Guild Wars 2

Grim.4795:

Guys, its sad to say, but this condi meta is here to stay. Players are being rewarded for passive play in which all they do is spam all their condi skills and watch other players melt. As of now in SPvP 80% of all specs (that i have encountered this previous week of gameplay – it was actually 76.795 but i rounded up) that ive encountered were condition based because it they require little to no talent/skill to play well to get amazing results. On top of all that A-Net has now decided to nerf (even though its a small nerf) power based specs – the only specs in the game that require a skill cap to play well. Guys, in all honesty, what do you feel of this current meta? I personally feel that conditions need to be reduced before this game loses a large majority of its player base due to frustration.
(examples of this ridiculous meta are spirit rangers, PU mesmers, terrormancers, condi engi’s, condi warrior’s and ETC)

The fact that you mentioned several specs that arent used at all at the top of the ladder in teamqueues made me wonder…. What do you define as “the meta”?

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

If you want to play wow, play wow.

This might shock you, but some guys actually play(ed) both games. Youre fine with that or?

Liewec.2896:

but the gear progression also meant it was fun to play the “hotjoin” pvp with ridiculously good gear,
i used to do it to feel godly, it was hellishly fun having a 100k health Blood DK during wotlk while everyone else in the BG was sitting around 50k (with 70k being the most i’d ever see on anyone else) hp,
topping damage meters while being unkillable and running the flags, godly fun. >:-3

Im actually one of those guys that prefers an even playing field.

Lachanche.6859:

from my experience it is based on consecutive victories.
3 defeats in a row followed by 3 victories in a row will rank you higher than alternating defeat victory defeat victory defeat vicctory.

Thats what i think aswell. Both consecutive losses and wins seem to increase your rating gain or loss a lot.

So lets you win 10 in a row, its very likely youll end up in the top 100. Even if your record before that wasnt that good.

JohnnyZero.5619:

Rewards are nice, but some players play PvP for the sake of PvP. It’s an aspect of many games that often doesn’t need a carrot on a stick; the reward is good gameplay, improving as a player and winning.

If everyone’s accounts we’re reset tomorrow and we all had to start from scratch, I would still come back and do PvP. I imagine a lot of the PvPers loyal to GW2 would as well and not really care that much.

This is my pvp philosophy aswell.

I remember something that happened in wow that illustrates the difference in mindset quite well.

I was part of one of the top RBG guilds in eu at the start of MOP. You would think that people in a guild like that have a mindset like this.

I remember doing some random BGs on my mage one day. I had no teammates online at that moment and wow doesnt have soloqueues so i have to settle with whatever pvp is available. So i did some random BGs. A few minutes in a random guildie whispers me: “why are you doing random BGs, arent you fully geared allready?”

Some of these new people dont understand the concept of pvp just for the sake of it. They need to have set goals or else they whont play.

Divus.3175:

I played since the beginning: pure condi necro, necro boon corrupter, engi grenadier, engi bunker with automated response and phantasm mesmer (s/f + gs). Most spammy was condi necro (now “terror” necro) and engi grenadier. Engi bunker, even with automated response, need some cooldown management. Phantasm mesmer with s/f and gs is not so spammy too. You’ve got less possible choises than shatter mesmer, and you can’t mindlessly spam everything, like condi mesmer. I played thief a little bit, and it doesn’t feel so spammy too.

I think youre confusing high APM builds with spammy builds. Spammy is when people repeat the same action over and over (1 spam) and/or …. brainlessly use every single abbilitie on CD with next to to no timing or skillshots required.

To claim nade engineer (mind not bomb nade) is spammy is just absurd. Since outside of landing nades on a group fighting over a point its all about skillshots with grenades. Landing the proper grenades means the difference between succes and failure in most cases.

Add to that that engineers auto attacks do next to no dmg, so they cant get away with spamming 1 like a lot of classes can. So its all about CD managment. Which is the direct opposite of spammy.

