Guild Wars 2

Manuhell.2759:

Engineers are good only in PvP and only for a simple reason: they are the control-oriented class of the game. And PvP as now needs only that, you don’t even need to kill the enemies to win.
That will change with the introduction of deathmatch PvP, anyway.

And don’t let me started on the best-case and kit-oriented balancing – practices that are completely incoherent compared to how the other classes are balanced.

The best builds have little to no control. Your move?

It’s so.. beautiful

Pretty sure that next Tuesday, the Titles will be scaled to the same rate as ranks.

Meaning: Everyone that’s in the mid 50’s will become a Dragon, and a Legendary Champion title. (Score 14,973,500 points in sPvP)

(Ransacker -> Marauder -> Ravager -> Reaper -> Mist Walker -> Legendary Champion.)

So this means that we’ll all be catapulted right to the last title, in addition to Dragon.

EDIT: Please check my facts, I recall the Lesh Prince mentioning that the titles ‘would scale’ the same way, which is open to interpretation.

Singer.8740:

you should’nt take him seriously mait he be postin a troll thread making fun of all the whiners who cry about engineer’s decapping points when in reality all engineer builds have the ability to do so. Just sit back and enjoy the sarcasm like the rest of us XD

I’m not sure about that, man. Lol!

The ability to decap a point once every 180s, using crate, and Toss Elixir S.

It’s extremely situational when this strategy should be ever used.. let alone to call that a feature focus of the build. Let me re-word that, you should probably NEVER use Toss Elixir S and Supply crate as an opener in a 1v1, unless you’re extremely un-intimidated by what’s on that point. It’s a real waste of defensive utilities.

The build’s all well and cool, I see there’s a difference in that you chose energy sigil over battle.. lol.

Five Gauge’s Toolkit Condi-Nade build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqiYnvSyF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF6nl95xbxWQIA-TsAAzCuI0SplTLjWStsaNE5swcBA

Oeggs Toolkit Condi-Nade build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqalIqicHxSfF1LJyoCdGoC5lIF5nl95xbxWQIA-ToAAzCpI0SplTLjWStsaNWYKC

Covis.6037:

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win.

Are you suggesting that in other game modes there are more than 1-2 skill needed to win?

Think about what you are saying .. How is that PvP specific? More hyperbole garbage, parroted by people who seem to think PvP is easy, but almost always have very little mastery of ‘1-2 skills’ themselves.

A:

No, and it never will.

BlackBeard.2873:

For reference, many “top engineers” run something like this (with some changes depending on the person): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqelUUpErlcx+KseRiMqQnBqAgJSR+ZZfe8WsFEC-ToAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNN8YuA

In PvP, Engineers are not able to fight on-point even close to the extent that carrion Rangers or Soldiers/Berserker Warriors can! If your argument is about Engineers being too tanky, it’s going to fall on pretty deaf ears. Especially since Engineers have no viable way to counter more than 6-8 conditions per minute.

Regarding relatively unavoidable procs from Incendiary Powder,

Every profession in the game has instant and potent abilities that are impossible to reactively avoid.

• Ranger & Pet auto-attacking with Sun Spirit buff: 6s of burning, base, every 10s (soon to be nerfed).

• Doom: Instant 3s Fear, does 3k+ damage, on a 17s cooldown when traited.

• Berserker Fresh air Eles – More instant damage than you can shake a stick at, that’s completely off the global cooldown, and decently long ranged.

To be honest.. to a certain degree, there needs to be a small amount of guaranteed outgoing pressure in order for PvP combat to work – fights against dodge/invuln/teleport happy professions have to end somehow.

Rickster.8752:

If PvP was about combat then you would get more than 5 points for a player kill.

Proper rotation and defending points is a huge component of PvP..

Just like laying siege to doors/walls is a huge component of WvW.

In neither case do those components make the game mode only about doing those things. Sure, you can scream to your heart’s content that PvP is nothing but Player vs. Point, but you’re only making yourself look foolish.

Regardless of who the ‘true PvPers’ are in this game, it will indeed be interesting to see which ‘true PvPers’ will be taking first place in the Tournament of Legends.

Could you consolidate these 4 ideas into one thread, instead of 4 threads?

Mike.4830:

that, and WvWers arent good.

That’s a pretty presumptuous thing to say.. that’s not always true.

Rickster.8752:

Your confidence in PvP players is hilarious. PvP is decided by running to empty points. Primarily that is what wins. Combat takes a huge back seat to this “pro” tactic. In WvW at least combat is the primary factor in success or failure. The people there simply fight and have practice in fighting which gives them the edge (in many cases) over player vs pointers in spvp.

Conquest players should be confident in their ability to play conquest.. Seeing as only one man can be temporarily decapping a point, before re-joining a skirmish or teamfight, I’m not sure how you figure that makes combat take a back seat.

Whether you believe this or not, larger scale WvW tactics often completely ignore many mechanics of GW2 combat, that PvP players are more often forced to learn, to survive.

• PvP Positioning for survival, and using terrain is everything – as you kite/LoS specific enemies. It’s very different than avoiding a singular entity (a group of players that stay stacked on themselves.) It’s more difficult to succeed at escape maneuvers such as stealth

• WvW combat isn’t as tough on people who haven’t learned the finer intricacies of combat, such as counting enemy dodges, proper aiming of hard to land abilities, or understand the cooldowns of their enemy. It’s just.. impossible, given the constant chaotic surroundings.

