Guild Wars 2

The thing is, people hear “e-sport” and start thinking LoL. DotA 2. Starcraft 2. They imagine these big games with large teams having lots of sponsors with big paying tournaments. They think of it as a person’s career, where they make their income solely on sponsorships, tournament winnings, and potentially streaming (though becoming a popular streamer is a completely different can of worms and doesn’t even necessarily mean you have to be a “pro” at the game).

However, some of these games had starts before the “flagship” titles of today were released. Defense of the Ancients hit WCG in I believe 2005, 2 years after the first version of the map was released by Eul. It built momentum slowly, gaining new followings, new teams, etc. The MOBA genre, as far as I can tell, was birthed from this process. LoL and DotA 2 have just piggy-backed on that success, gaining teams from these games and kick-starting their popularity with names and faces that have already been prominent in a game almost exactly like the newer models.

Then look at Starcraft 2. The first one was potentially the first prominent e-sport ever, even if it was mainly tied to South Korea. Although many top tier players and “bonjwas” didn’t move to SC2 initially, a whole hell of a lot of players did. Names that had experience with SC1, knew how to take RTS to a competitive level, and had resources. Replays also allowed other names to rise up from Youtube as new commentators in the space.

Now look at GW2. What other game is truly like it in the competitive arena? No LoL/DotA team is going to move to GW2, as they are rooted into their game. FPS games are sometimes similar, but different enough that the skill sets could discourage migration onto this new platform. GW1 wasn’t an e-sport, even if it did have a competitive field.

So where, oh where, does GW2 pull from for its “professional” base? Which players can jump into GW2 and commit to it professionally, earning income from sponsorships, forming “guild houses”, and winning tournament money?

Even if ANet had all of the appropriate features in place, they’re still basically starting from scratch. If in-game tournaments/rankings/leaderboards don’t climax in a championship held for actual money, then none of those things contribute to a game being an e-sport. They’re for the hard-casuals, or casualcore players, who want competition but can’t commit professionally to the game.

So what did ANet even have in mind with regard to GW2 being an e-sport? Did they mean it would be a foundation for a competitive arena where tournaments could be held? Probably. Did they mean you could make a living off of GW2 as a professional gamer? Honestly, probably not.

But who doesn’t dream of playing their game, becoming famous in said game for being awesome, and enjoying that game as a career? You get to play all day, perfect your strategies, and don’t have to work out in the “world”. It’s easy to be led to believe that this is how the game is going to pan out, because you want to believe it. People often read what they want to read, not necessarily what is written, and marketing/hype doesn’t help this at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised if GW2 ran a similar course as what I saw from GW1 in my minimal time. You could hop in to spectate top teams playing, look at leaderboards and in general the game would have a competitive edge that allows you to stand out within the game. Some LAN tournaments might be held if ANet foots some financial support, but I really wouldn’t expect GW2 to be an “e-sport” in the sense of a LoL, or DotA 2.

I also don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I could be wrong. Maybe it’ll flourish. Maybe it’ll die. Maybe everyone will leave and never come back. Maybe some will leave and come back later. Maybe all it takes is one key expansion or content release to open floodgates. Who knows.

I’ll tell you who doesn’t know: us.

Daays.4317:

@Cogbyrn

Right now you’re looking at least 6 months before a spectator mode will be in the game. And no game today can survive in the scene without a solid spectator mode. You can’t shoutcast matches from specific players POV.

Anet lead people into believing that GW2 was going to become an e-Sport contender shortly after release. Add some polish, fix some bugs, then good to go.

This was their focus. Their goal. To turn GW2 into the premier competitive MMORPG e-Sport. At least that’s what I got from reading the blog posts and goals for the game before launch.

LoL made no such promises in becoming an e-Sport sensation.

I don’t recall them speculating Spectator mode would take another 6 months, but I’ll guess I’ll take your word for it because this is the internet, and you seem to be an expert in the space.

Also, I thought it was fairly obvious that the GW2 marketing/hype machine was in overdrive. The only rival I’ve seen recently is Chris Roberts, who I think has promised every single thing. Unforeseen circumstances are the bane of any ambitious development timeline, and I’m honestly not surprised they’re set back.

Are you? Be honest with me, and yourself.

ANet made their overzealous marketing mistakes. Does that truly mean that the game will never have potential to climb the e-sports ladder? Will that many people pout about the game not delivering what they want when they expected it and use that point to not play the game?

