Guild Wars 2

Remember when Kalar mentioned that Moa should probably be changed? I do. I wanted to go ahead and put the reminder out there, because everyone seems to just be chomping at the bit to talk about how OP it is with elaborate examples to get us to admit that Moa should probably be changed.

Except we already did. We’re just more interesting in going out and improving instead of pigeonholing ourselves into impossible scenarios via written word and doomsday theorycrafting.

@Kalar Meadia: I’ll drink to that post. Cheers.

If you ever calm down, I’m going to ask questions about what your main sources of damage were and generally inquire about the fight. Until emotion submits to logic, I’ll be playing the game.

If only I had a replay of the fight to watch. Alas, I’ll never know the true story. This thread’s too emotional for any sort of logical discussion on how the fight actually went.

The Warrior was specced high damage because he was a roamer designed to end fights. It’s ultra easy to counter when Johnny Anywarrior specs Bull’s Charge/Frenzy and tries to kill me in a random pub, but high damage specs can still have their place in an organized fight.

I actually really love the size of hammers in this game. If anything, I think some of the Greatsword models are a bit oversized.

Two things:

1. The Guardian is still pretty close to dead, which makes me think it was a fairly even 1on1, if it was in fact a 1on1. Maybe the Guardian avoided/mitigated the spike damage and forced the OP to spam small hits to play to the Guardian’s strengths. An image of a passive boon doing the majority of the recorded damage is by no means the full story.

2. The Guardian is in the guild “Deal With It”, which I found hilarious considering the context of this thread.

It looks like Sword-Shield is your friend against ranged. Using Zealot’s Defense and Shield of Absorption to counter Volley/Auto Spam/Killshot should really help you mitigate any of his ranged damage. Follow it up with a Shield of Judgement to apply Prot to yourself, teleport in with Flashing Blade to blind, then swap to GS. From there, if he has been Rifle for at least a handful of seconds, you can imagine he might switch back to GS to get more damage in. Dodging out after he consumes blind, following with Binding Blade, pulling him close, then Whirling Wrath for some solid damage.

I’m not sure what utilities you like to use, but Hammer of Wisdom would be wonderful to apply some good pressure/CC while he’s shooting you (and you’re blocking it). Perhaps the natural KD could lead the charge for you to teleport in and start up on him again. If you pull 10 points from Honor (I’m not sure what you’re using in the Grandmaster slot, but bear with me) and put another 20 in Power, you can trait such that your weapon isn’t destroyed when commanded, which means 2 CC’s on command from the hammer before it dissipates, in addition to its natural KD.

Of course, this depends on whether or not he runs Balanced Stance, how he lead into 100B (Bull’s Charge? Bolas? Leg Specialist 1 second immo from a Bladetrail/Rifle shot?), etc. etc. etc. I also understand Guardians are subject to a 10 second weapon cooldown, so my usual ideas to swap back and forth between weapons (I love Fast Hands and will never not use it, even though it has a buggy quirk at the moment) fall flat sometimes depending on how you start the fight.

In short though, Warriors will almost always Whirlwind Attack immediately after 100B. It’s extra damage, but it’s also predictable and removes one of their potential dodge abilities. If he gets to range, that isn’t necessarily bad for you either depending on your condition removal/availability to swap to Sword-Shield. Also, Wall of Reflection could be very handy, as well as Judge’s Intervention (since you already have a Sword teleport and a GS leap, you’ll be able to close even if he knocks you back and tries to roll away).

Sometimes though you’ll encounter something and won’t quite have the tools to deal with it as you please. You could Utility yourself to easily handle someone like that, but what do you sacrifice? Would it be worth it? Just remember that many people are predictable in this game, so if you get close to a Warrior with a rifle, odds are he’s going to instinctually use Rifle Butt to knock you away, so it’s a good time to dodge. If he has a GS out, from range he’s probably going to Bladetrail (which you can just soak if you want. I also recommend running perpendicularly to the line between you and him, as I’ve known Bladetrail to have a very difficult time compensating for perpendicular movement like most projectiles can), and if he leads with an immo/stun then 100B/Whirlwind is following.

In any case, best of luck out there!

Nostalgia’s a hell of a drug.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take GW1 to develop into what I can only assume was the most dramatic and emotional experience of some people’s lives? Was it like that from launch, or did it take several months? Or maybe years? I’m genuinely curious.

Very fun game to watch, thanks for posting!

Thanks for the feedback, EasymodeX. I caught the end of a game, I think SK vs. CLG or something, and the whole thing was very disappointing for me to watch. It seemed like certain abilities like Flash give basically all of the heroes free outs from gank attempts. Creeps do seemingly trivial damage to one another, making last hitting seem wildly easy. Everything just felt slow-motion.

