I’ve been using Mender’s Purity in almost every build I’ve ever made for WvW. Being able to remove cripple and chills on heal has saved me countless times.
You’re just realizing this now? Every change they’ve made seems to have been done at the behest of thieves, warriors, and guardians on the SPvP forum.
I had naively hoped that perhaps Anet wouldn’t behave like every other MMO company I’ve ever purchased a game from but it seems that, as it has been with every other game, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
I’m not surprised but I am disappointed. Perhaps this means that complaining on forums will get things done which means that if we complain enough about these changes we might be able to get them undone.
I’ve run that full glass spec before and, as with all specs, I found it to have its ups and downs. The direct damage is significant, the survivability felt a little too low even with staff. Also the full glass build has no innate condition removal so unless I was running Prayer to Kormir (or whatever it’s called) or null field, I found that I had a hell of a time with eles, necros, condition mesmers, basically anything with conditions.
It’s pretty cool to be able to evaporate someone with Mind Wrack though.
The thing you gotta understand about Blackgate is that it’s pretty hard to find small group pvp regardless of what time slot you’re playing in. The NA presence of both Sanctum of Rall and Tarnished Coast is pretty significant and a lot of them tend to run around in larger groups. At night things get a little better but even then it’s pretty zergy. Finding even a 1v2 or 1v3 that doesn’t turn into a much larger fight is difficult and time consuming. Honestly I’m amazed that StG was able to find that many solo players.
I really enjoyed the video and I hope to see more in the future.
I’ve personally tried several different condition build layouts and I’ve also played a lot of straight burst shatter and I have to say that I personally prefer being able to just blow people up to having to wittle people down with burns and bleeds and then hoping they go gung-ho once the confusion is stacked.
It’s not that I don’t like condition mesmer. I do. I just like burst shatter more. But I have all the condition gear sitting in my warehouse. Maybe if the developers decide to make condition mesmer stronger I’ll play that spec more often.
Skill isnt entirely relative. Its like sports. the best (highest rated) team is better than nearly all other teams.
They are only the best team relative to the other teams out there.
i play for the same reason i do everything in life (to be the best) and in paid its truly the only place i get this rush.
Well that’s your motivation. That sort of motivation seems typical for elite players. They just seem to want to be better than everyone else because it makes them feel good.
I don’t necessarily care about being the best. I don’t think I’m ever going to be the best. I’m alright and that’s fine with me and for paid tournaments to be robustly successful there needs to be all levels of players playing, not just the elite.
I would be content to do decently well in a lower tier division, particularly if I still got in-game monies and other rewards just for playing but currently that sort of division doesn’t exist.
I’m not saying I don’t like your idea. I do like your idea. I just see it as one piece of the puzzle.
Rewards, rewards, rewards. Give people a reason to play, make them feel comfortable playing at whatever level they’re capable of playing at. Give them options. Give us spectator mode so we can watch the top tier games and learn. These are the things that I think will attract people to paid tournaments. I know they would personally attract me.
Skill is relative. Skilled compared to whom?
I am better than some players and worse than others. If I only played people who were equal to or worse than me then I would appear to be relatively skilled.
If I were to only play people better than me I will appear relatively unskilled.
My skill is measured relative to my opponent.
But we’re not just talking about pvp or skill though we’re talking about the carrot. We’re talking about incentives.
You want people to play a game. You have to give them a reason to play. You have to find the carrot that more people will find attractive.
I want to know that I can be that one team in eight. I think other people do too. People need to know that they can win first.
At present I don’t think I can be and so it seems to me to be a huge waste of my time. I think this is exactly why so few people are queuing for paid tournaments. They don’t think their odds of success are very high.
So why waste their time?
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I can’t speak for other people, I can only speak for myself. I do not know why other people play paid tournaments. Perhaps they enjoy competition for competition’s sake. That’s nice I guess. I don’t really care about bragging rights or whatever. I want to win things I like if I win the game and I want to feel like I can win before I even try to play.