Maybe. Or maybe people just need time away, and will be re-attracted to the game once all of its features have been fleshed out and deployed.

In either case, calling it 2 months after release seems like crying wolf to me, so I’m going to enjoy the game in the meantime.

I can’t edit my post on account of these forums, but the LoL Spectator Mode beta launched on 11/22/2011.

If you’re keeping track, that’s about 13 months after the game released. A game solely focused on type of experience that already had a template in place.

Let’s continue to speak about LoL:

http://timeline.leagueoflegends.com/

Launch – 10/27/2009

League of Legends was officially launched in both North America and Europe. The game featured 40 playable champions, automated matchmaking on Summoners Rift, and a basic tutorial on the Proving Grounds to introduce new players to the game. The Twisted Treeline – League of Legends premier 3v3 map – was available for play in custom games.

Season 1 – 7/13/2010

The culmination of a massive, company-wide effort, Season One was the single largest content update League of Legends had received to date, as well as the start of the first major competitive season. The major features of Season One included Draft Mode, Ranked Games, Ladders and more updates that helped elevate the game to a whole new level of competitive play.

For those playing the home game, that’s roughly 8.5 months between launch and competition, based on the official game’s timeline. LoL isn’t exactly a game offering a lot of gameplay options, it’s just a DotA-clone MOBA with some skill trees, and it took them 8.5 months to release competitive elements.

But if GW2 was going to be an e-sport, it would have been one yesterday, a little less than 2 months after release.

I just don’t get the rampant impatience.

What’s stopping an NFL player from joining a high school team? Probably the fact that he’s an adult, and he isn’t enrolled in that high school.

He would also probably just be benched, he’s known for being an NFL player, and he still belongs to that team. If he’s removed from his team, he has the option of joining the Canadian Football League. He can also join up with local flag football leagues, but they’ll probably know who he is and recognize he isn’t a fit for their league. They control who is in their league, after all.

I can’t believe this discussion is even happening.

I already stated I think this analogy doesn’t work. I took it the other direction because it’s easy to twist bad analogies to serve your own purposes. That’s how you know they’re bad.

Real world sports are the apples to E-sports oranges. I’m surprised you didn’t realize the impossible difference when you juxtaposed the two.

If you want the actual analogy, real world sports created systems based on the game itself. I can set up a league for Flag Football if I want to, and the people that join all have the same mindset as me: a casual league for fun.

The NFL isn’t regulating my fun, I can go out and have it once I find a ball and a yard. Why should GW2 have to regulate your fun? Find like-minded individuals and play against each other. Create a “minors” league between more casual guilds/players. Have everyone put gold or whatever reward into a pool and hand it out to the winners as you see fit.

What’s stopping you? Well, a few missing mechanics such as custom arenas, so yes, GW2 still has some work to do. However, expecting them to set up matchmaking is like expecting one single authority to regulate all matchmaking between all Football teams in the entire nation.

Once ANet gives you the ability to have your own playing field, it’ll be your own laziness alone that inhibits your ability to enjoy sPvP.

I really like this idea. I will be very unsurprised if something like this gets implemented down the road.

ehtom.5047:

I can give a couple of examples of esports games which ARE doing very well because they have a better philosophy: LoL and DotA2.

LoL is unbalanced at the high level and always has been with only 15 or so out of the hundred champions being viable for top level games. However, at the casual level it is quite balanced and they routinely nerf champions with “one-shot” combos or that the community does not think are fun to play against (e.g. tryndamere).

DotA2 is also unbalanced at the high level where most of the heroes never see the light of day in comp games. Yet icefrog still nerfs heroes that pubs complain about (lycan/ursa/huskar) to the point of being utterly worthless in comp games. In pub games all heroes have about 50% win rate.

Both these games are thriving because people are actually able to play them. Anet should follow this same route – games these days HAVE to be casual friendly. Anything else is simply not an option.

DotA 2 also recently made a CM change to allow for a much different dynamic at the competitive level. Heroes are constantly being bumped up a bit from the bottom, and a larger variety keep seeing more and more play. It appears as though he’s trying to diversify the competitive scene.

Also, the changes in that game are minor things from a game that has been developed for what, 7+ years now? Further, Lycan was a bad example, since pros were banning him in basically every game as well.

Sure, Icefrog may make a change that helps pubs. However, did GW2 not do the same with the recent Assassin’s Signet change? Now all the damage isn’t front-loaded, but Backstab wasn’t a problem for top tier teams anyway as far as I could tell.