It probably didn’t help that one of the teams let some ranged hero basically clean up their entire base while they were failing some slow push into the other base, ported back too late, and lost. It was the most anti-climactic and seemingly unforgivable loss I’ve seen in a MOBA game, which was probably just terribly unlucky of me to see in LoL. There was also a distinct shortage in hero kills, like it took nukes from multiple heroes just to bring an enemy kind of low, even if the enemy was caught out.

I’d love to hear input from others on the game. For those who play/watch LoL over DotA, what contributes to that decision? What about LoL is more appealing, exactly? What is it about DotA that disappoints a LoL player?

I may jump on the case of those who Chicken Little all over the forums, but the game isn’t exactly “fine”. It needs a lot of bug work, more sPvP features, and then a strong analysis on the meta once more consistent competitive matches evolve it beyond where it is currently (whether that’s a much more refined version of the current strat, or if counter-strats develop etc.).

Game isn’t fine, and the sky isn’t falling. People need to keep pressure on the important issues while still just remembering to breathe.

So, debate about whether or not these abilities were taken from LoL, which probably took them from other sources, which took them from yadda yadda blah, I have an earnest question that is sincerely not a troll.

What is appealing about LoL? I’ve been a DotA player since playing frequently (and terribly) in college dorms 7-8 years ago. I play DotA 2 on occasion and watch competitive DotA 2 tournaments. I’ve tried to play LoL, I’ve tried to watch LoL, and I personally don’t see the appeal. However, it’s hard to argue with 200k+ viewers, so what are the intricacies about the game?

What sort of big plays happen? Is the pacing easier to follow, or does it just seem slower to someone who doesn’t often watch? What sort of things determine an individual’s skill?

I don’t want to pass any sort of personal judgement without having the game explained to me so I know facts instead of uneducated opinions based on a lack of experience. I don’t need comparisons to DotA, I’ll be able to draw those myself. I’ve just been hoping to find an avid LoL player/follower to help me understand the little things about the game that make it popular.

Sorry for the derail (semi-sorry, my curiosity stole the rest of the apology), but I must know.

@Oni: you can’t possibly think that the majority of complaints about Moa Bird aren’t from hot-join players who got moa’d and killed a few times. The skill might need a tweak, but a bit of effort and the majority of complaints could be avoided, whether it’s through more intelligent play or better teamwork.

How many threads just like this one result from someone getting emotional about dying just a couple times to an ability? How many times do people claim imbalance before they even really try to overcome an obstacle? Too many.

Ah yes, the bruised ego resulting from dying a few times because it’s too much to ask to figure out the cast animation and dodge it.

Ah yes, using Diablo 3 as an example of a game that’s ruined. I’d like to see the source for “most players” having left out of boredom. The overreaction on that game was absolutely ludicrous.

If I use my 20+ years of gamer experience, then I realize that 15+ of it was games with absolutely no content patches whatsoever. I enjoyed playing the game just to play. I was never incentivized to play Mario, it was just fun. Counter-Strike never rewarded me in the 4+ years I spent on the same small subset of maps, and yet I came back night after night just to play the game. Why? Because it was fun.

I care about the game. I don’t think things are very bad. I’d love to see what people have to say when they aren’t holding back, as I know I haven’t been. If the truth hurts, then it’s a double-edged sword that should be hurting both parties. ANet needs to make a few key policy changes and get some rock solid features out the door, and the gaming community at large needs to realize how unnecessarily impatient and spoiled they act. Consumers in this day and age are complete brats about basically everything from what I’ve seen, and it never ceases to amaze and irritate me. But I digress. And now I sleep.

Ship.3612:

Not sure what you guys are doing then, if you aren’t using leg specialist, sword, mace, shield stun, or bolas for extra opportunities to land hundred blades, you are better off with axe/mace and switching weapons out of combat for roaming. It is far from our worst ability, just takes skill to setup and sometimes coordination with your team. Any ability that can instantly take someone out of a fight when landed is not terrible, sorry.

I personally run gs axe/shield roaming burst build and often switch out frenzy for bolas, giving me 2 utilities, leg specialist cripple, and shield stun to land full or partial 100b. Switching 100b to the gs burst would be pointless when we have eviscerate, and hurt our weapon combinations with gs and overall damage.

Rank 32 95% games on warrior.

100B itself can’t instantly take anyone out of a fight, and you don’t have to apologize when I know you aren’t sorry. Most times you need at least two utilities to set it up for the “instant” kill, whereas Whirlwind Attack, Bladetrail, and Rush are always useful completely on their own. I don’t use GS for roaming, I use it for mobility. We’ll also have to agree to disagree that setting up 100B with an immobilize takes skill.

I run Hammer/GS, and I can’t imagine playing anything else considering the fun I have in fights. You can keep your axe/shield.

Hsulf.9370:

@cogbyrn

For a game to be an esport, people have to be able to make money from it by streaming, youtube, tourny winnings, sponsorships, whatever it may be.

Dota doesn’t have these retrictions in place, Gw2 does.

