Guild Wars 2

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

In some cases you’re absolutely right. In the case of the thief I don’t think so.
Everything a thief can do, another class can do it better (e.g. condition, teamsupport, AoE-dmg, cc, survivability) The only thing that no other class can do, is this rapid burst from hide.
But that is just my opinion on it. No need to feel attacked by my words.
Inventors are still necessary, in every aspect. So keep it up.

I think this Thief-build fits a certain niche very well, especially in the current metagame:

- No other class has such an easy time spreading Poison+Weakness, two of the key-Elements of bringing down Tanks, especially the Ele-tank, if you don’t wanna rely on spiking him down with a Backstabber and a Mesmer (which can work, but it’s still risky)
- The Mobility of this build is ridiculous, especially thanks to the Shadow-Trap – it’s basically a Portal-light.
- In Terms of a Balanced-build, the ratio of sustain and DMG is pretty good, comparable with a valk-amu Ele.
- No other class has such an easy time landing a pretty much guaranteed Immobilize for 1 second – you cannot dodge it if you don’t blindly anticipate the Teleport, which is probably 80% luck-based.
- Almost no other build (I have an Ele-build with Glyph of Elemental Power that has single-target perma-Crippling) has such an easy time to control Movement with tons of AoE-Crippling-Effects.

So yeah, In Teamfights, this build rocks, in 1v1 or 1v2 against non Condition-spammers it can at least buy time (so you can actually hold the node you are defending with your trap, sometimes even like 30 seconds against two opponents) and 1v1’s against Glass-Cannon Thiefs, and Shatter-Mesmers, I win pretty easily actually.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

PowerBottom.5796:

I’ve also tried several variations of the build, some with more sustain, some better movement and some with higher DPS and I really start thinking that the build is rather decent!

At least it’s incredibly fun to play!

Try it out – yay!

Well you can actually play every build you want. You can even run venom-share. But if it comes to competitive play, these builds are not viable enough.
To stealth: Thieves are one of the primary targets (especially in teamfights) due to low dmg-resistance. Imagine a thief without stealth. It’s just a free target. Like an engineer but without supply and elexier.

Did you at least try the build?

I can honestly say that I’ve tried out probably 5+ vastly different builds with each class you almost never see in high-end competetive play and probably half of them would be viable in the right Team-setup. And I didn’t even count the minor adjustments you can make to certain builds, which could easily lead to 100+ tested builds.

I never understand when ppl complain about the lack of build-diversity and you can clearly see by the way they post, that they’ve never tried anything other than the standard-builds.
I’m pretty sure 90% of Players, even ones very high in the QP-Ladder, have no clue about most skills and any builds that aren’t FotM. I’ve spent maybe 500+ hours in front of the Golems researching how certain skills exactly work, reading up on them in the Wiki and coming up with builds in my Mind.

I’m pretty sure that I have a decent understanding of what might and might not work in competetive play, so why not at least give it a try?

This particular Thief-build is IMHO pretty solid and with a little more testing, I’d probably run it in tournaments.

And stuff like that works:

1) I’ve played the now all too common Ele-Tank back when everyone said that Ele is way too bad to be played competetively. This was only weeks after the Release when Theorycrafters like [iQ]Zrave were still trying out stuff.
2) I’ve played a Trap-Ranger when no1 played a Ranger in Paid Tournaments and I literally had to plea for several days until my Team let me test it in Paids – it worked!
3) I’ve played a Sword+Shield / Longbow AoE-Condition Warrior in Paid’s and it’s awesome, despite ppl saying that only 100b was viable (before the Quickness nerf obviously).
4) I’m currently working on a Ranger-build that (ab)uses a certain timing when switching from one bird to another, that will make the F2 hit of the bird come instantly after switching your Pet with a Range of maybe 200, which results in an insta 5k hit every 15 seconds. The timing is absolutely cruel though – I’ve been trying to get it right yesterday for about 3 hours and at the end, I got the right timing at maybe 30% of my tries.

There are still tons of builds available and the mechanics of the game aren’t close to being understood, because I often quite easily find Animations that can be abused, for example in the Thief-build above, were you will hit your immobilize of your teleport instantly when you dodge right after you teleport.

Little things like that can boost a build from good to IMBAAA, so why not try around more?

IMHO, constantly playing one class or even one build is extremely overrated anyways, you learn much more about the game when you try other builds and see what’s possible.

I’ve also tried several variations of the build, some with more sustain, some better movement and some with higher DPS and I really start thinking that the build is rather decent!

At least it’s incredibly fun to play!

Try it out – yay!

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

A thief without stealth is not worth to play. Even with the insane mobility from shortbow.

I don’t think so, here’s my Post from the last Page (that probably got overlooked because a new Page started right after finishing the Post)….

PowerBottom.5796:

Today, I’ve again played and tested a few interesting Thief-Builds and it’s really amazing how fun to play a Thief can be if it’s not just a Glass-Cannon that abuses invis. ^^’

Maybe here the build to give you some context of what I’m gonna talk about:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cF3V;1Vwk0-Q5wOFd0;9;4EE-T94;02;31272;0LoW4;2KJG4KJG44Js

The build is supposed to be a balanced roamer with good sustain, CC and decent DPS and the Builds works pretty well, but I don’t know if it’s as viable as the current FotM’s…

The key is to spread weakness+Poison and do AoE-DPS with the Shortbow while dodging around and crippling ppl. If you have built up enough pressure in a Teamfight with that, you go in with infiltrators strike and hit the Target with you Autoattack or Flanking Strike. I also really like to dodge right after the teleport; you’ll still hit the immobilize and get 2 ticks of the small caltrops on the target.
If you fight against a harder to kill Enemy with heals and stuff and you have others dealing DPS with you, you can also go in with the teleport, cripple with your dodge and then easily get in for a C&D and a Daze afterwards (you don’t have to dodge, but if no1 else in the team has stuns/Immo/cripple, it’s way easier to land your C&D+Daze).

Now what I’ve noticed playing this build is:

1) It’s way more useful in Teamfights, to a Point where you won’t really kill anything on your own (but you probably won’t die too easy yourself, so it’s a decent defensive roamer at least). But the Poison+Weakness, the AoE of the Shortbow, Dancing Dagger etc. is just sooooo much better in drawn out Teamfights, were you can slowly chip down a guard or another tank. Also, the teleport+[(Dodge)C&DDaze // Flanking Strike // Dodge+Autoattack] all don’t deal that much DMG and the build really only shines when you are assisting another Damage-Dealer.
The build works very well together with a Warrior, Shatter-Mesmer or D/D-Ele though, because you build up good pressure and with Infiltrators Strike, you can pretty much guarantee that the Teammate will land his Stun/Immobilize or whatever, that are often much harder to land than the infiltrators strike, which is pretty much a guaranteed 1 1/4s Immobilize on this build.

2) The Gain from Valk-Amu is way too small, I don’t really think it’s even justified, but I just don’t like Soldier’s Amu. A better Assassins Reward a more reliable Slowed Pulse and/or Pain-Response would IMHO be a good Option to consider when balancing this.

3) C&D is reaaaally expensive, almost to a point where I don’t use it, inspite the Fact that I LOOOOVE Tactical Strike. Same goes for basically any other Stealth-1 skill besides Backstab and even backstab is hard to use if you don’t play a Glasscannon. I see how this Problem is hard to balance, because C&D is such a big part of the Glasscannon builds, but you can always buff Tactical Strike and Sneak attack a bit! I really don’t think the Daze needed to be shortened for PvP – 2 seconds would be fine. Either that, or you could make Tactical Strike a bit easier to hit with maybe a short lunge forwards, like on the new “kick” of the Warrior.

