Guild Wars 2

Kampilan.3895:

But the way certain things are done post-expansion, it seems like the game is highly catered to people with (1) lots of time, (2) lots of money and/or (3) lots of… skills.

I guess what we are attempting to find out here is what are you perceiving as ‘a lot of time’ spent?

We both can agree the content in HoT is a step up in difficulty going in solo, if you can’t manage it float along with the groups out there, or party up with friends or whatever. The lots of money factor has always existed, players who spent money always got a massive lead on everything beforehand.

But Time? What time factor are we talking here? Some of your examples of ‘casual content that is still entertaining’ like Tequatl / World bosses can still be done, but you know that kind of train is time-gated well before HoT. Yet you can say players who only had an hour to play couldn’t easily do certain things before, should we cater all content to even the set of players who can’t be online for more than an hour every other day or less?

Outside of these holiday events, the only difference between players with a lot of time on their hands to play, versus a little, is how fast you get what you want logically speaking. It HELPS to be more skillful so you do not fail at the content so much, but by no means is it REQUIRED as long as you keep improving through repeat attempts. That’s is what we are saying, there is still a majority of the content that is Casual-Friendly.

…As for WvW, don’t worry, not even Hardcore WvWers are really in there right now except to K-Train. That mode needs a massive stimulus.

So, going to skip straight to a few things, just so you understand what might be within this topic, the title doesn’t quite help all that much huh?

- Metas.
- Matchmaking.
- GW2 Esport.

That’s all that is in here. If you were looking for another Dragonhunter is OP thread, we got enough of those.

That being said, I want to more or less have a discourse with all of you on the three points above, because they are important to just about everything SPvP related. Let’s get to it, I would like to get this all in one or two posts.

Metas: We know them, we want to love to hate them. We dream of a truly balanced meta that everyone can play mostly whatever they want in SPvP, maybe a few builds don’t quite work all that well but for just about everyone, everything is viable!

…Hate to be the guy who breaks it for you and I hope this is just a refresher but there will never be a perfect meta like that. Not a single game out there has created the perfect Meta, it cannot exist. There will always be a group getting a Charrzooka in the nethers, and we have to accept it. What actually matters in a Meta, what truly makes serious metas a reality, has nothing to do with the actual balance of, in this case, professions/sigils/runes. What a healthy Meta needs to foster good quality SPvP is two things, it is effective in skilled hands, and if it is fun to play As and Against. That’s it, nothing else matters in a Meta as everything even balance ties into those two factors.

The first point, effective in skilled hands, essentially amounts to the skill curve of one player versus another playing the same exact setup. It is what we all adore in those tourney ‘BIGGEST PLAYS’, versus the unusual hotjoin shenanigans. When there is always something more to improve, given a certain ‘meta’ build, you can have allowances for players of different skill levels come together to form teams and actually duke it out. Obviously, builds matter, however when the ‘effective in skilled hands’ is balanced, even hard counters can be beaten sometimes…sometimes.

That kind of ties into my second point, entertainment value for and against. Assuming the first point, we now have to ensure that all players are kept invested in fighting uneven matchups. I doubt any of us are fighting our clones as the other team so naturally every matchup is uneven in some regard. What keeps the competition healthy is if the competition between teams or players was entertaining enough to continue down that path. Even if you have extremely effective meta builds, if said meta builds are not fostered in a healthy, fun PvP environment both for and against said build, PvP will FAIL. We are competing in a game, or a hobby or something more, yet even the most hardcore SPvPer will cry out against a ‘toxic’ meta that fosters no entertainment! There has to be a higher level balance in check to ensure that nothing like this happens when numbers, abilities, well literally anything changes as especially in GW2 changes alter relative power. You nerf one build, a counter build becomes less useful and gets played less, some other builds become powerful, etc. It’s a bumpy ride to say the least.

Matchmaking: …Is the mic on? Ok, this will be fast, ahem…

Matchmaking might be a bit unfair and I bet everyone even Arenanet knows, but do not blame every single loss you have at your last pip before crossing a tier or division on it. Get better, we are all tired of hearing about how you almost reached Ruby. GW2 is not the first game to have matchmaking pit players unfairly against statistically stronger players, it just means you are being TESTED to see if you are better than the odds, pass the test and stop making threads about it. Thank you.

GW2 Esport: Uh…That’s not happening for a while. I agree with everyone who thinks it is very doubtful, there is A LOT OF THINGS that need to happen before it becomes considered. To be blunt, up until Heart of Thorns we shouldn’t even accept the prospect of GW2 SPvP being a thing. What I mean to say is, Heart of Thorns is a fresh slate, the beginning of beginnings, it is a ‘start-over’ on making GW2 Esport a thing.

We cannot advertise it as something ‘long lasting’ as it has always been in flux and never looked at realistically until recently. Might as well pretend the past 3 years of SPvP on a ‘global scale’ were…uh…Beta. Sure. Let’s start anew, give it a chance.

- Work on in-game/stream spectator systems for ease of understanding the gameplay. We are already seeing this being worked on both positively and negatively…Ugh Auras.
- Work on communicating with the LEAST knowledgeable spectators. Just assume everyone watching the stream doesn’t know how a sword works or what numbers mean. SPEND TIME DURING BREAKS SHOWING VISUAL CUES AND TALK ABOUT ELEMENTS IN THE GAME! This is why players who play GW2 actually understand and stick around watching ESL streams versus ambient spectators who see flashy effects and wonder if they are on some sort of drug.
- DO ALL OF THIS SLOWLY. Take time to get the systems correct, get Metas right, correct any ‘kinks’ in Matchmaking.

…Alright that’s all I wanted to say.

“So, you actually had three things for a healthy meta if you split playing for and against…”

Don’t care, you got the point.

“Match-making is still awful though! What about those ‘rank exploiters’ messing with the matchups?”

What matters here is that we all acknowledge it. We should expect countermeasures to be in place in the future if Arenanet truly wants GW2 to be treated seriously as an Esport. Deal with it, go beat Toker at Thief- OK yea that’s not going to happen but you can dream.

“You don’t seem like a nice person.”

