Guild Wars 2

Terrorsquad.4802:

Poliator.7021:

Terrorsquad.4802:

Coulter.2315:

Amante.8109:

Coulter.2315:

Why do you want Withdraw buffed? Kinda shoots your “I really want balance” ideals in the foot.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

They increased the CD. That was a nerf. Now you’re asking for an increase in healing. That’s a buff. If they nerfed the heal and found it was in a good place, why would they buff it?

Guys, please don’t be this deliberately dense. It’s embarrassing.

During the trait revamping process, ANet openly said that Withdraw’s CD was getting raised, but to compensate it would heal for 10% more. This change was never actually implemented, and to date no explanation has been given.

Assuming that ANet decided to leave it that way because it’s “more balanced” is silly. I suppose Thief being the only profession in the game that still has a weapon range increasing trait (as a hidden and unlisted effect) is also their “balanced” intention, eh?

No we’re saying Withdraw is a heal most would kill for and they increased its CD noticed 100% of Thieves still used it and therefore thought “well its still stronger than every other choice, increasing healing is then foolish.”

Don’t pretend “we were promised something” > actual balancing. Devs should change their mind if they notice their balance choice didn’t weaken the skill enough to require the healing buff.

Zzzzz.. pls get the point.. its not about the actual buff, its about COMMUNICATION around it. After 2 months they still said nothing about not giving it 10% heal increase.

I DONT NEED THE 10% HEAL, this is what u dont get.
WHAT I DO NEED is Anet telling us they’re not giving it instead of providing random lies and having players wait for months on nothing.

This is one of the reasons why ANet doesn’t tell us their plans (did the Dev say, “We promise to add 10%…” or “We plan to add 10%…”?)

Letting that aside, as you will tell me it’s about communication, I can agree that they should have said “We are not doing so in the end”, but that dev might have just told a “plan”, nothing 100% sure. I personally haven’t seen any post trying to discuss it.

With fearless communication, they would quickly stop by here, tell that they decided to withdraw (huehue) from that decision and that’s it. But guess what? People would whine “but you promised otherwise!”, which is a normal thing on this land these last months. It’s a person on his own judgement who has to come here to bring “explanations” that won’t be well received.

I’d suggest you to take a break from the game until HoT hits the game, like I’m doing. I haven’t left completely the game, but I play far less than before. Either they completely win me with HoT features or they will slowly lose me.

I agree with one of your things, Cele eles. They should do something with them. I wish some nerfs for them come in the next patches… They also make Tournaments less enjoyable to watch. I can handle two same classes in a team, but three and four is just waaaay too much.

Also, I strongly believe that matchmaking will get better as weeks pass with the Pay For Free model and HoT coming out soon with their Leaders. But that’s just my wishes!

If they are just planning things, why bother typing it all down, reherse it with your co-host and show it on a very long stream? Doesnt make sense since 95% of all other things did happen.. Except heal increase on withdraw.

Idc about it, I do care about the communication around it.

If you are talking about the streams regarding the changes to traits of June 23rd, that’s no promise. They always said that all we saw there on the stream was tentative and not final. They maybe were planning to add it, but in the end they didn’t. Moreover, they changed a lot of things from first stream to second about the traits. Which shows they can change opinions.

I do care about it, because if it was on the stream, then your point, in my honest opinion gets invalidated. I thought there was a Dev on the forums who said that, writing on the forums as an answer to a forum user. If that was the case also, then I retire this paragraph.

For me, communication it’s more “fatal” in other topics.

Terrorsquad.4802:

Coulter.2315:

Amante.8109:

Coulter.2315:

Why do you want Withdraw buffed? Kinda shoots your “I really want balance” ideals in the foot.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

They increased the CD. That was a nerf. Now you’re asking for an increase in healing. That’s a buff. If they nerfed the heal and found it was in a good place, why would they buff it?

Guys, please don’t be this deliberately dense. It’s embarrassing.

During the trait revamping process, ANet openly said that Withdraw’s CD was getting raised, but to compensate it would heal for 10% more. This change was never actually implemented, and to date no explanation has been given.

Assuming that ANet decided to leave it that way because it’s “more balanced” is silly. I suppose Thief being the only profession in the game that still has a weapon range increasing trait (as a hidden and unlisted effect) is also their “balanced” intention, eh?

No we’re saying Withdraw is a heal most would kill for and they increased its CD noticed 100% of Thieves still used it and therefore thought “well its still stronger than every other choice, increasing healing is then foolish.”

Don’t pretend “we were promised something” > actual balancing. Devs should change their mind if they notice their balance choice didn’t weaken the skill enough to require the healing buff.

Zzzzz.. pls get the point.. its not about the actual buff, its about COMMUNICATION around it. After 2 months they still said nothing about not giving it 10% heal increase.

I DONT NEED THE 10% HEAL, this is what u dont get.
WHAT I DO NEED is Anet telling us they’re not giving it instead of providing random lies and having players wait for months on nothing.

This is one of the reasons why ANet doesn’t tell us their plans (did the Dev say, “We promise to add 10%…” or “We plan to add 10%…”?)

Letting that aside, as you will tell me it’s about communication, I can agree that they should have said “We are not doing so in the end”, but that dev might have just told a “plan”, nothing 100% sure. I personally haven’t seen any post trying to discuss it.

With fearless communication, they would quickly stop by here, tell that they decided to withdraw (huehue) from that decision and that’s it. But guess what? People would whine “but you promised otherwise!”, which is a normal thing on this land these last months. It’s a person on his own judgement who has to come here to bring “explanations” that won’t be well received.

I’d suggest you to take a break from the game until HoT hits the game, like I’m doing. I haven’t left completely the game, but I play far less than before. Either they completely win me with HoT features or they will slowly lose me.