Wait what? you claim that bunker engi is less spammy and needs more CD management than nade engi? Mind = blown. I think ive read it all right now.

Valento.9852:

These NEW telegraph marks on the floor reminds me ALOT of Wildstar telegraphs. #justsaying

I think the telegraphs are great and a first step in the direction of what might be proper endgame content.

Reesha.7901:

Interesting – I had lag on Forest as well (EU). I did not lag in any of the other maps.

Same here on EU. Played a few matches and the only time i had it was on forest.

Chaith.8256:

Realistic? When has an MMO been able to change the way the trinity, base stats, entire professions and post-release?

Any rate of change faster than what we’re observing in GW2 now is unrealistic.. the systems in place are performing well enough in PvE and WvW that this level of overhaul isn’t necessary, and what developer would even bat an eye at a list of changes like these for the benefit of PvP.

Small PvP player base -> small PvP development budget -> Small PvP player base.

Thats exactly what my thoughts are about this subject.

My comment was purely targeted at the OP. I wouldve loved to see a post describing what his plans wouldve been if he was the pvp lead; while having similar resources at his disposal as the current team.

Thats where the realistic statement comes from. Since a lot of people seem to think that anets resources inexhaustible.

Why during alpha tho? You couldve made a “if i got hired as Anets new pvp dev today….”. describing some realistic plans that could turn GW2 in to a pvp powerhouse.

- I would be willing to pay 100 euros for a “skyhammer skip pass”.
- Playing on this map is so annoying and unenjoyable that i typically logg off right after playing it.
- I cant really recommend GW2 to my friends as long as this map is still part of the rotation.
- I havent bought anything recently and whont buy anything from the gemstore purely due to skyhammer.
- Its very likely that i will switch to wildstar (and recommend anyone who asks me to do the same) if this isnt out of the rotation soon.

GW2 pvp is like a really good looking girl. Really sweet, pretty, intelligent. The complete package. The only bad thing about her is that she smells horrible.

That horrible smell equals skyhammer. Something needs to be done about it. Or i whont be able to stick around. Its literally unbearable.

My servers heart of the mists looks more populated atm at 5.30 in the morning during a weekday.

Lordrosicky.5813:

From what has been suggested/leaked it will be in June but will launch as custom arena/hotjoin only.

So essentially there is no new game modes it is all a hoax. Only if the community organise their own games which takes the competition out of it as you wont be matched with people.

The finale of the living story will be on the 4th of march. I dont think think a short break means 3 months so june is a bit late.. And I do think these gamemodes will be included in the feature patch.

And regarding the fact that they will be custom arena/hotjoin only; i think its better that way. By adding it to hotjoins first people get the chance to playtest it. If it ends up being really good and suitable for competetive play, great. Then it will end up in rated play eventually.

Tuesday april 1st.

Yes its a guess, but its an estimated one. 4 weeks after the finale of the living story patch. They announced they will take a short break after that and come with a big feature patch. A feature patch that will probably include the two new gamemodes they playtested and talked about.

And a few days before TESO gets released. That way they try and keep people in GW2 despite some competion.

In other words, perfect timing.

RoRo.8270:

There is 0% chance of Wildstar releasing in March

Who says the GW2 patch will launch in march? According to the eurogamer interview they will take a short break after the 4th of march → followed by the feature patch.

If i had to take a guess id say that means they skip one 2 weekly update and time it exactly around the release of teso: the 4th of april. But it could be after that aswell.

Ive experienced play at both low and high MMR during the last week. Had a huge losing streak with a truckload of 4v5s (3 from the same guy DCing even) that dropped me from rank 200 till in the %s. So i think i have a good idea what the difference is.

Soloqueue as you all now is for a big part about luck. But at higher MMR your possitive actions quite often leads to something. If you keep 3 busy at their homebase, your team will benefit from it in most cases.