4) Conditions are a big Problem for any Thief that doesn’t use Stealth and there are several reasons for it: First of all, many skills/traits that get rid of the really bad conditions are linked to stealth, secondly, if you are stealthed, you cannot be targeted by most condition-spam skills that easily and lastly, if you don’t run a glasscannon and use Valk Amu or even Clerics, your Healthpool is really small.
It’s really a big Problem because I’ve built in a lot of Condition-Removal and against any condition-build, I basically spend all my initiative on Infiltrators Strike and Shadow Return and I still get pwned very easily… ;(
I don’t know if that’s inherently bad; if the build gets better in other Aspects, you can maybe Accept a counter like that, but in the current state, it’s just one other negative Aspect of the Build.

I really love playing this build though, probably the most fun and equally hard to play build I know and even if it isn’t a Top-Tier build, if you play it right and in the right composition, it can be very effective.

There are several ways of looking at this before calling it imba:

1) Is it maybe okay that the spec you are playing has a good counter?
2) If the Metagame is condition-heavy, why don’t you use more Condition-Removal or go with another class in general? (Yeah, Metagaming isn’t too great; it’s unsafe and counts on the fact that ppl don’t Metagame your counter to the Metagame or just play sth. that counters you at random that isn’t played that often.)
3) Even if your spec is bad against conditions, can you maybe team up with another class or have a good Teambuild that helps you dealing with the conditions? A Game like GW2 isn’t balanced around 1v1 you know.
4) Are you playing your build right VS Condition-builds? Do you maybe train 1on1’s against those problematic builds and think how you can deal with them more effectively.
5) Is it maybe okay for your Char to simply avoid certain MU’s and still be useful?
6) Is the Problem only existent in 1v1’s, or is it also existent in 2v2+? I can imagine it being hard to kill a tanky Ranger or Ele by yourself really fast and that’s when conditions come into play. If you maybe Team up with another Char, can you spike down the Ranger/Ele fast enough for the conditions not to become a Problem? This is different from Point (3) because it doesn’t depend on your Teammates having the right builds, but you can work with basically everything in your Team (probably a high Damage-dealer though).

Only if those Ideas above prove ineffective, we can start talking about imbalance.

Ohoni.6057:

Hate to tell you this, but balancing professions in a way that works for sPvP against real intelligence is always a better solution than balancing it against AI mobs if you have to choose only one.

Only if PvE content is anything like an sPvP match, which it’s not. You need to survive damage over X amount of time is different, your need to deal damage over X amount of time is different, and fights are more likely to end up 1v1 or 2v1 in sPvP than in PvE where it’s often 5vChamp or 5v5. A class can dominate in sPvP and not be terribly useful in a dungeon, and vice-versa.

So I repeat, they should balance PvE for PvP, the other game types aren’t relevant.

I don’t think that when balancing the Thief, at least from what I’ve read about ANet’s intentions, we need to have a fight between PvE and PvP.

I don’t know anything about PvE in GW2, but I think a glasscannon that has 1 good combo every 40 or so seconds that can instakill many other Players, won’t do too great against a big bossmonster. But that’s exatly what ANet wants to get away from in sPvP as well.

They want to make the sustained Damage more appealing and give the Thief more tools of survivability outsideof Stealth, which is probably exactly what will work better in PvE as well.

Instead of just ranting about whether PvE or PvP is more important and whether we should balance towards PvE and PvP, maybe think for a second if both Aspects of the game wouldn’t benefit from the same balance-changes?

Besides, it’s actually quite easy to balance PvP vs PvE if you’re smart about it. It’s easy to identify popular Builds in PvP and then apply a nerf at either a Point where it won’t hurt PvE as much, or you’ll just split 1 skill between PvP and PvE.

Today, I’ve again played and tested a few interesting Thief-Builds and it’s really amazing how fun to play a Thief can be if it’s not just a Glass-Cannon that abuses invis. ^^’

Maybe here the build to give you some context of what I’m gonna talk about:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cF3V;1Vwk0-Q5wOFd0;9;4EE-T94;02;31272;0LoW4;2KJG4KJG44Js

The build is supposed to be a balanced roamer with good sustain, CC and decent DPS and the Builds works pretty well, but I don’t know if it’s as viable as the current FotM’s…

The key is to spread weakness+Poison and do AoE-DPS with the Shortbow while dodging around and crippling ppl. If you have built up enough pressure in a Teamfight with that, you go in with infiltrators strike and hit the Target with you Autoattack or Flanking Strike. I also really like to dodge right after the teleport; you’ll still hit the immobilize and get 2 ticks of the small caltrops on the target.
If you fight against a harder to kill Enemy with heals and stuff and you have others dealing DPS with you, you can also go in with the teleport, cripple with your dodge and then easily get in for a C&D and a Daze afterwards (you don’t have to dodge, but if no1 else in the team has stuns/Immo/cripple, it’s way easier to land your C&D+Daze).

Now what I’ve noticed playing this build is:

1) It’s way more useful in Teamfights, to a Point where you won’t really kill anything on your own (but you probably won’t die too easy yourself, so it’s a decent defensive roamer at least). But the Poison+Weakness, the AoE of the Shortbow, Dancing Dagger etc. is just sooooo much better in drawn out Teamfights, were you can slowly chip down a guard or another tank. Also, the teleport+[(Dodge)C&DDaze // Flanking Strike // Dodge+Autoattack] all don’t deal that much DMG and the build really only shines when you are assisting another Damage-Dealer.
The build works very well together with a Warrior, Shatter-Mesmer or D/D-Ele though, because you build up good pressure and with Infiltrators Strike, you can pretty much guarantee that the Teammate will land his Stun/Immobilize or whatever, that are often much harder to land than the infiltrators strike, which is pretty much a guaranteed 1 1/4s Immobilize on this build.

2) The Gain from Valk-Amu is way too small, I don’t really think it’s even justified, but I just don’t like Soldier’s Amu. A better Assassins Reward a more reliable Slowed Pulse and/or Pain-Response would IMHO be a good Option to consider when balancing this.

3) C&D is reaaaally expensive, almost to a point where I don’t use it, inspite the Fact that I LOOOOVE Tactical Strike. Same goes for basically any other Stealth-1 skill besides Backstab and even backstab is hard to use if you don’t play a Glasscannon. I see how this Problem is hard to balance, because C&D is such a big part of the Glasscannon builds, but you can always buff Tactical Strike and Sneak attack a bit! I really don’t think the Daze needed to be shortened for PvP – 2 seconds would be fine. Either that, or you could make Tactical Strike a bit easier to hit with maybe a short lunge forwards, like on the new “kick” of the Warrior.

4) Conditions are a big Problem for any Thief that doesn’t use Stealth and there are several reasons for it: First of all, many skills/traits that get rid of the really bad conditions are linked to stealth, secondly, if you are stealthed, you cannot be targeted by most condition-spam skills that easily and lastly, if you don’t run a glasscannon and use Valk Amu or even Clerics, your Healthpool is really small.
It’s really a big Problem because I’ve built in a lot of Condition-Removal and against any condition-build, I basically spend all my initiative on Infiltrators Strike and Shadow Return and I still get pwned very easily… ;(
I don’t know if that’s inherently bad; if the build gets better in other Aspects, you can maybe Accept a counter like that, but in the current state, it’s just one other negative Aspect of the Build.

I really love playing this build though, probably the most fun and equally hard to play build I know and even if it isn’t a Top-Tier build, if you play it right and in the right composition, it can be very effective.

Well, it should basically be a standard ELO-Rating System.

What I think would be necessary is to differentiate between Solo-q/Dual-q and Team-q. First of all, games should Prioritize Team vs Team and Solo vs Solo. For shorter q’s, it should search outside of this Formula if the wait would be too long.

