Guild Wars 2

ronpierce.2760:

That’s not entirely true. Take WoW for an example. It completely changed Talents and how they worked like 5 times, WOTLK and early Cata were peaks of the game, too. Also they’ve had HUGE class rehauls in expansions where their entire gameplay changed, and generally -to make the game deeper- (like adding more class mechanics), and it paid off. When you own a business you gotta be able to take risks and go with you gut IF you believe it’ll benefit the long-run. And honestly, I think GW2 needs that because people are so bored with the game right now they foam at the mouth just to have basic class changes so something gets a little shook up. I think having an expansion of sorts that really changed some core mechanics that haunt the game into something better would at least give people something to look at and play with for a while.

Fair point.

I don’t think it’s ever economically practical to re-design a game from the ground up after launch. Things like re-making thieves to a cooldown profession like the others, or adding quasi-healer builds, would take a ton of resources, make balance very bad until the changes could be assimilated, and wouldn’t necessarily even make the game better. (I like having no healers, and most thieves would tell you they’ll take initiative over cooldowns any day of the week.)

My philosophy is that if I realize I don’t actually enjoy the core gameplay of something I’m playing, it’s time to leave. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stick around because a game has “potential.” That’s like saying you’ll keep eating at a certain restaurant even though you hate the food because you feel it has potential (while leaving comments in the suggestion box that it should serve Chinese food instead of Mexican food…)

tl;dr a game cannot practically change to something entirely different than what it is. If you don’t like the game but think it would be fun if it were very, very different, and hope it undergoes massive changes, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Unfortunately that’s going to be tough. We don’t have any community organization such as entry-level PvP groups at the moment. I’m not sure what to suggest except to try to build your friends list as you solo queue.

Ashanor.5319:

Warrior is fine. Warrior is destroyed by a competent mesmer and also loses to a competent thief or even a necro who knows how to kite or plays minion build. I will admit the majority of necros are pretty horrendous and just stand there and wait to be stunned, but that isn’t the point.

Ugh, you whiners are pushing me more and more towards Wildstar. Maybe players there won’t be so whiny. This is the absolute whiniest community I have ever seen in ANY MMO I have ever played, and I have been playing them for close to 16 years. Maybe it’s because generally I don’t play buy to play games where you just have to convince mommy to pick up the game for your birthday or something, but the maturity level on these forums and also in sPvP is the worst I have ever seen.

When you start to perceive things as “most players of X are just bad” usually it means your perception is off. It is statistically very improbable for noticeably more bad players to gravitate to one profession.

I’m sorry the community hates your favorite profession right now. I agree that there’s a lot of room for improvement in the quality of feedback we give to the devs. I even agree that at top tiers, warriors are probably not as imbalanced as they are in the rest of the game.

However, I’m hoping for warrior changes in the very near future because they’re turning players away from the game, nothing more. What is the reason you feel warriors should stay the same?

Most engineer “bunkers” tend to actually be point assaulters. Guardians are the best bunkers because they are nearly immune to focused burst and they have the most group stability/cleansing/healing reasonably available to a build. There isn’t really an argument there, although yes, an engineer could possibly survive a 2v1 for longer than a guardian could, depending on builds.

I’m not sure what you’re asking about though…?

dreztina.4820:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Warrior players need to present helpful ideas, not just try to defend their profession from nerfs.

I wish that actually worked. Multiple eles from the top tpvp teams made huge posts on this forum detailing the problems with eles and what anet could change to bring them into line without going too far. And then anet completely ignored everything they said and broke the class.

Warriors do need to be nerfed, and they probably will be in the next balance patch (8 months from now), but when it happens, it won’t be based on the logical well presented ideas from high level players in the community. It will be some completely off the wall nonsense that doesn’t make sense to anyone.

The ele nerfs weren’t great, but again, there were a lot of people calling for the hammer and a lot of other people saying “we’re fine guys, just leave us alone and l2p.” The other thing is that quite a bit of power creep happened about the same time.

One reason helpful ideas seldom work is that the helpful suggestions are usually drowned by the shouts of people trying to protect their profession, or people just looking for a massive nerfhammer. I’m fully aware that an even decent community is probably not possible, but it can’t hurt to try for one.

Zord.6130:

runeblade.7514:

Zord.6130:

Needed nerfs:
Nerf HS (make it scale better with HP: 300 HP/s with 0 Healing Power and 400 HP/s with 1000 Healing Power sounds nice to me).
Make Warriors lose their adrenaline if they don’t hit with burst skills.