Therefore, even if private servers were opened, you wouldn’t get truely good teams until the money arrives, which won’t happens till they drop the money ball and people can actually make chedda from their product.

Till then we won’t have an esport. You’ll have a great game with private servers with no professional teams playing.

As soon as they drop the money bomb, which will be when the game is balanced, you may even see teams like fnatic and TSM showing up.

But even the most experienced promoters will have issues with the current T&C’s.

This is why comparing Gw2 to Dota, lol, or any competetive game at the moment pales into comparrison, and also why intoroducing private servers without lifting $$$ rectrictions won’t change the current feeling in the community.

I thought we were talking about features. You’re absolutely right, but if that’s a T&C problem, then odds are it wouldn’t come from a blog post from the game designer.

So where’s the uproar? People are complaining that they won’t have a ladder, or they won’t have spectator mode, or this class/that class is OP, or that they are disappointed in hot-join scoring. If ANet is going to hammer down on potential third-party revenue as a result of their game, that seems to be a much bigger issue.

Perhaps I missed the thread that has been since lost to the winds of the forum that raised appropriate concern. If so, let’s revive it. Make more noise about the crux of the issue. If this stranglehold suggests that ANet is committing e-sports suicide by trying to control all revenue-creating GW2 content on the internet, where’s the passionate “Ummm… hello?”

Perhaps I missed an important release/ANet addressing that issue already, and if so, I’ll do some searching. However, that doesn’t seem like a feature to me, just a thing that needs to happen for the game to really explode on the scene.

Also, DotA 2 is in beta just like Gmail was in beta for years. I’m starting to think every single game should ship with the stipulation that it’s still in beta for 6 – 12 months even though it’s basically finished. Then, another 6 years down the road, they’ll have to start shipping games in alpha, because people expect the game to be basically finished in beta (sort of how betas now are expected to be free/pre-plays instead of actual beta tests).

But I digress. These threads are getting a little stale, so I’m just going to go enjoy my time elsewhere.

Last I checked, DotA 2 doesn’t have rankings, just hidden brackets so you can kind of match up against people who are at a similar skill level. Pubs also don’t matter.

All of the competitive/e-sports events in DotA 2 take place in private matches. Then, the match-making is up to a community that wants to sponsor tournaments held on their private server.

So, really, a matchmaking/ranking/ladder system is often just something for casuals or non-competitive players to dink around in. Actual e-sports take place in private arenas organized by third parties.

Kind of makekittenlad private servers are coming up right after the paid tournaments. In the interim, paid tournies will be a better opportunity for more serious PvPers to play against more serious PvPers more often. Then, custom arenas will allow serious teams to scrim one another privately, and third parties will be able to start looking into organizing tournaments on their servers. Then, when spectator mode arrives, the foundation will be in place for actual e-sports to happen.

That’s how I see it anyway, and it makes all the sense in the world to me.

I didn’t say useless, it’s just more situational and, in my opinion, worse than the other GS abilities. I used it most often to cleave down illusions, and I even had an opportunity the other day to use it on Thieves Guild after LoSing the mobs to line ’em up. The duel with that thief lasted at least 2.5 to 3 minutes (I prioritized point defense, and he seemed spec with all sorts of stealthiness in mind), only ending when one of his teammates came (none of mine showed up). I thought we were destined to fight forever.

Anyway, 100B has its place. If it was removed, I wouldn’t miss it. That’s all.

Excellent work. Thanks again.

I’m wondering if anyone in Bellevue has any clue how much of an unfinished sPvP they made and how pretty much they lost the game already.

And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up. And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

— Revelations 16:8-11, 17-18

If you want to speak of the doom of a game, I recommend checking out The Bible for some more exciting verbage.

Anyway, I don’t know what game some people are playing, but it must not be the same one I am, because I don’t see an incomplete mess. TF2 might have launched with all of those features, but I don’t remember it having a full and innovative PvE leveling experience or large-scale WvWvW. It might have had some good features, but I don’t remember it rising through the ranks as a competitive e-sport. My memory seems to be filled with an endless rain of hats.

I love TF2, but apples and oranges. At the end of the day, the game could be more finished in various regards, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play. The thing I’m most looking forward to is spectator mode, and that isn’t even placed in the batting order yet, but I can wait.

Thanks for taking the time and effort, Sami. It’s much appreciated.

I can understand not wanting the loss in DPS in PvE for those instances where you can stand and burn, but “DPS” in PvP means almost nothing. I use 100B once in a blue moon, usually as a means of controlling an area of the fight or getting someone to use a dodge. Its damage means nothing to me in PvP, as I use the GS more for the ranged cripple, charge, and Whirlwind damage-dodge-combo-of-awesome. With my weapon swap on 5 seconds anyway, I don’t need to be in GS for long before switching back to Hammer time.

