. It’s always the MMR’s fault, they’re always placed with 4 noobs and they’re always facing an ESL Pro full premade.

People would start blocking others randomly then complain that the queues are long and the game is dead.

Hi! Me and my friend are looking for a PvP guild so we can queue up in S3. I main druid and he mains warr, but we can also play scrapper, mesmer, ele and dh. We’re decent players, we mostly duo queued reaching ruby/diamond in the last seasons. We’re hoping to find an active guild that uses teamspeak/discord/skype for a more organised play.

Astralporing.1957:

We already know that the system is not balancing the opposing teams – quite the opposite actually. It will put all the better players on one team, creating an inherently unfair matchup.

No. It never worked like that. I have no idea where people get this from.

In S2 each team got players of the same skill. Your opposing team can be of lower, higher or the same MMR as your team. You only have 1/3 chances of facing a better team. The same holds true for S3, only the discrepancies between the MMR of the 2 teams are lower.

I hope they won’t cave in to the complaints and make the new expansion a braindead faceroll like the core game. One of the biggest issues with HoT was the accessibility, not the difficulty. You can still do any of the meta events just auto-attacking, but it’s annoying to taxi around to find a good map or to wait for a timer.

I hope to see more raids and more fractals – a ton of people don’t touch Gw2 because it has little challenging content to do. WvW and PvE are in good states right now, but PvP feels abandoned – only one new map, with bad mechanics and a powercreep from elites that killed diversity. They really need to push out balance patches more often.

Honestly, what you propose would solve a lot of balance issues and the traitlines themselves would feel less random and easier to put in perspective, but unfortunately it does require a lot of work. Added to this, I hope they might address the minor traits too. Depending on what you want to build, you’ll often be forced to take useless minor traits. They should be made to benefit any build.

PvE balance is non-existent and should never be an issue. You can always rebalance the encounters for them to be consistently challenging – you can’t do this with PvP and that’s why it should always take priority.

It’s obvious the game is quite a mess to balance with stats that feel more like a hindrance than a tool to build your profession around, condi requires one stat to be effective while power 3(for pvp), uneven health/armor and wonky/outdated weapons. Unless they invest resources into a real balance rework, Gw2 will never be taken seriously as an ESport/competitive game.

JPUlisses.8756:

Sardath.8524:

Wow raids are forever too, only they won’t offer end-game rewards.

They aren’t forever, because they are no longer raids anymore if you can solo them.

My bad, they introduced timewalker only with dungeons, but iirc, they might implement it for raids too.

The best thing they could add to SB is to cause bleeding while the opponent is suffering from cripple, daze, chill, stun, knockdown and immobilize. It would have a great synergy with the weapon itself and other ranger utilities.

Best mmorpg? No. Best at some aspects? Maybe.

PvE: Content does not last forever. Barely anyone goes after 80 in the core zones(except map-wide meta events maps). If anyone does it’s for mats/world boss grind/daylies. The leveling experience is mediocre at best, with faceroll content and weak story/lore.

Wow raids are forever too, only they won’t offer end-game rewards.

WvW: I don’t find Gw2 better at all. It’s a matter of taste. Both have their issues, but currently ESO has real rewards and incentives for you to play, WvW does not.

As for PvP, I truly think Gw2 has one of the best combat systems, but it’s hindered by wonky stats and lack of balance/diversity.

The monthly balance patches at ESO put the quarterly Gw2 patches to shame.

I love this game for its strengths, but it’s not the absolute best mmorpg.

Adding content like this can upset a lot of people – and for good reason.

When a MMORPG launches it will attract and retain players with its advertised features and core philosophy. In this case, some people played GW2 because they could progress in any content – a thing not true with the expansion.

Even if you tie progression to certain activities the playerbase might not be upset. The problem arises when the new mandatory content has a new type of gameplay – which was not advertised at all. Not to mention they’re lore and immersion breaking.

If jumping puzzles were a mandatory part of the core game, maybe people wouldn’t have been as upset.