Borderline nerfs:
Reduce zerker stance to 5 seconds duration from 8 seconds.
Increase Pin Down cast time to 0.75 or 0.5 seconds from 0.25 seconds.

—> a balanced warrior

The patch comes and no one plays warrior anymore.

This is a massive unneeded nerf based on a knee-jerk reaction.

Then it means that every warrior out there is a really bad player who relies on broken mechanics to actually be effective.
Every skill affected by those changes would still be useful in the hands of a good warrior.

Actually, what I’d like is to introduce a skill, like Wild Strike from GW1 (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Wild_Strike_%28PvP%29), which removes the target’s stance. So you can actually COUNTER Warrior’s stances.

I don’t think we need even more hard counters to stuff. Rock/paper/scissors is a fun game but lacks depth. If it’s too strong, we should fix that, not just introduce a new counter.

Knote.2904:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Also, conditions are not passive, they are dots. You still have to actively land them. The only difference is that they don’t do much damage up front.

This is true only in cases where it’s an ability that’s actually applying it, like Ranger Torch.

It’s true that condition damage also has a couple of on-crit traits. Dhuumfire and Incendiary powder are the only significant ones. IP is stronger than Dhuumfire, but they are both essentially on par with a +10% damage trait or a sigil of fire/air (Dhuumfire is significantly weaker, IP is about the same or maybe even a bit stronger). There are also tiny amounts of passive bleeding on crit (usually something like 50-100 extra damage per second, depending on how heavily you invest in traits/sigils/precision if you don’t know any better).

Nanashi.5704:

Errant Venture.9371:

In the next PvP Drop (1.5-2 months away) this will be fixed: after two teams are matched up against one another the players will be scrambled so the team assignments are random.

So I’m still gonna be put up against people 10-30 lvls above me the only difference is that now its 50/50 if they’re on my team or not? Well thats a bit better but still kinda sucky. I’d much rather be placed with people my own rank/skill level. But i guess that cant really happen since pvp is really dead =(

No, that’s not correct. Check my previous post. The matchmaker will “stagger” rankings so that each team ends up about equal. If one 70%, eight 80%, and one 90% players are in a match, one team would theoretically have the 70%, the 90%, and three 80% players, while the other team would have all 80% players.

To be clear, both will only prevent incoming condition damage. The full direct damage still goes through even though the message pops up.

Transmute has an 8% chance to work on every incoming condition, so if you hit him with, say, freeze grenade (3 vuln, 3 chill, maybe a bleed on crit) it’s not unlikely that you’ll see the immune message—even though all of your damage went through, the immune message popped up just because it blocked one of the three stacks of vulnerability.

Hotjoin is the one part of GW2 PvP that I really, really don’t like. It makes players feel way better than they actually are due to giving tons of glory for playing poorly.

So, when players try arenas, they sometimes wonder what happened.

If your rank is going up, you’re doing fine. Depending on your guardian build, you may not be able to expect to win many 1v1s vs. competent opponents (i.e. if you a built purely for teamfight support/defense, you can’t expect to also be awesome at dueling).

Chances are you have improved a lot, but just don’t feel as powerful.

There are also some serious problems with the matchmaker and players with no rating probably enter a bit too high in their first few matches. Hopefully, stuff will get a lot better at the next PvP patch.

Loco.4561:

It’s conditions and it’s beyond ridiculous. Look at the top damage dealers on death and it’s conditions that are killing you, for example, 31k of burning damage I took in 21 hits, I have 3 cleanses and STILL couldn’t clear burning, it can just be re-applied and all the time the person applying it is a kittening tank that you can hardly dent.

Again this stupid game is rewarding un-skilled passive play, It NEEDS to change, this ridiculous meta NEEDS to be changed otherwise no one will be left playing.

Burn usually deals between 350-650 damage per second depending on your opponents’ condition damage, so 31k damage would require about 60-70 hits.

Please remember that if you are hit from 20 different skills for 2k damage each, that’s 40k damage—but it shows up in your death log as a bunch of little 2k hits. On the other hand, if you get hit by 20 different skills that cause two seconds of burning (about 20k damage), all of that damage will appear the same on your death bar.

In other words, conditions always appear to do the most damage because their totals are cumulative from all skills. If the death breakdown was damage taken from all power skills vs. damage taken from all condition skills, power would win by a lot most of the time.