Are LoL and DotA doing well because they have a design philosophy that you think is different, or are they doing well for other reasons that we haven’t analyzed yet?

I run Hammer/GS myself, so I have a few points you might want to consider:

1. Mobile Strikes (Discipline X) makes your Whirlwind Attack, Rush, Bull’s Charge, and Earthshaker all break immobilize. I’ve found it invaluable in PvP based on my own personal playstyle.

2. Unsuspecting Foe (Arms IV) will basically guarantee subsequent crits after an Earthshaker, even without Fury considering your gear setup. I’m not sure how much vuln you get out of Rending Strikes, but I would think you could apply stronger burst with UF.

3. Merciless Hammer is quite good considering 3 separate abilities (Earthshaker, Backbreaker, Staggering Blow) all disable the opponent. It basically makes your CC combo 25% stronger. Of course, you’d have to give up a survival trait to replace it, which may or may not be worth it.

Otherwise, I wish you luck. I personally go 20/10/20/0/20, shifting some out of Defense to grab +10% GS damage. Considering your larger focus on damage stats with your amulets, however, I’m not sure that’d be worth it for you. In fact, I may test out a 10/10/30/0/20 build myself.

If I recall, the details of paid tournaments were already laid out in a recent blog post. What new information was expected, a release date? Odds are, they fixed some of the exploits that were breaking tPvP (if I’m reading these forums correctly), and they’re going to give it a bit to make sure the appropriate changes were made, using Free Tournaments to verify.

Which the patch notes basically say.

I’m curious why people assumed Paid Tournies were a shoe-in for this most recent patch. Maybe I missed a post or communication or two, but unless they say “Hey it’s going to release on XX/YY/ZZZZ”, I’m not sure why anyone would set themselves up for disappointment like that.

Also, regarding people being banned in Twitch, I feel like I’m missing half of the story.

@Durga: I think you bring up an interesting point: personal responsibility. You’ve seem to accept that, often, there was something you could have done better to perform better.

What percentage of the average player, do we think, can evaluate a situation and say “Yeah, I put myself into a bad situation” or “I should have brought X” or “I just got outplayed there”? I admit, I sometimes get frustrated as well and have a rough time admitting it was a matter of me being outplayed, but typically that frustration stems from me knowing that I underperformed with regard to cooldown management, timings, etc. I admit those things to myself and aim to improve.

The Bull’s Charge into Frenzied 100B didn’t kill me, my lack of awareness/Endure Pain killed me. Same with the Backstab combo of old.

My estimation is that few players blame themselves, and many blame the game. In such a scenario, how do you balance the game for these players?

Colton.9460:

Mogar.9216:

btw I’m not asking for nerfs or buffs. I play a elementalist and all I do is pvp. I am quite happy with my class and how I do. This is just a general post. I have played DAoC WAR for years and many other mmo. I really like GW2 and hope this game does well. Just throwing my 2 cents on how I think Anet should manage the pvp so this game don’t die like the other pvp game I have played in the past.

Your right to do so, this thread: (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/A-very-interesting-point-about-ESports-that-ANet-should-keep-in-mind/first#post486237) has some of the top players from SC2 explaining how their game is slowly dying due to casauls being left out when balancing.

If you would rather not watch the video or read the thread it paraphrases like this: Balancing for the top players makes the game much less casual friendly( since not everyone can be like the top players casuals get frustrated when only experts can perform well). This frustration leads to less people watching the esport, to less people going to tournaments, and to less reason for sponsors to shell out dough.

This phenomenon is clearly laid out, and shows that the majority of the player base is more important than the top when it comes to E-sport viability. Balancing around the average player lets them feel like they are doing well, and lets the pro’s feel like they are doing exceptionally well; which in turn leads to happy gamers.

That being said as spoonfey points out it should not be balance to the lowest common denominator. That leads to a bad game. But I do not agree with him that everyone wants to QQ and thinks they should beat top players. I am talking about the top 5%, spoonfey is talking about the bottom 5%, both are vocal but both are less important than the middle.

I think there are more interesting questions than just drawing a correlation between balancing decisions and popularity.

1. How are up-and-coming MOBAs affecting SC2’s popularity? Maybe people are finding that they like a 5v5 arena more than a 1v1. For games like DotA, often action starts right out of the gate. In SC2, you’re more than likely waiting several minutes for anything to happen, and sometimes the game then ends before you can blink or appreciate what’s going on.