Perhaps getting rid of 100B could spark an increase in Auto damage to help boost it up in PvE. I do understand the PvE concern of losing 100B, but then again, if the burst could stack more vulnerability, perhaps that would help compensate as well.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

To those talking about software development life-cycles, etc… Software engineer 12 years here (raises hand). Although good points are made, here’s the bottom line. sPvP side of the game feels like It shipped too soon. When they said things like “we know how critical observe mode is to making sPvP an esport” I assumed that feature would be a top priority and be available within a month.

I’m sure you’ve read The Mythical Man-Month, or at least heard of the concept, so the irony of your statement that it would be available in a month struck me. I half-expected you to say they should have thrown more people at it if too many were occupied with developing PvE content, working with WvWvW, fixing bugs, etc.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to start industry experience kitten-waving, but I’m still surprised by some of the strong opinions out there. Ah well, such is life.

Let’s not forget, also, that the game has no subscription. No one is tied to it. People say that the claim to “just quit until the features are available” isn’t valid or is inappropriate for the situation, but I think it’s very appropriate. If it bothers people that much, take a break and come back when the competition starts to kick off. There’s no shame in it, no stigma, it’s just a game that you aren’t even paying monthly for. Teams that play through will probably be a few leaps ahead, but there’s no reason to stress about it and force yourself to play against your own will.

And if you refuse to come back because the game didn’t have the features you wanted when you wanted, then an image of a pouting child with arms crossed comes to mind.

EDIT -

I really do not mind paying a monthly fee for a game if I see that the money is used to hire people to fix and improve things. Maybe they should implement a way to donate gems, so poor ANet can actually hire some programmers to do the work the designers are promising.

Speaking of The Mythical Man-Month, I suggest you take a look. Throwing more developers at a project doesn’t mean development time will necessarily go down.

I’m surprised everyone knew that the exact order of deployment is going to be:

1. Paid Tournaments.
2. Private Servers.
3. Other stuff to be disclosed later.

I’m surprised everyone already knew that servers were going to be rented out, and that the payment options are still undecided and potentially up for discussion, provided an appropriate thread.

I’m surprised everyone already knew that you could fund your own PvP endeavors if you were good enough by earning tournament tickets/gems for more tournament tickets by winning.

I’m surprised everyone already knew and was comfortable with the fact that ANet was listening to our concerns and was prioritizing with feedback kept in mind.

Anyway, sure, you can get the impression from the tone that it’s behind schedule. For those who work with large companies and have deliverables scheduled to specific deadlines, what do you do when you’re behind schedule? You bust your kitten to compensate, unless you’re a slacking consultant that is milking a client for more than necessary (I’m a consultant, I’ve seen it done by others, it’s disappointing). I doubt ANet is built on a bunch of slackers considering their success

Also, this is not a typical client relationship. I’m not sure what type of client relationship experience is floating around, but I personally work with a main contact or a small team of a few people. Other agencies or interesting parties might be brought in for various requirements gathering or sign-off purposes, but me creating a personal relationship with my small subset of contacts makes it a whole lot easier to be transparent.

Now imagine you have 100 contacts for one client. Your job is to keep all of them happy. What do you do?

You fail, that’s what you do. Unless they’re all clones of the same person, odds are you’re going to be working with all different personality types, and no matter what you say or when you say it (unless you’re lucky and it’s always good news/right on schedule/etc.), someone is going to probably spam your inbox with disappointed e-mails about something. How transparent do you become to these 100 people to make sure they’re all happy?

Now imagine your one client has 1000 contacts. Do you see the issue?

I’d love to get extreme detail. I wish I could sit in on conference calls and design discussions about the sPvP developments to come. I wish I could see their estimated timelines, short term and long term general goals, and how they manage the workloads/developers themselves.

If you want sugar-coated marketing, you should read some of the doozies I’ve seen from Google. At least you can gather that Jon’s a human being, and to be honest, you can tell he’s itching to share everything, but he’s shackled by internal process and regulation.

Did we really expect something different? That magically this post would include all sorts of insights about balance and meta development considerations? I thought the expectation was that it would be about the features, and it was. I went from having a foggy hear-say idea as to what was happening to a concrete relative release plan.

But, people are entitled to their opinions. If it wasn’t your thing, that’s fine. However, as someone who also works professionally with clients, has written blog posts, and works with marketing data, I was fine with it.

I didn’t say “you” did nothing but complain and cry, I said the community. You don’t have to act oblivious to the complete disrespect for proper software engineering, large-scale business practices, and the people themselves at ANet that has been exhibited on these forums. Many people throw tomatoes at ANet, only to expect them to kneel and beg forgiveness in return.

There’s no real insult to the fans’ passion and care, only imaginary sleights felt because of… I don’t know, reasons. They just used an old meme that is very, very clearly a simple joke.

I don’t expect people to understand the actual professional business world. I don’t expect people to understand project management paradigms, software engineering practices, or really anything that has to do with anything. I fully expect people to craft their own opinions based on what they know, even if it’s nothing, and I expect some to preach it as though it’s fact or simple truth.

