Guild Wars 2

9 seconds instead of 10 is probably to compensate for any lag or other minor delays. The reason they added a cooldown in the first place is probably to ensure that Warriors don’t benefit that much more from it than other classes.

How Rally/Downed-State came to be:

1. Let’s not have a trinity
2. Hmm, dying right away kind of sucks though. It’s too punishing.
3. Let’s have downed-state where everyone can heal you in 2 seconds.
4. But what when you’re solo?
5. Oh, great idea. You “rally” if you manage to kill someone before you die.
6. That’s cool, yeah.
7. Test and tune it exclusively in PvE.
8. Copy + Paste into sPvP and WvW.
9. Ignore the god awful game-play implication it has.
10. Pretend it’s still a cool feature.
11. Ignore constant criticism.

You know it’s not a conspiracy every time one server acts opportunistic.

It’s just that, being an opportunist. Can’t really blame anyone for that. In WvW you fight the fights you can win and avoid the fights you can’t win. In the case of anyone vs. Gandara this means avoiding Gandara and making the best of whatever the situation has to offer.

That’s what 95% of these "ZOMG servers ganging up!!1!! threads boil down to.

And I mean in practical terms, how would such a “conspiracy” even work. Who do you pay the gold? I know AM, I used to play there. They don’t have any real central authority who could even dictate, let alone coordinate such a matter.

Caps are there for technical reasons I believe. Idk why but ANet crafted a terribly inefficient netcode for their MMO.

But if it’s blobbing you’re wondering about, Guardians and Warrior Warhorns are just as much to blame for that as the cap.

Not a “victim” but I know plenty of Ranger builds that are extremely hard to fight 1v1. In sPvP I’d often opt not to fight Rangers on my Thief if I knew they were Spirit Rangers or some other variant just because I knew they’d never die.

But for some reason, aside from some rare exceptions, these strong builds never really caught on in WvW. The vast majority of Rangers I encounter aren’t condition bunkers or some form of Spirit Ranger. Instead they are the type of Ranger that kills themselves by shooting at Daggerstorm.

I argued the same way over a year ago and the points remain largely the same.

TL,DR is many Thief builds evolve around 1 key skill and Initiative allows us to spam that skill over and over again.

Now that’s still true to an extent.

However two things have altered my view on this topic:

1. Cooldowns aren’t much better. You think Initiative is bad? Well at least it involves some sort of resource management all other classes lack. There’s a reason why most MMOs have at least 2 mechanic to limit skill use, typically cooldowns and mana. Cooldowns alone make for extremely shallow game-play, which is what Guild Wars 2 has. Playing a class, using all the skills, switching weapons, using all those, switching back again etc. may look more interesting in fights but is hardly more engaging.

2. Dagger/Pistol – D/P is really the only weapon-set in which Initiative succeeds as a resource. This is because, unlike with most other weapon sets, ALL D/P skills are useful. Each fulfills a particular role and they are expensive enough to require some form of Initiative management. Yes, it could be harder to more in-depth, but considering how shallow cooldown management is it doesn’t have to be.

What this has taught me though is that Initiative as a resource is not to blame. It’s the poorly designed skills that don’t synergize at all with certain builds. If D/D had more than #2 and #5 to use I’m sure Initiative would be much less controversial. If P/D was about more than just #5 and #1 (with the random #3 tossed in for lolz) it too would be much more engaging.

So the key to fixing Initiative doesn’t rely on the resource itself, but in giving players more interesting ways to use it so that there’s more of a trade-off involved.

I disagree.

The game needs more downed-states like Warriors, Guardians, Rangers, Engineers, Necros and less stupid and hard to counter ones like the Thief, Elementalist or Mesmer.

When you go down you should be reliably stomped. Everything else is just dumb.

Welcome to Condition Wars 2. You would have really enjoyed your time with Perplexity Runes 1.0.

The days of active combat have been gone for a while now, but this patch was the nail in the coffin. Join the condition bunkers with their passive, no risk/high reward game-play or gtfo.

Because “walking away” is the only way you beat PU Mesmers (i.E. all Mesmers).

Nekroseth.5186:

“Tomes of knowledge.” true….but its not like every third mob dropps then….what are the best ways to farm them actually?

