I think 1 v 1s are by and large balanced. It’s in team fights where all the different mechanics of the game come together to make certain classes extremely powerful compared to others.
I’d also disagree that necros are useless. They can spec so as to be virtually unkillable while pumping out some seriously frightening damage. Elementalists are ok, though I have come across some CC heavy builds which I couldn’t do much against. That was on my Ranger, though, and CC is the end of any Ranger.
Warrior has pretty much only one “strong” setup in terms of damage at that’s GS. We can’t burst like that with any other weapon save for a very glass cannon MH Axe/Rifle build.
I will say though that I recently made an Ele just to see what the skills were, yeah that class is not just a make one to level 2 and hop into PvP class. That was -awful-.
I run a rifle build which can burst for about 17k over 3 seconds, comes with 1600+ toughness, 20- 22kish HP, and 2 defensive utility skills. It’s no glass cannon. I think you underestimate how well the class can perform in a wide range of builds.
Immobilize is the bane of rangers. Thats how I die on my ranger 90% of the time.
On my thief however, I can shadowstep out of it (even with my bow skill-which is spamable).
Balanced?
Pretty much… its crazy. I just commented in another thread that I made a Ranger first, and since then have made a thief, an Engineer, and a Warrior. In addition to other things, the amount of immobilize outs these classes have actually made me laugh out loud when I first looked through the skills/traits of each.
That said, I’m sure Rangers aren’t the only profession and immobilize isn’t the only mechanic about which there are a lot of imbalances in the classes.
The thing is I could understand if it were simply a case of some classes being stronger than others in area X, Y, or Z, but from what I’ve seen virtually every other profession has multiple solid immobilize escape options while the Ranger has none at all. On top of this, its not as if the Ranger has some area that it’s particularly strong in compared to thieves or engineers to make up the balance. I don’t mind a balance which isn’t 1 – 1. A game like StarCraft doesn’t have each race equally good at every facet of the game, but over the course of the game as a whole they all have relatively equal chance to compete against one another. I think this is fine.
Again – this isn’t just a bout Rangers. I am sure there are similar problems across the board. I just know the most about Rangers so its easiest to come up with examples.
Agreed. My first class being a Ranger, I have literally laughed out loud for each at the absurdity of how comparatively strong the traits/skills are when I first looked at them when making my warrior, thief, and engineer.
Right now immobilize is very important. But is it overpowered? Hardly. People are quickly realizing the importance of taking stability. However boon stripping isn’t ready available to every class. The best counter they could bring in this situation is immobilization.
Not every team wants to take a necro. They just don’t do enough damage and bring just enough to the table. Mesmers can bring null field to handle stability.
Absurd amounts of immobilization stacking is a problem. I feel 10 seconds of cripple is excessive, but everyone has condition removal at hand. If it really is your bane, then handle it.
Putting immobilization into the list of things that stability counters would make the boon truly unstoppable. The only condition counters to it are currently daze and immobilize. It’s impractical to bring a necro for this one purpose.
Also realistically, you could be as stable as anything and still not be able to take a step. And you could break something that’s stunning you and still not be able to take a step. I don’t see a problem with how it is right now unless someone can single handedly get over 5 seconds of immobilization without putting a huge effort into it by sacrificing damage etc.
Thieves – 7 seconds.
I think that’s sort of fair, albeit long. Thief don’t have any natural stability, stun, or way other than immobilize to ensure that their victim won’t move. What combo is stopping them from moving for 7s? Straight up spamming of the immobilize skill on sword? Or maybe their trap + immobilize venom?
Its the trap plus the venom.
The problem with it is that its extremely strong. Against a good thief, you’d need three ways to break immobilize to avoid taking spike damage from him during this – and some classes can barely come up with one.
Right now immobilize is very important. But is it overpowered? Hardly. People are quickly realizing the importance of taking stability. However boon stripping isn’t ready available to every class. The best counter they could bring in this situation is immobilization.
Not every team wants to take a necro. They just don’t do enough damage and bring just enough to the table. Mesmers can bring null field to handle stability.
Absurd amounts of immobilization stacking is a problem. I feel 10 seconds of cripple is excessive, but everyone has condition removal at hand. If it really is your bane, then handle it.