2. What else has SC2 done to shun its casual playerbase? I think balancing for the top tier is fine, as long as you don’t funnel everyone into the same game mode. In SC2, casuals often play the exact same game that pros do, which just causes problems. You can blame a large number of things for that, including the monetizing/privatizing of custom maps, B.net 2.0’s UI design, etc. In GW2 it’s actually very similar, though you could PvE or WvWvW as well if you’re so inclined. Still, sPvP offers one experience.

I’d like to see some ideas for people saying balance should be geared towards the “average” player. What’s average? How many hours per week? How much time spent researching the game? What sort of attitude does the average player have? How will this affect the top-tier/e-sports meta? Will it provide the appropriate skill ceiling to allow pros to obviously excel beyond the capabilities of an average player?

There’s one fact that must be true: For professional e-sports tournaments, a game must be balanced at the top tier.

The rest of the details can be up for debate on how you popularize a game, maintain a following, etc. However, if you’re going to hold tournaments, for money, for professionals, it needs to be balanced for them. Period.

I will absolutely not be surprised if Assassin’s Signet just became better for more situations. It’s more of a “play” now executed over a series of attacks instead of front-loading it all into one, which was the problem before.

I’m a warrior, I mainly just came to see what the reaction was. Naturally, some are already raising their pitchforks, but I’m guessing good/adaptive Thieves will be just fine.

EDIT – That’s a good point, Niim. Remember when Pistol Whip took a 15% damage nerf? Now you can spread a 15% damage buff across most of the hits. It requires a utility slot instead of just having it innate, but it’s an option.

Well, you’ll get 15% additional damage across the entire C&D → Steal/Mug → Backstab combo. So if it was, for example, 3k C&D, 3K Steal, and 15k Backstab from a 10k non-signet, you’ll now get 3.45k, 3.45k, 11.5k. Instead of 21k damage, it’s 18.4k.

A few thousand health to keep from insta-killing and allowing reaction times. Also, a few additional 15% hits, perhaps for Heartseekers that land, if used properly.

Whenever the thread doesn’t show anything, change the ‘2’ in /page/2#postxxxxxx in your URL to a ‘1’. It looks like the forum isn’t aligned in how many it thinks should be on one page versus how many are stored on one page.

Thrym.9436:

I’m not on the subject, just adding my two bits. The OP was asking about burst damage, and I mentioned that it exists in this form.

I was just hoping we could have an actual discussion about the cause of burst damage succeeding on tank-specced players and how it could potentially be avoided.

My bad.

Thrym.9436:

I’ve been dropped tonight before being able to get block to trigger on at least two occasions by backstab thieves. Yes, this is a team game and you should be able to rely on your teammates, but when you leave the 28k health shield warrior to defend a node, burst is a bit high when he loses it before he’s even delayed the enemy, right?

Running a shield with 30 defense and 28k health. It really doesn’t get a whole lot more “tanky” than that.

That, by definition, is burst, and it is a problematic amount of it.

You won’t run into it from many classes or specs, though, burst isn’t coming from everyone. Standing in a full barrage is bad, but hardly unavoidable. Eating a warrior greatsword is an outright mistake by anyone that actually lets themselves eat the whole thing. Backstab is about the only attack that directly frontloads in amounts that decide a fight in the opening button press, as far as damage goes(heartseeker can finish it, but the thief does have to get you to that point).

While you’re on the subject, could you please elaborate how you couldn’t get block to trigger? Did it involve Basilisk Venom? Do you not have a stun break? Did you not see the Thief approaching in the distance? What are your utilities?`

Typically, a simple increase in the number of permutations does nothing to add actual depth to the game, just illusory depth. If you let people customize, to the stat point, where all of their itemization went, they’d still find optimal builds and those would become the norm, leaving 90%+ of them as useless fluff.

Additional options might be useful, but I think it’s a mistake to think that simply adding more options will somehow create more viable choices.

@booyah: Alternatively, ITT: all the players who were hit for 10k+, didn’t bother to analyze their own play, and immediately came to the forums to ask for nerfs because they can’t be troubled to give an iota of effort towards self-improvement.

I’m not even saying Backstab shouldn’t be looked at, but I don’t even think it’s Backstab that’s the problem. Being able to Steal while in the middle of the C&D animation is really the crux of the issue.

Except no one cares, because oh my god numbers are really high and they should totally be nerfed because of reasons, am I right?

