Guild Wars 2

NinjaEd.3946:

Also food has no place in pvp, which is another place that has problems with condi spam.

Well not really—condition builds have seen some nerfs and PvPers have in general figured out how to deal with them. That’s not to say there aren’t some unfortunate builds still remaining: mace/sword-longbow warrior is ridiculously strong in duels, for example. Turret engineers sometimes use conditions, and they are unfortunately pretty effective in solo arenas and pug team arenas atm.

But in standard team or solo arenas, things like scepter/dagger-staff condimancer have been figured out. They don’t wreck people any more; in fact, they’re barely good enough to compete.

I haven’t played much WvW recently so maybe p/d thieves and PU mesmers are still running rampant there. That’s more a flaw with open-world PvP than conditions, though. You could cut condition damage in half and those builds would still wreck new players in WvW because they can’t be pinned down.

Also you will never see the condition that gets converted. It will be converted instantly, before it appears on your condition bar. So if you’re not familiar with the skills you’re being hit with you might never even know they would have applied a condition.

Gems as reward existed back when paid tournaments required a ticket to enter, which had to be bought with gems (or earned by playing free tournaments). I don’t think it’s a good idea to just pass out gems for regular arena wins.

Now there might be a place for gems as a reward for automated tournaments, or for wins from top positions on the leaderboards.

I’ll just quote my response from your other thread:

NevirSayDie.6235:

There are actually a ton of ways to stop an invulnerable stomp:
1. Stealth.
2. Rez utilities/elites (nature spirit, banner rez, elixir R, glyph rez, illusion of life, etc)
3. Manual rezzing (if you’re watching closely you’ll see your ally go down and immediately start to rez him. If there’s no cleave you’ll rez him before the stomp finishes.)
4. Quickness rez (even if cleave damage is coming in you can get him up in time)
5. Mercy rune rez (it’s fast. Like really fast. Combine with quickness for near-instant rezzes)
6. Double rez (also fast).
7. Not getting downed.
8. Being a thief, mesmer, or ele.

There are actually a ton of ways to stop an invulnerable stomp:
1. Stealth.
2. Rez utilities/elites (nature spirit, banner rez, elixir R, glyph rez, illusion of life, etc)
3. Manual rezzing (if you’re watching closely you’ll see your ally go down and immediately start to rez him. If there’s no cleave you’ll rez him before the stomp finishes.)
4. Quickness rez (even if cleave damage is coming in you can get him up in time)
5. Mercy rune rez (it’s fast. Like really fast. Combine with quickness for near-instant rezzes)
6. Double rez (also fast).
7. Not getting downed.
8. Being a thief, mesmer, or ele.

Flissy.4093:

It seems a little ambitious to try and counter a build who’s strong point is flinging you around like a sack of spuds with a class that has stupidly limited amount of Stability. You can’t apply your conditions when you’re perma CC’d.

More power to you, but I believe it will mostly be futile.

Condition engineers are very strong vs. turret or decap engineers. Now you might not want to just waltz onto a point they own, but you could definitely duel them and win, probably quickly enough to be time-effective if defending a point you already own. In general, there are very few builds that should push a defended point solo, you’re right.

Healing turret and toughness on your amulet gives you enough survivability to not die to turrets. Amazing access to poison (pistol 2, eg3, grenade5) counters their healing, especially since their main condi removal is tied to healing turret (so it’s impossible to cleanse poison and then heal.)

Your skills are mostly effective from 400+ units, so you can avoid turret knockbacks for the most part. If it gets bad, or if they supply crate, you can grenade turrets down. Pistol/pistol puts out a lot of damage, especially with the reduced cooldown trait. Throw in a good magnet/prybar every once in a while and some good elixir gun autos and that decap engineer will be down before you know it.

soloez.5910:

Whoever can spam the most stealth can win or run away, if stealth is a fair and just mechanic why don’t just give it to all classes ?

That’s why PvP is based around capture points. If your opponent is set on doing nothing but trolling around resetting fights whenever things look bad, he won’t die but he also won’t win.