You used to be able to get a lot of them from various event merchants. They still drop from champion boxes occasionally (I think), but the most reliable source is probably sPvP.

You should be getting a few tomes of knowledge every time you progress in sPvP.

It’s probably not more effective than playing normally if leveling is your goal but that’s where most of them come from. Coupled with an instant level 20 boost it can make leveling quite a breeze.

If you have none of these means however, EotM really is the place to go. It’ll give you nice loot too and a number of skillpoints to unlock your skills.

Because of PU.

Literally EVERY Mesmer I encounter in WvW is running some form of PU build. And while playing PU you’d have to be afk not to win. But even while afk you’d probably have a decent chance.

PU builds, especially the condition ones, are the pinnacle of low risk/high reward game-play that is so common among condition builds.

What used to be a compelling class to fight has turned into the worst cheese spec since decap-engis in sPvP.

Stop playing PU and people might give you a little more respect.

My Warrior has the Karma infusion because I WvW a lot with her. And Karma is the only currency you’re really rewarded with in WvW. The problem is there is very little to spend it on.

I personally don’t really “trust” the Magic Find in this game. I know more makes a difference but not to the extent we’re made to believe. I certainly don’t find 20% Magic Find to be a worth-while investment. That’s why I went with the Gold bonus on my Thief. At least that’s a reliable bonus, especially if you do a lot of AoE farming in Orr.

But it’s probably not an objective assessment especially since relatively few mobs actually drop straight-up coin.

Orangensaft.7139:

but letting enemies slowly bleed out so that they cant respawn so fast can be an intended tactic in spvp!

Yes, and this is a perfect example of why it’s a terrible mechanic. Downed-State was never intended to delay respawns and yet that it is what it’s exploited as. And it’s not a lot of fun either.

I always thought these talents were fairly well designed and while not popular, not completely ignored either.

Despite a similar these they have different effects for each class and require using the environment to your advantage in order to utilize them to any effect. That imo is a sign of great skill-design even if there could be more opportunities to use them.

But if you do find such an opportunity, like jumping an enemy blob from above, then they do make quite a difference.

No dungeon is any more rewarding than any other.

So you take the path of least resistance.

Downed-State and it’s associated mechanics (Rally/hard-rezzes) are the single, biggest design flaw in this game. I understand it’s conception and the reason for having it but the game-play it results in is just bad in every aspect of the game.

WvW is by far most affected by this mechanic however and is in most dire need of changes. Long-term I would like to see the entire mechanic revised but for now I’d content with the following changes:

• No more hard-rezzing in combat.

• 1 Rally/kill.

• Faster finishing (2 seconds channel instead of 3).

This would address the most glaring issues with the mechanic without affecting game-play much. Long-term though I still hope they find a better solution to their lack of healers than this abomination of a game-mechanic.

WvW is the only thing that truly stands out in GW2. It’s one of the few things I will remember fondly, even after quitting the game.

It’s a shame though that it doesn’t receive more attention. The PvE and sPvP in GW2 are entirely generic and forgettable. But the WvW is special, it has it’s own unique touch.

Sure, WvW has problems, many problems:

From the terrible and noncompetitive scoring algorithm, over the snowballing downed-state/rally mechanic, over hard-rezzing, blobbing, karma trains, PvD and general class balance. All of these are valid concerns.

But WvW at its core is still fundamentally fun. It also offers a wide range of build- and gear diversity and an environment where all classes can shine in their own way (except Rangers, lol).

It is probably the only truly memorable aspect of the game and yet I feel like ANet would still rather pursue some sort of ridiculous e-sport ambition with the shallowest and dumbest aspect of the game rather than enhancing and expanding the only truly unique and memorable aspect of their game.

The problem with Runes in general is that without a DPS meter we can only theorycraft which ones are best.

And theorycrafting only knows 1 winner, and that winner is simply best.

If we actually had a way to record damage in game in real, practical game-play situations I’m sure other runes would get their room to shine.

Runes of the Pack for example are a really solid DPS set for more casual PvE and dungeons but get left far behind because they can’t hold up in the spreadsheet wars.

iFruit.6190:

It’s just you bud.
Have still to lose a soloq on mine though^^

Love this logic.

Win all games = It’s because I am awesome.

