Guild Wars 2

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

Liewec.2896:

WoW is actually pretty fun, played it since before the first expansion,
the pvp feels alot more rewarding,
theres no one shotting,
theres no class like the mesmer spamming an army of clones,
the warriors can actually take a hit without crumbling like paper,
and theres the beloved holy trinity,

that being said, theres also a gear=skill factor which sucks, and a subscription fee.
i’m sticking with GW2 for now hoping the devs throw pvpers a much needed bone

you MMO folk and all this rewarding and we need a prize and all this and that nonsense is silly. the reward for winning is winning.

I don’t think he means needing a prize, he says “feels alot more rewarding”, some gameplay can feel more rewarding than others, e.g – gameplay with instagibbing, that is simplistic, spammy, etc can feel cheap, one dimensional and unrewarding.

Poledo.3256:

There has to be some risk vs the reward or the reward feels empty. You’d think this was not true by the complaints you see but even those who wanted everything handed to them would find themselves bored real quick if they were given the best gear when they turned 80.

The complaints over “grinding” have nothing to do with risk vs reward, there is no more risk in a piece of gear taking 30 days to get, rather than 15 days.

PVE in most MMOs these days is virtually entirely risk free, the only element of risk that most possess is some tiny financial penalty for dying (repair bill / waypoint cost, etc).

Hence it is also dull once you’ve done the content a couple of times, thus they provide rewards like you would to your pet dog, though you are right to mention risk, as long ago (and in a few games still) PvE was made exciting through actually having risk vs reward with things like public dungeons.

Surely what is dumb is expecting people not to PvP in a PvP zone…

Phantax.1369:

It really gets very tedious seeing the amount of players that want something for nothing. If you truly want a games designer to give you things without having to ‘earn’ them or put in any ‘effort’ then I suggest you play another MMO.
Anet have many faults, however as far as making players work to get stuff they have got it just right.
Dont be so LAZY ! In the end you’ll appreciate it more and it adds longevity to the game ! ! !

The only thing that is tedious are mind numblingly stupid statements such as people are lazy, because they don’t think a game that is meant for entertainment / fun should equate to work.

Some of the biggest layabouts on the planet “work” hard in computer games, whilst many of those who actually work, have real life responsbilites, etc don’t want a computer game to be another job, it is there for fun.

As for longevity, it adds for those who think gameplay is secondary and are more concerned with their game of virtual stamp collecting, salavating at the prospect of their next reward like Pavlov’s dogs.

For others, who bought the game based on years of what Anet stated (in retrospect, laughably stated) it does not increase the longevity, the game design moving toward the audience of WoW nabs, has the opposite effect.

It is just an insignificant computer game, so the answer is no.

Riss.1536:

For people who have issues with long term goals, everything is a grind if they can’t have it within their short term reference (5 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day).
So we have a lot of lazy guys who don’t want to play a month to have the best amulet of the game, or don’t want to play more than a week to get the best weapon in slot that will scale with the new tiers.

I guess if you are hard of thinking and therefore don’t understand what grind is, that laziness has nothing to do with a game, or that this game was (laughably) sold on the notions of non-grind, the “non-mmo” mmo and horizontal progression, how having tiers of gear that have to grinded for is a joke, then you may well hold the opinion you posted.

Darnis.4056:

the game is B2P…

To put it bluntly, so what?

Whether a game has a sub, is b2p or is completely free is a non-issue, most people leave games because of issues they have with the game itself, not the payment model. And it is whether those issues are still there or not that determines whether someone goes back.

Most of the time you do not even need to try the game again to find out if the issues you had with the game are still there or not, simply ask someone you know who still plays, read the forums, etc. But even if you wish to try out a game again a sub is not a barrier, lots of sub based games offer a few days of free game time to ex-subscribers to try and entice them back.

They have also upped the base damage on kits.

Also in the ‘world polish’ section:

• Weapons now continue to grant bonus stats while bundles are equipped.