Also, conditions are not passive, they are dots. You still have to actively land them. The only difference is that they don’t do much damage up front.

Warrior players need to present helpful ideas, not just try to defend their profession from nerfs.

Nerfs are often done based on internal data (i.e. “hmm, warriors made up 35% of the entire solo queue population for the last month…that’s a problem.”) In other words, nerfs are absolutely unavoidable at this point. Admit that there is no argument you can make that will prevent nerfs and things will get easier.

For example, warrior players could get behind changes to raise the skill floor of their profession. That way, warriors would remain strong across the board, but they’d stop being the #1 reason for new players uninstalling. Changes like longer cooldown for missed burst skills would even the skill floor a little bit between warriors and other professions. Giving healing signet a lower passive but stronger active would mean new players no longer uninstall after finding that their soldier amulet build literally can’t move a warrior’s health bar. Literally. Seriously, what do warrior players even find enjoyable about that?

Knote.2904:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Knote.2904:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Knote.2904:

This is arguable because it exists in League of Legends/DotA hehe.

It’s just reasoning. Right now, damage is carefully balanced against sustain. If damage got harder to land, it would need a buff (or sustain would need a nerf).

So higher damage but fewer hits…in other words, a couple of skillshots would define most fights.

Well damage in general is too high, it wouldn’t need to be buffed, just add more risk to attacks or make them require more skill to pull off.

My point is that that would effectively lower damage. Which would be a bad idea, because tankiness/regen in general is already extremely powerful.

They’re both a problem.

Okay, fair enough. Maybe dps is too strong and tankiness is too strong at the same time.

We could equalize things—for example, remove both crit damage and healing power as stats. That would be essentially what you’re looking for, I think. Less damage, less healing. You can still have bunkers and glass cannons, but the difference between them is smaller.

But I can’t really agree with that option either. I think the diversity is pretty cool actually, and I definitely don’t think a pre-alpha level change should be implemented over a year after release.

Locuz.2651:

While this sounds amazing. And you probably shout really hard “pwned” when it happens….it is bad for the game.

Sorry, I miscommunicated. I don’t play any of the specs you mention and I generally dislike playing glass cannon builds.

All I meant was that the game contains mechanics that negate or greatly reduce damage (like quickly stunbreaking a fear). If damage were lower and those mechanics remained, it would be impossible to kill people. If damage were lower and those mechanics were removed, this would be WoW. I don’t like either of those options, which is why I tried to explain things that way. I didn’t mean to imply a l2p. Best of luck.

I understand why the devs don’t want to change hotjoin too much, since it’s pretty popular for some unknown reason. I would love to see scoring changes that reward good playing (since people seem to be concerned about glory points for some reason).

Real tutorials are also badly needed.

Not sure on 8v8, since it allows new players to feel safe (since they’re not 20% of their team, as in a 5v5). I’d love to see a system to keep teams even numbers as well, but it would be tough.

Knote.2904:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Knote.2904:

This is arguable because it exists in League of Legends/DotA hehe.

It’s just reasoning. Right now, damage is carefully balanced against sustain. If damage got harder to land, it would need a buff (or sustain would need a nerf).

So higher damage but fewer hits…in other words, a couple of skillshots would define most fights.

Well damage in general is too high, it wouldn’t need to be buffed, just add more risk to attacks or make them require more skill to pull off.

My point is that that would effectively lower damage. Which would be a bad idea, because tankiness/regen in general is already extremely powerful.

Errant Venture.9371:

In the next PvP Drop (1.5-2 months away) this will be fixed: after two teams are matched up against one another the players will be scrambled so the team assignments are random.

Better than random, they’ll be mixed based on leaderboard ranking. So the total MMR of both teams should always be similar.

And I’m really hoping it’s sooner than that…but unfortunately you could be right.

Rarnark.5623:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree with you for the most part; however, complexity gaps do create imbalance at casual levels. The bigger the gap, the larger the imbalance. I think the complexity gap is a bit too large right now, which is turning away newer/casual players.

Small tweaks to lower the complexity gap would not hurt good players and would really help people getting started.

Yeah a narrower complexity gap is good but it’s not like it’s obscenely out of whack right now compared to other games (WoW). The problem with messing with the
complexity gap is you have to figure out how to increase the skill cap of build/profession without nerfing it’s maximum potential, which would probably require massive class restructuring.

