Guild Wars 2

If you think about the issue even a little tiny bit, you could see that:
1) you need a dps to down a bunker
2) usually two of them at least
3) if you finally manage to bring down the bunker, you still need to stomp him to start de-capping the node

a) DPS characters have no access to secure stomp → bunkers reign supreme (even more)

b) DPS characters stay as they are → bunker meta issues don’t escalate further into all-tank madness and terrible game mode of MY GUARDIAN HAS SURVIVED THE ARMAGEDDON… TWICE!!!

I suggest we make a solo queue just for the people who complain all the time without any real arguments. They will be sent into a random map, where they will be alone, and win automatically after 15 minutes. Seriously now…

I fail to see what the big issue about not having a dedicated solo queue is. From what we know from the SotG discussion, MMR takes into account a huge number of things, so even if you get matched against a team of five players, it is more than likely they will all be lame as hell, as long as you went into the tournament solo. As long as your team is composed of people more skilled than the enemy team, it’s no problem to win even without teamspeak and the other teams stuffs (and that’s what MMR is for after all).

What I think the issue here is, is that players are starting to blame their failures (or in this case future failures) on the system, rather than themselves. Like the legendary, but in truth non-existent, ELO-hell from LoL.

Many have discussed the 1v1 team tournament principle, and I do have to admit I am very pleased with it. What I would like to offer feedback about, is the map itself though. Possibly the best thing about Temple of the Silent Storm are the objectives spread across the map. No other map in all of spvp offers non-capture-point objectives as important and crucial for victory as this map does. The impact those objectives have on team composition and strategy are enormous, and make the game experience a lot more fun, therefore I would suggest, that objectives on the older maps should be reworked to carry more significance (make svanir/chieftain actually cap their respective points on kill, while doubling the points gained from such a cap for a minute or something similar, make the guild lord award immediate victory on death to the slaying team ect.). Not only would this promote new character builds (more balanced specs that work better in teamfights), it would also make spectating the game actually worthwhile (ToSS has been the first map to rouse my interest in watching a stream in a quite a while). It would also serve towards the end of silencing the masses demanding a new game mode, as it would present an alternative playstyle to just bunkering two points all game and roaming in between.

I would very much like to see the other 3 maps added to the rotation, just like the rest of people who have posted here. The sooner the better, of course.

Any pvp game can only ever really go two ways in terms of pvp builds/roles. It either goes into extremes, or tries to keep everything balanced somewhere “in the middle”. Right now, GW2 pvp (due to the conquest game mode) is heavily leaning towards the extremes, since there are only really two things to be done in a match where defending or acquiring a node decides the victor. However gearing towards extremes cannot ever work just one-way. A game mode without any bunkers with everybody playing DPS characters would be just horrible for everyone (I still remember the first days after launch). It would eventually end-up with everybody playing a thief, and victory would be decided by seeing your enemy first/pushing a button. Also, nerfing bunkers so that burst specs don’t have any trouble dealing with them whatsoever would kill the purpose of a bunker build, killing the game itself eventually.

The other option is balanced play with balaced builds, which is not going to happen on conquest-style maps, simply because balanced builds offer absolutely nothing to well organized teams (with the sole two exceptions being the ele, and engi, who overcome the uselessness of balanced builds by offering profession-specific advantages to their team like unrivaled cc, healing or support, that other classes just cannot compete with).

However, during the last week, some other balanced builds and team compositions have gotten somewhat more attention from the community. That’s because temple of the silent storm brought much stronger objectives into the game than any of the previous maps, and therefore encouraged large-scale encounters, in which balanced builds just excel.

In all honesty, I believe that even the maps previously released should have their objectives strengthened (chief/svanir giving control of their adjacent point and double points for the side that has killed it until the point gets de-capped, or maybe even granting un-cappability of their adjascent point for two minutes. Also the death of guild-lord granting immediate victory would IMO make the game much more interesting to watch (for audience on streams)), because right now these objectives just carry little-to-no relevance. While standard conquest mode makes for a brilliant strategic gameplay and encourages clutch-decisions, it is boring and uninteresting to watch and play after quite a short while. Adding objectives for which teams just have to fight, or they will loose the game, would imo encourage build diversification as well as make for an interesting watch, possibly opening up a path for teams without bunkers and DPS maniacs, as there would be more ways to win a map than capping and holding points.

jkctmc.8754:

Silferas.3841:

jkctmc.8754:

Silferas.3841:

Thieves are used to dealing with DPS or trap rangers, who are easy prey. Then they meet a properly built beastmaster tank once in a while, and their illusions of grandeur crumble, while I stomp them effortlessly.