Joined in tonight and had a blast. The builds were all absurdly cheesy. People could specify which particularly cancerous builds they didn’t want to fight when signing up.

I wouldn’t do it again, though. I just don’t have the heart to run a ridiculous build, which means I’d lose a lot of money.

We started doing 2v2s near the end of the night, and those were a lot more fun. I hadn’t done 2v2s before, but we managed to have a couple of nice fights even though my teammate and I weren’t able to voip at the time.

tl;dr dueling=trolling but everybody should try it once. 2v2/3v3 actually has a real future in GW2, I hope.

Lightsbane.9012:

i disagree completely. with all the pulls and mobility engineer has, theres no reason the auto attack can’t be turned into something like a shrapnel burst. i’m never in 1000+ range for long with my rifle, if you are, you’re not doing something right. notice i said nothing about reducing the range of net shot. i could see the range of auto attack being reduced to 800 and it will get a damage boost if that’s the case. if guardian’s staff#1 can function with a 600 ranged auto attack i think our rifle can too. i don’t even use nades, which is funny that you’re using that as an argument. i think my setup is proof that 1000+ range isn’t necessary.

It depends on who you’re fighting. If you’re dueling a d/p thief, you don’t need a ton of range or gap closing abilities—they’ll come to you. If you’re fighting a p/d thief, it will be different. Engineer only has one pull, and zero targeted gap closers, although rocket boots and jump shot can both be used to close distance.

800 range with a damage boost would probably be a decent trade-off. But I wouldn’t want to see it go any lower than that. Guardian staff is a lot more like engineer flamethrower actually, except with longer range and less retal punishment. I’m not complaining because engineer rifle is a great weapon, and back on topic, OC is an incredibly powerful skill. But trust me, it really needs the ranged auto.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Would this work as a pre-match filter for matchmaking, or as a map vote system?

I think either would work well. Honestly I’d recommend whichever is easier to implement.

It could be a pre-matchmaking filter “veto” system, where you could choose to never play on, say, skyhammer or khylo. I think limiting it to two blacklisted maps would be sufficient, otherwise matchmaking could be impaired if too many people are queued up for only one or two maps.

Or it could be a map vote—queue pops, box comes up that says “Your solo arena is ready. Vote for either _ or _.” Come to think of it, that would be a nifty way to implement that manual ready-check that we’ve needed for a while to prevent 4v5s…two birds with one stone.

I think limiting profession stacking would be good but it shouldn’t be too strict. Max two of each armor class is extremely tight—a lot of teams would get exactly two heavies, two mediums, and one light armor. That’s not much room for variation.

I don’t think the problem is so much with the starting rank of new players, but perhaps Glicko2 is a bit too confident for a game with so many variables. I’d rather see new players start in the current place but rise through the ranks more slowly.

Completely agree about manual ready-check.

Edit: forgot one complication about profession stacking. Certain maps favor certain builds, and if you couldn’t change, that could be frustrating. For example, if skyhammer pops and you can’t change your profession, it could potentially be a problem.

alofear.9637:

So I just want to say that I love my Asuran Engi and I don’t plan on playing anything else.

Currently I’m trying to build an anti decapper engi. I’m assuming that a condition top heavy build would be a great idea, but any other tips on what I should be running?

Correct. Engineers can’t deal with conditions.

Are you referring to countering turret bunker engineers, or the old rifle/flamethrower/throw mine engineers?

Either way, you’ll probably want to use runes of Balthazar, probably pistol/pistol, and something like grenades, toolkit, and elixir gun. Grenades aren’t a great engi vs. engi kit but you might need them to take down turrets from range.

You might consider sigil of doom—the poison proc is extremely strong in engineer 1v1s.

I’d suggest a standard 6/2/0/4/2 rabid condi setup.

Lightsbane.9012:

i think it’s fine. however, the autoattack has no synergy with the rest of the skills.

The auto has massive synergy with the rest of the rifle and other kit skills. It is literally our only direct damage >600 range attack for PvP (not counting grenades because they’re not effective at over 600 range in PvP). Our other ranged attacks are EG 1, pistol 1 and 3, and magnet.