The main reason I find paid tournaments unattractive at present is because I know that I’m unlikely to win first place.
Being guaranteed a medal is a nice idea but what I really want to know (or feel) is that I have a chance of winning first everytime I queue.
This tournament structure SAtaar has proposed is certainly more appealing than the current setup but I think it would become even more appealing if I knew that teams like SAtarr’s wouldn’t even be in the same bracket as teams like mine.
So I guess the idea here is to reward people regardless of how they perform.
I like that. It’s certainly more forgiving and inviting than the current setup.
I actually really enjoy the burst in this game. I like that if I land my stuff my opponent is probably dead or badly wounded and I like that it’s possible to learn how to counter the same approach being used against me.
Absolutely right Xirin, I could’ve better qualified that statement.
I was merely trying to point out that SoR doesn’t appear to me to be home of only skilled players. There is good and bad on every server.
Tight Community, skilled player base, mature atmosphere, friendly and helpful people.
I mean ask yourself this, if SoR had the coverage that BG has, who would be #1? I think the answer is obvious to everyone.
You can build coverage, you can’t build the things listed above.
I have no idea about the community or the atmosphere or the friendliness of the players so I can’t comment on that. Obviously communities can be built otherwise SoR wouldn’t have been able to build its community.
Skill can obviously be developed through practice and by learning theory otherwise no one would be skilled. People (except for exceptionally rare talents) don’t start out good at things, they develop skill over time. Even talented people have to practice.
My completely honest opinion after playing for several weeks against SoR is that there are some skilled players, a few really skilled players and a lot of really really bad players. But that’s just my opinion.
Yes SoR could build coverage. But then they could just get it by default by transferring.
BG has the coverage, but that’s all they have over SoR, why would they move there?
Because in WvW coverage is the name of the game.
I absolutely love winning. In fact, I win every time that my small group or I, stomp BG and TC players. This type of win is directly linked to MY ability and I feel that I worked for that win. I am sure a lot of the guilds on SoR feel the same way. We prefer winning based on our own merit as opposed to “winning” based on who has more people that can smack gates while there is a lack of opposition.
So winning to you may be the point tally at the end of the week that shows that your server has more players around the clock that can capture and hold points. If that makes you happy then kudos to you. You have every right to enjoy that type of victory.
A lot of players on SoR however would not be content with that type of victory. I know that I wouldn’t.
What makes you think you can’t have both?
I don’t see why small group pvp is mutually exclusive with being on a winning server.
They’ll never do that. Better rewards for participation and time yes. Better rewards for a server winning no. Not in WvW anyways where too much is outside of the individual player’s control. Winning in the highest tier possible should be a matter of pride and rewarded with satisfaction … nothing more.
Winning in general is satisfying, I don’t think it matters what tier one plays in. At least it hasn’t for me. Winning in t4 and t3 on Yak’s Bend felt good, winning in t2 with Blackgate feels good now.
If the only reward for winning in WvW is the smug satisfaction one gets for doing so then I think I’d rather win in t2 than risk losing in t1.
What I think big SoR guilds like Pain Train and Tempest Wolves should consider is that all their NA primetime work could be put to much more productive use on a server that has the overnight coverage their current server lacks.
Transfer over and make Blackgate even stronger.
There is no material incentive to win in WvW outside of the psychic benefit people receive from being on the winning side.
No one on Blackgate has gotten any special items or whatever for winning these past few weeks.
That being said, it’s probably better for people to play on a winning t2 server than a losing t1 server since winning always feels good whereas losing always feels bad.
If Anet implements some kind of system where the winning server gets actually gets some serious material rewards then I think that would change the way people play this game entirely.
I don’t think it would be wise to count SoR out yet.
I’ve seen them grind out 15k points pretty quickly before.
We don’t even know exactly what they’re going to change yet. I don’t think Sharp’s post is entirely clear.