• In PvP, you can be slightly worse, mechanically, than your enemies, but if your rotations and map awareness are far superior, you can get earn outnumbered fights, and overcome a bad matchup, or stronger enemy. Generally, flawless rotations are the hardest thing to cultivate in the conquest game mode. Players that have less experience in this (who primarily WvW or PvE) are extremely behind on this aspect of conquest. Similarly, how a player handles being in an outnumbered situation is extremely skill testing and important, too. IF you nullify their damage, and remain at good HP when you’re 1v2 by kiting off point, you can have a temporary numbers advantage elsewhere, and still stand a chance of winning once reinforcements come.

Generally, the top PvP teams are extremely skilled, mechanically, and have perfected their teamwork to the point where they can just out-rotate, outnumber, and outplay any team who’s new to conquest..

Being good mechanically isn’t enough. Even if WvW/PvE players are equally skilled, mechanically, it still could easily be a blow out.

You know that it was just moved from an Adept trait to a master trait, last major content patch?

Yeah, seeing as it would break condition grenade builds, I’m going to have to pass. Don’t compare traits directly across professions. A condi necro burning you for 5s is very different than an Engineer burning you for 5s.

Just checking, but did you guys know that pretty much every GW2 Tournament thus far – except those explicitly randomized on stream – are seeded based on the admin’s perception of the team’s past performance?

In Elimination (which this tournament will be), and in match ups that lack divisions (Bronze, Silver, Gold), spreading the top teams is par for the course..

If teams are relatively equal in skill, and/or a Round Robin gametype, where every team plays every team, (as opposed to elimination) is chosen, then randomization of the brackets is acceptable.

Using the leaderboards, or ‘season end’ rankings, as it is known in most games, is usually the best way to create fair brackets so one bracket doesn’t contain all the super tough teams.

Rezz.8019:

Chaith.8256:

KarlaGrey.5903:

War Machine, Last Pride, Idiot Savants, vD, rawr etc. all had to fight their way up the same way other entrants did (by fighting oponents of similar skill), after all.

That’s fine. But for example: when you have War Machine VS. Last Pride in the first round of preliminaries, Last Pride VS. Idiot Savants in the second round of preliminaries, Idiot Savants VS. vD in the third round of preliminaries, ETC, there is a good chance that:

• The finals will be a world class team, vs. an opponent who has no hope in keeping up.

• Many teams who deserved to be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th, were potentially eliminated early on by the 1st place team – meanwhile, people that are weaker would fill those positions, because their brackets were ridiculously devoid of good teams.

Seeding the brackets so the veteran teams are evenly spread out is definitely a positive to the quality of the tournament.

If they lost in first or second round then they did not deserve to be 2nd or 5th or whatever. And so what if first round would be 2 really good teams while second round might be a really good team against a pretty decent-average team? Does it matter? Why force only finals to be interesting when first rounds could be interesting too. And whoever gets that far to finals or semifinals will definitely not be a terrible team and they will put up a good fight.

Because the point of a tournament is to have results that accurately display the skill of that team. The higher quality of tournament, the more accurately the placings of the tournament correlate to the real performance of the teams.

If you say that the second best team in GW2 doesn’t deserve to place around 2nd place, if based on their performance, they would beat every team but one, I disagree.

KarlaGrey.5903:

War Machine, Last Pride, Idiot Savants, vD, rawr etc. all had to fight their way up the same way other entrants did (by fighting oponents of similar skill), after all.

That’s fine. But for example: when you have War Machine VS. Last Pride in the first round of preliminaries, Last Pride VS. Idiot Savants in the second round of preliminaries, Idiot Savants VS. vD in the third round of preliminaries, ETC, there is a good chance that:

• The finals will be a world class team, vs. an opponent who has no hope in keeping up.

• Many teams who deserved to be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th, were potentially eliminated early on by the 1st place team – meanwhile, people that are weaker would fill those positions, because their brackets were ridiculously devoid of good teams.

Seeding the brackets so the veteran teams are evenly spread out is definitely a positive to the quality of the tournament.

The forum bugged out. Fixed!

Fresh MMRs need to be rock bottom. This is a really big problem, and probably the most pure and important take-away from this thead.

Lux.7169:

Darek.1836:

Lux.7169:

Chaith.8256:

Lux.7169:

I’m in-game now. Let’s roll.

Hey, I’m 50g richer now. I am a poor pvp player so I’ll take what I can. I actually had to borrow 47g from someone to bet XD

ya no thieves were on so i just fought him on my guard where he pretty much sat in SB and casted thieves guild for most of the fight

Yeah just let me know when these thieves are on for some money matches.

You two are disgracing this thread… fyi.

Relentless.7023:

snipsnip
When the evidence of an apathetic player base, endless threads of QQ, and the experience you’ve had adds up to a simple, and thus superior, solution it’s hard to pay attention to apologists that think everything’s fine.

Trying to explain that to most people is a waste of time, but the comparison is relevant nonetheless.

If you can’t realize that, then your head is stuck about 2 feet in the sand.

Ok.

• Apathetic player base does not mean re-classifying the combat roles into rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock is a good use of developer resources.

• Just because your limited experiences have culminated into a ‘simple and superior’ point of view, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to other people’s point of view, you arrogant sob.

• If you are calling me or others ITT a Guild Wars 2 apologist, perhaps you should re-read where I created many walls of text outlining (in my opinion) more thoughtful, realistic, cost efficient, and effective directions to remedy the problem of our apathetic playerbase, and common bad experiences in GW2 PvP. Instead, you chose to only read the part where multiple people have stated they feel the combat roles are not priority to completely re-conceptualize.

