There was one point where they were looking at two spirit rangers fighting each other and they just didn’t say anything – I don’t think they could pick out anything that was going on to commentate.
That was hilarious. Probably the best part of the matches.
Because it’s pretty obvious condition metagame is shorthand for the current metagame. It shouldn’t be taken literally to think it means people are only using condition classes; it just means that there is way more emphasis on conditions than there used to be. Language is nuanced like that sometimes.
Replacing a condi build with a power build isn’t a metagame shift
So since it seems you people are actually serious, let me ask directly.
One condition guy and one condition backbunker is how you are defining a condi spam metagame? How many conditions classes are ok on a 5man team before you consider condis too strong? 2 is clearly too many, so is 1 ok? Or only if it’s a backbunker? Or is having any condi pressure on teams a condi spam meta?
I’m not the one calling it a condition metagame. (But when people do call it that, I’m not purposely obtuse; I understand what they mean.)
The current metagame is condition necromancer, sword / dagger thief, spirit ranger, guardian and a final slot that can be whatever a team feels is necessary. Do you see a problem with all of those mandatory classes? They’re all completely uninteresting to watch and way too easy to pick up and do very well with. That’s the biggest problem. The game is simply too unrewarding to skill, which causes many victories and losses to feel cheap.
Jumper left, Acandis left, Zoose left, Xeph left, Helseth is leaving after next Mist League. Everyone is abandoning ship
That’s disastrous. This metagame gutted structured PvP, all because ArenaNet insisted on keeping it around for a tournament that didn’t even get the anticipated publicity.
With the exception of spirit ranger, I think every class is still difficult to master. The problem is it’s way too easy to pick up most of the viable builds and be fairly successful, which nullifies a lot of the genuinely good play that’s done at a high level.
I’m OK with you guys disputing the viewership numbers. That’s the least important issue.
I also expect the developers to change the metagame, but I’m not sure if it will be fixed in the correct way. Just a couple days ago Jon Peters was in a stream’s chat calling spirit rangers highly skillful. To most people, that might seem like a developer cruelly trolling loyal watchers, but he was serious.
A functioning human being without disabilities should be killing them in like 30 seconds at most.
Were they a guardian? :P
I meant groups of people. But even a guardian shouldn’t be taking five-plus minutes to kill a guard. (That time estimate is not an exaggeration, by the way.)
It’s unfortunate that spvpers never experience the competitive side of roaming wvw. The average zerger is bad of course, but the dedicated small scale roamers are as good as spvpers. Obviously skill levels vary by person, but I’ve fought people in wvw that could meet or beat anyone I’ve fought in s/tpvp. I’d think with all the reminiscing about DAoC there’d be more understanding about open world combat, but guess not.
This is true. The average player is the equivalent of an ape, but there are a few excellent roamers.
Funnily enough, some of the best roamers I’ve fought were in mid-tier servers instead of high-tier.
My husband and I have seen some people take like five-plus minutes to kill sentry guards in world vs. world. A functioning human being without disabilities should be killing them in like 30 seconds at most.
Still, it’s a lot of fun to win outnumbered fights. But I actually get bored in world vs. world when the fights are even.
Unfortunately, WvW is more influenced by PvE than PvP.
Without the automatic gear balance, WvW is just like every other gear treadmill game.
Most people in world vs. world are essentially wild animals. If you’re in the top 40 percentile in structured PvP, you could probably 1v5 the average player while wearing full greens.
I think at this point there aren’t any fair weather spvpers left. The people still interested in it have stuck through a year of this kitten, one more problem isn’t going to get them to quit, or at least not for long.
Despite all the problems, it was at least nice to see GW2 in a real tournament setting.
This is actually wrong. A bunch of teams, including Team Paradigm, are currently taking breaks until the metagame is fixed. The game is really that bad right now.
The purpose of tournaments is to attract new players by showing how off how awesome and competitive the game is. By almost every account, this tournament failed at doing that. It caused the developers to keep the worst metagame ever in place for two months, and the tournament itself was such a disaster that it likely turned off potential newcomers.
This is specifically about the tournament and structured PvP, not the rest of the events or game types.
Pros:
- A tournament happened, bringing in extra publicity.