I agree with one of your things, Cele eles. They should do something with them. I wish some nerfs for them come in the next patches… They also make Tournaments less enjoyable to watch. I can handle two same classes in a team, but three and four is just waaaay too much.

Also, I strongly believe that matchmaking will get better as weeks pass with the Pay For Free model and HoT coming out soon with their Leaders. But that’s just my wishes!

I think they tried with the last Conquest maps to implement meaningful side objectives, not only capture points. Temple is the only one that passes, that people like, Spirit’s Watch is… meh, nobody likes it, nobody certainly hates it, nobody hates it as much as Skyhammer (who doesn’t hate it? It’s a map that feels unfair for many classes and builds).

So I think they tried to separate from Conquest, try something new, but they just didn’t find a good different game mode. Some may consider all these “possible” unused sPvP maps a waste of resources, but I don’t. They tested it and it didn’t work, they could improve on their mistakes on those maps, giving them experience, so in my opinion, although literaly a waste, it’s not terrible but good.

P.S.: The Courtyard-like map looked sick! Or the possible “Deathmatch” -like maps too!

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Slowmelt.8547:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Minor Adept – Serpent’s touch – Stealing causes vulnerability.

This is not ideal, as it does not reduce target healing.
Poison on Steal is useful for many builds for that alone, since many builds do not actually have the Poison condition. My build would not, without Serpent’s Touch.

I understand, but the poison on steal should be in SA, not DA, where it belongs.

Being even more fair, I’d put it into the Trickery Specialization because it’s the one that “improves” the Steal skill and has some condition thingies on it.

Reading the trait changes right now! Nice post to see here, much needed.

I’ll maybe post here an Acrobatics rework, if I manage to do it as clear as your pics. :P

Edit: my thoughts!

DA:
- I think Revealed Training would hurt the PvE side of the game for Thieves but it could be really good for PvP, making it somewhat impactful.
- The one I liked the most was Blood Poisoning, adding sustain via the insane amounts of Poison the Thief can get, really nice one.

CS:
- On Practiced Tolerance, I don’t think they will ever add Vitality again on that trait. Instead, CS being more damage focused, I’d put something like 10% for Ferocity and 5-7% for Power, enhacing the offensive side of Thief.
- The change you proposed for Sundering Strikes is really nice and could see some play if enemies have high numbers of boons. Maybe it should need an ICD of 2 or 3 seconds.
- Hidden Killer would need an ICD too, sounds quite OP. :P

SA:
- Lots of changes to the “on-stealth” traits. Making them work only while revealed would kill at some extent the trait line theme. If there were more tools to cause “Revealed” status on players, it’d be fine.
- Good try on the Venomshare trait. However, I think that the venom skills themselves need a rework of some kind.

Acro:
- I want that Vigorous Recovery. Please. cries
- Feline Grace. That’s how it should have been changed from the start, no more random dodges. You need the condition of dodging something.
- In my opinion, Guarded Initiation needs some kind of rework, more than that. On the other hand, I think Hard to Catch is fine as it is… not going to deny a buff to it either!
- Upper Hand… Were you trying to make a useful Grandmaster trait for Acrobatics? That can’t be! We always had useless Grandmaster traits for this trait line!

Trickery: omg so many OP things here
- If they would release Trickster as you listed there, I think it’d be OP, but lot of fun! I like the fact that it enhaces a utility type, giving them other fitting features (such as the Caltrops or the Scorpion Wire additions: more conditions, more disruption).
- That Quick Pockets should compete with Sleight of Hand. We just need a Fire Field and we can be Warriors 2.0 and Celestial!

Good changes listed so far. Some of them were meh, didn’t change anything (on my experience) but overall those are just imaginative and good changes!

Necromonger.4970:

Poliator.7021:

Necromonger.4970:

Chase.8415:

The rating system in this game is he best one for MMORPGS. If you actually tried rated PvP in the other major MMORPGS I will guarentee you that within an hour you’ll be running back to Guild Wars 2.

What rating system? What are you talking about ? You obviously haven’t played wow(too bad they kittened up the WoD expansion), they have very transparent and skill based rating system.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/leaderboards/3v3?player=&realm=&faction=&minRating=&maxRating=&specType=all

If the 50% win rate is “forced” then the system isn’t good – e.g. you have a win streak and you’re matched with teams that you have almost zero chance to beat just to bring your win rate back to 50%.

EDIT:
Here is some ranting from thelordhelseth’s perspective(the first 15-20 minutes):
http://www.twitch.tv/thelordhelseth/v/4293927

Ehhh, as far as I know, in any “rating”, if you have a win streak, you will be “even out” by putting you against better players. Therefore, you will start losing frequently because the skill level is superior. Because you had a win streak against the supposedly same level of skill as yours. So we can say that every game with rating give you a “forced” 50%.

Slightly better – yes, stomping better – no.

Up to about rank 20, i was playing with other rabbits and deers – they were as bad and as inexperienced as i was and the games were fun(regardless of winning or losing) and i was wondering why people are complaining about the matchmaking, but…

After that the things started to get ugly – i started to see phoenix and dragon finishers more often and people with reaper and legendary champion titles, but i was a dolyak with less than 100 games, but hey… i have 50% win rate. Sure, you’ll say that rank != skill, but a player with 1000 games will have a lot more experience than a player with 100 games. I was barely winning any 1vs1 and i started to rage, afk and ragequit(i know, i know, i am a kittener), but hey… i still have 50% win rate.

Even the games that end at 300-350 feel very one sided, the losing team is just delaying the inevitable.
Sure, there are very intense and fun games that end at 480+, but a few good games cannot outweigh the rest of the bullkitten.

