Guild Wars 2

Sunshine.5014:

And that’s why we need to buff sustain damage and nerf the extreme bunker. Bunker fights are boring fights.

What extreme bunkers? We don’t have extreme bunkers.

Ya’ll trippin.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

skyhammer is fine and fun.

wait until 1 dec 2015 and play ranked then to avoid playing in skyhammer.

The fact that it’s not in ranked rotation validates that it’s a trash map…. Again it’s about the chance to skill ratio being off. But I guess some prefer chance over skill

It just validates that ranked players are whiney. Seriously the moment anything ever changes they get up in arms and demand removal/nerf.

Am I the only person that hates the pocket raptor herds?

Morwath.9817:

I guess it could force timer.
You know all those Cele Eles and Druids supporting each other ;-)

You know, boring and one sided matches would be fast, while those more balanced and enjoyable could last a while.

Balanced matches wouldn’t last long at all. Why? Because in this game the HPS is significantly less than the post-defensives DTPS (damage taken per second). This means that even in fights with near even levels of skill, the fight will draw to a conclusion in a reasonably quick amount of time.

If you pay attention you’d realize that all those MMOs that do no-respawn TDM are nearly one and all trinity games where the two support roles offset the DPS role so that equal skill matches would go on forever with no deaths.

GW2’s classes and combat system simply does not have sufficient sustain to support any type of no-respawn PvP. People already go down rapidly in a 2v1, do you really want to see what getting focus fired by 5 people will be like?

Seriously stop, the kind of match you are asking for would likely have a average combat time of maybe 20 seconds. Unless you’re the first guy on the focus list, then it’ll be like 4 seconds.

Morwath.9817:

I’ve played most major MMOs mostly for PvP since 1999 or 2000… and I can tell you that RA like TDM is perfect mode for following players:
-> Players who don’t have much time or just dislike wasting time in ques or lost matches that last eternity [matches are fast, there is no MMR so ques should be short]
-> Players who prefer action than capping and rotating around the map [action! no time wasted for rotating, runing around, respawning etc].
-> Players who hate playing against any kind premades.

RA suggested by OP wasn’t designed to be competitive nor he suggested it should replace conquest, but to be PvP mode for those who could enjoy it more than current one.

Think about the average TTK in this game.

Now think about what playing a gamemode where you will have 5 people focus firing will be like.

enough said.

And competitive in my last post means “any game where the participants are playing to win”

Morwath.9817:

That means you have multiple viable builds which can let meta slowsly reshape rather than wait for next big patch, since you got options, which you don’t have now.

Also game you used as example has “trinity” for PvE reasons, in GW2 I believe healers and supporters are like -1 in PvE, so they don’t need to have such purposes as those in SW ;-)

It’s the same way with that game’s DPS too. i.e when I left that game all burst DPS specs where non-viable because hardswitching had been out of meta since season 2.

Your design system would be balanced if you considered “each build being desirable at some point during the game’s history” as balanced. However at a given time it means only a extremely limited number of builds are viable.

Now if you could make it so multiple diverse strategies where all viable at the same time your system would be amazing. Unfortunately that’s never happened and the conquest meta has been stagnant for a long time.

Morwath.9817:

Crinn.7864:

Morwath.9817:

I disagree.
I remember game where Abjured was dying like little kittens ;-), yet they won 500-200 or so (it wasn’t Foefire) and it was prefect match to show what about CQ really is and show its weaknesses as gamemode:
-> It’s often worth to die to prevent cap/decap if someone can jump in your place during your downtime (even if you end dead).
-> Because in CQ often rotations are often more important than actual fights.

But going to a gamemode like the one suggested by the OP would become far worse in terms of the effects on quality of play.

And strategic play is a type of skill in itself. Players using a strategy to win a otherwise losing situation is a measure of skill in itself. No-respawn TDM doesn’t have strategic play and really doesn’t involve much personal skill either since matches usually come down to which team has the worst player on it, rather than which team has the best player on it.

Nope. It just causes more balance problems, because even if all professions would have 50% vs each other and skill would decide 1v1 and 2v2 situations and so on then more tanky (who can hold for longer, even few seconds of longer cap/decap than enemies can decide “close enough” match) and more mobile (who can +1 more frequently or move between points) composition is better, which makes even more imbalances.

