Guild Wars 2

It really isnt surprising that Engineers do not have a role anymore, ANet has spent the entire year since HoT nerfing Scrapper piece by piece.

Right now Scrapper offers nothing unique and as you say, is outclassed by everyone else in any specific niche. There is really no reason to play Scrapper or Engineer in any game mode right now, we have no unique buffs to offer, dont have the highest DPS or Healing nor do we have any utility really.

Scrapper and Engineer has been on a downward slide since the June trait overhaul when they gutted us and gave us so many useless traits. Maybe the next XPack will fix it but I dont think it will. Engineer is clearly not a favorite class at ANet so we dont get the love that Guard, War or Ele get to experience. I mean, do you remember when War was supposed to be weak to condi? lol! Now they get to stack resistance so high that condi’s dont even matter to Zerkers. Ele and Guard complained about their elite specs and ANet buffed them into absurdity.

I love my Engineer and only play it but there is no denying we are the worst class at the moment.

DH and War are both totally overtuned right now so its not a fair fight. Wait for ANet to nerf.

DH and War both needs some serious nerfs somewhere. As it stands currently both heavies put out too much damage, are basically immune to condi (remember when War was “Weak to condi”?…lol great design ANet), have absurd uptime on invuln to regular damage AND have multiple gap closers.

ANet has really screwed the pooch with these two classes, everyone else feels pretty good right now. I wish some of the other classes had multiple builds (Engi) but everyone else can at least compete.

Here is a crazy thought, design a weakness into DH or Warriors… I know, thats crazy talk but I think it will make the game better for everyone.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

displacedTitan.6897:

Honestly just don’t play Engi in WvW unless its only for zerging and even then you are not very useful.

There is not a single engi build that can beat the meta roamers and its silly to even keep trying. I would love for someone to come up with a real build that can win but its just not possible right now. Other classes are able to deal more damage while having higher defences in both power and condi as well as reset a fight over and over. Really frustrating until you realize its not you, its the class and current game climate. Lets just hope for a change from ANet… oh wait they hate Engi so I guess its just GG.

Well to be fair, there are moments where its not the build but the skill. My engi (vanilla) has gone vs many HoT builds (including meta) and came out on top (in a 1v1 scenario, only chronos give me grief…and mallyx rev’s) Many tried but the win loss ratio is in my favor. Fares well in a 2v1, the odd 3v1 if I’m bringing my “A” game. This is also in WvW and PvP.

My guess is you either a.) Haven’t seen someone on an engi build who was skillfully capable of handling their own, even in a 1v1, or b.) You know someone who has that tried but failed (so again, skill/l2p issue)

There are some out there. Where a viable engi build that can 1v1 takes a bit of skill, you don’t see them often (or I guess in your case, its not at all)

Either way, they do exist, and maybe one day you will see one that will make a believer out of you

I will try to say this in a civil manner, watching your videos where you skill click and crutch on your druid friend to get through a couple roaming fights or watching you skill click through ranked and still not doing very much doesn’t engender a whole lot of confidence in your skills or opinion. I am glad you like to post here and you are very well spoken and seem like a nice guy.

As other here have attested, Engi just doesn’t have a place in roaming currently and any wins come against unskilled opponents. A well played Condi Mes, Zerker or Druid will just eat you alive and a DD who is decent will reset until they get the upper hand and finish you. Just not worth the effort to roam right now. In the past Engi could hold its own but after a year+ of nerfs and no real buffs to our skills I just dont see it.

Honestly just don’t play Engi in WvW unless its only for zerging and even then you are not very useful.

There is not a single engi build that can beat the meta roamers and its silly to even keep trying. I would love for someone to come up with a real build that can win but its just not possible right now. Other classes are able to deal more damage while having higher defences in both power and condi as well as reset a fight over and over. Really frustrating until you realize its not you, its the class and current game climate. Lets just hope for a change from ANet… oh wait they hate Engi so I guess its just GG.

Tried it and its pretty meh. Engi is just in a terrible spot in WvW and there are no builds that can get you out of it. You lose to every meta build and have no ability to reset fights like they do.

I have given up roaming in WvW and now just zerg or go to sPvP where I can at least play hammer scrapper and have a chance.

Supreme.7352:

Maybe you should live in the real world instead of some fantasy you invented.

Huh, here I thought I was living in the real world where I am an average player and you are subpar. Maybe if you blame your team and your luck harder then reality will change for you… or not.