Tell the thief to come heart of the mists at desolation EU. I will duel him

You do understand sPvP does not equal WvW, right? Thieves are at their strongest in WvW, so I doubt any Thief would duel anyone in sPvP, where the ruleset is dumbed down, with a multitude of nerfs.

Thieves might be stronger in WvW than in sPvP, but so am I. All the benefits they get from food and pve gear I get as well.

On the other hand a claim that WvW is more complicated than tournament pvp is naive to say it nicely. It is the ruleset imposed upon tournaments that makes it so much more demanding and competitive. Everything you get is restricted: gear/time/players, and you simply have to do with what you get, you need SKILL. Any player who can consistently win tournaments will absolutely dominate any fight in WvW, while players from WvW don’t amount to much in tournaments at all (speaking from experience). And if you are thinking about bringing up strategy and teamwork, don’t even bother.

Not true brother. The damage is far less in sPvP to the point that if you can handle the full damage in WvW, fighting under the increased damage of siege, you’re going to find the lessened damage of sPvP quite weak. On top of that sPvP is more about controlling small areas, for points, rather than fighting it out to match skills against another group in a head to head battle.

At least in real competitive games like League of Legends, you have much, much better fights.

I will just have to disagree again with you mate :/. While it is true that damage is somewhat elevated in WvW compared to sPvP, there are several other things in your post that I cannot agree with. First of all, sPvP is no different in it’s methods than WvW is. Teamfights do happen every game and they are often the one thing, that decides which way the game goes. It’s just that there is no wall and gate in between the fighters. Every serious team I know is geared towards teamfights one way or another (trap rangers, carrion necros, shout guardians ect.). On the other hand, there are many underhanded methods utilized in WvW to accomplish the same thing as in sPvP: capture and defend a point. Mesmer portals, thief invisibility cap blocking, portal bombing, culling were just some of the things I experienced while I used to play WvW (I dunno if any of these already got fixed, if yea just scratch it). WvW is essentially just large-scale sPvP without the emphasis on individual contribution to the team. As a result of this, individual failure also tends to carry less significant consequences.

And even in LoL the point of the game is not to win fights or teamfights, but to destroy the nexus. Over my two year period of playing the game extensively, that has ended when GW2 came out, I have witnessed many strategies that employed the use of these. Namely Twisted Fate, Shaco, Pantheon backdoors, split pushing with Shen and some more that I don’t remember right now, all of which were more effective and reliable than winning fights.

jkctmc.8754:

Silferas.3841:

Thieves are used to dealing with DPS or trap rangers, who are easy prey. Then they meet a properly built beastmaster tank once in a while, and their illusions of grandeur crumble, while I stomp them effortlessly.

Tell the thief to come heart of the mists at desolation EU. I will duel him

You do understand sPvP does not equal WvW, right? Thieves are at their strongest in WvW, so I doubt any Thief would duel anyone in sPvP, where the ruleset is dumbed down, with a multitude of nerfs.

Thieves might be stronger in WvW than in sPvP, but so am I. All the benefits they get from food and pve gear I get as well.

On the other hand a claim that WvW is more complicated than tournament pvp is naive to say it nicely. It is the ruleset imposed upon tournaments that makes it so much more demanding and competitive. Everything you get is restricted: gear/time/players, and you simply have to do with what you get, you need SKILL. Any player who can consistently win tournaments will absolutely dominate any fight in WvW, while players from WvW don’t amount to much in tournaments at all (speaking from experience). And if you are thinking about bringing up strategy and teamwork, don’t even bother.

Thieves are used to dealing with DPS or trap rangers, who are easy prey. Then they meet a properly built beastmaster tank once in a while, and their illusions of grandeur crumble, while I stomp them effortlessly.

