Guild Wars 2

<- desiring the Unbreakable Bell too (but if I don’t get one, what the heck)

But I understand why people complain about that stupid system. No normal player will be able to acquire the thousands of gifts one would need to have a reasonable chance for a rare drop. I do Wintersday activities every day and know the Jumping Puzzle in and out, but still I will have a maximum of a few hundred gifts collected in the end. People with more ingame gold or the will to spend real money just buy 5k gifts or the bell itself on the TP. That is what annoys be about the system. Kind of contradicts with the spirit of doing fun activities and getting rewards for the completion of challenging tasks (and no, I’m not saying give the bell to anyone who does perfect at the choir game, I know that would be fairly cheap).

Galandil.9641:

Tinius.1380:

but that doesn’t make the skill OP in my eyes

How could you honestly say that?

Except for dodging it (mostly randomly, as you stated), it’s a skill that has no counter at all after you land it on your target, except fleeing away, and most of all it renders ALL the elites of another class (Necro) useless, since it breaks Plague/Lich/Golem and even the Death Shroud.

You’re probably right about necro. Honestly, I don’t play necro, so I can’t really estimate what getting moaed means to you.

Galandil.9641:

Could you mention to me another elite skill (of any class in the game) that counters perfectly all the elite skills of another class without the possibility to avoid it?

I know there is no such skill, but what I was saying is that a lot of other elite skills in the game can turn the tide in a group fight. Take Thieves Guild (crazy burst), Supply Crate (aoe stun and group heal), Tome of Courage (full heal), or Time Warp (I know, mesmer too, but that basically doesn’t contradict with my statement). Just a few examples. I know, moa is without a counter at the moment, but then again, it’s just a control effect. The skills I mentioned are all counterable but nevertheless extremely strong and they will also have the maximum impact on the fight if you are coordinating your moves with your team.

Imo moa needs slight readjust, maybe decrease the time of the effect to 8 seconds or decrease it a little bit more but then make the cooldown shorter.

Lol at people discussing about the animation of the skill. Unless you’re a savant on crack, you will probably not be able to identify the skill and dodge it in time when there are more then 2 subjects engaged in fight. Plus, as a mesmer I will mostly cast it while in stealth or after having switched places with a clone, so come on. The only thing that slightly decreases the power of this mighty elite is the fact that the designated target will often dodge it or stand behind an obstacle by pure luck while I cast it.

Concerning the moa state itself, you should just run around, try to hide somewhere and hope you have a dodge ready. If you’re in a team fight and the enemy team is well coordinated, you will probably be kittened, but that doesn’t make the skill OP in my eyes. Concerning team fights and good coordination, the fact who has which elites ready will be the gamebreaker in most cases…

sorrow.2364:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Rank is intended to be a metric to show much how you’ve played of PvP, and how experienced you are over-all as a result. The various banners that come with rank is a bit of a prestige thing that says “I’ve played me a ton of PvP!”

The addition of our new paid tournaments, and the features that will follow after it will be how we answer that clear question of: “who is the best”. We think it’s important to have both. As we begin our new live releases, starting with Shadow of the Mad King (and the new pvp hero tab and paid tournaments) you’ll see pvp feature additions come very regularly going forward!

All the best and happy n00b stomping,

I don’t want to be the unpleasant guy, but I want to know if you ArenaNet are aware that many people are faming rank points capping a node alternatively with a friend.
While in Guild Wars it wasn’t possible, it is sad that it is happening here because it wastes all the usefulness of rank.

Well, there are probably some players doing that, but I don’t really see what would be their point. It’s absolutely boring, you don’t really get more fame than in a normal match, and the only reward you will get is one chest per rank. I dare to say no normal person would actually want to do this boring stuff on a regular basis.

Wiki:

Bug.Contrary to the description, stability does not provide immunity against fear.