When I heard of adventures I thought they would be short instanced events that you could do with a group/solo. I was disappointed to find out they’re more like phone platformers

Sigmoid.7082:

This is the point I made that OP underestimates the work you need to do. If you change the healthpool not only do you need to rework the classes damage, survivability , traits and abilities accordingly you then need to look at how they function vs other classes and change them too. Over all its unfeasible to even consider.
It’s more realistic to work with what you have than start from the ground up again.

I said it would require a huge rework – huge doesn’t seem like an understatement – and it’s just an opinion, we don’t have any data to know the feasibility of such a task.

Either way, the current system does not promote diversity – not build wise, and certainly not amulet wise.

The whole health/armor discrepancy will continue to hinder diversity, especially when new elite specs will be made. They will have to be balanced around the shortcomings of the base class and will have to compensate with amulets, like in the current system.

Even if we would have perfect skill balance most classes would boil down to picking something with vitality or toughness and healing power. Adding more amulets would still leave most of them unusable by most classes – you simply can’t find invent a better amulet than marauder for some classes.

There are only two classes I see that would be very problematic with this change. Ele and guardian – they would benefit immensely from this change, with ele being a huge bunker and guard dishing out too much damage in relation to his survivability. The armor remains unchanged, I don’t see the rest of the professions being way too overpowered.

Something has to be done, though.

Chase.2798:

If guardians gets the warriors health then warriors want the guardians access to aegis, if ele gets the warriors toughness we want their group support, and if thieves get our vitality we want their stealth…basically the extra health and toughness is what gives warrior any chance…it is our defensive ability like an extra dodge roll/stealth/aegis/2nd health bar/ or unlimited heals is for other classes

You conveniently left out the insane amount of regen warr can have(the same as druids Troll Unguent actually), the high amount of blocks, condi imunity or lots of condi cleanse(depending on build), damage immunity on utility and trait, dead or alive and good mobility skills.

This is not a nerf/buff warr thread. Whatever balance issues you find should be fixed and are definitely not an excuse for the fact that the rest of the professions are pigeonholed into one or two amulets.

Cats have comparable DPS, they stick to their target. Iirc, Lynx has the highest DPS of all pets, but cats in general a bit squishy.

I used to play Jungle Stalker and Tiger with Fortifying Bond, We heal as one and warhorn. Kept good fury/might uptime.

Daishi.6027:

If viability for a Raid or Frac would be affected due to changes to a class in PvP, then you can alter the Raid or Frac to match the nerfs. Then no one could complain… Except the devs.

This is why I never understood PvE players complaining about PvP balance. In an ideal world, PvE encounters should be tweaked, I’m sure the mobs won’t complain. I’d like to see a split between PvP and WvW.

In other news, Wow gets a split balance, so yeah, it can be done – even if they’re small changes.

So, we all know mercenary got removed because it was an easy nerf to mesmer, without it impacting other professions’ main builds too much(except necro, poor guys) and we all know the next amulet: carrion. Why not viper or sinister? While i’m sure some will attempt that, you will generally find that you’re way too squishy. Even if they pull it off, it will be due to their active defenses.

What about warr? Well, since he has 19200 hp and 2160 armor, he can pick whichever amulet he wants. At the moment, warr has the greatest build variety of all classes – not meta(but I wouldn’t exclude him either), but viable – a variety that Anet should strive to represent on each profession.

If you look at guard, with 11600 hp, he barely has a choice(excluding the huge amount of useless utilities and traits), he is pigeonholed into marauder. That’s all the diversity guard gets. Same for ele – cleric, same for thief – marauder. What I’m trying to get at is that the discrepancies between armor and health are forcing all the classes except warr into specific amulets. That’s why you don’t see many zerker thiefs out there, or any sinister rangers.

What I’m proposing is normalizing all health in PvP to 19200. Yes, there will be a powercreep for most classes, since it will allow people to take more offensive amulets, but I feel this is the first natural step to truly diversify builds in PvP.

I’m sure some people will give necro as an example, since he already has 19200 hp – why doesn’t necro use sinister? I’m afraid this has more to do with the profession design than anything else. They have no active defenses, thy’re just a big health sponge and a form of damage mitigation is required. As I see it, it’s a balance issue.