Locuz.2651:

No no no. That is just a pro league level player who was unlucky.

Oh right, they just got very unlucky in placement and should be higher ranked! That play I saw in two games on different teams was not indicative of their skill at all!

These forums are excellent every season.

For “purity of purpose” I think Rocket Boots shouldn’t move you as far as it does, I mean its clearly a damage skill since they buffed it’s base damage for purity, it should barely move you at all! Someone get ANet on here and explain why rocket boots seems like an escape skill!

Also I think that hammer should have some Condi on it and remove some of the DPS, its clearly lacking in “purity of purpose” as well!

Lol @ ANet, they really have no clue what to do with Engineer. I cant wait to see the next train wreck elite spec they give us. Maybe another set of AI minions will do the trick!

Abelisk.4527:

This is all you need to know.

If you account name is close to your Ele name, I can tell you why your teams are losing → Its your play and your build.

You were on my team and we lost horribly because you went down in seconds, next game you were on opp team and we dropped you in seconds and won.

Thank you for posting that screenshot actually, it confirms that people on the forums complain when it is indeed their fault they are where they are at. There is no way, with the play I saw in two back to back games, you deserve to be at the same MMR I am.

Supreme.7352:

To tier players play with other top tier players. So of course they have a better time.

Meanwhile at bronze level we get crap for players and crap for people disconnecting and rage quitting.

Sounds like expectations crashed into reality hard for some people. Maybe accept that you are bronze tier, learn from mistakes and get better?….. Nah better go cry on forums instead!

I am in gold and understand its around where my current skill level puts me, guess I shouldnt try and get better since its all luck right?

The jokes are great here!

Supreme.7352:

Locuz.2651:

Sure, so u lose those 3 and win the rest? I dont see the problem.

People complain to hide their own incompetence. It happens every season in every game i played. Blaming yourself hurts your ego and thats not what people want.

Apperantly all rating systems in all games suck:

Starcraft: https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/10189289103
Overwatch: https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/17612332120
League: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3575586
Wow: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17605341160
Dota2: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/23vdp4/why_dota_2_solo_ranked_sucks/

All those games you listed, anyoen serious is teaming up with a FULL TEAM or it’s a 1v1 game.

This is a solo or duo queue that’s determined by your placement matches alone.

Do you want links to the twitch streams of pro players in those team games playing solo or will you just admit you are making excuses for yourself? Those pro players play solo and have very high solo ratings in all of those games.

The excuses on this forum for this season are amazing. People discovering they are not nearly as good as they told themselves is just priceless.

Kahrgan.7401:

I cannot carry 4 other people in my team. It requires a team effort to win a game, yet I am personally affected (via rating, and therefore losing rating when they decide to crash into the DH zerg trap pile over and over in a match)

The league rating system is absolute garbage, and cannot be taken seriously, because it means you were lucky or unlucky, and that’s it. You can carry your hardest, cap points, decap, assist in teamfights and turn the tide, but if your team is chasing off points… leaving points uncapped after they killed the person decapping it (this happened a total of 10 times today alone), fighting off points, dying by going in 1v4… The list goes on.

But I do like the new reward system, so I got that going for me.

Rating needs to be changed to take into account personal contribution. Team healing, dmg, decaps, defense, offense, etc.

LOL this is just too funny.

Do you think that DOTA2 and League rating systems are also all luck? They dont take anything but W/L into account.

This is how its done in a team based MMR game.

Gold 155X

I tried p/p condi engi to start the season, remembered why they are garbage after getting blown up over and over and swapped back to hammer scrapper.

Unfortunate that Engineer can only play hammer scrapper, at least its a decent spec.

Warriors seem to be completely OP right now. They were supposed to be weak to condi’s but thats not true with all the resistance they can stack. They are basically immune to regular damage with the insane heals they get and they also get to have a ton of defense while also dealing immense damage and CC. As the season goes on you will see more and more of them since its pretty clear they are the best class.

This new season is great, I ONLY solo q and the games feel really good overall. There have been a couple games where it was clear my team was very new but there have also been a couple games where it was a free roll. This is how MM systems always feel in games that have been doing it right for awhile (DOTA2 and LoL).

Hopefully ANet implements some of the more technical tweaks that a few people have suggested but keeps the overall system intact going forward. They do need to add automated tournaments for the organized guild 5 mans groups to play in.