I don’t think you’ve actually played a mmo with competitive TDM. Yes conquest is certainly flawed but TDM is downright broken.

Any TDM with no respawns, revolves around nuking the kitten out of the other team’s weakest link. Glass builds are garbage. Anything that requires support is garbage. Anything and can’t escape a focus fire is garbage. Anything that requires any amount of setup is garbage.

Don’t believe me?

the only way you could make no-respawn TDM work is if the entire combat system and the classes themselves where designed solely with no-respawn PvP in mind.

Silverkey.2078:

As long as each profession does the same role in a unique way, with different strength and weaknesses, different counters, etc… then you can have high build diversity without overlap.

That gives great build diversity but it doesn’t make all that diversity viable.

Example:
SW:TOR already does this with their healers and tanks. i.e mando healers are single target burst healers, sages are AoE healers, and Ops are sustained healers. Jug tanks are active DcD defensives, VG tanks are passive based, and Sin tanks are avoidance based.

What happened in that game is that of the three healers and three tanks only 1 of each would ever be viable a given time because only 1 of those “unique” types would mesh well with the current meta.

That system of yours works great on paper, and is in theory balanced, but it doesn’t actually increase diversity in terms of the number of viable builds.

Morwath.9817:

I disagree.
I remember game where Abjured was dying like little kittens ;-), yet they won 500-200 or so (it wasn’t Foefire) and it was prefect match to show what about CQ really is and show its weaknesses as gamemode:
-> It’s often worth to die to prevent cap/decap if someone can jump in your place during your downtime (even if you end dead).
-> Because in CQ often rotations are often more important than actual fights.

But going to a gamemode like the one suggested by the OP would become far worse in terms of the effects on quality of play.

And strategic play is a type of skill in itself. Players using a strategy to win a otherwise losing situation is a measure of skill in itself. No-respawn TDM doesn’t have strategic play and really doesn’t involve much personal skill either since matches usually come down to which team has the worst player on it, rather than which team has the best player on it.

Morwath.9817:

Cogbyrn.7283:

I think the idea of needing diversity and “playing how you want” in PvP are both pipe dreams that people don’t want to let go. If your class has a build that is competitive, you have the option to be competitive with that build on your favored class. Odds are, this build plays to the class’s specific strengths and fulfills a particular role.

Is that not great for people? Everyone can look at a build and say “no, I want to play differently”. But you’re in a competitive game. You can’t go into DOTA 2 and combine any skill/item build on any hero and expect to be competitive. Yes, this is an MMO, so people are more attached to their character and style. But you technically can do pretty well with all kinds of different builds. You just might not win tournaments.

What does balance and diversity would mean in GW2 PvP? Lets use Necro as example.
-> You could support others with Blood as much as Druid.
-> You could could sustain yourself with Death and/or Reaping as good as bunker Guardian.
-> You could nuke with Spite as good as Dragonhunter.
-> You could play attrition game with Curses (Terror) as good as Chillmancer. (yay! :P)
-> etc.
so…
-> Mixing Blood with Death and Soul Reaping would give durable supporter.
-> etc.
Obviously you would have decide to do one, max two things at once because Amulet choice still would limit your stat scalling with those trait lines.

That is a dangerous road to go down. Trying to make all classes able to have builds that can do all roles equally effective as any other class is nearly impossible to do without pure class homogenization.

I’m all for diversity in strategy but as long as Blood is different than Druid one of them is going to be invariably better. It’s far more effective for developers to give classes individual strengths and weaknesses than to try and get all of them performing all roles equally.

Firelysm.4967:

For those who don’t know what that is I’ll explain:

• It’s a solo queue with death match style of 5v5
• you get paired with 4 random people
• if all players on one side are dead, that team is defeated and the team that won, will go in next round.
• There is no re-spawn once you are dead.
• There is no reviving once you are fully dead.
• If you win, your team will continue in the next round, Maximum rounds is 25, if you lose, your team is kicked into the lobby.
• Higher you climb higher reward you get.
• If player doesn’t want to continue, you can go out on the end of the round, and that player is replaced with random person.
• You can change your build in Ready position before round starts.
• No time frame[all fights were cca 2-10 min long].
• Example

This was a game mode of true skill, honor, pride, helping each other like a brother or sister to push harder to the top, a joy and meaning of PvP, where many times you felt like a hero for defeating enemy team as last man standing.