And it would truly require a huge balancing effort from Anet, because in the current setup, some classes would be broken. After more useless traits/skills get repaired and after the next batch of elite specs is released we will have many more build options. It would be a shame to be pigeonholed into the same amulet.

FogLeg.9354:

I have seen these threads pop up several times now and they always bother me. I do not want to insult anyone if they try to explain their feelings but it basically boils down to this:

Most of these low population dead servers were not dead some time ago. People left, stopped playing or lost interest in WvW, and while some also like to jump between servers, many do not. I never have, and have no plans to transfer. And I know many players in my low population server who feel exactly same.

The problem is, the last tiers are not fun. It is not fun to be in the dead server and it is not fun to fight one either. WvW is about having enemies and when there is none, it stops being WvW. I understand that some people may like the emptiness and lack of enemies, and yet, I strongly feel that most players prefer actual fights, actual enemies instead of NPCs.

And while you are explaining here how much you enjoy being in dead server, try, even for a moment, to think about all those players who have quit the game because only reason to play – WvW is so stupidly boring they can’t be bothered anymore. I know many players trying this changed WvW right now after being away from the game, and many more just planning to return. Countless players have left the game because there is nothing to do in WvW, because scores do not matter, because winning or losing the match is same result.

Now, after years of waiting, we have a chance to fix these problems. And you guys, instead of being happy too about the gamemode we all love so much, start to complain against any improvements. It just blows my mind. It really does. Just because you want something, everyone else has to suffer too. It’s just extremely selfish.

And on top of that all, you do not even propose any other solutions. You just complain that all the change is bad and try to lie about how everyone loved their dead servers. No, everyone hated it! Everyone suffered for a long time and many left in the end. Again, there are obviously small number of players used to empty server matches, but it does not make you more special then many more players who actually want to fight and want to have meaningful matches and want to see enemies more then once a week. What exactly do you wish Anet would do? Nothing? Just keep the system going on for many more years until there is only you and 2 more players left in whole WvW?

Nothing more needs to be said on this thread.

X T D.6458:

When your part of an actual server community that can coordinate, communicate and enjoys working together you will understand.

Anything you can do with a server you can do with a guild. Not to mention that guilds are mandatory by game design – servers are not.

I can’t honestly understand how people cling to something like server pride, especially when you claim stuff for your guild. Not to mention the fact that it’s one of the most selfish things presented here. You’d rather have a name that you personally like, written somewhere, instead of others having meaningful battles around the clock. It’s just mind baffling.

The issue here is that Anet needs to add a real incentive for you to fight, especially in a megaserver context. It’s one of the things that ESO does better in WvW. If you have pride for your alliance it’s due to the story + awesome lore. If not, you still fight for real end game rewards + the chance of becoming the freaking emperor.

If they ever implement this megaserver thingy they should further incentivise guilds somehow(exclusive rewards for top guilds maybe), so people can invest their pride where it belongs.

If you keep it at a small-ish scale it’s enjoyable. The mechanics are pretty interesting and you have plenty to do, regardless of your group size. The thing that drags WvW down the most are the class skills – it’s basically an AOE spam fest. Having a 100 red circles on the ground isn’t fun/strategic/meaningful in any way.

Get past that or get into small zergs or roaming – you’ll find that you have more impact and what you do will be more meaningful. Or try ESO – they fix most of the problems stated here and replace them with others.

If this gets overnerfed, druid will have 0 useful grandmaster traits. I’d fix the pets before nerfing anything, or at least make the other 2 traits even remotely useful in PvP.

Most MMO’s out there have a restrictive build system, it isn’t anything new, but Gw2 has a potential do diversify the builds. It’s really frustrating when all that potential is wasted. Unfortunately, I won’t think they’ll go with another system, it’s a pity.

I’d argue that guardian is in a considerably worse state than ele from the point of view you described. I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Factoring the number of useful utilities, they both have about the same number of completely useless ones, but if you take into account weapon skills and traits it’s much worse for guardian.

You can play virtually any weapon with ele, and still be viable-ish outside eart/water/tempest traits, by replacing one of them with arcane/air. It’s sure as hell not competitive, but you can have fun around. I even ran a DD fresh air/electric discharge ele without tempest that was pretty fun.

