Guild Wars 2

Good form of practice… but not good to be a competitive mode.

Funny map, but far away from being a competitive one.

1 Fix only: Remove it for the gods sake. Casuals should have a better choice instead of this zerg-fest where ppl don’t learn anything.

Still no tutorial in basic-mechanics for beginners, still no option to play against bots, no Guides or Build-Suggestions. This leaves people without a clue. And when they try to make the next step by joining soloQ or TeamQ, they literally get crushed or flamed by more experienced players.
This system just poorly thought out in my opinion.

The philosophy of A-Net to try make PvP available for everyone (casuals) is the reason why PvP wasn’t such a success as GW1. By making classes even easier to play (warrior, thief, necro) they completely destroy PvP by taking it’s competition away. Without competition PvP doesn’t make sense. Why ppl should invest time into PvP when every idiot can reach a high level of effectiveness in 1 day? Cosmetics won’t solve this problem of cheese, only class-overhauls can.

Some information for the uninformed:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820.htm

Eurantien.4632:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

JinDaVikk.7291:

cymerdown.4103:

It’s bad in team arena, can be effective in solo, though. For team, just run a “decap” thief instead. 4 stab war counters the build, just test it. Jin just go duel Wakkey, you won’t full cap before death and you need to full cap for it to be worth running the build otherwise you are a negative point investment.

Keep in mind, nothing is really new about this build. It’s been around and known for over a year, and no top team has ever run it. There are good reasons for that.

Lets get some things straight Ken:
1 plastic Fantastic ran decap engi and they were a pretty good EU team (better than 90 percent of NA team and I say that to prevent the no “top” team comment. Na is far from TOP anything).
2: NO warrior will kill me 1v1.
3: Unless you rotate someone within 15-20 seconds I will still decap.
4: I can just 1v2 for ages (see next reason)(and I can just run around. Niflhel is hilarious)
5: 4 stab warrior gives up alot of damage or utility (the stab trait loses either cleansing ire or hammer damage)
6:Knockbacks aren’t the decap the Immob Is. You only have 1 condi immune. And removing the condi is same time as a “tick” for decap.
7: The stab trait doesn’t stun break ( or hasn’t since I’ve played warrior correct me if I’m wrong) So your still required to stun break (waste of a cd)
8: I’ll still decap you we tested this against Olrun using that exact idea… took 12 seconds to decap. Full cap in 40~.

Now to the “thief” thing. They are technically my counter. Some thieves (most of NA thiefs) I have severely out-played. Some have destroyed me. if I want to win using decap won’t play it against a thief.
1:Running decap thief isnt a guarunteed thing. If you have seen Cheese Mode, Sizer generally beats the other thief to his home point. Then its a 1v1. Which is fine.
2:I DO NOT want decap engi to be viable. I started playing it on NA to kitten every person in NA off. I feel like I’ve done a good job considering how many people rage quit, yell at me, and have disbanded their teams (thats just sad…)

Nerf AR and decap engi goes bye bye. Every condi build would be able to kill it with ease. I would like it to be changed to condi removal and NOT at low hp. Just low amounts of condi removal. Maybe 1 per toolbelt skill? Maybe 2?

And while they are at it fix the other immunities. Diamon skin( remove it) berzerker stance (just nerf it)

Elephantitas.

competitive and experienced engineer talks facts . . . especially immunities are a problem and create such kittened builds.

.

Regarding:
2. ROM from cheesemode would kill you. 1. Because he’s good, 2. Because the reflect projectile bug makes you rather useless.
3: You can die 1 v 1 regardless of how “OP”. “http://www.twitch.tv/livevvvgaming/b/499946230” start watching at 3:11:00.
4. Rotate a thief back.
7. The stab trait gives stab upon CC instantly stunbreaking.

The build is annoying, I do not think it is impossible to deal with. I also think that the build is relatively new to the scene and we have yet to see what it will do to the meta. That being said it fits right into the current meta in terms of being not enjoyable along with spirit rangers and warriors.

2.) Sure a axe/sword – bow Warrior will kill this type of engineer. But the fact you either give up utlities for stability (and the chance of a decap is still existing) makes the warrior not that powerfull compared to a hambow.

