Guild Wars 2

I play GW2 mainly for the SPvP and rarely leave the Mists on most of my characters, yet when I log into the game they are displayed with their main world / PvE gear in the Character Selection screen.

Wouldn’t it be a great idea to have the option to display the PvP gear we identify our characters with?

There was a thread about this some two months ago, but I figured it might be interesting to see the replies now people have had more time to gear their characters.

http://i.imgur.com/eACzJ4e.gif

Allie Murdock.8152:

For sure, I can’t say we’re entirely happy with the meta right now either. Changes are coming.

There is a general consensus about the current meta being an alltime low and the point of this thread is to address the fact it won’t change before PAX (in the name of e-sports). So the entire playerbase feels their time in game is no longer priority and we are stuck playing a horribly flawed meta (not fun)!

Numerous other games simply continue balancing and choose to hold tournaments on a previous patch.

It is nice for newer players to be vocal about their experiences.

I don’t claim to be a seasoned player. Though I have played a fair bit, I never competed on a proper team and I’d say playing with other people on voice chat is probably the most educational!

It gives you fast access to common team strategies and it will teach you the art of stomping / reviving that you can’t learn anywhere else.

In all fairness, Guild Wars 2 struggles on the aspect of communication and grouping. The new tournament systems move around this issue, but it is still very much present. There was a time when, unless you knew and played with a group of people already, there was basically no chance of finding one for tournaments.

Some pointers, if you like:

- Pay attention to combo fields: there are a lot of team play revolves around stacking might or stealth to open a fight. Learning every combination at your disposal can improve your play.

- Downed state is crucial: it is not always in your team’s best interest to stomp, simply damaging a downed enemy can be a safer way of securing a kill. Know the abilities every class will use in downed state and how your build can counter them. Same goes for reviving allies.

- Count your opponent’s dodges: dodging is the most basic and powerful defensive skill in the game, if you notice a target without endurance it is safe to burst or crowd control.

- Use verticals to your advantage: maps often offer secure and strategic positioning on the high ground. Moving up the vertical axis can allow you to leave a fight and save your life (less so now after blink nerfs).

- Personal positioning is essential, but knowledge of map control is equally important. Moving quickly between points can allow you to catch the opponents of guard by suddenly outnumbering them, stealing away their secondary buff or rotating your members of your team to their backpoint.
Sometimes it is better to sacrifice a point you have and moving elsewhere if you know you cannot defend it.

These are very basic ideas and since you said you won 10 solo queue matches and have experience in PvP games I recon you already do this, but it might be helpful still.

I would like to ask the developers for more clarity in terms of the upcoming glory change and how we can prepare for it.

Also I’d like to question the strategy behind recent glory sinks (cultural armor, the winterdays npc, etc.) and the obvious problem of glory boosters and spvp crafting materials.

To make the playerbase aware of how glory is not going to be phased-out, but is actively being phased-out already… which has not necessarily been in our advantage due to Arenanet’s lack of clear communication about their plans. Unfortunately.

http://youtu.be/dsJEjTNDt3E

Recap in the ‘PvP Developer Behind the Scenes: Ready Up – Ep 5’:
- Use glory boosters.
- Fill out your locker. (?)
- Get “those things” out of your locker. (?)
- Salvage “extras”. (?)
- Craft “specific pvp stuff”. (?) Use ALL your crafting materials.
- Make unidentified dyes.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/phasing-out-pvp-glory/

Blog post February 13 ‘Phasing Out PvP Glory’
- All random reward chests removed.
- All rank vendors will be removed.
- New glory vendor will be altered and eventually removed.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/

Blog post December 2 ‘Rewards Roadmap’
- Greater rewards for teamwork in competitive play.
- Gear transferable from PVP to PVE and vice versa, so fill your locker.
- Gold and experience in PVP. Gold will be the standard currency.

To me, it seems wasteful to be unclear about these changes. Players will and have spent or not spent glory on various temporary sinks and may already start to feel cheated! Unless the new award system is flawless, individual players will have missed a chance to be awarded for what they had earned in the past and will have to work towards regaining features they lost by not being informed.