I wish I had taken a screenshot of the time a Thief’s Backstab did 0 damage to me in 1v1, because it was blatantly obvious it was incoming and I build Endure Pain into my utilities to counter high burst like this. He did 0 damage repeatedly while I stood and looked at him, then he ran away. I didn’t even move.

Burst damage is pretty OP, I guess.

Also, using one-off example logic to try to argue balance is useless and only serves to create threads full of flamebait.

Another post claiming subjective points prove some objective idea, worded in such a way that conversation is immediately put onto a negative foot, and in the end, no one gains any sort of benefit.

Your anger has been noted and filed away with everyone else’s.

I’m not sure if this has been mentioned (I didn’t see it on the list), but in the Fear Me! tooltip, the ranges that determine fear duration are measured in feet, but every other ability in the game is in arbitrary “range” units. My guess is that 1 foot = 20 range, but it would be much easier to understand if the tooltip were put in line with the rest of the game.

What I find interesting is how people think casuals want the same game mode as pros, while on the same breath referencing Destiny’s recent SC2 remarks. I read the reddit version (I’m going to assume it’s similar to the video, please correct me if I’m wrong and I’ll watch the vid. I don’t have much time at the moment), and one of the big points I grabbed from it was how discouraging playing SC2 was on account of the notion that 1v1 was the only way to play.

I think deep down, casuals realize they’re casual. They want to have fun with the game, not play competitively. Who goes and tries to play local football competitively? Or soccer? Or basketball? You play pick-up games because of your love for the sport, and those games are often glaringly different from the actual game (unless you happen across 5s in pick-up basketball or something).

If anything, ANet’s focus on the casuals should be around more “fun” content. WvWvW isn’t for everyone, but it’s a step in the right direction. More game modes and perhaps more emphasis on fun game modes (keg brawl’s a thing, isn’t it? I have no idea where to do it though), even if they aren’t geared for e-sports, will provide a conduit for people to have fun while not being competitive. You want to maintain interest in the game in general for people to follow the e-sport.

The dilemma then becomes: how do people follow the e-sport and appropriately understand it enough to stay interested while not actively participate in the same game mode? You can’t balance GW2 like you can MOBAs. MOBA hero complexity is a dust particle compared to the classes in GW2, and the amount you can do with your one hero in GW2 eclipses that of a MOBA hero as well.

I personally think MOBAs are the future of e-sports, because they hide the complexity of the game under a layer of heroes that are pretty simple to understand. If you press all 4 of your buttons, odds are you’re positively contributing to your team, regardless. Also, you’re free to blame your team for being terrible even if you die repeatedly, while in GW2, people watch themselves die to someone over and over and instead blame the game. Once the game starts being blamed and not the people, it’s a downhill spiral.

So what does ANet do? I have no idea. I’d like to see GW2 become an e-sport, but it doesn’t seem like the style of game that’ll really make it. At best, I see a niche community creating smaller-scale tournaments. You don’t need 200k viewers for a tourney to be profitable, and I’d personally be happy with that.

I guess we’ll see.

Also, if a game tried to be balanced in 1v1, it would be the most extremely FOTM game ever, and I don’t think the MMO community can handle that. The Fighting genre already covers the 1on1 arena.

I’ll always be all for transparency. I love information, so the more the merrier.

However, a few notes:

1. Many posts around here are just emotional responses to dying. Do devs have to pander to outcries with soothing words? That’s how you treat an infant human, and I’d prefer not to be treated that way.

2. Every little thing posted by someone with ANet next to their name is read by hundreds, or thousands, of eyes. If even one little thing doesn’t quite add up, or if it gets misconstrued by the wrong person, then it’s immediately taken out of context and blown out of proportion.

Some of us are appreciative of bits of information. We all have varying levels of tolerance for ANet’s position.

However, I personally think ANet would be inclined to be more transparent if the community had a more stable head on its shoulders.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was a fly on the wall for every PM/balance/etc. meeting ANet has. I’d like to know which classes they’re looking at for tweaks, and how. I’d like to know about ideas they have regarding bunker builds. I’d like to know how if they are going to add more WvWvW content iteratively, if it’s mainly just good how it is, or if major changes will happen with content packs/expansions. I’d like to know every detail for their upcoming sPvP releases.

I think posts like this are excellent for the community to keep ANet honest with regard to timely blog posts/responses. However, I also think the community can relax their pitchfork hands.

Later, I’ll probably do the math to see how the differences between armor translate based on a damage equation I saw earlier. I’m curious now.