However, when people take offense at jokes, I’ll be the one who stands up at laughs at the misplaced sensitivity.

And I can laugh very, very loudly.

@Khristophoros : I have no real problem with gearing yourself towards 100% uptime on those boons (absent any boon removals, of course).

The problem I was illustrating is that the Runes of Lyssa remove all conditions on you and give you all buffs for 5 seconds every time you activate your elite. I think 60 seconds is the shortest elite, and the ability to remove all conditions, let alone also gain all boons (including such beauties as Aegis) is extremely strong.

Perhaps the rune sacrifices too much to provide such a thing in the end, but I’m really, really enjoying it at the moment.

EDIT: also I find this

TL:DR – Less QQ, more pew pew.

offensive and utterly out of place

Hahahaha, oh comments like this amuse me. The community does nothing but complain and cry foul, ANet tries to add a touch of humor, and suddenly people take offense.

I find the whole “why aren’t they groveling at my feet after throwing tantrums?” attitude incredible.

Also, I had a chuckle at it.

Keep in mind that GW2 didn’t release as an sPvP exclusive game. Had they kept it in development to spend another few months polishing up some eSports-ready features, everyone who wanted to just PvE or WvWvW would have to sit and wait for no reason that impacts them. I get that they want it to be an eSport, people think the eSport side is the most important, etc. etc. etc., but the fact remains that this isn’t just a tPvP game.

Also, I think their order is appropriate, though I’m moderately concerned about the costs. Not that I’ll necessarily be partaking, but I don’t want entry fees into these tournaments to be such that people are discouraged from playing. The question of what people are willing to pay is important. Of course, professional teams with sponsors (which, sponsor display is another thing I’m curious about) will be fine, and splitting a $10/mo bill between 5 people is pretty darn easy, but I’m very, very curious to see how the costs pan out.

Also, keep in mind you can “purchase” gems for in-game gold as well. Earlier when I was checking it out, it seemed like about 2g would net you 800+ gems, but again, it all depends on how much things cost.

I get ha things like spectator mode is important for eSports, but right now, practice and true competition for these teams feels much more important right now to maintain interest and evolve the meta. With that in place, people can follow their favorite teams/communities to see how things are progressing without spectator mode until it arrives. They really need to nail the spectator mode as well, because the bar has been set very high with other games (such as SC2 and DotA2, both of which I’ve followed). They’ve seen what works and how those modes evolve, so hopefully they put together something awesome.

Then, all we need is an internet personality to captivate the audience. Something along the lines of Day9, Tastosis, Tobiwan, etc. Tobiwan’s enthusiasm got me started watching DotA 2 professional matches, and it hooked me. The insights provided by Day9 and the Casting Archon always interested me, because often they commented on the little things that anyone other than a professional probably wouldn’t know (timings, player tendencies, build order tells, etc.). Perhaps a game doesn’t need it, but hot kitten does it sure help.

If 5 signet/high damage is terrible in a group setting, then carries are terrible in DotA, because they provide nothing for the other heroes on their team.

Kimbald.2697:

My solution: keep the burst if you must (I never liked burst in pvp) but make it as difficult to pull of as it is to defend against it.

When someone blows 2 utilities and gears their entire spec towards the combo, and all I do is press “Endure Pain” to counter all of it, how does your solution hold up?

I get that you want a burst sequence to be difficult to execute, but I’m not sure how you even achieve that, mechanically. It isn’t a fighting game, which is the only type of game I can see that working as intended.

Sprawl.3891:

balancing around the 1 percent elite players will result in problems because you will have the elite players finding something not over powered and all the lower level players will be getting owned and get discouraged and quit the game.

welcome to why mmos dont make good esports. you dont cater to the masses and they quit thus no spectator interest

I’m not sure you can single out MMOs for this. I bet I could log into SC2 right now and 4-gate my way into the Diamond league. That build received a slight, professional-timing grade nerf, and as far as I know, that’s about it. It might be nerfed even more now, but I bet it would still be moderately effective on the masses.

Every game of every genre is going to have a skill-level rift that will upset balance. The issue for eSports is that you have to balance with the professional tournaments in mind. There’s really no way around it. If Johnny Everyamateur gets Frenzy/100B’d, is that much different than me playing Lina in DotA 2, walking through the forest beside someone, then hitting them with LSA/Dragon Slave/Laguna for an easy kill, does Lina suddenly need fixing? There have been a number of games I’ve queued up with my girlfriend (new to the game, so she’s in a lower bracket) where I’ve basically had free farm, after which I could just do whatever I wanted to rack up kills.

Is it the hero that needs to be rebalanced for a lower tier because it can instakill another hero? No. It’s the fact that the player had a slip in awareness, or the team communication failed (imagine how often that happens in pugs), or the support failed, or whatever.

