Guild Wars 2

Airanthus.4592:

why is it that many people both who write guides and the pro-players in the Tournament use Celestial Amulet? it gives a small bonus to everything but nothing you can specialize on

Because when team size is 5 people you don’t have any room for “specializing”

Melanion.4892:

Sure, every class has access to condi cleanse, but does that make it something they’re taking? No.

And? If you ain’t going to spec into condi cleanse then you deserve to die to condis.

And you still haven’t covered the fact that condi builds are penalized by everything a power build is penalized by (blocked/evaded abilities don’t apply condi) in addition to being penalized by cleanses, transfers, and duration reduction traits. Not to mention condi builds typically having much longer ramp time than power builds.

Condi builds are underpowered in this meta, and will continue to be so with or without the existence of Diamond Skin.

nearlight.3064:

Crinn.7864:

Melanion.4892:

Does nobody see the necessity of counters like this?

If you don’t have a class or two that can completely nullify a full condi build, condis will run rampant.

There are counters to pretty much anything in the game except for tanky/sustain cele builds, and even the tanky/sustain builds can be bursted if caught out. The inclusion of these hard counters is how anet keeps certain builds from running rampant and unchecked. If you didn’t have stealth high damage classes, other classes can run much glassier and without as much in the way of damage mitigation.

You don’t need hardcounters when the game is choked full of softcounters.

Every class in the game has access to condi cleanses, and that’s not even counting cleanses/transfers from sigils and runes. On top of that there is the resistance boon, in addition to things like plague signet and necro staff #4. Additionally there are a number of traits and runes that straight up reduce the duration or damage of condis. Oh and lets not forget the occasional cleanses from combo fields.

And if after all that you still somehow have issues with condis, you can always bring a bunker guard with the double AoE cleanse on each shout + triple cleanse on F2.

No one runs bunker guard anymore, since while it can be a cleansebot, thats all it can do anymore. It doesn’t have the tools needed to get rezzes and stomps in this AoE CC cleave spam meta since its health is too low with cleric.

The point was that if the person I quoted was somehow still managing to have trouble with condis despite everything listed before I brought up bunk guard, then they should probably think about taking a cleanse bot.

Melanion.4892:

Does nobody see the necessity of counters like this?

If you don’t have a class or two that can completely nullify a full condi build, condis will run rampant.

There are counters to pretty much anything in the game except for tanky/sustain cele builds, and even the tanky/sustain builds can be bursted if caught out. The inclusion of these hard counters is how anet keeps certain builds from running rampant and unchecked. If you didn’t have stealth high damage classes, other classes can run much glassier and without as much in the way of damage mitigation.

You don’t need hardcounters when the game is choked full of softcounters.

Every class in the game has access to condi cleanses, and that’s not even counting cleanses/transfers from sigils and runes. On top of that there is the resistance boon, in addition to things like plague signet and necro staff #4. Additionally there are a number of traits and runes that straight up reduce the duration or damage of condis. Oh and lets not forget the occasional cleanses from combo fields.

And if after all that you still somehow have issues with condis, you can always bring a bunker guard with the double AoE cleanse on each shout + triple cleanse on F2.

Supreme.3164:

As somebody said before in this thread : diamond skin is a hard counter to hard counter

The real problem is not even the condi spam which is manageable with enough practice, the issue is chill which affect the ele main profession mechanic attunement swap

The entire class is designed around attunement dancing even if this is less prevalent with tempest, ofc I understand the design point of view of having something affecting ele in particular, something like chill that completely shut down the whole profession; this was fine pre-HoT because it was not possible to maintain perma chill in any way.

But now you have an entire elite spec based around perma chill, this is the main reason why eles run diamond skin, it’s not because of the condi spam really but because of this devastating condition that can now be spammed with impunity; this is a hard counter at 100%

Now that reaper exist they should remove this fallacy of chill affecting attunement recharge, after that …trust me no ele would cry if you’d remove diamond skin the day after

Then give them a trait that specifically reduces the effectiveness of chill. Unilaterally making eles a hardcounter to all condi builds just because of the existence of reaper is absurd.

