Showing Posts For Schlieffen.2054:
They making solo que as perfectly balanced as they can, here is the wait timer.
Time before next match begins one week.
Haha, if that’s how much time they need to fix the solo queue mess then let them have it!
horrible bug, so annoying.
well, ever since I had 6-1 I started getting total morons in my team, resulting in 6-7 right now so yeah…
5-1, 6-1 maybe if you are pushing your luck extremely well 7-1. There is no way in hell people go 10-1 without sync.
That’s bullkitten… I ended my matches yesterday with 10-1 and was definitely not syncing.
I also had a lot of different team members, even though I queued right after a match ended. The queue time was 5-7 minutes after the first couple of matches, so I’d say that the game does not put the first 10 players into a match, as some people claim. Both teammates and enemies could be found on the higher ranks of the leaderboard.
Conclusion: The matchmaking works fine for me. Of course there is often some luck involved, but isn’t that natural?
I thought that too, keep playing and you’ll run into a time where you’re on a strong team that keeps being matched together against the same weak team (or vice-versa). If it was truly random, what are the odds that the same 3-4 players would each be on the same team 3 times in a row? Very bad odds, which makes me think there’s something going on with the matchmaking code keeping groups together after a win/loss.
When the pop is low, I can understand the same 10 players being put into the same pool after each match, but why is it that the “teams” from the first match tend to stay together? Why don’t we see the players being mixed? Someone recommended that after players are in one match together there should be a matchmaking function that breaks those teams up. That is an excellent idea.
There is a healthy amount of paranoia going on as well…when losing teams accuse the winning teams of synching and none of the winning players know each other, LOL.
At various times I was getting matched up with 1 or 2 players for few games, and I was strictly solo queuing. Not sure if that’s because of low pop, or the timers are too quick for player pools to get big enough, or what.
I knew posts like this would pop up as soon as SoloQ was released. What did you guys expect from soloq? Perfect teams with perfect compositions with perfect players that know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing?
Hey by all means, if you have an idea of how to achieve that for solo que I’m sure we would all like to hear it, including A-net. Adjust your expectations to reality and stop crying or just stop playing. Solo que is always like this, always has been and always will be. Worrying about dropping your rank also – your problem. I don’t care about my rank. All I care about is that I know, when I join a solo que that I won’t play against premades. That’s what soloque offers, that’s what it’s supposed to offer, and I’m satisfied with it.
Also an answer to “Give us Real PvP” guy above.
- get a team.
Agree with this. Solo Q rank might mean something after hundreds of matches, when the randomness of player skill begins to normalize for all the players who have played hundreds of matches. Until then, enjoy it for what it is: a chance for 5v5 without premades.
I’d say it’s more of a no one cares about NA PvP yet. Progress is finally being made on features that will support gw2 as an esport. So many people were excited about gw2 pvp at launch; they’ll return when (and if) the tools/features are added that should have been there from day 1.
This is a good change.
For people that want to queue with 1 or 2 friends, all you have to do is both queue solo for a couple matches and identify other good players and then invite them to group. Soon you will have a full team for team queue. It will lead to more friends in-game that you can team queue with. Make friends and profit.
if you don’t add time for 2 weeks they delete your item that costed you 1.6k gems. Cute, isn’t it? And this is not mentioned when you buy it.
Thank you so much for mentioning this, I had no idea.
To the guy talking about reseting the fight thief v necro in tpvp you have x seconds before his buddies get there.
Or you could just be good enough to dodge the two EBs in the first place. The d/p stealth build is an attrition build anyway, so of course one of the main drawbacks is that you have x seconds before his buddies get there. My point remains, if you consistently die to a necro 1v1 as a d/p thief then you are not doing it right. If you’re not good enough to kill the necro, then all you have to do is backcap behind him because you’re highly mobile and he’s not.
Pop thieves’ guild, burn down necro.
Or get on the bandwagon and faceroll with s/d.
MrBig just doesn’t want to take points in shadow arts for condi removal.
I’m an S/D thief, i can easily win a necro 1vs1
I’m talking about D/P.