If anything, GW2 needs to shake the coil of “game accountability” that MMOs tend to develop and evolve into a game that takes an attitude of “personal accountability”. You died to Frenzy/100B and are complaining? You were either outplayed, or you’re bad. Get better. You died against a class/spec that is designed to counter your playstyle? Without proper teamwork, you’re specifically designed to lose, so either try to play better or accept that you can’t always win every situation with every build.

Perhaps it just needs time. Maybe once the eSports developments start taking place, that attitude will set in more quickly. Maybe GW2 will fail miserably as an eSport for lack of depth/skill ceiling/whatever. Regardless, balance must be placed at the top tier as long as general consideration for the lower tiers is kept. The Frenzy combo is so mind-numbingly easy to counter for what seems like every class I can think of (maybe not necros? I’m too unfamiliar with their traits/utilities), and with an iota of teamwork, it becomes even less of an issue. If anything, it’s a wonderful tool to get people to examine the game more closely and work towards improving.

If 100B was the burst ability, odds are I’d never, ever use it in PvP. I already don’t often use 100B, though I will on occasion follow up a Bull’s Charge with a non-frenzied 100B to insure that they dodge after recovering from the stun. I’ll sometimes use it when someone is coming towards me just to make them think twice (which has backfired a few times, but oh well). I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d use anything other than the Hammer burst though, so I guess that isn’t that big of a surprise.

I do think Crescendoll makes a good point though, as there already is a very similar burst ability in the Warrior weapon sets. If they wanted to keep up with the theme of mobility, they could make the GS burst a leaping AoE “sunder” that stacks 3/6/9 Vulnerability on targets within the radius while doing moderate damage. It could have a longer range but smaller AoE than Earthshaker so it doesn’t feel the exact same. You’d have a charge, whirlwind, and a burst leap to play with for mobility, and maybe it would make the Vulnerability part of the auto feel less out of place. I might actually use that instead of Earthshaker depending on the situation.

Leave it to someone who makes their name Jay Wilson to try to troll. XBox Live is that way —-——————————————>.

Anyway, I love my Warrior because it seems to be the only class that’s brutally “in your face”. Every once in a while I enjoy relaxing into a ranged role, or running support, but at the end of the day I want to be up in the grits. I also have a personal affinity to two-handed swords, which warriors tend to be able to wield.

I roar around a battlefield slamming my hammer around, knocking people down, crippling people with sword throws, charging around, hacking and slamming my way through enemies. What other class gives me that sensation? None. I played a Guardian to level 31, with some sPvP and WvWvW mixed in, and although I initially thought I might appreciate a more “hybridized” class, the fact is that I don’t. I ran a few tests on a Thief, and although I love watching others play a Thief that bounces in and out of combat, it just doesn’t quite do it for me.

Whatever happens with Warriors in the future, I’ll be playing one. I don’t care how much dodgey Thieves and Mesmers annoy me, the feeling of catching one and pounding him/her into mist is more than enough to counter any frustration I feel when I’m fumbling around doing the wrong thing in a fight against one.

I’m certainly not a PvP pro. I’ve spent more time in WvWvW tooling around and diving into zergs with my hammer than sPvP. I think I’m rank 7, and I’m still experimenting with various timings to see when other classes are invulnerable and when they aren’t. I actually just recently started to really enjoy sPvP using my trusty GS/Hammer build. I don’t put a whole lot of stock in rank myself, as I see warriors decked up to the nines in spiky armor and fancy swords dying to my hammer after their burst combo failed miserably. However, I still think I need a lot more experience with the various classes to get my tactics down better, and everyone can always improve their muscle memory/response times.

However, I’m also not really calling for any balance changes. I have yet to run into something and die horribly that I didn’t think “Well, I handled that like trash. Hopefully I can find that situation again”. My girlfriend has asked me on several occasions what I would like to see changed about the Warrior class, and my main response has been “I can’t really think of anything, because I don’t feel like I’ve collected enough data points to say I think anything needs to be changed.” With the help of some level heads on these forums, I’ve seen that additional dynamics could be added to make the Warrior class more engaging in certain areas, but that’s about it from me.

I’d also be silly not to think that I wouldn’t love the pants off of the ability to test my own personal changes to the game. If I didn’t get caught up making whimsical changes to abilities just to see them act crazily in-game, I’d be all about testing all sorts of different subtle changes to see how they play out.

As far as removing frenzy, I’m torn. On one hand, I think Quickness in general adds an element of burst excitement to the game that could benefit GW2 as a spectator eSport. A moment where the crowd goes “OooooOOOOOOH!”, and you either have well-coordinated kills or a well-countered play by the defenders that turns the game to their advantage. Metered chess matches are all well and good, but I absolutely love standing up and screaming while watching an exciting event play out. Also, Frenzy warriors by and large are ridiculously easy to kill, so I personally have no problem with it.