Here are some re-reads for you:

Chaith.8256:

Unfortunately, I think there is a lack of congruence with the GW2 combat design philosophy.

IE: Viability of professions who major in support, such as Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Necro. Or, the viability of professions who sacrifice a major in damage for a major in control, for example.

Obviously, in PvE, the encounters are so easy, and there is so little control needed, it’s a DPS fest. Take steps to eventually change this, and allow GW2’s self-declared ‘roles’ of a combination of Damage, Control, and Support, to bring something to the table when one aspect is specialized in.

In PvP, which has a much higher focus on competitive builds, the lack of role diversity is the strongest.

Chaith.8256:

I think that it’s best not to get really misguided with our proposals to increase the success of the game.

I think a better definition of the success of a game is better derived from the PvP participation, and viewership. We could derive it from the combat system, or the profession balance, but honestly I feel those are quite healthy, not perfect, but quite healthy, and definitely not what is the actual huge turn off for the PvP community.

High participation is not going to be achieved (I feel) by restructuring the combat roles, but making it feel rewarding, and prestigious. I think once the patch hits, we’ll return to this and re-evaluate. High participation can be achieved by allowing for an experience which is easy to get in to, for new players. Unfortunately, conquest is extremely hard to master effectively – Still waiting on that answer when it’s best for one to leave close, so the map isn’t 4v5! Regarding conquest:

Chaith.8256:

I’d say it’s probably the annoyance of having to constantly be checking enemy numbers and figuring out if you’re where you need to be, or are the reason for an outnumbered fight, causing your team to lose nodes. Lots of people are true deathmatch players, and that has a comforting simplicity to it – you’re already where you need to be, just focus on surviving.

Adding other game-modes that are easier to get in to than conquest is very important. Rotations and matching numbers is extremely draining on the player.

High viewership is directly correlated with cash prize tournaments – because viewers indirectly trickles down into the return on investment needed in order to justify more prize pools. Cash prizes will also, in turn, add many more participants to tPvP.

What WILL increase the viewership of GW2 PvP?

1. Emotional connection to the game mode.

• I think GW2 has struck gold on the unofficial 2v2 tournaments that take place. I am effing pumped when I saw this clip for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4x1QoGkzY . I think that the reason why people love watching this game mode is the fact that the camera is on a certain person’s perspective long enough for the viewer to identify with that player’s struggle.

2. Clearly visible plays.

• This is tied in to spell effects, animation size, and character size. If these 3 things were modified in PvP to be to a certain standard, it would facilitate a better viewer experience.

Lux.7169:

I’m in-game now. Let’s roll.

Much chest beating ..

Trigr.6481:

The fact that you’re relying on the leaderboards as a show of skill makes me cry on in the inside chaith. We know it’s broken, you know it’s broken. Just walk away from the idea. If this tournament has any potential of not becoming a kitten storm, then they need to have qualifiers. Simple as that. And if your argument is going to be something around the lines of, “well we can’t have qualifiers because we don’t have the people to manage it.” Then you shouldn’t have even announced a tournament to begin with. If you can’t do it right, then don’t even try.

Countless

“If you can’t do it right, then don’t even try.”

Mistakes in setting expectations have been made.

And if this totally unplanned issue isn’t able to be worked around in the time we have left? Maybe a little realism is needed, in that case. Instead of time machining back to the announcement date, and setting the expectations properly, maybe we should start considering the option that is time-efficient and effective at the same time.

And of course the ideal situation of doing a qualifier 1 round elimination tournament sounds good, because you seem to be not understanding that Blu might possibly be forced take an unpopular stance, and limit the tournament size.

I would have the same opinion as you, Countless. If I was operating under the same assumptions as you. Qualifiers for all will be more fair. Qualifiers for all might already be off the table! So, if it can be done, it will be done. So I’m instead trying to generate plan B, that isn’t operating under ideal circumstances. Which is a much harder question to answer.

Regarding the leaderboard method I proposed, if you think about what it’s good for: (Accurately portraying skill if we took a current snapshot isn’t one of them, FYI, don’t have to preach to the choir)

• Identifying players that have never set foot in PvP. The leaderboards are really good at identifying this.

Leaderboards are volatile, and people don’t give a crap. It’s true. But it’s a adequate tool if the tournament participants have a reason to give a crap, and reach their proper MMR, and smooth out their volatility.

Jeez, well, their team was 60% composed of Future Dragons. Don’t feel too bad

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/All-40-new-GM-traits-for-feature-patch

Lux.7169:

While many people have issues with the MMR system, I would definitely support this approach as opposed to any others that immediately come to mind.

Yes, the accuracy of the current MMR system is not very defensible. Despite this, at least it is a supported system of the game, and I feel we should use it. It would accurately identify teams that have never participated in the PvP game mode. I’m sure exceptions will occur, such as: “I recently had my account banned”, or “I just transfered from EU”, but there’s no reason why admins couldn’t override it.

BLUna.7928:

Venus In Furs.9756:

Thinking ahead, I really do think the number of entrants is a “good problem” to have, but obviously it calls for some sort of contingency plan.

I absolutely agree. The issue of having too many teams has yet to happen in a guild wars 2 tournament, and while its certainly a great thing (that it’s happening), one of the biggest things ill be taking away from this event is how to handle a scenario such as this.

If I could provide any possible suggestion as to select the most deserving teams for the potentially limited seats:

• At a public, specified time, take a snapshot of individual player’s rating according to the leaderboards.
• That snapshot would include the player’s Solo Queue and Team Queue rating. The greater one would be chosen.
• Add each player’s value to ceate a cumulated team value. Assign a new value to every team. Take the top 32, 64, 96, 128, 160, 192 valued teams, or to infinity and beyond, as indicated by the time & resource constraints.