Putting immobilization into the list of things that stability counters would make the boon truly unstoppable. The only condition counters to it are currently daze and immobilize. It’s impractical to bring a necro for this one purpose.
Also realistically, you could be as stable as anything and still not be able to take a step. And you could break something that’s stunning you and still not be able to take a step. I don’t see a problem with how it is right now unless someone can single handedly get over 5 seconds of immobilization without putting a huge effort into it by sacrificing damage etc.
Thieves – 7 seconds.
Art:
The reality is you need to balance 1v1 to show balance for 5v5. This is called induction. From early dev blogs, you can see that ArenaNet is committed to this.Sweeet:
You getting ganged up on is not the definition of imbalance. If you are fighting 2v1/3v1, your team should be out-manning them elsewhere. It’s not as simple as you’re boiling it down to be. The TL;DR for this whole thread is that this game is 3 weeks old. We can not speak accurately on balance. Give it time.Now you’re assuming I’m getting ganged up on, that was never the case nor did I say it was. I’m not talking about 2v1 or 3v1, I’m talking about high level competitive play in which you get the third round of a tournament, only to be scuppered by a team abusing Quickness to take you or a team mate out before you have time to react, or when you can’t react because you’ve been forced to blow your defensive cooldowns.
None of the guys I run with use Quickness, they too think it’s a cheesy game mechanic that has no place in competitive PvP. Yet every third round match we’ve been beaten in, has been because of a Warrior or Thief abusing it like there is no tomorrow.
You keep on trying to act like the problem doesn’t exist yet because the game is not even three weeks old. Well I’m here to tell you the problem does exist, and it’s not going to get any better. As a matter of fact it can only get worse, as more people realise the risk vs reward of using Quickness at the right time is far too lucrative not to take.
Yes top end teams are learning how to manage the noob teams who are trying to use Quickness, but when teams starting jibbing people into using their defensive cooldowns and dodges, we’ll see just how powerful Quickness can be. Not that we don’t know already, we all know exactly how powerful Quickness can be…
You sound like an intelligent person, yet you are either unwilling to see how detrimental Quickness is for the game, or you lack the foresight to see the game would actually be better off without it. No one profession should be able to take someone from full health to nothing in a matter of seconds within a competitive PvP environment no matter what the circumstances. There is nothing competitive about one class gibing another, nor is it to be praised or balanced around.
You’ve also said, and I quote;
Notice that I’m not actually saying Quickness is balanced. I’m just saying it’s too early to determine that. And evidence is pointing to it not being out of balance, due to how few of competitive teams are running Quickness.
Conversely, I think the teams I have seen NOT run it are doing so because everyone is specing anti-Quickness atm. So we’re just in the 3rd week meta… it’s to be expected.
How exactly is it too early to determine that? How is the evidence pointing to the contrary?
You have an opinion, make your mind up for gods sake, either you think it’s fine the way it is, or you also see that it is a detriment to the game. Stop beating around the bush waiting for “metrics” that may never be reliable. Use that brain of yours and think about what Quickness allows a player to do in a competitive PvP environment, and ask yourself whether you think said burst from one profession in a matter of seconds has any place in competitive PvP. It’s not exactly a hard concept to grasp, it’s not like the game would fall over without it.
Well, do you think the game would be better off without Quickness, or do you think Quickness adds a level of competitive play unreachable without it? I’m eager to hear your actual thoughts on Quickness as a game changing mechanic.
As I’ve explained in the other quickness thread (its linked in my a recent post in this one), I don’t think the problem is with quickness, but with the overall way DPS synergizes with some overall game mechanics.
I gave the example of a Rifle Warrior build I use which is not a glass cannon, does not use quickness at all, and yet can hit for 17k in about 3 seconds.
So try to step back and recognize that the issue isn’t quickness, but something greater. Look, I’m with you in terms of the kind of PvP experience you’re looking for in the end, but I think focusing on quickness as THE obstacle to that is missing some other very important problems.
Learn to use condition removal and stop crying.
If they want to escape one, they absolutely need to use their condition removal as there are no other options. At the same time, they’re a class which has ultimately only one option for clearing out conditions and its on a very long cooldown, so if they do use the remover for the immobilize break, they’re especially susceptible to condition damage after that point.