That’s it. That’s all of the ranged attacks. Without a ranged rifle auto, power engi would be completely unplayable.

What about a toggle to allow or not allow /inspect?

Branden Gee.2150:

How would this idea handle things like cultural armors? Won’t turning everyone into humans cause a loss of uniqueness in the game? Every player has specific facial adjustments, body types, heights, armor colors, and weapons; what happens to these?

Everything except body choices at character creation and cultural armor would transfer. There’s not much time in PvP to really examine your opponents’ facial features. Also, this is more of a tournament suggestion; maybe it could be optional or only applied in solo and team arena? All in all, I wouldn’t worry too much about the possible drawbacks.

Alkaholic.3875:

Thanks to this thread, I’m taking my max height asura and paying to change to the smallest size.

LOL @ turning every player to a default look. Can’t tell them apart except for name. That totally makes sense…

You already can’t tell any players apart except by their names and profession icons, especially if they’re all Asura. Their armor, weapon, and dye choices could easily remain.

Longbow/greatsword ranger is a pretty unforgiving build to start out with. There are other ranger builds you could try that are slightly more comfortable, or you could jump in with a warrior or an AI build as Lux stated.

Other non-AI builds that are somewhat simpler to achieve success with than glass cannon ranger might be:
—Bunker guardian (or maybe dps guardian)
—Sword-dagger/shortbow thief
—Celestial/strength rune d/d elementalist

Simon.3794:

i would like to hear a counterplay to incendiary power, please

it’s like counterplay to steal.

Yolo dodge 4lyfe.

Condition transfer for necro/mesmer, zerker stance for warrior, outcleansing for ele/warrior.

Bunker guardians struggle to keep up with application in a 1v1, and will eventually lose the duel, just like they do to every other profession.

Thief, spirit ranger, and power/celestial engi are probably the only builds that can really complain about IP.

That said, IP does feel too mandatory for engineers. Since grenades can’t be reliable at range, engineer honestly has only rifle 1, pistol 3, elixir gun 1, and toolkit 5 that are effective at over 600 range. That’s four total ranged attacks across four different kits/weapons.

That’s good because it forces engineer to be the mid-range (200-500) skirmisher it was designed to be, but it also means it’s extremely easy to kite to death. IP mitigates that weakness, but it is also open to abuse with balthazar runes, etc. Hopefully there’s a better solution somewhere.

kirito.4138:

Wouldn’t need Rank requirements if the match making system actually worked. New players are seeded too high initially.

Actually I think new players start out pretty near the bottom of the active playerbase.

I do think glicko2 is a little too volatile to account for the obviously large variables inherent in a solo queue situation. I wonder if it’s possible to use exactly the same system, but just to cut whatever plus/minus to MMR from each match result in half?

So for example, if I win three games as a new player, instead of gaining +1300 MMR and shooting to the top 300 on the leaderboard, maybe I should only gain +650 MMR. If I lose three games straight, maybe I shouldn’t fall as far. Glicko2 is a very accurate system, but maybe we should “trust” it less given the natural variables of solo queue.

MithranArkanere.8957:

- There’s no more modes. Only conquest. Conquest favors a horribly coward style of gameplay, in which victory is not determined by skill, but again by exploiting loopholes in balance to spam conditions, AoEs and survivability. It’s horrible how often players can win by just blindly running around in circles in a point like a headless chicken aimlessly spamming crap around. Maps do have quirks and unique mechanics, but they are clearly not enough. We need modes with more different mechanics for victory, from deathmatch to having to perform tasks in different parts of the map while fighting off enemies.

Get more game modes and autobalance measures. Then you have a good starting point for balance.

If I may:

Conquest does allow for some unfortunate builds like turret bunker. But other modes would not necessarily be better. For example, take p/d thief and pu mesmer, two of the most hated WvW roamers. You won’t find them ruining tPvP.

Take the 10v10 and larger annihilation matches arranged by guilds in the obsidian sanctum, or by the windmill in the borderlands. There’s a lot more aoe (mostly hammer warriors) flying around than in PvP.