NONONONO

This is bad, this is cancer.
I play SW:TOR for 4 years right through the period when that game transitioned from 8v8 ranked (which was like conquest) to Arenas (which used the exact rules you outlined above)
This game type is pure and complete cancer. It’s near impossible to balance, it promotes class stacking, it has little to no strategic play and promotes some of the most kitten play I’ve ever experienced. And random team selection makes it even worse.

Since you have random teams, you can’t depend on support. So all strategies and builds that require support or coordination beyond “focus X dude first, then focus Y” is gone. Also because of this, the only viable builds for such a gamemode will be builds that are extremely self-sufficient with high levels of sustain. Or in other words it’ll be bruisers only, and even then only a couple bruiser builds will even be viable.

Since the is no respawn, strategy boils down to having everyone focus fire whichever enemy player is the squishiest (thieves you’re worthless here even with sb#5), once they die you’ve got a +1 situation. This detail means that comebacks in this gamemode are super rare, and most matches will be blowouts.

Never, EVER do this. It’s bad enough in SW:TOR which has full trinity, this game would be destroyed by such a gamemode. With GW2 TTK the average match time would be maybe 30 seconds.

nacario.9417:

and which mmos is it that you’ve played that allowed for “some level of stat customization”, since we have that here as well through amulet, sigils, runes, weaponchoices, traitlines. What is it that these other mmos are offering? WoW? That game has less customization, put pvp gear on and you’re a go.

I was thinking SW:TOR with it’s mod system, where each piece of gear has three changeable slots, the only limitation being that the armoring mod slot only has mainstat and endurance(vitality) in some ratio, the second mod slot only has mainstat, endur, and a secondary stat in some ratio, and the third mod slot can only have secondary and tertiary stats in some ratio.

Weapon choices, sigils, and traitlines are not stat choices, they are simply the spec choices seen in typical MMOs. The difference being GW2 is far less mechanically in depth since there is no rotational mechanics.

Kraggy.4169:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Masteries is a pretty original way to level up without leveling up

Actually they’re not original, FFXI has had non-leveling character progression for many years and other MMOs also provide for increasing character ‘power’ without an increase in level number, LoTRO’s Legendary Items being one other.

That said, gating content by such mechanics is a bad idea IMO and is why people consider it a grind .. it gate’s desirable content behind the need to acquire masses of points of some sort or other which can only be obtained by repeating content over and over and over again, the very definition of a ‘gind’ for many people.

The thing is that content has to be gated one way or another otherwise managing the player’s experience becomes impossible.

Mastery gating is a less obtrusive and more lore friendly way to gate than the traditional level gating is.

kdaddy.5431:

You mean settlers?

Settler’s is a inferior version of Cleric’s as far as bunkers are concerned. It still has zero vit.

I still run shout bunker guardian and in my last 3 matches ive won all 3 of them with a score of 500-100 in solo queing. All of you are talking out a ******** since skill game play is about timing and not smashing for face against the key board.

3 matches? You’ll need a much much larger sample size.

Guardian has a 2 builds and work fine, warrior has 1 build period. Guardian has a burst burn build which ORNG were using in ESL tournaments so dont throw any crap about it. Trap guardians are ruling the dumb in solo que atm.

I already named both Burn Guard and DH in my post, I don’t see where you’re going.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

glaphen.5230:

What so removing Minstrel’s did nothing?

It did, so much. Minstrel Druids were basically raidbosses, you needed 4+ people to chain-CC them to have a chance of bringing them down.

Celestial druids still have insane sustain, but they are managable with 2 people.

Druid shouldn’t exist. And Druid is not a minstrel problem, it’s a druid problem.

SlayerSixx.5763:

tico.9814:

I rather see bunkers than the stupid bunker meta.

Fixed.

@OP

Yea, I agree. We need less tank in our games for more plays and more fights. Increasing DPS to down bunkers faster is ok until a certain point. Then we go back to stealth bursters rolling through players. Maybe we reduce/remove bunk entirely? People who want to support can be given more options, but no more meat shields.

There is no such thing has non-meatshield support. Why? Because raw survivability is the only thing useful enough to warrant considering versus taking another DPS.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m pretty sure the Druids were using Minstrel, too. The second game had two bunkers autoattacking each other on a point for half the game. If I was a game developer and I saw that, I would have been embarrassed.

