Guild Wars 2

Stability..?

Stunbreak is for.. uh, stuns and stuns only.

If your profession lacks guaranteed stability cough engineer cough, that’s a balance problem.

It’s true that the only casual sPvP mode tends to be hot-join. Grinding ranks through solo-queuing free tournaments will take forever, as you are unlikely to make it past Round 2 or Round 3 due to premades.

It’s quite funny that premades are even matched against PuGs in free tournaments. Shouldn’t tournaments be about skill? There is no skill in PuG stomping.

• If you queue as a group you go into POOL A.
• If you queue solo you go into POOL B.
• People from POOL A are only matched against others in POOL A.
• People from POOL B are only matched against others in POOL B.

Problem solved. Will queues be longer? Yes. They’ll also be worth it. I’d rather spend an extra 5-10 minutes waiting for a queue for a game that may end up giving me more glory and rank than losing a game I have no chance of winning.

The burnout for casual solo players such as myself is strong, because we only ever see 1 or 2 maps. Kyhlo pretty much doesn’t exist to me. You may argue tournaments are meant for grouping. If that’s the case they should remove solo-queuing from free tournaments.

Frequent and verbose communication is the best remedy, and I don’t know what it is about MMORPG developers but they fail horribly at it.

ArenaNet has a blog. Make daily or semi-daily posts. Inform us of what is happening. Don’t be vague or ambigiuous. Be detailed but concise and go through each profession. I think a lot of developers keep quiet because they don’t want to make promises. Solution? Put a big red 18pt disclaimer at the top of every blog post that says “THIS IS ALL IN DEVELOPMENT AND MAY BE CHANGED BEFORE RELEASE”. Anyone who still complains is at fault.

Despite the complainers, Blizzard devs and CMs do a remarkable job communicating on their forums. They are consistent for the most part.

It’s not enough to just say “Stuff is being worked on. Please be patient.”

• Viable turret build for sPvP that ISN’T bunker.
• More sigil choice. We can’t use most sigils because we lack weapon swap. Make it work with kits.
• A skill that gives guaranteed stability. We have none. Throw Elixir S cuts close but it’s still random.
• Not having a large majority of our traits/skills be bugged.

ArenaNet wanted a piece of WoW’s popularity, so they gave up their originality for simplicity and catered to the masses. From a business standpoint that’s probably smart. Most customers don’t even PvP. However longterm it could hurt them gravely. Nobody remembers a game for how much it sold.

Build diversity is pitiful. You may think with so many traits there are probably just builds people haven’t discovered? Except so many traits and skills are simply horrible or bugged, with absolutely zero indication from ArenaNet that they’ll ever be fixed. There are traits that have been bugged since BWE #1.

Everyone is using the same few builds because they’re the only ones that work and/or are fun. Therefore, PvP is stale.

Drop Guardian – Drop a guardian for 60 seconds to win easy.

I see premades in free tournaments every match. Bads will bad, regardless if they’re a premade. For these bad premades it’s better farming if they stomp PuGs than get beaten in the first round of paids.

Bunkers aren’t by design. This game is meant to have no trinity. Everyone is meant to be DPS. No pure tanks or healers.

It’s an oversight that bunkers came to be. People realized dumping all their points into the two defensive traitlines made them great point defenders.

Even in other map types bunkers can still thrive. Capture-the-flag suits bunkers well as the flag holder. Bunkers usually have a lot of CC, which could make them useful in deathmatch-style map (3v3/5v5) to CC a target for switches.

Still, I believe the only way to discourage bunkers is to adjust maps and mechanics.

* Conquest: You should never be able to hold a point when outnumbered.
* Capture-the-flag: Flag holder receives a debuff that increases damage taken. This starts very low like 1%. It increases over time. This is vital to prevent turtling. WoW does this and it works.
* Deathmatch/other: Diminishing returns on CC. (this would be needed for deathmatch anyway, as CC is ridiculous in this game)

http://www.gw2guilds.org/guilds

Filter by sPvP.

MMOs that focus on PvE and PvP tend to let one or the other suffer, and usually it’s PvP.