On the other hand, it seems to be the elephant in the room, and if it’s going to cause continual balance issues down the road, I can deal with it leaving. Perhaps they could change the Quickness mechanic by cutting all of the effects in half and doubling the duration. Instead of 100% increased attack animation speed, you get 50% (or whatever the numbers are, divide the current by 2). The game speeds up, but not to the point where things are instantly popping. Additionally, instead of something like 50% increased damage taken for the duration, you take 25% additional damage. Instead of 4 seconds, it now lasts 8 seconds, so you have a period of “Alright, Team A just blew Quickness”, the pacing picks up, and it’s like a “play”. You try to maximize the amount of increased damage you do, but you have to mitigate the effects. Perhaps you use Quickness mechanics to draw out aggression on your focused target, and for example for Warriors, you use defensive cooldowns to negate the counter-burn and have your team make a move on some other target. Or whatever.

I’m rambling at this point, because I’m bored at work. In summary:

1. I’m no pro at PvP.
2. I’d love a local instance to test all of my whims on.
3. I’m perpetually torn on Quickness as a mechanic.

(FYI, I’m playing a shout warrior right now and I know the answer – the problem isn’t the warrior player build and instead of saying, “blame that GS/Signet warrior, he should have shout condition removal”, it instead should be, “hey, maybe I should build for my own survivability/condition removal”)

I particularly enjoyed this observation. I wonder how many people specifically don’t go with much, if any, condition removal because they expect the Warrior to do it for them. Then when they see the Warrior is signet spec, they yell at HIM for being selfishly specced.

Pugs are wonderful.

Most people here will never be top tier players, and their competitive tournament play will be amateur at best. Depending on the nature of whatever imbalance in meta exists, it will almost always look like a bigger deal than it actually is, because putting the effort into circumventing the problem is hard and stuff.

It is the nature of forums to blow everything in the game out of proportion, and it is the job of ANet to filter the feedback into reasonable and unreasonable requests, then iterate on changes. Nothing new, really.

Part of me wishes people could take a local instance of the game that would magically turn their wishes to reality, just to see how broken the game would be without it. Ah well. The best you can do is temper wild accusations of imbalance with reasonable suggestions for dealing with it.

If ANet came out and responded with any depth regarding the ideas for the Warrior class, every other person for every other class would start demanding responses to their ideas, then ANet has two options:

1. Start responding to everyone about everything lest the populace get angry about being snubbed.

2. Respond to a few, and make many people feel snubbed.

It’s a really slippery slope when it comes to communication with a community. The people who would be able to provide insight that mattered at all are busy, and company policy around disclosing what important decisions are being made is another touchy subject. Every single thing produced by an ANet employee and posted officially anywhere is always going to be referenced as fact.

What if they say the ideas are good? How many people take that to mean “We’ll get right on it”, and then start to get upset when the changes don’t happen?

Anyway, I wouldn’t expect ANet love. Not that you are, but so many people expect “developer” input on their posts, and that just isn’t really how things work. Then again, who knows what they’ll respond to and how.

With that out of the way, I’ve personally been having fun look at fights from the perspective of “what do they expect me to do” instead of “what should I do next”. I’ve seen many people just run away casually, I guess expecting me to do something that has an animation. Instead, I run with them and auto attack for fairly substantial damage. Many times I’ve caught myself doing the “obvious” thing, and many times, they’ll obviously dodge out of it. However, even with slow hammer abilities, I’ve caught people off-guard on a number of occasions. I even knocked an Eviscerate out of the air with Staggering Blow. Lucky? Yes, but I did see him coming towards me, and I did figure he had some sort of attack up his sleeve. Odds are he wasn’t expecting me to randomly knock everything back, and why would he?

Regardless of the fun-having, I’d still love to see more dynamic elements incorporated. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took multiple months for something to happen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just minor tweaks that happened instead of any class overhauls for the first 9 – 12 months anyway.

People in general are terrible sports in competitive situations and would rather win than have what Patrick Rothfuss explained in the Kingkiller Chronicles as a “beautiful game”.

Nothing new to see here.

@phaeris: If GS3 sends you back into the fight, it’s entirely your fault. The ability only ever goes where you point, never towards a target. If you have the cursor behind you when you right-click to control the camera, it will send you back, because that’s where it knows the cursor to be.

Also, GS5 has never sent me back when I didn’t deserve it. It sounds like a settings error (if you have it set up to auto-target), or a player error.

Further, I think Fast Hands is still very consistent in its behavior. The first time you swap weapons while in combat, you get a 10 second weapon timer. After that, it works fine until you swap weapons out of combat, at which point you get a 5 second swap timer and it resets the cycle (next time you swap in combat, 10 seconds, etc.).

If a group of people run up to a defended wall, or uncoordinatedly charge into a gate/wall/small area, then die, that’s their fault. Perhaps WvWvW failures are more because people think they should be able to run up and auto-attack the gate down instead of strategically setting up siege weapons and coordinating their efforts on a larger scale.