Besides “hardcounter to the hardcounter” is absurd logic. All that does is change the class that is getting screwed over.

zenleto.6179:

There’s “hash” for a start. Drug reference even if it is becoming legal in places. They’ve always frowned on that.

Hash has many meanings, of which only one is bad. example: Hash (programming)

Also it seems like everything these days is either a drug reference or sexual.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Crinn.7864:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

scarydogie.3024:

One thing to consider, do the illusions gain the passive buffs from signets or are they merely a visual display?

well, for my topic, i would like them to be a visual display, perhaps to confuse new and less experienced pvp players.

i’ll clear that up in the original post. thanks!

Generally speaking, making life harder for new players is pretty much never healthy for a game.

well, that may be true, but the real mesmer is too easily found out by not so new players.

In my experience people usually identify the real Mesmer by the fact that all the clones just stand around. Looking for signets isn’t even something most new/average would do anyways.

Besides tabbing through all the clones to see which one has signets is a terribly inefficient and slow way to find the real Mesmer.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

scarydogie.3024:

One thing to consider, do the illusions gain the passive buffs from signets or are they merely a visual display?

well, for my topic, i would like them to be a visual display, perhaps to confuse new and less experienced pvp players.

i’ll clear that up in the original post. thanks!

Generally speaking, making life harder for new players is pretty much never healthy for a game.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Bigger capture points will greatly reduce the clutter.

This, this game is appalling in how little space is utilized.

Deniara Devious.3948:

So basically if you haven’t bought the expansion, just don’t play at least not in the competitive level!?

All the old classes are using the new overpowered elite specs. GW2 has truly become pay to win and this will surely (and rightfully) aggravate a lot of players.

Buying expacs is no more p2w than any game that charges money to play.

You got 3 years of game out of the core purchase. If you seriously think you should be getting more than 3 years of gameplay for a mere 50 bucks you need to stop being a entitled brat.

logan.5846:

Boy, look at all those god mode Dragon Hunters making a mockery of the game..

Color me totally shocked to find out that traps which only work against bad players.. only work against bad players.

To play devil’s advocate here, I think the main compliant is that DH takes very little skill to execute on, but takes significantly more skill to counter. (no sorry dodge rolling a trap doesn’t mean you win.)

ReaperJr.5967:

3. In link with my first point, condition builds have no ‘counter’ except diamond skin. And no, cleanse is not a counter. Well, not unless you consider healing a counter to power builds. Moreover, cleanse is not readily available to everyone. And frankly speaking, condition builds can dish out more condi than most builds can cleanse. Resistance is an invalid argumemt for the same reason why endure pain and signet of stone are not complained about.

1.) Healing is reactive mitigation, and as such is actually a more effective against condi than power. Why? Because (excluding burn guard) condis are build around maintaining pressure over time. Power builds are usually built around spiking/bursting. Healing by virtue of being reactive rather than proactive is less effective against spikes because it has far less time in which that healing can be brought to bear, however Healing is extremely effective against builds that focus on maintaining pressure. (i.e most condi builds)

2.) Cleanse is totally a counter to conditions. Cleansing a condi removes all of the damage the condi would have dealt. Which is huge considering that most condi builds can’t spam their main sources of condi stacks.

3.) Condis in addition to dealing with cleanses have to deal with everything power builds do. If a attack is evaded or blocked, the condis applied by said ability don’t get applied.

There is a reason Reaper is the only strong condi build right now, and that reason is that Chill stacks duration rather than intensity which means it’s far less penalized by cleansing than other condis are.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Sykper.6583:

What I didn’t expect were tears. Bravo, I haven’t laughed so hard in a while.

You didn’t expect tears from a PvP community for an attack doing 20k damage? It doesn’t matter how gimmicky it is, people can’t handle situations where it felt like they couldn’t react, regardless of how many things they could have done to prevent it.