From a business view, it makes sense to cater to PvE because there’s far more players who purchased the game for PvE. PvE players are probably more likely to buy gems also.

From an E-Sports view, you really need to be a PvP-focused game from the get go to survive. e.g. SC2, LoL, etc.

Stealing is a legit tactic, but Quickness makes stealing trivial. I’ve stolen kills easily on just about every profession that has guaranteed Quickness.

Nerf Quickness and it would be more difficult.

Oh….over 1k health/s from elixir gun +elixir infused bombs, significant AoE damage and control through bombkit and rifle or p/s, the abillity to self-rez and aoe rez teammates, 100% uptime for 100% endurance regen, and the ability to dodge ~5 times in a row? Oh…and the ability to kill off all the mesmers clones in 1-2 aoe attacks.

lol, why do I feel like I’ve heard this line before? Oh right, because you spewed it in another thread.

Sorry, all of that pales in comparison to having a well coordinated team with a mesmer who can bring 1-2 people with to defend two points simultaneously.

It’s a long known bug that Med Kit in PvE does not swap out properly like most kits. In PvE.

That said, I actually prefer this bug in conjunction with Speedy Kits. When traveling it’s just mindless to spam Med Kit over and over, whereas in sPvP I have to think about GCDs or what kits I have. 1st world problems.

I always use ~ to swap so in either situation it doesn’t matter.

What does a bunker engineer offer that a bunker/support mesmer doesn’t plus more? The mesmer can assist between two points easily while bringing allies.

I wish they removed the scoreboard. The scoreboard only serves to hurt PuGs. PuGs would be more successful if they actually focused on objectives and winning instead of just topping charts.

Keep the scoreboard in paid tPvP if e~peen so desires.

I wish duels would happen. It was incredibly requested during the beta weekend events, and ArenaNet even acknowledged it and hinted that it would be worked on, but now that they’ve mentioned dueling in the form of 1v1 custom arenas.. I don’t think we’ll get actual dueling that every other MMO seems to have.

Bunker engineers are easily soloable if you’re playing your profession properly. Their self-healing and stability pales in comparison to Elementalist and Guardians, which are much more difficult to solo.

Should they ever put DRs on knockdowns, knockbacks, stuns, snares, immobilizes.. that will help kill the bunker (especially Engineer bunkers).

It’s quite sad how few actual fixes we’ve had since release. The biggest fix was auto-attack not persisting on kits. When we do get fixes, they’re the less important bugs.

So many of our traits are bugged and don’t work. I honestly think Engineers are their least concern because they’re the least played profession, which is a result of our bugged profession hampering our potential. ArenaNet would rather spend time fixing professions that most people are playing.

From the latest patch notes:

“Save Yourselves!”: This skill has now been split between PvP and PvE. In PvE, players will notice no difference. In PvP, this skill’s boon duration has been changed to 5 seconds.

Well, I stand corrected! Bravo ArenaNet.

Will WvW borderlands and EB be themed for Halloween?

Some mechanics are split, but it’s pretty clear skills themselves are not. However there is no in-game documentation or UI indication of what is split. I’ve noticed traits that work differently in PvE than in PvP, but without a detailed tooltip there’s no way to know what changes without testing it yourself and trial/error (and whether or not it’s just bugged).

I believe MMOs of the future that truly want to contend in E-Sports and PvE will need to face the reality that splitting is the only way to go about it, lest you sacrifice the balance of one or the other, or both.

The problem is, as mentioned, people forgetting to hit it.

It’s a small button in the lower left. Bad bad ArenaNet.

Put it in the middle of the screen, just like the pop-up that exists when the queue is ready.

Replace moa with an ability that clears every condition and grants stability for 6 seconds, 60 second cooldown.

The CD would have to be at least 90 or 120 seconds, with perhaps a trait that lowers the recharge.

They just need to make it so it breaks on a certain amount of damage, or breaks randomly on some damage. Maybe even have it break on any damage, and Moa then becomes the WoW equivalent of polymorph.