I assume kits are bundles.

Edit: athuria beat me to it

And base damage has been increased:

• Bundles from player skills (engineer kits, elementalist conjured weapons, warrior banners) now have base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player

There is a buff in the general section:

Profession Skills
General

• Gadgets placed by players (such as turrets) will now apply boons and conditions based on those players’ stats. Those conditions and boons will not be reduced to level-1 values when the triggering gadget is destroyed.

Cavernshark.8957:

Sylosi.6503:

It hardly sounds like the programming challenge of the century, how hard can it
be to extract the data for the default equipped weapon and apply that to skills / your stats when using a kit.

Probably a lot harder than you think, both from a technical and a design standpoint. Other classes have the flexibility to apply different stats depending on which weapons they have equipped. Forcing the equipped weapon stats onto some kits wouldn’t make sense. For instance, if I have a rifle emphasizing power, I may not want that on my elixir gun.

I don’t see the issue, currently engineers get zero stats from their weapons when a kit is equipped, that other classes can apply different stats depending on their weapon is irrelevant, engineers can only equip one weapon.

As for forcing stats what are you on about? Gear appropriately, just like you do with armour, jewellery, etc, that already effects your kit skills.

Nor is it just the effect on the kit, if you have a p/t/v statted weapon for example, then your HP drops as does your toughness, when you equip a kit.

From a techincal standpoint, why would it be hard? The mechanics of applying stats to skills / kits already exist, are you saying they have made such a terrible, inflexible piece of software that the “gigantic” task of accessing data on the default weapon and then applying those stats when a kit is equipped requires months of work and a total rewrite?

Maal.8674:

Kits have been affected by the weapon’s sigils for a while now.

Applying sigils/stats to the skills themselves as if they were equitable weapons would be too complicated i think.

It hardly sounds like the programming challenge of the century, how hard can it
be to extract the data for the default equipped weapon and apply that to skills / your stats when using a kit.

It is frankly ridiculous that in PvE and WvW engineers are still playing with this disadvantage, note it is not meant to be like that as can be seen from sPvP where the engineer gets the full benefit of stats like every other class, because the stats are on the amulet, not the weapon.

Creld.8702:

For the most part, it seems devs/admins don’t post any major information in these sub-forums, for reasons which intelligent players could likely guess.

The devs have my sympathy when it comes to posting on an MMO forum, however there are a couple of things other games do better and which does in fact reduce some of the dev relevant “raging”.

For instance in LOTRO (which probably had the best community / least terrible forum in any MMO), one of the things they did was post dev diaries when they made changes to class balance, explaining the reasoning why they nerfed skill X or buffed skill Y.

Creld.8702:

unlike certain other mmos, you are not paying monthly. You paid for a full game, and the majority of it was finished, polished, and ready to go.

I don’t pay a sub for my car, if it had arrived in state this game did, I’d have my money back and the company would go out of business.

Now GW2 is not alone in the games industry in this respect, the industry as a whole is sloppy and it now seems regular practice to release half finsihed products.

That it does not have a monthly fee is irrelevant, it is a full price game (at the expensive end at that), that I assume will release paid expansions and it also has a cash shop, some games (DDO, LOTRO, etc) increased their revenue several times over when they switched to a cash shop model.

The fact is the game was released half finished, really I lost count of how many DE were bugged, or the sheer number of class bugs at release (especially on things like necro & engi), then there were the missing features, if you are going to talk your game up pre-release as an esport, then expect discontentment when you release a game lacking even the basic features needed for. This was all made worse of course by Anet repeating “when it’s ready” for years, it clearly was not ready.

To be fair to Anet it may not have been their choice to release then.

Then on top of that you have the speed at which things have been fixed, which is very slow comapared to other games, last MMO I played was Rift, they would at times put out 3 or 4 pathes in a week to fix bugs, yet 6 months in to GW2 and there are still many bugs in core things like class skills / traits and even basic class features missing, for eample that engineers have been playing without the weapon stats counting in WvW or PvE when you use a kit, is an absolute joke.