I don’t think Solo-q’s should be rewarded for Solo-q’ing against Teams by loosing less Points on a Loss or gaining more Points on a win – the System should encourage queuing as a Team.

Also, if two proper 5-man Teams face each other, the System should award more Points, because Premade vs Premade is much harder than if you simply Zerg with a few solo-q’ers against another Solo-q Team.

Remembering back to Hotjoin vs free Tournaments vs Paid Tournaments, we saw how huge the Skill-difference is and that should be reflected in the rating. It would be totally senseless if sm1 that simply Solo-q’s all day long would be regarded as equally skilled as sm1 who constantly plays with a Team against other premade Teams.

As far as I am concerned, the Solo-q ranking will probably say as much about skill as the current Glory-Ranks and the only thing that would actually tell sth. about skill is a ranking of premade vs premade: No excuses there and all the aspects of Teamplay are actually represented.

IMHO, simply splitting up premade vs solo-q would be the best option.

JonathanSharp.7094:

So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker), but a lot of other things are weak in comparison, which is bad.

The goal is to allow them to punish boons (something we also want to try with the Warrior) while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).

Cool, that’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking as well. I’ve been toying around with quite a few non-traditional Thief-Builds and here’s what I’ve noticed:

Flanking Strike: In Theory, I like this Skill very much: It has a boonstrip and a nice little Evade which gives much needed sustain/survival to Thiefs outside of Stealth. What I don’t like about it is it’s effectiveness: It simply does too less DPS and the attack is kinda hard to hit after all that rolling around on the Floor. I think the skill should reward Players for landing the attack and punish opponents for not evading it. This could be done by letting the second attack strip another boon or by dealing more Damage.

Pistol Whip: With the recent Quickness-Nerf, I do think that a revamp on this skill is in order that would also go into another direction than Burst. I think that both Flanking Strike and Pistol Whip should work together with Infiltrator’s Strike to become a quick “in-and-out” attack skill: Teleport to the opponent, do an attack and then get back. For Pistol whip, this could mean maybe give the attack a little longer Stun and make the actual attack trigger faster after the Stun, but reducing the Number of Sword-Swipes or sth. Just so you are able to hit a good deal of the swipes without having to go for quickness/immobilize. You shouldn’t just be able to do full DPS (in a Team there are other Players with immobilize/stuns as well), but it should be a little bit more effective without any of that.

Assassin’s Reward: This Skill just benefits way too less from Healing Power. You get like 35 Points more Healing (from about 70 to 105) with 1000 Healing Power. It could easily be trippled without creating another über-tank: It would just reward assa’s that maybe went for Valk-Amu instead of Zerker…

I would heavily empower any Idea in Custom Maps that lets us redesign the Map in any way. IMHO, one of the best ways for GW2 to get back onto the Map of competetive Players and let’s the Community contribute to the Success of GW2, would be a good Mapmaker.

This is obviously a very hard thing to make for ANet, but the closer we get to that with the Custom Arenas, the better it could be for GW2.

There are multiple ways to implement a “Mapmaker-light” with the Custom Arenas. These redesigns could all be based off pre-existing Maps:

- Being able to restrict a Map to a certain Area
- Being able to set distructable and indestructable Walls
- Being able to turn off certain Nodes
- Being able to add additional Nodes
- Being able to make certain Nodes bigger/smaller

I think this could be a very good Idea, but I really don’t know how hard it is to implement sth. like that.

One major Problem I have with the approach of accomodating casual PvP’ers over highly competetive oriented Players is:

Are casuals willing to pay for GW2, if they can play tons of casual games for free?

I don’t think this Aspect is a Problem for Players that are looking for a very competetive Game: If I see a good Game with a big Community and an e-Sport-friendly environment, I don’t mind paying for it.

@Myrmidian: Yes, there are tons of games out there that are more successful than other because they accomodate casuals, but there are things to consider when trying to apply this logic to GW2:

1) The point mentioned above: Are they willing to pay if they just want to play casually or “just try it out”?
2) How will they hear about GW2 in the first place? Having a good competetive Scene would help with that: Tournaments, well-known streamers and all the networking that comes with being a good competetive Game in an established competetive Field of Games (being associated with big Names/Companies; even if well-known Teams like EG or Team Liquid would just have a decent Team and pay them basically nothing, it would still be Advertisement for GW2 and the Team that is playing under their Banner. Same goes for ESL, MLG etc. Even if it was just an Amateur-League with a low Prize-pool, it would get the Word about GW2 out there to exactly the people you want to hear about GW2, if you are trying to go into direction of e-Sports). It’s basically heavily targeted Advertisement ANet would get for free.
3) The really successful Games like LoL and WoW, had very good timing: They offered the right things at the right time and because they were so successful, everything like e-Sports grew naturally. Look at WoW: Even that had a competetive Scene for a while, although it’s horrible and confusing to watch for anyone that isn’t a hardcore-WoW-Player themselves, but because every Organizer of a Team or an Event could just say: “Sponsor us – there are 10+ Million People playing the Game.” were able to get money practically thrown at them. GW2 gets into an oversaturated Market in that aspect of more established Games with more Features that are even free to play. Can you win this battle by accomodating casuals? Well: I don’t know for sure, but I’d strongly doubt it.

Oni.5429:

lol@people arguing against soloque being a must. Yeah meng, lets appeal to teams only. Soloquers are most certainly not the majority of any pvp game.

I totally remember that whenever I played jk2, wc3, league, wow, sc2 and gw1 etc all I saw was team players and solo players are just some nische market compared to forcing 5

Gw1 failed because of it’s neglect of solo play when it could have been so much bigger. No, I’m not saying HA mode should have had soloque, but having the only form of competitively playing solo being hero battles was the most kitten idea ever and whoever argues against it should return to licking the wall they were previously making out with before posting such a thing.

I personally don’t argue against ANY Feature, but I argue that to me, some features are more pressing than others. IMHO, GW2 could have a competetive Snowball-fight Ladder all year long, but not if it means we’d have to w8 another X months on Spectator-Mode and Custom Arenas.

Besides: GW1 didn’t fail in any way, but it could’ve been bigger. But not because of a lack of Solo-q. GW1’s Problem was that they never reached out to competetively interested Players/Organizations outside of the GW1-Community:

1) Most Tournaments were organized by ANet themselves and got little to no traction in e-Sports outside GW1, because there were no third-parties involved. No ESl, MLG or whatever, where other Viewers might have stumbled upon GW1 while watching the Streams or attending a Tournament live.
2) GW1 didn’t stream anything, didn’t make many VoD’s etc. which meant that most ppl watched the Tournaments with the ingame Observer-Mode. This meant, that in order to watch those Tournaments (which could’ve been a great way of reaching out to potential new customers) ppl must’ve already bought the game!

It’s like advertising for a new TV with a commercial that only plays on exactly that TV which you must’ve bought already in order to see that commercial.

This meant all the growth and every e-Sport aspect of GW1 came from within the Community itself, which heavily limits the potential growth of a game.

I have no doubt in my mind that solo-q in Ascent or GvG would’ve changed absolutely nothing. Those game-modes were designed for organized Teams anyways and it would’ve been a huge mess for solo-q’ers and probably not even that enjoyable.

Evo.9180:

PowerBottom.5796:

Evo.9180:

None of the today’s big “e-sport” games would have had such success if they didn’t have solo queue. It’s the most popular option and it always will be.

More importantly, none of the big e-Sports games would be big e-Sports games without Custom Games and Observer Mode…..

Except, League of Legends, the most popular of them all, was released in 2009 and got spectator mode in late 2011. It didn’t stop it from being extremely popular and successful.

mhmm… And when exactly did it start with ridiculous Prize-pools, the Formation of professional Teams and when did LoL really explode with their numbers (both ppl playing and ppl watching it on Stream)?