3.) Please, don’t refer an NA-Tournament as an argument to proove facts. That doesn’t work. A good engineer can hold extremly long in a 1v1. Also we don’t talk about top-teams only, but also lower-tiered teams, where such engineers have the biggest impact, because unexperienced teams don’t know how to handle/neutralize such builds.

4.) If you send a thief back you are outnumbered on mid. The only reason why teams can survive such situations is the reason of too much sustain (especially setups with warriors and rangers). In the burst-meta, no team was able to make such a rotation (Balance in gw2 these days is completely kittened up anyway).

7.) Again! The problem with decap-engis is that if you ever get knocked out of the point, they will immobilize instantly. Stunbreak doesn’t help on immobilize.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Well, lack of rewards isn’t an issue when the pvp is actually quality.
Moreover, you’re looking at the pvp from a casual point of view, in which the points listed so far aplpy to a far lesser extent, because a casual player doesn’t contribute a lot to driving competition.

Depends how you’d define a reward. For me reward can be titles, emotes or trims. But about quality I have to agree though.
Still if you’d look at GW1 and guess if ppl would still play it if there was not something like Champion-titles, trims, observe-mode of top100, HoH-Winning-team pop-up in chat and other things. For me those things are all rewards, no material rewards but more of prestige-rewards.

PvP is enjoyable for all ppl that don’t play it full-time. Means it’s enjoying to play pvp besides WvW / PvE. So my personal tipp for you is: don’t overplay it. And make some days off from PvP. Otherwise you will hate it sooner as you wish

Lescansy.6174:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

There are two teams that can deal with it in EU. The reason is, there are not other teams on the same level as those. Just because 2 Teams don’t play a specc in a competiton-dead game, doesn’t mean the specc is easy to handle.

No, there are 3 (ore more) Teams.

Again, there are two teams nowadays (ELE, CM).
I think I played competitive long enough to tell that. And fake is our core-warrior and we think it’s a waste to let him run that bug-abuse-build. Just because HamBow is so much stronger in general, especially in teamfights and 2v2’s.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

… but the tankier dps specs have seen substantial improvements.

… on swap sigils coming in alone. This might over scale certain specs into godliness while bringing other classes up to par at the same time.

…Every single class has such drastic improvements to sustain through this

… at the same time it allows full tank builds to bring out more damage while supporting their group.

… warrior 5 second weapon swaps, they can utilize 4 different on swap sigils as compared to what most classes can do with 2.

Just some quotes of you.
To be honest, I’m completely horriefied of the upcoming patch. Wasn’t the warrior not a lesson for you, that sustain and damage or general speaking, power-creep, will ruin the balance and the PvP with it? God have mercy with this development.

WaffylesYay.9735:

Virgil Kemp.7056:

WaffylesYay,

Is it because you enjoy mindlessly zerging around in hot-join? Some players do enjoy being rewarded for play which does not result in wins for their teams. And ArenaNet presumably encourages this, considering their point system remains unchanged to any degree.

It’s not very many, though, judging from the number of people participating in sPvP.

Personally, I’m bored as [kitten] of it. Tournaments can be fun, but who wants to play competitively all the time? There is no casual play in this game. It’s competitive or complete garbage. And when talking competitively, there are some balance and mechanics issues that could use some attention.

But if you enjoy rolling around randomly in hot join without regard for winning a match, sure. There’s certainly some of you guys having fun with that. But there’s a lot of people who don’t enjoy that.

Hot-join is the casual aspect of sPvP right now. Some parts of WvW can be casual pvp as well (on some servers).

I am a generally competitive player and I spend a good amount of time in free tournies and some paids. I almost always go in with a premade team of like-minded folks who play to win. That is the competitive nature of sPvP. I enjoy super-competitive tournies and the more casual hot-join at this time.

Honestly, the balance in this game is pretty good imho. Sure tweaks etc are needed but the core gameplay is there and functional. I am not in the super elite in sPvP and I am reminded frequently about how much I do not know about different class combos as I frequently get my kitten handed to me.

So, I think many cries about “bad balance” can be taken with a grain of salt. sPvP does not have an “easymode”. Progression and success is very difficult and you need to work for it.