Yep, and he’s saying that if you take Shadow’s Embrace in D/P then all you have to do is reset the fight, clear condis in stealth, and engage again (which you can do repeatedly until you figure out how to dodge EB). If you don’t have skill and patience in D/P you will lose, but if you have those two things you should win (even though it might take a bit of time).
Would be so awesome if they just used an old mechanic that was removed from the game.
Engineer Toss elixir S when you got stability used to make you grow larger as well. They removed it.
I think they should bring it back, FOR EVERYONE!
http://youtu.be/6ORToU6LiZA?t=1m10s (1:10 for effect)
I liked that growing larger for stability too, a simple visual cue that worked and doesn’t clutter the visual field.
Do we know if character swapping will be allowed for soloQ matches yet? If it is allowed, people who swap to make their comp better will have at least a small advantage.
I think the main problem here is maybe not the blind, but THIEVES.
Everything thieves do is broken.
They dodge too much.
They stealth too much.
They blind too much.
They do too much damage.
They move around too much.
They don’t just sit there and die enough.
They have all the unicorns.
They keep stealing our women.
They make it impossible to be as cool as them.It’s no wonder people won’t dare run a tournament without 3 of them. They’re always the first class people look for when making a tourney team.
I lol’d
But Shadow trap is fine.
So where’s the counter-play on shadow trap?
Mesmer portal?
@uberkingkong: Field + Finisher. Wiki has a table with the combo effect from each combination of field + finisher. From there’s it’s not very hard to make a list of the fields that a certain build has available and what finishers it has. Up to you to maximize that.
As for the permastealth, this thread is the reason it’s not a problem. All you do is stand near the blind field (you usually don’t even have to stand in it) and the thief won’t be able to get his combo off for longer stealth. In fact he’ll like break stealth and use up initiative on his HS.
Also, permastealth is a bit of a misnomer. To get permastealth you have to get 4x heartseekers off through a single blackpowder. This is difficult to do outside of combat and almost impossible to do in the middle of combat. So, the 4x HS is pretty much just to start fights/traveling (and with two or more people, one with a smoke field and the others with blast finishers, these longer stealth openings are common anyway). 2x HS is reliable through BP, but if the thief is able to get off more than 2x HS then the other person is letting him do it.
I’m so sick of people asking for nerfs just because they don’t take the time to learn what they’re up against and develop a counter strategy. The unfortunate side effect from the Phantaram nerf necro thread’s success is that nerf2win players have been energized.
Hey thanks, and great post. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people didn’t know the the BP and HS makes them go stealth if they never attended forums, have someone tell them how it works, played a thief or was somewhat hardcore in PvP.
Not sure if GW2 wanted you to goto the wiki for combo finishers or what but they did terrible job in game going over them. I’d say this is a big factor over the pro’s and the rookies is that they know combo finishers and the rookies don’t have a clue.
Also agree with you about people particularly the pro’s trying to cater everything around there builds, if theres some big CC patch and there build don’t have any CC removal they going to complain and make it into a huge deal, when they can just switch out utilities to counter.
+1
Yeah it’d be nice if you could access that info in-game, maybe they’ll add that eventually. Wiki is great though, sometimes there’s really good info on specific skills in the “discussion” tab of the skill.
@uberkingkong: Field + Finisher. Wiki has a table with the combo effect from each combination of field + finisher. From there’s it’s not very hard to make a list of the fields that a certain build has available and what finishers it has. Up to you to maximize that.
As for the permastealth, this thread is the reason it’s not a problem. All you do is stand near the blind field (you usually don’t even have to stand in it) and the thief won’t be able to get his combo off for longer stealth. In fact he’ll break stealth and use up initiative on his HS.
Also, permastealth is a bit of a misnomer. To get permastealth you have to get 4x heartseekers off through a single blackpowder. This is difficult to do outside of combat and almost impossible to do in the middle of combat. So, the 4x HS is pretty much just to start fights/traveling (and with two or more people, one with a smoke field and the others with blast finishers, these longer stealth openings are common anyway). 2x HS is reliable through BP, but if the thief is able to get off more than 2x HS then the other person is letting him do it.