Welcome to Player Versus Player, enjoy your stay and thank you for reading!

Daddicus.6128:

Ayrilana.1396:

Exactly where are you forced by the game to need ascended to do content other than high level fractals? Player created requirements do not count. I could require all players to fight with pink armor but that doesn’t mean it’s actually required for that content.

You can complete all content, other than raids, in whatever build that you want. Everything on the HoT maps can now be done in whatever build you want. Every class can complete any of the HoT content. I’ve done map completion, ran the story, and done metas with all of them. You can do PvP and WvW in any build that you want. Yes, some builds will be more effective than others.

Why are you excluding player-created requirements? Raids are out of the question unless you have maxed your gear, because there are no teams that will allow you to come with them. You are excluding the main source of angst over this.

…Because as a player you can make your own rules for doing the raid? You are blaming the wrong people here if you are instigating that Arenanet should be accountable for Player Requirements, this is happening way too much. Even Arenanet said that these raids aren’t meant to be done with any pick-up group, rather guilds will have much more success. Why? It might be because guilds have players that have worked together for some time on various other activities, and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They can meet the challenge easily, and know very well what their gear requirement for their friends and guildmates will be to complete the raid.

Pick-up groups don’t. And thus we are seeing people scrambling over themselves making these one-time deal groups and fail, and blame the gear rather than themselves. Players will blame literally EVERYTHING else but themselves, that is precisely the biggest problem underlying everything with HoT, people are just too stubborn to learn. Even though, EVEN though the majority of the content in game isn’t even remotely close to the level of challenge of raiding.

I sincerely hope the Gerent Nerf is the last PvE nerf we will see for HoT.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Thaddeus.4891:

Yaki.9563:

I’m pretty disappointed. I guess I’m forced to craft ascended armor and weapons if I want to continue in fractals and that is just not worth it. I opened about 20 days worth of daily boxes (40 regular, 20 adept, 20 of the middle tier) and got nothing. GG and bye bye.

If you bother looking thing up. If only lol.

Ascended box are dropped from daily 51-100. There is a very small chance to drop from Veteran and zero from Adept and Mist chest.

With Trinkets alone you can reach 94 AR which mean you can do up to level 68 where you should get about 1 Ascended box (weapons or armor) for every 6 days on average.

Pretty much similar to what we used to have.

Honestly, what data are you looking at?

I’m looking at King’s Fractal Drop Rate data here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml#

These data indicate that from the daily boxes you have about a 12.5% chance of getting an armor box from a Champion daily chest, and practically 0 chance from any other chest. That’s a skin every 8 days. Pre-HoT if you did 50, 40, 30 daily you’d get an armor box every 5 days or so (again, using that same data sheet.)

Skin drops have been radically nerfed – about 1 per 5 days to 1 per 25 days. Golden skin drops are abysmal – about 1 per 50 days.

The rewards are worse than before HoT, still. The only thing that’s better now is XP and maybe gold, though I haven’t looked at that data.

It’s about, on average, 32s per box given the discounted ones. You can easily get a couple gold every hour doing fractals. Experience is probably the biggest one, hundreds of thousands of experience at 50+ levels, might not be CoF level but it is considerably less ‘grindy’ and more entertaining to do Fractals to level.

I think given what I have seen, gold rewards are about even or greater than Pre-HoT, experience is profoundly better.

…Are you secretly implying that Warriors are in a state that when we get stomped, our own allies rally out of pity?!

Might be my bias, but wow that bug hits home hard.

Draknar.5748:

Things that people claimed weren’t casual friendly pre-HoT:

Fractals (3 mini dungeons plus a boss?! I don’t have time for that I play 20min a day, I’m casual!)
Dungeons (I can’t get into a group because I don’t have zerk gear and I don’t speedrun! I’m casual!)
World completion (why do we have to do WvW for world completion, I’m casual, I don’t like PvP!)
Story-mode finale (I need a group to finish the story?! what the heck Anet! I’m too casual for that!)
Living Story S1 (these LS events are timed?! You’re saying I can’t do all of the achievements within the 2 weeks if I only play 10min a day?! I’m casual, wtf ANET!
Living Story S2 (wtf Anet, I didn’t log in when these were released because I’m super casual, and now you want me to grind gold so I can trade for gems? I’m casual! I don’t have the time nor money to do this!)
Dailies (Whoa, Anet, look at how long it’s taking to do these dailies! And I have to do it to get laurels?! I’m only on for 2min a day! I can’t possibly get all of this AP that you are forcing me to get! Make it casual friendly!)

I think a lot of people think that casual friendly means everything needs to be able to be completed quickly or easily. A casual player does not imply a bad player, it implies someone that plays at their own, typically slow, pace. Being able to do things at your own pace: that’s the definition of being casual friendly.

In GW2 you can do literally everything at your own pace (minus holiday events, as those are time limited). That is casual friendly. Raids is the only area that I would say has the biggest obstacle to casual players, and that’s getting a 10man group together.

I’d love to hear what exactly in GW2 you couldn’t do at your own, casual, pace.

If something takes a long time, it doesn’t mean it isn’t casual friendly, it just means it will take longer to complete, but it can still be 100% casual.

People claimed crafting legendaries wasn’t casual, but I can assure you I crafted two from scratch, casually, over the course of 2 years. Some days I felt like working towards a requirement, some days I didn’t. I dictated the pace I completed things. THAT IS CASUAL.

Million…Million times this.

And the worst part is that by addressing and keeping to the formula they had for 3 years, GW2 would never be able to sustain for a long time since the dedicated folks that wanted more challenge would never receive it would end up leaving, despite the fact GW2 has one of the best combat systems in an MMO ever. The casual players wane out over time, seeing the same old ‘new content’ that doesn’t do anything but provide skins maybe. What incentive is there to stick around without long-term goals? Why play?

Arenanet needed to included challenging content, and slightly up the difficulty in open-world. We are a few months into Heart of Thorns, players have finally got these maps covered, they have seen and dare say met the challenges facing them. People need to realize that by surviving and playing in the jungle and succeeding at events and exploration, they have subtly gotten better at the game than they were before HoT. Most definitely, they had to adjust or else!