This is why you have “QQing”, if you prefer to make excuses for an unfinished product, that is your choice.

Chaith.8256:

Sylosi.6503:

Kardiamond.6952:

My question is : Is it too strong?

Well based on watching what happens to a very good player (Teldo) when this build goes up against good teams, the answer would be no, for a few reasons, but the biggest ones are the lack of ability to disenage and the lack of ability to deliver the burst whilst under pressure, in the way burst thieves/mesmers/eles can, so what happens when playing a good team, is this build gets focused / trained out of the game.

So basically the same story as any other engineer build, there are other classes that do the job better and a side serving of AOE support DPS doesn’t make up for that.

When you’re being heavily focused, that’s where the l2p factor comes in. (Not suggesting anyone l2p.) Elixir S, gear block, call for peels. Have an escape plan in mind, lay your double box of nails at a bottleneck, and spin camera, overcharge shot any aggressive melee, combo this guy if possible – if not, lob the chill grenade. You can cover a lot of ground during this time, further overextending your enemies. If the train on your tail is getting doubled over by your allies, and they try to retreat, magnet one back to you from 1200 range and watch as your team sodomizes him.

If you’re a survivalist you can be a pretty huge asset to your team, if not, then perhaps another class is in order. From a ledge, I feel a 100nade engi is on par if not superior to a shortbow thief – if you have to, then that’s the plan.

Which doesn’t really address what I stated, you are largely describing surviving, that is not the same as disengaging, other classes can disengage much, much quicker (and then subsequently re-enage whilst this build is still running round corners trying to disengage) it is a really easy build to harrass out of the game.

I’l also add other issues:

- The burst is harder to deliver / easier to avoid (or negate) than thief, mes, etc, the burst requires you to stand in the enemy and as such the slightest thing can disrupt this, they can also see you coming and in similar vein to 100b they know what you are going to do, then on top of that the two primary skills you use to help you apply the burst are pretty obivious / relatively easy to avoid (net shot / magnet).

- If you want to actually use the grenade kit for either support DPS or you want the chill, it will at times mean you have to sacrifice half your burst as you have just put the GB on kit swap on cooldown for 20 secs.

- As is often the case with the engi, you have options, but in actual practice those options are more restrictive because of relatively long cooldowns. So for example you can say it has a super stomp with exlixir S, but then that is also a big defensive cooldown, so you can’t have both in a 60 sec period, same goes for toss skill. Now if I compare that to my thief, I can nearly always stealth stomp, or my mesmer which has so many defensive options (blinks, dazes, invurn, stealth, illusions, etc) that I can afford to save a stealth or f4 for a stomp.

However, saying all that, I’ve clicked the follow button for your stream on Twitch, so I am quite open to having my mind changed on whether this build can do as good a job against good teams as some other classes burst builds. (I watched some of your stream the other day, but it was hotjoin sPvP, so it was a bit meaningless in terms of how good this build is, as you are very good and most people in hot join are not).

Kardiamond.6952:

My question is : Is it too strong?

Well based on watching what happens to a very good player (Teldo) when this build goes up against good teams, the answer would be no, for a few reasons, but the biggest ones are the lack of ability to disenage and the lack of ability to deliver the burst whilst under pressure, in the way burst thieves/mesmers/eles can, so what happens when playing a good team, is this build gets focused / trained out of the game.

So basically the same story as any other engineer build, there are other classes that do the job better and a side serving of AOE support DPS doesn’t make up for that.

Pinder.5261:

That said, I’ll claim that the Hot-Join system, and the resultant zergs, are A-OK.

The general failure of sPvP, for which the dismal hot join is party responsible for and the attrition rate of new players, says different.

Pinder.5261:

You should go play free tourneys; I think you’d feel a lot happier about life in general that way.

I expect a lot of people would, if there was a matchmaking system, strangely enough being rolled by pre-mades using voice comms is not considered fun for many people.