I’m so sick of people asking for nerfs just because they don’t take the time to learn what they’re up against and develop a counter strategy. The unfortunate side effect from the Phantaram nerf necro thread’s success is that nerf2win players have been energized.
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no because your duo is a premade too
why should solo players fight duo premades when you in a duo dont wanna fight 4 ppl or 5?
premade is premade and for this there is the teamQ – simple
^^This. I am so happy they’re adding soloQ and not letting duos in. If you want to team competitively with a friend, soloQ until you find 3 other good players that are interested in teamQ. Duo arenas would be great down the road though.
mist league – the finals match video is not the entire match, just fyi.
However, I agree that it’s silly to schedule a tournament where one side of the bracket has to play all the way through in one day. It doesn’t make the result less valid but they should change that in the future. It’s also silly for a TO to change the tournament just before the finals. I don’t think it gave either team an advantage
Oh but it is, if you play all day you get tired and you are exausted, and if this was a drastic change made out of nowhere i can see that is a pretty kittenty tactic to lower the succes of that team.
Meh, if this was THAT big of a deal why didn’t anyone speak up before the tournament when it was clear that the second bracket would be playing all day. Nobody did though. The fact that they only spoke up after the tournament makes this argument very weak.
BO5 was determined prior to the start of the finals, yes? If so, I don’t see any reason to dispute the results. How would changing it to BO5 give either team an advantage?
However, I agree that it’s silly to schedule a tournament where one side of the bracket has to play all the way through in one day. It doesn’t make the result less valid but they should change that in the future.
The BO5 format was a huge success from the viewpoint of an exciting match for viewers, I’m glad they did that. Disputing the match after losing always cuts the legs out from under the argument that someone got screwed, instead it looks like sour grapes.
Changing rules mid-tournament is a BIG no-no. If GW2 is to become a decent e-sport this has to be cracked down on hard. Even if it led to a more interesting match this time. Then the rules should be changed for the next tournament saying that the Finals will be BO5 instead of BO3. You do not come in and change that at the last minute.
I agree, I had already edited my post to include the bit about avoiding that so as to avoid even the slightest bit of impropriety.
In this case though, changing to BO5 from BO3 gave neither team an advantage. In fact, wouldn’t you expect a longer series to be more likely to determine the best team than a shorter series? So yes, I don’t think there is anything odd going on here just the TO trying to have a better EU finals (and honestly, that might be the best match of the entire invitational). It was a huge success and no team gained an advantage from it.
But in the future, I agree with you. These things SHOULD be thought out ahead of time and set ahead of time. Again, if we’re talking about the present case, I fail to see how either team was advantaged by the change.
BO5 was determined prior to the start of the finals, yes? If so, I don’t see any reason to dispute the results. How would changing it to BO5 give either team an advantage?
However, I agree that it’s silly to schedule a tournament where one side of the bracket has to play all the way through in one day. It doesn’t make the result less valid but they should change that in the future. It’s also silly for a TO to change the tournament just before the finals. I don’t think it gave either team an advantage, but a TO should avoid doing that for the sake of avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
The BO5 format was a huge success from the viewpoint of an exciting match for viewers, so I’m glad they did that on that level. Also, disputing the match after losing always cuts the legs out from under the argument that someone got screwed, instead it looks like sour grapes. The time to dispute would have been before losing BO5.
(edited by Schlieffen.2054)
When the casters don’t even go over the builds, it’s pretty stupid. Yeah the people who are up with the meta know the builds for the most part, but when one of my friends is watching (someone I’m trying to get to come back to competitive pvp) and he doesn’t even know the builds there just isn’t much for him to watch besides a bunch of characters running around damaging each other.
I actually think gw2 is almost ahead of its time in how fast and intense the combat is. Kind of like football, it would be amazing for the casters to be able to show slow motion replays of key parts of the previous match in between matches. GW2 is going to have to figure out a way to train up its potential esports viewers to the point they can follow what’s happening (casters need to be trained up too).