Well, you can take pets that break conditions too, brown bears are your friend.
Apart from this being a Ranger specific issue when I was just giving the Ranger as a single example of a more widespread problem, keep in mind that
A) the Brown Bear is the only condition removing pet
B) It only removes a single condition which may not be the one you need removed
C) It would have to be in range at the very instant you need to break, which just by the nature of it being a melee pet it often won’t – and probably shouldn’t – be
D) Rangers need to rely on their pets for many things, including even CC. They’re the only class I can think of which doesn’t have any immobilizes, for example – at least until you add pets. Asking a Ranger to take a bear to clear conditions is asking him to give up other things which other pets can provide. Of course, every class has to choose what they want to bring and what they don’t, but the issue with the Ranger in particular is that most other classes have in their weapon attacks many things Rangers need to trait and take utility skills to get, and then those classes get to take more in their traits and utility skills.
Like I said, though, the Ranger was just an example.
I personally don’t think the time-to-kill is too short in a 1v2…….
snip
I think a comparison between dota and objective based MMO PvP is not necessarily a good one, because the goals in the two games and the means by which you go about achieving those goals are so different. In fact, I very highly value objective based PvP (not that dota isn’t objective based, but its just a different animal) and I think that’s a big part of the reason I don’t have as much fun in this game as others: right now, most people don’t really play the objectives very well or consistently.
Given this, I think the whole concept of defending a point, having 1, 2, or 3 people coming to try to take it away and managing to survive long enough for teammates to arrive to help defend absolutely needs to be possible. For point of reference, in TOR whether I was on my tank or my squishy DPS, I could hold a point long enough for help to arrive – though by different means and with different subtleties to it all – ahh, such great depth! I think this makes the game more team oriented, not less. It means that the victor of the overall TEAM PvP match is going to be the TEAM who can work together to control the map and win the fights. Contrast this to the groups of 3 or 4 people who run around taking points by ganking other players. In that latter case, the team that wins may be the one who controls the map the best, but I think it takes something away from other aspects of the team versus team concept.
I also think that people dieing in 10 or 15 seconds is terrible for the e-sport concept. One of the things that makes competition interesting to watch is a tension about the outcome which builds and resolves over time. Thus, you watch a football game and see it slowly take shape. A game which is 24 – 0 in the first quarter is simply not entertaining, but one which gets to be 24 – 0 over the course of 4 quarters can be interesting. Imagine if boxing matches ended in 20 seconds. It would be a tremendously unpopular sport. Of course, you can go the other way too far as well, and so ideally you want a balance where battles are decided before it gets boring not so quickly that they don’t have a chance to take shape.
I think the problems go deeper than simply balancing the classes. See my post in the other quickness thread where I specifically explain why balancing 1v1s in this game by its very nature imbalances team games.
That is just simply not true. You can link me, and I will read it. However, I think that game designers are largely understanding that if your 1v1 is not sound, you will never have balance at any number greater, especially 5v5.
I think the problems go deeper than simply balancing the classes. See my post in the other quickness thread where I specifically explain why balancing 1v1s in this game by its very nature imbalances team games.
That is just simply not true. You can link me, and I will read it. However, I think that game designers are largely understanding that if your 1v1 is not sound, you will never have balance at any number greater, especially 5v5.
Well the thing is, I agree with you in general. 1 v 1 being balanced is a necessary condition for team fights being balanced, but I don’t think its a sufficient condition. I also believe that there are certain factors because of its unique design such that in this particular game balancing 1 v 1 almost intrinsically imbalances 5v5 and other team fights. I think its unique to GW2 because of some of the game mechanics.
Here is the post explaining it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Am-I-the-only-one-who-thinks-Quickness-needs-to-be-removed/page/2#post75579
Learn to use condition removal and stop crying.
… and then die to the necro, ranger, mesmer… heck, to anyone who decides to put stack bleeds on you after you’ve used it.
The thing to realize here is that each class is a little different in what it has for condition removal, CC breaks, etc., and it doesn’t always make sense. Take, for example, the Ranger – a class with no immobilize breaks at all. If they want to escape one, they absolutely need to use their condition removal as there are no other options. At the same time, they’re a class which has ultimately only one option for clearing out conditions and its on a very long cooldown, so if they do use the remover for the immobilize break, they’re especially susceptible to condition damage after that point.