With this method, teams would have a known period and deadline to qualify themselves just simply by playing the game. If your team only intends to PvP for the tournament, (and you PvE/WvW for all of your other gameplay sessions), then accept whatever limitations are imposed. If schedules don’t accommodate Team Queue practice, Solo Queue during free time is a viable way for individual team members to raise the team’s value.

Lux.7169:

What’s your solution to the issue, then? Completely random? First come first serve? Highest ranked teams/players? Reserve spots for 1-2 teams and RNG the rest?

Live with whatever Blu feels is most feasible based on how much energy he intends to invest in this completely awesome and thoughtful event for the GW2 community.

You can play any profession you want in PvP without wasting any effort.

If you mean PvE and WvW, I’d probably point you toward Warrior. My reasoning is that it can be easily optimized for Max PvE damage, and can be extremely good in any size battle in WvW with a different set of armor.

What the literal kitten is happening in this thread? I don’t even understand what game that players ITT are playing.

In my humble opinion, seeing as it’s Blu who is:

• Tasked himself with finding help in filling the role of game admins.
• Apparently not receiving custom arenas from Anet to host preliminary matches for unlimited players to slug it out.

I find it quite strange that people could possibly request for everyone who signs up to be accommodated.

Relentless.7023:

“Who decides what is useless in PvP and should be off limits to PvPers?”

Uh you guys do. All you players who compete at the highest level. What you decide to play and how you decide to play it establishes the metagame.

I am just still super ‘not ok’ with this kind of responsibility imposed on high MMR players, and the limitations imposed on players across PvP.

Relentless.7023:

Finally, your example of 4 assassins shows you didn’t read that there would be one of each role plus one that you choose as a team to complete the 5 members. If it’s a queue it would be random.

Currently in Team Queues, it’s fair to expect already that teams will fill out the roles somewhat properly. My comment was towards games matched from non-partied players, IE, Hotjoin, SoloQ and YoloQ.

Because we all know that in SoloQ and YoloQ, when people individually queue, everyone loads in to the match and roles are never double, triple, or quadruple stacked. With less roles to choose from, it probably increases the chances of double or triple of a single role in a match. You seem to see things mostly from a shoutcasted tPvP tournament perspective, but in reality, that’s applicable to a very small frequency of games played in GW2.

Relentless.7023:

Hunters would have to be looking for the best place to contribute for their team, as do Assassins, but with the tension of risk. If an Assassin goes far to go with his Duelist after capping close to gank their Duelist, what if their Hunter comes over? That’s a better fight for the other team. So he’d have to look out for their Engi or Ele and if they see one, call off the push.

Let’s see what happens if I just changed out the word ‘Hunters’ for ‘Engineer’ and ‘Assassin’ for ‘Thief’ and ‘Duelist’ for ‘Mesmer’.

Relentless.7023:

Engineers would have to be looking for the best place to contribute for their team, as do Thieves, but with the tension of risk. If an Thief goes far to go with his Mesmer after capping close to gank their Mesmer, what if their Engineer comes over? That’s a better fight for the other team. So he’d have to look out for their Engi or Ele and if they see one, call off the push.

Things like this happen to me every day to me, in tPvP. Counters already exist in the game, and.. the harder the counter, the less fun the combat roles become. I’ll never let our Spirit Ranger 1v1 a Hambow Warrior until the bitter end, I’ll never let our Warrior 1v1 a Thief until the bitter end, and I’ll certainly never attack a Necromancer on my Engineer, for fear of instant death, etc.

Relentless.7023:

That would be so much more interesting to watch and play than Build Wars 2.

You gotta understand that if you have to retreat at the sight of your counter every second 2v2 you engage, that’s like adding a nuclear arms race to Build Wars 2.

You also should look a little bit harder. Clutch dodges aren’t more clutch if you call the professions by different roles, Shoutcasting the actual combat won’t improve because all the strategies around using the actual moves ‘IE: Berserker Stance’ won’t change… yeah, the Ranger will still wait until it’s over before he applies his conditions :P.

The game has pretty much everything that you speak of in your romanticized ideal of GW2 combat, except for every fight being decided before it starts, or an early retreat.

ellesee.8297:

that build would be better off running energy instead of smoldering. you literally get nothing from smoldering even with the 20% burn duration. no extra burn ticks from flame turret toolbelt, flame turret, incendiary powder, or balth 6 piece.

Correct, I thought with Smouldering you’d be at 100%, but only 95%

Uhtameit.2413:

Chaith.8256:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqelUUpErVWxqKseNiMqQnJ6h+ZZAwnH0FbBhA-ToAAzCuIkRJjTGjMSZsyMEZKA

Will be a legit build. :P

Looks nice, but also looks like insta-death against conditions (no vigor except if the healing turret procs so less dodges, no TK block or rocket boots to kite or anything). On the plus side, as long as thumper turret is alive you’re unkillable.

Engis insta die against conditions, how will Toolkit block and a bit more vigor change that?

Relentless.7023:

First, the ease with which the roles would be introduced would be far easier than currently. As I’ve said before there are so many variables to building a character that these new roles would do away with because they don’t matter anyway. A narrow purpose makes it easier for each role to decide what to do, but doesn’t give them the experience or skill to successfully implement it.

Having the proper utilities & traits alone isn’t going to introduce a role to anyone.