(yes I know there are some balance tweaks need to be made but I don’t think any class is broken etc.)

Thanks for the balance-statement! (no sarcasm here)

I think some ppl who answered to this topic don’t know what timed stuns and immobilizes are.

Demonts.4593:

the thing about thief is that most thieves don’t run perma stealth because stealth doesnt help team at all. so if a thief is playing burst, he doesnt even have much stealth. as for s/d thiefs, i understand ur frustration but they are really not that great in 1v1 and dont have any serious AOE damage or condition damage. so its not as strong as you think. If you watch jumper play its misleading because he is so good. if thiefs want survivability they give up A LOT.

S/D is the best known specc for 1v1’s, due to constant damage while evading. D/P thieves have one opener and after that they have to retreat, if target is not down. It’s much more riskier. Also it is plain simple to get out of a combat as a S/D thief.

That’s why focusing a S/D thief in a teamfight is one of the worst things you can do.

Skyhammer is really fun and innovative. But when it comes to competitive play the map has too much of a RNG / Jump n’ Run behaviour. Therefore it should stay in Hotjoin and is not ideal for TPvP.

However, A-Net can make 50 more maps, but that doesn’t make PvP any more interesting than it is nowadays.

This thread is way too important for unconstructiveness and posts about PvE and WvW.
Keep it elsewhere, thanks!

Kouryuu.4213:

One thing to also remember is that sure another profession can do higher damage in shorter time but once the burst is done it can be very risky to stick around. Necro is quite bulky especially with this latest patch and their damage never stops unlike burst classes which drops drastically and becomes more risky (soon as you burst people can switch to you and melt you rather instantly).

You can argue that burst classes can kill quicker and have tools to evade/invun damage but necro’s damage never stops and its so high with less risk as its 900 range as opposed to melee.

+1
The problem overall why the necro can keep his dmg high is the amount of conditions and a not existing stat that reduces this condition-dmg. Vitality is a bad excuse for such a lack.

Finally a good suggestion that makes sense. Mabye we will see this in a future patch.

ExaFlare.1390:

It even makes us dodge when we respawn if we tried to dodge before dying.

That’s actually the most funny thing. Try to be as fast as possible to get back on the point, but hell no, this dodge roll is really important.

Pyriall.5027:

Adapting isn’t an issue, recognizing how poorly designed this map was obviously is.. People spouting, “players don’t want to adapt” use this as their war cry as a means to dismiss people who have a different opinion than theirs. Do you think it is hard to adapt to that map? It isn’t…and after you adapt you STILL realize it is terrible design choice.

Framed in golden letters!

Lescansy.6174:

JinDaVikk.7291:

1: I will never die 1v1 to a warrior.

You mean, you will never die 1v1 vs a NA warrior? It can be … true.
The top Teams of EU didn’t play with decap engineer. Why? They can counter it!

There are two teams that can deal with it in EU. The reason is, there are not other teams on the same level as those. Just because 2 Teams don’t play a specc in a competiton-dead game, doesn’t mean the specc is easy to handle.

Just make berserker-stance reducing 100% condition-duration regarding the opponents “condition duration stat”. If he has more than 100% through traits or runes/sigils, than he applies his condition duration minus these 100% of the stance.

With this way, classes that actually run condition specs are applying at least some sort of damage, while builds that rely more on direct damage can’t apply conditions (or not as effective)

When you compare all the complaints on this forum you should see everything disappearing: Guard-bunker, ele, mesmer etc.
Mabye we should all run warriors? The game must be super interesting at this point.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

There will always remain certain builds, which require less skill. Look at the state-of-the-ranger . . . this class screams for skillless play.

However I agree on OP.
But even after toning down these things, you will find yourself in the same game, in which Ranged-AoE DPS is dominating. Doesn’t really matter if it comes from a mesmers GS, from marks or elementalist.
In general this game will never reach a state where the skill of a player regarding class-play is more important than his rotation and roaming. It’s just a bonus that comes along.

It will never EVER change. They have to nerf aoe. That is it. No auto attack should have aoe (like nades) and no weapon set should have all aoe (staff necro or ele). They need to make fundamental changes to the game. They wont though, recently they have buffed ranged aoe. Look at mesmer GS for example. It would be so awesome if weapons like rifle for warrior were viable. But right now if you cant bring aoe then what is the point?