I’ve never in my life seen a game where it was good play for healer/tank/support roles to try to do anything alone let alone try and solo another healer/tank/support. Support roles are never designed for killing or 1v1s, hence the name “support”

Jackalrat.5493:

Agree that we need more build diversity. At least bring gems for amulets back.

…totally disagree that Guardians are bad though. They have a ton of really great builds, and don’t even get me started on that elite. Currently it’s all but unanimously the strongest proff/elite in the game.

By “a ton of great builds” you mean burn guard and DH only. Bunker guard is out of meta.
the reason guardians bring up stat customization is because of how punishing playing a melee class with the lowest health tier is. It’s the same issue thieves have.
Hell the only reason Bunker Guard is out of meta is because of the lack of vit, tough, and Healing Power amulets.

Kharr.5746:

Crinn.7864:

Kharr.5746:

It’s impossible to balance customized stat distributions. The limited stats available in sPvP exist to promote healthy and skillful game play. E.g., Dire Stats allow for super tankiness with very high condition damage. These don’t belong in competitive play since they have no weakness.

Seriously? Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that doesn’t allow some level of stat customization.

I understand the concerns with total freedom of stats. But the amulet system is simply punishing. There numberous builds that are prevented from being viable simply because there isn’t a amulet with the correct stats for that build.

The many runes and sigils allow for plenty of customization regarding stats. You can make pretty much anything work if you spend the time looking through them.

sigils aren’t stats. Runes provide too little stat to mean much.

I seriously miss SWTOR’s secondary/tertiary stat system. It was balanced and it provided real customization. I miss having a stat system that required a brain to use.

Kharr.5746:

It’s impossible to balance customized stat distributions. The limited stats available in sPvP exist to promote healthy and skillful game play. E.g., Dire Stats allow for super tankiness with very high condition damage. These don’t belong in competitive play since they have no weakness.

Seriously? Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that doesn’t allow some level of stat customization.

I understand the concerns with total freedom of stats. But the amulet system is simply punishing. There numberous builds that are prevented from being viable simply because there isn’t a amulet with the correct stats for that build.

Honestly I think the issue with DH is less to do with DH and more to do with conquest.

It’s fairly easy to fight a DH if you’re free to pick your terrain, but conquest forces us to fight over these itsy bitsy nodes.

Signed,
A salty bunker guard that has the lovely job of having to hold point against all the HoT AoE.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Sigh. I should know better than this. I’ll see myself out.

I’d be amused to see these people reaction if they had to play any other MMO.

Like holy crap, I thought the RP’ers in SWTOR where whiney, this is something else entirely.

HoT is Buy2Play. You have to buy HoT to play HoT.

Stop freeloading, they aren’t going to let you play HoT for free.

paying for the base version of a game isn’t pay2win. HoT the base version now, since expacs the MMO equivalent of a sequel.

SkyShroud.2865:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArenaColin
We are rolling out a beta version of a 64 bit client today if all goes well – please give this a shot if youre having crash issues and let us know if that does the trick!

As a non computer literate person, what does this mean to me?

64bit can use more memory than 32bit, this might resolve some of the gw2 crash issue. Yes, gw2 now using more memory than before. What happen to game optimization?!

this is 2015, 2015 programs require more room than 2007 programs. (’07 was the year 64bit hit mainstream)

glaphen.5230:

What so removing Minstrel’s did nothing?

No the OP hasn’t figured out he can use more buttons than his autoattack yet.

Laraley.7695:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Laraley.7695:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Laraley.7695:

TheAngryDuckling.5481:

You can play for free. Doesn’t mean the game is a f2p model. Mike O’Brien specifically said they are still considering themselves a buy to play product. So essentially your entire argument is invalid.

I disagree. There are people who didn’t buy the xpack, but bought the core game before. It’s like they took what they bought from them, those people still should be able to be competitive in pvp.

You’re lucky you can even play with people who have the expac in PvP, to be honest. If you had vanilla StarCraft, and a friend had Brood War, did he pay to win if you were able to play agaist him? No, he’s playing Brood War now.

So come play HoT, or don’t complain that you don’t get everything for free after your initial payment. Expansions aren’t a p2w mechanic.

I have the xpack.

The reason people with and without xpack play together is the fact the population is not high enough to separate them but it still isn’t fair.