Relentless.7023:

For example, let’s say as a Thief your Assassin build is the equivalent of a choice between D/P SB and S/P SB, Zerker in each, eliminating the dagger offhand and pistol mainhand. Your utilities are condensed from the mountain of crap we have now to signets and shadow steps. Wouldn’t that be 10000x easier to figure out for someone brand new?

Who decides what is useless in PvP and should be off limits to PvPers? What if balance changes and those ‘useless’ utilities become viable? Wouldn’t it just be 10000x easier to have a few freakin’ link of the current meta build for brand new players? You can’t just ‘condense’ all the utilities and traits. It would not work in the UI, it would be a complete nightmare for players who are on the cutting edge of what the ‘meta’ build is, and it feels like 80% of the game content would be stripped from you. It’s an extremely abrasive and intrusive solution. It would step on more toes than you know.

Relentless.7023:

GW2 PvP players have to weigh so much more information than is necessary to compete that it kills the desire to compete in the first place.

Nobody has to think about what adept trait they should have taken during matches when they’re processing information. This is just insulting to players.. builds are not too complicated so that there’s no willpower left for competition, lol.. New players just need to have a quicker path to making good builds, if anything at all.

To be honest, if there was the proper population to support matchmaking and there actually became noticeable permanent differences in the quality of players in the games at any given MMR, once you get in the proper bracket, there won’t be any bad builds ‘screwing up’ your teamwork as you put it. When you’re new in any game, even a game like LoL or DoTa like you hold in such esteem, you can definitely ruin the game with a bad item build. You are definitely not propelled to attack the proper targets, and fulfil the Champion’s role properly. It comes down to education, experience. It does not come down to limiting all the bad options so there can only be meta builds.

Relentless.7023:

The lack of clarity and purpose to the classes makes it impossible for PvP to flourish. It’s just who can build a more effective class or team composition, not who is actually good at them. If the roles were narrow, there would be no question about who is the best and who isn’t.

I don’t think that forcing players into the current meta build will make your comp good. It will still be a comp game. Every game is a comp game. Try to play a MOBA like SMITE Arena with 4 Assassins. Or no magic penetration vs. a team stacking magic protection? How is the better player going to be found? Choices, man. Choices. Games need them – they are what set the good players apart from the bad ones, too.

insanemaniac.2456:

Chaith.8256:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqelUUpErVWxqKseNiMqQnJ6h+ZZAwnH0FbBhA-ToAAzCuIkRJjTGjMSZsyMEZKA

Will be a legit build. :P

i think so too. do turrets reveal you? havent tried, cant play

Turret autos do not, no. Detonations I believe, do.

Don’t complain about a Turret Grandmaster in Alchemy.

There are plenty must-have defensive traits in the Alchemy line that you can use for the Adept and Master level traits. And Alchemy is the Boon Duration line.. Experimental Turrets scales off of Boon Duration so..?

Honestly, why would anyone care about taking Metal Plating or Autotool Installation? Instead of traiting for an insignificant increase on an insignificant aspect of your build (keeping turrets alive, long term), you could pick up actual good traits.

We received two Turret Grandmasters… the one without boons is in Inventions, and the one with boons is in Alchemy. Would you rather the boon based Experimental Turrets go Explosives, Firearms, or Tools?!

All of you are crazy.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqelUUpErVWxqKseNiMqQnJ6h+ZZAwnH0FbBhA-ToAAzCuIkRJjTGjMSZsyMEZKA

Will be a legit build. :P

Uhtameit.2413:

Nice one but…you were at far. Lmfao. And then you make a thread about it, real nice one.

This guy has a point. Lol!

But I also understand where the OP is coming from, too. In-game communication is horribly awfully terrible. You can’t even play competitively without VOIP and a LOT of talking. The game needs to properly ease players into rotating properly. It’s even hard to get enough information to rotate properly as an advanced player sometimes.

Relentless.7023:

Mobas are not easy to figure out at all for a new player or someone who hasn’t seen them before, but they can be explained pretty effectively in pre-game and during the game.

This suggestion would make GW2 PvP really easy to explain, but the players would have to be really good tacticians to win consistently. The second role would be the intrigue before each match, wondering how much more of one role they want to specialize in as a team.

While I get it that you believe that the balance is good, Chaith, where is everyone else? The community has pretty much fallen apart and many have said that it’s irreparable at this point. New players don’t make teams, they just farm gold and their dailies. People don’t care about PvP in this game, save for a few dedicated teams.

EU used to be the lifeblood of the PvP community and now its falling apart too.

This isn’t working.

Relentless.7023:

This suggestion would make GW2 PvP really easy to explain, but the players would have to be really good tacticians to win consistently. The second role would be the intrigue before each match, wondering how much more of one role they want to specialize in as a team.

In your proposed combat system, how would you explain to a new player when he needs to stop watching close and rotate to mid. And what should he do if some enemy contests that node when he leaves? How do you sufficiently explain to new players the importance of developing the battlefield awareness of all 5 enemy players, so that proper rotations can be done? These are, in my opinion the true issues as to why sPvP is not as vibrant or as populated as WvW and PvE – the profession balance in those modes are far worse, in my opinion.

Relentless.7023:

While I get it that you believe that the balance is good, Chaith, where is everyone else? The community has pretty much fallen apart and many have said that it’s irreparable at this point. New players don’t make teams, they just farm gold and their dailies. People don’t care about PvP in this game, save for a few dedicated teams.