We can all squabble about balance. But for the me, the core issue is bigger than that. It is a lack of balance between AOE spam and single target damage.

Yep, a significant problem since release. The funny thing about it as you said, A-Net stated they will toning down AoE and in the same breath they buffing AoE. That’s logic.
Also conquest favors AoE even more. I doubt they will start to fix this. I rather see in the future better ranged-AoE skills for classes like the thief or the guardian.

It’s unstoppable, this meta.

They told this allrdy in 2 SOTG’s when ppl asked them.
But the pace you are working with is just frustrating.

Highly amitious ppl/guilds left the game due to lack of achievements/rewards.

First month it was okay, playing tournaments and hotjoin because fast rank up and new gear to get. Besides that you had champion-ranks (150 wins). But after this month, you could achieve basically nothing. You had every gear, you had your c-title and the rank wasn’t a goal as in GW1 because you get your rank faster in non-skilled zerg fests aka hotjoin.
Then paid tournaments came. You stored lots of tickets and it was highly competitive. First time you could get gems in pvp and new gear again. After some weeks the most teams lost all the tickets because the entry fee was too high to compensate with the rewards (you had to be 1st or 2nd place to compensate). Ergo: ppl had to move to free tournaments to ticket-farm. Competitive play was a privilege to high-end teams.
After 6 months we get the 1v1 paid tournaments. Good entrry fee, good rewards. Competition was increased again. Sadly there was only one map to play and this for a week. Ergo: it gets boring over-time.
After 7 month: Taking out tickets and QP’s, making a solo-q mixed with premades. Competitive play drops to zero. Rewards compared to hotjoin are still horrible.

Proven.2854:

I guess I just find it distasteful to have any class be so hard to kill while also putting out so much support. It feels unbalancing for the game mode and is part of the reason why the meta has shifted to what it is now (more classes running tankier builds so they can approach the point holding ability Guardians have, and more classes running conditions to help deal with both Guardians and other tanky builds).

The reason why setups are more tankier than back in the days is not caused by Guardian or anything that has to do with the class. The reason is constant buffing (damage and sustain) by A-Net, which leads to the fact that a warrior can be nearly as tanky as a bunker, while putting out tons of damage.

Short: Power-creep is the reason, not Guardian . . .

Everyone that doesn’t like to troll and play for real hates the map. A-Net is too pride anyway to admit faults, so this map will stay in soloQ.

I still see topteams playing thief really effective. So I’m not sure what’s the matter. They are nearly the same as before the patch.

Eccentric Duck.7510:

You guys are so dramatic, if you are not enjoying the game in it’s current state then simply do something else, and come back when changes are made and you think you could enjoy the game again. Complaining is not going to make Arena Net work faster.

It’s more of a “We stil care about the game and want it to succeed”. If there’s no complaining A-Net would have no information what ppl think about the game. And as I can see A-Net read lots of posts and had adjusted changes and priorities on their list. From my point of view it’s not always constructive, but it’s still useful for the devs.

Log into the game and see for yourself. Personally, I can’t recommend to play this game on a competitive level, as the reward and the incentives for that are not existing. If not competitive then there is the broken-yoloQ, which gives you frustration and headache. What’s left? Hotjoin and its glory, no comment on that though.
For my part, I switched to PvE to have fun, because it is actually rewarding. At least I can buy gems with it. I’d wait some more months till they actually fixed the major issues and treat PvP with some priority.

Retribution.3058:

Here’s my 2 cents as a 99% pvper nowadays…

This map is crap. The laser idea is great, I love it, but the fact that you can die from a simple crowd control is absolute garbage. I’ll be 1v1ing or 2v1ing people, almost get them downed, ‘or downed for that matter,’ and all of the sudden BAM knockback or feared into a hole or off the edge. HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE PVP!? Necros with that 5 second fear?… instant death if my clear conditions are on cool-down. Now I know that everybody’s gonna say, “well that’s how this map works, deal with it.” but it’s not like pvp at all! It’s like a mini-game at best! I like to pvp every day… With this new map I’m not going to be able to pvp for 2 full days with this map in the rotation because I hate it that much. My build means nothing when a rank 1 can spam knockbacks on me. Okay, it’s a fun/interesting map, BUT REMOVE THE THING FROM TOURNY ROTATIONS. It doesn’t effect how good any player is or how good their build is. Sure, put it in the free-play availability, but this is JUNK in tournaments. It’s not true pvp.

this thread is such a facepalm . . .