There are some unfortunate low-risk builds at the top right now, but that’s not the fault of conquest. Hammer warrior is hammer warrior, whether on a node or in a zerg. Guardian is just as important in deathmatch as in conquest. Conditions are kind of good on side points. There is some AoE spam, mostly hambow warriors, thief shortbow, and some elementalists.

My point is this: conquest encourages teamfighting, mobility, and 1v1/1v2/2v2 situations. Most other modes would only give you one or two of those scenarios (for example, annihilation is pure teamfighting, CTF is mostly mobility with some teamfighting, dueling/arenas is mobility and 1v1/2v2). It’s very unlikely that team deathmatch would magically make cheesy builds disappear. I think we do need 2v2 or 3v3 arenas because GW2 combat excels at that scale, but there’s nothing that says it would reward better or even different builds than conquest does.

It’s true, the server sometimes sees a downed player in a different location than they show up on a client screen, making the stomp do nothing.

I believe it’s caused by client lag when using a leap/movement skill, though. I don’t see it happen just randomly due to server lag.

Scrye.9278:

Hello all,

I am unsure if a post like this has been made before or not, so I’m just creating a new topic.

I, along with my friends whom I play with, feel that conditions are overwhelming; not necessarily that they are overpowered, just that there is little counterplay to them.

We feel that conditions are in a nice place; however, there is no stat that mitigates condition damage/duration except for vitality…

A simple way for me to explain what I’m thinking is as follows:

For power builds to work, players invest in Power, Precision, Ferocity (3 stats)
Where as, condition builds focus on Condition Damage and Duration (2 stats)
> Condition builds only have 2 stats to worry about and can invest in another stat…

Countering a power build, players can invest in toughness, vitality, and/or healing power (3 stats)
For a condition build, players only have vitality and/or healing power to focus on (2 stats)
> There are 2 stats that work against a power build, while only vitality works to against conditions

I guess what I want to say is: when building for a condition build, there isn’t as many stats to invest in which allows for the build to focus on survivability; where as in a power build, players don’t have as many stats free to invest towards survivability because of how many stats they should invest offensively…

Please let me hear your thoughts

GW2 combat is extremely active. In other words, you don’t just equip a shield and get a “block chance,” you actually have to use a block skill to block important attacks.

It’s the same with condition damage. You don’t just have a “condition damage reducing stat,” you have to use active defenses to dodge, block, and cleanse important condition attacks.

No need to be rude, guys. PvP in GW2 is way more difficult than even PvPers realize, and unfortunately, PvE/WvW teach very little about PvP.

The OP is probably a fine player, he just doesn’t realize that he’s completely new at PvP. If I had played PvE/WvW for two years, I’d probably assume I could enter PvP at a high level, also. But that’s just not the case in GW2.

Unfortunately, PvE/WvW have probably taught him some “bad” habits that he’ll have to change to succeed in PvP; in that respect, he’s at an even greater disadvantage than someone who just installed the game yesterday.

Sirendor.1394:

He means 100 gems: 1 gold ratio. Regardless the gem prices have surged beyond imagination. I can remember the days when 10 silver was 100 gems, now it’s 1000 silver.

I figured that’s what he meant. Regardless, the points still stand. If gems are worth that much it means there is more incentive to buy them with real money, not less, because currency exchange revolves around real people, not around Anet.

I’d never purchase gems to exchange for gold if I was only going to get a few silver out of my money.

Lukin.4061:

Solid dev job should be a given, since gw2 was advertised as a “First AAA pvp mmorpg”, “ESPOOOOORTZZZZ!!1” and other marketing slogans used to trick people into buying this game for actual player versus player.

Actually, most of the esports hype came from third-party interviews. Anet has very rarely used that word, and certainly never in an advertising campaign. There were quite a few pre-release interviews in which the devs say things like “we’ve spent a lot of time looking at these games that are currently e-sports, to see what makes them fun. We want our PvP to be like that.”