If you were so bad compared to your teammates you would be “making” your team lose. So it’s strange that you have 50% winrate. What you described about rabbits vs dragons it is a problem, of course.

The 300-350 thing, as you said, it’s only a feeling. If you get that close to the other team, then the gap, the match, is not one sided. One sided is a stomp 500-50 and there are some of those, I’ve had blowouts too, not going to lie. However, for me a 300-350 match is pretty close and amazing. Maybe your team was tilting because they were so close? That’s maybe why you had that feeling with you or your team missrotating because nervousness.

To clarify, I’m not denying that a 300-350 match can feel lost all the game. I had one of those games, as well as I had 300-500 matches that felt insanely close to play, as if the enemy team suddenly were about to kill us all and get the win. There are examples of both sides! In my case bad experiences are minority, but I see that for most others on the forums the experiences are consistently bad and unfair.

So yeah, my statement is that matchmaking of course can see improvement and it needs so, but it’s not as terrible as people want make it seem.

Necromonger.4970:

Chase.8415:

The rating system in this game is he best one for MMORPGS. If you actually tried rated PvP in the other major MMORPGS I will guarentee you that within an hour you’ll be running back to Guild Wars 2.

What rating system? What are you talking about ? You obviously haven’t played wow(too bad they kittened up the WoD expansion), they have very transparent and skill based rating system.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/leaderboards/3v3?player=&realm=&faction=&minRating=&maxRating=&specType=all

If the 50% win rate is “forced” then the system isn’t good – e.g. you have a win streak and you’re matched with teams that you have almost zero chance to beat just to bring your win rate back to 50%.

EDIT:
Here is some ranting from thelordhelseth’s perspective(the first 15-20 minutes):
http://www.twitch.tv/thelordhelseth/v/4293927

Ehhh, as far as I know, in any “rating”, if you have a win streak, you will be “even out” by putting you against better players. Therefore, you will start losing frequently because the skill level is superior. Because you had a win streak against the supposedly same level of skill as yours. So we can say that every game with rating give you a “forced” 50%.

In my opinion they should have plenty of times to change how Leagues work in between Seasons. It’s not like a fixed system. They can eventually add Division descent (something they said currently Leagues don’t have) or to change how matchmaking works. Hell, even the “pip” gain system based on Win % predictions!

One thing I have to agree with, if first season with Leagues fails in some way (and it will do, not because I don’t trust ANet, but because they have never released any kind of this systems and they need to learn) I know that players will be so obfuscated that they won’t provide valuable feedback to improve it.

So yeah, in the end I also agree completely with the thread’s title! It’d be nice to hear more from ANet about Leagues.

Entenkommando.5208:

Poliator.7021:

This is Conquest game mode. Tanks and sustain to hold points will be ALWAYS meta. In fact, this meta is better balanced because it allows condition builds at some extent using burning (or Cele Necro works good too).

There can be a balance – if you don’t make tanks too strong.
Everything but full bunker shouldn’t be able to fight a 2v1.

But if we add generally more damage via sigils or whatever, then not even full bunkers in this game will be able to sustain 2v1. In my opinion, these Conquest “metas” will always be “boring” to some because Conquest is that way: capture points that you need to hold efficiently, while killing other holders.

This is Conquest game mode. Tanks and sustain to hold points will be ALWAYS meta. In fact, this meta is better balanced because it allows condition builds at some extent using burning (or Cele Necro works good too).

skullfaerie.7203:

Poliator.7021:

First of all, there will be more BWE to come. I don’t know why are you all complaining about. Did you expect the Devs to fix everything in one go?

Good job guys, that’s how you encourage developers to balance things, telling them they suck.

Take a look at the changes made to Reaper and Chronomancer and then try to say this again with a straight face.
It would be a lot weirder if people weren’t complaining at this point.

And do you think they did something great on Reaper? Greatsword is still worthless in PvP and PvE with other weapons being more useful. Shouts will still be crap with the heal being nonsense. Want me to continue? There are more BWE coming and you guys are being jerks to the developers.

First of all, there will be more BWE to come. I don’t know why are you all complaining about. Did you expect the Devs to fix everything in one go?

Good job guys, that’s how you encourage developers to balance things, telling them they suck.

I sincerely don’t like Solo Queue either. You can get bad matchmaking due to various factors (which leads to occasional full pugs vs full premades, thing that is not common EVEN THOUGH a lot of people insist it is), but we know that competitive matches (future League Ranked matches) don’t punish you for bad matchmaking (the % win mechanic).

So… if suddenly we get an inmense playerbase pool and ANet makes their sPvP teams grow, I’d not be bothered by the addition of SoloQ, but right now, I feel like we are good without it.

But IF this League system is “perfect” (it will have flaws, we all know that) high MMR players will be on Legendary Divisions, where the high skilled players are and it is the Division where players will be rewarded the most.

One of my suggestions is to tie matchamking with both MMR and League, so the good players in each League can “stop” less skilled players from progressing if they are not worthy (saying it roughly).

So I think that if Leagues are good, high MMR guys will be rewarded accordingly. Also, queue times for high MMR players is just a given. Don’t expect having a high MMR and get 2 minutes queues. This happens in Gw2, LoL, DotA2, any game, really (queue times getting up to more than an hour).

Terrorsquad.2349:

There are more conditions next to burning to be applied so saying “condi cleanse” is absolute bs.

Even if we cleanse the burning, we would die to other conditions so that would make burning OP aswel, forcing us to use our cleanse for one condition.

Don’t forget that condi cleanse is randomized if I remember correctly. You want to cleanse the burn but you will probably cleanse whatever else!

The League system comes with Gw2:HoT but I firmly believe that you do NOT need the expansion to enjoy this feature. It’s the same as Stronghold or the WvW new Borderland, it gets included into the base game.