Tell the thief to come heart of the mists at desolation EU. I will duel him

EU – Desolation
IGN: Don’t have one
Rank: 34 (I avoid hotjoin, most of my glory has been farmed by winning tournaments).
Class(es): ordered from played well to played ‘kay
- Guardian (I can pull off most builds on this class, I use shout bunker mostly)
- Ranger (beastmaster, have experience with playing trap builds, just tired of them)
- Elementalist (bunker only)
I also have experience playing thief and mesmer, that I could develop further in case of need/interest by team.
QP: 0 (as my rank works like a good paid-team invite repellent)
Qualities: I have lots of experience playing with and against people of ranks considerably higher than mine, as most of the players on my friend list with whom I play frees are ranks 40, by now even 45+. I am willing to adapt and eager to communicate if given a chance.
What I am looking for: a permanent team of capable players, who have missed the train and are stuck labeled as “newbs” such as myself, or if some miracle happens: an experienced team willing to give an unknown guy a chance. I want to start playing paid tournaments, but I refuse to waste my tickets on chest runs or PUGs that won’t help me grow as a player.

In case anybody was interested in having me join his team, send me a mail in game please

@Mufa.1326 You have answered nothing of what I asked. The closest thing to answer that came from you was to make a build that had no hard counter, which is like ordering me to go hunt unicorns with a rope woven from Santa Claus’ nose hair. There is no such a thing as build that can do everything, and most importantly builds that try to do too much of everything usually end up failing at everything they do. If you cannot even understand this much, there is no point in me having discussion with you any further.

@Mufa.1326 : what you are saying is utter nonsense. There is no adaptability to the way one plays. You use a condition removal skill when you have many conditions, you use a stun breaker when you need to avoid major burst while crowd controled. But you do that regardless of build. You do that always because that’s what the kittened skill is for. That’s NOT ADAPTATION. That’s using your brain and playing with some skill.

GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE HOW YOU ADAPT WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING.

I dare you, give me at least one example how you can adapt your playstyle against a condition necro or burst thief, that you wouldn’t be doing regardless of build. If there is a way to counter something just by certain behavior everybody is doing it already, and if not, they are just plain bad.

Shukran.4851:

@ Silferas.3841: so opponent won the fight against you because he had to change his build..is it pro you think? impressive.

Yea, I think the ability to change your build on-spot to match the situation is a major part of your skill and is open only to those who know their profession well and have lots of combat experience. On the other hand ANYBODY who spends a few hours reading skills and doing some theorycrafting can make a balanced build for his class and just pray he doesn’t meet a build that counters his own. And you call THAT skill?

I think people are happy about this change, because the teams that stomped them day and night whenever they registered for a tournament are going to suffer. But that’s not going to change anything about random PUGs and newbies getting stomped by proper teams. Without a normal ranking system based on win/loose ratio and matchmaking that puts people of similar skill level into the same bracket, no matter what change is implemented nobody’s situation will get any better than it already is. People, stop being delusional about being skilled players trapped amongst bads, because of some stupid mechanic. This is the same as crying about ELO hell. We are all where we should be, and the only way to start winning is by improving one’s skill.

In a proper matchmaking system, people who can’t be bothered with changing their build to match the situation would just be matched against other people who couldn’t be bothered with learning a vital part of the game, while those willing to adapt would rise to a higher bracket. And everybody would be happy.

Shukran.4851:

and about last question: it is DESERVED. if you play with no stubreak and opponent strategy goes around CC it is your fault, not theirs.
you are outplayed, outbuilded and not smart. gg no re

In any balanced build, you have two stunbreakers at most, both on a considerable cooldown. More often than not, it’s just one stunbreaker. If you’re a great player you can anticipate the enemy’s movements and you can dodge two additional skills. And then you will get caught by all the other crowd controls (ever fought a cc heavy engi/guardian/warrior?), and you can go grab a drink while death timer ticks. Or you can be paranoid and make a counter-cc build that will be utterly useless in any other situation, or you can make a full condition spreading team, that will just own everything, because your condi removal capabilities coudln’t handle such an overload.

Simply said this build limitation propagates extremes that were before counterable with ease, yet now would require your team to know what builds your enemies are running ahead of time.

As many others have said before me: a game won before the match starts, that’s what this change is going to bring.