Compare that to thieves and engineers, for example, who have some of the most readily available immobilize breaks in the game and also have some pretty readily available condition cleansing as well. It would seem to make more sense for a class who needs to use condition removal to escape immobilize to have more condition removal, and a class which doesn’t need it to do so to have less, but its currently not really balanced in any particularly orderly way.
Art:
The reality is you need to balance 1v1 to show balance for 5v5. This is called induction. From early dev blogs, you can see that ArenaNet is committed to this.Sweeet:
You getting ganged up on is not the definition of imbalance. If you are fighting 2v1/3v1, your team should be out-manning them elsewhere. It’s not as simple as you’re boiling it down to be. The TL;DR for this whole thread is that this game is 3 weeks old. We can not speak accurately on balance. Give it time.
I think the problems go deeper than simply balancing the classes. See my post in the other quickness thread where I specifically explain why balancing 1v1s in this game by its very nature imbalances team games.
Reading this thread is hilarious. It’s reminiscent of all the threads in other competitive PvP games complaining about “broken” abilities that for some reason real competitive players never have a problem with.
If we take the complaints in this thread and see what they look like in League of Legends, a very similar competitive game (5 players on each side, winning is about objectives and not kills though kills help, and a limited set of abilities for each player), it becomes evident that quickness is not a problem. The complaints boil down to “This skill does too much burst damage to me and I can’t avoid it when my defensive skills are on CD because I’ve already used them!”
Well, if it’s a 1v1, then you used your defensive skills at the wrong time for the wrong crowd control. You should know that their class carries quickness – why did you use your escape on a soft cc?
If it’s 1v2, you are meant to lose given equal skill levels. This is a team game.
If it’s an even matchup, and then suddenly another enemy sneaks into the fight and kills you and that’s not fair because you didn’t see him coming so all your defensive skills are on cooldown, you were ALSO meant to lose. You got ganked. The extra enemy roamed. What you can do with that is either have your team take an objective since the extra enemy had to sacrifice position for that, or have them roam as well/follow the roamer.
Quickness is not broken because you can’t defend against it when you’ve already used all of your escapes. This is a team game, and you are not meant to be able to 1v2 or 1v3 yourself. You should also understand that positioning, map control, and map awareness are still relevant in this game. When you only have five players, every single player is about as important as you. Every single enemy is also as important as you. That doesn’t mean skill doesn’t matter, because skill is what wins you the game, but it does mean that you can’t faceroll this game 1v5 as a solo superstar and expect to win. If you want to do that, play a game where there are no teams. If you want to get better, figure out how to build for whatever is stopping you from winning the game (note: you do not build for kills or fighting, you build for winning the game) and realize that there are nine other players in the game who might be at least as good as you.
Also, 8v8 is not competitive and should not be balanced around if GW2 is to become an eSport.
edit: Every class has two dodges for free that regenerate with time. My warrior can take Shield Stance, Endure Pain, and Fear Me on top of that. My mesmer can take Phase Retreat, Chaos Armor (Staff 4 Chaos Armor has a 100% chance of proccing Protection), several Aegis procs, multiple sources of Evasion/Distortion, and multiple sources of Reflection. Many classes have 5+ ways to mitigate or avoid damage completely. You can easily dodge Quickness, and other threatening abilities, as long as you have the map awareness to know when to fight and when to not fight.
Two points. Keep in mind here that I’m not a “quickness is bad” person. I’m a “there’s something off about the PvP in general” person.
First, you’re certainly not meant to win a 1 v 2 against players of equal skill – at least not in normal circumstances. You should, however, be able to put up a fight and ideally survive long enough for help to arrive. In the current state of the game, you really can’t at equal skill level. The time to kill is just too short, the way CC and DPS increase per additional player is too exponential, etc.
Second, I think you’re overestimating how many CC breaks, mitigation – basically, defense in general – every class can bring. Some have it far better than others, for example Engineers with a 15 second cooldown break immobilize versus Rangers without any way to break immobilize. As it is, this area of the game isn’t quite balanced. This isn’t to say that every class doesn’t have some way to deal with every thing they’ll face, but some will still run dry on these options far, far more quickly, and some need to sacrifice far, far more in their overall build to get these options than others.