Seeing the crying in the forums by people who thought they were highly skilled but turns out are not is just amazing, sucks when you find out you got carried by a broken system in the past.

Kuya.6495:

displacedTitan.6897:

Oh I love that they buffed burn guards, in all but a single match today there were 3+ DH of regular or burn variety. GG ANet, way to take a class that you admit is overpowered and over represented and buff them further. Your playtesting group must be outstanding!

-players demand more build variety from anet

-anet gives more build variety

-players complain about the build variety

Spotted the Guardian player!

More build variety is great, making another OP build on the most played and most winning class (according to ANET) is just bad design. Not a difficult concept to grasp I would think.

Give up, Engineers were shafted during the trait overhaul when we had TBD during the presentation.

Shafted again with HoT release when Scrapper was one of the final specs to be pushed to the beta and got a single weekend where we learned about our new AI pets after the total failure of turrets.

THEN they decided to do nothing but nerf Scrapper for the better part of a year while providing only the smallest buff to other Engi abilities. Just give up guys, they really and truly do not care about Engineers. We have 3 wep choices and rifle is so bad that its not used in a single game mode.

Let me reiterate, give up guys, they dont care.

Oh I love that they buffed burn guards, in all but a single match today there were 3+ DH of regular or burn variety. GG ANet, way to take a class that you admit is overpowered and over represented and buff them further. Your playtesting group must be outstanding!

Madman.6912:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Everyone got a rating reset, at least wait until you place.

That’s a great idea, so basically it is up to total luck during your placement games, whether rng will be on your side and not the other team’s to determine your placement.
The problem with soul destroying games is that they are … soul destroying… a few like that in a supposedly improved system will quickly make me not caring and just tag along not even trying… because.. you know, what’s the point? I actually wanted to have some games before the new horizon stream but I just finished the 2nd game and it wasnt any better… already in a bad mood….

Found the guy who has never played a competitive PvP game before.

10 matches to set your rating is literally the STANDARD, I cant think of a real competitive game where it doesnt have you play ten matches at the start to set your initial rating.

I think responses like this basically sum up why devs don’t listen to forums.

With all the complaints in this thread about setting your MMR, it really drives home the point of how casual the pvp crowd in this game is, would love to see the DOTA2 or LoL crowd react to threads like this.

Jourdelune.7456:

Gyro nerfed should had been put on DH trap as wells.

DH Traps compare to Scrapper Gyro or Tempest Shouts.

They are instants and do DAZE with a minor trait (not a grand-master one) when they trigger.

Well you need to remember that Guardians and Elementalists have people in ANet that play those classes so they get the favortism buff. No one who works for ANet plays an Engineer so we get table scraps. I would love to know who the dev in charge of Engi is supposed to be, my guess is they literally do not have one.

This is the reworked version of the skill remember.

Just another clue to the fact that they have no idea what they are doing on Engineer. The rework is worse than the already terrible pre-rework version.

My only conclusion is that they literally do not have a designer at ANet that cares about Engineer and whoever does the balance for us does it as part of another job they have. Look at the last balance patch for all the evidence of that you need.

Rocket Boots physical damage buff, Fire Bomb physical damage buff…. GG ANet.

Lets be honest, no one at ANet plays Engineer. It was obvious the day they revamped the traits and cut it down to three lines while releasing Explosives in the state that its in. This was further revealed when HoT was ramping up to launch and we saw Engi as TBD for a bunch of its new things. Scrapper has gotten nothing but nerfs and it no longer fills the role they claimed it should, where is the control now ANet? You toned down the stun on hammer 5, removed daze on gyro, cut back on damage, heal and support on the other skills over time. What does Scrapper do thats interesting now?

Give up hope, they dont care about the state of Rifle, they dont even care about the state of Engineer as a whole. Look at the classes ANet actually cares about, Ele gets reworks constantly to traits and skills that are underutilized, DH and Druid get to keep their nonsense dazes even though they dont fit “Purity of Purpose” in the slightest for those classes.