- Two teams walked away with cash prizes.
Cons:
- The current metagame remained in place for two-plus months because developers refused to make big changes while a tournament was underway.
- Anyone who actually watched the tournament got to see what a mess the game currently is. “Petting zoo,” as funny as it seemed to be to two developers, actually represents something seriously wrong with the game.
- The viewership numbers were so low that it probably reinforced many people’s perspective that Guild Wars 2 PvP is dead.
The criticism toward interrupt traits is a good, understated point. That’s one of the reasons Runes of Perplexity are absurd right now.
Interrupts might take skill in other games and Guild Wars 1, but that’s because in those games proper interrupting centers around interrupting a specific ability, like a big heal or nuke, and players actually know what they’re interrupting through cast bars. Just interrupting anything at random is equally skill-less in other games.
All the North American players died every time they tried to go out individually. They just weren’t good in one-on-one situations. They should have listened to Supcutie and remained in a team.
Yeah, I should add a note about snaring before fearing. Good tip.
I’ve made some updates to the guides in the past few days. I’m actually recommending Hemophilia for AR engineers and Berserker Stance warriors now that they’re becoming more prevalent.
I really doubt their PvE and WvW servers are attached to the PvP servers in any way.
Even if they are, I doubt it’s causing skill unresponsiveness. This just started happening last patch. The game’s servers aren’t under an extra load since last patch, as far as I can tell.
It’s not traditional lag. It’s skills just being unresponsiveness. A lot of MMOs seem to have this problem. (I still attribute much of WOW’s success to the fact it was so snappy from the start.)
I agree with this entire post. I would only add a few things:
Adding something like this would greatly boost PvP’s replayability. In other games, a big reason to do PvP is to improve the score. Trying to top damage, kills, caps or healing is fun. It’s even more fun if a badge system is attached to it, which could provide a better avenue for glory.
Even if someone is OK with the limited information of the current scoreboard, it’s organized terribly. I wouldn’t be surprised if most players failed to realize that the bottom part of the scoreboard exists at all.
Coming from other games, this seems like a really basic feature to miss. WildStar is going to have scoreboards for its dynamic events. It’s crazy to think that Guild Wars 2 won’t have scoreboards for its PvP before WildStar has it for its dynamic events.
I don’t really care about massive zerg skill lag, but recently I’ve had my heal skills go off and renewed focus not renew my virtues in like 5v5 fights. Wee.
Most WvW players have given up complaining and realized Anet is going to do nothing about it. I’ll speak with action. Any future game that Anet or related companies release, I will not be buying it. That’s how I operate. If I have a bad experience with a gaming company, I don’t invest money in them. Plain and Simple.
I don’t want to encourage people quitting or boycotting, but I can understand this mentality. Being completely unable to participate in zerg vs. zerg fights is terrible.
The deviation on this system is still way too much. I think I’m bored for 66 percent of the match-ups because my server is either annihilating someone or getting owned. (I actually prefer getting owned because there’s at least objectives to go for, but sometimes a dominant zerg can ruin everything.)
The runes aren’t built around fear. The condition duration also applies to all other conditions, particularly burning, poison, torment and weakness. The six-piece is nice for some extra survivability and defensive damage.
But what’s better against trash? Lingering Curse? The only AOE Lingering Curse affects is scepter’s No. 2 attack, which is OK but not a massive gain by any means. Epidemic isn’t affected by Lingering Curse even while using a scepter.
I have been in a few situations in which fearing an AOE pack has saved a party on top of doing damage.
People should of course be careful with scattering mobs, as I noted in the guide, but there’s really not much reason to give up a substantial single-target DPS gain against bosses — the real challenge of the game — for a trait that’s much less single-target damage and barely beneficial in AOE.
The one thing I don’t get is why they couldn’t at least let bleed cap prioritize based off damage and maybe duration. It makes no sense that a power build can take up precious bleed stack slots over a condition necromancer who applies bleeds that are twice as strong.
Conditions scale the same at lower levels as they do at higher levels, but it’s a bit more difficult to gear for condition damage, condition duration and precision until lv. 80. (Then again, the same applies for power, precision and critical damage.)