But anyway back to the OP, to improve sPvP, the biggest single thing would be to increase the win bonus massively, so people actually play the game rather than zerg about like idiots or have situations like four people capping a point that is entirely uncontested.

aydenunited.5729:

Sylosi.6503:

The reason people complain about engi condition removal, is that unless you build for it quite heavily through traits and kit choices (which usually involves 15+ points in alchemy and a build that can make use of an elxir gun and/or elixirs), you often end up with virtually zero condition removal (just the 4 skill on medikit / the 60 sec cooldown on healing turret, plus sometimes the redundant removal on elxir R toss which 90% of the time is going to be used on the basis of the rez).

Take the current FOTM build 100nades, the only conditional removal is the 4 skill on the medi-kit, now what would you replace? You can’t remove the grenade kit, how about swapping the toolkit for the elxir gun, not really the toolkit fits a power build teh elixir gun doesn’t, the toolkit provides far more that fits in with the build such as the pull, the shield for defence, etc.

How about replacing elixir S for elxir R, well you get some condition removal, but most times the consideration will be rezzes not the rather redundant removal, you also gain a stunbreak, but then on the other hand you’ve lost an invurnrability, plus your super stomp, plus stealth / stability, either way the main consideration is weighing up the benefits of the rez

Now I don’t expect my engi to have the same easy access to condition removal as my necro, after all conditions are the necros thing, but as a an alleged all-round, versatile class that has apparently sacrificed damage and a weapon swap, I expect a better than average baseline condition removal compared to most classes, we don;t get that.

Take my thief, for a measely 10 pts in shadow arts, I remove a condition upon entering stealth, then every 3 secs in stealth, plus I have a heal that removes burning, bleeds & poision, this is far superior (even on a build with zero stealth utilites as you can get stealth through C&D, or through smoke field on pistol offhand) to anything I can get on engi for the same points, where even after spending more points I am forced into either using certain kits (elixir gun, flamethrower) or picking elxirs in as my utlity skills.

Engi needs a re-think, it is not versatile nor jack of all trades, quite the opposite, removing the weapon swap and then trying to make up for that by squashing everything in to the three utlity slots, simply does not work, especially when combined with the trait system, which is not good a design full stop, but is especially bad for certain classes like engi as it actually promotes specilization.

My next question is then, what currently popular builds in tPvP (non-bunker) have any natural condition removal that’s any better? It seems to me that every profession has to specifically decide to take along condition removal or not, this doesn’t seem at all an Engineer specific issue to me.

It is not a question of having to choose condition removal or not, it is a question of if you want some condi removal, the level of investment (points & ultilty skills/slots) that you need to get an okay level of condi removal & the versatitility of those options.

Plenty of classes (Ranger, Thief, Necro, Ele, etc) all offer a decent level of condi removal for both less investment than it takes on an engi and that is far more versatile, in that they don’t require multiple traits (or a 20 pt trait and then being forced into using elxirs), and/or multiple utility slots, so can be added to nearly any build.

The condition removal options on the engi (like so much else), are in direct opposition to the alleged “versatile” design of the engi and you posting another build that yet again goes down the Alchemy line, yet again uses the elixir gun, yet again uses an elxir, etc does nothing to change that. (and yes you get it from kit refnement also, but again being forced into certain kits, flamethorwer and elixir gun (yet again)).

Which is why so many engy builds end up with virtually no condi removal, less than even the basic heal skills provide from other classes (necro, ranger, etc).

And then finally on top of all that, you have the issue that utility slots are a more important commodity for the engineer than other classes, so if I want more condi removal on my ranger, the decision to say sacrifice 1 slot for the signet, is a much easier one, than on my engi, and more importantly gives more versatility in that area.

Daishi.6027:

Not long ago it was stated they were taking a look at bunker ele.