Now if only they made the HoT maps naturally fill to say Hard Cap before creating a new instance, rework the player instance entrances a bit, and I believe the open-world HoT would be just dandy!

More like ‘Misleading Title Strikes Again’.

You could have phrased literally everything better than this unproductive tone.

Chip Skylark.2367:

Stop patting Anet on the back please. This should have been nerfed before league even STARTED. It should have been nerfed on day 1 of Heart of Thorns.

It was the most obviously overpowered ridiculous insult to PvP I’ve seen in a long time.

The devs should not be rewarded for screwing up and taking their sweet time to fix something this obviously broken.

I don’t think we are patting them so much on the back, if anything I am more impressed they decided to take this kind of action mid-league, contrary to what they wanted Leagues to be, uninterrupted by ‘balance changes’. It gives us a satisfaction that they finally listened, which is a good thing.

…Yes, they should have absolutely saw this coming, there’s no way they aren’t aware of it now. I would rather not be too bitter about it given the circumstances, and I really do hope they learn from this to avoid this happening next time.

I am more interested in seeing what comes out on top next, but I doubt any bunkers will be as unbreakable as what Chronobunker was.

AWWWW SNAP.

Alright, let’s see how this all turns out, I betcha Chronobunker is still going to be a solid support, its just not going to be able to do what it COULD do before.

Also, we need to queue the party music, anyone?

It’s essentially GreatAxe with Durability, Marauder, Str/Def/Disc. Endure Pain and Signet of Might are interchangable depending on how much block the other team has, but what I have noticed is a profound amount of cleave pressure, and the universal boon procs from the set are always welcome, especially protection.

My general feel after playing it is that it is fairly mobile and an excellent +1 to float between points or decap. The shield and stances make for a fairly decent psuedo bunker but that’s not the intent of it.

It’s nothing new though, I’ll probably hit a limit with it, flip over to scrapper for a time, and get a feel on what my queue opponents are like before flipping back.

Been on and off with SPvP, floating between Engi and Warrior competitively.

Decided to try out a build recommended by a solid source, won the last 10 pips for Emerald to reach Sapphire tonight with it on my Warrior.

Honestly, Durability Runes are way too good.

Here’s a checklist for you DeShadowWolf, at least 2 will be used as a response to you.

- Ad Hominem
- Restating previous assertions as reality, without proof
- Deflection away or back to you on the subject
- Yet another Argument to the Stone for the triple

Though in an ironic twist if none of these happen due to my post here, well that suits the progression of dialogue in the thread far more than what is going on now.

Bearded.6485:

No no. This wouldn’t apply to invidual players but to everyone in the match.

You’re missing the point of your own suggestion.

In fact, your suggestion can be interpreted in two ways:

- Each player gets their own RNG on whether they get the instability or not, based on their rank. This means that the higher the rank you are, the more likely you are to get an instability which changes how you yourself play, compared to other players who won’t have it. This isn’t normal competitive play, and the same exact players with the same exact ranks on the same exact map with the same exact instability, might get a different amount of players with the instability than before. That literally makes each game nonstandard and kills any competitive normalcy.

- The RNG is the same across the board, averaged based on the ranks playing, meaning everyone gets the same chance for having an instability affect their play. Once again, the mere fact that something RNG affects the very onset of playing a map breaks the competitive standard, as the same match repeated 100x times can have different outcomes on who does and does not get an instability.

Lastly, instabilities affect balance, things like your conditions last 50% more or less can make some builds broken beyond belief.

Your suggestion doesn’t ‘fix’ anything.

Bearded.6485:

This would be no different than snow, wind, or rain in a football game.

Also I’m not sure what you mean by competitive enviroment. As the only thing this league is about is the top 2 tiers using ambers and free at accounts to farm pips from emeralds and sapphires.

It’s quite different as snow, wind or rain at a football game affects everyone equally, whereas implementing an RNG dependent effect based on your rank, which may give you a handicap, is utterly broken and unbalanced.

Just because the current state of SPvP is in a poor shape doesn’t mean we should be tossing out ideas that go contrary against the purpose of the gamemode.

So no dice.

Astralporing.1957:

Sarrs.4831:

NeXeD.3042:

They can gateway aesthetics all they want, performance is the only no no

You don’t even need to do well to get the legendary wings. You just need to complete Amber ten times which has no tier or pip loss.

The 4th tier achievement states that you need to advance 4 divisions within a season. That means reaching Diamond. Which, by the way, noone can do reliably without cheating the system.

It’s…worded poorly, I recall you need to simply cross divisions 4 times in a season, which could mean as long as you cross divisions during league seasons you will get credit towards the achievement.

…Still waiting on devs to confirm/deny, they probably won’t and will force us to go into the 2nd season to find out.

I don’t know you.

I don’t know what you were thinking, but let’s be clear. In a competitive environment like SPvP, the rules and standards for each and every game must be the same, a map will play out exactly the same way without outside interference, the only factors being the players and what they bring.

Putting any sort of RNG effect based on how each player is performing in SPvP as a whole, is detrimental to what a competitive environment is.

So no. Your idea is wrong. Thank you for your input though.

Gewd.8125:

It is pretty much universally agreed that Wildstar failed because of overfocus on hardcore content. If you think otherwise you are in some fantasy world by your own. They spent a huge amount of resources on their raids and the rest of the game suffered as a result.

The rest of your post is literally role bias, Wildstar had by its design massive issues with its hardcore content.

For instance, instances only gave rewards when the full group did all the encounters at a gold rating, yes, runs were literally graded on performance. A lot of the progression loot was gated behind players playing 100% all the time, which is garbage in any sense. You could have a flawless run, mess up on the final boss for the last few %, get a silver rating and not get anything worthwhile. Doesn’t take a genius to see what that causes, it was just poor reward design.

The second issue, interesting enough was that it wasn’t promoted enough, there were nearly zero advertisements for the game while WoW at the same point was releasing an expansion. That never ends well, so the launch got delayed in tune. Gross, so the appeal was already downhill from the start.