Please guys, try to bring solutions as well. If you think that the new League system, with the information so far, is likely to be a “Grind League System”, bring possible solutions.

In my case, as I pointed out in the initial post, the solution if the Grind was the case, would be to tie Matchmaking to Divisions, this way high MMR players will stay in higher Divisions while kicking out lower skilled players!

Stay constructive and keep the SoloQ issues Salt level low.

butch.8136:

I started a thread already but might be good to keep things in one thread.

Copypasta:

Not much new information sadly.
No mention of the queue system, no mention of a league/LB split for conquest/stronghold. No mention of hardlimits in MMR (e.g. impossible for starter to go up against legendary, etc.).
It all looks good, but crucial information is lacking.
This system will just be a better farm with a bit better progression then now which will still reward time over skill.

Woops, my bad. I spent a fair 20-30 minutes writing it, so… I should have supposed someone would have done a post alreday! I’ll go and post in yours shortly as well then, or should we keep it on this one?

The blog post about sPvP Leagues is out: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-pvp-leagues/

There is a TL;DR below at the end.

This still doesn’t solve some of my fears about it and last iterations of the point system Test Leaderboard. One of the main problems it had was its “farm nature”, as we could see people with, for example, 400 matches and a 48% win rate on the top of the Leaderboard.

It’s true that in the Second Test Season the top players on the Leaderboard were well above the 50% winrate mark, proving the changes they made were valid. But I will explain my fears on this topic in Leagues.

Okey, we have 6 different Divisions, from Amber to Legendary Division. This means that “Ranked Playerbase” should be distributed “equally” between this Divisions, showing different skill levels in each of them.

We can say, Amber has players with a MMR of 2 (out of max 10, for example). In the end, Legendary should have players with a MMR of 9 and 10 or rather the top MMR players. Middle Divisions should have all the other MMR players distributed. Sounds good, in this case Legendary Division, the very top of the League system will showcase the best players in the game, this will give them recognition!

But… the blog post didn’t say explicitly anything to solve this “farm it” problem. Of course, people with less than 50% win rate, won’t go to upper Divisions, because you can lose tiers and all.

The problem lies: If a guy has a MMR of 4, ideally he will get matched with other MMR of 4 players. If this guy is slightly better than the others, he will have a win ratio above 50%, letting him advance into other tiers and Divisions… until he reaches Legendary Division, where supposedly the top players should be.

That player is good, he has more than 50% win ratio, but he’s still a MMR of 4 (that will grow obviously because he has a win ratio above 50%) in Legendary Division.

Therefore, I don’t know if my suggestion is already in the system they want to put on Leagues but Matchmaking should take into account both player MMR and Division.

If Matchmaking takes into account Division, this will stop players from farming matches and start growing skill-wise, because they will get stuck at one Division. If you have a MMR of 4, but you are in the Diamond Division somehow, you will get matched with people on that Division, which should have a MMR of 6 or 7. Those guys should win over the lower skilled guy, making him drop and forcing him to get better if he wants to go higher.

In the end, this are just initial thoughts/fears on the sPvP Leagues feature and its implementation might prove me wrong.

TL;DR :
- The farm nature of previous Ladders can still be preserved into the League system. (Bad Thing)
- Players below 50% winrate should not get high into Divisions. (Good Thing).
- Ideally, Legendary Division should showcase the most skilled players (Good Thing).
- As the blog post sounded, a guy with a MMR of 4 could get into Legendary Division (Bad Thing).
- If this is the case, Matchmaking should take into account current Division to stop this (Suggestion). Obviously, in the case this isn’t already implemented.

So yeah, just some initial thoughts about the announcement. Discussion is welcome!

P.S.: As I said, tying Matchmaking to Divisions may not even be necessary and I’m just over-exaggerating this!

Remember to queue up in Unranked Arena guys, the Mode Preferences feature only works there I believe. Ranked Arena is only Conquest, doesn’t matter if you only have Stronghold checked. Hope this helps.

This is nonsense lol

Abjured team comp proves nothing. They ran the SAME team comp and oRNG beat them 2-1 in the first encounter. oRNG did it with a burn condi guard. Against 2 celestial elementalists.

Is this really a matter of “sustain” or “Celestial OP”, or maybe how both teams played their matches? oRNG did serious mistakes in the 4 matches they lost, especially on Temple (you could see how they, somehow, didn’t want to contest any buff).

In my opinion, it wasn’t Celestial eles, or bunker comps, it was how both teams played their comps. oRNG got back-capped heavily by Toker, but oRNG generally won every fight.

EDIT: This is a Conquest game mode, it’s natural that both teams have sustain/bunkers on their teams, as you can win only by holding capture points.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

Poliator.7021:

I wanted to drop a comment here, seeing all these “Solo being farmed” comments. Remember that although the current queue system isn’t by any means perfect, we are talking about Ranked play. They made the points system in a manner that, even losing you still get points/don’t lose any, which translates into rewards.

The issue is that at the higher levels you are losing pips and tiers (though not divisions) and the simple fact is, the higher ranked you are the more competitively minded you’re likely to be. Also the higher ranked you are the more likely you are to want to have a good match and actually fair competition (i.e. not a stomp) however you’re not going to get that because you might run into premades (something solo queue removes completely). This is further compounded because premades are more likely to be higher ranked in general and the higher ranked you are the more important communication becomes.

Essentially getting through the Legend division as a solo player will be a nightmare because you’re more likely to run into good premades and premades have even more of an inherent advantage at that level, imo at least.

I can’t disagree with that. It will indeed be hard to get into Legendary League, but as you said, you can’t drop out of it. I wonder how everything will end up being. I’d say it won’t be as rough as it sounds.