Unfortunately along with that they are also taking a look at AoE’s and attempting to balance them… So ele will be hit hard but I have to ask What exactly is really wrong with ele? A friend of mine doing more tPvP than me (haven’t done TPvP since November) claims its how fast they can regen in water.

If this is the case rangers regen is almost on par if not better, countered really only by thief and maybe 100b (which isn’t hard to get out of)

So why is ele potentially getting the nerf bat and rangers not?

(This is all assuming I was not mislead by my friends words.)

Because the combination and amount of healing, CC, mobility, cleansing and boons a bunker ele has, gives it the best ‘sustain’ in the game.

So there are now teams running double Ele, even some running triple ele.

The reason people complain about engi condition removal, is that unless you build for it quite heavily through traits and kit choices (which usually involves 15+ points in alchemy and a build that can make use of an elxir gun and/or elixirs), you often end up with virtually zero condition removal (just the 4 skill on medikit / the 60 sec cooldown on healing turret, plus sometimes the redundant removal on elxir R toss which 90% of the time is going to be used on the basis of the rez).

Take the current FOTM build 100nades, the only conditional removal is the 4 skill on the medi-kit, now what would you replace? You can’t remove the grenade kit, how about swapping the toolkit for the elxir gun, not really the toolkit fits a power build teh elixir gun doesn’t, the toolkit provides far more that fits in with the build such as the pull, the shield for defence, etc.

How about replacing elixir S for elxir R, well you get some condition removal, but most times the consideration will be rezzes not the rather redundant removal, you also gain a stunbreak, but then on the other hand you’ve lost an invurnrability, plus your super stomp, plus stealth / stability, either way the main consideration is weighing up the benefits of the rez

Now I don’t expect my engi to have the same easy access to condition removal as my necro, after all conditions are the necros thing, but as a an alleged all-round, versatile class that has apparently sacrificed damage and a weapon swap, I expect a better than average baseline condition removal compared to most classes, we don;t get that.

Take my thief, for a measely 10 pts in shadow arts, I remove a condition upon entering stealth, then every 3 secs in stealth, plus I have a heal that removes burning, bleeds & poision, this is far superior (even on a build with zero stealth utilites as you can get stealth through C&D, or through smoke field on pistol offhand) to anything I can get on engi for the same points, where even after spending more points I am forced into either using certain kits (elixir gun, flamethrower) or picking elxirs in as my utlity skills.

Engi needs a re-think, it is not versatile nor jack of all trades, quite the opposite, removing the weapon swap and then trying to make up for that by squashing everything in to the three utlity slots, simply does not work, especially when combined with the trait system, which is not good a design full stop, but is especially bad for certain classes like engi as it actually promotes specilization.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

If that’s your build, it’s no wonder you’re not doing a lot of damage.

Don’t build engineers like you build your warrior. It’s not meant for that. You can build high damage, but you have to think of your utility too. That’s what makes the engineer great. Great damage with a lot of utility available. If you go through a dungeon without swapping skills at least once, you’re either doing it wrong or the dungeon is just stupidly easy. In Fractals, I switch my weapon, armor and utilities all the time to fit the situation I’ll be going into. There’s a reason you’re allowed to change your skill outside of towns.

Swapping skills is a non-argument, in some areas of the game (tPvP) they lock your skills once the match begins, in others, every class can swap skills, they can also swap to many more weapons in comparision to engi.

Engi doesn’t do great damage, it does weak damage outside of grenades, which themselves are feeble compared to other AOE unless you spend 30 pts to get grenadier trait.

As for utilities, engi is okay, but nothing special and has to use slots playing catch up for teh lack of damage / lack of weapin swap, it does not have any must-have utlity like mesmers, eles or guards do.

Stiv.1820:

Burst thieves punish people with poor reflexes, utilities and builds much more than any other profession. No doubt they are noob slayers even if they are noobs themselves.. That’s all these screenshots prove.