Guard, on the other hand, has virtues, valor and dragonhunter – that’s it. As for weapons, most of them are slow, clunky, undrewarding and/or weak. The few ones taken complement longbow. I tried many builds, the only one that came close of not being totally useless was bunker guard, but even current warr is more bunker and dishes out way more damage.

I agree though that something must be done with these 2 classes, they have the exact same build and playstyle since HoT released and a plethora of useless skills/traits since Gw2 released.

A poll about what? The pvp community is the most fractured, undecided and hostile community in Gw2.

I can already see the hordes screaming about SoloQ without even understanding the underlying issue. I hope Anet won’t cave in to them and bring it back.

A poll about balance won’t work either. People are still complaining about Dragonhunter, even though it’s arguably the worst class atm.

At best, Anet should poll us about what weapons/traits/utilities should they work on next.

StickerHappy.8052:

how is even dazing traps on par with cripple traps? lol.

0.5 sec daze is barely noticeable. Added to this, you can dodgeroll out of them very easy. I won’t take into account Dragon’s Maw, because ranger doesn’t have an elite trap.
Spike trap does more CC with knockdown + cripple and you can’t dodge it. Flame trap doesn’t have CC(besides cripple), but with 12 seconds cooldown it does a kittenload of damage. Combine it with the plentiful immob that druid has and it really shines.

If ranger had any proper sustain on his weapons(besides dancing around with sword/dagger), trapper druid would be truly cancerous.

Ranger main here that played Guard plenty due to Dragonhunter being the elite spec that some rangers wanted.

I think the biggest problem of the Guard are the completely useless synergies. Added to this, there are subpar traits and skills:

You can build around spirit weapons – jee, thanks. There are several traits and skills that revolve around retaliation, all of them lackluster. Another marvel are symbol synergies, completely useless outside of PvE and even there you have better options. Due to the powercreep burnguard can easily be cleansed. Blocking traits feel extremely unrewarding. So the only thing you have left in core guard is building around meditations, that’s it. If they wouldn’t have changed the virtues, even the virtues traitline would have been pretty weak.

The first two things I’d want to see with guard are the rework of spirit weapons and retaliation traits/skills. Spirit weapons should be able to offer you meaningful utility and cleanse, so you’d have an alternative to meditations. Retaliation should trigger a guard specific effect(like necro had with chill), so you’d have a reason to have a high uptime, besides the ~250 damage that is barely useful.

I really like this class, but in this current state it’s a pain to play it.

StickerHappy.8052:

Can we make ranger traps on par with DH traps now?

Fire trap and spike trap are on par with DH traps already. I agree poison and chill need some rework though. The problem is running 2 traps doesn’t give you much wiggle room to run stun breaks and/or condi cleanses.

As I see it, they will never bring the elite specs in line with the core ones. And they shouldn’t, that’s why they’re called elite specs, they are meant to be stronger – you can and will only be able to pick one elite spec. The increased difficulty in the expansion demanded a bit of powercreep on its own, there are more factors in play here besides PvP/WvW.

Anet made a huge mistake here, in my opinion: some elite specs grant a new role to the base class(tempest,druid are healbots/support, dragonhunter ranged kiter dps) while others are a superior extension of their base class(daredevil acrobatics 2.0, scrapper bruiser 2.0). If you nerf the latter there won’t be much reason to play them. And if druid were as weak as core ranger, I’m guessing many players would have avoided it, since it shoehorns you into a role you didn’t ask for when you chose your class.

Basically, you need an incentive to play them. Since some of the specs were poorly received as concept, I don’t want to imagine how would have they been received if they weren’t more useful than the base class.

Don’t get me wrong, I want them toned down. There’s a lot of spamming going on, dps/survivability ration is wonky, but honestly, I’d rather first see old traits/skills made viable(not strong, just viable) and then shaving off some of the powercreep.