There were also the usual bugs that came with any new MMO, but although the difficulty of content was there, the means behind keeping players around were done poorly.

Gewd.8125:

I could’ve handled the harder roles if it came down to it.

But guess what? I don’t like to be the meatshield occasionally moving the boss or the healer staring at health bars the entire time. And the people at arena.net realized that most people don’t either.

That is why I left for Guild Wars 1, and then Guild Wars 2 where there would be no trinity that allowed tanks and healers to become spoiled brats, being able to demand special treatment and make 39 other people wait for you all day. I’m not sure why anet changed their minds. It seems to me they are randomly trying things to see what will make them more money now even if it goes against their original manifesto.

I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with having easier roles in the raid. I had fun playing with my guild, and we could take our friends that sucked at the game instead of ditching them.

The hardcore mentality that started with BC has led raids down a dark road. At least Blizzard was smart enough to try to alleviate the issue with raid finder and multiple difficulties.

Honestly I don’t think spending this much manpower making content for 1% of the players is sustainable for any MMO except for WoW at its peak. Look at Wildstar for a good example.

Always hate it when people think Wildstar broke apart just because of ‘Hardcore Content’. That’s a discussion for another time, anyways, let’s start from the top.

Tanking and Healing were a set, it wasn’t just being a meat-shield as there were particular..I guess ‘Tank-only’ mechanics bosses would occasionally do that would throw you for a spin, and quite a few mechanics called for very precise and proper positioning without accidently getting your damage cleaved. Healing wasn’t just health bars either, especially when you were a ‘Tank’ Healer and you needed to know to coordinate your cooldowns with your tanks, both of you popping the cooldowns during the same intense attack could mean you were flipping on a coin on the next one if the boss could instant-kill your tank and consequently wipe the raid.

I want to say though, that compared to WoW where gear was extremely important to the tanking or healing classes, GW2 has a nice little consolation in how mechanics work out, and giving flexibility to tanks and healers to be more active in encounters. We can argue this constantly, but a tank in GW2 is vastly more damage heavy than any other MMO out there, it’s refreshing.

That’s why I can’t understand your stigma towards GW2 tanks and healers, they are just fundamentally different, its literally a few pieces of gear, maybe a traitline. A greater % of professions can tank compared to other MMOs as well, hell hearing about Chronomancer tanks made me almost float in my chair in happiness. The system is there, and working. If someone can pull off a Daredevil tank, I would be just…beside myself.

As for ‘easier’ roles that naturally comes with the experience, but you have to have a mentality that there were players in your raid having to put more effort in certain encounters. In fact, there were WoW encounters that actually flipped things around and required extremely difficult DPS checks, so roles were often changed about on their difficulty. We see this in GW2 with Gorseval having a nasty timer if you don’t properly dodge slams.

Hardcore Mentality with BC? Did you ever do Karazhan? The first Entry Level Raid in BC for 10 players and it was a blessing of easy, creative, and difficult encounters all mixed together into a lovely little present. It is, by far, one of the best raids out of any MMO, brimming with steadily difficult encounters to introduce players into what BC raids would be like, requiring each player to take more responsibility for their work. BC and quite a few of Vanilla’s Raids worked to engage you instead of you floating between the computer screen and Seinfield. And they made it fun.

It’s disappointing though. Players have step by step been working with the tools they have had with their characters, getting better at the small things like rotations or doing the occasional CC. I don’t see why, there should not be a call for specific content that puts those kind of talents to their limits. Something perhaps to aspire to, but maybe something unattainable to those who won’t actually put the time into them. I thought GW2 was about content for everyone.

I’ve actually played with you, you definitely know what you are doing.

As for those guys, if I had to gather, given that team queues are superior to gain pips with, they might have just gotten into Sapphire with comms alone, their individual skill was probably awful. In a way, it proves that teamwork and communication can bring anyone up, even lame strats like that.

I had a Foefire where a three man wanted to rush far and then strike lord at start…

I won’t go into too many details, but an Enemy Triple cap negates 150 points pretty kitten fast.

Gewd.8125:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Gewd.8125:

It has been a long time, but I don’t remember it ever being as hard. And you are comparing the 1st wing of the GW2 raid to the 6th wing of vanilla wow.

And yes farming equipment was very grindy but at least it wasn’t hard.

and whats so hard about farming gear in GW2? you don’t even need to kill a 40 man boss for it to even be allowed to do other content . You can literally chop trees and mine nodes your way to BiS stats in GW2.

I
Don’t
Understand.
At
ALL

The first couple bosses in Molten Core still required a significant amount of time to learn in comparison to anything spirit vale.

I never said farming ascended gear was hard. I was disproving your claim that vanilla WoW raiding was hard because it took forever to farm equipment for the next wing.

And no, molten core was easy. I remembered that I barely needed to worry about anything, with the tank and healer doing most of the work while I dpsed the boss while watching TV. There might have been one mechanic per boss that everyone had to worry about, but they were easy compared to VG where there are as many as 6 different mechanics sometimes happening at the same time, and needing to coordinate CCs.

For example, Baron Geddon, the only thing I remember about the fight was having 10 entire seconds to move when you became the bomb. Every other mechanic was easily healed or dispelled by 1 person.

Oh…you were that player in Vanilla. That explains it.

It was a 40-man, but there were quite a few difficult roles to be filled out by a select batch of folks, the rest didn’t really have to do much as you said. In other words, it was probably yourself and a dozen others just doing the dps rotation, the rest really worked on the hard stuff.

It’s sort of why BC went to 25 man raids, to get rid of the filler.

Aomine.5012:

gavyne.6847:

People secure a division or tier, then they throw the games and tank their mmr. Once they start getting easier games they start playing to secure the next tier, rinse & repeat. Saw it happen with many people whom I’ve fought, know how good they are/can be. Then an hour later saw the same people mindlessly run to the far node losing 1v1 fights over and over for no reason.