Please, be more vocal and clear about exactly what will change and how you anticipate it will affect the players. The blog posts are far more functional than the youtube videos in this matter.

http://www.ultraimg.com/images/9KU2V.gif (courtesy of Jumper)

Want to say thanks to Grouch and GW2Guru, as well as the Devs! You really stepped up this time, well structured interesting debate!

I feel this player to developer feedback is really making GW2 a better game and I, for one, am excited about the changes.

Oh no, now Raid on the Capricorn is ruined! No one will ever want to play that map again!

From what we do know: Weakness rework / Torment condition, I can only say it is looking dim for Warriors being viable unless they get exponential buffs from here on out.
I’d rather see Warrior have Torment, it would fit what they need perfectly. Punishing opponents for running from them, which is one of the Warrior’s weaknesses right now.

I am excited to see new opportunities for condition builds on unconventional classes: Thieves & Mesmers and picking up Necromancer again!
Although, it’d rather see more burst glasscannons in the game than team’s stacking conditions mindlessly in teamfights…

Opting for the sensible reaction.

Durzlla.6295:

Anyone have a link to the vid? I checked the twitch channel but didn’t see it…

Exactly. Watch PAX? How?

If you didn’t catch it live, good luck digging through the entire stream… when will the developers understand that if they want serious viewership they need to make their content visible and easily accessible?

It’s the first worldwide event / one year anniversary celebration and it’s not even highlighted on the Twitch channel… can’t you simply upload the matches to Youtube? If you want to be taken seriously try to take minor attention of what similar companies and games are doing: League Of Legends, for example.

At this point, everything good about this game is community driven. I don’t care anymore, here is the link: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/454437568 – around 4 to 5 hours in.

One note: skills during jump animation = fluid gameplay!

Think about adding this to SPvP.

I’d say Anet will be reluctant to introduce this map.

It overlaps with WvW and basically requires developing a new gametype for SPVP, which does not fit well into the Hotjoin system.

Then again, I think it would be dumb to not even consider it since the existing playerbase will love it and it could introduce many WvW players to the Mists!

1. Solo Queue (as mentioned in SOTG, will be implemented soon)

2. Class Balance (mainly viability of Warrior and Necro, rest is on track)

3. Reward system (gems/gold + beyond glory farming: class, race, leaderboard rank oriented rewards,)

Aye.8392:

This is certainly an exploit of the system. Hopefully A-Net is looking at permanent bans for the players involved as well as changing the system to encourage a more fun type of play.

It always amazes me when people who are breaking the rules blame it on the system instead of taking responsibility for their own poor choice. “You made me!” is such a grade-school response.

And asking for permanent bans is not a petty response? How are those people even affecting the fun others are having? It’s exclusive to Skyhammer in Custom Arena’s and people actually pay a lot of gems to organise their own games!

If anything, this behaviour shows how flawed the glory rank system is and it draws away glory farming from the Hotjoin servers! I can’t believe Arena Net didn’t foresee this happening when they introduced an instant kill mechanic on Skyhammer, anyways…

Agreed, why can’t the the community just get more balance patches, while the “pros” play their Spirit Ranger meta at PAX?

I’m not one to vent on the forums, because I played casually and enjoyed the game, but suddenly I don’t anymore.

Tonight, I played five matches in a row against the same premade +r40 team with no chance of winning. Because I joined solo and got matched with 4 -r10 players every game, who played with the typical ‘hotjoin’ attitude of zerging point without defending them.

At this point, I’m very dissappointed. These are simple facts. I did not have this experience before the removal of tickets.

I realise there is a need to attract a larger playerbase into spvp, but at what cost?

Overall, I’m kind of disappointed. The community and its representatives seemed way more prepared for this than the developers. (Except for Jon, maybe. Soon.)
I don’t mean to offend, but Karl didn’t seem self-confident about giving this talk and that reflected negatively on the more interesting things he said.
Time is limited, don’t fret explaining the basics of a class for the off chance one viewer has not read the discription in Character Creation.