I just don’t see the evidence that implies that bad profession balance is causation for the PvP community to have fallen apart. Maybe everyone in tPvP made a mass exodus away from the game mode in the last year is because they are the Mesmer and Ele players who it’s been significantly harder to be competitive with those professions? Lol, I joke.

Restructuring the combat roles could be interesting, but I don’t think it’s going to work well for the rest of the game, nor would it fit in the budget. I’m not even sure if it would translate into a more successful PvP mode, once the new changes become old.

We already have a really robust and interesting combat role system right now. I feel due to the lack of rewards, and therefore, competition, most players just haven’t had the incentive to master it, yet.

Every profession already has a unique, desirable function right now in high level tPvP. I think people are just unappreciative towards the beauty of the current system because conquest rubs them the wrong way, and they haven’t had the chance to master the current combat roles.

Relentless.7023:

EU used to be the lifeblood of the PvP community and now its falling apart too.

This isn’t working.

Instead of “PvP is falling apart, must be the un-interesting and difficult combat roles!” I feel that it comes back to the reasons I roughly outlined earlier.

• Emotional connection to game-mode
• Reward
• Prestige
• Ease of Mastery without VOIP

In all likeliness it will be added as a PvP Reward track possibility, instead of a PvE recipe being suddenly made. Craft it now, or earn it after the patch. But there is a chance that it will become unattainable, seeing as nobody knows all the reward track bonuses.

I think that it’s best not to get really misguided with our proposals to increase the success of the game.

I think a better definition of the success of a game is better derived from the PvP participation, and viewership. We could derive it from the combat system, or the profession balance, but honestly I feel those are quite healthy, not perfect, but quite healthy, and definitely not what is the actual huge turn off for the PvP community.

High participation is not going to be achieved (I feel) by restructuring the combat roles, but making it feel rewarding, and prestigious. I think once the patch hits, we’ll return to this and re-evaluate. High participation can be achieved by allowing for an experience which is easy to get in to, for new players. Unfortunately, conquest is extremely hard to master effectively – Still waiting on that answer when it’s best for one to leave close, so the map isn’t 4v5! Regarding conquest:

Chaith.8256:

I’d say it’s probably the annoyance of having to constantly be checking enemy numbers and figuring out if you’re where you need to be, or are the reason for an outnumbered fight, causing your team to lose nodes. Lots of people are true deathmatch players, and that has a comforting simplicity to it – you’re already where you need to be, just focus on surviving.

Adding other game-modes that are easier to get in to than conquest is very important. Rotations and matching numbers is extremely draining on the player.

High viewership is directly correlated with cash prize tournaments – because viewers indirectly trickles down into the return on investment needed in order to justify more prize pools. Cash prizes will also, in turn, add many more participants to tPvP.

What WILL increase the viewership of GW2 PvP?

1. Emotional connection to the game mode.

• I think GW2 has struck gold on the unofficial 2v2 tournaments that take place. I am effing pumped when I saw this clip for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4x1QoGkzY . I think that the reason why people love watching this game mode is the fact that the camera is on a certain person’s perspective long enough for the viewer to identify with that player’s struggle.

2. Clearly visible plays.

• This is tied in to spell effects, animation size, and character size. If these 3 things were modified in PvP to be to a certain standard, it would facilitate a better viewer experience.

DanyK.3842:

I’m still waiting on my Ransacker title… and my Marauder.

The titles are so de-synced with actual rank points – I have earned 3,820,000 rank points, but don’t even have the 2,973,500 Reaper Title. I should’ve gotten that a million rank points ago .. It’s bad.

scerevisiae.1972:

Exedore.6320:

There is nothing wrong with conquest.

No, but clearly, there is something wrong with GW2’s implementation of it. I too have enjoyed it in other games but not in GW2- IMO it’s not fun at all. I am still convinced that it’s downed state that is the underlying cause of spvp’s failure to thrive among the general player population – IMO it just does not work in PVP on any level and fundamentally detracts from the game.

I’m not quite sure if that’s it. I’d say it’s probably the annoyance of having to constantly be checking enemy numbers and figuring out if you’re where you need to be, or are the reason for an outnumbered fight, causing your team to lose nodes. Lots of people are true deathmatch players, and that has a comforting simplicity to it – you’re already where you need to be, just focus on surviving.

Relentless.7023:

Mastering something doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel – you just take a fast car and drive it better than the other guy. If they took this concept and built it into GW2 PVP I guarantee you the population would explode and new players would buy the game ready to play PvP

Take a fast car, and drive it better than the other guy? If this is the game winning philosophy, why can’t everyone just take the most competitive builds and focus on outplaying the others? That’s what it’s like at the top of GW2 competition, as of now. And to be honest, I still find pre-made team queue very fun because this is how it is. There are 3 players on each team that are driving the same ‘fast cars’ and it becomes a competition of who can drive those cars the best. On the other hand, outside some of the must-have professions, currently, there is a ton of meaningful customization choices – and it’s extremely incorrect to say that any of those options are garbage, or that there’s an optimal customization. I will explain:

I’ll do a customization analysis for example, when Team Good Fights plays say.. Disney Channel.

Pre-game: On my Engineer, I have many viable options. P/S, Nades/Bombs, P/P, Nades/Toolkit, Rifle, Nades/Toolkit. I can run 3 different stunbreaks of choice.

On Kensuda’s Guardian, he can toss in a bunch of different utilities. Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection, Purging Flames, full Shouts, and there are completely different viable customizations for an Altruistic Healing type bunker.

On Rar’s Warrior, he can go freely between Soldiers/Berserker amulet, Endure Pain, Dolyak Signet, or Signet of Stamina.