There are many builds that can potentially kill someone “before they could react,” gunflame’s only claim to fame is doing in one hit rather than 4-5 simultaneous hits.

And while the question of whether insta-gibs are good for quality of play is certainly a legitimate one, I’m not sure if nerfing the burst builds are really the way to go, since eliminating insta-gibs can cause some other problems, namely with the meta being overrun by glass cannon builds, since without the threat of getting blow up, there isn’t any reason to not run glass cannon.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I also disagree that removal of the holy trinity in PvE was a good thing, because based on what I hear about raiding, the holy trinity is sort of present anyway. You have someone who tanks, support who help heal the group, and DPS who bring the boss down as quickly as possible. If you want to design meaningful and complex encounters, structure actually helps you make it more complex without worrying about silly boundary cases. It’s important for balance.

Similarly, structure in their PvP is pretty fluid, from what I can tell. All classes seem to expect to be able to be all roles, and if they aren’t, then “diversity” is a problem. If they solidified builds for classes and had a pre-game draft of various builds (for example a “Condi Necro”, a “Bunker Guardian”, a “Support Ele”, etc.), then they could probably balance PvP much better. Instead, they throw a million variables into the mix and wait to see what settles.

Trinity is mandatory for meaningful raiding/PvE. Without having dedicated tanks and healers the developers cannot make PvE content hit hard enough to give the mechanics teeth.
There is a reason that GW2 has “speedrunning” rather than “progression”

I think the trinity hate comes out of WoW where blizzard took trinity to the far extreme – where tanks where neigh invincible, and DPS where glass howitzers that died when sneezed on, which naturally leads to some really obnoxious quality of play.
A better trinity model is probably Bioware’s SW:TOR which moderated the trinity, but still kept it in force.

Relevant

I really don’t get the condi hate this forum has. Condi builds are actually vastly more penalized than power builds are since there are so many things that can ruin their day.

Condi’s have to deal with having their condi application skill being dodged/blocked
Condi’s have to deal with the numerous cleanses.
Condi’s have to watch out for condi transfers least they kill themselves.
Condi’s have to deal with Diamond Skin.

Meanwhile the only thing power builds have to deal with are evades and blocks.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I’ve always thought this trait was extremely poorly designed. If Elementalists need more options for condi clearing, make it something active. Or do something like “Removes 1 (or 2, whatever) condis every 3 seconds while above 75% (or 50%, whatever) health”. Or “Reduces duration of all conditions applied to the Elementalist by 33% while above 75% health”. Or either of the two “while attuned to Earth” instead of at a threshold. Still passive, if passivity is what the design is really looking for, but they aren’t complete negation.

Why does it have to be an on/off switch?

This. Builds shouldn’t be able to passively hardcounter other builds.

Also all the “just deal 10% damage” folks seem to be forgetting that eles have the heals and defensives to easily stay above 90% vs the measly direct damage dealt by Condi builds.
Sure a condi build will eventually get them low enough, but by that time the condi build has already lost the fight.

I’m glad Eir died the way she did. I’m tired of the game industry godmodding characters.

Seriously Eir was a bipedal humanoid lacking any kind of shell, spikes, claws, or any real defense outside of opposable thumbs. And yet it still took a giant creature 5 times her size to actually kill her, and only after she was backstabbed.

Sytherek.7689:

Crinn.7864:

The masteries QQ is ridiculous. Would you rather go back to a leveling system where you can’t do content until you’re level X? The only difference between masteries and a traditional leveling system is that I can choose which zone’s masteries to focus on first rather than having to grind levels on all previous zones first.

Actually, I’m not interested in levelling at all. Progression is a synonym for mindless work, running in place.

I want content, not grind. I want to see things, have interesting adventures, find cool stuff.