GG ANet, your inability to iterate is on full display with Engineer, I cannot wait to see the next elite spec for Engi be just as kittencrapper and nerfed just as hard.

insanemaniac.2456:

displacedTitan.6897:

insanemaniac.2456:

kappre.3897:

Removing daze completely is a poor choice. They could have put it in Final Salvo. And if its addition is too much for that single trait, then switch it with superspeed. Or put it in Expert Examination. At least let us trait for it.

and then it’s a mandatory trait like dh, and we lose more build variety

LOL pretending we have build variety!

without a trait that adds daze to gyros, we have an adept choice between 2, a master choice between 2, and a gm choice between 3 (or at least 2, all the gms are not bad but clearly adaptive armor is now the least used). if you put that trait in any of those slots, it’ll overpower any of the current options and effectively delete the traits it attempts to merely compete with.

it’s not a matter of choosing a spec, which does lack diversity and has since hot. but the traits we choose in scrapper all have different purposes and do make deciding between them interesting.

You are totally right, scrapper does have some interesting choices for traits. Too bad its overshadowed by the fact that the rest of the build is set in stone. Invetions and especially Alchemy are mandatory and there is no discussion of traits within those lines.

Engineer is broken right now, we have so little build variety and many of our traitlines and utilities are garbage. I guess the only thing to do is wait and be disappointed by the next Elite spec. They will surely wait until the 11th hour to create it, not test it, and push another kitten spec on us but oh well, hope is better than what we have now.

Is this supposed to highlight just how OP druids are for roaming in WvW? They are far and away the best and one of the easiest classes to roam well with. You have dps, cc, heals and insane disengage. Roaming in WvW is imbalanced and always will be, you either play the busted builds that carry you or you struggle. Thief, Mes, War and Druid are far and away the best roamers and always have been.

Let me know when you have a video where you roam on a class that isnt both too easy and OP.

Rezzet.3614:

Samug.6512:

Lyger.5429:

You know what’s even more of a joke, the fact that this is what 3 month’s of balancing gives us. These could have easily been done in 1 month’s time, at least that would have given them an excuse.

A lot of those changes look like they were made few hours before actual patch.

aint that how all of engineer’s changes have happened for the past 3 years though ?
remember when they were announcing skill and trait rework engi had everything in the TBD/A? stage until the very last what 2 weeks?

engi’s changes dint even make it to the beta

clearly devs arent even looking or testing engi changes anymore

Yep, since long before HoT Engineer was going downhill. We get tested last and are clearly the lowest on their radar for fixes or reworks. We have so many traits and utilities that are downright useless (turrets, impact savant).
The we have our primary weapons, of which we get one, being next to useless. Seriously MH pistol, Rifle and Shield are embarrassing, rifle has a self-knockdown, name a HoT wep with that kind of drawback.

ANet really needs to find a dev who loves Engi and get them on the skills team to really advocate for engi changes. The ones this patch were done in ten minutes right before release, just like all engi changes.

Dirame.8521:

Manuhell.2759:

Dirame.8521:

Let’s be smart here guys. Ask yourselves;

What is Thunderclap?

What does Thunderclap + Rocket Charge do?

What does Shredder Gyro toolbelt: Spare Capacitor skill do?

I mean seriously, did you forget that there were other skills and other ways that a Scrapper could apply daze?

Yeah, exactly two ways, how amazing. And they removed, like, six.
But everything is fine, eh.

Toss Shield 5, Personal Battering Ram’s Tool belt skill, Supply Crate, AED’s Toolbelt skill, Net Turret.

I believe that’s 5 ways to apply dazes and 4 ways to apply stuns.

Your argument that a bunch of skills no one uses because they are horrible in all game modes makes a MANDATORY trait useful kind of defeats itself.

On any meta build you have… Condi – zero stuns/daze and Hammer Scrapper – one stun. Impact Savant and Expert Examination are hilariously bad at this point.

More evidence that ANet has no clue what they want Engi to actually accomplish. They lost the thread of what Scrapper should do before it was even released.

insanemaniac.2456:

kappre.3897:

Removing daze completely is a poor choice. They could have put it in Final Salvo. And if its addition is too much for that single trait, then switch it with superspeed. Or put it in Expert Examination. At least let us trait for it.

and then it’s a mandatory trait like dh, and we lose more build variety

LOL pretending we have build variety!

Duh guys this is that high concept “purity of purpose” they talked about. Rocket boots are clearly not made for escape, if they were then they wouldn’t break stealth and they would have evade frames. Rocket boots are clearly a DPS skill, I mean look at the toolbelt skill that deals condi damage…..

It’s hard to even pretend honestly. The devs have zero idea what to do with engineer as a class. We are out of meta in every game mode and have some of the narrowest build options and more broken traits and useless utilities than any other class.

GG ANet.