Lose all games = It’s because my class is underpowered.

It’s a fine line to tread in PvP and people throw around the word “toxic” all too quickly.

In general we have to distinguish between two things:

1. Venting/trash talk: This is a way some people deal with an impending loss or how they vent their frustration. This can be a standard “L2P” or “noob”, “lolcondi bunker” or “cheeser” expression. It can also take others forms of QQ, maybe about playing in a premade or stacking bunkers. I think this is to be expected in a PvP setting. Even professional sportsmen downtalk each other a little, nobody is above that.

However what we should take note of here is that none of these “insults” are directed at the player themselves, rather than at the game/his character/his build/his skill etc. So in that way they aren’t personal attacks and should be tolerated.

2. Verbal abuse: Is when people cross that line, out of rage, extensive frustration or whatever. I don’t think you need any examples but this is when things get personal and “blocking” and reporting are justified.

I think seeing the difference between these two is important. I don’t want sPvP to become a super-sanitized environment because we have become super sensitive to everything. It’s called player vs. player for a reason.

On the other hand I acknowledge that at time people can cross the line and that doesn’t need to be tolerated.

Be happy you weren’t playing before the patch. What a decap-engi galore that was.

Yes, Engineers are still overpowered. But it’s not as blatantly “in your face” as some other imbalances because they are a less specialized class.

But this is an issue with all condition classes to an extent. Engineers would be fine if conditions in general were somehow addressed.

About Taida: People have learned that if you interrupt her at 50% HP you can skip the second phase and kill her directly. That’s why she tends to bug out at 1% when people still attack her because that’s not really where she’s supposed to die.

So it’s really not intentional.

Case and point however is that none of the megaevents are fun with 200+ people. It’s turns any event into a mindless spam-fest (not that they weren’t before).

They really need to reduce the threshold at which a new instance is created. 50-100 people per mega-event is fine, but 200+ not.

Thief was my main since launch and I have by far the most experience and progression on him.

However I have increasingly shifted to other classes as they offer more than the Thief has to offer. Thief is fine, but limited in the roles it can perform.

In PvE I play a lot on my Mesmer because reflects are awesome and the utility you bring is cool.

In WvW I play more on my Warrior nowadays because you can actually partake in zerg warfare. I only really long on to my Thief to take revenge on some scumbag roamers that ganked me. The Thief still excels at that.

The more the meta shifts towards bunkers the more Thieves will be left behind. We had a natural advantage against other Berserker builds (and still do) that were commonplace during the first year of the game.

But that meta has shifted as people learned more about the game. Currently the only thing we have going for us is our superior mobility, mainly thanks to Infiltrator’s Arrow. That skill alone basically carries us through the sPvP meta.

We were never super good at 1v1, at least not in sPvP. We did well against some builds but poorly against others (mainly bunkers). Overall I’d say our 1v1 capabilities are average.

yanniell.1236:

People playing on that “skeleton crew” hour would feel that their work is less valuable than the work of players on the prime time. And they would be right. One person’s 5 AM is another’s person 7 PM.

Instead of palliatives, we should go to the root of the problem and fix the coverage issue, not the PPT system.

Well that’s exactly how EVERYONE feels who plays during prime-time, you know the 1000* players duking it out every night, who know that what they do is irrelevant because the night-crew decides who wins.

I’m sorry we’re beyond the point where we “reward” people for PvD at 5 AM. That’s the reason this whole system is broken.

And btw. I have never heard anyone say “hmm, this really doesn’t feel worth while to me. The tick isn’t reflecting the effort I’m putting into breaking down this door”.

I’m not proposing excluding anyone from WvW. All I’m saying is that the score needs to reflect the “relative effort” a server is investing into achieving that score.

I’ve said this 1000 times and will gladly say it another 1000 times.

The most seamless solution is to have the “tick-rate” tied to the current total player activity.

Lots of players active = score “ticks” every 5 minutes.
Skeleton Crew at 5 AM = score “ticks” every 45 minutes.