Because of the way GW2 is designed, as players get better they start to land a lot more of their damage. A new player might only land 10% or 20% of his potential damage, and even experienced players can’t land all damage because of dodges, blocks, and other defensive abilities.

Even the tankiest build cannot withstand even five seconds of pure damage from a dps-oriented opponent. What you need to do is set up your damage abilities with immobilizes or stuns, and bait out dodges and other defensive cooldowns.

Also, you should consider your build. I see a lot of people in tournaments and hotjoins that just don’t have much damage OR survivability in their builds. Sometimes it’s using zerker amulet but not having any good way to chain damage skills together; sometimes it’s using soldier’s amulet but having no active defense or mobility. Either way, it just hurts to see people playing builds that literally aren’t good at anything.

irk.2047:

no reason to alienate people who play PvP and those who don’t.

using gold -> gem conversion is what is probably hurting income the most which is probably why a lot of trains and loot drops have been nerfed. Slowing gold income would get people to spend [more] real money to get gems.

I remember when gold was worth more than gems. Now, gold is only a 10th the worth of a gem and its still going down.

Actually I believe the ratio is 100x that—one gold is worth about ten gems iirc.

And I don’t think Anet is suffering from gold for gems because, as far as I know, it’s a player-controlled market. Anet doesn’t just “sell” gems for in-game currency. People buy gems with real money and then sell them to other players for whatever the market is willing to pay.

I could be wrong about any of this, and of course Anet has the right to “interfere” with the market however they want. But the point is, I don’t think we need to be telling them what to do with their business model.

Every game is slowly dying. Games don’t just last forever.

GW2 has done well with their business model. Anet is a business. If they could be making more money by charging a subscription, they probably would, because their goal is to make money.

In other words, since they have not changed to a sub-to-play system, we can assume that doing so would likely cause them to lose income. There have been several games in the past few years whose income skyrocketed when they went free-to-play.

Watson.6492:

No offense, but you’re coming off as irrationally defensive.

None taken. I am often irrationally defensive; it’s my nature. We are all irrational in our own ways. I prefer to err on this side of things.

I enjoy posting on the forums but generally spend too much time doing it, so I won’t address most of your points. I hope you find what you’re looking for. GW2 has pretty active combat so I think you could enjoy it, but it’s not perfect like WoW

(Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m also irrationally sometimes a jerk.)

Solstice.1097:

i am talking about really good engis here, they don’t just drop all their turrets at once, and they don’t drop supply crate 1v1 either unless they need it.

It’s true, an engineer in the hands of a truly talented player is a force to be reckoned with. That’s true of…any profession in the hands of a truly talented player, though.

The build is pretty cheesy and some variants are incredibly strong in 1v1s, usually those that take two turrets and a kit and also rely on balthazar runes and IP for the ultimate amount of cheese possible. I’m not defending it. But a very skilled warrior player can beat a very skilled engineer player, and vice versa.

Watson.6492:

My mouse sensitivity is quite high. There are two problems with the movement system that make it inferior to WoW, which I’m now going to comment on if anybody is interested in the opinions of a consistently top .1% WoW PvP player.

1. The camera action feels like it’s going through molasses, even at high sensitivity and after adjusting the rotational slider. The rotational slider should adjust upwards towards the needs of an experienced player. I believe Arenanet made it so that it doesn’t get too fast in order to equalize the inexperienced player with bad character control to the experienced player.

2. No casting while jumping. This is a subtle point that less experienced players might not understand. A jump is like a kinetic energy chain. You store your movement/velocity in the jump for a brief period. This enables you to systematically put up ‘auto-run’ in the direction of your choice while also changing your camera angle and using abilities. Jumping allows for superior character control and movement. No jumping while casting destroys this, and I can only imagine it is a deliberate design choice to hamstring good players and appeal to casual PvP play.

That’s all. The game is different, which is nice, but inferior.

It’s a bit odd to assume that the developers are intentionally trying to level the playing field between good and bad players. I suppose a conspiracy theory like that is possible, but it’s something of a non sequitur.