I think I’ll wait until I actually have something concrete to look at to either cheer or despair.
It’s unclear to me what exactly Mr. Sharp meant in his forum post. I imagine many people, myself included, are thinking it might mean a change to shattered strength.
Although he may just be referring to the clone “exploit” that other people have been talking about in other threads, the vague language makes it hard for me to be sure.
I believe, however, that with or without shattered strength in its current form, the shatter build will continue to dominate the mesmer metagame.
The thing is that with Mesmer you’re either doing damage with phantasms, doing damage with confusion or doing damage with shatters or some combination of all three.
People use shatter builds because they’re the class mechanic, they’re what the mesmer appears to be ultimately designed to do best.
The class doesn’t have enough healing to bunker as effectively as other classes can. We can use traits from the chaos and inspiration lines to give us protection and regen with the use of phantasms but then we don’t have the condition removal of water specced eles or guardians or even necros or engis.
Confusion is alright but you can’t ever force anyone to use skills when they’re confused and the traits that accompany a confusion build are somewhat clumsy. The scepter, the only weapon with a direct confusion application attack (confusing images) is a lackluster weapon. The torch trait is in the domination line for some reason. The staff has nothing for applying confusion.
Phantasm damage builds are ok but easily shut down. Smart players just kill the phantasms. Without deceptive evasion a mesmer is relatively easy to keep track of but running deceptive evasion with a phantasm damage build puts clone generation and phantasm generation at cross purposes.
Shatter builds, because of the slipperiness they offer as well as the high AoE damage and cc potential and the fact that the entire class mechanics are built around shattering, make shatters far more attractive to me than any other conceivable build and this has been so for a very long time.
Unless they make phantasm builds stronger or make confusion builds more easily usable, shatters will continue to be the way to go with or without shattered strength in its current form.
I think anyone else who plays mesmer will agree with what I have just said.
Changing shattered strength isn’t going to lead to more build diversity, it’s just going to lead to nerfed mesmers.
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Well I guess I better have my fun now before I get nerfed again.
Well as was expected, TC brought something fresh into t2 tonight. I’m so glad to be fighting new people.
For a week. SoS took what 3 weeks, and they were good, I mean outnumber you, outplay you, outzerg you, skilled players, dead on tactics, that good. SoR is the T1 Gatekeeper. I cant wait to see the BG, SoS matchup. SoS will humble your butt, like they did to SoR, and they were champs about it.
I’m sure they have some decent players. Every server does SoR included. Laudanum or Vengeance or that CD guild for example.
But getting zerged? It is all the same to me. I don’t care what their nametag says.
t1, t2, t3 is all the same to me too. Who cares? There’s no reward for winning in WvW. I just go out and try to kill people. Makes no difference to me who they are.
That’s what I did on Yak’s Bend, that’s what I do on Blackgate, that’s what I’d do on any server, regardless of rank.
If we get bumped up to t1 and lose then we’re right back to fighting SoR and that doesn’t seem to be what either server wants anymore. This matchup has grown stale to me and I think a lot of people are feeling the same way.
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If SoR had the Oceanic/Asian coverage that BG had, they wouldn’t be sitting in Tier 2 that’s for sure. It’s like you guys purposely lose points so you never have to leave Tier 2, so you can pump your chest and be the “winner” when you know full well you’d get your kitten kicked in Tier 1
I think everyone’s just taking a break before reset. People have been grinding WvW all week.
I don’t think people on BG have necessarily been trying to stay in Tier 2 but then getting to Tier 1 has no obvious reward other than fighting even bigger zergfest servers than SoR. Not exactly a compelling incentive.
But do not fret, I imagine we’ll get bumped up sooner or later and then SoR will have T2 all to itself.