Are there any numbers on how many people actively engaged in competitive PvP in GW1? If anyone has it, feel free to PM it to me. I don’t want to start a numbers game, I’m just genuinely curious how popular it was for my own knowledge.

Earlier, I saw Braxxus post that he’s actually most angry about the fact that he can’t carry his team even more with individual play (I think I remember that right), while others are partly disappointed that the emphasis on team is overshadowed by other mechanics.

I feel bad for those who expected something more akin to GW1 and were let down, but then again, the foundation GW2 has set is exactly the MMO I’ve been trying to find for years. Every other MMO has fallen flat for one reason or another, except this game. It has its problems, but I can accept them considering the amount of fun I have.

Also, I have yet to find a single thing about LoL that I think is better than DotA 2, and the boring meta award for me goes to SC2. I followed professional SC2 for months and months with very few positive surprises in meta/gameplay evolution.

Different strokes, I suppose.

I was skeptical when the post started “I a very good Thief player”, but this seems like a rational analysis with some interesting ideas. Offloading some of that front-loaded damage and distributing it over a duration maintains PvE DPS potential (if done right) while releasing the one-shot syndrome in PvP.

Not that Backstab is the Thief PvE spec, and this might even increase Thief PvE DPS viability, depending on where they sit now in the whole scheme of things (I don’t Dungeon/PvE much, so I have no idea what that landscape is like).

BishopX.6453:

there is a warrior skill that REMOVES all conditions and gives you EVERY boon for warrior and thats fine, but a guardian skill that gives you boons and takes all conditions from everyone else onto you.. needs a nerf?

Enlighten me. Which Warrior skill is that?

crewthief.8649:

My personal opinion that Thieves are a bit out of hand is based off of my personal experience playing the game. I had that opinion before I read this thread. You know, not everyone who thinks balance needs a bit of work are just terrible players, right?

And you know that not everyone who claims to be good is actually good, right? I didn’t call anyone out as being bad, as I don’t know any of you. However, why am I supposed to believe you’re good? Because you say so?

I’ve been around these forums fairly consistently for a while, and I can’t remember any posts that actually try to weigh the Thief class objectively or aim for the crux of the problem. Is it just that Backstab does too much damage? Doubtful, but that’s all I seem to see: shallow analysis based more on emotional reaction than objective analysis.

This has to be a troll thread. Praying it gets closed quickly.

My question is: why does it matter that he could 1v4 against people who didn’t seem to know what they were doing? Is that the goal of balance, to make sure everyone can 1vX given particular skill levels?

This is another case of people focusing on some out of context point, claiming imbalance, and then siding with one another into a Red Rover-style band of brothers. Someone might challenge them, but they say “Look at us, the proof is in the pudding, Thieves are OP”, and discussion falls to trash because no one knows how to remove emotion from the equation and discuss the details to come to rational conclusions.

At this point, we have those who fly off the handle because a number looks high, and those who have been aggressively called OP to the point where they’re forced into the defensive. Even if Mr. Rogers came on these forums and, in the nicest way possible, proposed that many people probably aren’t as good as they think, there’d instantly be a strong reaction saying “Nah, you’re just OP, check out all of my brethren who agree”.

Conversation’s unfortunately going nowhere, and it bums me out.

I’m going to agree with evilapprentice, on the grounds that I don’t trust complaints for the sake of complaining. However, I think a few things about the Thief could be looked at (note: I don’t play Thief, and I’ve only looked at the Traits a few times, so please feel free to explain the finer points):

1. Perma-stealth. We had a situation the other day where a single Thief was hiding in stealth on a WvWvW point for several minutes. A large group of us was scattered, all auto-attacking, all dropping AoE. A few times we thought we found him, but couldn’t be sure. I saw a Shadow Refuge drop, instantly lept onto it with a Hammer combo, but still nothing. Finally a Binding Blade hit, we converged, and dropped the Thief. However, it was a little silly. I heard that the Thief has to hit someone to continue the stealth, so I don’t fully understand the mechanic, but this leads into my next point that pertains more to sPvP.

2. Tiny Window of Opportunity. One of the issues I debate with myself frequently on is around the window of opportunity to attack various classes. As a Warrior, I’m always right where I am, with no real surprises. I can break stuns, but in I believe every case, I remain where I am. It works for me, but with Mesmers blinking/decoying/etc. all over constantly, and with the Thief’s ability to frequent stealth/vigor, I feel like I have these tiny windows to actually do damage. I have multiple openings for a CC combo, but trying to actually chain them together successfully is almost silly amounts of difficult. However, this is only one piece of the potential problem, combined with the next point.