No underwater pvp please

I am against implementation of this feature. Here is why:

I am NOT a pro player, however I have only dedicated my play hours to pvp quite recently, and have managed to climb my way up to rank 30 in a matter of weeks, only by playing tournaments and nothing else (almost no spvp at all, which is several times more beneficial in terms of glory grind than tournaments are). During that time I have devised many builds, and have tried many professions. When it comes down to it, mastering a single static build to a level, where further progress in usage of tools disposable to you is negligible, takes no amount of time at all compared to mastering all that a class has to offer. With this hard skill cap measure implemented, an individual is no longer required to understand his class to be effective, rather than understanding JUST his build and nothing else. For a decent player, it takes no more than a day or two of playing tournaments with his friends to achieve a level of proficiency high enough to say he can use the build with little problems.

As an example, I will give you a situation that has happened to me in one of the tournaments: I was playing a bunker guardian, and so was my point opponent. After the game ended, I have found out that his rank has been almost double of mine, yet at the beginning of the match itself I have had no problems performing just as good as him, tanking the initial graveyard wave and holding the point against ongoing assaults for quite some time. Yet as time progressed further into the match, I have noticed his performance has increased rapidly thanks to swapping of utilities and an offhand. His team has won the game by a large margin in the end, and I have learned something important that helped me grow as a player. But what if this feature would have been implemented back then? I would have (with most likeliness) performed only SLIGHTLY worse than my opponent, who has almost double the experience, if not more considering I play other classes a lot too, than me. And that is, because skill growth in terms of mastering one build is suffering from a syndrome of diminishing returns.

And in reality, the implementation of this feature will ONLY lead to decrease in number of viable builds, as everyone will be trying to find the optimal distribution of resources in order to get the max out of what they can (at the casual level). Can you imagine running a build without any stunbreaker against a team devised around stacking as much crowd control as possible?

Yea, balance mobility!

And give thieves and elemenatalists necro’s health pool, guardian’s defenses and mesmer’s portal!

Nerva, I disagree with you mate, and I think you should play some more sPvP instead of crying on the forums all day… because the option I have suggested might actually help your skill grow, and in retrospect, save me from reading such stupid posts such as this.

Berserker specs counter this build by destroying the thief before they can do anything (you have 12k HP as a condition thief… that’s like 2 backstabs or 100b combo, or dragon’s tooth combo ect.). Condition thieves have one single stunbreaker at long cooldown, which is also needed to continue stacking up bleeds. So if you just think a little bit before you rush in and make sure they won’t escape your burst (which is easy with a little bit of patience) you can win them with most glass cannon builds.

Most condition-specs destroy bleeder thiefs too, by better condition management (every other profession with viable condition spec has better condition management). Most importantly of all, bleeds are one single condition. Everybody in this whole game has a means of removing one condition lol.

And caltrops? It’s a skill that is SUPPOSED to make you stay outside. Like guardian’s sanctuary, except caltrops’ weaker. Complaining about caltrops stacking up bleeds on you is like complaining about getting knocked down by sanctuary every time you stand up (again) and run towards it just to get hit back to the ground. Because you wanna cap the point lol. And just to mention: three casts of death blossom will do comparable bleeding damage as standing inside caltrops for majority of the duration. Caltrops bleeds are short and weak, and you have to stay inside the caltrops in order to keep the stacks high for more than two or three seconds.

The only way condition thiefs win fights is by their opponents being stupid and rushing towards their own demise. Don’t stand in caltrops, when you see them death blossom towards you just use that dodge, nothing worse will be coming your way anyway. It’s really so incredibly simple: stay out of the red circle and dodge two times. All they will do to you once you follow these two primitive steps is stack 3 bleeds for 3,5k HP and one weak poison until their cooldowns/initiative is back up. And if you think of complaining about stealth, shadow refuge has quite a long cooldown and most thieves in tournaments wanna keep it for ressing teammates/saving themselves from a bad spot.

There’s too little positive feedback in this thread. So here we go:

Thanks for the vid to everybody involved. It was enjoyable and informative. Also thanks to the top players for streaming even though sometimes the number of people watching might not be that big, but for those of us who do, the streams are great.

And to Jonathan Sharp and the dev team: thanks for an awesome game. Keep up the good work ’till we all get an awesome e-sport too! I was getting frustrated with spvp recently, just like a lot of players here on the forums, however this video has addressed many of my concerns. Some remain, but I have faith, that those will be addressed when the time is right. It would be great if we (as a community) got more of these videos (maybe even rather than blog posts), just to feel like we are a part of this grand scheme (even if only as viewers).