Not really, I’ve watched plenty of streamers in “pro” teams that win the vast majority of their tPvP, every single one of them has been instagibbed by thieves, many have expressed the sentiment along the lines"thief burst is so stupid", “noobs” may be instagibbed much more, but plenty of people find the instagib mechanics unfun.

The ironic thing is, thieves are much more balanced in tPvP (though still unbalanced enough to make warriors redundant) and much easier to deal with in tPvP, because it is a 5v5, people actually play to win (thus play the objectives, rather than zerg it up) and for the most part only ever have to deal with 1 thief on the opposing team.

If you compare that to hotjoin, where it is not unusual to have 3 thieves (what a shock, noobs go straight to the faceroll OP classes!) on the opposing team, where people zerg it up and you have 8v8, so people blow through their cooldowns / dodges faster, magically have to keep their eyes on say 3 thieves (and everyone else), it simply tilts the balance further in the direction of burst and especially in favour of classes like thief who operate best taking people out whilst they have distractions in a team fight (for the same reasons GC warrior is much more effective in 8v8 hotjoin than tPvP).

In case you hadn’t noticed sPvP has flopped pretty badly, one of the reasons is as an introduction to structured PvP or as the casual “fun” end of it, it is simply terrible, in part due to poor class design like the thief, which is then magnified when it is combined with the greater team size and poorly designed incentives of hotjoin that lead people to zerg.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The game must be super interesting at this point.

The game is already dull, in part due to things like the burst demonstrated in this thread, which is why so many people either go GC or bunker.

Zonzai.2341:

Guardians are not that great in sPvP however, which is why I don’t mind that they are so great in PvE.

I’d love to know how a class that has been a permanent fixture in sPvP tournies, because it is so good as a bunker, is not great at sPvP?

The less balanced PvP becomes the crappier it becomes (hence why it so often dies a death in MMORPGs).

Obviously WvW is never going to be in the same realm of balance as an sPvP match, but stuff like this just makes it all the more lame.

Aether the Nob.9172:

No. You go to WvW to take camps and towers to help your world. And NPC’s guard those camps and towers, not players. It is more beneficial to kill NPC’s in WvW than it is to kill other players. Therefore, WvW is PvE.

PvP means player versus player, ‘versus’ does not mean killing, it means competing against, the entire point of WvW is your team of players compete against the other teams.

To do that you need to score points, just like you score points in tPvP by standing in a circle, killing the guild lord, or champions, etc. There is no “PvE”, the “PvE” elements offer no real competitve element without the opposing players, WvW is designed around completing objectives whilst the opposing players try and stop you (and vice-versa), just like sPvP and just like sPvP you end up killing (or dying to) other players.

Iruwen.3164:

And still PvP players complain the most and cause changes for all PvE players.

So let’s get this right, you think the devs in this game are so bad, they make changes solely on the basis of what it moaned about on the forums, wihout considering the merits of it first or introducing changes based on their own data?

Putting that aiside, the evidence doesn’t even support your claim, the most compained about classes in PvP have been thief, guardian, mesmer & ele, but guess which class has had the most nerfs – Engineer, a class virtually no one complains about.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Given that preliminary results indicat…

The preliminary results indicate nothing, because you’ve made the mistake of only posting your survey in the general discussion forum which is very PvE orientated, if you want to include PvPers in your survey then it might be helpful to also post it in the sub-forums they spend most of their time in.

I don’t think it has much to do with newbies vs expereinced players, I’ve seen plenty of very good players who stream get instagibbed, repeatedly sometimes, when they have done a little bit of hot join to fill in time.

The 8v8 format (along with the fact people tend to zerg) simply tilts the balance toward burst classes, in the case of thief it provides the ideal scenario, as they are strongest bursting down people in a team fight, when the target can’t feasably keep their attention on the thief (or multiple thieves as is often the case in hotjoin), so when it comes to 8v8 zerg vs zerg, it becomes even easier as people blow through their cooldowns / dodges even faster and simply become even easier targets for a thief. (for the same reasons warriors are much more effective in 8v8 hotjoin)

Nor am I sure people will learn much about fighting a thief from the excuse for PvP that is hotjoin, much better they go do 1v1 to learn.