“Purity of purpose” in this context makes the balance team look even more out of touch than they are already.

In the same paragraph outlining the purity of removing the daze they buff the PHYSICAL damage of two skills whose primary roles is CONDITIONS (Fire Bomb) and MOBILITY (Rocket Boots), this isnt even mentioning that the toolbelt on rocket boots is a CONDITION SKILL!

Seriously ANet has absolutely zero clue what to do with Engineers. The last two balance updates have done NOTHING but nerf our meta builds while buffing skills that are STILL and will CONTINUE to go unused because they do not fit with the rest of the class.

GG ANet, GG.

Two “balance” patches that have changed ZERO about Engineer builds. Nothing but nerfs to the meta and “buffs” to skills that are unused and will continue to go unused because there is no build for them.

Turrets and Gadgets are still utter kitten. Rifle is still useless due to all the projectile hate and its old design (self-knockdown, lol). Shield is useless because mainhand pistol deals almost zero damage.

Lol a buff to the physical damage of fire bomb? Purity of purpose I guess. A buff to rocket boots launch physical damage… must be that purity of purpose what with it having a condi toolbelt skill.

It is extremely clear that they dont play engineer in a single game mode these days. WvW and PvE (raids/fracs) already dont use engineers at all because we lack anything special for the group and have to work twice as hard for the same damage as other classes. Now that they nerfed our ability to rezbot in PvP we are officially non-meta in all game modes.

Good job ANet, this is what balance looks like to you?

Pathetic.

I have been running this for a long time roaming. Its very solid and in my opinion much stronger than a hammer build for roaming. Hammer gets kited far too easily for my tastes.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUnUUBtbhlcB2UBEqilJjacEqgIgeur79W8ZKgAA-TVCFQBIRJmSUGQgLAg60BUI1fY3+DXUJIAeAAIUpBpAMXmF-w

Its always incredible the number of times people can explain that there is nothing on the back end for 50/50 and its a product of good matchmaking algos.

The problem with GW2 is laid out exactly in Josh’s post, anyone who doesnt understand it needs to reread it and then think about what having a pip system and mmr system working at the same time does to groupings.

Its not hard to get, it has been talked about to death here. Drop pips and just use pure MMR ala DOTA2, LoL, CSGO, OW. Good games just use MMR and add leagues as a fuzz for exact numbers. Really good games just give you your MMR and end it there.

Ya Overwatch is a good example of both how to do balance iterations quickly but also an example of what Developer favoritism looks like. McCree was broken OP at launch then they nerfed him but since hes Dev favorite they rebuffed him to be broken again.

Cynz.9437:

Ithilwen.1529:

People are finding that they can’t advance as fast or far as last season.

One logical explanation is that they were boosted by the mmr system higher than they should have been. Now, without the advantage of being on a team pre-set to win, they find themselves over matched.

Nah, the only reason is because we are back to artificially forced 50% winrate from season 1 with pip gains from season 3.

In season 1, if i won vs decent team i would get 2-3 pips, if i lost but managed to get the score high enough i might not even lose pip. So if you did your best and you were good player you still had positive progression.

In current system it is always +1-1, regardless of your MMR and how much effort you put into match, combined with forced 50% wl ratio it makes progression extremely slow, especially if you add trolls/dcs etc.

And dear Ithilwen.1529, you got 50% win rate is not because of your skill but because it is enforced by the system. Anyone that plays mainly soloq has around 50% win rate unless they don’t have many games on their account yet.

Why do people think its enforced by the system and not a by product of matching you with nearly equally skilled players.

The previous two seasons were a total joke with one team being designed to win BY THE SYSTEM. This season is like season 1 where the 50% win rate is merely a consequence of matching equally skilled teams.

I see lots of complaints about balance in all PvP games but this might be the only game where players are so needy that they complain about a system that is well designed in giving you a 50/50 record once your MMR settles down. I would love to port some of these arguments to the DOTA2 forums and watch those toxic mfers just eat this forum alive.

Dawdler.8521:

Brutal Augus.5917:

Dawdler.8521:

Brutal Augus.5917:

Its only a matter of time before a group of players that love WvW/RvR come along and crowdfund a game that is BETTER…Oh wait thats right : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot_Unchained

Searched on youtube, yep still at least 1-2 years away like we guessed the same 1-2 years ago, not sure why people keep bringing it up like its right around the corner.