Leveling systems don’t exist to make a grind, leveling systems exist to control the order that a player goes through content. Controlling the order a player goes through content is important because the devs have to be able to make sure a player has learned certain skills by the time they reach certain areas.

Example: Verdent Brink. VB can technically be done without a glider but the entire zone basically slaps the player in the face and says “learn to glide.” Because VB does this the developers can then assume that by the time a player leaves VB they know how to glide, and thus the developers are “safe” in including gliding mechanics in later maps. (just imagine the QQ if players where getting to the mordremoth story fight without learning gliding)

dragonWarrior.1045:

My intentions are to buy HoT at some point but I wanted to see how this played out. I purchased with real $$$$ GW2.0 (x3) almost 3 years ago so I am not a freeloader. I mostly play WvW and PvP so new content for PvE does not interest me. Apparently WvW is dead and PvP is useless without these new builds? Why do I feel like I am being held hostage for $50?? Is this the future of F2P?

You got 3 years of gameplay for that 50 bucks. Stop being entitled.

Given how badly people react to maps having simple environment hazards I can’t image the rage that would result from a water map.

Timston.1976:

By Spiro hunter you mean spirit ranger right?

I thought he meant Spyro Hunter but that’s just me.

PlayerSkillIssue.9410:

I go mid
I see spiro hunter
me go him
it starts disappears
i keep running
BOOM CHARIZARD
i dodge NO WORK
i block NO WORK
I now downstate

I play guild wars not peekaboo
plz nerf

Charizard is orange not blue.

The masteries QQ is ridiculous. Would you rather go back to a leveling system where you can’t do content until you’re level X? The only difference between masteries and a traditional leveling system is that I can choose which zone’s masteries to focus on first rather than having to grind levels on all previous zones first.

ReaperJr.5967:

sephiroth.4217:

Elite: a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society.

You will have to do what so many WvW and PvP players already did and buy HoT just to keep up competitively. We paid for Elite skills. Refer to definition of the word “Elite”.

They already blatantly stated that elite specs were merely a naming convention and were not to be taken literally. They were supposed to be an alternative form of gameplay that does not outclass pre hot specs. Supposed to be though.

Judging by the fact that elite specs can only occupy the third spec slot (and thus you can only ever have 1) it vary obvious that there will be more elite specs, and I’m willing to bet that the intent (regardless of what the PR department says) is that everyone will run 2 core specs + 1 elite.

boumz.9851:

trueshot was not unblockable before the update i dont know what you are talking about

True shot still isn’t unblockable. It was a typo in the patch notes.

Bunker Guards aren’t really a thing anymore. Burn Guards are still a thing.

I run axe and staff.

Come at me.

Prisoner.2419:

38 out of 40 players in NA’s matches running elite specs, seems balanced.

I’m 90% certain that they will add more elite specs in the future with the goal being that everyone runs 2 core specs + 1 elite spec.

Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered differentiating “elite” specs from regular specs.

Snorcha.7586:

I’m also a programmer by trade and I can tell you that if:

1. It took this long to fix major bugs like getting immobilized for no know reason;
2. Not being able to actually see anything on the screen cause of some fancy new effects or BUGS with powerful skills ; and
3. Have a tendency to be exceptionally inconsistent in the way I treat various parts of the product

I would be fired and replaced without a second thought, but this is ANET so it’s all good I guess.

aahhh another one of those “if this where my company…”

2 & 3 are subjective opinions. Number 1 shows you’ve never worked with the amazing complexity that is a modern game engine. (that pac-man project you did java 101 doesn’t count)

That not to say they should just leave bugs, but for the love of god debugging games is extremely time consuming because of all the interacting bits. This isn’t your college programming assignment.

apharma.3741:

Anyone who’s even bothered to mod games knows it’s not as simple as changing one value. I won’t admit to having a clue just what’s under the hood of GW2 but some games I’ve modded changing a value even by 10% often took me several hours to get properly working depending on how convoluted its interactions with other parts were and hunting down each line that needed changing.