I’d personally like to see a five shatter mesmer team all running the same build that everyone is complaining about right now. I think it would be interesting to see what happens. Logic dictates that if the Mesmer is truly more powerful in tPvP than any other class then five Mesmers should also be more powerful than any other conceivable combination of classes. Or is my logic flawed somehow?
Well at last let ppl go with 1 bunker u.u
I feel like that would ruin the experiment.
So I have a question for top tournament players. Are any of the top teams planning on running an all mesmer team? If so, which teams will be doing this and can you stream it please? I’d like to see how an all mesmer team performs.
so…for you giving your team 25 stacks of might every 45 secs and maybe aoe quickness with time warp it’s ok? Potentially to the whole team? 5 ppl with 25 stacks of might and quickness every 3 minutes and half?And ppl still complain bout thieves’s single target counterable bursts…seriously? It’s like a dam freakin’ army of doom…you call this balanced? Really?
The might stacks are nothing that a necro well or a well placed null field can’t get rid of very quickly. Incidentally those wells and null field are on the same cd as signet of inspiration. The same cannot be said for ele and guardian boons since they’re so easily restacked. Also I don’t know if generating and transferring 25 stacks is even feasible, I’d like to see video proof of a mesmer generating that many might stacks by himself. The most I’ve been able to reliably generate and transfer is between 9-12 because of the time it takes to generate clones and land full shatters. Sometimes I can get 18 but that’s if everything goes perfectly. Perhaps with elementalist and/or guardian support 25 is doable, but then elementalists and guardians can generate more boons much more quickly than a mesmer can and they can both do it far more frequently. Time warp is strong but it has a very long cd. In a tournament match it’s probably only going to get used once, maybe twice if the match is long. An ele can share auras as frequently as mesmer can use signet of inspiration and keep his entire team buffed every attunement swap. They can also set up combo fields fairly easily with ring of fire being on such a short cd. Guardians can provide a lot of consistent support as well. I don’t really understand the engineer class very well but I’ve seen them generate lots of boons as well though I don’t understand the class mechanics well enough to speak more about it in depth.
In a pvp match there are things happening every second not just every 45 seconds and 180 seconds. Those other seconds matter too when considering balance.
Keeping that in mind, yes I think shattered strength is balanced. I think signet of inspiration is balanced.
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What is the point of this thread?
Wait just a sec…so you’re saying that mesmers where bad before patch? Seriously? The most powerful pvp class was actually bad without this? u.u
I have not said this.
I do not know if mesmer is the most powerful pvp class. Obviously you seem to think it is but you are hardly in a position to make such an evaluation. I think the most powerful pvp class depends more on the context of the fight (terrain, type of opposition etc) than just the skills on a hotbar.
What I said was that Mesmers have been getting progressively toned down since I’ve started playing them.
This is the first time they’ve actually given me a new toy to play with instead of just taking my old toys away.
It is for this I am thankful. I really like the way shattered strength works now. I do think there are some popular misconceptions about the functionality of stacking as much might as possible in as short a time as possible. To do so limits the functionality of the shatter mesmer since all he will have is auto attacks for the duration of the buff. It also makes the mesmer very vulnerable in the case of boon strips. I think the more intelligent approach is to steadily rotate shatters to maintain a consistent, albeit not-as-high might buff.
I have also seen people complain about the use of signet of inspiration in conjunction with shattered strength. On first glance this seems like an obvious synergy. However, I offer some things to consider. Firstly, any signet other than signet of illusions could most adequately be described as a tell. A mesmer with signet of inspiration on his bar is the real mesmer guaranteed. Secondly, the recharge timer on signet of inspiration is 45 seconds. So after the mesmer has shared his might stacks with his teammates he’s basically just sitting there. Thirdly, in order to use signet of inspiration, a mesmer has to choose to get rid of some other crucial utility. Perhaps decoy, null field, mirror images, blink, portal or illusion of life. These are all utilities which, imo, can be absolutely crucial. So to sacrifice any of them is a very serious decision. This sacrifice is made to be able to give removable might stacks to his team every 45 seconds all the while carrying a buff on his bar that says: this one is the real one.