At lower MMR your efforts might be in vain in a lot of cases. The difference in skill amongst lower MMred ppl is absurdly big at times. So big that even a top player cant carry. Ive seen it happen so often during my own games or games i watched on streams.

The last soloq game i played for example was a blowout 500-50 win while we where 4v5: http://i.imgur.com/iYF8r2D.jpg. Teams like that arent carryable.

The only thing i wouldve loved to see was a:

As requested by the community we (temporarely) removed skyhammer from the soloq rotation. We will work hard to remove the cheese and make it a more enjoyable experience even for players who dont enjoy minigames.

To make sure that our efforts arent in vain we recruited some intelligent and experienced pvp players to playtest this map during multiple playsessions. Based on the feedback during those rounds we will try to turn the map from unlikeable to a crowd (community) favourite.

If only

brannigan.9810:

Get real WoW balanced way more often. You might not have liked what they did but WoW had like 10 million subs at its peak and tons of resources. This game has been out a year and a half and the pvp changes have been tiny.

Wow didnt get anything besides some bugfixes since 5.4, 4 months ago. Ahh ye they reverted one off the buffs they gave to warriors. So warriors dropped slightly from the 25% representation they aquired over night after 5.4 hit (they had a 2% representation before that).

I guess thats the type of balance patch you prefer?

Romek.4201:

ye

but will be to late for me – i dont play this broken balance for another 3 months and i will buy Teso 1 month before release^^

People are too vague to be honest. Classbalance isnt as bad as people make it out to be. Everything besides ele can be used in top tier comps.

That doesnt mean there arent any issues that need to be adressed. Like the huge gap between risk and reward when looking at classes. Some classes need only 1-2 or two skillhits to kill someone while others are far more complex.

But its not like its unplayable for anyone ….or is it?

People will hate me for saying this but. After playing wow extensively for 8ish years i actually feel spoiled by Anet patching (during the last 3ish months) and GW2s current balance.

And regarding teso. Did you manage to get in to the beta?

Romek.4201:

they have to hold back content for the patch 1-2 weeks before teso release on 4.4.2014^^

22th march you will see everything you want

Exactly what ive been saying since that eurogamer interview. They are saving up goodies for that patch to keep people excited for GW2 when Wildstar and teso are releasing.

My guesses:

- Full fledged balance patch including some bigger changes.
- New uttilities and weaponcombinations.
- New pvp gamemodes
- New Laddersystem.
- Edge of the mists wvw map.
- Some kind of progression PvE.
- New zone (cough cantha cough)

cuge.5398:

According to the patch notes just released looks like we wont have any balance change….. nice… another proof that pvp is not important here…
yeh this is a QQ thread.

We got a balance patch last month and the one before that in october. Do you really think that balancing needs to be done every month? In most MMOs like wow for example balancing is done every 6-7 months.

So where do you get these unrealistic expectations from?

The problem isnt healing signets healing output. The problem is that you dont need to use the active. The only way to fix this is to make the active a crucial part of healing signets healing output.

I would do something like this:

Passive: 200 hps
Active + a bonus heal overtime that add up to 600 HPS within a 10 second timeframe.

It is due to the fact that skyhammer is first in the rotation. They reset the servers a few times yesterday and after such a reset youll see only skyhammers.

There are a lot of good things about GW2s pvp. On forums people typically focus on things that annoy them or things that arent as great (yet) in this game. But there are a lot of things like that in any MMO.

There are so many things that do make this the most enjoyable MMO experience atm.

+ The combat. Despite all its class specific flaws has the potential to be called the best MMO combat on the market atm. Its fast, twitch based and due to the lack of healers not as drawn out as in other MMOs.
+ Small scale 5v5 battleground combat. More diversity than arena and less zergy than RBGs. Combining strategic play with smaller scale skirmishes.
+ Making money and leveling via pvp being a viable option.
+ No (noticeable) cheaters.
+ No focus on weekly caps (logging on once a week -> play untill cap -> logg off again).
+ Decay instead of teams and players sitting on their rating for weeks or even months. (eventho that its not optimized yet).
+ A dev team that communicates and actively asks for feedback.
+ A game that is moving forward with a dev team that tries to make this a better game.