The same reason why I’m not sure people keep pointing out that it’s still in development like it’s never going to come out. See? I can do that too, now wheres my cookie you kitten?

Your cookie failed its kickstarter goal and the money has been spent on a chocolate bar thats already been half eaten. No refunds.

Sorry.

Please fund my new project Cookie 2.0 instead, thats sure to succeed! If you pledge twice as much as for the last cookie I will throw in a half eaten chocolate bar as a preorder bonus (may or may not be available at time of release)!

You are destroying his hopes and dreams. Let him dream about kickstarted games being able to overcome problems that a AAA studio with x10 the budget has trouble overcoming.

I am sure Camelot Unchained will be the greatest game of all time, just as soon as they get around to finishing the Alpha (in 2018).

Supreme.3164:

Chaith.8256:

Enjoying Capricorn, fast queue pops, queuing outside mists, and faster pace killing in casual play. Compared to last patch, the casual game is 200% more fun even without a ranked season.

If you wanna be negative, yeah, MMOs are dying from the minute they’ve launched but the timing on this post is weird

MMO companies that listen to the “plea” of a small minority are destined to die quickly, you may not be aware but currently GW2 has the same PvP population of GW1..after 8 years from its launch, after 3 years from its launch GW1 had 10x the number of active pvpers

-GvG Matches had like 2 million viewers?
-All classes have always been relevant and with multiple builds?

When you actually gonna see these numbers in GW2?…hmm I think NEVER

The small vocal minority will ofc be happy of seeing professions they don’t play out of the competition..no more a serious threat, but hey..yours is a pyrrhic victory.

For how long do you think NCSOFT will be happy to pay for your 3k viewers tournaments?

This is so disconnected from the reality of the past that its laugh out loud funny.

2 million viewers for GvG? Really? So its larger than The International and LoL World Championships, which get play on ESPN and yet no one could tell you what GvG or Guild Wars 1 OR 2 sPvP looks like outside our fandoms. I would also love to see where you are getting these 10x player counts 3 years after GW1 launched.

Three years after that game launched it was limping along like it had always been. Balance was a rotating wheel with each new patch (just like in GW2), population would ebb with releases then go dormant again (just like in GW2).

TL;DR: Guild Wars 1 was an extremely niche game, Guild Wars 2 is an extremely niche game. Nothing has changed.

Exedore.6320:

Myself and my friends used to play GW2 PvP every day at least for a few hours. We did the AG tournaments when we didn’t have schedule conflicts. I would watch the ESL Sunday tournaments most of the time.

Then HoT came and killed it all. The power creep was and still is ridiculous. HoT elites are far too forgiving of mistakes and spam, which allows them to carry most players. Picking the meta build has completely eclipsed skill, and even if everyone is meta, skill is barely noticeable or meaningful.

We mostly skipped season1. Got legendary in season2 after about a month, but quit again due to the terrible state of PvP (matchmaking is awful too). Now we’ve pretty much quit for good.

If ANet nerfs the elite specs to not be brain-dead OP, we’ll consider coming back. I still love the base mechanics of the game, and I’m sure my friends do too. But we have zero faith in ANet ever balancing elite specs.

100% spot on.

I would love to play pvp in this game again, I used to really enjoy it but HoT and the grind based league system have driven me out of it entirely.

The power difference between the meta elite spec build and every other build a class has is night and day. There is literally no reason to take anything off-meta.

Overwatch launched and after a couple rounds it hit me… this is what a competitive game is supposed to feel like. Short queues, balanced matches (80%+) and a dev team who listens to feedback.

I still play GW2 but I wont touch pvp again with until major changes (aka never).

Lexander.4579:

i dont see the connection between pvp being boring and the usual low rank whining about matchmaking and other crap

is the pvp boring? yeah pretty much i cant imagine doing more than 10-20 matches per week although some people are able to grind 100 per week easily while being stuck in sapphire

is the balance bad? i’d say its the most balanced season since HoT, and more balanced than the majority of pre-HoT timeline too, definitely there is more ridiculous bullkitten going on around but at least every class is able to pull it off

is matchmaking bad? nope, other than “git gud” there is really nothing else to say no matter how bitter or salty that phrase makes you

If this is good matchmaking to you, just wait until you play ANY OTHER PVP GAME!

You will be blown away by what is actually good matchmaking in them!