It fixes most of the issues and is done without “punishing” or impairing anyone’s game-experience. It also doesn’t require changes to the maps or anything aside from the scoring system itself.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Theres no build diversity in PVE. Im not saying in the entire game, thats true obviously. Look at something like sPvP which does have an annoying condi meta right now but is certainly more diverse than the toxicity in dungeon community. One reason there is only zerker is because there is no strategy to the bosses in dungeons, at least nothing too complicated. The strategy used to kill most bosses in dungeons is so simple that it doesn’t really warrant multiple strategies to be used. Its usually just “okay lets do the strategy where we do as much dps as we can because this boss doesn’t do anything or we can completely avoid its abilities by putting it in a corner”

I think we have a difference of opinion on what build diversity is. For me it means how many viable options there are. For you it seems to mean how many optimal options there are. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Well all builds are “viable” because dungeons pose no challenge whatsoever. There is practically no possibility for failure so yes, it really doesn’t matter what build you run. Hell, people can solo many dungeon paths and bosses so you can even afk if you want.

But that’s not a solid basis for discussion. Yes, everything is viable because there is no real challenge and yet the benefits of going all out DPS far outweigh the benefits of any other build. That’s the issue.

If you don’t enjoy PvE leveling then just join the Karma train in EotM. It’s the most efficient and rewarding way to level nowadays.

You also get plenty of tomes nowadays which further speed-up the leveling process. My Engineer is currently level 60 with 30 minutes of play-time, simply because of Tomes, Boosts etc.

TCG were clearly the best team of the tournament and deserved the win. They were leagues ahead of most of their competition when it came to rotating and holding points.

But honestly, the number of “to 0” wins shows that GW2 is just way too snowbally for a competitive game. Downed-State and the upper-hand after winning a team-fight, making it easy to rotate for the next incoming means that a losing team barely has a chance of catching up.

I also didn’t like how basically everyone was rolling with extremely durable “bunker” builds.

You can look at it from multiple angles.

You can look at the number of skills you have to manage and use that as a basis. In that case Engineers and Elementalists seem “harder” because they have more skills to manage. But you can also argue that since they are all limited by cooldowns, all you’re rally doing is rotations.

You can argue that it’s about risk/reward. Playing a glass cannon well requires a lot of finesse and situational awareness since one mistake can undo you. In that case Thieves would seem most challenging since they lack any form of passive defense. But again you could argue that all they do is “spam 3” or “spam 2” because they don’t have cooldowns.

You could argue that playing a Bunker requires most skill since you’re the most important member of a team and have to keep track of both your enemies and your allies and assist accordingly. Your success probably has the biggest sway on the outcome of a match.

You could argue Mesmers and Engineers take most skill because they are the least popular and most non-intuitive classes. And that must obviously have to do with their higher skill requirements.

It’s all about how you want to twist your arguments.

Imo though playing any class “well” isn’t difficult in any case. Sure, grasping a Warrior might take slightly less time and practice than grapsing an Engineer or Elementalist, but both can be created and played at a competitive level within a day.

What really dictates your success in PvP is situational awareness and coordination with your team.

It can’t really be a fixed damage number though. I’m talking about a Full Berserker Mesmer who, despite tagging the Champ at 80% HP, can’t get a “tag” in a mass blob. I mean it did take at least 20 seconds for the blob to melt the champ, more than enough time to deal significant damage.

Yet no “tag”.

That’s why I doubt it matters how much damage you deal. It’s about tagging it before the vast majority does.

I have noticed this while running with the megazerg who runs from one megaevent to another.

It seems like whenever you kill champions with such a large megablob, a large portion of the players do not receive any champion loot, despite dealing significant damage to the mob.

Considering this seems to be directly tied to the number of players partaking in the kill it has left me to believe that there is a ~50 player tag limit on champion mobs. Anyone tagging the mob later won’t be assigned any loot.

Could this be correct and if so, is it intended?

Lopez.7369:

Dave Pare.2069:

Well, honestly every team with that mesmer build was in a disadvantage, I mean going shatterer with GS and Staff? Makes little sense to me although I don’t know the class well.

As for Warriors: the build almost every team used is horrible imo; HamBow+Soldier amulet+Runes of strenght for everybody? Really? There’s nothing better at the moment for warriors? You definitely could afford going with the berserk amulet if you use warr.

So far I’ve seen very little new builds and originality and it is at least disappointing. The only team that really put something “new” is, as it was predictable, Car Crash.