Suggestions:
Minimap for viewers – this should be wayyyy more clear so that viewers can readily see the movement of all players. The minimap is too detailed and has too much color, so the dots aren’t very obvious. Simplify the map, put it in grayscale, and fade it. Make character symbols (for guardian/ele/necro/etc. like when you open the map) appear on the minimap and make them large enough and bright enough to be obvious. The minimap should be faded grayscale because what viewers need is to see movement. The only relevent details of the map are the capture points and secondary objectives. The rest are just pathways to access those points. Right now the map drowns out player dots and reads like a map for someone to get an understanding of the details of the entire zone. That’s a lot of unnecessary information and it makes it hard for viewers to easily get the important information.
Builds – can we stop with the ridiculous secrecy of builds? A decision needs to be made: do we care more about expanding the viewership by letting them get into the details of the game or do we care more about protecting super secret builds from supposedly pro players. My take: players who are really pro will win out, even when builds are not secret. It’s more important to grow interest in the game by letting viewers in rather than shutting them out. Casters should ALWAYS review builds and discuss them. It’s an integral part of the game, but casters are completely mute on the subject.
Casters should have the ability to replay previous matches and show slow motion replays from various character perspectives. Teldo escaping from 3 players at mine? Hell yes, I want to see replays of that to see exactly what he did and what the other players were doing to try to catch him. There are so many key parts of these matches, rezzes miliseconds before a stomp for example. Going back to see highlights would be amazing, both for entertainment purposes and for educating viewers to better understand what’s happening during real-time matches in the future.
Anyway, GW2 as an esport is more intense, busier, and more complicated than a lot of other esports. Care needs to be taken to present all of this information to viewers and potential new players in a way that they can appreciate the timing and skill required to win a game between top players. Please give casters (and, in the future, spectator mode) these tools.
Edit: one more thing — for the big matches, ANet should consider recording the match from every players perspective and make these videos available for anyone to watch whenever. Heck, even get a Caster to voiceover what the player is doing while he’s doing it. This would be so interesting, I’d watch big matches from every player’s perspective probably multiple times. GW2 doesn’t need to slow its intense play down, it just needs to recognize that viewers are going to need additional tools to properly follow and enjoy matches. Give players these tools and watch GW2 esports get moving in the right direction.
(edited by Schlieffen.2054)
I like Signet of Spite, too.
I don’t understand Signet of Spite. Never did.
Tooltip: Hey, this thing increases your power!
Player: Awesome!
Tooltip: It also applies a boatload of conditions!
Player: Aweso-, wait, what?
I get the vulnerability/cripple/weakness combo, and I can see the potential as a stack of short-duration cover conditions, but… why Power, of all things?
Burst signet. It was actually quite nice for power builds with target the weak, that is… when people were still running power builds. Gives at least a 10s window of at least 12% increased damage.
I barely play necro, but was happy to see the conditionmancer emerge as a counter to bunker guardians. I hope they don’t nerf you guys too hard, it’s so boring seeing a bunker guardian on every team and without a strong necro I don’t see any other class posing much of a threat to the same old meta.
I’ve seen AR engies, spirit rangers, stun-lock warriors, and s/d thieves do very well against the fotm necros. There are really good counters to condispam necros, and I’m sure there are counter-builds we have yet to see. Problem is that most people don’t make counter-builds for one specific type of class build, because they enter into a matchup where they don’t know if that build will be there.
Condispam necros are extremely good against the general builds that dominated the meta before necros were buffed. People will want to keep playing those general builds with the blind matchups, even though there are very good counters to condispam necros. They’ll just qq when their general build is strong or average against everything but is extremely weak against necros. Necros will seem like the problem to them because the builds that actually counter necros are not seen as generally viable. They won’t play counter-builds for condispam necros because it would be silly to play a build designed against one specific class-build when you don’t know whether you’ll be facing a condispam necro.