No casting while airborne is unfortunate. I’d love to be able to cast while jumping or falling. It’s far more likely that it was an oversight than that it was intentionally harming top players, though. It’s also possible that casting while airborne could have been exploitable to prevent falling damage, or to jump further, or could have just looked absurd (let’s say you cast a leap skill while falling…) There are multiple explanations tens of times more probable than an intentional plot to make good players less good. (Spoiler alert: good players win no matter what the mechanics are like).

I think the camera rotation was more of a PvE thing—they probably wanted the default to be somewhat slow to encourage players to “take in” the environment. I can rotate 180 degrees by moving my mouse maybe a third or a half inch, though, which I feel is fine. I believe there’s something like .05 second camera delay, which I also feel is fine. Especially since I usually use the “look behind” or “180” button instead of the left and right mouse buttons for those situations, respectively, as it’s much more physically efficient, no matter what the settings of the game are like.

How long have you played WoW? It’s possible that games with any other minutely differing settings will feel odd to you if you’ve spent thousands of hours with your controls feeling a certain way.

Locuz.2651:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Hmm, I might recommend axe-sword/longbow. If he’s a condi engi, throw bolas is very effective. Against decap, he can potentially rifle 4 out.

As someone who played various (condi) warrior specs and various engineer specs vs pretty much the the entire top of the EU ladder; I found that mace sword is far more dangerous and tricky to deal with as engineer than axe sword. Esp if its power based axe sword.

Its one of the best if not the best 1v1 build overall in the game.

Interesting, good to know.

Solstice.1097:

stances don’t > engi lol. Use berserker stance? OK he will knock you back. Use stability first? OK he will immobilize and blind you. Use both at same time? Ok he will dodge, dodge, block, invis/invul, dodge…. oh look your stances are all gone now and none of his CC skills are on CD.

great engineers can 1v1 just about anyone now on-point. a lot of the engineers I see, however, aren’t great. we have to separate the theory from the skill factor.

Depending on the two builds, it can be very effective to pop both stances. Turret engineers don’t usually have any boonstrip like the old decap builds did, so popping both and charging can work. Since we’re talking about turret engineers, they will likely not be using elixir S (stealth/invuln) or toolkit (block), so there’s really a decent chance of killing them in ten seconds.

Usually, however, the best bet is to drop combustion shot once or twice while kiting. Let’s say you’re trying to 1v1 a rifle/rocket/thumper engineer. You should be able to get rid of rifle and rocket turret in just a few seconds using combustion shot/arcing arrow/etc, and probably land some pressure on the engineer as well. Then you just have to stance onto the point, rendering the thumper turret useless, and finish the job. You could just open with melee/stances, but only if you think you could destroy most of the turrets or kill the engineer in ten seconds.

Chest, pants, and boots all add armor. Gloves, helms, and shoulders do not because freshly-created characters are not guaranteed to start with them.

Okay, looking back over the thread, I think our best ideas so far are:

—Creating a sound for queue pop
—Nerfing some really powerful runes and sigils
—Implementing an MVP vote
—Showing extra stats on end-game scoreboard
—Temporarily removing skyhammer from solo arena
—Fixing the immob bug (not sure how easy/difficult that is)

I’ll edit this list into the OP. I think most of them would be pretty cost-effective to implement.

Kitt.2567:

Hi do you know the best weapon type of warrior that can pwn those kinda engis easily?

Hmm, I might recommend axe-sword/longbow. If he’s a condi engi, throw bolas is very effective. Against decap, he can potentially rifle 4 out.

One idea that people have suggested is the MVP award. At the end of each match, everyone has to click a vote to one player on their team to receive the bonus MVP award. No voting for yourself.

I think that would really encourage last-minute heroics. Even if it doesn’t change the outcome of the match, it’s a lot more fun to end the match by honorably charging into a 1v3 than by afking in spawn. Plus, you never know what can happen—I’ve seen some absolutely ridiculous comebacks.

I agree with other posters that making losses give zero reward is likely not a good idea.

Sounds like you’re running essentially a pure bunker setup. Since you have very little direct damage, and only bleeding and burning as condition damage, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to take him down through his sustain. You can easily stalemate him by dodging key grenades and not spending too much time in melee range.