The balance conversation seemed very random. I don’t think banners, necro summons, turrets, traps, … should be priority. They don’t have a solid place in PvP, because they rely too much on AI and even when buffed, players will prefer not to use them, because there is no related skillcap.

I think I’ll delete my Engineer now, waste of a character slot. The RNG is not fun.

I’m excited for the leaderboards and I like how it’s being handled in a way fit for GW2 and not just a copy of how it has been done in other MMOs in the past.
Even though, the matchmaking is still vague and I expect there will be unflattering exploits if they don’t get it exactly right.

It also seemed as if they had not given much thought to the player incentive issue and only see new rewards as a long term thing. There was no further discussion about carrying over PVE players to sPVP except for sharing an option of a daily Laurel.

edit: Oh yeah, great to hear the PVP gear will be displayable in the selection screen coming next patch! ^^

I agree with everything the OP (Henry) listed. Though, he could work on his phrasing and general tone so people will take his advice seriously.

These are not l2p issues. Henry has as much experience and skill in playing this game as anyone and he knows what he’s talking about. No idea why you’d take my word for it, but I thought I’d put that out there.

Re: 21 lame things

I’d prioritize dodging (4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ) – Energy sigils and Lyssa runes definitely need to be adjusted. Sigil of paralyzation is still broken. (3)
Hotfixing should become customary, instead of having to wait 3 months to fix obvious bugs!

Passive play through AI or signets is very harmful to SPvP. These issues have been targeted in the past, but continue to be crutches for players and classes such as Ranger. Long uncounterable invulnerabilities should be avoided too, though there are numerous ones in-game. It should always be offset by inability to attack during the invulnerability: i.e. Mistform (1, to a lesser extend 2, 9, 15)

Undodgable burst (10) also has negative effects on the Meta, inforcing all the above. Fresh Air Elementalist will be dominant if condition meta disappears.

Lag issues (14) have been plagueing the Mists recently. It has nothing to do with our internet connections, definitely server issues on ArenaNet’s end!

(18) If you plan to nerf stealth stacking / grouping, Shadows Refuge’s cooldown is the way to do it.

(20) Access to burning makes condition builds viable or unviable: i.e. Necromancer with or without Dhuumfire. All condition builds should have their access to burning looked at first.

(21) Standardized model sizes need to happen to make GW2 an #Esports, better sooner than later…

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

(…) This is how the rest of the community that doesn’t care to play thief thinks about this.

Please, don’t alter my statement, my choice of words was plenty clear. Hell, at least quote my post if you want me to reply to your nonsensical babbling. Allow me to, anyways.
“I would go so far as to say (…)”. Take note of the “I” as in me, I am not putting words into anyone’s mouth here. If anyone is, you are!
Besides you completely contradict your primary opinion, about this being a bug, by agreeing the developers were not clear about the matter.

As far as parity goes, why would you want all classes being equal on all terms? What is the point of having different classes if they all have the exact same mechanics and stats…
This thread is not about the Thief alone. It is about the mobility of all classes.

Quite frankly, I don’t agree with this change and I hope it can be toned down to make shadowsteps functional again, without them being abusive. It makes the game shallower at the moment.
If it wasn’t intended it should have been made clear and it could have been announced that it was being “fixed”.

I don’t understand why certain spots are still functional and others aren’t, though. There are sudden imbalances now where the red side can jump walls and the blue side cannot, for example.
Also, Shadow Return, which is by far the most defensively strong has not been balanced at all…

Pyroatheist.9031:

Everybody seems to think that the problems in Pvp are a result of a lack of resources being given to the balance team. I think this gives the balance team too much credit.

The problems in pvp are due to the balance team being completely incompetent, from the top to the bottom. I honestly don’t see any hope for this changing, as any change would require the removal of the Jon’s and co. from balance entirely, and I can’t see Anet actually doing that.

It’s hard to deny any of this! Jon’s commentary at PAX was almost reminiscent of Karl’s first appearance on State of the Game when it comes to understanding the gameplay they are balancing.

The balance team needs to balance more insightfully in terms of the current SPvP meta, more efficiently in terms of their future goals and more frequently to accomodate player wellbeing!