What’s another game where you don’t have to buy the expac, but you stay “competitive”? What genre does that happen in, where they don’t add new units/guns/abilities/races/etc. that take the game to a new level, but it’s still an expansion?

That wasn’t the question. The question is if it means it’s pay to win, which it obviously is.

By the literal interpretation of pay2win sure. By the actual conversational meaning of pay2win no it isn’t.

alain.1659:

Other games never advertised themselves as : Buy one time only.

Gw2 did.

Good thing they didn’t make us buy it again.

Protip: Expacs are a perpetual game’s equivalent of a sequel. Heart of Thorns is effectively Guild Wars 3.

Timston.1976:

So no actual builds or ideas?

The only bunk guard build is the same one as pre-HoT. The only real thing you might want to look at is maybe taking Force of Will over Pure of Voice, simply too alleviate the HP issue. Granted this does cost you a ton of condi cleanses, so you might want to shuffle that depending on enemy comp.

PlatinumMember.5274:

JEFFARR.8163:

lol guys it’s not like they care about this kind of constructive feedback.
They’ve shown to be very reluctant in admitting mistakes i.e.skyham
Even tho for once conquest had strategy and teamwork I guess throwing hybrids everywhere and trying to match numbers validates as “skill full play”
Capping points actually mattered with minstrels other than pseudo death match where it was chaotic af and the points didn’t really matter as much

Why would they ever admit a mistake when you people constantly show how incapable you are at acting as a rational people?

They gain nothing from it because people here will constantly use that apology to bash them. So pretty much nothing changes. Apology or not. It is better to not show weakness to a crowd incapable of acting above high schoolers.

I hope I don’t need to explain why screwing over the game just to spite a narrow portion of the forum community is bad design.

incisorr.9502:

Seriously? WoW and SW:TOR (the two biggest grossing MMORPGs on the western market.) Both include level cap increases with new skills in their expacs, and also require you to pay for said expac. Or in other words, to get the new skills and passives you have to buy their expacs.

And don’t even bring up Asian mmos. Asia is like the motherland of p2w gaming since their culture doesn’t see anything wrong with putting up money to be competitive. The reason you’re ignorant of this is that most Asian games never make it to NA or EU because they would get flamed out if they tried.

You need to stop taking the pay2win literally. The rational definition of pay2win is games where your effectiveness increases with the amount of money you spend on it. Buying expac content is buying expac content, nothing more nothing less.

Buy2play != pay2win

ya’ll dumb.

Hot is b2p not p2w.

It’s just like how back at launch you had to buy the core game to play the core game.
HoT is the exact same, you have to buy HoT to play HoT.

By ya’ll definition of p2w, every single MMO on the market is currently p2w.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yeah, this is the specific reason for my hesitation. Is it really so bad to be the inverse of the Zerker amulet? From a gameplay perspective, is it more fun if everyone is Zerker and people are dying left and right, or if everyone is Minstrel and never dies? Is there something about Zerker being incredibly flimsy that is healthier for the state of the game than someone being incredibly tanky? Both have their risks (dying quickly/never killing anything).

You have to be careful because there is such a thing as dying too fast. Nobody likes spending half the match in downstate.

There is a equilibrium between too fast and too slow. But there are more ways to achieve this outside of a bruiser meta. I would guess that hard bunker + zerkers would be equivalent pace of play to the current bruiser meta.
My problem with this whole thing is we basically have no idea what might of happened because it got removed so fast. We literally saw like what a couple teams on the EU tourney even attempt it? We have no kitten idea what might or might not have happened.

Also I think people are being shortsighted. Anytime you introduce a mechanic that prevents killing, people start to look for strategies to bypass the mechanic and get their kills.
I saw this happen firsthand in TOR the mmo I played before coming here. I played in season 1 through 6 of that game. In the first season matches nearly always went to timer. By the sixth season matches almost never went to timer despite the fact that healers and tanks had been buffed considerably going from s1 to s6. Why? Because in s1 nobody had developed a effective manner to bypass the tanks, by season 6 there where half-a-dozen canon strategies for breaking a tank-healer combo.

But rather than seeing if that happed Anet just went full handholding and removed the minstrel because changing strategies is hard.