Albaraa.1635:

I don’t care about the crossfire animation breaking every once in a while…the CD you added on the cast is RUINING rangers in PVP…! PLEASE FIX IT this is ridiculous…it feels like I am shooting arrows in slow motion now…not acceptable…

Here we have the perfect example for the reaction of a clueless and intemperate player towards a normal game update. Seriously, you must be a troll. Crossfire builds, both skilled on traps or condition/power hybrid are still perfectly viable. You can use the same build as before. The damage has decreased on a level that is barely noticeable.
And the devs will have to read through nonsense like this…some people in this community are really trying hard to ruin any good atmosphere.

What is funny is reading all the posts QQing because of an expected “ele nerf”, while Jonathan actually just wrote the devs were having an eye on one single build that is not particularly UP at the moment. You definitely need to change your view from class-wise balance to build-wise.

Are you sure you’re thinking of the same Crossfire that everybody else is talking about? And you’re not biased even though you play a Shortbow Ranger? You don’t have to defend yourself to me with your elite attitude when you speak for the 99% of the competitive community while the rest of us are bad.

Yes I’m sure, no I’m not biased, and actually I didn’t want to bring any “elite attitude” in here. What I was saying is that a normal player won’t die to an opponent who will only press his Crossfire button as ranger. And I’m not even taking your statement by word. I know you don’t literally mean that someone could only let his ranger auto-attack and win, but what you are saying is that a ranger shortbow build is lame and consists of “spamming” this one skill, which is just wrong in my eyes.

I don’t know if half of you only read the OP and then go on a crusade to defend yourself and your class, or you actually read the whole thread and still think you can justify these types of things happening.

Stop resorting to class warfare and devolving the thread in to troll comments and attacks.

I read the whole thread before I posted, and if there is anything like “class warfare” in here, it’s thanks to your OP and idea behind the thread. I just wrote that shortbow ranger wasn’t a “spam 1 skill build”, which can hardly meet any definition of class warfare.
Look, my problem with your thread is the following:
You obviously got once killed by a ranger and saw “Crossfire” to be on the sole top of the damage list, concluding that Crossfire was an overpowered skill. I joined the discussion here to correct you and make clear that a ranger with shortbow would actually have to use a lot of different skills and swap weapons to be effective. I backed up my statements with logical reasons, whereas you have explained nowhere in this thread why my arguments were false. Instead of that, you accuse me of “going on a crusade” and devolving your thread. Furthermore, you permanently repeat yourself by posting your opinion without having reasonable arguments (the only one being “I’ve got killed once by XXX. Have you never?”). From that kind of statements, anyone could read that you have never tried out the build yourself, which is the main reason why I don’t give your opinion any credit. Highlight of this flat argumentation is how you refer to some “people who have mained ranger since the beginning”, which neither gives you a better basis for arguments nor represents the opinion of the community as a whole (for example, I know ranger players who think shortbow requires a lot of skill to play – but that shouldn’t be used as an argument here).

Greetings

Merciless.5349:

You have never encountered anything like the rest of the community has? You have never come across a Crossfire only Ranger or a Pistol Whip only Thief?

Seriously, you must either be trolling or a really bad player. Speaking for 99% of serious competitive players, I have never been put in danger by a ranger who only used his autoattack. If you have, please uninstall the game. If, however, you are interested in getting a better pvp player, I suggest you read the skill description of Crossfire, or even better, you roll a ranger yourself.

Merciless.5349:

The issue is not how to beat or counter those builds/skills (and I have beaten them :p). The issue, which, if you read all of my postings in the thread you would know, is their viability and effectiveness vs those whose “fingers are aching from playing the keyboard like a piano” to achieve same/similar results.

I can’t speak for the Pistol Whip thieves, but what you say is wrong for Crossfire rangers, and, from my observings and from what I’ve read, also wrong for greatsword warriors. And no, I’m not automatically being biased because I play a shortbow ranger. My pvp main is a phantasm mesmer and I’m 100% aware that’s a very easy-to-play and over the top effective build.

Merciless.5349:

I am sure a Ranger would love to help you with a Crossfire build. And then you can try it out for yourself.

Haha. You suggest other people to try out builds you obviously have no clue about. I seriously recommend you have a crack at some of the classes you haven’t played before.

Decoy, portal, null field

I have been bringing the same idea since beta. Neutral downed skills.