I’ve already made a thread suggesting a change to the way tournament matches begin (there should be an alternating character lock-in draft where both teams can see the builds). The tools for countering condispam necros are there. It makes me sad because there could be so many interesting builds but because the system rewards generally good builds that’s all we’ll ever see.
i tried a necro mancer last night i think i was running 30/20/0/0/20 or 30/20/10 or something i can’t really remember. staff scepter + dagger had no clue what half my skills did and the sheer hurt i put out and the beating i could take before going down was phenomenal. if your burning trait is off cooldown you can bring a thief from 100 to 0 or force them to double shadowstep with scepter auto. a friend later pointed out that i had a wrong utility and i should have taken the fear wall and stood inside it this way melee can’t do anything to touch you and your only threat is from other ranged classes.
people have said stun lock warrior works well against this spec i’m not so sure as eles and guardians were mulch for the boon flip skill and warriors i’d just lay marks everywhere hit f1 while they tried to chain stuns (still doing extremely heavy damage with #5 and #4 or 3 i think) then switch to scepter and hit all five skills for the kills. this is without adding your elite (gain up to 30k+ health and 3000 toughness with condi ammy) into the mix.
i played this in a number of spvp games for about an hour or so and the only thing that successfully brought me down was another necro (with champion shadow title lol)
Oh I’m not saying Necro isn’t strong. I picked it up for the specific purpose to find a way to counter it and I know how strong it is. I’m just saying that I have come across certain builds, AR engie with high health pool elixir c and stun break, that condispam necros are just bad against. I also play an engie though and to build that sort of AR engie you are have to make sacrifices that make you weaker against non-necros. The AR build that counters the condispam necro so well, isn’t a great build if there’s no condispam necro to counter. So people don’t run those builds and don’t build comps specifically to counter condi-cleave comps. A group of Spirit Ranger, 2xAR engies, and 2 burst classes with good CC will destroy a condi-cleave comp.
My whole point is that the reason we don’t see comps that steamroll a 2xfotm necro group is because it requires specialization of builds to counter the fotm necro group. The problem is that there’s no place for counter-specialization in tPvP right now. If Necros are deemed to be OP, then I would advocate for 1. changing tPvP so that counter-specializing has a place, and 2. giving other professions the tools, if more are necessary, to trait in order to better counter condi-cleave comps.
All this calling for nerfs is the wrong way to go about it. Bunker guardian has been in every group comp since the start of this game. Boring. Condispam necro comes along and is a huge threat to bunker guards. Exciting. Don’t kill condispam necros off (boring), make it possible to counter-build them (exciting).
I’ve seen AR engies, spirit rangers, stun-lock warriors, and s/d thieves do very well against the fotm necros. There are really good counters to condispam necros, and I’m sure there are counter-builds we have yet to see. Problem is that most people don’t make counter-builds for one specific type of class build, because they enter into a matchup where they don’t know if that build will be there.
Condispam necros are extremely good against the general builds that dominated the meta before necros were buffed. People will want to keep playing those general builds with the blind matchups, even though there are very good counters to condispam necros. They’ll just qq when their general build is strong or average against everything but is extremely weak against necros. Necros will seem like the problem to them because the builds that actually counter necros are not seen as generally viable. They won’t play counter-builds for condispam necros because it would be silly to play a build designed against one specific class-build when you don’t know whether you’ll be facing a condispam necro.
I’ve already made a thread suggesting a change to the way tournament matches begin (there should be an alternating character lock-in draft where both teams can see the builds). The tools for countering condispam necros are there. It makes me sad because there could be so many interesting builds but because the blind matchup system rewards generally good builds that’s all we’ll ever see.
(edited by Schlieffen.2054)
[…]
I agree that different builds of the professions should be stronger/weaker depending on the situation. But what I mean is, that there should be more team comps that can deal with several situations. In GW1 you could play a pressure or spike build, but you always had the possiblity to react to/counter diffetent tactics or team comps (e.g. split). The best example was balanced, what was hard to master but with that build you could play spike and pressure and split tactics. I dont say that all profession builds should be equally strong in general, but as a team you should have the possibility to play several playing styles and tactics so you dont need to know what you enemy plays.. The team comps should not be equally strong in everything, but they should balance out (one has more spike dmg, one has more condis, but both are equally viable in pvp, maybe with different skill caps but at least they are)
Gotcha, I agree that would be great. I just think that the blind matchups mean that it falls on the Devs to create this broad balance that also has strengths and weaknesses of matchups within the broad balance.