In fact i dare to claim that a lot of people who play that other MMO dont switch simply because they invested a lot of time in it and all their (online) friends are still playing it (thats what i get when i ask my wow contacts to play GW2). Not because its a superior pvp game across the board.

Before you think think that im some raving fanboy. There are some areas where GW2s pvp can improve on.

- Diffference in depth between classes. Some guys need to hit 1 or 2 often poorly telegraphed abbilities to kill someone, while others are far more complex.
- Lack of gamemodes that are both easy to get in to/figure out and hard to master. With the new gamemodes inc we might see this become reality.
- Still to hard to follow due to (AI) clutter and lack of telegraphs.
- Lack of a proper ladder rating system (they are working on it).
- An engine that isnt as optimized/doesnt run as smooth as.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SupcutieTheRed

XacTactX.6709:

I think you are talking about hotjoin

I was in 12 4v5s in soloqueue games this weekend out of 40ish games played. 2 x on the opposing team, 9 losses and 1 win with 4 on my team. 3 of those losses where actuallly due to the same player (who probably has the debuff now) who kept queueing despite the issues he had with his PC or internet connection.

I dont really care about ranks (yet) but i literally dropped from top 200 to the %s due to an unlucky streak that had a lot of these 4v5s in them. (If grouch or any CM reads this, please feel free to verify).

I added and had friendly conversations with pretty much every single one of them. None of them cared about the debuff if they would get it.

I dont understand why random teammates have to suffer due to something that is out of their control. A loss in a 4v5 is almost entirely caused by the guy who left or DCed.

So what i would do is give the winning team the win rewards accordingly. And the 4 guys who “lost” dont get affected at all. Instead they should add up the cumulated rank losses and deduct it from the guy who left or DCed.

So lets say all 4 wouldve lost 50 ranks (which isnt weird during the weekend) the DCed guy would end up losing 5 × 50 (incl his own loss ofc).

1] What MMOs did you play that had amazing classbalance in pvp?

2] What MMO did you play that had no fotm spec/class in pvp?

3] What do you consider fotm in GW2 now?

Soul.5947:

No, not the bad kind; this is my first with fotm and if i wanted to play garbage i would have picked some chinese mmo not pay for gw2. Not saying that the pve is garbage, just the pvp part of the game, for pve the game is quite good.

Played wow for 8 years including arenas from s1 till last season and RBGs from s9 till last season. Every single season at the top of ladder while reaching 2200-2600 rating with 7 different classes (in the arena) and consistantly in top 3 top RBG teams eu.

It never was as balanced as GW2 is now, besides S7 maybe. This season in wow started with a warrior representation of 25% in 3v3. That means 75% of the teams you met at 2.2+ where warrior teams. Thats not fotm?

Im not saying GW2 doesnt have any issues, but classbalance is quite ok. Some classes could use some tweaks to add some depth/proper risk/reward. Some specfic abbilities could use nerfs or buffs.

Soul.5947:

This is the only game that has a flavor of the month class.

I guess you havent played a lot of MMOs.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

you just gave an excellent example of “perspective” issue!

to you (a player who knows proper conquest mode rotation) proper rotation is basics.

to me (casual player) the basics of conquest is: see enemy on point, fight, kill or remove enemy from point, stand on point, wait point change color.

that is the basics for me, a casual player.

see, it is better for me to return back to 8 vs 8 hotjoin so i will not hurt anyone’s solo arena game further.

A gamemode has set rules and basics. Basics have nothing to do with being casual or hardcore. And yes these basics for conquest are to difficult to figure out (or learn as you said) as a new player. But they are still the basics.