No question. The ranger state sticks out as one which is essentially unrecoverable from apart from immediate teammate assistance.
I think the end result of the current capture system is precisely that players are encouraged to simply roam about in groups. Its so incredibly quick to neutralize a point that many times its just more advantageous to roam than to play point defense. Because it is also a proximity capture system in a game where movement is so essential, it all the more makes it difficult to defend.
I much prefer the system of having a central node at each control point which needs to be interacted with for some given period of time to capture the point. To me, it encourages defense and introduces a variety of subtleties to capturing and defending which enrich the game.
I think that quickness gets a bad rap for what is ultimately a deeper issue with the PvP combat in the game.
Up until GW2 (at least generally speaking), attacks were “instant.” As soon as an attack ability was triggered, the target took its damage (in the case of instant casts) or began to take its damage (channeled casts). Instant casts were completely unavoidable. Channeled casts could be cut short by line of sighting mid-cast or mitigated by using a defensive ability. Therefore, it was important that no attack exceeded a certain reasonable percentage of opponents’ HP. Those attacks which could hit for 50% or more of the targets health were generally consistently nerfed to bring them more in line.
GW2 has introduced the evade. Whereas previously the only way to avoid damage was to act before an attack was initiated, in this game attacks are animation based and it is possible to avoid any one by triggering an evade before the animation completes. Partly to make this mechanic “worth it,” GW2 has been designed with very heavy hitting attack potential. For example, I have a Rifle Warrior build which, though NOT a glass cannon (1600 toughness, 22k hp, 2 defensive skills), can still hit for 16 – 17k over the course of 2 button presses and about 3 seconds.
Now this and other hard hitting attacks are easily recognized and should be evaded through dodge rolling, certain defensive skills, or certain weapon skills, or mitigated with protection or some other defensive boon.
In theory, this all makes perfect sense. In practice, it does not work this well because of how this mechanic interacts with a few other things.
First we need to note that the game has CC, and while most of the CCs are short the damage that can be taken in that time is immense.
Second, GW2 is a team game. While each player only has so many evades and mitigations available, the opposing team has multiple players worth of CCs and damage spikes. Thus, it is common for a player to take large hits by being CCed past his number of CC breaks or to have no endurance for a dodge when the 2nd or 3rd opponent tries to drop a damage spike on him.
Consider that if each class has a sufficient number and variety of CC, CC break, damage mitigation, and damage spike such that he will evenly balance out with any other class in a 1 v 1, then by its very nature any single player is going to be lacking by a degree of approximately 50% when it comes to facing an additional player. The end result is that any one player simply does not have the ability to avoid the CC and spike damage from any two or more players of equal skill.
Now given this, the same ought to be true of other MMO PvP combat systems if they are also balanced so that 1v1s are even. The reason it hasn’t been this way is that these games have had lower overall damage (they were not trying to incentivize dodging, as we noted) along with dedicated healing and dedicated support. Thus, 3 players chain stunning and spike damaging one would not necessarily be the end of that player because
a) Each of those players’ damage was significantly smaller compared to what it can be in GW2
b) That damage could be mitigated by dedicated PvP tanks using taunts, guards, and other mechanics
c) That damage could be made up for by dedicated healers
While Guild Wars 2 does permit players to spec into support and healing roles, the degree of impact they can have in damage mitigation or health replacement is significantly less than the healers and tanks from other games while the damage incoming on a player in GW2 is significantly more than what they would be facing in other games. The end result is a very short time-to-kill and lots of players feeling unhappy with the state of the game.
To really see how drastically different impact the healer/support players have in other games compared to GW2, consider that whereas in virtually all games to this point the most widely accepted sound strategy was to eliminate the healing and support players on the opposing team first, because they helped the team to stay alive and to succeed in the match, in GW2 the most common strategy is to worry about the support players last because they are typically too hard to kill relative to the other players while putting out the least amount of DPS threat. In GW2, the support isn’t being nearly so supportive as we’d hope and we know this because we don’t typically concern ourselves with cutting off that support as though its having a sufficiently high impact on the opposing team’s survivability or even DPS.
I strongly believe that its all of this which is really making sPvP what it currently is, and, while quickness contributes to that spike damage, its not, in the end, by any means the biggest culprit.