I’m sorry but Anet isn’t going to catch this nor will they do anything about it. They can’t afford to ban the already small playerbase they have in PvP. The fact that ruby and above players have to wait hours long before getting a match should tell you just how small the PvP playerbase is where they can’t even put together a 5v5 match. Think about that for a sec. So for devs to say they’re gonna banhammer people who throw games deliberately? LOL I laugh in your general direction. Not to mention a lot of these players are pro league players, without them, Anet wouldn’t have esports.

Your system is getting exploited, I’m sapphire and saw my pips melt away tonight due to diamond level players exploiting the system to get match ups against folks 2 divisions below them. It hasn’t been enjoyable tonight both due to getting impossible match ups and lose pips in the process, but also when we should be winning but watch good players deliberately toss the games.

Fix the system, because people sure aren’t going to stop exploiting it. Empty threats mean nothing, and these players know Anet won’t touch them.

Also even though you can see “pattern”, this does not suffice as to “proof”.
There’s actually no HARD evidence to back it up.

They can claim that they’re feeling unwell during that time, or just trying new builds. (Who said you MUST play a Meta build in rank Q?) It may seem like excuses, but you have no evidence to prove them wrong too.

Anet would get alot of lawsuit issue if they just ban players when they didn’t play as well as they previously did.

Yea it’s going to be a bit of a stretch. Honestly I’ve seen the same things happen in popular MOBAs before like LoL. There’s no way to deal with players genuinely competing with experimental builds even in Ranked play.

That being said, there’s a lot of turmoil going on with the ranked system, eventually the divisions will start to even out, with quite a few outliers since you can’t actually drop divisions save for Legendary increments, and you won’t see such troll plays at the higher divisions given the players at those divisions are dedicated.

I will say this, despite all of the shenanigans, there’s a white lining, SPvP is pretty popping compared to WvW. So hey there’s that!

Let’s be real. That ‘One gold per rune’ might only apply to really kittenty runes, Strength runes which are popular tend to be a bit steeper, and no one wants to override those. Ever.

But that’s beside the point, let’s say runes were fairly cheap. Even if a player had a moderate amount of playtime each day making money, if they were playing like you they would have to dedicate some of that income to each piece of legendary equipment. Thus the more legendaries and ‘convenience’ they have the greater the costs will be. Meaning that Legendaries in the long run, will cost far more than simply making an ascended set with each kind of rune you would run on all your characters.

The only way, the only way Legendary Armor is a convenience is when the Runes DON’T matter with the stats tied to them. Because then there is no cost, you save money and time not needing to make a helm shared between a Warrior and a Revenent. Unfortunately that’s hard to calculate and pull off, you almost always want a set of stats for a particular rune for a particular build. Why would you flip your Berserker Stats to Knight Stats with Strength runes? That’s not an appropriate rune at all for it, were you putting it on your guardian? Why?

It would actually be most cost-effective to craft each set than to force a convenience with a cost. That’s just common economical sense. This is why most legendary weapons aren’t really shared, at all. So yes you are one of the few who does fall into this gold sink, fortunately though you don’t seem to care for gold all that much so once again congrats on being rich enough to spend pointless amounts of gold on making this ‘convenience’ a reality.

dertingel.1730:

Sykper.6583:

dertingel.1730:

Sykper.6583:

Yea…

- We don’t know how the Legendary Gear would look, and looks are fairly subjective.
- Switching Stats is not all that great when you can’t flip runes, it might even be counter-intuitive and useless kinda of like the Fabled ‘DvD rewinder’.

/thread

Have you read any of my posts?
I dont think so…i invalidated your whole post only several posts above.
But at least, you were able to repeat nonsense arguments…

I have, you have no argument. Stating that you can afford changing runes constantly is not something everyone can do. That’s a huge cost for a lot of players, so sorry that argument doesn’t fly.

Repeat…repeat…repeat…
Sorry, last answer…really. But just because your argument is so funny
You can afford several thousands of gold for a legendary armor, but 1 gold for a runeset…no thats way to much. Can´t afford it. Sorry…i am out…that expensive…

…Because that’s a flat amount of gold? Because not everyone who owns a legendary constantly swaps out sigils and stats?

Are you honestly that naive? Not everyone tosses dozens of gold into their legendaries and spreads them across alts. Actually you might be the first who admits doing so. Congrats!

dertingel.1730:

Sykper.6583:

Yea…

- We don’t know how the Legendary Gear would look, and looks are fairly subjective.
- Switching Stats is not all that great when you can’t flip runes, it might even be counter-intuitive and useless kinda of like the Fabled ‘DvD rewinder’.

/thread

Have you read any of my posts?
I dont think so…i invalidated your whole post only several posts above.
But at least, you were able to repeat nonsense arguments…

I have, you have no argument. Stating that you can afford changing runes constantly is not something everyone can do. That’s a huge cost for a lot of players, so sorry that argument doesn’t fly.

So I just now encountered an interesting bug in SPvP.

Towards the end of a match I was fighting mid and there was an enemy Dragonhunter in a downstate. I sent my Function Gyro (traited for Stability) to stomp however during the long Gyro Stomp I was taunted by a separate opposing player. There wasn’t enough time for me to get a grasp of the full picture, but after the taunt wore off I noticed I had gotten credit for ‘Teammate Rezzed’ as the Dragonhunter got back up. I don’t know if my Gyro also got taunted as well and turned to rezzing instead, or if I saw any green numbers on an enemy as it was a pretty frantic skirmish in mid.

Regardless is this behavior the normal for Function Gyro? Just wondering!

I believe I speak for Warriors and Thieves when I say you might just be.

Also, there’s a bit of tragic irony when referring to this meta as a ‘bunkery’ one. I remember the last time that term was used…

Devata.6589:

Sykper.6583:

There’s a definitive disconnect between what players are determining as a grind. I am of the category that looks back at old MMOs and remembers the gruesome monotony of having to farm a single type of mob or worse, a particular named mob for a RNG drop to get something required for content. *That is what a Grind is.

If the RNG is not to bad, or their are enough of those, and it’s mixed in with other ways to get other items you want or like I don’t find it as bad as grinding gold.

At least, today you are farming that named mob, tomorrow you are doing a dungeon, the day after you are doing a quest, the day after going for a specific boss.

You are always on your way.