For simple changes to damage, it is 99% of the time just simply changing a value. I expect it is no different here.
Now if you wanted to change how abilities function that might require some scripting, but even then the actual time it would take the scripters to do that isn’t overly long, unless you wanted to do something totally off the wall.

The reason the changes are so long in coming are quite simply:
a) needing raw data – what the playerbase says should always be taken with large amounts of salt. It’s usually better to wait a month or so to collect metrics, to get a clear picture. Otherwise you’re just spitballing the balance which never ends well for anyone.
b) making sure your changes don’t have unforeseen consequences. Often especially in game with as complex as meta as this one, even the slightest of changes can cause majors changes, and the last thing a dev wants is to break something else.

Signed,
Someone who does programming as a career, and does modding as a hobby.

same, and by the map chat everyone is having this issue

Kayberz.5346:

No one is claiming that unranked matchmaking is perfect, but 99/100 times its better than any matchmaking you will get in hotjoin. Sure getting matched a full premade when your solo is frustrating, but nowhere near as frustrating nor as frequent as getting uneven teams or getting auto swapped to the losing team right befor you were about to win like with hotjoin.

This is like asking for a sandwich. Recieving one with white bread, but then because you prefer wheat bread over white. You ignore the white bread sandwich and continue to eat moldy bread and complain you have no sandwich.

Premades aren’t even that much of a problem in unranked since the matchmaker is usually pretty good at assessing a given premade’s effectiveness and matching them accordingly.

Is it just me, or do most of “just do this to beat DHs easy” depend on the DH being a scrub.

Some of us don’t put our traps dead center of the node. Some of us take advantage of longbow skills. Evading the traps just mean you have one less evade to use against trueshot.

Also the virtue #3 is insane, it blocks everything, include unblockable things like a Necro’s marks.

I’m fairly certain the reason you can’t queue outside of HoTM is going to have something to do with how they manage cross-server.

They would probably love to allow people to queue outside of HoTM but if the tech doesn’t allow it……

Nova Stiker.8396:

I heavily disagree, Guild Wars 2 always had CC spam, the reason why it’s a problem now is the CC has way to big of an AoE and lasts way to long.

For the longest time CC had a max AoE range of 300. Earthquake, Earthshaker, Supply Crate had an AoE of 240. The biggest CC belonged to the Big Ol’ Bomb of 300 range and a 3 second delay.

CC spam has always been a issue in GW2. Old Hammer Warrior is proof enough of this.

The difference with HoT is that CC is now readily available to most classes.

There needs to be a system that changes CC from something to be spammed to something that is strategic.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Serious Thought.5394:

Idea: Give players break bars. Hear me out.

Each player has a breakbar, and stability enhances break-bar regen. Higher stack, higher regen. Thoughts?

Pointless, just put the crowd control under control.

No there should be a system in place that penalizes excessive CC spam.

The problem is that there is currently 0 penalty to just spam CC. We need a system where after getting subjected to so much CC you get some immunity, and this can be as simple as "after being subjected to X number of CC effects, you get Y number of stability stacks.

So if I’m in conquest I shouldn’t stand on red team’s nodes?

9/10

Only compliant is the difficulty getting hero points for elite spec, having most of the hero point locations requiring a decent sized group is not fun, hero points where previously a exploration experience not a raid one.

I don’t get the gripe with masteries. Masteries are imo a much more player friendly system compared to a traditional leveling system, since with masteries I can pick which ones I want to go up rather than being chained to a purely linear leveling system.

Taggerung.5364:

What is a large roadblock when it comes to getting into gaming? Accessibility, namely the system requirements. WoW has remained at the top in terms of popularity for nearly a decade due to an extremely polished user experience and consistent system requirements throughout the years. Add-on support is obviously top of the line, no other even comes close. Content quality aside, as it’s all player preference, WoW is simply the superior game.