Its like saying shooting the ball in the goal when playing soccer is to hardcore for you and you prefer dribbling and randomly hitting the ball in the middle. While its a part of the basics even for a team filled with young kids that started playing soccer last week.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

well, that depends on perspective.

No it doesnt at all.

You stated “conquest is easy to learn but hard to master”. While without knowing how to rotate at a basic level basicly means you havent learned how to play conquest yet. Since proper rotating is the difference between winning and losing.

So apperantly its not that “easy to learn” for new players. If it was, a lot of new players would figure out these basics relatively fast.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i think conquest mode is truly “easy to learn, hard to master”

Not really, since properly rotating is part of the basics. Randomly"standing and fighting" on points =/= people learned how to play conquest.

There are only few players who actually know how to rotate properly etc.

Last game on temple for example.

I took home and my team whent mid. A thief showed up that ended up dieing first. I saw him crossing later with a warrior that died earlier in the middle. So i rushed back home and ended up dieing after a while in that 1v2.

After i ressed I killed the warrior who for some reason remained on our close point (love it when opponents do that) and quickly crossed to their (empty) home to cap it. I typed in chat “someone watch homepoint” …ofc noone did. My team literally never left the mid fight, which was a neverending decap war. I was asking for help in chat, blinking etc, but nothing.

To make it even more hilarious. At 8.30 all of them whent to the down buff forcing me yet again to defend multiple points vs 2 including middle.

0 help and 0 rotating. Im basicly forced to solo 2 during multiple occasions since ppl never disengage and tend to stick to fights, even when they vastly outnumber opponents.

So when a teammate says GG after that game. Am i supposed to be nice and say GG to him, while they essentially screwed me all game and i had to carry them hard?

NevirSayDie.6235:

If the matchmaker were at fault, what type of flaw would cause that type of result (excessive win/loss streaks)? If the matchmaker is creating uneven matchups, how would that explain the streaks you’re experiencing? For that to happen, you’d have to be on the favorable side of the error multiple times in a row, then on the unfavorable side of the error multiple times in a row. That’s statistically improbable as well, and it’s absolutely impossible for it to happen to a high percentage of people at the same time (as they’ll be on different teams). The only way a MM error could cause that is by putting the same people on the same teams too often, as it was pre-November. That fix has been confirmed. In your opinion, what problem could explain the streaks?

Being unlucky with classcombinations. While the MMR might be similar, being on a team with a subpar comp can kill you. The guys you play with might be great when playing in viable team comp. But some classes arent flexible enough and quite a few guys only play 1 class in tpvp so switching isnt an option either.

I think the system should altered so it prefents classstacking as much as possible.

Keira Ferland.5619:

That’s a matter of perspective. I think that sky ham should be in solo queue. IMO, you have to pay more attention to what your enemy is doing or you will instantly lose. Which is how this game should be anyway. You make a mistake, there should be no chance to recover at all. You should just lose. Unless of course, the enemy screws up even harder.

Imo they should make a map where you end up shooting purple hippos out of your behind. Something as powerful as that will 100% 1 shot anyone in LoS (ofcourse) when detonated.

This whont be ridiculous at all and it will almost certainly gain interest from pvp players that dont play GW2 yet. With proper positioning and by reading the castanimation (bending over) you will be able to counter this.

As you can see this nicely fits your description aswell.

That isnt that weird if youre new to an MMO right? It takes some time to get to know the game and its classes. Ive been playing GW2 since beta and i still dont know everything. Thats a part of the fun/challenge when playing an MMO.

Most people have a bit more experience than you have in this game. So they figured out when to use defensives or how to kill you while you are still learning. Its a part of the learning process when being new to an MMO.

Warriors are actually really good right now with the right build and if played well. So there is light at the end of the tunnel!