From my point of view:
- They have no idea what is played because it is powerful compared to what players actually want to play.
- There are no plans. None for specific classes (bugged traits, unused weaponsets or overall viable builds). None for a balanced meta in terms of their ideals for the conquest gametype (power or condition heavy? bunkers or roamers? high skillcap or low skillfloor?) None for anything beyond what the community repeatedly throws in their faces and what they are assigned through management.
- They are unwilling to adapt their philosophy of a slow and steady balancing and fail to see where this has gone wrong in the past. The meta is entirely dictated by their “non-whack-a-mole” balancing, but they still insist players can afford to build independently of the flavour of the month and be viable in their skewed matchmaking system.

Phantaram.1265:

I can say that if we were still going to pax I’d be all for balancing before the tournament. Other games use older patches for tournaments so they can continue balancing even during the tournaments. This game doesn’t have that and continued balancing is far more important than 10 players playing for 10k. This tournament isn’t even really the beginning as it isn’t community driven, it’s just a booster arena net has provided. The community will decide whether this game grows or not and right now the game is not good enough. When it is good enough the community will get behind it and we will have ourselves a supported competitive game.

So while not balancing in the tournament could have helped the teams have a fair game for 10k, I think the teams would realize that the game needs growth and the 7.5k or 2.5k their team will earn is not sustainable without a good enough game.

+1 Exactly!

It’s absurd we have to wait for balance because of a tournament that should be an advocate for this game.

Zodian.6597:

Everyone compares every single game to LoL in reference to esports. (…)
“LoL will never be as competitive as HoN” -most moba players in 2009.

LoL is where it is today because Riot (and later other companies like Intel) threw insane amounts of cash into sponsoring and hosting tournaments.

Cash incentives = dedicated players = #1 marketing tool, which results in more casual players, which = $$$$$, reinvest portion of the money made off of casual players back into cash incentives and you get LoL’s business model in a nutshell.

Completely agree.

The community should support the player initiatives those streamers undertake, but Guild Wars 2 Spvp’s chances at becoming an Esport are largely dependent on how Arenanet chooses to / is able to promote it.

To be honest, LoL and Starcraft II are unfair references. They are the peak of Esports currently and it is a healthy goal for Arenanet, but when it comes down to viewership on Twitch only other MMO Pvp (= WoW) should be considered competition to GW2.

WoW has Blizzcon and was able to corner the market by mass-promotion and the simple fact of being the first to achieve such a large playerbase. Backed by Blizzard’s entire infrastructure, it is easy to generate large numbers – hell people even watch Diablo III streamers… is that an Esport?

In short: there are no other MMOs that can be considered Esports. World of Warcraft is the only realistic comparison and it doesn’t even have a spectator mode or regular broadcasted tournaments.
Please, just appreciate the work other players put into those streams and have fun watching / playing the game.

Seeing as the pvp in this game revolves entirely around map presence and objective/node control, I’d suggest making two lists: one based on a class’ power to hold an objective and one for the offensive pressure on said objective.
Key factors for one would be boons, healing and general survivability. Two can be measured by mobility, power burst and conditions damage spread.

I think, this will be more suited to account for the “viable” builds each class currently adopts in the meta strategy.

1: Defense

S = Guardian, Elementalist
A = Engineer, Mesmer, Ranger
B = Necro, Thief
C = Warrior

2: Offense

S = Mesmer, Elementalist, Thief
A = Necro, Ranger, Warrior
B = Engineer, Guardian
C =

(You know the builds that are implied…)

You could, of course argue, both take place simultaneously in teamfights and that is certainly true, but I felt the previous lists were lackluster in their ability to accomodate both build variaties.

My opinion:
- Most balance issues come from sustain builds, permanent boons such as regeneration and protection break counters and make less classes viable, since the effects are not unique to each class.
- The map presence the Mesmer class provides ranks them highest and makes roaming strategies nearly obsolete: lack of Warriors and other melee roamers (besides thief).
- I think most people underestimate how strong Necroes are, they are largely abscent because of their lack of build strategies, which makes them easily countered.