Even as a pure bunker, you won’t be able to facetank/cleanse/heal through all damage. You’ll need to dodge key skills such as freeze grenade and poison grenade, and kite to avoid turret knockbacks and make grenades harder to land.

Remember, you don’t need to stand in the capture point all the time. If the engineer comes in to decap it, drop combustion shot on the point to try to pressure him off. As long as the engineer isn’t on the point, you don’t need to be, either. Standing in one place makes grenades too easy to land.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

spot an ele with 25 stacks of might? click on the tiny boon icon, then use boon removal skills.

I actually like that idea a lot. It would make micromanagement crazy effective. It would also buff all condi removal and boonstripping abilities, though.

Does your mouse have multiple sensitivity levels? I felt very sluggish turning two years ago but I turned my mouse sensitivity up and it’s fine now.

BurrTheKing.8571:

You might as well just say Engi. It’s a shame, when I used to play that class all the time it felt so much more challenging. Now, it seems like half of the sustain is automated and the only thing I have to do is use my heal and the block on the Tool Kit.

What specifically changed about engineers that you don’t like?

Vash Past.4385:

I count: 15 posts in this thread, 15 of them negative and complaining about things that have been complained about for over 1 year. I’m not criticizing any of you, I don’t even play this game any more for above mentioned reasons and more, I’m just asking you to think really really hard for a moment.
“Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result… that’s the definition of insanity.”

You didn’t read mine then

I do agree that if someone doesn’t enjoy a video game he’s playing just for fun, then there’s a logical disconnect. The entire purpose of video games is to have fun in your spare time, and if that’s not happening, forum posts probably will not change it.

I’d like to take your concept a step further. If someone has played several games over the past several years, and have ended up feeling frustrated, angry, or disillusioned about many of them, you may want to change something in the way you approach video games. If you’re not having fun doing what you do for fun, you need to change something about you.

I don’t think these forums have gotten more negative than they were, say, one year ago, or a year and a half ago. There was a nice thread in the general discussion a while back that analyzed several dozen threads at random from given time periods, and it suggested that in general the forums are happier now than they were a year ago.

bhagwad.4281:

Rezz.8019:

You can always play thief and just keep pushing far point. You will not cooperate with your team at all. Problem solved!

Agreed. I like “solo” type professions (though for some reason I never liked the thief). Right now I switch between close bunker as a necro with some help at mid and a pure decap engi.

For example, I’ve tried playing a bunker guardian but that depends heavily on team support. If you’re alone and no one comes to help you, you’re pretty useless. That’s one of the reasons why I think conquest is flawed with its focus on teamwork.

GW2 does “solo artist” way, way better than any other MMO right now. Let’s count some fun “solo artist” builds:

—kit engineer
—node assaulter/defender engineer
—s/d thief (or d/p)
—celestial ele
—longbow/axe sword warrior
—MM necro
—Roaming/dueling mesmer builds
—Sidepoint ranger builds

Because there’s no trinity, any profession can put together a really fun and effective solo artist build that works great in solo queue or % team queues. Guardian might be the only exception, which is probably okay, as they are kind of defined as the “party leader” type profession.

That said, I do understand your point—GW2 is very difficult to play well. Conquest is probably not part of that; it’s simple enough to understand, although it does leave room for strategy, rotation, etc. 3v3 annihilation would have way more reliance on teammates than conquest.

Liewec.2896:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I believe it’s meant as a way to keep hotjoin for the casual playerbase.

but thats like saying that in PVE rewards should stop for everything except dungeons after a short while, since you’re obviously playing for awhile should they force you to go to fractals if you want to progress?

hotjoin is the equivalent of the pve open world with dungeons and fractals being the more serious tournaments.

so what if people want to play casually, we should still get rewarded,
just rewarded less than the tournaments.
even if hotjoin games only gave 30% of the track progression of tournament games it is still better than nothing.

as someone who plays none meta builds just for fun i don’t want to be forced into the meta cess pool of tournaments if i want to progress.