No.
WoW got as big as it did because blizzard was the first company to discover and capitalize on the mass-appeal mmorpg market. WoW then managed to completely corner said market before any one else could get in and compete. Add in the fact that mmorpgs are odd in the fact that players typically never play multiple ones and leaving a mmorpg is often more difficult than other genres……

WoW is only dominant because of such a crazy huge headstart it had. Most of it’s systems are actually extremely outdated, inefficient, and poorly thought out, and in some cases downright punitive (gear grind anyone?), but WoW can get away with it because it has a 5million+ population and when it comes to mmos you can fix almost anything by throwing more players at it.

There’s a reason that pretty much every one of the WoW clone mmos ended up dead or with some minor population.

I get the impression that most of the masteries are just gating, since after all they can’t use level gating anymore since they didn’t increase the level.

Collero.7963:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Balance has actually gotten much better with every patch. Also, there is no bunker meta.

I won’t even bother explaining to you why you are so wrong.

Bruiser != bunker, and either way in my experience people die way more and way faster now than before.

And really I’m still confused by the argument that longer matches is a bad thing. In every game and sport I’ve ever heard of longer matches are considered something desirable.
Granted I’m one of those “oldschool” players that believe that killing opponents should be a achievement rather than a entitlement.

Harvey.7820:

brannigan.9831:

If the Meta is that all the elites rule the roost the no I don’t like it. It makes no sense to me to wave a magic wand and render all the old builds mostly ineffective. The game should be about as wide a variety of builds as possible being effective. That being said there will always be something people will cry about but I just don’t think its right to cudgel people into buying the expansion and to have everyone play a small variety of builds.

It’s called a business model. Anet needs to incentivize PvP players to purchase HoT

Honestly I think it’s more like there will be new elite specializations in the future, and that they plan on having builds always be two core specs + elite spec.

Life is overpowered

Lucifr.7289:

More options and depth would really help improve the pvp population.

I would argue that this game has too much “depth”

Seriously the combat system doesn’t need to be rocket science to be a eSport.

I mean really conventional sports are literally nothing more than “get ball and take it to far side of field” and I don’t think anyone here is going to say conventional sports are suffering competitively.

dkayl.6509:

actually DH are not op.. yeah traps can kill you in a easy way.. but if you put condi’s or use range to atack them well DH is going to die really fast.. for example a thief P/p can kitten a DH … condi mesmer are a nightmare for DH… warior can rek the dh …just dont go near the traps or.. dodge the traps

The problem with DH is that it requires almost no skill to execute but requires vastly more skill to counter.

The other problem is when you get stacked DH.

Wolfs Shadow.7234:

Ramoth.9064:

While killing 4 door bombers. Even had enough time to /say “you guys are pretty bad, lol”.

Fun times.

The specialization is actually quite well balanced. You’re able to get decent survivability with burst gear, or decent killing power via attrition with tanky gear. Its really just a L2P issue.

So… if I understand this correctly. You troll two players, come to the forums to tell everyone you think Reaper is balanced…. ?

Playing as a reaper and against one are 2 very different perspectives.

I’m 99% certain that the story in the OP is either complete bullkitten or at most mostly bullkitten, and this is just a very poor indirect attempt to QQ about reaper.

I fail to see how reaper, a melee class with like what one source of stability? is remotely overpowered in a meta where half the elite specs are built around CC spam.

Arken.3725:

Except you can dodge traps…Even the instant ones don’t activate until after a small moment of time(right after the daze).

I think his point was that “just dodge it” is a lame reasoning because you can dodge pretty much everything.

I mean really, they could put in a ability that hits for 20k that bounces across five targets with 1200 range and you could still “just dodge it.”

If dodgability is the definition of balanced then there has never in the entire history of this game been a overpowered class.

rchu.8945:

I dont think that’s fair, picking the correct target to focus fire in TDM, and for the opposing team to anticipate which member of their own team will get chosen and come up ways to interrupt are both examples of skill and decision making. TDM here is not the same as FPS, each class has mechanics to avoid damage, stun / daze opponents. I fail to see your argument that there’s no strategy involved.