Right now I’d say it’s best to balance builds according to their maximum play potential. After the MASSIVE amount of problems with the PvP system have been cleaned up then the developers can focus on tweaking profession/build skill caps.

EDIT: grammar

I don’t know. How about longer cooldowns for missed burst skills? Zero change to build potential, tons of opportunity to get outplayed.

I’m not really talking about skill caps—it’s the floors that I’m worried about. IMO skill cap for most builds is already pretty high. Simple builds take a lot of skill to use really well. It’s just that they don’t take much skill to use pretty well. For the first couple hundred hours someone spends in GW2 PvP, there are a few simple builds that will seem grossly overpowered, just because they’re easy.

Knote.2904:

This is arguable because it exists in League of Legends/DotA hehe.

It’s just reasoning. Right now, damage is carefully balanced against sustain. If damage got harder to land, it would need a buff (or sustain would need a nerf).

So higher damage but fewer hits…in other words, a couple of skillshots would define most fights.

kirito.4138:

^^ Is slightly wrong. MMR has nothing to do with Win% or W/L Ratio or in-game rank.

Its based on your ranking on the leaderboard which is separate system to in-game rank. Your rating is a hidden value. How much you gain/lose depends on the difference in rating of your opponent. However, GW2 uses a system that tends to stack teams often the matches are lopsided espeically when the pool of people to match-make is very low.

Right, it’s based on your wins and losses vs. different people, weighted differently based on their MMR relative to yours.

Knote.2904:

He’s not talking about burst.

He’s talking about the overall extremely low TTK. It is a huge problem IMO.

It’s not as simple as “nerf everyone’s dmg” either.

But the time to kill is not low. It’s quite high in GW2.

The time to kill someone who doesn’t defend is very low, but fortunately we’re not in an old-school trinity stand-and-swing MMO.

MMR stands for Match Making Rating. It means that people are not grouped based on their PvP level, but on how good they are based on their wins and losses. If you have a similar win% as a rank 60 guy, you’ll end up on his team often. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

The bad thing is that the solo matchmaker is not working perfectly at the moment. It should always split up the highest-ranked players, but sometimes it does not, especially during low-population hours like weekdays. The fix has been confirmed for the next PvP patch, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s already finished, just that it will be by the next PvP patch.

Locuz.2651:

Im talking about dmg in general. Seeing people melt during one fear on my necro for example. Or warriors getting one hit in with their hammer and ppl being at 50% allready.

For bad players sure…ill be able to kite 2-3 of them nps. If ppl know how to burst etc. It literally takes 2-3 secs if they are lucky…even with 2840 toughness (not 2480).

But a single stunbreak negates most of your fear damage if used quickly. A single dodge negates a heartseeker. Turning around quickly halves the damage of a backstab.

Trust me, it seems very fast at first but once you get the hang of it fights last a long time (except in hotjoin, as I’ve already mentioned). It’s more like a super lightweight boxing match where people don’t absorb a lot of hits, but spend a lot of time being all fast and hard to hit and stuff.

If we made people able to soak more damage, we’d have to nerf dodging and probably healing and blocking. Besides, it’s much more fun when you have to avoid it.

Rarnark.5623:

The QQ about how easy some builds are needs to stop.

“Wow hammer Warrior CC spam and GG”
“Bunker warrior banner regen + heal sig then /party”
“Spirit ranger spam 1 ftw”
“S/D thief spam 3 and win”
“condi necro: spam aoe and GG”
“D/P thief, 411122 and done”
etc. etc. etc.

This game is built to be fundamentally simple so that people can pick it up easily. Arguing that a build is overpowered because it’s too easy to play is ridiculous because some builds will always be easier than other (mind blast ele in guild wars 1).

The truth is that the majority of the skill in PvP revolves around positioning, dodging correctly, and advanced techniques that will give you the edge over other players (weapon sheathing, dodge jumping, knowing when to cleave/stomp, whatever). Just stick to a t1 build on your best prof and then get better at that stuff. You can complain when you’re number one on the leader boards.

I agree with you for the most part; however, complexity gaps do create imbalance at casual levels. The bigger the gap, the larger the imbalance. I think the complexity gap is a bit too large right now, which is turning away newer/casual players.

Small tweaks to lower the complexity gap would not hurt good players and would really help people getting started.

I agree that a high percentage of the skill in GW2 is based around avoiding damage. Another way of saying that is everyone has access to at least two dodges, and if you mess those up, of course you should lose to someone who dodged well.