3. Damage to Window of Opp ratio. I’m fine with ultra-survivable builds that counter CC chains and are hard to hit. In fact, they can be enjoyable to fight. What’s much less enjoyable is the slippery slope I feel like I’m on when fighting one because of the damage potential that remains. For example, if I were to choose weapons/traits/utilities that maximized my survivability, you’d notice in a wild reduction in damage. It’s a trade-off. It almost feels like Thieves do not have a similar trade-off, or if they do, it isn’t necessarily that impactful.

4. Being able to use Steal in the middle of the animation of another ability. It honestly just feels like a bug, and I would very much be unsurprised if this were changed in the near future. To me, this is the crux of the real issue with the Backstab combo, and not just the number Backstab pops up with.

The thing to note is how teamwork and coordinated AoE start to impede a Thief’s ability to influence a game. At what threshold is the burst from a Thief too little to make sense in a coordinated team fight, given general Thief squishiness? Their ability to pop in, do damage, and (hopefully) pop out safely is sort of what the class is built around, yes?

At the end of the day, I’ll be curious to see what ANet does.

Defektive.7283:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Defektive.7283:

Whirling Axe does less damage than Axe #1 attack unless you’re hitting greater than 4 (real world, 5-6) people at a time.

It’s damage is bad for an attack with a cooldown.

How about when you’re in a combo field?

Never tested w/ a combo field, but the combo field needs to force twice the dmg output in order for it to break even with Axe1 DPS. But then there’s an issue of building an attack around a field.

My thought is that it’s a team game first and foremost, so you have the utility option a combo field brings. What I’m unsure about is how much the combo field actually increases damage by with random projectiles firing from the whirl, even in a team situation. However, if you create several stacks of confusion, or keep blindness up, it seems like it could be very useful.

It just feels like a long whirl has its uses beyond damage that I’d like to see explored.

Defektive.7283:

Whirling Axe does less damage than Axe #1 attack unless you’re hitting greater than 4 (real world, 5-6) people at a time.

It’s damage is bad for an attack with a cooldown.

How about when you’re in a combo field?

Prancer.5680:

If it’s not fit for tPvP, then it isn’t fit for the game.

Why does sPvP hotjoin have to be full on derpmode? What is there to do as a mostly solo player?

The map actually hurts my enjoyment of the game, and lots of others. Everytime it pops up I want to leave the match. If tPvPers don’t have to tolerate it why should anyone else?

Tell you what lets make it fair for everyone, put it in tPvP aswell, I enjoy ruining other peoples fun too.

So leave the match. It’s hot-join. It means absolutely nothing, and people can repopulate any server they want at any time.

Eventually, it’s possible an FPS model will fully form with custom arenas, and you’ll get your public customs for guilds or what-have-you that only include certain maps in the rotation. Then you can join something that guarantees your favorite maps.

Until then, perhaps we should calm down. It’s one map, and it’s highly avoidable with absolutely no actual consequence.

Is Capricorn poor quality, or do you just not like it? I think it’s fine for a fun map. It has no place in a competitive environment, and as a result, it isn’t in the tPvP rotation.

People take losing so hard, even in scenarios designed to just be fun, that incorporating new/interesting mechanics is always going to be dangerous. Personally, I almost wish they would create a map where the third point is in the middle of a large minefield that randomly blows you all over the place, just for gigs. Unfortunately, hot-join PvP is serious time, so I’ll have to stick with the serious maps people decide are best.

Do people forget about the cannon/Elixir of Heroes on the ship? I bet the Elixir is designed to help ward off sharks for the decap at least.

Underwater combat has its problems, but I personally like what they tried to do with Capricorn. It may not work for people and is therefore considered “bad”, but I’d rather see them try and fail with maps than do the same old song and dance.

Braxxus.2904:

And…

Ele’s are overpowered now.

Interesting meta switch.

Though nothing else has changed, it’s just an addendum apparently. Now it’s:
Mesmers/Thief/Guardians/Elementalists

Anyone want to start a pool on the next class to be added to the axis of evil? Say, 5 gold buy-in?

5 gold is still a lot for me, as in I don’t have that much to pay.

However, my vote goes for Engineer, with Necro being a close second.