A few tips:

- Dont join 8v8 hotjoins. You can manually join the servers that are numbered 100 or higher or you can create a filter so it shows only 5v5 servers. 5v5 is a lot less chaotic and the prefered format for pretty much all pvpers.
- Builds are a huge part of your succes and failure in pvp. If you whent with your own build its very likely that that is a big part of your problem.
- In the pvp hub (the mists) youll find relatively challenging practice NPCs of every single profession (class) that hit just as hard as real players. If you open the map youll see orange fists. The NPCS are at the top one. These NPCs are excellent practice and give you an idea of other classes.
- If you struggle with certain opponents who play a certain class, try it out for yourself. Its relatively easy to roll a new class -> level past the starting quest -> practice some on the practice NPCs -> enter (hotjoin) pvp. That way you can find out what their strengths and weaknesses are.
- Use spectate if you see certain good players (especially others who play your own class). Check what their build is, what their rotations are etc.
- Talk to players who have experience with pvp in this game. The GW2 community is great and there are a lot of nice people that are willing to help you out.
- Watch some streams of other people playing warrior. The most popular one that comes to mind is: http://www.twitch.tv/shinryuku_ku. He does everything in GW2 (including pvp), is quite friendly and helpful and has been playing warrior since beta.
- Read grouches beginner guide (if you didnt allready): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-to-PvP-Start-here/first#post3420542

Snaffs lab can be accesed via one of the southern asura gates (purple icons) in rata sum. Its on the “surface” level.

If youre on eu i can show you.

Mind that the majority of the quests in GW2 are dynamic events. The human starting area for example has 17 heartquests and like 87 dynamic events.

Dynamic events are basicly zone specific quests that get “triggered” in a certain way. There are a lot of ways to trigger them. Just a few examples:

- Entering a certain area
- As a follow up of another quest (make sure you follow NPCs after dynamic event quests are finished…they might have more quests for you.
- Spawns every x minutes or hours
- If you talk to a certain NPC (some of them run up to you and ask for help for example)
- Opening certain chests or other objects.
- If you perform a specific action like bowing in front of a memorial stone or w/e. NPCs in that area often give you hints about potential “hidden” dynamic events.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event

If i had to give you a checklist of things to do in zones while leveling it would be something like this:

- Main storyline
- Heartquests
- Dynamic events
- Jumping puzzles
- World bosses if they are available in that zone.
- Vistas (red triangle), skillpoints (lightblue arrow), and Points of interests (small squares) if you want to complete the map. (you get some nice rewards if you do).
- Pick up gathering tools and gather while youre busy leveling. You dont need a profession (craft) to gather in GW2. It gives good exp though and everything you gather can be send directly to a collectables tab in your bank (in your inventory click on the wheel on the top right and deposit collectables).

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Locuz.2651:

- Intuitive and competetive gamemodes. Something that is easy to get in to but hard to master. (inc during the big late spring/early summer patch probably).

hmmm Locuz do you have anything in mind? i mean game modes.
in these sPvP forums, when people mention death match or annihilation, they all say death match cannot work etc.

i also recall MrBig said that conquest mode is actually not-new-players friendly and requires very good team coordination in order for the team to succeed etc.

just what kind of game modes would be easy to learn, hard to master and competitive enough for guild wars 2 sPvP? O_O

I would love to see GW2s version of a hybrid between a moba and old school GW1 pvp. Its a bit late to come up with ideas now tho. I have a feeling that the gamemodes are pretty much set in stone right now and ready to release during the major content patch after the 4th of march.

A plain objectiveless 5v5 deathmatch in spvp settings wouldnt work since it would make the game to zergy (imo). I guess the gvg guys have a different opinion about that tho. What we need are maps that split ppl so we end up seeing a lot of 1v1’s, 2v2 or at most 3v3s. Kind of like conquest now…but without the need to sit on or control points.