Just some things which I think are worth considering.
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Posts like this only perpetuate disproportion of class to class strength.
Perhaps there is no disproportion and you’re just as biased about this issue as I am.
You obviously don’t agree with the changes and I obviously do agree with them.
Luckily it’s not for either one of us to decide. I would hope that Anet developers don’t use the forums to determine what to do with their game.
However, in the off-chance that the developers actually are reading any of this and taking it to heart, please Anet don’t listen to the forum qq and leave shattered strength as it is.
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I’m a mesmer and I don’t hate shattered strength at all. I’ve been really enjoying being able to actually generate a decent amount of offensive buffs for a change. Thank you Anet for finally giving us something nice. Please leave shattered strength as it is, thanks.
I am glad they finally gave us mesmers a way to generate some decent offensive buffs.
I hope Anet leaves shattered strength as it is.
I don’t think shattered strength is overpowered now I think it’s fine and I’m glad Anet finally showed us some love for once.
Anet please keep these sorts of changes coming.
And what is the supposed counter for Cloak and Dagger spamming condition thieves?
I wanted to say that of all the opponents from SoR I’ve run into, one guild has really impressed me. They are called Laudanum and they actually seem to have some really skilled players.
I don’t think I’d ever want to play on SoR but if I had to I think I’d want to play with the Laudanum guild.
What are the other viable specs?
@Brutalistik
“Blurry Frenzy can be used 10 -12 times before Endure Pain is useable again.”
Mesmers can nullify damage more often than warriors can. Does that mean that in the grand scheme of things that the mesmer and warrior classes are imbalanced?
I think we need now to consider the classes in terms of strengths and weaknesses. Warriors are typically played as AoE damage dealers and in that capacity they can excel tremendously.
Warriors have many more ways of doing AoE damage than mesmers do. Whirlwind attack hits hard, bladetrail still hits hard even after the nerf and let’s not forget hundred blades, a skill which can 100-0 as many squishy people as are in its range. All the greatsword auto attacks are AoE. Warriors also have far more mobility than mesmers do if they use the one handed sword in combination with the greatsword.
Does this mean that mesmers need to be given more AoE damage or that they need to be made to be more mobile?
No, I don’t think so. I accept that on my mesmer I’m more of a single target damage dealer than I would be if I were playing warrior and that I’m going to be slow even with the focus offhand. That’s the tradeoff of playing a mesmer.
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And just something else I noticed.
“5. You need gap closer with staff? You are a joke. WTF do you need gap closer with staff. Luckily devs are not as clueless as yourself and you gave you what you actually need: gap OPENER, and on very low timer (8s again if you trait properly).”
Phase retreat actually has a 5s cd with the staff trait in chaos line, 8s is the skill’s base cd. I’m sure that Mufa already knows this since he’s an expert mesmer but it’s almost mandatory to run 30 points into illusions with shatter based builds to get illusionary persona, the trait that causes all shatter skills to trigger on the mesmer as well as his/her clones. Shatter builds also typically require 20 points in dueling to get deceptive evasion, the dodge roll clone generation trait and at least 10 points in domination to get mental torment, the mind wrack damage modifier. This doesn’t leave enough points left to go far enough into the chaos line to get the staff trait. This means that shatter mesmers using staff are not going to have the staff trait and so phase retreat will be 8s rather than 5.
The reason I’m talking about gap closers is because the bread of butter of shatter damage is mind wrack which is maximized at close range if the mesmer is running illusionary persona which, as I said before, almost every shatter mesmer is. In order to ensure a 4 illusion shatter, the mesmer needs to close the gap between himself and his opponent. This is why so many mesmers use illusionary leap as a way of rooting their opponent before triggering shatters and blurred frenzy. Staff doesn’t provide any means of doing this.