It’s only skill and decision making for the early days of the arena, before the meta settles.

I saw this when TOR debuted it’s arena system in 2.4. The first week was amazing, each match saw different strategies and builds in play. Even the team ranked queue was diverse.
But then the meta and the pecking order was established, and thus diversity and strategy died.

See the problem with saying that choosing a focus requires skill and decision making is that it doesn’t account for player behavior. What will actually occur is that the PvP community will come to a consensus on a “focus list” which is basically all the classes order from squishiest to tankiest. Strategy will simply be selecting the member of the opposing team that’s the highest on the focus list and going from there.

i.e in TOR it works like this, Mandos are always #1 target, if no mandos then focus Sniper, if no snipers then focus DPS PT, if no DPS PTs …… you get the picture.
Here in GW2 it would be something along the lines of “always tunnel thieves first, then….”

Not only is that a cesspool in terms of depth of play, it also means the arenas are going to be nothing but a source of anger and frustration for anyone playing classes that are higher on the focus list, since they will be forever condemned to dying early and quickly. Playing these classes would boil down to “try to live long enough for your team to hopefully kill one of theirs first.”

Not to mention, if this mode becomes popular, there will be more meta builds for each class, specifically for players that want to compete in this mode. Just because you dont like TDM, it doesnt mean it’s bad for everyone.

More meta builds is meaningless when the meta itself is a cesspool. In my experience in past games is that the people that enjoy arenas are exclusively players that main high self-sufficiency classes (the only class that can really function in a pug TDM) the rest of the community typically ends up hating on TDM.

no-respawn TDM was really designed for coordinated environments in games that have trinity. no-respawn TDM can have some amazing strategy (like hardswitches, which I love), but only in the realm of premades and voice-chat, where you can assure team support and can both execute and deflect more complex strategies. no-respawn TDM is also largely dependent on the combat system being set up so that evenly matched teams will stalemate, rather than mutually obliterate.

Morwath.9817:

Thats another thing I’ve mentioned many times already on those boards: we need casting bars and ability icons (both on cast and on damage) so everyone can follow, like GW1 had.

casting bars and ability icons don’t really help view ability. Have you ever watched another person play some mmo you’re not familiar with? Sure you can see what buttons they are pressing, but that doesn’t in the slightest help you understand what is actually occurring.

Shemie.4286:

Not sure about that. CSGO is the biggest growing E-sport game at the moment, and it’s been big since always, streaming back then was never a thing. But in certain countries it was streamed on TV. CSGO is a simple way of action, defuse bomb or plant bomb while defending. That’s what people do over and over, and even in competitive play in ranked, it’s the same game mode over and over, and over and over. Why do people still play it? I don’t know, but I play CSGO and it’s fun as ever.

Most of the time you win in CSGO is by kills, not having a bomb exploding or defusing. So, if the game is good – the action in pvp will never get dull. It’s just how Anet is handling conquest pvp atm. Valve and Riot are great with communication.

CSGO’s success wasn’t because of the speed it was because of what you said “is a simple way of action, defuse bomb or plant bomb while defending.” It’s simple, it’s something that a casual observer can understand and follow.
To be successful as a eSport, a game must be something that a person who isn’t a high level player, or doesn’t play the game at all can watch and still engage in.

Viewers must be able to see the big plays and cheer for them, to yell “GOGOGOGO” when their team starts a big play.
Guild Wars 2 can’t deliver this. Conquest and the telegraph system are so nebulous that only experienced GW2 PvP’ers can even follow what is occurring. You can’t cheer your favorite team on through a play if you can’t even understand when the play happens.

There is a reason that nearly all mainstream sports boil down to “take ball and get it somewhere” because that’s something that anyone, even people that don’t plaay the sport can engage with.

Becoming a sport requires designing around the viewer just as much as the player.