Besides: Here’s what GW2 had for casuals from the start:

- Hotjoin
- Rank
- Rewards in terms of aestheticly more appealing Gear

Now they’ve added: Matchmaking (lets assume this invisible Matchmaking-System does exist), Ladder (coming soon….), Solo-q.

—> What do casuals want more?

This all happened while paid tournaments got removed, 3-map Tournaments got removed etc. which totally crippled the organized competetive Teams.

—> Is it good for GW2 to loose the community which would potentially form the core of an e-Sports Scene to invest in stuff the casual players wants?

Well, we don’t know it exactly…. It’s the good old question of what came first, the Egg or the Chicken? Does a game need to make the casuals happy for them to begin forming an e-Sports Scene, or do they need to accomodate more professional Players that could attract more potential pro’s and casuals?

I can only speak from my own experience and from what I think a lot of Players out there want:

- I’m only interested in a game with a highly competetive Scene and I get interested in certain games when I see good streamers, tournaments and when the game to me has potential to be an e-Sport.
- There are millions of potential Customers out there that play competetive Games like SC2, LoL, HoN, Dota2, freaking World of Tanks (50 Million guys!) and I do think that a good portion of them is looking for a competetive Game, maybe sth. new and fun, that they can get into.
—> Those Players won’t hear anything about GW2 if there are just Casuals playing all day long, the way they hear of GW2 and get interested in it is:

1) If there are Tournaments with good Prize-Money
2) If popular e-Sports Names/Brands sponsor Teams or participate in Tournaments.
3) If ESL and other Leagues had an Amateur-Series
4) If they constantly see GW2 up there at the Top on Twitch.tv (and in EVERY game, Tournaments get the highest Viewership and as a rule of thumb you can say: The better and more professional a Player is, the more Viewers he gets. Of course the person itself is important, but no1 watches a streamer just because he is soooo hilarious, it’s always a combination of skill and personality and how can you rate skill better then with a Player being sponsored by a big Team and winning a lot of Tournaments?)

—> This is pure advertisement for a game and thats why I think pushing out Content for high-end competetive Play is more important for the growth of GW2 than giving the casuals everything they desire. This is of course based on my opinion and of course you need a certain ground to stay on and to keep the casuals happy, but IMHO, GW2 has that now, while they have nothing for the competetive Players atm.

Evo.9180:

None of the today’s big “e-sport” games would have had such success if they didn’t have solo queue. It’s the most popular option and it always will be.

More importantly, none of the big e-Sports games would be big e-Sports games without Custom Games and Observer Mode…..

Acandis.3250:

@Davinci LOL

@PowerB I did put quite a bit of emphasis on the solo-queue aspect of what needs to be done, but I don’t think I left out anything that needs to happen in order for teams to be pushing the game to be more competitive. IMO The most important thing that needs to happen for that is a Team Queue in which only teams can queue up against other teams. Teams hate that there is no competition right now because solo queue and team queue got merged.

True, but I didn’t complain about a lack of Features you mentioned, but a lack of an order of Priority in which they should be implemented. Because even though your Features are necessary, it could hurt GW2 even more if they simply worked on everything to make solo-q’ers Happy and neglect the organized competetive Scene for another X Months.

The Problem with all those Modes and Features is, that it’ll simply split up the competetive Community even further.

We don’t need to make Game-Modes for each and everyones specific taste, at least not until GW2 has a big enough Player-base.

We simply need 1 working, highly competetive Game-Mode and the necessary features (Guild-Ladder, working Team-Matchmaking, Custom Arenas and Spectator-Mode) to make e-Sports possible. There is enough in GW2 for casual PvP’ers, more than enough. Yet they don’t do anything for GW2 as a competetive and e-Sports worthy Game. Why accomodate Solo-q’ers that do nothing for the Game, when you can accomodate high-level competetive Play, that will:

1) Stream on a high level and therefore advertising GW2 as an e-Sport
2) Enable third parties to run Tournaments
3) Enable Showmatches
4) Enable competetive play on a high level
5) Drive GW2 forward as an e-Sport, which is what most ppl are looking for in this kind of a game

But you can of course waste time and ressources to make tons of Game-Modes for casuals and keep them happy and hope that they won’t leave, instead of investing in growth, a highly competetive scene and a potential e-Sport.

I think there will be ingame Wedding-Ceremonies with a “Sims”-Like Minigame to raise your family in GW2 before we get anything in PvP.

I can probably agree on most of your Post, but there is a thing I want to explore a bit more:

You name all those features, yet some of them are incredibly more pressing than others IMHO. Many of your features simply accomodate casuals and solo-q’ers and atm I think that GW2 offers more than enough to them. What’s truly hurting right now is the support for high-level competetive Teams.

So even though those Players/Teams are the ones that would drive GW2 forward as an e-Sport, would help to establish a competetive scene, show the world how complex and fun the Game is by streaming high-level play etc. they got almost nothing for months and tons of Teams left and opportunities passed by

GW2 had some decently skilled high-level Teams that were eager to compete. At the hight of Paid Tournies, the Competition was high for such a young Game and we had Top-Teams streaming, a few showmatches etc. and ESL even wanted to start an Amateur-Series. Tell me which Feature for Solo-q’er can drive this Game forward as fast as that?
—> Now we don’t have Paid Tournaments anymore and no 3-Map System and the things that tooks their place don’t work: Single-Map is a neat Idea, but no1 wants to play the same Map over and over and while Paid Tournaments offered a high level of competition (during the few months at it’s peak), the Matchmaking now doesn’t work and it’s once again like farming free Tournaments if you are in a dedicated and competetive Team.

So what’s important IMHO, is not to focus on better Solo-q Features, but features for the really competetive Players, because GW2 is loosing them rapidly.

How can they do that? Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode go a long way, but they also need to focus more on proper Matchmaking for Teams, so they don’t get paired up against a group of Solo-q’ers or Teams that are way beyond their Skill-Level. Anet should also encourage Players to find a Team and to not simply solo-q, with much higher Rewards for Team-q’s, because Team-q’s are so much more skill-demanding and tell much more about the skill of a Player and a Team than Solo-q’s.

We should simply move away from a Matchmaking based off the accumulated points by individuals to a Matchmaking for Teams based on the performance of the Guild, why?

1) Adding up Points of Individuals doesn’t tell you how good the Team as a whole is. You can easily have ppl with double the amount of Points get demolished by a Team that plays well together, has a strategy and well thought-out builds.
2) ANet doesn’t have to worry about leavers or single Players dragging down Teams etc. because the Guilds will sort that out themselves to keep a good ranking.
3) It’s easier for newer Players and new Talent to play at their respective Skill-level, because other than a simple Algorithm that establishes how much worth you are based on results in the Past, a Guild uses much more sophisticated ways to search their Players. Why should a new Player that is incredibly good but didn’t play too much (or on another account/server) drag down the whole Team, if the Team decided that this Players is worthy of playing with them?

If ANet would publish the Single-Player Ladder now and I’d see someone at the Top, I’d most likely say: Well, he sure puts a lot of time into it, because such a Ladder would say nothing about skill if it’s based on a flawed Matchmaking System were you can get points in solo-q. If there would be a Team-based ladder and one team would clearly stand out, it would actually tell me that they firstly know how to play together AND that they’ve played against other organized teams, which has a drastically higher skill-level than solo-q.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Oni.5429:

silvermember.8941:

Not only do PvE play the bills and sustain the game and can be monetize. PvPers tend to be less loyal and more likely to easily move from one thing to another faster than a PvEer will do. GW1 had everything PvPers would want, however that did not prevent it’s inevitable decline. So it makes little sense to dedicate a lot of resources to a game mode that is less monetize AND significantly less loyal.