I hope OP and friends are not serious about Crossfire. I don’t want to sound like one of those haters here on the board, but you have obviously never played shortbow ranger before.
Ranger on shortbow can be played either with traps or with a bleed/power hybrid build. The latter is arguably easier to play than the first but nowhere near to “just spam 1-2 skills” because the bleed of Crossfire is only applied if you hit the enemy from the side or back. This means the ranger has to reposition himself permanently and make use of all his available slows to make the damage viable.
The second reason why no ranger in the game will only be hitting his shortbow auto-attack is that he won’t live long without using his CC skills and evasive moves. This definitely also includes a lot of weapon switches because the shortbow’s skills are definitely not enough for that purpose.

Long story short, please don’t make ranger look bad for no reason.

…is that not everything that was correctly thought-through by the developers is overpowered. I’m talking about tournament play by the way.

I believe that most profession-related balance problems are based upon badly designed trait lines, skills that are weak or not working as intended, or even design flaws in the mechanics of a whole class. These issues obviously limit some professions to only a few viable builds if at all.
In my opinion, those issues are the reason why other classes with better design stand out as overpowered while they actually aren’t. I’ll take mesmer as example because I play one and I believe I once saw a similar thread here where it said “mesmer is where other classes should be”.
Mesmers can use a lot of different weapon sets to create viable tourney builds, most of their traits make sense at their specific line and position and they have two very strong elite skills. Another plus for the class is that the shattering mechanic also seems to work as intended, as it can be used to various degrees in different builds but doesn’t restrict the mesmer to a handful of builds that rely only on shattering. Another example for such good design would probably be the guardian – I have to admit I haven’t play him yet – but from what I’ve seen and heard, he can also play a lot of different builds and choose from a good range of viable weapons.

So, what I’m trying to say is that people who complain about class imbalances shouldn’t shout for nerf of well-designed classes but obviously wait for bug fixes and design improvement on weaker classes. A guild mate of mine once told me there was a bug list for necromancer that listed dozens of bugs in skill mechanics?! Elementalists, who have 5 possible weapon combinations only use three of them in serious tournament play because the other sets suffer from bad design? Those issues are where balance fixes have to start. Nerfing better classes to the ground won’t make gameplay as a whole more enjoyable over long time.

I hope I have made my point clear.

Greetings

@OP: I’m just really confused by your 5 points. You complain about a number of things that are connected to how PVP in GW2 works and a lot of whole other issues that are not really related at all.

1. The high-speed gameplay of PVP is probably the reason why the devs called it “a new take on MMO PVP”. It’s obviously also the reason why you don’t like it, but that’s just personal taste. I, for myself, like it better than GW1’s PVP (Heroes Ascent I’m talking about) which was much slower and definitely closer to the “conventional” kind of MMO PVP. Same goes for the differences between professions which I prefer to the scheme that GW1 had. Both things, speed and professions are a question of personal taste, so I don’t question your opinion here, but please don’t pretend that’s a result of developers’ laziness or lack of inspiration. It is, in fact, just a NEW TAKE on pvp.

However:

2. Unrelated to 1. You should play tournament PVP and you will see there is no zerging and if there is, nobody succeeds with it. And no, you don’t need to be uber pro to try out tournaments.

3. Unrelated and absurd. See 2. Forget about the “top echelon of players” you’re imagining and have fun in tournament play. Unless devs finish off the other tournament modes, some pro group will wipe you from time to time, but that will be the worst that can happen to you.

4. I don’t play WvW, but if you dislike the hectic floods of boons, conditions, damage and heal on your character you should definitely stay away from it.

5. Unrelated? Come on, the game is brand new. Metagame is just being born. You can’t be seriously talking about imbalances and stuff if you’re obviously only playing hotjoin and fighting with or against huge zerg groups where the average skill level of participants tends to go against zero.

That all said, give PVP a second chance

When playing tournaments,

I have noticed that the names of the two participating teams (guild/player names) are only shown for a few seconds at the beginning of the game, which makes it quite hard to read and memorize them. Sometimes if you’re shortly distracted it’s almost impossible to keep them in mind. So, simple idea, to make it more obvious who’s actually playing, show them for a longer time and maybe with guild emblem if it’s a guild team.