Players expect this, but this is extremely hard to do at a macro level—there are always going to be inefficiencies in a system. Players are smart and super-motivated and will discover the inefficiencies and leverage them. That’s what leads to FotM builds and a meta of generic builds in the current system.
If players are given the opportunity and tools to counter enemy builds/comps then that same player intelligence and motivation will lead to a more dynamic meta. How often do players complain that Devs don’t play as much as them and therefore don’t know the intricacies as well? To some extent this may be true, and a system that empowers the players to specifically counter inefficiencies (e.g. automated response engies being used against a pure condi cleave enemy comp) will ALWAYS result in better balance and a more dynamic meta as compared to a system that relies on Devs to create proper balance while making matches blindly.
But the problem is that this form of counter-play isnt possible in GW2 where some professions (rather builds) dominate the scene and are a must in every team. It should be possible to play multiple styles with several team comps, like the good old balanced <3.
I prefer the old model of RA, where it was random what professions your mates are and you had to deal with it, but thats only my opinion, I dont like the “Build Wars” model in general..
My hypothesis is that the current system where players are blind to what they’re up against directly leads to the state where certain strong generic builds are in almost every team comp. Niche builds are niche builds for a reason – they perform a specific function well under a particular set of circumstances. Blind matchups mean you don’t know whether you’re going against comp A, B, C, D, or E.
Your niche build might be superior against comp E and not good against the rest, while the generic build would be better against all the rest of the comps. Not knowing which comp you face, your smartest play is to bring the generic build. Every other person in sPvP faces the same decision. Thus everyone brings the generic build and we have stale comps and stale matchups.
One way to deal with this is to try to perfectly balance all professions in relation to one another and all skills within a profession. What does perfect balance even mean? Each class has multiple builds that are all equally viable in a spvp match? If you want to avoid the stale meta described above while keeping the blind match system, then I think this type of balance is what you would need to achieve. This type of balance begs the question: if each class has multiple builds that are perfectly equal in strength, then does group comp cease to be important?
The other way to fix a stale meta is to balance through counters. Paper/rock/scissors style. The thing about counters though is that counter balancing will only work in a system that supports it (the blind matchup system does not support it). Yes, in this type of system builds become extremely important.
So in my opinion you either try to achieve perfect balance between all classes or you allow certain builds to be powerful in some situations while being weak in others. If you choose the former, a blind matchup system is fine because it doesn’t really matter which of many classes/builds you bring. If you choose the latter, then you need a system that supports the counter-build system because builds and team comps are extremely important.
You can call it build wars if you like, but I think the latter option is way more interesting and based on which games on twitch have large followings I think the esports viewers would agree with me. An Esport never becomes more than nerds playing a video game without viewers who are willing to watch the matches. MOBAs like LoL got it right in terms of balancing through counters and developing a framework which supported and even showcased the counter-balancing system. Anyway, I think GW2 needs something more to support counter-based builds and comps in competitive play.
sPvP is only there so that ANet can proclaim “E-SPORTS W000T!!!”. But nobody really want it.
My competitive pvp guild of about 30 people came to GW2 specifically for the spvp and esports potential. They all left the game when it became clear that support for spvp would take a long time to implement if it ever came at all. There are plenty of people that want spvp but they’re playing other games right now.
I should also add that the current system leads to teams being extremely protective over their builds during streamed scrims and non-tourny matches. There will always be some of that in competitive play, but the current blind matchup system exacerbates the problem.