Recently.1043:

I am pretty amazed at the new PvE thing though, it looks interesting. Not interesting enough to get me to log in after 3 months, but amazing nonetheless.

It begs the question why would you bother hanging around a forum of a game you don’t play?

I always found that amazing…in a kind of sad way why people do that.

Guild wars 1 lacked proper solo play support. The vast majority of pvpers play solo.

It’s a miracle gw1 did as well as it did with that being the case.

Actually GW1 was that successfull because you had no solo Q (except RA). They generated a good reward and title-system that forced you into team/guild forming.
Imagine GW1 would have solo q in HA. This would result in less competition and based on that easier to get a higher rank. The high competition was the reason why so many ppl were ambitious. GW2 is for sure a complete other design, where solo q is necessary.

/Agreed.

Nowadays, with LoL, HoN and Dota2 and the like, ppl think they’re playing the game seriously when they solojoin and they think they have fun doing it. Yet, it’s a completely different game if you join up with other ppl: It gets ten times more interesting, more social and much much harder to play.

I don’t know why so many ppl want GW2 to become a solo-q-paradise. Yes, you should be able to log in real fast and knock out a couple of quick sessions alone, but this shouldn’t become the norm.

In GW1, there was no getting around finding a team when you wanted to enjoy the REAL experience of the Game, which was either Ascent or GvG.

By giving all the players the easy option to solojoin and by making this Aspect more appealing, they just split down the PvP-Community even further and they make tons of stuff necessary to accomodate solo-q’ers, which shouldn’t be the focus.

Did any1 ever complain in GW1 that it had no Solo-q for Ascent or GvG? Did RA/TA complain that there was no proper Matchmaking? Did any1 want to have a Ladder for single Players? Nope: That’s all because ANets focuses too hard on Solo-q’ers. Even the ongoing and obnoxious Balance-Discussions are lead by the Solo-q’ers, because to them, Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode doesn’t matter at all and that’s why they are slowing down the true e-Sport-Potential of GW2.

I don’t hate solo-q’ers or want to single them out, but ANet shouldn’t focus on them first, because those Aspects of a game don’t make it an e-Sport or help a potential competetive Community to grow. Hotjoin really should’ve been enough for Solo-q’ers and once Custom Arenas, Observer-Mode and a few other Game-Modes got implemented (some of these changes would accomodate the Solo-q’ers as well), they could’ve seen the e-Sport train begin to roll and start really accomodating the very casual Players more.

Spyro.3261:

this is so sad

Get used to that feeling if you wanna play pvp……

Spyro.3261:

what about materials I get to create items in mystic forge? those are useless? so in other words all this hearth of mist if useless?

Yepp

ensoriki.5789:

There is a new finisher for pvp to spend yo money on.

w00t – I take everything back and state the opposite then! ^^

silvermember.8941:

This isn’t a law class or scientific discussion. If you don’t believe me don’t. But look around, go to other MMORPG with PvP, the first to jump ship are PvPers.

yepp, if the pvp sucks.

If it’s good though, they can be loyal for minimal effort of the developer.

Example: GW1.

silvermember.8941:

Not only do PvE play the bills and sustain the game and can be monetize. PvPers tend to be less loyal and more likely to easily move from one thing to another faster than a PvEer will do. GW1 had everything PvPers would want, however that did not prevent it’s inevitable decline. So it makes little sense to dedicate a lot of resources to a game mode that is less monetize AND significantly less loyal.

Less loyal?

Ever heard of e-sports?

It’s not about PvE making more money, it’s simply about ANet setting completely wrong Priorities:

1) To keep the PvP-community happy and allow it to grow, we’d only need the bare essentials: Custom Games and Obs-Mode could’ve been implemented months ago and we’d maybe have an ESL Amateur-Series and some Tournaments and a whole lot more players by now.

2) While PvE needs new Content every few weeks/months to keep them happy, if the essentials for PvP are there, you could keep them playing with minimal effort. We’ve seen Games like SC:BW being played for 10 years and the only thing they needed was new Maps, THAT WERE DEVELOPED BY THE COMMUNITY ITSELF!

3) GW2 already has a solid Ground for PvP, yet ANet lets it go to waste by not giving the minimum amount of support. You can’t say: “Our Restaurant is not making Money”when there are tons of Burgers rotting in the Cellar…

4) There already is tons of Stuff in Place to make money off of PvP – PvE has tons more Skins that could easily be implemented into the Gem-Store for PvP-ers to buy.

And what makes me angry about Events like the Super Adventure Box is, that we see that there is clearly enough Manpower and willingness to invest in GW2 at ANet’s Fingertips, yet they don’t deliver the bare minimum to PvP to allow it to grow.

It’s also not good customer Service and advertisement for ANet if they don’t care for a certain Part of their Playerbase, so you could argue that ANet not only neglects Potential paying Customers (and paying Customers insofar that we’ve all bought the Game) but they are actually making negative Advertisement for their Company and their Product. And then we see stuff like the Super Adventure Box and start to ask ourself: “Are we being trolled with?”

We’ve stopped asking for wonders in the PvP-Community about 5 so-called “PvP-Patches” ago, that were all a horrible dissapointment and then we see ANet splitting the red sea in two for PvE, that’s just a slap in the Face…..

Imagine what ressources it took to make only this Event possible and what it could’ve meant for PvP: Custom Arenas, Obs-Mode, Ladder and theres probably enough time left to implement the whole GvG-Mode with 3-4 decent Maps…. -.-°

Baad joke – u can’t do this to ppl….

Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool that ANet makes sth. special for Halloween, Christmas and even 1st of April, but c’mon ANet – if you can knock out stuff like that every few months, why are we (the PvP-Community) still waiting for Custom Arenas, Observer-Mode, GvG (and/or other Game-Modes), a decent Matchmaking-System and basically everything a successful PvP-Game just NEEDS to have nowadays?

Just let those geniuses from PvE work at PvP for a few weeks and PvP will be good to go!

Really: Enough is enough!

Argh, I walked right into it!

Yes, buff Thiefs because they can’t solo- and insta-kill Targets in a very tanky Metagame anymore…

If they Buff Thiefs in any way, they need to leave the Bunker-Ele’s as they are now, or if they Nerf Bunkers, they can’t Buff Thiefs, maybe even Nerf them more, because in a Metagame that isn’t that Bunker-Heavy, Thiefs are still Godlike. Besides that, in actual competetive Play with premade Teams, Thiefs are still good and absolutely needed to deal with Bunker-Chars; They can’t solokill stuff anymore, but together with the Mesmer, they are still the best way to deal with Bunker-Eles.

Really, ppl that want Thief-Buffs, either have never played on a high level with premade-Teams or they don’t understand how a Metagame works.

Why do you think Ele’s started to go overly defensive, because it’s so fun? Nope – they needed to because they were sick of getting one-shotted by a class that is better than them in every Aspect possible (If the Ele was running a Balanced Valk-Amu build or even a Glass-Cannon build).

Oh and yes, the haste-nerf was a buff to Thieves, they are now the best Burst-Class – they were before as well, but the haste-nerf hit other classes harder than them. I’ve never understood why you’d use haste on a Char that instakills anything anyways. But Thiefs just misinterpret the current Tanky-Meta for their class being weak. Yes, you can’t instakill everything anymore and yes, the only viable build probably is the BS-Thief, but you can’t just Buff Thiefs overall because the Meta doesn’t fit how you play them.