It’s also true that it’s generally not too hard to land damaging skills. Exceptions would be engineer, ele, and guardian. I think it’s all right that most professions don’t revolve around skillshots.

If they did, damage output would invariably go way down. The game already has a lot of active defense, so bunkers would receive huge nerfs and dps would receive huge buffs to compensate for less damage landing. And then the meta would be awful, because landing that one great skillshot would literally always win the fight for you.

Try some solo arenas. Hotjoins are bursty by nature because why not? No one ever leaves the herd so there’s safety in numbers, leaving people free to see those nice big red crit numbers pop up on their screen like they love.

In team/solo tournaments, people are usually trying to win, so they split up and use a variety of builds. Yes, a well-executed burst combo can potentially kill someone very quickly, but in reality that happens very, very rarely.

And if you’re talking about WvW…well yeah, that’s pretty much how it works there.

—There’s nothing wrong with playing a simple spec. Some of the best skill games in the world are simple.
—However, simple specs always overperform somewhat at the casual level. The simpler a spec is, the more likely it is to overperform.
—Thus, you should not be surprised if people hate on your favorite build a bit. Remember that not everyone is coming from the same experiences you are.
—AI is actually more than a visual buff, as some projectiles can be body-blocked and AoE skills have target caps.

Sol.4310:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Ashanor.5319:

Spirit Ranger takes more skill than warrior? Ha!

Only slightly. Spirit ranger has slightly lower apm than a standard hambow warrior (lol) but is also less forgiving (no stunbreaks or much active condi cleanse). It also depends on the matchup—for example, very few people are running warrior-killing mesmer specs for some reason, but warriors hard-counter spirit rangers. So in general, spirit rangers face more difficult fights with fewer mistakes allowed, but still have a very low apm and very few decisions to make other than positioning.

I put both specs somewhere around Animal Crossing in terms of difficulty to play.

What’s funny is none of you play Spirit Ranger.

I have before, but not at a high level and I’m only jesting of course. The humorous thing was how sure someone was that hambow is harder to play than spirit ranger.

Writetyper.1985:

What is a “Warrior killing mesmer spec” out of curiosity?

Phantasm specs generally have plenty of sustained damage to get through the regen and it’s hard for a melee-heavy warrior to deal with ranged phantasms.

sorrow.2364:

Also, attacking personally someone is a sign of the lack of arguments.

Yup.

Ashanor.5319:

Spirit Ranger takes more skill than warrior? Ha!

Only slightly. Spirit ranger has slightly lower apm than a standard hambow warrior (lol) but is also less forgiving (no stunbreaks or much active condi cleanse). It also depends on the matchup—for example, very few people are running warrior-killing mesmer specs for some reason, but warriors hard-counter spirit rangers. So in general, spirit rangers face more difficult fights with fewer mistakes allowed, but still have a very low apm and very few decisions to make other than positioning.

I put both specs somewhere around Animal Crossing in terms of difficulty to play.

Proshox.6931:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Not sure if the older thread on this issue had a response, but the bug causing the broken rating is fixed and will be in the game next month. Looks like your solo arena rating has already been reset as well. You should be able to continue playing.

Divide by zero once and the whole world falls apart…

My solo rating has NOT been reset… still at a fabulous 9% with 7-10 min queues(prime time)

Apologies, I assumed that the problem had been resolved. Very odd that it happened on a Monday afternoon.

This anomaly will never happen except when servers go down for a patch (and people ignore the warnings and queue up anyway). So I’m not sure why people expect that it should be hotfixed. That would be pretty pointless honestly.

The OP’s rank is reset, no one else can possibly experience the bug until the next patch, which is also exactly when the fix is coming. What is the issue, again?

Oblivion.8307:

Yep, you can make an engineer tanky enough to not die against a warrior, and also not be able to kill anything. Best counter.

Hey, it’s worked for me. Anything is better than a tanky dps build that literally cannot dps through the regen, but also doesn’t have the tools to stay alive.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Comparing it to the spirit elite, this sounds like a valid improvement to the warrior. Although if banners ever become a huge part of the meta, they should have health. Remember what you did to my poor spirit weapons Anet!

Lol that invincible spirit hammer with knockback on autoattack chain…

Thedenofsin.7340:

What do bunker engineers bring to the table to counter this?

Well, hambow warriors are generally so surprised that the standard rotation doesn’t kill you that they don’t really know what to do for the rest of the match.