Let’s hope the community grows much larger (supposedly thanks to competition and rewards added via this League system) and that they stay, so ANet tries in the end to bring Solo Queue back! This is in the end great news right?

I wanted to drop a comment here, seeing all these “Solo being farmed” comments. Remember that although the current queue system isn’t by any means perfect, we are talking about Ranked play. They made the points system in a manner that, even losing you still get points/don’t lose any, which translates into rewards.

I guess this will be translated accordingly to the Leagues. This means that, although matchmaking can be unfair sometimes, you can still get rewarded when losing. So, as unfun as it’s losing, let’s not lose our heads because we will still progress.

Let’s play the guessing game! Yey

Everything mainly has been called out here:

- The final iteration of the Leaderboards, making them meaningful and rewarding.
- Maybe a rework of hot-join (Remember they deleted the “Practice” button in the last Stronghold Betas ).
- How Guild Teams will be integrated in the current system! Maybe a full Team queue?
- More Leaderboards!

So yeah. I won’t get my hopes too high, but the hype is here. I know it won’t be super big, but oh boy, it’s so exciting!

Rednik.3809:

Belzebu.3912:

I prefer to get ~2 mins queue and sometimes face a premade team instead of wait way longer to guarantee that I’ll face other single players

This is an outright lie. SoloQ was MUCH faster than teamQ, and only reason why soloQ was deleted was constantly growing queue times for teamQ.
“Nobody wants to play with premades, we have to do something. Oh, right, lets delete anything but premade queue! Brilliant!”

I’ll tell you that SoloQ having less queue time than TeamQ is a lie as well. I had faster queue times AND better matches on TeamQ than I had on SoloQ. In my experience, I had to wait an average of maybe 4-5 minutes on SoloQ while I just had to wait barely 2 minutes on TeamQ.

So, let’s not call anything a lie, let’s not make such statements because those are based on your experience! In your experience, SoloQ was faster and better; in mine, TeamQ was faster and better.

Velimere.7685:

Poliator.7021:

The only class I have a problem with burns is Elementalist, because Ring of Fire range/borders are a little bit… buggy? You step the border but never actually enter/leave it, yet there you have, 6 stacks of burning, all for you;

How about that? If you don’t touch fire, you don’t get burned by fire!

Blocks, evades, and invulns are also a thing too.

And that doesn’t deny my point that the current Celestial Elementalist (Fire) build is one of the classes that uses burn the most efficiently, giving an output of burns at a higher pace than you can cleanse/invuln/evade/block.

Also, the example of the Ring of Fire was it’s buggyness. You don’t actually touch it, yet the physics of the game says “OH, he went in and out! MUST BURN ermahgehd.” And there you go, 6 stacks of burn you shouldn’t have gotten. I shouldn’t be forced to use anything defensive for something that shouldn’t affect me.

I also think that burning is not OP.

There’s not a whole lot of classes that can apply a lot of burns in little time (Guardian and Engi comes to mind). They can “burst” you lots of burning stacks, that can tick for 3.000 damage probably, but you generally have condi cleanse. You can’t “cleanse” power damage (and I know this is another topic).

So… I’m fine with some condi builds being able to do that much damage with a well executed combo, as you are able to cleanse it.

The only class I have a problem with burns is Elementalist, because Ring of Fire range/borders are a little bit… buggy? You step the border but never actually enter/leave it, yet there you have, 6 stacks of burning, all for you; and while those stacks won’t deal a lot of damage, it’s worth 1.000-1.500 damage, applied constantly (which makes condi cleanse less relevant).

Maybe, then, the problem lies in burn application form and not on the raw damage it can do. Just my opinion

bhagwad.4281:

I think this all hinges on the question of how large the PvP player base is. Obviously we have no statistics, but we can compare it to GW1 which had a solo Q and was easily one of the most popular game modes throughout its history.

I think GW2 has a larger player base than GW1. Not sure why I think this, but I feel it’s true. And Random Arenas (RAs) had very decent wait times. So I’m not sure why GW2 can’t do it if the population is more than that of GW1.

This entire argument of mine falls apart if GW2 is less popular than GW1. The only stats I can find are sales numbers. After 4 years, GW1 had sold 6 million units. And after only 6 months, GW2 had sold 3 million copies so I’m guessing that the GW2 population is far higher.

Not everyone who bought the game plays the game right now OR not anyone that plays the game plays/enjoys sPvP.

This will be a rather easy thing to check out when expansion comes out. There will be a population increase for sure. This will lead at first to bad matches as new players will have to get their initial rating settled but after some weeks, if the overall experience has not improved, then it might not be a population problem, but a matchmaking logarythm problem.

bhagwad.4281:

Poliator.7021:

Aereniel.7356:

Hammerguard.9834:

If you think the pvp community is big enough to split with solo que then you’re crazy. The team and solo queues would surpass even 30 min.

TL;DR version: A dedicated solo queue is a must-have part of a functional PvP game’s infra, along with a visible MMR and ladders & seasons. Not having one is an impediment to population growth.

I’ll play the role here as well then. First of all, not every game has visible MMR and that didn’t stop them from growing (but I agree completely about the need of Ladders and Seasons!)

I have my own thoughts about Solo Queue. It has good points and bad points.

• “Supposed” fairness (because everyone is Solo).
• Last one has to be backed by a strong Match making system.
• Last one depends heavily on the population pool playing at every moment.
• The depended fairness comes also from the game systems (lack of pings fault of ANet, lack of team chat communication fault of players).
• Splitting the Community.

Also, you have to question the players bias. I’m sure that in a hypotetical game with an infinite number of players of all skill levels, people would still complain about the lack of Solo Queue, even though the system will always pair 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, (infinite number of same skill players/SoloQueuing because the system is fair). System works completely fine, it’s fair, but the player will still complain because he’s biased.