Anyway, I put some points into the defense line for a Warrior because it allows me to survive situations that would trash a glass cannon build. That goes for sPvP and WvWvW both.

I didn’t realize jumping around was warrior-ish/heroic. I guess I’ll have to add frolicking to my gladiatorial training.

I really wouldn’t be surprised to see the cooldown placed at 90 – 120 seconds, if only because combining it with Rune of Lyssa currently feels absurd (which is what I do as well).

It’s hot-join, which means the wins and losses are nothing. It’s absolutely no different than an FPS public server with people leaving and joining. Most of the time I don’t even notice if we’re winning or losing, I’m just enjoying playing the game and working on improving.

If you’re in it for the glory grind, perhaps you should re-evaluate why you’re playing Guild Wars 2.

Zatria.5783:

I agree. This was nothing more than proof that Anet really has no clue what is going on. Their ‘pets’ should do ZERO damage. Them being there is the only advantage they need. Illusion, that is it.

Claims ANet has no clue what’s going on, then claims phantasms should do 0 damage.

I see where this thread is going. I’ll bid this trash can adieu.

I think there are some interesting ideas, but a few necessary aesthetic concerns:

1. For the Mace #1 Attack 3, what is the combo field made of? I understand the desire for a combo field, but you’re wielding a blunt object in one hand. I have no idea what it could really be that would make any sort of sense.

2. For Hammer #3, I get the idea, but we aren’t Thor, or Wulfgar. Having a greatsword boomerang is already a bit of a stretch, but throwing a hammer at someone and having it somehow pull them back just seems aesthetically silly. I’d also personally rather have the conal cripple, but if they could make the movement more like Mighty Blow for Guardians (where the character leaps forward and slams down, providing movement but still making sense from an animation perspective), then it would be less of a mobility liability.

3. I use Greatsword all the time, and I would be heavily bummed by those changes. To be honest, moving 100B just frees up another ability slot that I would use more frequently, and then I’d probably almost never, ever use 100B. The bummer lies in 4/5. Bladetrail already doesn’t seem to do a very good job of being a predictive projectile when targeting an enemy, so when I hit someone on the way out, I feel good. If that turned into my only means of gap closing, I’d be horrified. Not only that, Rush is incredible. I know you’re looking at tPvP, but the consequences of WvWvW and even PvE and I’d venture sPvP/tPvP mobility give me a sad. The fact that it doesn’t often hit is almost a non-issue. It’s the long range dash that is the key that adds really good mobility for the weapon. A block would be nice I suppose, but the weapon seems geared more towards mobility, and blocking is in stark opposition to that design philosophy.

4. For Hammer #4, I think I’m the only one in the world who isn’t bothered by the self-root. I use it to follow up after an Earthshaker for clearing people away from the area, or for predicting when someone will be attacking and having the knockback already swinging when they get to me. It has its place, but if they wanted to make it so you could move while knocking back, they’d have to change the animation completely, and maybe reduce the AoE as well (even though it already isn’t very big).

5. For the Longbow F1, when is the boon removal applied? Is it ticked immediately, then every 5 seconds? Or is the first tick of removal after 5 seconds of being down? If it’s the former, I’d be concerned that it would almost be too good, and if it’s the latter, I’d be concerned that it would almost be a nonfactor.

6. For Longbow #1, I feel like there are already infinite ways to cripple. Putting it on something spammable in any class feels lame. I’m not sure what the answer is to spice this one up, but I’d personally prefer just about anything else. Maybe they can apply 1 second of burning or something to tie the weapon into a condition damage/burn theme.

I’m still wondering if the current meta will eventually shift to favor Warriors within a few levels before any balance changes are even made. However, it’s hard to tell when the meta has such a hard time developing on account of no private servers/tournaments.

Ah well. I think we have some good ideas here to make Warriors more dynamic, and I’ve enjoyed reading them. My current favorite is to turn banners into kits, as I would be very, very tempted to use one if that were the case. As it stands, I like them in something like WvWvW or potentially PvE, but they’re too “clunky” in my opinion. I’d be fine with stances too.

Essentially the tPvP Meta is revolving around Bunkers, dealing with Bunkers and Mitigating Bunkers. None of these areas Warriors really excel at.

One thing to keep in mind is about meta in general. From my minimal experience watching competitive scenes develop, meta leans one way, then someone has to figure out how to beat it. For example, if 2 guard comps are part of the bunker meta, perhaps an anti-boon comp will develop to counter it.

How do warriors fare against this anti-boon comp? Would they then be “meta’d” into the competitive game? I’d be hard pressed to think that ANet should jump the gun and do any Warrior balancing before more complex meta develops.

I would personally just like to see a bit more dynamic play involved.

@Braxxus: I had to check timestamps, and you posted that about banners 1 minute after I posted in the sPvP forum thread about banners.

Long story short, I agree completely about banners.