Seriously, this game has by far the worst matchmaking in any game I have played. Even unranked Overwatch has better matchmaking than this. Far far better in fact. Once you start comparing this game to LoL, DOTA2 or CS:GO it looks even worse for GW2. To everyone that thinks the matchmaking here is somehow good or balanced, go give any of those games a try. You will quickly learn why no one plays spvp and why its been badly bleeding players since S1.

Vicky.4563:

If the design is inherently flawed, nothing you tweak about matchmaking will fix the core problem.

Anet needs to unlink rewards from progression up the ladder, and instead reward players for just participating. That way they can then get rid of the safety barriers so matchmaking can self regulate.

Remove the cross X divisions in season achievements, and change it to more things like “Win X matches on Y map”. Or some other achievement that doesn’t require progression.

Change the way PvP tickets are rewarded so they come from completing achievements or they’re earned by winning each game. So IDK, every 2 games won rewards 1 ticket? Completing the achievement rewards more tickets? Something like that.

Bam. Problem solved. PvErs will still need to play ranked to get the backpiece, but they aren’t forced to progress upwards. They still need to win, but most of the rage from “I’m stick in this division!” should be eliminated because they have no need to move beyond the division they’re supposed to be in.

As long as they win consistently, they will get the rewards.

And then people who actually care about leagues being competitive can still get their badges and titles.

Right now, matchmaking will NEVER be perfect because rewards are locked behind progression. That means every PvE player is out there trying to circumvent matchmaking in order to progress in the leagues. They did this by amber shopping, grinding ridiculous amount of games, anything that lets them move upwards beyond where they’re supposed to be. And safety locks makes it worse so matchmaking can never accurately gauge.

Remove the incentive for them to progress and just simply reward for playing the game /winning. Ideally that means players will settle into one range at a 50/50 win rate and will only move upwards if they improve. And accordingly will drop down if they do poorly.

We have a winner!!!!

To bad we still have another season this year to suffer before they can change it for next years pvp leagues. Hopefully they learned this lesson… but I doubt it.

Cynz.9437:

Veneratio.1980:

12sec queue in Overwatch

Fun fact, OW uses same old 50/50 algo that forces 50% win rate on you by stacking teams like in gw2.

You mean like all games with MMR try to accomplish? The GOAL of MMR is to increase the difficulty on you as you win until you lose and then find the sweet spot where you go 50/50.

It would be great if this game just used that “same old algo”, at least we would get good games after awhile, instead they have skewed it so you can grind up your pips/divisions to get the wings which completely invalidates any kind of MMR equilibrium.

This season combines the worst aspects of S1 and S2. Who would want to play in it?

Until MMR matchmaking is decoupled from the grind based pip/league system this games pvp will continue to suffer from horrible blowouts and unfun matches.

DeWolfe.2174:

insanemaniac.2456:

just say no to this thread.

2-1 abl-dbl is the best possible outcome. anet will consider working on a 3rd map, we can have both maps to play on at all times instead of long periods of time with only a single map type, and the different maps have different advantages which can help shore up the smallest server against the larger servers’ population advantage.

How is having dissimilar maps a “good” thing for balance? All it’ll do is drive players to the Alpine maps and EB. Thus giving free PPT to the Red World.

Knob.6835:

I don’t understand how “you people” can’t compromise. Everything has to be your way. There are other people who play this game and do not share your opinion.

Because the “compromise” appears to be catering to an extremely small percentage of the population. There should have been voting to bring it back at all first. Then vote on the number of instances of maps. Not just sticking us with it, again.

ABL is driving me to only play on EBG, can I come in here and make threads about how boring ABL is for me and people I play with?

I think the votes are going to show the same thing they do now, that players actually like the DBL and the loss of population had much more to do with the months of neglect pre HoT (that you seem to forget was killing WvW populations) than the introduction of DBL.

It will certainly be interesting to read people try to claim the majority is on their side once the votes go the other way.

Sardath.8524:

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.

Wow I had literally this same experience. I started playing Overwatch and then came back to play some sPvP and really noticed a lot of the flaws here.

The most prominent flaw is that fights take forever and are nothing but attrition. Everyone is incredibly tanky because conquest is the only game mode and most of the defense in this game are on passive threshold procs. This makes every fight turn into a boring slug fest where you dont care what connects just as long as you hit them more than they hit you. Literally everything in this game is now spam spam spam and its all AOE damage.