“Oh, this is not SoloQ, it must be a premade or someone who was way lower than me/someone who was way stronger than me”. This good be the typical reasoning. With this I’m not telling that Guild Wars 2 matchmaking is perfect, but in my opinion the Guild Wars 2 playerbase is heavily biased.

Maybe this “false sense” of fairness that SoloQ can bring sPvP can be the solution to make population growth skyrocket. Or maybe it can decrease game quality and make people leave rather than keep playing. It’s not like SoloQ is a God or something like that. :P

Also, don’t missunderstand me, in the state of the game, Solo Queue would be better. But if there were seasons/ladders AND rewards, there would be a motivation for players to keep… playing the game. When those lack, SoloQ brings that motivation due to its “rougher” nature.

TL;DR: In my opinion SoloQ has both positive things and drawback things. It’s not a must, given certain infrastructures in-game.

But right now, people can easily see who’s in a team and who’s not. Just right click on their names in the “B” panel. If it says “Invite to party”, the player is solo. If it says “Join party”, the guy’s in a team.

So that takes out the question of “perceived” fairness. There’s no mistaking who’s in a team and who isn’t.

Yeah, you can do so. But… what is the difference between a premade and a solo? They may be just two guildmates chilling around in sPvP. No voice comm, or anything, just playing because they decided too.

Keep in mind as well that Matchmaking tries to do its job even-ing it out. If there is a premade and the overal MMR is of 5, then the premade should be one 4 and the other 6. Or maybe even 4 both of them. In the end, as I said, the system tries to even it out. (I say repeatedly “try” because this is not always the case).

Moreover, this problem is the most obvious in high MMR matches (because the high MMR player has to either play with lower MMR teammates or wait a long time in queue to get good players) and also with newcomers to sPvP, this last because the initial settled MMR is generally always higher than it should be for the newcomer’s skill, this leads the new player to be paired with more experienced players leading to either stomp or get stomped.

So… even the Solo Queue perceived fairness is lost if there’s not enough population/newcomers. When I had barely 600 total games played I got matched repeatedly with top teams players (and that wasn’t fun for me. I hadn’t the level to play against them).

P.S.: When I say “Solo Queue” I’m not refering to Solo Queuing into the system we have right now, but in the past “Solo Arena”.

Yeah, that’s one of the problems. It’s hard to determine what a premade (be it 2 or 5 players) is worth of. Some premades are just guildmates chilling around, while other premades are competitive players (that want to reach the top of the MMR).

Parting from the idea that ANet will not introduce Solo Queue back anytime soon, I think that first of all, good Leaderboards and season should be added to the infrastructure, this will create more incentive to play i.e. increasing the playerbase. Along with this, to aleviate the problems about the premade vs PUG issue, an in game voice communication system or a really simple “ping” in map system would be a great benefit.

Eventually, everything should even out.

Also, top teams are condemned to do scrims on Custom Arenas against others. There’s a point where queue times would get insane for them leading to unfair matches/boring waiting time. :P

Let’s hope the announcement they will make at Gamescome the WTS day (Saturday 8th) will be about Ladders and Guild Teams. It can be huge.

I agree “Ready Up” should be used more often but… most people don’t realize the function of that +1min of time before the actual match starts?

It’s a time of communication, setting a strategy, changing builds. Most people don’t press it because they are afk. But most ideally, teams would say “hey I’m running X, should I switch?” or “We do a 1-3-1 split, we have 2 eles”. But it doesn’t happen.

And it’s okey to say nothing, there’s nothing wrong. It’s wrong when then, in the middle of the match, that same person starts “OH WTF WHY IS NO ONE CLOSE” or “GG 4 Thieves, kitten matchmaking”. In my opinion, if you are playing tryhard to win (instead for fun) you have to communicate. Talk to your team before the match starts. It’s not hard. I improves the quality fo the match.

Aereniel.7356:

Hammerguard.9834:

If you think the pvp community is big enough to split with solo que then you’re crazy. The team and solo queues would surpass even 30 min.

TL;DR version: A dedicated solo queue is a must-have part of a functional PvP game’s infra, along with a visible MMR and ladders & seasons. Not having one is an impediment to population growth.

I’ll play the role here as well then. First of all, not every game has visible MMR and that didn’t stop them from growing (but I agree completely about the need of Ladders and Seasons!)

I have my own thoughts about Solo Queue. It has good points and bad points.

• “Supposed” fairness (because everyone is Solo).
• Last one has to be backed by a strong Match making system.
• Last one depends heavily on the population pool playing at every moment.
• The depended fairness comes also from the game systems (lack of pings fault of ANet, lack of team chat communication fault of players).
• Splitting the Community.

Also, you have to question the players bias. I’m sure that in a hypotetical game with an infinite number of players of all skill levels, people would still complain about the lack of Solo Queue, even though the system will always pair 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 vs 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, (infinite number of same skill players/SoloQueuing because the system is fair). System works completely fine, it’s fair, but the player will still complain because he’s biased.

“Oh, this is not SoloQ, it must be a premade or someone who was way lower than me/someone who was way stronger than me”. This good be the typical reasoning. With this I’m not telling that Guild Wars 2 matchmaking is perfect, but in my opinion the Guild Wars 2 playerbase is heavily biased.

Maybe this “false sense” of fairness that SoloQ can bring sPvP can be the solution to make population growth skyrocket. Or maybe it can decrease game quality and make people leave rather than keep playing. It’s not like SoloQ is a God or something like that. :P

Also, don’t missunderstand me, in the state of the game, Solo Queue would be better. But if there were seasons/ladders AND rewards, there would be a motivation for players to keep… playing the game. When those lack, SoloQ brings that motivation due to its “rougher” nature.