Anyway, to be in line with the topic, I honestly can’t think of a single thing that core ranger has too strong – quite the opposite. The only thing druid has that sets him so far apart are the pets and CA. I’d leave the pets how they are, since the old ones are just horrible and I’d probably scale the amount of healing you do depending on how many targets are affected. If you’re alone, you shouldn’t be able to fully heal with no consequences, so I’d drastically nerf the heal with only one target(you) and keep it the same as it is now with 3-4 targets. I’d probably eliminate CA skill 4 and add something like “Your pet’s next attack can’t crit and will steal 2 boons and heal you for 4x damage dealt”

naphack.9346:

What incentives are lacking?
On paper, there is a lot of incentives to buy HoT. The only people who are left are those who wouldn’t buy the expansion regardless of the content and conservatives, who really dislike the way, their game is heading and refuse to buy the expansion out of principle.

For me, the story itself would be enough reason to buy the game, but the lack of polish and quality clamps down on the product so hard, I can’t bring myself to buy it. I don’t want to incentivize Arena.net to become complacent or lazy. The HoT release showed a real lack of care about the quality of the game and I found it highly alarming.

What incentive does it make, when you blackmail the players into buying the game by devaluating their existing stuff? If the expansion was advertised as such, if the principle of the game was an endless grind for better gear and higher power levels, then obviously that wouldn’t be a problem, but the philosophy of Guild Wars 2 has always been one of vertical progression: When maxed out, everything will remain relevant and the only progress is in new play styles and new skins.
People were even concerned about that before the release of the game and thus, Arena.net proclaimed that elite specs won’t be any stronger than existing builds. And they said it at a point, where it should have been apparent to them, that elite specs will be monsters, that outclass anything in existence in general utility and in some cases will render core classes obsolete entirely.

kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t. If they made the elite specs equal to the core specs, people would have complained that they have absolutely no reason to play them. HoT brought a very slight increase in difficulty and even with the current powercreep to the elite specs, people are complaining that it’s hard. That’s what 3 years of faceroll and braindead content does to a playerbase, but that’s another story.

Even though the elite specs are stronger in PvP, you are exaggerating. They do not make the core classes obsolete entirely, especially true in PvE. Other MMOs are much more restrictive to PvP – from locked gear slots, inaccessible gear or level cap and grinding to be viable. I’d love it if they made a completely separate client for PvP, with its own pricing and budget, separate from the core game, but as it is, the game is not a Moba, it’s still an MMORPG.

I won’t argue with the fact that the expansion is kinda lacking, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the availability of the content.

They literally had no choice in this. I’m pretty sure the next batch of elite specs will be in line with the current ones, people will have a choice and they will still be relevant. It would’ve been ideal if they released an elite spec for the core owners and one for HoT owners, but they have problems managing and balancing one set of elite specs – I can’t imagine them juggling with 2.

I really hate how pets die in WvW. Ranger is the only class that loses its “F abilities” in WvW.

What the hell are you on about? Doesn’t bring anything to the team? Well of course it doesn’t if you don’t play it like that.

There are a lot of selfish classes out there and a lot of selfish builds, that’s doesn’t mean anything. Your comparisons with thief and dh are way off too. The absolutely only thing that thief does better than warr(and any class at that matter) is mobility – it has less sustain, less CC, less dps and less team utility. DH has way less CC and sustian than a war has, and after the nerf bat, it’s even more useless outside of teamfights.

Want to bring something to the team? Play this build.

It can be tweaked for more damage, less cleanse, depending on the enemy comp.

You cleanse 12 condis from your allies. Not even ele does that. It’s madness. While doing about 1560 heal per shout. That’s roughly 6200 heal to all allies. Not to mention the added bonus of fury, might, fear and endurance from the actual shout effects. Plus two of them are pretty spamable. And with the amount of healing, cleanse and regen you have, you’ll outlast most teamfights. It’s actually a challenge to die with this build.

Sure, you might say the build does kittenty damage, but it’s far from kittenty. You can stack up some nice burning and with a well timed fear and headbutt, those ticks are there to stay. And when you’re opponent is low and vulnerable, sigil of intelligence lets you get that sweet big crit with a well timed final thrust.