Actually we don’t need more PvE Population farming PvP, but rather attract real PvP-Players… you know, the whole crowd, who left the game. Anyway, we all know that PvP in GW2 was just a side-project and the development now tries desperately to make it something big.

The lack of proper balance-knowlege on the side of A-Net and the flawed infrastrucutre will slowing down the process of reaching an acceptable level of PvP. Still hope the game will get on a good level though . . .

I think a player that for example has to work during night or have shifting working hours, has neraly no chance to get a team. Nevertheless he should be able to play in a fair match and has also a chance to proove his skill. Also players that prefer to play alone or haven’t that much time to play in a team shouldn’t be disadvantaged either. With no splitted Q, they don’t have any chance to proove their skill. Everytime they work their way up in the ladder, sooner or later they’ll face a premade.

In my eyes they should have a chance to play competitive in a certain degree without a team. How do you think about that?

Vorch.2985:

3) Rewards area not good enough This one, I don’t understand. Do players want more PvE rewards (gold, karma, etc.)? Do they want easier ranks? I personally think that lockers should just have stackable armor, but other than that, the rewards seem pretty great. You can even make bags using glory for alts. What I WILL agree with is the fact that hot-join will rank you up faster than tourney play. I think a compromise would be the ability to rank up to r30 in hot-join and only able to gain ranks from tourney from then on. You would still be able to gain glory in hot-join, but it should not improve your rank.

There are two sort of rewards. Material ones and immaterial ones. The first is more or less for PvE, the second for PvP. PvP-Players tend to feel more rewarded for immaterial goods. The most excentric reward in my opinion is “Prestige”. Players want to be known, they want to be recognized for their achievements.
This can be easily done by titles/ranks/leaderboards/emotes etc.. The problem here is, if these immaterial goods are accessable for everyone (in GW2’s case rank / champion title through soloq) the worth of these prestige-indicators drop to nearly zero value (that’s what we have right now in this game). So the incentive to be good in PvP gets lost in this aspect. This results in a decrease of competition, which is the most important aspect of every healthy PvP-Environment.

To summarize the failed incentives in PvP:
- broken leaderboards
- rank grinding, accessable for everyone through hotjoin
- slower rank-up-progression in competitive mode (tournaments)
- Qualifying Points introduction failed
- no skill-ceiling as meta-builds tend to be “cheesy” (easy playable by everyone)
and many more . . .

However, material goods are also important in PvP. In GW2 we have glory as our material currency. Sadly the value of this currency is not existing. There is nothing you could spend your glory for, except some cosmethics.
During the 3-round-paid-tournaments ppl could earn gems for winning. This has driven many players into competitive PvP, as rewards were there. A-Net however decided to take these rewards away (they would have decreases in income, by a inflation of gems).

That’s why ppl often ask for better rewards (more or less)

Calling WvW the real PvP… I appreciate your troll there

milo.6942:

This entire thread is wrong. No one will give a kitten to hear this, but you can’t monetize a bad product. There are lots of conflicting ideologies present in these forums for how to “monetize” pvp, and it’s also pretty clear that anet don’t know what to do either. Here, I will help you guys out:

Firstly, op, selling access to streams is asinine and counterproductive. Streams are the lifeblood of pvp advertizing. Sponsors pay to have more people see them.

Secondly, and most importantly, is the confusion anet has within itself. It wants to be esports, but it also wants to lure pve casuals in and keep them with handouts and an easy to master, low skill ceiling gameplay. You can’t have both. Here is why:

PvP is about competition and public domination of your opponents. It is not, and has never been, about rewards and what you “get” from winning. It is about overcoming great challenges, and recognition of worth from others.