TL;DR: In my opinion SoloQ has both positive things and drawback things. It’s not a must, given certain infrastructures in-game.

butch.8136:

Saiyan.1704:

snow.8097:

Josh Davis.6015:

We’ll also be announcing the details of one of our Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns features during the course of the tournament live on stream – you won’t want to miss it!

sounds interesting, what could it be?
i doubt they will announce challenging pve content
a secret new pvp map? announcement that they are now previewing the last elite specs?
An entire new pvp feature? i would be happy for a new pvp lobby map…

After not hearing anything about a type of GvG implementation, I was very impressed with a GvG announcement as well as its intricate structure. They were working on it even during all the forum QQs about no guild vs guild!

If they said they’re focusing 100% on HoT, they could develop and release anything at this point. I’m beside myself with anticipation!

They’ll announce details about a feature. So I’d guess the only major feature left = challenging group content.

However in another blogpost about Gamescom they said they’ll also talk about the future of pvp too. So, let’s hope we get some good news there.

They will announce something about PvE probably during the other Gamescom days, but if what I read is right, during 8th we should hear a sPvP feature/news.

If we are guessing I’ll say three things: Finished Leaderboards, Guild Teams or Hot Join rework. I’m so hyped both for news and the WTS EU matches! It’ll be a HUGE day.

This is a pretty amazing thing! I hope it gets stickied.

Congrats, you are playing for fun!

I sometimes YOLO builds when playing instead of using meta builds, because I want to have fun (Venomshare Thief is OP, I swear!). If I want to win games, I’ll grab my ele with its meta build or Thief’s one as well.

So yeah, you are not doing anything wrong Drakortha, you are playing the game for fun, there’s nothing bad in that.

P.S.: When I say playing for fun, I don’t mean you are playing to lose or to troll, it’s just that you want to discover new things, test others and you don’t want to play the “meta builds” that supposedly give you “easier” wins.

What in the heavens guys? It has been less than one month and you are already complaining about Balance?

I know you have 0 trust at the moment on that matter, but hell, chill a little bit, most games balance every month or, the lesser, every two weeks.

Instead of asking where is the balance you would be much more useful creating topics regarding how do you believe those classes should be balanced and start a constructive discussion.

If by the end of August we had no balance at all, go on and let ANet now again that they are being slow, but there’s no right saying that when the patch has been out for less than one month.

Phil.8901:

Wolfey.3407:

I hope we are able to have a couple more strong hold maps before the year is over with.

We don’t need more maps, we need a solid game mode with people play it.

More maps are low priority in this state

I wouldn’t say Stronghold is in a bad state at the moment. They need to fix the Overtime bug, maybe add some more comeback mechanic like the double supply drop when you kill them on base (I feel that it will maybe get nerfed… don’t ask me why), and, the next critical issue with Stronghold, Archers. Address them somehow.

It can be argued that Guards are weak and all, but I guess that the solution for Archers may come in line with the solution for Guards.

So, in my opinion, they should be thinking already on doing more maps (which I’m sure they are already working on more maps), learning on the mistakes with this map while they nail down the core of the game mode.

This doesn’t prove anything super important at all.

It’s a beta, so people may not want to play Stronghold at all. In fact of my PvP friends, almost nobody plays Stronghold. So keep in mind that because it’s a Beta (and roughly critized for being PvE, which in my opinion isn’t true) people won’t queue there.

As Wolfey said, queues tend to be buggy. I had a long queue time (10+ minutes) on Conquest when I’m not a high MMR player. Does that means that suddendly, at that time, there was no one playing Conquest?

Moreover, it’s Summer. Can be said both ways, either people play more because it’s summer, or people play less because it’s summer and they go out.

EVEN MORE, just wait for the expansion. It will mean a HUGE increase in playerbase if ANet does it correctly. An increase sufficiently big to make this “split” not important at all. While it’s true that the 4 way split isn’t good for queue times, those are completely different game modes. It’s like merging in League of Legends the 5vs5 Summoner’s Rift vs Dominion. They are simply too different to be put in the same queue.

P.S.: Queueing outside of HotM has nothing to do with queue times. LOL

There is a possibility they are working on a major update on it, so maybe that’s why it is down/not working. Or maybe they just don’t want to enable it for the Off-Season time.

Anyways, I’d safely expect nothing on Leaderboards until the expansion hits the game, because they are probably focusing on Guild Teams, Stronghold and the like.

Hope this helped, just my wild guess on it.

I have a question about the Overtime mechanic!

If enemy team is attacking your Lord, and you kill them, hence Lord is out of combat, this will end the game and it will be decided by points anyways right?

COULD they maybe get trapped inside the Lord’s room, so you can kill them all and get their 25 points of a complete team wipe?

Edit: Loving ALL the changes too it. It’s getting in the right direction! Thanks a lot for your effort.

I believe every class can have a build for 1vs1 that can win in a duel situation. That is, Conquest is excluded. Thief has Shadow Rejuvenation, Mesmers have PU, Elementalists have Focus + current Celestial build, and go on… the problem with that is that duels would never end.

So, as some people pointed out, they are trying to balance the game on 5vs5, which is good (although maybe the changes they make don’t end up being this way…).

So, for OP: I think that your post, more than speaking of Balance, it should be about “Wins”.

I love how people complain so much about X class is OP, Y class is UP. That’s true (looking at engi, at some extent, he has fallen out of the meta). BUT, if you are planning to WIN, you will have to play whatever is in the meta in that moment, anything that is the stronger, you will have to play it if you are planning to Win.