Would I have a Problem with buffing their sustain or their pressure-DPS – most likely not, but as soon as you Buff their Burst, we will have huge outrcries as soon as the Meta shifts to a more offensive playstyle.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Funny how they kitten over epidemic by making it blockable and dodgable whilst leaving the way too long cast time AND YET they wont fix rtl (which effects games way more) by making it consistent with other movement skills and slowing it down due to chills and cripples.

It MUST be a technical issue surely.

I actually thought ppl whining about RTL on Spirit Watch were stupid; I believed that this would obviously be fixed ASAP, because it really is gamebreaking in the sense that you won’t see anything else than a Bunker-Ele running the Orb on that Map.

But what do they do instead? Nerfing RTL (yes, it was a longer time ago) that is actually more useful and necessary for Ele’s that aren’t just playing a Bunker-build, because they actually need their Movement-speed to be good Roamers (they are behind Thief as the main-Roamer in almost every Aspect of whats important to be a good Roamer).

Nope….

With All Chars having Stunbreakers with very often shorter CD than the Skills giving Quickness, it was basically mostly used for Rezzes/Stomps on high-level play, because you can’t just fire off a 60 second CD skill with a Warrior to simply force a 30-Second Stunbreaker AND receive double-DMG yourself. That’s why we saw so few Warriors in high-level play and only in Team-Setups that could basically guarantee him a kill with every Frenzy he uses with additional Stuns and CC and good enough Pressure to force out the Stunbreakers before the Warrior fired off his Frenzy.

I basically only saw Quickness for attacks on the very few Warriors we saw in high-level play and on Thiefs, when the Bunker-Ele’s became so popular that many Thiefs thought that they needed the extra-burst.

Engis didn’t use Quickness at all, Power-Rangers were almost never seen on high-level play and the Condi-Rangers that skilled Zephyr, did it for the Quickness-Rezzes and Stomps.

Time-Warp could’ve maybe used a nerf, but not because the Quickness-Effect is so strong, but because Time-Warp has a huge radius and lasts 10 seconds.

It’s IMHO clearly a Balance-Change ANet did because of bad Players crying about stuff that can be dealth with pretty easily if you aren’t a level-10 hotjoiner…..

Kneru.8014:

PowerBottom.5796:

Thats exactly why ppl are so disappointed and put as much pressure on ANet, because they realize what this game could be!

Yes, in it’s core, the gameplay, the engine, basically everything that is GW2 besides the lack of features (and maybe balance), is absolutely amazing! Never have I seen such deep and action-packed gameplay in an MMO or MOBA, never such a rich character-build-system etc – there’s nothing in that genre that even comes close to GW2, BUT: They Lack so severely in necessary features, that it’s just a chore to play the game nowadays.

I’d be really Angry with ANet and NCSoft if they let GW2-PvP slip through their Fingers, because it could be a game I would want to play competetively on a high level, that I’d want to watch Streams and Tournaments and that I’d want to invest my precious time and hard(ly)-earned Money in!

^This. I really feel like MMO devs have lost touch with the gamers that actually play their games lately. It feels like a lot of them make the game, but then dont have the time to play it themselves, and see what we’re missing.

That’s ANets own fault, because:

1) They know the good players and actually host Shows with them (SotG)
2) They have an extremely active PvP-Forum where ppl Post….. a lot of BS, but also, there are some good Posters and informative Posts. It’s not hard to actually identify which players ARE good and which Posts they should take seriously.
3) There even have been Top-Players wanting to work with/for ANet, but they’ve declined.

I’ve seen a few Top-Titles fall very hard because of the exact same thing ANet does atm:

- Lack of Features
- Lack of Communication with the Community
- Things get implemented and time wasted on Stuff that should be second Priority
- Lack of understanding of their own Game and the Community that plays it
- False Promises
- Lack of Outreach to the competetive Community

- SWtOR had some very good PvP-Ideas and one of the best PvP-Modes ever (Huttball), yet it failed horribly because they didn’t give the Players Server-Transfers and Global PvP, which most Players have been asking for for Months.
- Diablo III didn’t do too well because of the AH, lack of PvP and in the first few Months, such a skewed Balance, that certain classes simply couldn’t do anything at higher difficulty-Levels. The Community asked for changes months ahead of time… They didn’t listen and lost tons of Players.
- HoN, which is probably the best MOBA out there (in the sense that it is the most complex, fast-paced and skill-demanding) still has the lowest Numbers of Players, Viewers on Twitch etc. because they failed to get a hold of the competetive Scene. So while Dota2 struggled, Valve reached out to TL.net, made them promote their Streamers, they organized almost Daily Tournaments and now, they are doing extremely well and potential MOBA-Players that want to go Pro, will surely choose Dota2 over HoN, because that is where the money’s at.

Mesmers and Thiefs are still Godtier, the only difference is that they were joined at the top by a certain Bunker-Ele that is currently stealing their Show….

Mesmer is also not only about 1v1-Strength, but most of all: Portal, one of the only Chars with good Boonstrippers etc.

And the only reason why he isn’t doing all too fresh in 1v1’s atm. is, that most of the Builds played atm. are simply strong against Mesmers and often specifically designed to be just that. (Bunker-Ele’s, Beastmaster- and Trap-Rangers, Condi-Burst Engis etc.)

Basically the same is true for the Thief.

If they Nerfed Ele Bunkers and Condi-Burst Engis and we would see more Valk-Amu Eles and maybe less Condition-builds, ppl would start whining about Thiefs and Mesmers again instantly.

gwawer.9805:

how do u block retaliation? is that like blocking yourself?

CD 10sec on frenzy? lol

lol u guyssss

Why not?

You can easily balance it without giving it a ridiculously long CD….

Would you use it with a 10 Seconds CD if it gave you 1 Second of Quickness but double your received DMG for 10 Seconds? Nope, no1 would.

But if we get to like 3-4 Seconds Quickness and 6-8 Seconds Double-DMG, we could really get into a territory of a fun to use skill that isn’t OP and requires Skill, Map-Awareness, good positioning and Teamplay on both the Warrior&His Team and the opposing Team.

Considering the other Quickness-Skills, that really have quite weak drawbacks, we could easily double or even tripple the time of the Drawback to always force a strong decision to be made.

But well, you can of course always have 3 Utilities and 1 Elite with 60+ Seconds CD – that’s really fun and doesn’t make the Game volatile and “coinflippy” at all….

Don’t have a pic of it, but just a few Minutes ago, I (~r43), was teamed up with two lvl 10, one level 5 and one level 1 against a Team with average rank 30-35….

I highly doubt that this invisible Matchmaking even exists.

Most ppl that play PvP are Solo-q’ers, (especially now, that there is no competetive scene left) and they think stuff is imbalanced when it is hard to kill.

Why? Because to kill Bunker-Eles, you have to work as a Team. I don’t say that they aren’t a Problem even on higher Levels of play, but the Problem isn’t as severe as people make it out to be.

Or does any1 here really think that a non-bunker Staff-Ele or Valk-Septer/Dagger Ele with 2 Arcane-Spells is imba? Well, it’s not. It’s basically the same builds that were played a little bit when everyone said that the Ele is weak, because if you don’t play it as a Bunker, he’s very easy to kill by Mesmers/Thiefs and the DPS isn’t as high as the one of those classes.

So why don’t they think Mesmers are imba, or why do we hear now that some people even want a buff to Thiefs? Because the Meta is very tanky now and they can’t kill Eles and some other builds on their own anymore. Nerf Bunker and the only thing we’ll hear is once again: “NERF Mesmers omg!” or “THIEFS ARE SOOO IMBA111111 kekeke!”

The Problem with those DPS-Machines that can easily spike down non-bunker targets on their own and are hard to kill for a class-cannon is, that it’s way harder to deal with them in a Team, which isn’t the case for Bunkers, even ones that are maybe a little bit too strong.