• If the game does not present a significant challenge
• or attempts to cater to casual players too much
• or makes it difficult to immediately realize above-average player skill during a game

the perception of your worth by winning doesn’t rise.

This causes the core pvp player base to not take this game seriously and leave. And so, with them go your hopes of esport, and any meaningful pvp exposure/popularity and monetization. Anet is attempting to monetize pvp casual players. You can’t monetize an audience that isn’t committed.

To summarize: You must focus on your core audience or fail.

On point! GJ

If you’re new to bunker then I’d suggest to try first the more defensive and easier weapons to play. These are mace,focus,shield,sword. Combine Mace/Focus and Sword/shield. After you settled with guardian and how to survive long enough you can try on hammer or staff.

For solo play akka Hotjoin you should roll DPS guard with meditations as it is funnier and more mobile.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I play warrior. I don’t have a single stun, nor do I have heavy sustain. I use banners and conditions. So explain to me again why if I use healing signet I should have it reduced because of these so called stuns and sustains that I have neither of?

I think the OP’s point is the passive play, which comes with the healing signet. You get heal while you don’t have to do anything for it. Overall the healing signet pretty much counters whole classes (especially elementalists), just by taking it. In every competitive game, that should be never the case. Atleast not unintended.

I see what you did here

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I’m sure Anet will add some classes in the future, they did the same thing twice in GW1.
But it will take a long time, first the current classes need to be balanced.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

As you only PvE i guess you won’t understand that, but classes in PvP are freaked up balance wise.

Easily fixed, seperate pvp and pve skills/traits. They did the same thing in GW1 and it worked perfectly. They will have to implement that in GW2 because if they don’t, there will never be balance.

Would solve the problem. In the last SOTG A-Net devs said they won’t seperate skillz between PvE and PvP. So you have the solution, but A-Net refuse to implement it.
I’m sorry for the whole playerbase.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Evan Lesh.3295:

We have more changes coming to further hinder this type of behavior.

Simple solution…

Start over. Rank progression was implemented so badly and left for so long that you need to create a new system that rewards tourney wins and ignores custom/hot join. Tie the rewards to the new Rank system that actually rewards playing the game correctly instead of gaming the system.

That wouldn’t support their concept of casual-gain. Never gonna happen :/

What’s the hate? We have fused-gauntlets and awesome backpacks!

Prestige-Titles and listing top-teams in observer-mode are the way to reward competitive players. Shiny toys aren’t the way.

Amelor.9845:

Why exactlly is it not acceptable for a company to try and earn money from her product? Of course they will try to make money, and of course it should be totally acceptable by everyone. No one creates a game so that you can play free!!

The problem with pvp is that it needs much more stuff , so that it gives motivation to all of us to play. Custum arenas is something nice, i just disagree with the top 50 players been able to create an arena at he beggining. Arenas should go to Guilds, so that Guild members can train and learn to play better.
My Guild would have like 20 more players playing tournaments if we had an arena to help them learn how to play.

Sadly “Guilds” are not in the focus of A-Net or not considered. We have individually seperated leaderboards, individual mmr, a not seperated soloQ, no guild-halls etc.
Also the philosophy of A-Net is to be casual-friendly, but even casuals don’t feel satisfied. SoloQueing is not funny if being stomped by premades etc. . And there is no incentive to create a guild, because a guild has no sense beside having a list of friends in a seperate window.

The example of your guild shows i could be right. The target to be casual-friendly has been missed and the hard-introduce and learning-curve makes it not easier to start with.

Qaelyn.7612:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

As an example, GW1 was balanced around top-tier (development worked together with [rawr]) and it was a lot more successfull than its follower.
Top-tier players can achieve a level of experience, which a casual will never have. A top-tier player is able to push a class/the game to a maximum and can show the full potential of it.

I don’t really care about GW1. Never played it, and it’s history. I also dispute your claim that it was “a lot more successful”.

Why should gameplay be oriented around the top 0.1% in this game?

Balance NOT gameplay. Two totally different words. Dispute my claim is your right, however not really reliable, as you never played GW1.

The fact that A-Net needed 4 MONTHS to create this map is just… wow, I can’t find words for this. Other developers create 10 maps in 4 months. wtf is wrong here?