Now when 90% of the items require you to grind gold, that is worse. While theoretically you can earn gold anywhere, there are mostly a few places to best get your gold. So today you are doing that for the item you want today, tomorrow you are doing the same, but for the next item, the day after you are doing the same but yet for another items and the day after that again.

I rather have a few specific items locked behind a specific named mob, then having nearly all items locked behind gold.

And then this is the worse case scenario, because indeed having it behind a named mob is the less interesting of the type of reward you would find in those games. However the items locked behind quests, dungeons, raids, crafting and bosses are much more interesting.

It’s however this mix that makes it fun.

I can agree, we’ve had a massive gold-reliant only system of earning things for so long, that people are mistaking items that require certain collections as being too much of a grind when before HoT, they were literally doing Silverwastes and Dungeons everyday.

Personally, I think one of the best things to come from HoT were the collection specific items, more importantly the Ascended Specialization Weapons. Those weapons are extremely close or what I like to see future installments of ‘prestige’ items be balanced around. The gold sink isn’t too intense, there’s an investment from the player to go do much of the HoT content, and that kind of item isn’t required to do any of it, but it carries value regardless. I prefer that system to either a Gold-Extreme, or a full time-investment in a series of 1000+ token items.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately we won’t see any changes right now for Warrior until after the season, but I do see massive potential for a Hybrid setup on this. I can only work with so much you know.

There’s a definitive disconnect between what players are determining as a grind. I am of the category that looks back at old MMOs and remembers the gruesome monotony of having to farm a single type of mob or worse, a particular named mob for a RNG drop to get something required for content. That is what a Grind is. And Grind, in MMO speak, carries extremely bad consequences for the game. That’s why there’s such an opposition to it, because those of us who know what the original Grind in MMOs was are painfully aware what happens when that kind of news spreads, MMO players hate Grind overall.

That being said, I can agree that at the very worst the content is repetitive. That’s different, as although you are repeating most of the same stuff over and over again, you aren’t actually doing something singular, you are mixing it up. The Maps in HoT are just too massive to have you do everything in a few hours, you are doing something on the map that might be different each day, and it is progress towards your goal. That can never be called a grind.

Furthermore, Vayne is correct, the…I suppose true End-game content from Raids and Fractals carry a pseudo-gate on what gear you are wearing to succeed. I actually dislike the idea of Fractals more just because Agony is a thing, but given all the other content in the game right now, these two facets make an extreme minority of it all. Lastly, with Ascended/Legendary being the literal best-slot stat-wise, once you reach/craft/earn what you want for those stats (given Arenanet actually doesn’t add another Tier and break everyone’s hearts including my own) you are set for now and the future of GW2. The satisfaction of knowing my current Ascended Gear Set will never get outdated is beyond that which WoW or FF14 can pull off. Because that’s always a trendmill, you are never the best for long.

Ohoni.6057:

It just sounds like you want the prestigious PvP wings without putting any effort into the PvP part of it then.

Yes, ideally.

This is the crux of the OP’s argument folks. Knock yourselves out.

Yea…

- We don’t know how the Legendary Gear would look, and looks are fairly subjective.
- Switching Stats is not all that great when you can’t flip runes, it might even be counter-intuitive and useless kinda of like the Fabled ‘DvD rewinder’.

/thread

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
- Chronobunkers → Signet of Might and Gunflame on their block utterly destroys their set rotation, and nullfies their second block. In other words, in a teamfight you could shut them down fairly fast.
- PowerShiro → Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
- Bunker Tempest: This is borderline your advantage, as your set of skills ends up beating them up just because of their cloth. They will try to Magnetic Aura, but Unblockable renders that pointless. If you land a Skull Grinder, they are forced to cleanse which then you can Gunflame and daze their healing.
- Support Druid: You see these guys typically in the back just barraging with dazes and blinds, most of them will back off if they get focused by you just once. The issue you see with them in most games is that players don’t notice them in a teamfight when they are casting from off the point, but you can absolutely pressure them for a few seconds and either outright destroy them or let them limp away with nearly no life.

Even Matchups:
- Scrapper → This one’s tricky, most Scrappers are fairly tough to get down, even a Gunflame Crit will dent their health pool with their protection uptime and sustain. You actually have to flip back and forth, penetrate their Hammer 2 and 4 with Unblockable, condition bomb them with Skull Grinder. It’s a very even match-up and a fun fight, literally the difference in skill makes or breaks this one.
- MalShiro → With access to conditions and resistance, MalShiro is tougher as conditions come in steadily from this guy. You should save the shield block for UA like before, but keep your evades and distance when he flips to Torment, and watch your distance. If you can avoid his Off-hand Axe closer, that is even better as it is unblockable.
- Fresh Air Tempest: Preface here, Fresh Air Tempest is never alone. They are a solid +1 position that can really deal insane damage to everyone on a point. The issue is that they daze enough to potentially stop your own combos, I would argue they are more impactful than Druids. They are your #1 target in a teamfight given their damage and utility, kill them before they kill your allies.
- Condition Druid: A different breed from the Support Druid, I won’t go into too many specifics but these are the guys who play around with you on poisons and bleeds, staying in stealth most of the time and healing up with Astral Form. You…may or may not win, but if you are on a point holding it against one, you might as well play defensively to waste its time. Depends on the matchup really, but if you want to kill them, you might be playing into their bleeds a bit much. Just be careful.

What you will suffer against:

- CondiReaper: The current Meta Reaper, or just necros in general will give you a bad time. You can melt their healthpools, but the condition damage you will be taking is just insane for the attritional fight. You won’t win a straight-up fight against one without a +1 for the slightest of support, I have had way too many close calls nearly killing them on my build. But I can safely say for what is out there right now, these guys are going to be what kills you most. Times sure have changed from when Warriors would destroy Necromancers.

I do not need to remind you all of this, but a lot of what I have been seeing in SPvP solo queue has been teammates staying on point until they die, taking heat unnecessarily when they can back off for about 10 seconds and come back in. Trust me, it would be better to temporarily leave the contested point to let your cooldowns refresh and come back in unfocused than dying, giving 5 points and taking a 50 second walk back.