In Fact, when I played actively a few months ago and the Bunker-Ele was all the rage on EU-Servers, I’ve talked with a few Players on Top-Teams (Top-10 QP) and they said that they really have no Problem with Bunker-Ele’s.

Thats exactly why ppl are so disappointed and put as much pressure on ANet, because they realize what this game could be!

Yes, in it’s core, the gameplay, the engine, basically everything that is GW2 besides the lack of features (and maybe balance), is absolutely amazing! Never have I seen such deep and action-packed gameplay in an MMO or MOBA, never such a rich character-build-system etc – there’s nothing in that genre that even comes close to GW2, BUT: They Lack so severely in necessary features, that it’s just a chore to play the game nowadays.

I’d be really Angry with ANet and NCSoft if they let GW2-PvP slip through their Fingers, because it could be a game I would want to play competetively on a high level, that I’d want to watch Streams and Tournaments and that I’d want to invest my precious time and hard(ly)-earned Money in!

Nope, but I think ANet needs to rework the Quickness Skills in different ways, like lower CD, rework the drawbacks etc.

It should be sth. like Frenzy in GW1: It had a very low CD (4 seconds), gave 33% atk-speed and doubled the recieved DMG for 8 Seconds, so you could’ve run around with Frenzy all the time, but nobody did it, because of the Drawback!

Quickness and especially Frenzy shouldn’t be balanced by the Cooldown or simply nerving it’s DPS-increase, that makes the build volatile and bursty. It should be balanced by making the Drawback as severe as the one on Frenzy and you should have to be able to decide in every situation: “Should I use Quickness now or shouldn’t I?” This makes for interesting Gameplay, not having OP skills every 60 seconds….

Balance length and severity of the Drawback, leave it at 50% speed-increase and get the CD down to 10 Seconds….

I really doubt that this invisible matchmaking even exists…..

of course we are….. again…… only like the 7th time in a row……

The OP is completely right, it’s basically exactly how many of my ingame-Friends and I feel atm.

For me, there is an additional Point to the Story though and that is the Fact that I think that GW2 is an amazing PvP-Game (if not for the Lack of features) and it literally drives me crazy that ANet is letting this opportunity slip through their Fingers.

There is no MMO or MOBA or anything like GW2, that has such a deep and action-packed combat-System, there are few with such a versatile and impactful Build-creating System (ppl might disagree with me here, but as sm1 who has tried out literally hundreds of different builds, I can say that the potential is enormous – it’s just that ANet needs to buff a few Skills/Traits and every class could have 5+ vastly different Specs).
There was also a very strong community behind GW2 right from the Start, but like so many Games these days (recent examples are SWtOR and DiabloIII), the Developers didn’t deliver what was necessary to push the game to the next level.

Now I know how my Teachers and Parents must’ve felt when they said this about me: “The Potential is there – he just needs to put the work in.” ^^’

are u really complaining about more ppl playing pvp?

Skills

1) Throw Bolas: Either reduce CD by 5 Seconds, make the Bola Fly 20% Faster or make it insta-cast.
Reasoning: Atm. Bolas only really hit if you’ve already stunned/immobilized an opponent and even if the War itself lands certain immobilizes/stuns, the Bola is often too slow anyways.
My Fav would be the Instacast, it could open up some strong Chains the War definitely needs to be useful.

2) Kick: Either Reduce CD by 10 seconds, double the range it Lunges towards the Enemy or make it Stun/Knockdown
Reasoning: It’s simply way too useless atm. With only 10 seconds CD, you could maybe interrupt Heals and pressure a bit, more Range would give the War more Moverability on the Battlefield, which is one of the biggest Problems of the War atm IMHO and the Stun/Knockdown-Option would just be a very good addition to the War as a CC-Char.
My Fav is doubling the Lunge.

3) Signet of Stamina: This could actually be a pretty useful Utility, because both Endurance and Condition-Removal are things the Warrior doesn’t get all too easily. Atm. it’s just way too bad though. I’d say double the Endurance-Reg on the passive and make the active a Stunbreaker.
Reasoning: It’s just bad atm and atm. almost every class gets perma-vigor practically thrown at them and few classes have worse Condition-Removal than the War.

4) Frenzy: Reduce the Cooldown to 15 Seconds (in GW1, it had an even lower CD, but only gave 33% attack-speed) and the Duration of the Quickness to 3 seconds, while increasing the duration of Frenzy to 6 Seconds.
Reasoning: With the higher CD and shorter Duration of Quickness, it should be on par with GW1. There should also be no Problem with DPS being dished out too fast, because with the Quickness-nerf, there are other classes that have stronger bursts. Also, it gives the War an interesting feel of constantly weighing risk VS reward, while also making his spikes a more constant threat, but not as high as before and with an increased drawback. There should be no doubt that Frenzy has to be treated a bit differently than the other Quickness-Skills, because it has BY FAR the biggest drawback. Frenzy should be kind of the Class-Mechanic of the War and I see no Problem in making that happen.

Traits

1) Inspiring Shouts: I liked the Idea someone had that it should give the War a bit of Endurance back as well. Probably 25-50%
Reasoning: Again, the War has few ways of getting Endurance and although I like using Shouts on the War and I don’t think that they are weak, they are just not strong enough to justify playing a Warrior in almost any role atm.

It’s atm clear, that ANet has a wrong philosophy regarding game-balancing.

I get where they are coming from and why they don’t wanted huge changes to begin with, but let players feel out the Metagame, evolve new strategies and ways to play etc.

But what they need to realize now, is that this time has passed!

Let me make an analogy: If you aren’t feeling well, the first thing you do isn’t to go to the emergency-room and hop under the knife – you maybe drink a Tee, swallow an Aspirin and maybe w8 a bit. But if it doesn’t get better, maybe even worse, you start taking more drastic approaches to solving your Problem.

ANet is still trying to “cure” the Cancer of GW2’s balance with Aspirin, which simply won’t work.

1) Ele is too tanky: why not make the atm. tanky builds more geared towards team-support? Like reducing the Heal you gain but increasing radius on stuff like cleansing wave? This way, Ele would still be viable, but he wouldn’t be as useful guarding Points alone against multiple enemies. I’m thinking of reducing the heal you get yourself by 50%, but adding 50% on either health the Team gets or double the radius.

2) Warrior: Why not either buff his utilities/traits to be more durable (Warrior has a hard time removing conditions and getting vigor), make his CC a bit better (Kick is still bad, it needs to knockdown/stun or have a drastically smaller CD, so is Stomp and the Bolas need to fly faster). And if you are going to keep Frenzy as it is right now, make the CD 40s – other classes get their Quickness down to that as well and the War has by far the biggest drawback.

3) Engi: I initially liked the changes to the Kit Refinement and I still like the Effects most Kits give you, but the global 20s CD makes it almost useless, because you won’t really be able to get the effects when you need them. I initially also thought that this would create a nice tension and require planning and skill when to use which Kit so you can still get the most out of Kit Refinement, until I realized that I need to switch Kits constantly, to get Swiftness/Vigor…. -.-°
Also, I generally don’t like how the Traits are arranged: Alchemy at lvl 10 has 2 Traits that almost every Engi uses (invigorating speed and protection injection) and 2 more if you use a few Elexirs (fast-acting Elexirs, Self-Regulating Defenses). Also, basically all the Traits/Skills the Engi has to deal with Conditions are in Alchemy as well and tied to Elexirs.
Now compare the Traits in Alchemy with those in Inventions, or even with Firearms!

Although I do think that the War is probably one of the weaker classes, there are still a lot of pretty decent builds out there and out of the hundreds of PvP-Games I’ve had with the War, maybe only 10% were with a rather Standard 100b Build.