Deboog.1847:

Players have every right to information

Blame the community, not Anet. That’s like blaming Anet for showing scores in WvW, It’s not like anyone is dumb enough to complain about that… right?…

Nothing is stopping you from keeping a tally of all of your kills/deaths.

Also, I do blame the community.

Where are all the Thieves/Mesmers to save the day? I thought they were OP.

If the GS provides 995-1100 power, and weapon power truly does vary per swing based on this range, then eventually it turns into a matter of getting the best range rolls.

I doubt that you received perfect rolls. Also, where’s the line for what can/cannot be used? If Signet of Rage is used, are all utilities fair game? If Unsuspecting Foe is used, can any trait be used? Is it fair or not to stack power from a sigil?

I personally think if this is going to be a competition, there should only be one line: no outside influence. No allies, and no sigil buff stacks. Secondary weapon, utilities, elite, traits, and runes are all fair game to see how high it actually can go.

I think it’s safest to assume absolutely nothing about what will/will not make it into the stat sheet. I do think the discussion on the introduction of KDR is interesting though.

BishopX.6453:

id like a 15 vs 15 deathmatch. especially for us pubsters who just want to run out and beat on people for a few hours after school/work

You say you want that, but I don’t believe you. What about it is appealing to you, considering the game as it stands? What do you think the experience would be like?

I’m going to make an assertion:

A real PvPer will be committed to continuous self-improvement in order to be ahead of the game and achieve recognized victories. In order to get to the top, you have to constantly challenge yourself, and one of the best ways to improve is to seek situations that you may very well lose in. If focus is put on KDR, then you are seeking situations which you have a high percentage of winning.

Therefore, a real PvPer will put no stock in KDR, because it pales in comparison to organized tournament/competitive victories.

Also to note, since this is a team game, one might sacrifice KDR for the good of the team to achieve victory. I’ll take that PvPer over a KDR-focused player any day of the week.

Glass Cannons aren’t “nuke missile”, they are scissors, countering paper, countered by rock.

I’m very suspicious of people who claim they know what they’re doing.

This thread pleases me. It pleases me greatly.

I don’t know why people say things like this:

- they have on demand, 100% damage mitigation in the form of stealth. Even block/invuls/shields pale in comparison

Because it’s completely untrue. It isn’t the game mechanic to be 100% damage mitigation.

For those who get offended when people talk about/advocate balance at higher levels, you have to understand that a game that desires to be an e-sport must be balanced at the top tier. The End. There’s no other way around it.

I generally agree with Schwahrheit. Where is the desire to improve? If something is killing you, don’t you want to try to adapt and overcome the obstacle? I cannot empathize with another human who doesn’t embrace challenges like that, instead opting to complain about balance and hope the developer changes the game for them.

There very much is a “spoiled kid” mentality permeating games these days, and it’s unfortunate.

Two people have expressed positive interest, but neither gives a reason other than “I want it”.

Honestly curious: why do you want it?

How is the condition damage of a Rifle/Sword build that actually itemizes for condi?

I really need to start playing around with other weapons. I love Hammer/GS so much that I have a hard time arguing for other types of Warrior builds.

Where did you see the screen-shot?

I will add that, in my experience, KDR only ever creates a venomous environment. It’s used as the public end-all be-all, regardless of context. People tout theirs like it’s the holy gospel of skill determination, and if yours is low for any reason, you’re automatically bad.

Of course, those people’s opinions mean little, and I don’t care to ever have any sort of meaningful relationship with said people. KDR itself means basically nothing, as well. At the end of the day it’s just a fun stat, but I personally believe it’ll have a negative impact on the community.

If it does release, I’ll just have to do what I did in AoC: repeatedly throw myself into death to sacrifice my KDR intentionally. I’d much rather people think I’m bad before I paste them to the ground.

EDIT – I don’t think it’ll have any impact whatsoever on competitive play. “The Maelk Award” was created when the captain of Evil Genius’s DotA 2 team, Maelk, went I believe 0-21 with Venomancer, with his team still winning the game. Professionals will know that getting kills and avoiding deaths aren’t the most important things. The only thing they’ll care about is winning the match.

This is strictly a “fun” pub stat.

a reliable way to damage high toughness builds in while using power

This is paradoxical. High toughness is specifically designed to counter power, and conditions are designed to counter toughness.

If you create a situation where Warriors can counter toughness stacking with just power, what happens in that situation where you sub out someone toughness stacking and sub in someone with a more balanced build or naturally low toughness?