“6. Staff bad dmg? Did you know those things apply burning on enemies? no? laughable.”
The staff auto attack applies one of three conditions randomly: bleed, burning or vulnerability. The damage on these conditions is not very high relative to say the damage of the greatsword auto attack spatial surge and finishing a downed opponent with winds of chaos is a very slow process that leaves plenty of time for teammates to res the downed player. I think it’s fair to characterize staff as being the more defensive of the mesmer two-handed weapon options.
None of this directly relates to the invuln question but perhaps Mufa is not the source of all knowledge about mesmers.
@ Brutalistik
“since he plays the class and admits the move is a bit sketchy on such a low cool down being immune to all in 2 seconds.”
So he plays mesmer and thinks something is too strong, so what? I play mesmer too and I don’t feel it’s too strong. Which of us is right? Depends on who you ask. Everyone has an opinion but the only opinion that ultimately matters is the developer’s and I don’t know what they think about this “issue” but I doubt it’s along the lines of what Mufa and you seem to think.
“I play this class as well, but not often and I treat this attack as Endure Pain every 8 seconds”
Well then you know that the base cd on blurred frenzy is 10s not 8, it goes down to 8 with the sword trait in dueling. It’s sort of like endure pain except you can’t move when channeling Blurred Frenzy and warriors are in heavy armor the rest of the time whereas mesmers are squishy the rest of time.
“If this move performed as hundreds blades since it has no immunity to anything when using it then we wouldn’t be discussion the issue here besides it doing a lot of damage.”
Well if blurred frenzy was changed to do the kind of damage that hundred blades can then I’d probably be ok with losing the invuln. As it is it doesn’t hit for anything near what hb can.
“I understand the purpose of Blurry Frenzy to evade attacks like normal attacks, but it shouldn’t evading AOE attacks such as knock backs, shockwaves, condition aoe or fear. Just because I’m blurry to hit shouldn’t make invulnerable to earthquake attacks or raining cats and dogs if you catch my drift.”
This is an opinion that expresses a conceptualization of what you think ought or ought not be in a video game. I don’t necessarily agree with you but that’s all I can really say about this. It’s a difference of opinion.
Mufa, I don’t think there is a real issue here. I don’t think you’ve provided compelling reasons to think of blurred frenzy as unbalanced and I do not think the skill will get changed in the future.
You may find a few people on this forum who agree with you but I don’t think any of them will be the developers.
Keep whining if it makes you feel better though.
I’m not sure that it autofaces I think the coned hitbox on the skill is fairly wide, wide enough to hit players standing next to the mesmer as well as in front.
I don’t think they’re gonna nerf blurred frenzy these guys are just whining to make themselves feel better.
We can presuppose any number of hypothetical scenarios where, if everything goes exactly according to the presupposed script, a mesmer could use blurred frenzy several times over the period of a single encounter.
The problem is that in real combat things don’t go according to a script. Illusionary leap, the only mesmer gap closer on one handed sword, is incredibly unreliable. So sometimes the clone spawns and goes to the target, often times it gets caught on the topography of the map or simply doesn’t follow its target very well. Sometimes triggering swap will put the mesmer at the intended target, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the aoe immobilize catches people where the swap occurs but sometimes they get a few steps away before the immobilize triggers. When any of these errors occur, the blurred frenzy/mind wrack burst sequence is undone. It’s also undone if someone dodges the shatter or blocks it with a shield etc etc. There’s also the possibility that mesmer phantasms or clones get killed by aoe before they can be shattered or deal any damage whatsoever.
Mufa mentions the use of the offhand pistol’s iDuelist as a way of putting pressure on melee but what he doesn’t mention is that iduelist has a 16s cd when untraited and gets killed in about two hits. It won’t summon if the game registers the target as being obstructed, if the mesmer is blinded, if the attack is blocked etc. It also struggles with topography sometimes when trying to go around corners. A lot of times it will LoS itself. Magic bullet, when untraited, is a 2s stun on a 25s cd. It can be blocked, dodged etc.