WoW had this thing thing with fear back in the day. Horribly imbalanced until it could break on some damage threshold.

This would be a change for the better because it furthers the meta. Do you attack the Moa target and possibly risk canceling the form, or do you ignore the Moa so you and your team can focus another player?

I would prefer they not hard nerf anything until the meta develops for at least a month after paid tournaments are available. That will allow better indication on balance.

And certainly don’t nerf anything based on hot-join.

Speedy Kits is a huge must have for WvW, and to a lesser extent sPvP and PvE. I hope they never change it!

Free transfers will close when guesting is implemented. No source, but it’s clearly what they’re waiting on.

Please add a forum for Team Recruitment / Looking for Team. It would be like the Guild Recruitment, but for finding a team or finding more members for your team.

This would be doubly nice for the upcoming paid tournaments.

I would prefer they add an actual LFT (Looking For Team) interface where you can post yourself as looking for team, or browse for people to join your team. Same end-goal, less lag.

I play a bunker Engi. I’ve tried different builds but sadly I haven’t found anything capable of stopping the Backstab Thief instakill

Huh? As a bunker engineer I’m not sure you’re actually a bunker if you’re still capable of dying in less than 3 hits.

Do you not have > 2.8k armor, > 23K HP, and points in Inventions and Alchemy? (particularly the trait that gives you protection on CC)

For U.S. region:

In an attempt to avoid premades in tPvP, I’m curious what tPvP queues are like at 7AM EDT?

Are they fast? Are they mostly PuGs? I imagine not a lot of teams are playing at 7AM unless you’re international playing on U.S. servers.

shaolin.9716:

Bunkers builds are ruining free tournament pug tPvP. People are catching on to this trend. I was just in a game with 3 bunkers builds. 1 guardian and 2 elementalists. It’s simply impossible to dislodge these stupid builds from the nodes. When we miraculously manage to down one of them as a pug, they get revived by their bunker friend (because bunkers are not just specialized in holding nodes but reviving people too), and this goes on and on. When a point is contested it should be instantly grey and not giving points to either team. Unkillable builds are atrociously overpowered with the current PvP objective mechanics. Force people into more balanced builds, if they can’t kill anyone they should suffer for it, just as glass cannons should suffer too. Balanced builds make fun games, but extremes of the build spectrum don’t.

Relax.

Jon Peters has expressed concern with bunkers.

The patch next week will probably have a slew of changes. ArenaNet will most likely want to fix a lot of balance problems before paid tournaments go live next week.

Doesn’t that mean you’re locked into a weapon bundle? I mean, as a bunker, Elixir’s X normal skills are actually quite good — you have so many knockdowns and knockbacks. We have no kit that is worth using over that.

That said, I’m curious how much damage grenades do under Elixir X.

I actually used to think this was bogus because people reported it so much, but anymore I think it’s true.

I don’t PvE, but in sPvP as soon as I walk into the vicinity of the sPvP bosses, while my other teammates are attacking and I haven’t even begun to attack, the bosses aggros onto me. I am a bunker however with high toughness and HP, if it’s related to tanky-players being chosen by the AI as more appropriate targets.

Except for thieves, all other skills except for #1 have a CD. This is unlike some MMOs, such as WoW, where you have many spammable abilities.

If they were to add “mana” without removing CDs from skills, we would be sitting around twiddling our thumbs.

In short: CDs ARE the resource management.

I still remember walking into Divinity’s Reach in BWE1. I was floored at the size of the city. Before then I had seen only concept art and screenshots. I had no reference to the actual size of the city. I don’t think anything else in this game will be that unforgettable.

It’s kind of a shame the city is mostly an NPC ghost town.

Sure, pick up Elixir U and some gadgets and go to town.

Engineers are not destined to spam grenades. Except maybe in WvW.