I was very surprised not to see any zerker/condi warrior or turret engi or phantasm/condi mesmer; every single class was in most of the cases the exact copy of one another. I almost had the feeling that someone just said to teams before the tourney started: “so here are the builds to use for the tourney, have fun and don’t try something new; bye”.

Anyway the tournament is thrilling and exciting, although Car Crash are still the best imo, both for originality and skills.

None of those things are surprising to any high-end player. The metagame that apparently exists at low-level play is completely wrong, because it’s built around very easy builds that only work against unknowledgeable players.

You keep saying that in every thread you post. And you are still wrong.

Build-wise high level play isn’t any different than any other level of play. There is no such thing as builds that work exclusively at high levels and won’t also at lower levels.

dboylolz.3916:

frifox.5283:

Runes of the Centaur… welp, now I can say I’ve seen everything.

Aka lazy eles.

Runes of the Pack > all for Mesmers

1. Equip S/D

2. Build 2/6/0/6/0 or 2/0/0/6/6.

3. Press 3.

It is nice to see a little competitive PvP by good players just because it has been so long.

Not sure if I liked the actual game-play though. Way too many stalemate fights, way too many condition bunkers and condition spam in general.

I also disliked how the downed-state mini-game decided most of the team-fights. Feels like the exact opposite of what “active combat” was supposed to be about.

In general I enjoyed watching the competition but saw it affirm all my dislikes about GW2 PvP.

My problem with Critical Haste is that it seems to lag. With only a 2 second duration is desyncs your animations from your damage. It is just really weird.

You can harvest some in your home instance.

The big problem is that conditions in many ways are CC. They are tied into the same mechanics and it’s not healthy for the game.

But this is just echoing thousands of other voices complaining about conditions.

Now that I think about it, given how crap conditions are in PvE, how abundant and poorly telegraphed they are in sPvP and how they are both CC and damage tied into one, I think it would be best to simply redesign conditions from the ground up.

They must really regret announcing that merchant at this point.

Roe.3679:

Guardians are not broken. Guardians are among the most balanced classes of any MMO I’ve ever played. The deva should be proud of what they’ve done with them and move to make every class more like them.

As I said this is only true if you look at 1v1 balance.

But if they are so balanced, why do they make up up to 50% of WvW guild zergs? Far more than any other class, even Warriors.

Why have Guardians been the undisputed mid-bunkers in sPvP since launch? Why is that ok when Thieves for example rightfully receive complaints about displacing all other roamers. Is it fair or balanced to have one class basically own a role?

Why are Guardians by far the most desirable class for Fractals?

I can tell you one thing, it’s not because they are “fair and balanced”.

I agree,

having more players in the world is generally a good thing.

But the game hasn’t improved by turning every megaevent and champion kill into a gigantic zergfest. Sometimes less is more.

Personally I’d like to see the number of participants in mega-events cut in half per instance.

Lopez.7369:

-snip-

Wrong,

you design a game around all tiers of game play. No game has ever been successful by being fun and balanced exclusively around the best players.

That kind of approach is the best way to ruin any PvP ambition. PvP needs and thrives on a wide player base. And to achieve that the game needs to be balanced and fun to play at all levels. That’s what makes DotA 2, LoL and all other PvP games so popular. Easy to access but a lot of depth.

Within this balance it’s ok to have heroes or (in the case of GW2) builds that are harder to play effectively and others that may achieve good results with comparatively little effort. Here you can bring the argument about build X being balanced around higher level play. But the game as a whole still needs to be balanced around all levels.

And that said, I think you vastly overstate the skill-cap in GW2. The difference between a top 20 and a Top 200 Guardian is virtually indistinguishable in actual game-play. Both still run in circles, spam the same cooldowns and essentially do the same thing. The only difference between a good team and a top team is coordination.

Lopez.7369:

Top-tier players complain about a lot of bad things in the game. They don’t complain about downed state because it creates counterplay and interesting tactics. The game would, in fact, be pretty basic and dumbed-down without downed state, or even if bleeding people out was somehow nerfed.

The problem is low-tier players generally refuse to adapt to downed state and think of it as a mini-game. But there’s no reason to think of it as a mini-game. It’s an extension of a character’s normal life in Guild Wars 2, and it demands just as much attention as a fully alive player.