If a mesmer is using pistol offhand then he cannot be using focus offhand, the only weapon the mesmer has to pull people off a ressing opponent. So even if the mesmer downs an opponent with sword/pistol, he’s got no real way of getting a reliable stomp because decoy doesn’t last long enough and doesn’t negate the downed opponent’s skills like thieves’ refuge does. The only other option is to use distortion for the stomp, but that shatter is on a 60s cd and requires the use of clone resources to get enough time to avoid pushes, pulls and stuns. The best, most reliable way for a mesmer to finish a downed opponent is actually by dpsing him down with blurred frenzy because otherwise finishing the stomp can be very difficult, particularly in a group fight.
Mufa mentions the use of staff to counter melee but here’s the problem, staff auto attack is terrible for finishing downed opponents. The damage on warlock isn’t really that great and chaos storm and chaos armor are on relatively long cds when untraited. Sure phase retreat can get the mesmer out of trouble but he has no gap closer with staff and phase retreat usually moves a mesmer out of the point for defense which often allows the opponent to run in the middle of the circle and neutralize the point.
I could go on and on but I have already written more than I think anyone will read. The point I’m trying to make is that while blurred frenzy is powerful, there are a number of reasons why the invuln is so crucial for mesmers. Mesmer shatter burst can be undone in so many ways, mesmers don’t have a reliable way of stomping downed opponents and the class’s gap closer is unreliable at best. Fix Illusionary leap, give mesmer a way to reliably stomp downed opponents (something tankier classes and anything with spammable quickness buffs, and thieves can do much more easily) before any more talk of nerfing the one mesmer skill which can be used to both stay alive at melee range and finish downed opponents and then maybe we can talk about nerfs for the 2s invuln.
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I don’t really see the “meta” as being “unhealthy” whatever that means. I don’t see a problem with certain classes being better at certain things than other classes. I don’t have a problem with the bunker/glass dichotomy. What I do have a problem with is a lack of variety in maps and game modes and what appears to me to be an overall lack of incentives for participating at all levels of pvp.
Every day there seems to be some new complaint about mesmers. Part of me assumes that Anet devs won’t listen to the endless forum whining but then another part of me worries that they will. For my part I have no idea how to rationally approach these conversations because I don’t know of any objective standard for what is and is not OP or how to really evaluate class balance from a developer’s viewpoint. From a player’s viewpoint I don’t find myself having trouble dealing with blurred frenzy or the short invuln buff it applies. I do not feel that blurred frenzy requires any adjusting either to its blur invuln nor to its cooldown timer.
You can create pickup groups that do well in pvp if you have the motivation to find groups using voice chat. Develop a friends list, join some random groups, ask in map chat, join multiple guilds.
In this format, communication is essential. Download every voice chat thingy you can get. I currently have about 14+ ventrilo servers on my roster that I have used with various pugs.
You don’t have to be bffs to group with someone and stomp some face in some tourneys – you just have to be persistent. The better player you are, the better groups you will get invited to. Figure out your class in hotjoin, then look for organized groups using voice chat for tourneys.
In the fluke that you to get to map 2 or even 3 with a total random team, talk to some of these peeps, see if they are interested in grouping or minimally tell them “hey add me to your friends list, I’m always looking for groups!”
There’s no question that players can take steps to alleviate the problem. The issue is that players have to take steps at all to alleviate a problem that could at least theoretically be dealt with by the developers. Finding workarounds for bad game design is always a good thing but that doesn’t excuse the underlying bad game design imo.
A good post imo. It’s not impossible to beat a premade with a pug but it’s really tough. It’s very difficult for a randomly comped team with absolutely no history together and no communication to take on an even semi-organized team.
While I don’t necessarily like the overall tone of this post I have to say that I agree with the first idea. Premades and pugs should probably be separate.