Cogbyrn.7283:

However, I’m not sure the Minstrel stats look healthy for a game like this. There’s probably a reason Dire stats aren’t in sPvP. Are Minstrel stats not very similar? At least with Cleric you don’t get the triple threat of survivability stats. You could probably make a similar argument for Zerker as an amulet, but there’s some risk involved with that amulet. I guess the risk for Minstrel was that you’d never kill anyone?

Dire stats don’t exist because of the difference between how condi specs and power specs work. Conditions are only affected by condition damage. Power builds however need power, ferocity, and precision. Dire amulets would allow condi builds to be almost as offensively effective as a berserker, while retaining the defensive capabilities of a soldier amulet. Basically dire would make condi builds the only valid choice.

Ministrel’s don’t really push anything out of meta. They might potentially discourage "hybrid" stacking, but they aren’t going to render bruisers worthless, nor are they going to cause one type of bunker to be radically more effective than any other type of support bunker. At least no more than already is. *cough* druids *cough*

Minstrel is to bunkers as zerker is too DPS. The difference being instead of pure offensive, minstrel is instead pure defensive. It’s all armor and no teeth.

zaced.7948:

i’m kinda weirded out by where this p2w talk auddenly comes from. not being viable without the recent expansion (actually all of them, there’s just one for this game though) is something that always existed in every mmo and will ever exist. there’s always this one stronger skill or trait or whatever that fits a specific builds just so well.
it wasn’t a thing back then, why is it now?
people would have had heart attacks from anger if they had played gw1 back in the day.
the fact that there are still specs that are viable without hot to me is kinda amazing.

This.

Expacs are essentially the The Game version 2, and they expect you to pay for it.
This isn’t pay2win, this is a “buy the expac and stop trying to freeload it.”

Seriously by this thread’s logic the core game is pay2win because you have to buy the game to get laurels, and therefore can’t access ascended gear without buying the core game.

I’d like to QQ about the people that are QQing about the QQ.

Cogbyrn.7283:

If one amulet is tailor-made to bring a class above and beyond, and you nerf the class, what does that mean for their diversity? You’re balancing a class around an amulet. Is that good design?

It is good design. Players are always going to choose the amulet that synergizes best with their build. tough+vit+heal power will always synergize best with support bunkers, therefore all support bunkers are going to go for. Removing Minstrel’s didn’t increase bunker diversity, it just shoehorned us back into Cleric’s amulet.

It would be like trying to balance engis without accounting for the existence of the celestial amulet. You’d be a fool to do it because most engi builds go for the cele amulet.

kdaddy.5431:

Actually the last few parts about my comment had to do with queing vs the community and not in league play.

Druid was nerfed but i have a friend in my guild who can still 1 vs 2 in a cap point and not die. They were both cele so to me that evens out but that doesnt change the fact we ran 3 pure bunkers and were frustrating the crap out of people.

With match making being unpredictable we had pugs and team groups face us and get very frustrated. Also were not new players so being that we knew what we were running we overloaded one side to win that cap point and simply out sustain them.

the probability of getting stacked bunkers in pugs is extremely small. Tank-like roles are always unpopular no matter how strong they are. I’ve never seen a MMO where the support roles are even a quarter as common as the DPS roles.

Also again please stop bring up druids. Druids scale absurdly well with healing power and are effectively broken in that regard. Ammy removal is a bandaid fix to problem that has nothing to do with the ammy.

Also if something is bad for the game people will abuse it. For instance after the wts people started running 4-5 d/d eles in tourneys. I wont say who but a NA team ran 2 bunker guardians and 2 bunker staff eles in a ESl tourney at one point and it was like a movie from 1915 since nothing happened till 8 minutes in.

People only abuse things that allow them to win. Stacked bunkers don’t win. You’re also assuming that people won’t devolpe counterstrategies and ways to break bunkers. (hint: they will)

And to hell with “watchability” Anets job is too make good gameplay, not good youtube videos.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Anyway before getting into a broader discussion on counterplay that you’ll have to define terms. What do you mean by counterplay? What do you mean by everything? Another question is, does everything need counterplay? Or more pertinent to this thread, should Unrelenting Assault have counterplay?

counterplay

SlayerSixx.5763:

Wanna res your ally? Have your allies stall the enemy as you res. You think its fair and balanced to be able to collapse on top of your ally and res them against 2 or 3 people’s pressure?