And it IS a big problem, because when someone like Blu is streaming he often can’t go over builds because teams don’t want to randomly be caught off guard by a team comp that is designed to counter their team set-up. Viewers do not like being in the dark about builds. Builds are at the heart of the game! And let’s be honest, GW2’s combat is very busy with visual effects. Leaving viewers in the dark about the capabilities of the combatants only further muddies the waters. If GW2 is to become a legit esports game, it is going to have to get new people to understand what they’re watching. Viewers bring advertisers/sponsors, advertisers bring $$, and $$ brings more players. This secrecy of builds does nothing to help viewers enjoy watching a match.
This would do a number of really good things for GW2:
1. Add an interesting tactical element to the start of the match
2. Related to number 1, it would give shoutcasters a specific chance to talk about the choices of team composition and character builds. This would help unfamiliar viewers have a better understanding of what the builds and team compositions are trying to do.
3. It would reward inventive, flexible, and skillful players. Players that master multiple builds would, and should in my opinion, be able to leverage that as an advantage.
4. Change the generic build meta into a more specific niche build meta, which adds variety and interest to the game.
5. Allow for better balance control. I am not a developer, but I am basing this off rock-paper-scissors and other games I’ve played. It’s very difficult to balance all of rock/paper/scissors with each other. I can’t imagine trying to balance all skills across all classes and skills in GW2. But creating balance through counters is much easier. At least in theory. One particular build too strong generally? Add new skills that counter it, or tweak old skills to counter it and let players create a niche build to counter the meta.
6. Provide another source of revenue for ANet. I would recommend dropping the price on pvp character slots (after adding pvp-only slots), but serious players would be willing to buy slots for many of the niche builds they master so they don’t have to worry about setting traits/gear in the limited character selection time period.
7. Eliminate the blind, and therefore random, nature of the current tournament match system. The blind matching system dumbs the entire system down for all of the reasons stated herein.
8. Creating more viable builds. There are so few viable builds, because players are having to design their builds for general play. As soon as they can start designing builds for specific situations, there will be a ton of new builds that are viable under certain conditions.
9. Creating more viable group comps. Comps are designed to deal with the general meta and for the map that is being played. The fact that these comps are usually determined before the match even starts leads to very stale group comps.
10. Eliminating the constant swapping of characters to counter the enemy once people get into a map. Countering will instead happen gradually and no team will be caught off-guard by their enemies builds and comps. Countering will therefore be PURPOSEFUL.
11. All of these things will increase the skillcap, and truly good players and teams will shine brightly.
Anyway, I think balancing all classes to one another is a recipe for banging your head against a wall. A character selection system at the start of each tourny match would forever change the generic slant of the meta and provide players and devs alike the framework necessary to counter stale metas with niche builds. More interesting matches to watch. More opportunities for first time viewers to become grounded in what teams are trying to do before the non-stop intensity of the match. Plus more money for ANet. Everybody wins.
Just returned to GW2 to see if improvements have been made to further their esports aspirations. There is a lot of complaining about the condi-heavy meta on these boards and in-game. However, there are niche counters to a condi-heavy team. Having niche builds, imo, is a very good thing. The problem is the system of how the tournaments are started. You enter your team and if you don’t swap out characters to optimize your strat then you will be at the mercy of a blind match-up of two teams. If your tournament doesn’t allow you to swap characters and you randomly happen to go up against a team that has the right counters to your groups make-up, gg. There is no skill in countering your opponent. There is only the skill in designing a team that will be good and at least have a chance against the most possible enemy team comps.
What has this done to the meta? It has prioritized general builds over niche builds. General builds are polished and eventually turn into generic builds and you get pretty much the same builds over and over again because they are strong against most teams. Niche builds are only strong against certain team compositions, so very few teams run them because you’re unlikely to randomly be matched up against consecutive teams who are running the perfect composition for your niche builds.
A lot of people are complaining about the CC meta and focusing their ire on certain classes that have changed the general meta. However, I believe there is a more fundamental change that should happen: add a character select system at the beginning of every tournament match.
League of Legends does this very well: alternate selections and once the selection is made lock it in. For GW2, I would suggest that each player has a couple minutes to select his character and set the traits/gear. Once a character is selected, the traits and gear are locked for that particular match and all players (and viewers) can see the traits gear of the characters as soon as they are locked into place.