I know it’s fun to say war sucks. But they’ll keep buffing him until we have a new necro. And then we’ll get another round of QQ and nerfs. Not saying war is 100% fine, but he’s way better than last season.

It would be good, if we had a minimum of viable 4 builds per class. But we barely have 2, and only on some classes. And even considering different builds, the playstyle is roughly the same due to elite specs.

Elite specs killed the diversity in this game, no matter what you do it almost always feels the same. Launching only one per expansion is a mistake, they should have released another set with LS3 – especially since some classes were shoehorned into roles players didn’t want.

It’s admirable that they tried to buff SB, but it’s not really viable. The autoattack can stack a lot of bleeding(the highest in the game for an autoattack if I’m not mistaken) but it’s seriously hindered by the position constraint. Besides the stun, the SB skills are really subpar. They offer little utility and the overall damage is lower when comparing to LB.

I’d like to see the autoattack apply bleed when your target is disabled(crippled, chilled, stunned, dazed, launched, immobilized etc.) in addition to flanking.

Skill 2 is a weaker version of axe 2, on a higher cooldown. Greatly reducing the spread of the projectiles so you can stack more poison from a reasonable distance would help.

Skill 3 is meh, the only good thing being the cooldown. Maybe increase the evade to 3/4 and give it a bit more distance?

Skill 4 really needs a buff – there are way more powerful condi skills in the game, and this one requires you to use the buggy pet to do the damage. If your pet is dead, it’s useless.

Skill 5 is good, but it has no synergy with the weapon. It could’ve been on any range weapon in the game. It works well with ancient seeds though, giving you some nice kiting capabilities. If they made autoattack like I described above, both 4 and 5 would have synergy with the weapon.

It’s really nice of them for buffing SB, but it still needs work in order for it to be competitive.

Charrbeque.8729:

Oh and, people who claim there wasn’t enough content with HoT are really saying there wasn’t any content they want to do. The content is there. You payed for it. If you don’t like it and/or want to do it, that’s your problem. There was beta testing and plenty of announcements for all the stuff included with HoT. You knew what you were paying for. If you didn’t know, you should have researched it before buying the expansion.

I’m also getting sick and tired of the claims that “the game is dying”, “everybody is leaving in droves”, “everybody hates this or that”. It’s not true one bit. There are still plenty of players in the game. I see lots of people everywhere I go.

Compared to other MMOs expansions, HoT has scarce content – there really is no arguing with this. Heck, one of Elder Scrolls Online’s DLCs has twice the number of hours of story compared to HoT. And that’s only one lousy DLC – not an expansion, and they push 4 of them per year.

I get that there were a lot of features implemented, but unfortunately they don’t count as content, however nice they may be. The constant reworks have taken manpower from developing new content, plus the abandonment of planned content(fractal leaderboards and legendary weapons).

I enjoy every aspect of this game, but there are players who aren’t skilled enough or don’t have the time for raids(which were advertised from the beginning as challenging, for organised/skilled players only, so naturally the game should cater to the rest of the playerbase as well, since it excludes them outright). Well, for them there is little else to do. Unfortunately, your average PvEr is stuck with 4 maps.

And I completely agree with OP. The game is far from dying, but HoT has really stained the image of the game. Honestly, if not for raids, the game would probably be in decline. Gw2 has the stigma of being faceroll and too casual friendly(a reason why a lot of people don’t touch it) – I think the raids helped bringing back and retaining a considerable amount of players who want a challenge.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Right boiz?

Day 16 in Ruby while the rest of my guild is in Diamond or Legendary.
I play every single day atleast 10 matches.

70% of my matches are blowouts.
My MMR is bugged due the matchmaking giving me not equal skilled teammates and lost so many games..

But instead of fixing asap, lets have some more PvE’rs farm their way easily into Ruby, shall we?

But no, lets keep ppl

Could you post your 70% blowout matches? Since I’ve hit Ruby I had 2. Surely I must be lucky and the other people genuinely have 3 bad team mates, 1 afk per match and are facing a Pro ESL smurf premade each time.