If my team is stalling the enemy for a rez then there is no need for a bunker since even a zerker would be just as good at rezzzing.

The whole point of having bunkers for rezzing is so they can tank the cleave.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Then, for the sake of clarity, what exactly is bunker guard missing? I’ll go ahead and assume its HP since it lacks nothing else, unless you’d be kind enough to elaborate.

If its HP is lacking, a minor buff wouldn’t be out of the question, but naturally, something would have to be done about all of the active sources of damage mitigation and the ample sources of stability/stunbreak. A bunker guard can still hold off a 1v1. If the bunkers gets focused, he dies, but slower than the rest. If the enemy coordinates CC, runs through all of your stab, blinds, blocks, stun breaks, staff ward, RF, etc and manages to down you, they deserve the kill. If you believe that, for some reason, you should still have a chance to survive two well coordinated players without any sort of backup, then you’d be the incredibly idiotic one.

If you are trying to hold nodes 1v1 as a bunk guard it means you’re in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. The whole point of taking a bunk guard is for support in teamfights, doing 1v1s with it is wasting the bunker’s team’s time and completely defeating the point of a bunker since bruisers are far better and more efficient at 1v1s.

As for teamfights, the other team doesn’t need to coordinate CC when a single daze+ambient AoE that is present in all teamfights will do the work for us.

The whole point of asking for a HP buff is so that it requires some level of effort to kill bunks since right now bunk guards lack the raw survivability to make them worth taking over a bruiser.

posthumecaver.6473:

I would really like to hear your opinion on how you think the amulet helps game play. Especially from a person using and not using it aspect.

Is this game moto not ‘play whatever you like’ and now some people/developer (in the name of ‘healthy game play’) tells me it is kitten!!!!!

Wutttt??

You can’t play a healer Guardian in PVE Dungeons/Fractals while it is insta kick and now you can’t in PVP while it is kitten.

Why don’t we delete the traits and get over with it? Then I will not get the impression that it is a built that I can play in the game.

I honestly think they are prioritizing “viewability” over the actual gameplay.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Did bunker guard work before HoT? Because if so, then it is a l2p issue. If HoT brought about ANYTHING, its that everyone has much better ways of sustaining/CCing.

emphasis

much better ways of sustaining/CCing.

Bunkers, especially bunker guards have traditionally be counted by heavy CC since all of their defensives are actives.

HoT gave everyone new tools to lock bunkers out of those actives. hence 13k HP being worth way less than it used to be. Although really you have to be tripping to think that HoT didn’t also bring a increase in damage output, as least as far as the elites are concerned.

Tman.6349:

snip

Can we please stop talking about multi-minstrel comps? You’d never be able to win with such a comp. Even if you stalled all three nodes, you’d still lose because you’d have 0 ability to kill anything, while an opposing team that had dps would still be able to get occasional kills and win on the timer.

The great thing about hard bunkers is that they are one of the few if not the only role in the game that does not stack with itself.

kdaddy.5431:

Back to the topic, the EU scene though i dont know for sure but i do recall people being unable to kill druids in many of the matches. Which is a terrible meta. Bunker wars 2 if anyone remembers was god awful.

…Which is why druids where nerfed hard. People keep bring up druids and using druids to justify the amulet removal.
If druids are unkillable, then druids should be nerfed. Removing a amulet that several other non-OP builds relied on for viability, just to get at druids is total kitten.

Your 2nd point about chaith saying bunkers are cancer is a little taken out from your mouth then his. His team usually consists of bunker/boon comp and i think the difference is that even d/d had a limit.

From page two of the now locked “Bunker Guard is dead” thread.

Some just either don’t know the cancer it brings, or play Bunker Guard. -Chaith.8256

Naturally that’s a cherrypick, but if you read all of his posts in that thread, he spent of much of implying that bunkers are somehow inherently bad, and it’s rather obvious by his commentary that he has a pet peeve about Bunkers so his word should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

Pure bunkers is a hard point to push across here. Your saying more build options which im fine with but just 1 week ago i could go 1 vs 3 and be confident no matter what they were running i could survive on a s/f ele.

If a team wants to run glass they have to make up the survivability somewhere else. Conversely if a team wants to run bunkers they have to make up the lost dps somewhere else

If you want more options for builds you really need to ask anet for more amulet and rune options. That amulet was not fun to fight against and it was kitten when team ran 3 of them. Having a combination of ele/druid/guardian with that amulet on 1 team was a what is the point type of fight.