There are very good builds with strong Adrenaline Buildup, Condition DMG and Bow F1 + Sword F1. You can literally spam those two abilities all 10 Seconds (Fire Bow F1, jump on the Target with Sword 2 and get Fire Aura, then fire off Sword F1 to add about 15 bleeding stacks and keep the Target in the Fire).

Another good Build includes Shouts and Shoutheals and tons of Knockbacks on Hammer and Mace+Shield. The DPS isn’t amazing, but the Teamsupport, Survivability and CC of the Build makes up for it.

Then, I have often used a pretty balanced build with Axe+Shield and Rifle, Zerker-Amu with Celestial Stone and divinity Runes. The Ranged-DPS is quite high (rifle1 + earth sigil + deep cuts is pretty good, even if you don’t go for a lot of condition-DPS and it gives the build a bit more versatility against high-armor Targets). You simply pressure with the build, until you can fire off an Axe F1 (+Int-Sigil), for 4-5k DPS.

I don’t get it….. I’ve seen so many Threads about how Quickness is supposed to be OP, but I never got it.

I get that It’s maybe too good that a Ranger has such an easy time to get Quickness, but in competetive play, I’ve used my Quickness almost solely to speed-rez or speed-stomp.

On the Warrior, I don’t get the Nerf one bit: The War has by far the biggest Drawback and he has no way of Reducing the CD on Frenzy. Also, the War has no Invis and his Gap-Closers are easy to dodge. Ergo: If you got spiked down by a Warrior on Frenzy, you are either bad, had bad luck with your Stunbreakers not being ready or the opposing team played well together – in all these circumstances, getting killed by the War is totally acceptable and not imbalanced in any way.

On the Engi, no1 used the Quickness anyways and besides some weird bugs on the Thief, Quickness was fine on them as well, because the Thief needed to sacrifice yet another “getaway-skill” for it.

To me, this looks like a balance-change completely geared towards lowlevel-players. I don’t hate it, but I don’t understand it.

Also, the War got some nice Buffs on the Banners, maybe this will make him more useful. I never was a fan of Frenzy on War anyways and I either used completely different builds than 100b, or I used Immobilizes (Sword F1 or Bola) rather than Frenzy.

I don’t think it’ll strenghten Bunker-builds more either, because against Guard, you use Conditions and against Bunker-Ele, nothing comes even close to Thief+Mesmer.

Nice!

I really hope they bring CA’s though, because now I’m actually getting excited about this Patch.

And about CA’s costing Gems: Can’t really Comment on that, depends if the Price is fair and what CA’s will actually offer. I like the Icon of the Tickets though; this Helmet makes me think that we’ll actually be able to “work on” a Map and make it sth. we want it to be. You don’t really put a Helmet on their that is associated with “construction” if we can only tweak around with the absolut standard-options.

Zodian.6597:

Question- Before I get into this, I have a question for a dev; Will the “Custom Games” feature be designed so that anyone can just make a custom game whenever they want w/o having to pay (like League of Legends)? or is it going to be a pay to use feature like owning a vent server (like in Counter Strike)? If this is still up for debate in the designer war room, I’d like to offer some input on how I think we can please everyone with this upcoming feature.

Suggestion- The design of the Customs game tab could actually be a mix of the two philosophies mentioned in my above question. You could have a free option with basic customization (map select/turning off auto-balance/password protected/# of ppl per team), and then you could have a pay-to use option alongside that which could cater more to people who are unhappy with how current pvp works. The pay-to use option could feature things like custom balancing, class exclusion, ability to turn off conquest node point generation, and all of the basic things included in the free version.

Conclusion- I know it’s not at the top of the priority list for most people, but I see custom games (and spectator mode) as a rich opportunity to give the players a little more control over how they actually want to play, and it also gives organizations (some of which I happen to have affiliation with) the ability to host tournaments and begin to promote this game as a competitive title. The latter of the two would of course need to happen after ladders are integrated and new competitive teams begin to establish themselves on NA and EU (could you imagine where we’d be now if we’d had custom games + spectator mode on release? Guildcast would have had some competition ;p).

TLDR- suggestion = pay/free option for custom games, paid version can manipulate balance + game type a bit, both get basic customization. 3rd paragraph is me rambling about how AWESOME custom games feature will be, and 1st paragraph is question for dev.

Agreed with all of what you’ve written.

And yes, it’s not the top-priority for a lot of ppl, but it definitely should be! Custom Games is the only thing that can come out in the near future that has the potential to revitalize high-level PvP and make the talk about e-Sport even a possibility.

mbh.8301:

Gw2 having long fights only happens when/because you can devote all but 10 of your trait points to not dying and it isn’t a full teamfight. Damage occurs in such enormous bursts and with plenty of aoe that most big fights don’t last particularly long because the only defensive tool you have available to you is to defeat your enemy.

There are builds that can burst well and there are builds that are easier to burst down than others, but I’d say that on average, fights last longer than in most MOBA’s. Not only because of dodgeing, certain builds that are very hard to kill, various stunbreakers etc. but also because of the downed-state (another great mechanic IMHO). My Point was that GW2 doesn’t need the creep-kill “Minigame” in the early stages of the Game to be interesting, which is of course a matter of opinion.

mbh.8301:

Also, calling dodging an excellent mechanic is a bit much. My problem with it is that some traited dodge effects are way better than others and as a result, with vigor and energy sigils, you spend half your time rolling around being immune to damage while activating an ability.

That’s like saying you don’t like Burger because your local Burger-King Puts too much Horse-Meat in it. ^^’
Certain classes can take better advantage of dodgeing, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean dodgeing isn’t an extremely well thought out and implemented Idea, that brings so much more depth to the Gameplay.
It’s in Fact such a good Idea, that I see no reason why not every game that is at least somewhat similar to GW2, shouldn’t have sth. like that.

Zinwrath.2049:

Smite just confirmed that GW2 needs a moba style pvp mode. Its fun, graphicly however for something that forces you to look that close at the models…it coulda used a better art design. (aka GW2 art….)

I have to strongly disagree here, here’s why:

- The MOBA-Concept is pretty fun, but there are more than enough MOBA’s out there that are practically the same and with Smite, we even have a 3D one – do we really need another one?
- GW1 was all about different Maps and even different Game-Modes, this just doesn’t work with a MOBA-Style Game.
- MOBA’s don’t work nearly as good in a third-Person Perspective: You need to be able to look around the Map, actively control certain Minions, scout out Gear-progression (you can’t rely on your teammates to tell you in solo-q’s for example) etc.
- It would cost ANet a ton of ressources they don’t have atm.
- The MOBA-Genre is oversaturated immensely; how can GW2 get any Players if they don’t set themselves apart in any way?
- GW2 is set around longer fights and has excellent mechanics (like dodgeing), why would you let that slip through your Fingers with a Game-Mode where you could just sit behind Creeps, being guarded by a Tower, so no1 could attack you in the first Part of the Game?

The Game-Mode of MOBA’s is not as good and successful as it is now, because it is exactly that Game-Mode it is right now, but it works because it follows a few Principles of making good Game-Modes that ANet could easily get inspired by:

1) There are Multiple Objectives and ways to win a Game (Farming, Tower-pushing, Ganking etc.)
2) There are several things a Char can do at any time. Take the early-game for example; a Char could harrass, farm, deny, go around ganking, farm in the jungle, bottle-run, rune-control etc.
3) It offers a Multitude of possible Strategies that require certain Team-Setups, this makes things interesting before the Game has even started (what are they trying to do with their Lineup, how will it work against the other Team etc.)

If we simply take a look at the GvG-Mode, or even a slightly better Conquest with more important Secondary Objectives, it could easily qualify as a good Game-Mode with most of the Advantages of the MOBA Game-Mode, while still being more suitable for GW2.