On Magic Toker’s Thief, he can run S/D Acrobatics, D/P Trickery, S/P Trickery based builds.

On Genyen’s Ranger, he just runs the same kitten all the time because he’s bad <3

There is a good chunk of viable, meaningful customization. Obviously, most tend to settle into out signature setup, but that’s absolutely unique to team.

Disney Channel’s Lineup, for example:

• 0/0/10/30/30 Clerics Guardian,
• 10/30/0/0/30 D/P Berserker Thief,
• 0/10/30/30/0 Carrion Ranger,
• 20/20/0/30 Berserker Mesmer (maybe 20/20/30/0/0 Chaotic Interruption?),
• 0/0/30/10/30 Soldiers Warrior.

Apex Prime’s Lineup, for example:

• 0/0/10/30/30 Clerics/Soldier Guardian
• 0/0/10/30/30 Clerics Staff Elementalist
• 20/0/20/30 Berserker Warrior
• 20/0/20/30 Soldiers Warrior
• x/x/30/30/x Carrion Ranger

As you can see, there are a lot of similarities and a fair bit of unique-ness to each team.

Good Fights brings a balanced 2 Condi Damage / 2 Power Damage dealers, Disney Channel is currently trying out a Bursty & less tanky 3 Power Damage, 1 Condi Damage dealer. Apex Prime prefers to harness as support and sustain/combo fields as much as possible, with 2 Warriors, Staff Elementalist, and Spirit Ranger. No squishies, tons of Water field blasting, and a huge amount of reviving ability. Almost all of our matches lately have ended via the timer expiring.

It’s just a pity that only a handful of people per region build highly competitive comps. Disney Channel has ran a Necromancer with huge success, Apex Prime continues to be extremely competitive with a Staff Ele – which might be competing for a spot in the ‘core comp’ with Ranger after April 15th. Mesmers of the Chaotic Interruption variety are extremely tough customers when their Thief is driving the car better than the other team’s thief. Engineer is a ridiculously strong teamfighter, that is NOT that easy to rush, or catch out of position. Thief is pretty much part of the ‘core comp’.

Balance is pretty dang good, if you ask me. Because I can say for certainty that if you want to play any profession and be among the best teams, it’s totally possible. Right now, there is a dependence on Warriors and Rangers, but April’s Patch will likely change that stance a bit, by shaving those two professions. Warrior and Ranger suffer slightly from a lack of meaningful customization in competitive games, too.

There’s honestly not a whole lot I would change about the GW2 competitive comps, in regards to your customization vs. focus belief.

Solstice.1097:

thief and ele are better down state than mesmer. mesmer is better than the rest. if you look at the hardest classes to kill, the best down states are in basically the opposite order of that.

You said the exact same thing 5 hrs ago, lol. For the record, Thieves, Eles and Mesmers can be much harder to kill than other professions, depending on how they’re built. * Shrug*.

Perhaps a bit too specialized. Obviously, this is aimed at healing signet. What if instead of Signet Hate, which by design is kind of weird, Power Block put the enemy’s heal skill on a 4s cooldown when any skill is successfully interrupted?

Zirith.6429:

Chaith.8256:

Mesmer downed state 2 is like, the best downed state 2 attack there is, after elementalist.

It’s easy to see why stealthing and moving a random 400 distance is harder to stomp than preventing a stomp by shooting a measly interrupt projectile (Warrior, Ranger, Necro, Engineer, Guardian).

• Your stealth cannot miss. Therefore, you can’t be countered by: Blind, Aegis, Stability, Invulnerability, a dodge roll.

• You often port right out of the downed cleave on you, in teamfights, and are in stealth for ez-mode revives. It angers me when I’m cleaving where the Mesmer went down and suddenly I see 2 enemies start reviving their invisible ally .. right behind me, and then it’s too late.

A superior downed state 2 skill, if anything. Get some perspective.

I’ve probably stomped 5000 mesmers and more often than not if i reset the stomp before they hit 2 the stomp will still land on them, it’s more like a 25% chance that they will port out of stomp range. Still a strong skill since they are guaranteed to last the longest while downed.

You don’t know when the Mesmer is going to use Deception. It could be an early deception, or right as you go to stomp. If you get the right read, then yes, there’s – I would say about a 50/50 chance that Mesmer is dead. This stomping method depends on player skill and has an element of RNG attached.

Remember, that even if you start stomping, and .5 seconds before finishing, you get a perfect pre-cast on the Mesmer’s deception, he already is going to live until that second stomp finishes. That’s a guaranteed stay of execution for 5.5 seconds after going down. Around the same as if you ate the interrupt from Warrior/Ranger/Guardian/Necro/Engineer. Don’t you see? Deception isn’t even worse than other downed state #2 skills, even if your enemy reads the Mesmer, and perfectly pre-cast stomps the Mesmer 25% of the time.

Relentless.7023:

Nothing weird about one class having 1 archetype. FFXIV does this and it does it very, very well.

You’re kind of proving my point with how you’ve come full circle about PvP build diversity. Why aspire to diversity when the system is designed for it and still doesn’t happen. There’s no point. It’s a waste of resources to keep that contraption going in PvP. People are going to pick the most efficient way to play the game and leave the garbage behind.

The problem with that “major” idea is the player base doesn’t really care about that at all. They will cherry pick what’s going to do the best overall, not specialize because the game lets them do what they want.

If GW2 was released with a Specialization system or something in the Traits that made you pick Support, Control, or Damage builds that’d be different.