I think the only thing top-tier players would agree with is that rallying needs a range limit of some sort.

You can’t design a PvP game around what “top tier” players like.

I’m was a good player myself. Not quite “top tier” but good enough to play against ranks >100 in teamQ on a regular basis.

Downed state is not an interesting mechanic. Instead it’s a snowballing safety net with a completely imbalanced risk/reward ratio.

The only build that can reliably capitalize on downed state is a Pistol Whip Thief since it can both interrupt the revive as well as damage the targets. But even Pistol Whip spam can’t stop a Guardian from rezzing.

The entire downed game-play is lame too. It’s always the same dance. It’s not interesting or engaging. It’s just annoying.

And again, it’s not balanced that it can take 10-30 seconds and 20 skill-uses to kill a target, but it only takes 2 seconds to revive them and negate that entire process. Everything that is good and fun about combat in GW2 is focused on getting people in to downed-state. But what happens thereafter is just bad design.

And by the way there were plenty of competitive PvPer when GW2 originally launched. It’s just that they all left, partially due to downed-state.

Here’s Kripp’s first impression video from GW2 back in 2012. And Downed-State is the first thing he criticizes.

And we haven’t even touched on WvW, where downed-state and rally is the single biggest snowballing mechanic in the game. Combined with hard-rezzes it makes it virtually impossible to chip away at larger zergs. It gives nigh immortality to numbers.

To this date, and my view has never faltered on this, I consider downed-state to be the single worst game-design element of GW2, probably even the worst in any MMO to date.

I know it must have sounded good on paper but the game-play it entails is just bad in every respect.

The key to an effective condition build isn’t maximizing your condition damage or duration.

It’s about getting as many different types of condition on your enemy. 10 stacks of bleeding are just as easy to cleanse as 25 stacks. But add Poison, Confusion and Burning to the mix and you’re causing serious trouble.

Priority #1 needs to be removal of hard-rezzing.

Priority #2 Rally with dodge-ball rules.

Priority #3 Is devising a new scoring algorithm.

The potions should work as advertised (incl. the 10% damage reduction). That bug was fixed a few months ago.

….to complain about them.

At least that’s what it feels like. Considering the consistent stranglehold this class has had on all aspects of the game since launch it receives surprisingly little complaints. I guess it’s because in 1v1 scenario, which everyone bases their assessments on, Guardians seem ok.

But while it was fair to complain about Thieves displacing all other damage dealers in sPvP it has never been an issue that Guardians, since the dawn of this game, have been the uncontested bunker class.

Nothing comes close to Guardians in this role and everyone seems to be ok with it. Why? Have we become so complacent that we simply accept this as a rule of the game?

All all other roles up for grabs (roamer, point-fighter etc.) except for mid-bunker? Have we given up trying to see class diversity in this role?

Or what about WvW where 30-40%….sometimes even as many as 60% of classes are made up of Guardians. Guardians that turn themselves and their team-mates into nigh-unkillable blobs.

Guardians by themselves also seem to negate the entire power of conditions in large scale battles, conditions which normally dominate any smaller scale encounter.

Or let’s talk about PvE where Guardians seem to cover 80% of the support a group might need. Sure, you might take a Mesmer for more reflects or an Elementalist for damage but when it comes to defensive support a Guardian is all you could ever ask for. The 1-stop carefree package to any PvE trip you might have planned.

In any other MMO having so much (defensive) power culminating in a single class would be considered game-breaking. And it is.

And yet in Guild Wars 2 this seems to be perfectly acceptable.

Guardians might not have 20.000 crits, stealth or other obvious “in your face” imbalances that might spark QQ on the forums. But if you ask me they are probably the single most broken class in the game, simply because of all the defensive and group utility they have accumulated in themselves.

What is this based on? WvW? sPvP?

You provide no context for your assessment. And context matters.

In either case, aide from ridiculous condition spam (whiich was a problem before but is now worse than ever) I think it’s too soon to comment on any specific sort of balance issues.

Every game I play had consisted of a completely random assortment of classes and builds without much of a common pattern.

I used this food a few times since the patch but since I didn’t actively record damage I can’t really say if it works or not.

Anyway, I didn’t notice a huge difference in damage. It certainly isn’t a game changer.