Yea, some of you blow anything out of proportion. I’m hardly bothered by it at all. It was a mere suggestion. If ArenaNet were to even seriously consider it, it would be placed at the bottom of their “to-do” list. (actually the real reason I brought it up was from another thread that was talking about making sPvP F2P, but the Level 1 problem would have to be dealt with)

GW2 sPvP needs to get GW2 back onto the front page of Twitch. Twitch is basically the de facto benchmark for popular E-Sport games. If you’re not the front page, you’re not relevant. It’s also a great way to get publicity for the game and get ArenaNet more sales. F2P sPvP would probably help increase Twitch viewers and streamers.

Sure, paid games like SC2 have an easy time maintaining front page status because — face it — it’s Starcraft and the game has a legacy. GW2 however is still largely unknown.

Sky.9347:

So which professions do you not have 1 of yet?

I mean… personally I couldn’t care less one way or the other. Seems like a pretty superfluous thing to post on the forums about though.

There’s many reasons to have multiple of the same profession. Perhaps you want a character with a different look, race, or sex. The topic is relevant to sPvP. Sorry I didn’t post the usual tripe about thieves or mesmers or what not.

Awesome.6120:

It’s like 5 minutes at the most.

Some people will cry about anything I guess.

Just as you are now.

You’re right, it’s only 5 minutes. It shouldn’t be a big deal then to allow Level 1s to skip it.

I feel it’s a little silly that every time I want to try another profession only for sPvP that I must roll through the Level 1 PvE prologue.

My suggestion would be once you have experienced the prologue for a race, allow the option to Jump into The Mists starting from Level 1.

I like this model very much. LoL, HoN and Dota 2 are all very popular because they’re F2P.

Make sPvP F2P. However, for the sake of maintaining fair and healthy E-Sport, in no way can F2P players have restrictions on them for sPvP. You can’t cap them at Rank 20, or any other restriction.

If the player wants to try PvE, WvW, or go beyond level 2 — they’ll need to pay for the game.

One problem is that to even get into The Mists at level 2 you must complete the introduction instance that is PvE. They can either skip this for F2P players, or — what I would prefer, they let you join The Mists starting from level 1. I hate rolling new alts and having to wade through the introduction instance just to get to The Mists. I’ve seen it all a hundred times.

im in favor of adjustable traits while in match.

Yea, so the best teams are those who cheese AutoHotkey scripts to quickly populate traits for best min/max given any situation.

forcing 1 set of equips to face varied teams is dumb.

Then why lock down traits at all? Might as well let us change traits in the middle of a match to adjust for varied teams.

Answer: because it compels people to play silly cheesy micro-management in order to min/max and feel competitive. It’s like Diablo 3 and MF-swapping debacle some months ago.

I’d like to say that the image in question is a mock-up created by artists, and does not accurately reflect the in-game result of a feature.

Aw, you mean we probably won’t have a “Rage Quit” counter? =(

I think swapping weapons/characters is fine before the match but should not happen after the match begins. If any weapon swapping is allowed after the match starts it should only be in the spawn area.

My problem with character swapping is it inherently shows balance problems. If every team has someone swapping to Mesmer for Kyhlo, clearly something needs to be fixed. Most of the time people character swap for some map advantage that profession provides.

There’s a lot of ways to bunker Engineer, I’m curious which ones people find most or least effective. I definitely agree they’re not as good as bunker guardians. I’m not sure about bunker elementalist, I hardly see them.

I bunker engineer with flamethrower, elixir gun and tool-kit and do quite well. In a 1v1 against a bunker guardian at clocktower with no trebuchet interruption, I can easily keep the guardian off the point. Especially if I swap to Elixir X.

Weapon swapping should be locked.

Even more important, swapping characters between matches should be locked. It’s silly that people swap to their Mesmer for Battle of Kyhlo. (tPvP) Just have someone lose their queue when they log in with another character.

I’m not sure any of this is important.

It may affect hot-join, but tPvP — especially higher ranks and especially paid tPvP — I doubt it.

If in tPvP your teammates aren’t taking risks in order to maintain their K/D ratio: find new teammates.

In tPvP I can’t realistically see a scenario where I think to myself “Oh, if I defend this point we will surely win, but I may die and I don’t want to ruin my K/D, so I better run away despite the fact we will lose the match.”