Conquest isnt noobfriendly since a lot of crucial things are often counterintuitive for new people. Just a few examples:

- Join a hotjoin or even soloqueue at lower rating and youll see 2-4 people running to homepoint and sitting there untill it caps. This is not an exception either ….it literally always happens.
- Pretty much all new people never disengage or rotate properly when they outnumber players at a certain point. Even if that means their own teammates get outnumbered at other points.
- A lot of new people just want to hit stuff. So they chase single players with 3-4 at times untill it dies instead of trying to go for points.

Dont tunnel vision specific content. By experiencing a bit of everything content stays fresh and exciting for a longer period of time.

I have this issue quite often. Where im in pvp and all of a sudden i cant swap weapons anymore. Both my hotkey (the standard ~ key) and trying to “click” are unusable. Anyway to fix or prefent this at least?

Adian.8756:

Higher level? Really? I’ve been ranked since the introduction of the leaderboards, with about rank 100 being the highest. I’ve had a consistent 60% winrate, and played with players from Paradigm, CC, AKGL etc. My current group consists of one player who’s currently rank 16, and one who’s rank 120. I’ve played almost sorely PvP and WvW since the betas, without ever playing Hotjoin or Zerging.

If you can boast better results than that, then I’m all ears. Until then, I suggest you go watch any of the ‘pro’ streams (like Teldo, Helseth or Ostrich), or simply take a look at the countless threads from former pros (Xeph comes to mind), who left the game because it was too easy, and too braindead.

Ranks dont mean sh…in this game :x. Deimos showed it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/and-so-i-gave-solo-arena-a-try/first

99% of the pros in this game arent really that pro to be honest. They are where they are due to the lack of competition. Its a bit like the early TBC arena days where we would get to 2100-2200 with 0 losses since we where some of the few that where try harding it.

The only classes that take some degree of skill/coordination if compared to other MMOs are engi, ele and mesmer.Something can be said about thief aswell but its too simple mechanically to be considered difficult.

Its very likely that these are features that will be added in the “really big feature patch” that is coming after march 4th as mentioned in the eurogamer interview*. Its my personal guess though but it would make sense.

I see this patch as somewhat of a competetive thing. Both teso and wildstar will release in Q2 of this year aswell. With a really good patch filled with a lot of new pvp and pve features Anet will try to keep the GW2 population where they are.

• http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

Fortus.6175:

@ the comment that said about how rock/scissor/paper is “all pvp mmo out there”, I remember spending hours watching people or videos of good players doing duels outside stormwind; warrior vs frost mage, and other skewed and unlikely duels. True ‘near’ balance is reached when both parties have an almsot equal chance of beating eachother if they know their game well. So no, it can be done, the condescending excuse that all MMO’s pvp is r/s/p is just that….an excuse.

Youre proving my point that most only think about 1v1s when they think about classbalance. While in reality class balance is about what works within an entire gamemode.

Good wow players like me you mean? Wow duels where possibly even more lobsided than 1v1s in GW2 are. On my frostmage ive never lost to any warrior and i duelled some of the best in europe.

Rym.1469:

If you come from WoW and seek some cool class to play in PvP I have only one suggestion:
Play Engineer.

Good advice. Engineer is one of my personal favs.

KrisHQ.4719:

Well. While that might be true, Elementalists are still very easy to play.
There is not a single class in GW2 that is not easy to play. Surely there will be classes that leave you in difficult situations, for instance playing an Elementalist in the current meta. However, this does not mean that Ele is not easy to master, it just means that it’s currently much weaker and therefore more difficult to succeed with.
I’ve lost a lot of fights to Warriors and Necromancers where I basically played flawlessly, not comitting a single mistake. GW2 is often like a game of rock, paper and scissors, no matter how well your execute “Rock” you will always lose to “Paper”.

Its really easy to say something like that on the forums. Yet i see so few that actually mastered their class even after thousands of hours at times. Even guys that won tournaments and are considered top tier in GW2 are often playing far from perfect. I guess you are better than them?