Have a good day

tinius

edit: and please, dear community managers, don’t move this to the suggestions forums where it drowns amongst the mass of completely unrelated other topics

push – sadly, in the suggestions subforum a thread drowns very fast

I partly agree with the OP. I wouldn’t call the transform skills “punishment”, but activating one of them always means you let your utility and heal skills as well as your traits behind, which basically makes it impossible to embed those kind of elite spells into the rest of their build.

On the other hand – in all fairness – it goes without saying that a pool of only 3 elite skills per profession makes it necessary to design them as “fitting all profiles” in terms of reinforcing the rest of your build. It’s still a miracle to me why they didn’t give the classes more different elites.

Searingarrow.4637:

Kal.2376:

Searingarrow.4637:

Kal.2376:

Searingarrow.4637:

Are you kidding me? This idea is horrible. Perhaps if you wanted to make the game dull and break immersion then sure. But this would make downed state incredibly boring…

Next lets give every profession the same skills when they aren’t downed! Yaaay!

I’m really glad most of you will never be in game design.

Downed state is the same state for all. There are no passives that affect you there, there are no different weapon skills, no different skills slots that you can choose. Everyone is pretty much “equal” when they are downed… Or at least, they should be.

However, we have different skills that make some downed skills better than others. Why is that? I could understand it if we were given a range of skills we could choose to configure our downed state. That way, sure! having different skills and options is fine. But we can’t. It’s a fixed stated with fixed stats that is given to everyone. So it should be an equal state for all (or at least very close) since we cannot modify it ourselves.

And that is a basic rule of game design… It’s called balance. Downed states currently feel unbalanced between them.

Well then balance them… You don’t need to completely remake them to all have essentially the same abilities…

Exactly, and one way to balance them, is to make them equal. Thanks for your support.

I know what you are saying, but it’s not as easy. Again, we have a fixed state where everyone has the same HPs, and only 4 skills. We can’t move, we can’t change weapons, we can’t modify the state. Since that mode is very simplistic, then we need to have very simple skills. Since we cannot “balance” it ourselves by choosing skills, or gear, then it has to be balanced in its “factory default” setting.

This is a temporary mode. We are not meant to be in a downed state for long, so it is fine if it is “boring”, or equal for all. I see no problem with that in such a mechanic.

If you intentionally make a mechanic in the game boring then you have failed in game design…

Well, the fact that you want to get out of downed state as quick as possible doesn’t mean it’s a mechanic that was intentionally designed to be boring. It was added as an additional tactical element, and you can discuss whether it improves or deteriorates general (pvp) gameplay, but you can make it equal for everyone without turning it into a completely boring factor. You’ll usually spend 5 to 30 secs in downed mode and be happy if you have a chance to rally or be rezzed, but not think about the enjoyment of being downed itself. That’s what I think you are not considering.

I guess YOU are kidding me right now. No offense, but in a competitive mode of gameplay you need to set the same preconditions to a certain extent, which, for me, include the same chances on getting back to life. It’s not like you get downed and get all euphoric about your class-related downed skills. You fight for a second chance and just have VERY different chances depending on your profession. I see downed state as a state everybody wants to get out of as fast as possible. So create the same prerequisites and forget about how diverse and fun it is. My two cents

Push – and agree to the above poster, while disagree to Doctor Orderly […]. Downed state means your last fight for life, where your survival or death should be determined by your skill and your team mates’ behavior.
I don’t get how anyone could seriously approve to the “diversity” of downed skills to make up for imbalances in normal gameplay. That basically means you approve that some classes get downed faster, but then have a ridiculously higher chance of getting back in the game, whilst others gamble for their life in main gameplay and then face instant finish. No sense in that.

I’ve suggested this during beta feedback time and I’m still supporting the same idea:
For sPvP, give every profession the same, neutral skills for downed mode. Let’s say Auto-Attack, Evade, some Burst/Condition Skill and Heal.
The downed state will be a lot less frustrating for players and a much more tactical element. All said I think.