Learn to disengage, this build like I said isn’t a full Bunker, but it can play around like one.

I’ve been to 4 tick T1 emerald three times, I just can’t secure that last win it’s pretty aggravating!

Chris Cleary.8017:

pandaexpress.1458:

After just advancing into the emerald division after 20-something long games of getting through Amber division, I lost a game because we had a teammate refuse to play. He stayed at home and did nothing. He did not d/c or leave, but he sometimes left home and died while autoattacking the enemy player taking the point. I wouldn’t be too annoyed at this loss if I didn’t lose a pip.

The game is rewarding players who deliberately toss games by making future games easier. When a player comes in with the intent to lose what are the rest of us supposed to do. His loss becomes all of our losses.

Deliberately throwing games is not something that we are OK with, and we should have something in-place in the near future to discourage this activity. I would look for enforcement against this negative behavior to start sometime early next week and may be retroactive since the start of the season.

I can’t really comment on system changes, as that is outside of my realm, however I do know that it’s actively being worked.

I am ready for this.

It’s the funniest thing too. No joke, I’ve had a few select players blame me for the loss, even when the end-game results show a close matchup with myself as the highest contribution and themselves near zero.

You won’t believe the trash playing meta professions that lose the game more, Emerald is a gold-mine of ego-tripping baddies.

Keep an eye out for DHs staying off point auto-attacking with LB and call them out, keep an eye out for Chronomancers not staying on a kitten point after just getting it.

People are awful, just the worst lol!

Dahkeus.8243:

Cerby.1069:

This is kinda the opposite of what everyone has been telling me lately. Vitality over toughness. Ferocity over power. Your crit rate is still a bit low to just go all in ferocity isn’kitten Can someone explain the logic behind ferocity with such a low precision to me? I’m not meaning to criticize, I just legitimately don’t understand based on what other people tell me.

I would actually say that vitality over toughness is a good idea for PvP since vitality helps against condi and gives you time to escape or get healed when needed.

The ferocity, however I agree on. I actually wonder if an int sigil would be better on the rifle.

Int on the Rifle I actually went back and forth on.

Honestly, you could give up Force for Int and get away with free crits on swap.

Playstyle though, Force just nets you more consistent pressure from Rifle in general.

Go nuts.

Warlord.9074:

Rifle is a terrible weapon outside of kill shot. It’s single target damage makes it a great ranged weapon, but makes it a terrible weapon when your opponent is in melee range.

No, Killshot is garbage. Gunflame makes Rifle worth taking, and recent buffs to Rifle including cooldown reductions and increased adrenaline gain on auto add filler to your rotation. Killshot is the least useful Burst you will pull off in the build, used only in very select circumstances.

Warlord.9074:

Mace Shield is okish, however skull grinder is worst than Skull crack if when you are power based. A 4sec stun vs a 1 sec daze with a load of condis that do no damage.

Those condis aren’t there for a heavy condi-bomb, we are talking Blind, Cripple, Bleeding, Confusion and Poison, those debilitate your foe pretty hard. And aside from the single proc of poison you could keep laying the pain with non-stop interruption while your Rifle CDs come back up. You want Skull Crack and Skull Grinder to be used in their respective circumstances, Skull Crack is the obvious choice when you really want to hold a guy still. Plus, those condis are still noticeable on a glass cannon.

Warlord.9074:

It’s incredibly difficult to land on anyone paying attention. Like this build probably works find vs other scrubs with low MMR. Vs anyone good I think it’s not great. Anyone good who sees a rifle warriors automatically will focus you the same way LB rangers are always focused. When this happens your build with it’s zero mobility has no choice but to die, you can’t even run. Theres nothing secret here. move along.

Good, that’s the intent, that’s what Ma/Sh is for, that’s why your health pool is massive. It’s why I run Discipline instead of YOLO arms. There’s a lot more mitigation than what you are saying, and it’s not difficult to trick your enemy with a sudden Melee Gunflame or flipping straight to Ma/Sh at range and closing the gap. Mobility is not always required when you get onto a small point, and when the other team is forced to send more than 1 to try to take you off the point, or if you last long enough for a +1 to come in, you are already doing better than any other Warrior build out there.

Warlord.9074:

BTW rifle mace shield was always known as a decent dueling build against some specs. That doesn’t translate into a great PVP build or even a group build.

/thread

Of course it has…before Berserker, now it is vastly improved.

/opens thread

PS: GS / AxSh is outclassed even by Power Staff Daredevils, you aren’t playing competitively with that build.

SenthRawr.7843:

Would the rage healing skill get some uses in this build?or you would be too squishy to fight back.

Unfortunately as much as you could heal up while Blood Reckoning is active, it is still reliant on sustaining off hitting your opponent, whom even outside of blinding or blocking you could evade/invuln, or even disengage while you run out of it.

I find simply using Healing Signet or disengaging with it keeps me sustained if I pull 1-2 off a neutral point to be a bit more useful, the Resistance is a handy tool when things go south.

Furthermore, Blood Reckoning only gives you ‘Critical Chance’ not ‘Precision’, it won’t scale your Critical Damage up with Blood Reaction.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Can confirm, signit of might + power/dps spec does counter meta builds.

Just don’t face premades who decide to focus the squishy war and you will be fine. Also hope your solo-q team has bunks to hold the points while you do your thang.

Best played with friends.

Pretty accurate. You aren’t too squishy with this build however the natural thing for premades to do is focus you down, which is fine for them to try. You can totally mess around with them while in Berserk given all the stability you make for yourself so they can’t just stop you from blocking or dodging or whatnot.

Like I said, given the state of leagues right now this build I am doing much better than other builds as a whole for the Warrior. If meta builds were aligned as being ‘S-class’ this warrior build might be akin to a B+ or an A, it can turn the other teams comp on their head. Just be aware you gotta know what you are doing as a Warrior if you want to succeed with it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAU5enMdA1dgVhAmhAElilrATpq16qBIBgEQB49zWaftA-TpRBABxXGQjDCAGHBAAuAAP8AAUa/BA

Alright, here’s the deal. I been solo-queuing non-stop, we are all aware of just how awful the matchmaking is right now, between having the best and the worst imaginable in a game.