Except in the long run you’d never 3 three of them because you can’t win with such a set up. Plus given time people would invariably develop ways to counter/bypass hard bunkers.

I would really like to hear your opinion on how you think the amulet helps game play. Especially from a person using and not using it aspect.

There is the obvious point about hard bunkers supporting glass builds. Which is significant because since glass can’t hold a node, and hard bunkers can’t take one, it promotes team play over skirmishing, and would ultimately lead to more variety in strategy.

Mak.2657:

It is just your hypothesis. Mb ppl run 4 ministrels +1 decapper, etc.
Abj would loose cause 1 amu?..

That can only work if they get caps first. If such a comp didn’t get first caps they would be screwed because they would have 0 chance of capping a node since they have no killing power.

Of course (most) bunker builds tend to be slow so the chances of them getting early caps is practically non-existent.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Well, you didn’t really read what I said if you didn’t think I addressed that. Cheese comps DO work, and they would be used by strong teams trying to beat better teams AND in queues.

How is running a bunk + glass cannons cheesy? Your argument only works on the assumption that anything and everything involving a bunker is cheesy yet you don’t give any reasoning for why bunkers are inherently “cheese”

Saying “bunkers are cheesy” is a conclusion. It is not a argument, nor a rational.

Heck I could argue that bruiser/skirmisher/hybrid/whateverthehellyoucallit builds are cheesy since they are more self-sufficient, and by being more self-sufficient they need fare less team cohesiveness to be effective, and are therefore “cheesy” compared the builds that require support from other roles.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Tankier builds are always easier to find success with. Does that mean they’re optimal? No, but it means they’ll be prevalent in queues and there will be teams who try to abuse it to beat better teams.

You still failed to address 2 of the 3 points in my previous post. They’re reiterated below.

Crinn.7864:

Nobody in their right mind would run more than 1 minstrel, and moreover having a bunker with the support level that minstrel allows means that teams could run more glass cannons rather than being perpetually chained to running high sustain.

I would also argue that a hard bunker + glass cannon play would be more skillful since it moves the meta away from the self-sufficiency builds and requires more team cohesiveness.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Abjured will adapt to the strongest meta. They’re strong players. I don’t want that meta to be any bunkier than it currently is, which is what Minstrel Amulet would promote. Do you really want to go up against teams with 2 or more Minstrel Amulets?

Adjured wouldn’t have to adapt b/c they would just out rotate any team using a bunker build.

Also the meta would be less bunkier with minstrels. Nobody in their right mind would run more than 1 minstrel, and moreover having a bunker with the support level that minstrel allows means that teams could run more glass cannons rather than being perpetually chained to running high sustain.

I would also argue that a hard bunker + glass cannon play would be more skillful since it moves the meta away from the self-sufficiency builds and requires more team cohesiveness.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

Minstel’s Amulet would be kitten on the scene and promotes less skillful play. The fact that you resort to personal attacks when someone disagrees with you just says your point doesn’t hold much water.

How does it promote “less skillful”

kdaddy.5431:

Another thing is chaith explained why it was a good thing to remove the amulet for many different reasons and the heavy majority of the community attacked him as if they were all dodo birds walking off a cliff and thinking they had won.

Can we please stop saying anything was “explained”

If you go read Chaith’s posts and boil down what he said, he made two points:
1.) The EU tourney had slightly longer match time.
2.) Bunkers are cancer.

He never actually explained how longer match time is a bad thing, nor did ever even attempt to explain how bunkers are “cancer”

Moreover neither he nor any of the removal backers even attempted to counter the point that hard bunkers allowed for more build diversity allow allow teams to use the hard bunker to compensate for glassier builds.

Chaith.8256:

In my speculation, and nothing more, there’s an extremely high chance that the PvP team acted off of the Weekly EU Thursday cup.

Most notably, Vermillion vs. Car Crash finals.

I recommend you use the Re-Chat plug-in for twitch.

http://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity/v/23035369

3:17:00

off one single final? Namely the immediate final after the amulet was introduced when teams haven’t had time to tune counter stratagies?

Besides you cannot ever have a true bunker meta in competitive play because bunkers don’t stack well with other bunkers, and moreover bunker comps suck against bunker comps.