In seriousness, engineers can have huge damage reduction while stunned. They also actually have knockbacks, something that warriors never seem to take, so it’s fairly easy to neutralize a point from under them. However, bunker engineers don’t have much support or downed-state control, so they won’t really counter warriors in a teamfight. They make excellent sidepoint counters, though. I’m not sure what kind of counter you’re looking for.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Ironically, stun warriors were made to counter the condi meta but that’s also their weakness. They do stand a great chance against the condi meta, but the fact is if you spam more condis on them after their berzerker stance is down, they’ll die. So we just need to buff the condi meta now. Then we’ll be ok—wait a minute…

Actually I believe most warrior buffs (except for shouts) happened before the dhuumfire patch. Greatsword/axeshield warriors were getting kited to death, which is why we saw things like cripple/chill/immobilize reduction. Berserker stance was meant to be a gap closer afaik.

Then when conditions became popular, it took people about another month to figure out that the profession with immunity to conditions might actually be good…

Coordinated spike. That’s not always possible in solo queue, which is one reason solo queues are currently about half warriors (not even exaggerating).

Or bunker engineers.

Just wait until your thief or ele teammate uses their downed #2 and then drop the banner. Warriors are considered far too strong at the moment—if Anet buffed anything else on them it would be received very poorly.

hihey.1075:

I build my toons around 1v1. I win them. Then get QQ. And when the match ends I’m even more a noob because of my low rank.

I didn’t mean it like you were doing something wrong, just trying to explain your situation. Unfortunately, it requires a community much, much better than hotjoin’s to not qq after losing duels to simple/popular specs. Solo arenas are a better community overall, but even there you’re likely to find some qq.

There isn’t a meta build, although 30/0/0/30/10 is the closest thing to one. Grenades, bombs, X, and healing turret. Rabid amulet.

The three builds you mentioned are all pretty easy to play and are all really good for duels.

I’m not excusing your opponents, though. Hotjoin heroes are kind of known for being like that. Try some solo arenas—they’re usually better.

I don’t care if warriors are OP or not. They need to be nerfed so there can stop being 5+ of them in nearly every solo queue match.

Engineer has comparable burst to other professions in terms of cooldowns, damage, and difficulty to land. However, staying alive as a dps engi takes more work than other professions.

But yes, I love the flexibility of kit swapping and the like. Engies are certainly a solid profession for PvP right now with a ton of good builds.

infantrydiv.1620:

NevirSayDie.6235:

infantrydiv.1620:

Divide them into teams of 1,3,5,7,9 and 2,4,6,8,10 by their rating.

That’s an outrageous advantage for the first team. Are you sure it’s as easy as you think it is?

A dev has already explained the different models he’s working with in pretty decent detail in some other threads. It sounds like the new model will be ready for the next PvP update.

That isn’t nearly as bad of an advantage as many matches currently have 5 top 500 players vs people from the 80th percentile

Maybe. All I’m saying is, it’s not like coding for 3 hours will instantly fix this.

I had a match end 500-500 the other day, and got a ton of matches with my teammates lower ranked than the opposite team even though forum wisdom says my teams should always be better. There’s no way to quantify how far off matchmaking currently is, so implementing another flawed system might be better or worse. And all of that is moot anyway, since an actually good model is probably coming in the next PvP patch.

infantrydiv.1620:

Divide them into teams of 1,3,5,7,9 and 2,4,6,8,10 by their rating.

That’s an outrageous advantage for the first team. Are you sure it’s as easy as you think it is?

A dev has already explained the different models he’s working with in pretty decent detail in some other threads. It sounds like the new model will be ready for the next PvP update.

Hotjoins will always be that way because of their super-casual nature. Try a solo arena or team arena.

Are you planning to do PvE or WvW? There are quite a few very different, good WvW builds that are tanky+conditions, although you’ll probably want at least half dire instead of full apothecary. I’m sure it would be awful for PvE, though. Even a bomb healing build is much better off in cleric’s for the bomb auto.

Durzlla.6295:

Someone doesn’t know how to position themselves very well…

As others have said, succeeding in skyhammer has very little to do with positioning. Sure, that will help you vs. simple knockback spammers. But that’s…easy.

The real skyhammer game means giving in to the system. Run a combo that either cannot be stopped or cannot be seen coming. That’s it—there’s no stability, or positioning, or stunbreaks. None of those are really important.

It’s kind of ridiculous. I’ll be glad when the map gets modified.