In Overwatch you can see the same problem with a “conquest” type mode on the King of the Hill maps. The best team comp in OW is 2 AOE healers, 2 of the Monkeys with AOE shield and 2 McCree aka busted DPS. Sounds a lot like tempest, engineer and rev to me.

Where are the different game types in GW2? Why is there no payload or push maps? So much potential and all we got was a moba clone in a seperate queue which destroys the entire purpose of multiple modes… making people picked balanced specs for whatever gets randomized each match.

I will come back after this years seasons are over and we get some more patches but I dont expect this game to ever get better in sPvP. It needs too much work to be good.

gennyt.3428:

• 3 copies of DBL means I’m quitting GW2 for the duration at the very least, I’m not doing the whole EBG Groundhog’s Day thing again
• 1-2 copies of ABL means nastier queues unless Anet does some upgrading
• Not paying for yet another transfer into murky waters especially since the few friends left are barely hanging on to this game

I feel the opposite, I hate ABL, it bores me to tears. Currently I am stuck playing EBG which is pretty stale at this point as well but not as bad as ABL.

Having non rotating borderlands of each type depending on placement would be the most fun option I think.

Sardath.8524:

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.

Yep, biggest problem with pvp in this game isnt the game. Its the playerbase.

Substance E.4852:

warbignime.4610:

Kasteros.9847:

Fade to Black.7042:

Yesterday the numbers of viewers was about 1900 when i joined.

I think one of the problems of low viewers is ppl are focusing in ingame pvp rather than watching it. I’ve joined twitch after my daily dosis of pvp.

Nope, the problem is that people don’t care about e-sport of this game and it is just waste of anet’s money. Look at WoW… Ppl play PvP there, but don’t need any esports or tournaments to do that

What’s funny is wow is starting to do esport too, and pvp in that game sucks balls. But they will still get high views because its wow.

No they watch it probably because it’s actually fun to watch.

Even people who like GW2 don’t watch GW2 pvp and it’s not because they’re too busy with playing it. They just don’t want to watch a chaotic mess of passive effects and faceroll AoE spam.

Trying to watch GW2 pvp is like trying to watch an animated Jackson Pollock painting only that would actually be interesting to look at.

OR its because sPvP is a niche game mode in an already niche genre of game? I love people who think its anything more than that causing low viewership. The market for viewers of sPvP is so tiny.

The games that get a ton of views on twitch are almost all free to play with a single game mode. Most of them are also super slow ala LoL and DOTA or simple play patterns only ala Overwatch and CSGO. Complex games get much fewer viewers, its really that simple. WoW is something of a hold over from previous generations and has Blizzard’s massive fanbase to draw from and it still doesn’t get a 10th of the viewers of the previously mentioned games.

On a totally separate note, why do you guys need twitch views to validate what you are doing with your free time?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Good, bad, skilled, not skilled, these things have pretty much nothing to do with your progression in leagues.

You are placed based on your MMR. if you happen to have a high MMR from previous seasons then you are almost guaranteed to have a very high win rate since you are always placed on the winning team. If you have a mid ranged MMR then you get the 50/50 matchups people are talking about since sometimes your MMR is bigger than the other people and sometimes not. If you have a low MMR, say if you just started playing last season, were able to get to diamond and started in a high league with a low MMR then your win rate this season is almost certain to be terrible since you are always placed on the losing team.

You keep telling yourself that, maybe one day it will be true.

I like trying new builds so I decided to give this one a whirl.

Its OK but suffers in the way that Sorel posted and I tried all the things he did as well. I even swapped runes to Traveler at one point because not having mobility sucks. This build suffers because you are making an asymmetrical trade off due to both the amulets and the unbalanced nature of Engineer traitlines.

Compared to meta this build probably deals the same damage (if you proc IP every 10 seconds and hit with Rocket Boots) but it loses so much sustain from not having inventions.

Just more evidence that Scrappers are totally pigeonholed right now into taking Inv/Alch/Scrapper to be viable in PvP. Explosives and Firearms need massive buffs OR Rifle/Pistol/Bomb Kit need massive buffs.

fishball.7204:

I’m 8 pipz from diamond with 61/123 wins which is just under 50%. It’s totally doable lol, just need effort.

Pretty sure someone did the math only need 43% win rate can go up still.

Shhhh you are ruining their “logic” with your facts. (I guess some people dont understand what the win streak and loss streak bonuses do.)

Interesting how the same 5 or 10 people just chime in to every complaint thread each season. Why do you guys continue playing this game?