That’s fine, however, I have found a fairly amazing build you should look into. I’ll explain some details, but I am afraid if this catches on, we might see some real salt coming. No joke, this build is actually working.

So, there are a few facets of play to this build, there’s an anti-bunk aspect, and a psuedobunker/lockdown. When you face say a Traphunter, Chronobunker, or even a Shield Rev, Signet of Might is crucial to interrupting their play. Normally these guys have a fairly set rotation, forcing them to play into their blocks while you have full adrenaline actually wins you the fight, Gunflame plus Unblockable interrupts Chronomancer block and cleaves their life, Shield Rev is already popping his heal at low health anyways, and Traphunter is likely glass enough to immediately start reeling back. What I am telling you, straight up is that you actually do extremely well against half the meta right now.

Whoa whoa hey now, I am serious. Don’t spread the word yet, let me continue. While you do a great job being an anti-bunk, you can run into some small issues with some condition heavy classes like ChillReapers or MalRevs. Berserker Stance, Healing Signet and some weapon swaps help a bit, but ultimately those matchups come down to skill. I have lost matches against those 1 to 1 when they had nearly nothing left, especially reapers after I killed off their shrouds at least twice. Truthfully though, those 1v1s always last quite a long time given both our health pools.

When you are rocking Marauder and Wurm Runes, your health is nearly 27k. The thing is, although you are losing about 20% crit damage not being full zerk, Blood Reaction helps ensure your Gunflames really pack a punch, and you are pretty much popping them off left and right with Smash Brawler. Did I mention your Mace? Ma/Sh and Headbutt are your lockdown, let’s say you land a solid Gunflame on a Tempest. Get in there, lock them down with CC after CC. In a teamfight if they don’t get a break or many stacks of stab you can keep on them and hold them in place for your team to follow up on and down. No questions ask, you float between ranged and melee in a fight. Your adrenaline can occasionally starve at times forcing an auto-attack but in your build even Mace autos are solid power pressure on a Diamond Skin Ele.

Finally, if you weren’t already aware, Shield Master applies reflect to all your blocks, even Mace 2. Counterblow’s damage is great when it hits, and you can reflect a lot of shenanigans coming your way without even having to shield. You..actually can stick on a point to contest for a good amount of time with all the mitigation you got, even in a 1v2 giving your team the advantage.

One downside is that you are slow, quite slow, you have no swiftness. Be ready to run around like a Guardian in this build.

I’ll let you guys know if things change, but if you want to start somewhere, this’ll work wonders. In our state we will kitten well need it. Cheers and good luck. Smash some heads.

Sam you might have misinterpreted the phrasing there.

Making Leagues more accessible in a sense is making them casual-friendly, but we should have all known them to be a competitive environment even at Amber. It’s no different than any other game taken to a tournament level of competition, everyone plays to win even if the way to enter is set on the easiest of terms.

PvP Leagues were never meant to be defined in the same manner as hotjoins or even unranked.

…As for the whole premade vs solo gambit, I could agree, but just as you said if Premades are essentially going to be the players who formed teams, that implies that players in say Division 4 or 5 are either up and coming new SPvP teams, or competent Solo Queues those at Legendary Rank would want to bring on.

I can forsee the PvP environment making more informed decisions about what a players division or even tier mean at a certain level, and yes there will be a massive stigma against Amber players a month down the road when many players have moved on to Emerald at the very least.

Right now though? I have other SPvP concerns, such as the MMR vs. League issues. Those are probably a better priority than judging the system pre-emptively.

Looking at our options, it’s probably wise to end up mastering a few different build roles on the Warrior to actually advance properly.

ZerkAxe, BurnBruiser, maybe even toss in a Gunflame here and there (least till some actual PvP names show up).

It’s not impossible, there’s a lot of bad players playing right now, it’s kinda RNG which side gets hit harder with them though.

Darknicrofia.2604:

hint: if your teammates always seem awful, maybe its because you’re the awful teammate

Sage advice, I would agree.

Tell that to the triple DH premade I had on my team that died to a single DH though rushing Temple Altar, for whatever reason.

Queues are kinda a wash atm, not just for me but anyone. But, playing a Warrior I will find that wall at some point and let you know.

Just spent the last hour trying to get the last tick to get outta amber.

It was like a marathon of bad players on my team, zero rotational quality, and ironically running meta builds but are terrible at it.

I’ll have to get into Emerald tomorrow, ugh.

Turns out what’s killing me right now are bad players in general. Swings both in my favor and against, only had like, 2 matches where the score was within 100…

Going to Obsidian using only Warrior, most of it solo queue.

Wish me luck, bet it’ll be fun.

I hope some thieves also do so as well, gonna crush this meta!

Professional Pride, I’ll be doing it. Going straight to Obsidian Rank as Warrior.

…If we don’t get a balance patch at Season Launch, this will be a fun couple of weeks.

Going to give you some advice.

Avoid, at all costs, people requiring AP for Raids.

Actually, avoid those requiring AP in general, I don’t know where the metric came from but it is beyond irrelevant.

Man, when they release an alternate source to get Legendary Armor (as a function) that isn’t in a Raid, pretty sure all these complaints will stop.

Yep, can’t come soon enough…

…cough I might have been one of the commanders in that ~2% fail in Ogre lane. I should have called on my Novus lane to shift over 5 people as we killed ours, but there was a concern for scaling so /shrug.

I have a couple of issues with TD as a whole, the wait times for the meta to restart is absolutely brutal given how quickly the metas go outside of it. Abusing the ‘DO NOT BREAKBAR FOR BETTER DPS’ seems counter-intuitive for what the breakbar was intended to do, it makes no sense that the fight is harder if you coordinate CCs as that is punishing good play. Finally, across all the maps there aren’t enough…‘single ambient events’ that make the Jungle as a whole feel more alive with activities.

That being said, the TD meta is getting easier and easier to do, and the crystal rewards even if you push it to the last phase without finishing it are still quite worth it.