Apologies, I was using the word “casual” to mean someone who doesn’t play very much, let’s say rarely more than an hour per day. They would be unaffected by the cap.

Of course, “casual” can also mean unranked matches or less competitive playstyles, which is also fine.

So a better way to word my statement would have been: “I believe it’s meant as a way to keep hotjoin a place for PvPers with limited playtime or experience to play against each other.”

I’d support the first suggestion. I think the main thing holding that back is that there would have to be a lock on character switching—no switching after queue pops or after entering the match.

The second suggestion already exists in solo arena. Hopefully something similar can be done for when two pug groups face each other in team arena.

I believe it’s meant as a way to keep hotjoin for the casual playerbase. The reasoning is that if you PvP more than 1.5 hours/day or so, you’re probably not a casual player and would fit in solo or team arenas better than hotjoin.

zapv.8051:

Edit: did some quick math, assuming your statements are correct and you need both sigils to proc, and you where full zerkers, it would happen 21% of the time. That is quite a bit higher than expected, but still wouldn’t happen often.

I wasn’t really trying to make a statement about power necro. As I said, they’re not even really used in tPvP teams. The point is that there’s plenty of damage available, and a straight damage buff across the board would lead to a lot more stuff like that.

I’m not positive you’d need both sigils to proc. I think you could do it with just auto+sigil of air+spinal shivers, but it’s hard to say. I’m talking about PvP builds here, so zerker’s amulet. That’s significantly less damage “full zerkers” ascended or even exotic in PvE gear terms, but it should be enough to instakill a 15k build with base toughness fairly regularly.

Also very effective vs. bunkers.

zapv.8051:

While I don’t agree with the op that simply isn’t true. Lich form with procs most certainly can’t hit for 10k. If you think it can I invite you to give me video proof.

shadowpass.4236:

25 stacks of might, bloodlust, guard stacks, etc. etc. lich form can 1 shot with full zerk lol

Not necessary. Because lich form triples base power, it can proc fire and air sigils for significantly more than normal. Combined with the 4-6k damage from the autoattack, this is sometimes enough to bring the target below 50% health, proccing a 4-7k spinal shivers to finish them off.

The times I’ve seen this have been in PvP vs. standard zerker thief PvP builds. So about 14-15k health. Even with all that, power necro is not even strong enough at tPvP to be used by most teams—but the point is, there’s already quite a bit of damage flying around.

Here are some additional suggestions:

—Make Sigil of Energy give 8 seconds of vigor on weapon swap instead of 50% instant endurance refill. Normal builds will not be harmed, but builds with perma vigor AND instant endurance refills on top of that will not be able to dodge every three seconds any more.
—Make rune of strength give 30% might duration, 5% damage bonus.
—Make rune of Balthazar give 30% burning duration, remove the on-heal burn proc.
—Make team arena use the same shuffling process solo arena uses when possible (i.e. if four duo/trio groups queue into the same match, the two groups with the highest MMR should not end up together)

That’s pretty broad. How do you suggest going about equally nerfing all defensive capacity for every profession?

Or if you simply think all damage should be increased, are you willing to accept the 1-shot gameplay that will come with that? Lich form autoattack can already 1-shot some builds, 100-0 in a single auto (+procs). Should it do more damage?

Elegant Avenger.8042:

…

Yeah I think all of those could be considered low-hanging fruit. I think the MVP idea would be cool.

infantrydiv.1620:

Deathmatch arenas, a real scoreboard, real leaderboards that show class type and MMR, real matchmaking that doesn’t start players with absurdly high MMR

Some of those I think count as low-hanging fruit, some not. If you don’t think Glicko2 is a good MMR system, which one do you think would be better?

Visible MMR shouldn’t be too hard I don’t think.

Deathmatch arenas I think wouldn’t be too tough to implement, although I think 2v2/3v3 annihilation is actually what people want rather than “deathmatch.” I think courtyard is ready for the rotation, however that could be implemented. Maybe regular hotjoins would do a 5v5 annihilation once per rotation? But that would likely feel too crowded.