And sure the lack of pvp population has something to do with it. But if its so easy, people should be able to do it right?

Its the same story people been telling me about wow. How easy it was/is to reach high ratings there. Sure they are 1400-1500 now but if they tried they would get 2400 in a heartbeat. Right?

And @ that rock paper scissors comment: thats MMO pvp for you. There will always be classes that are superior in 1v1 situations or superior at bunkering points or mobility or whatever. I have a feeling people are focussing to much on “lost 1v1s” while balance is more about balance within groupplay.

Almost every class in this game can work in a competetive setup.

There are a few major things that need to be done to make the GW2 scene more competetive:

- Intuitive and competetive gamemodes. Something that is easy to get in to but hard to master. (inc during the big late spring/early summer patch probably).
- A better ladder system. (Inc soonish aswell).
- Maintaining decent classbalance while adding more depth and difficulty to specific classes.
- Bigger playerbase as a result of the above.

Destiny.6738:

GW2 has such a low skill cap – compared to competitive games.

It depends a bit on what class you play to be honest. An elementalist for example is a lot harder to play than wows counterpart mage (a class that i got to 2.4+ during my first season of playing it). There is a huge difference in difficulty between the viable classes in GW2. Some other classes are (far to) easy to play at a reasonable level though. I agree with that.

Spvp in general is more demanding vs really good teams if you compare it to wows counterpart RBGs. Its harder to carry in Spvp due to the format, lack of holy trinity, etc. Ive seen guys in our alt/2nd RBG group get to 2.6 in RBGs while they barely knew how to position themselves, barely used CCs. They basicly spammed dmg and thats it.

If you compare it to something like an RTS…sure. But thats a totally different gametype.

The most important thing is that you need to avoid going back to your old habbits. Thats what makes it harder than it needs to be.

Its very likely that you will be able figure it out within a few days … if you stick to it. Within a week or two youll find that your old playstyle is actually harder to pull off than regular mouseturning.

Ugruk.4069:

My point exactly " it’s fine for me, ignore the blatant imbalanced classes, just join them you will be fine!"
Tell me what class do you play again?

Every single class besides elementalists are usable in top tier setups. Which doesnt mean that there arent any things that are “broken” within the toolset of these classes. It does mean that the class balance is quite ok now.

Its a relatively new MMO. If you give it time ripe it might flourish in to something grand. They are noticably adressing issues and improving the game gradually. Thats more than we can say about wow which got progressingly worse from a pvp perspective.

Pvp in that game saw 0 QoL improvements during the last few years besides the feature to play arenas with people from other server.

I play everything besides guardian myself. What about you?

Ugruk.4069:

I like how people are all like “hey hey hey come and have fun in lala land!” If he got that rating in wow arenas he WANTS a competitive PVP game scene, not this “oh it’s fine for me and my casual needs, dont listen to them, they are so negative ewww”.

Yeah pvp is fine for casuals, for hardcore players? Balance is not even close think about vanilla wow it’s something like that…

Ive been quite hardcore in to wow pvp with 7 classes ranging from 2200-2600 (arena) rated. Probs one of the most experienced multiclassers in europe. I dont think there is anyone on these forums who was / is more hardcore in to wow pvp than i was.

And im fine with GW2s pvp…

I dont compare spvp to arenas tho. Instead i think that spvp is what RBGs shouldve been. More focus on individual skills, positioning and rotating properly. While in wow RBGs its typically “blob vs blob” / zergwars even at the top end of the legit ladder.

GW2 is relatively balanced if you look purely at overall class balance. The only big issue is that some classes are to easy to play atm. So id like to see some added depth and difficulty to some classes while maintaining reasonable balance.

The nice thing tho is that Arenanet actually tries to make it work (while imo Blizzard isnt). We got 2 balance patches within 3 months and i read that they are working on a new patch as we speak. We got new gamemodes inc aswell which could be big.

So im quite possitive to be honest.