Yes, I don’t think there’s any question that sPvP in its current form is rather a mess. There are just so many symptoms and too many causes to fix all that easily, but hopefully something can be done because, at its core, there’s something fun about the PvP in the game. It just can’t really come to the surface from all of the muck that is keeping it down.
- I don’t so much have a problem with stealth. It doesn’t seem to be that big a problem in my eyes.
- Retaliation is absolutely an issue. It’s not so much a bad mechanic in itself, by any means. Rather, its those builds that can keep it up permanently which are enormously problematic.
- Quickness itself isn’t really a problem, as I see it, though it could be toned down a bit. Rather, I think you’re seeking the cause for one of the game’s biggest symptoms: a time-to-kill which is far, far too short. I think its the confluence of a number of things that causes this. Namely:
a) It’s possible to create builds which do certain attacks which are far and away stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. I have a Rifle Warrior build which not only has very adequate defense but can put up 17 – 18k damage over the course of 3 seconds (and that’s without quickness, btw).
b) Because of these strong attacks, dodging is incredibly important, and this is really the design philosophy: make dodging matter by having powerful attacks. However, the way CC works in the game interferes with this. GW2 was originally touted as having much improved CC mechanics from other games insofar as that the CC was all very short. While this is true, the attacks being so strong means that a 1 second CC is all you really need to ruin somebody’s day. Add to this the fact that CC breaks are abundant for some classes (e.g., Thieves, Engineers) while virtually nonexistant for others (e.g., Rangers) and you have what ends up being a pretty big problem.
c) Because game does not have the so-called trinity of MMOs, these various factors are amplified even more. Whereas being stunlocked and focused by 2 or 3 players in other games could be survived through heals and the support of good PvP tank play, here you’re largely on your own. Yes, Guardians and, to a lesser degree, a few other classes can provide some measure of healing and damage mitigation, but it pales in comparison to what has traditionally been available and, when the damage in what has traditionally been available pales in comparison to what can be put out in GW2, it all just adds up to people dying at sometimes absurd rates.
- There is another whole topic about the fact that having so many pets/minions/turrets/etc. make the PvP feel more like player versus pet than player versus player. It just takes a lot away from everything.
- The maps themselves aren’t balanced. The Chieftan is significantly more difficult than Svanir, The blue soldiers are somewhat more challenging than the red soldiers, the beach is harder to capture and defend than the dock, etc.
- The capture and scoring mechanic encourages a zergy play style. It’s often more advantageous to your team to capture a point and move on to the next one than to defend it. This is particularly true when combined with the way damage scales much faster with larger numbers of players. Guarding a point alone is almost silly outside of a few particular classes using particular builds, because if the other team shows up with 2 or 3 players, they’er going to get the point AND the kill, whereas by moving you can quickly neutralize an enemy’s point, even if you aren’t able to capture it yourself.
I think there are some other issues, but these are a good place to start.
I am very glad to have seen this topic, because its one of the biggest reasons I think sPvP in this game is just not very good or on par with what other games have to offer. That isn’t to say there isn’t the core of something good – there certainly is, and I’d love to see it come out at some point. That said, right now there are a number of issues which I think seriously detract from it, and this is one of them.
Consider that in a 5v5 tournament match – the supposedly less zergy format – you can have up to 50 entities on the battlefield at the same time, between players, Ranger Pets, Necro minions, Mesmer illusions, Engineer turrets, Ogre rune rockdogs, Elementalist Elementals, etc. A lot of other games are criticized as being player versus gear, and one of the big intentions behind the sPvP in Guild Wars 2 was to eliminate that, but it ends up feeling like player versus RNG or player versus AI more than player versus player. A huge portion of what goes on in any PvP battle is very much dependant upon what AIs and RNGs are doing, as opposed to being about purely what buttons the competitors sitting behind their keyboards are pressing.
To me, this seriously detracts from the integrity of the sPvP, not to mention that it makes every battlefield into a giant mess. I think if the sPvP in this game is to be taken seriously – especially if its to be given any kind of recognition as an e-sport – this needs to change drastically. The problem is, of course, that so many of these NPC entities are such a core mechanic to the classes that removing them seems impossible. All in all, I think its a pretty unfortunate situation.