It is that way here in Guild Wars 2, in League of Legends, in any PvP games. Perfect balance does not exist, hence there will be always classes/champs/whatever that are OverPowered. If you are planning to WIN games and not just play to have FUN, then it doesn’t matter if you like X or Y, you will have to play Z because it’s the strongest. And it is that way.

So yeah. Fun = play what you enjoy. Win = play Meta and OP things. It’s just that way.

Am I the only one who thinks this nerf was OK?

Thieves that spec into SA now get Shadow Rejuvenation too. We have to add, on top of that, movement (leap) skills are not affected by impairment effects, so this conditions have lost, at some extent, their effect.

You know get surely removed damaging conditions too. Which, oh well, kills you in the end. You can still either spam HS or IA to get away (because you get the 1 second bonus of stealth too).

It’s still a fairly good condition removal for the class, at least better than Sword#2 return and more “cheap” than using Shadowstep return to cleanse. I don’t know where this complains are coming from.

But after all, this is just my opinion and I might be biased because I don’t like Thief stealth playstyle. I’ve been always more kind using S/D playstyle, or even S/P or D/D burst playstyle.

This said… I think D/P got buffed a lot more rather than nerfed (without comparing with other classes buffs after the patch).

Don’t expect support to sPvP TDM anytime soon, as they are focusing now in Stronghold, with the game mode and the maps they will introduce. Maybe they will eventually focus or support sPvP TDM, creating its own queue, but I don’t think it will happen soon.

That said, maybe they want to give Guild Halls arenas for this purpose until they can focus on the sPvP mode of it, refining it, creating maps, et cetera.

Moreover, one of the problems people have a problem with TDM is because it’s on the Conquest queues, so people usually have Conquest builds. Some others say because it’s small/it has too much LoS, which I disagree on. I find it an amazing TDM map + the mode should be a little tweaked (going for rounds, for example), because right now it’s pretty snowball-ish given decent premades vs solos.

Everyone of those things will be baseline to the game, that is, no expansion will be needed for that (if it’s ever implemented) because it affects core sPvP gameplay.

1. There should be one. Soon™.

2. That’s too rough and severe. A quick 2-5 minutes would be fine. Of course if it’s someone trolling, that number would go higher, something like 5 queues missed, 1-2 hours ban from queueing.

3. Guild Teams are coming with their own Leaderboard and hopefully, a separate queue (this last thing about own queue not confirmed).

4. Ignore is your best friend. I’m sure they check those reports.

5. This won’t be good. Players tend to be biased and blame on anyone but themselves. This would be an unhealthy system, would affect matchmaking heavily being subjective.

6. No 5 no 6. (but I’d restrict reports against the same person).

So yeah. Expansion is almost PvE exclusivities. Think that there’s game outside of sPvP, like PvE or WvW.

For sPvP, as far as I know, you get in the expansion the Elite Specializations, the Revenant and one (if I remember correctly) Stronghold Mist Champion (recently announced). Stronghold itself and the Mist Champion “Turai Ossa” are available for everyone, have HoT or not.

They already confirmed there will be more maps after the expansion is released. I expect to see a couple of maps thrown into the new game mode 6 months or so after release, just give it some time. And oh boy, I don’t want a few of Skyhammers in the new mode too man :P

I can understand your post Zelulose, however, I don’t think it should be done. First of all, spectator mode is not available in Unranked or Ranked play (everyday matches from a daily PvPer occur there), so players can’t see either their team’s build, nor the enemy’s.

This aside, they have to have available builds when casting ESL tourneys just to know what is every player playing. To understand their role and to ease both player understanding and casters… oh well, casting of the matches.

Great players like Phantaram or ROM have proven to have created Meta builds on their own. Builds that have been always there but that no one wanted to try. So, even if all builds are public, you can always create new builds that will stand. Meta is half on ANet obligations of balance and half on playerbase innovation to win against the meta.

I can agree with you. While I think that Thief is unbalanced right now (from a Main Thief perspective), it’s not near of what I read in the QQ posts.

For reference, the more glaringly issue of Thief right now in PvP is that have to spec in the Trickery trait line, because boon rip and Daze on Steal (+ the CDR on it) is simply outright strong.

This kind of things is what I would like to see discussed and while I understand that Stealth may seem unfair, I don’t support “stealth too stronk plz nerf” threads. Stealth may see nerfs, but there are other -core- issues on Thieves on their own detriment, than to their opponents.

So yeah… everyone join the glorious Thief Master Race! \o/

About the last part, the Hero Channeling.

In my opinion, this is a “good” thing, because when building a team composition for it people have to think things like: “Do we have a class that can get a lot of stability too?” “Do we have classes that can burst down the channel player?” “Do we have classes that can remove the stability stacks? (Thief/Mesmer/Necro)”.

These are kind of “strategic options” when building a teamcomp or even things you have to account for when facing another team. So it can seem kind of unfair, but in my opinion it’s not, ultimately, a bad thing for the gamemode. It’s a difficult matter.

PS: I played 6-7 hours of Stronghold too, I love it!

Puck.1509:

I don’t get rewarded for defending though. If I hold off an enemy team while my team does its job. I get no points, I’m at the bottom of the leader board and have nothing to show for my contribution.

By defending you are rewarding by not losing to the “oh, so famous” Lord rush. I don’t know either what has the Leaderboard to do here (and you already get 3 points by just spawning the initial DB or Archer you can, so it counts as you “haven’t been afk”)

And… the last part is true but you get rewarded equally having 50 points (because you defended excelently the whole game) or 300 points. You get the same reward at the end of the match.

Khalisto.5780:

when their “world grand finals” has 600 viewers, it looks like a fail to me

Oh you mean the almost 12k viewers that saw the WTS NA in Boston? Not on level of LoL and such but darn, that was a huge impressive number of viewers imo.