The ‘major’ system that I described is at work, in every build that players load on live GW2 servers. It’s a ‘soft’ archetype, not a hard, restricting archetype. My only problem with it, is that the non-‘damage’ roles in GW2 aren’t as impactful as focusing on damage is.

Another really big thing with GW2 has 3 game modes, and it’s highly non-competitive in 2 of 3 game modes (PvE and WvW). There is minimal garbage, because you can run any build, as long as it’s coherent, and not fail at that content due to a bad build. What would adding ‘duelists’ and ‘hunters’ and ‘assassins’ do for PvE content? It would just be the exact same as it is now – whoever brings the highest combined damage, and group utility.

In PvP, the one game mode where builds are highly competitive, no matter whether there are ‘soft’ specializations, or ‘hard’ archetypes, as long as there are interchangeable weapons, and traits, there will always be a more efficient way, for every competitive gametype, and that leaves garbage. Whether your system is implemented or not, there will be plenty of garbage ways to build your character – even if each profession is specialized for one single role, IE, hunting, assassinating, supporting. You can’t get around it, unless you have pre-packaged heroes, like MOBAs.

Relentless.7023:

Build becomes more important than skill, because your ability to pick the best possible options in each slot matters more than your execution of them.

I’m assuming you are talking about tPvP, due to the implied competitive nature of picking a comp. Let me just say, there are no 5 best professions & builds in each roster. And even if there were, your system would be no different – which duelist is optimal, and which is garbage? Which hunter is garbage? Only 1 of each role can be brought (except for the 5th slot).

Relentless.7023:

It is currently impossible for anyone to respect their opponent because their build is a lot more important than how they use it.

This is wrong on so many levels.. and sounds more like the angry tears of someone who doesn’t know how to handle himself when he meets his counter.

For example, I have a lot of respect for the ability of certain Necromancers and Spirit Rangers. Can I tell the difference between good players using a good build, and bad players using a good build? Absolutely. Am I going to avoid 1v1s with those professions on my condi-Engineer if possible? Absolutely. Am I going to coordinate with my team to nullify the threat that those professions mean to my Engi when they dive to kill me? Absolutely.

When GW2 is played at it’s competitive level… it’s freakin’ challenging. It’s almost impossible to go through a game and make all the right rotational choices, never let your abilities get dodged/blocked/blinded, and keep excellent positioning in teamfights. Not using awful builds or an awful comp is surely important to winning, but I assure you, in GW2 PvP combat at its most competitive, builds are only a fraction of what it takes to succeed.

I suspect you only have the opinion that ‘builds determine everything, might as well call GG before game starts’ because possibly you’re used to playing in Soloq, or other non-competitive pvp where everybody is thrown together without a balanced comp, and nobody ever feels like switching.

Homicidal Toaster.5836:

Yeah, I want to blow people up.
Such fire. Much crispy. Wow.

Glass staff ele is difficult because while people can hunt you with precision, your attacks will be wildly inaccurate and ineffective when they take the fight to you. You will have to use teamwork to overcome this inherent advantage of glass staff ele, and if that’s unsuccessful, it’s a super liability. My advice is to work on recognizing when those critical times are that you need to be nuking the point, and convincing your team to peel for you. Otherwise, your Staff Ele isn’t going to be showing any better results.

I merely suggested that running support makes the Ele much more self sufficient in dealing with enemies taking the fight to them, and provides great support benefits. It really removes the importance of landing all of the staff’s wildly inaccurate and easily dodged counter-pressures. And for those critical times when point pressure is needed, the support staff ele brings a modest amount of that, too.

silvermember.8941:

Uhtameit.2413:

Homicidal Toaster.5836:

My issue is that I do focus on point suppression, but they just leave the point briefly to kitten on me and then they cap the point while I bleed out (if they decided not to waste their sweet time stomping me).

Are you going alone vs several people? your post makes it sound that way. You need to position yourself so that the enemy doesn’t see you until it’s too late if you’re glass staff ele.

Yep. staff elementalist is only truly effective inconjuction with another player. the other player puts pressure while you stand back and do stuff. The issue with the ele is one wrong look and they drop really really fast.

Running a support Ele means that you aren’t really going to die, fyi. Still brings decent point pressure.

It’s a bit late to completely re-structure the entire profession design philosophy. Also, I would like to point out that re-structuring so that each profession is limited to 1 archetype is an extremely unnatural approach to MMOs.

I understand what you’re saying – each profession has certain narrow trait usages of traits & utilities across game modes.

If anything, I think that we should adhere to the system in place even further, and do a balance patch that focuses on enabling all of the professions to have a build that embodies a chosen ‘major’ in Support -or- Damage -or- Control, with minors in the other two. This is the true GW2 design philosophy.

( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat )

Unfortunately, I think there is a lack of congruence with the GW2 combat design philosophy.

IE: Viability of professions who major in support, such as Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Necro. Or, the viability of professions who sacrifice a major in damage for a major in control, for example.

Obviously, in PvE, the encounters are so easy, and there is so little control needed, it’s a DPS fest. Take steps to eventually change this, and allow GW2’s self-declared ‘roles’ of a combination of Damage, Control, and Support, to bring something to the table when one aspect is specialized in.

In PvP, which has a much higher focus on competitive builds, the lack of role diversity is the strongest.

I was thinking that in addition to stealthing the Mesmer, instead of cloning yourself, it would summon an illusion of Zhaitan, and spawn 6 cannons in which the enemy team would have to interact with to kill the illusion of Zhaitan, so the Mesmer gets revealed.

What do you guys think?