@Shirk, mind posting your build? I’ve had no issues with my sword/warhorn staff druid in PvP, but I’ve bored myself to death with it

I sometimes play ele. Main a druid and sometimes play dh too. I just kinda feel bad for people who main ele, they’ve kinda been reduced to a bunker healbot with no other viable options. And it’s kinda hard to buff him since people will just play an even more offensive bunker.

I didn’t mention it because the damage/survivability ratio of rev/necro/scrapper is off the charts compared to other classes while ele does only one thing better than the rest and it’s kinda hard to shave it off, since it will leave ele practically useless.

jessiestiles.9437:

There’s been loads of people complaining about blowouts. As you just have too. Last season blowouts were far less regular.

People posted a screenshot of their matches and you could see their builds? Err.. you mean you could see the profession they were using? Which you agree profession imbalance is a problem. Although you skipped Ele which is probably the worst culprit for imbalance as they are still practically bunker meta. Any profession you fight 1v1 someone will die except ele. You could fight them all game with a glass cannon and they won’t die because they have too much healing and damage mitigation. You won’t die either because they don’t have any power.

If you are high dps stand next to an ele they will keep healing you and stun the other team in place while you kill them.

Last season had blowouts too, only people didn’t complain as much about them because some of the blowouts cost them no pips. Of course, due to high MMR players starting in amber, significantly more blowouts occurred. I’m sure this will be fixed one way or another in S3.

By builds I mean builds, not professions. Most of them had bad builds. Meta isn’t mandatory, but sometimes a bad build will drag you down. Won’t even comment on how some of them had few matches in ranked and classified themselves as pros.

While ele is annoying as hell, I guess people should be allowed to run bunkerish builds as long as they won’t be able to kill you. Not being able to die 1v1 is not that big of an issue, not being able to die 1v2 is.

The meta is slightly better than last season, but they still need to fix rev/scrapper/reaper.

As for matchmaking, it’s better than last season – but still needs some improvement. Games were pretty crappy and lopsided until ruby. Once I hit ruby, I got mostly balanced/fun games and I barely had a blowout. If they add a preseason or place high MMR players in higher divisions at the start of the season, the overall experience will be greatly improved.

If you look closely, most of the complaints are from the same people. Some of them attached screenshots and you could’ve seen their builds. No surprises there.

This is brilliant. Not only did he reach legend with a volatile and bad MMR, he did it without the overpowered elite specs.

But now matter how much proof you bring, people will still blame Anet and not their lack of skill. It’s actually funny to see how many excuses they can invent. I’m most certain that in every single match, they get one afk, 3 crappy team mates and godlike opponents. I bet it happens to absolutely everyone, except me and all my friends, who are just lucky scrubs.

Also, for the people that keep throwing around the term grind, you have no idea what the term means(it’s not even applicable to PvP) and past ruby, there is nothing but skill that will grant you pips.

With the recent changes to rifle, my friend melts mostly anything in teamfights. I usually play ele/druid and heal/cleanse him and he deals enough damage for two. At the moment, if you play pure offensive warr, there is no other class that can deal that amount of damage. But it’s risky as hell, because it’s kill or be killed.

Michele.2986:

This happened yesterday on a pug team against a premade.

Now 3 people are a premade? We should ban DuoQ next. After that, ban SoloQ people with multiple personalities.

Sorry, but with only 220k dmg on Dh, I’m guessing their win was deserved.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Um …. why do you think Gw2’s pvp community isn’t equally toxic? o.O what gave you this impression.

You better play on your best 24/7 or boooy oh boy you are going to get a kittenstorm in your way.

It’s simple. Firstly, Gw2 is not a purely competitive game, so its players interact with each other in cooperative endeavors and this tends to create communities and an overall less hostile behavior. A part of this will inevitably translate to PvP, because most players are PvX.

Secondly, the target audience of Gw2 differs slightly from other toxic games. Shooters and Mobas in general are easy to learn, hard to master – Gw2 is arguably harder to learn and arguably as hard to master. Bluntly speaking, this puts off a lot of stupid players that just want to point and shoot. Less stupid players, less toxicity.

I can easily say Gw2 Pvp is the least toxic of all competitive games I’ve ever played, with other Mmorpgs coming close.