But learning aside, as an introducton to PvP, hotjoin is simply the worst I have played in any game and the way the popultion of sPvP has declined, it seems I am not the only one with an opinion along those lines.

Dee Jay.2460:

Now try to ignore the fact that P/D is Op and that you hate Thieves….yadda, yadda, yadda and accept the fact that the player is skilled and knows what he’s doing.

Try to ignore the fact a P/D thief, WvW and the word ‘skilled’ do not belong in the same sentence.

Khyras.8021:

Also deserter debuff should be at least 20 mins.

Which will still be utterly ineffective for most people, you want a debuff that actually deters people, try 3 hours, but they will never put that in, because of people that have a real reason to leave, your 20 mins debuff will not solve anything, it doesn’t work in other MMOs, it wouldn’t work in this one.

Khyras.8021:

Oh really? if someone for example wants to pvp for the next 2 hours, joins tpvp game then leaves because he doesnt like the fact that there is a certain class on his team or for what ever reason, then gets 20 mins deserter debuff and cannot pvp for those 20 mins even he wanted to and was planning to and only has 2 hours free time, you think he wont think twice before doing the same thing next time? Really?

A lot of people won’t think twice, because the deterrent is a weak slap on the wrist, the last MMO I played was Rift, they had a 15 min deserter debuff, it didn’t stop anyone from leaving, just go and do a chore / job you were going to do later for 15 mins, go get a cup of coffee, go back to dailies for 15 mins, etc.

For it to actually be effective you would need something that is a strong enough deterrent, but then you can’t do that as some people have to leave a game for real reasons or may have no control due to a DC.

The best way to keep people in a match is to create balanced matches – player ratings, keep pugs and pre-mades seperate, balance class composition in hot joins, don’t do dumb stuff like sticking 8v8 on maps made for 5v5, have good class baalnce,etc, unfortunately MMORPGs are bad at this, GW2 is no exception.

daydream.2938:

stop playing hotjoins.

and who cares, glory means nothing.

What a shortsighted post, everyone who plays tournaments should care that the initial entry point / casual part of sPvP for “fun” is the worst of its type in any MMORPG (that I’ve played), that simply turns players off and in turn reduces the numbers of people that go on to play tournies.

In case you haven’t noticed the structured PvP part of the game has flopped pretty badly and part of that is due to how dismal hot join is.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

This guy again… : /. League is boring to watch, boring to play. Yet people go to watch it’s tournaments and watch it online. Please show me a link and give me evidence, and where you get this? Please.

This guy again :/, what are you on about, are you incapable of looking up that according to Riot they got about 8m viewers over the course of their finals and have about 32m active accounts each month, so at best only a 1/4 of their own playerbase bother to watch what is the equivalent of their Superbowl, which part of that is confusing you?

Viewing “Esports” is not popular, even amongst people that play the game, let alone people that don’t, and that is LoL, the most popular “esport”, the viewing figures for other “esports” are much lower, get over it.

Kakeru.2873:

Well the majority and myself have deemed LOL and DOTA2 more entertaining to watch and better as an esports and the majority are what e-sports happen.

GW2 will probably never get off the ground in terms of competitive pvp. Little podcasts with developers who completely disregard the issues raised isn’t helping.

There is no majority that watch LOL, not even the majority of LOL players watch it, let alone when you consider the number of people who play computer games, it is dull as ditch water, really go get someone sit them down in front of LOL and see how excited they are after 15 mins of whack-a-mole and farming, two of the most boring concepts in video games.

But then that goes for video games in general, they are more fun to play than watch, for most Twitch streams the biggest factors are the size of the playerbase (LOL has 32 million active accounts each month, WoW PVE gets more views than most “competitve” games, etc) and how entertaining the person is, look at GW2, Teldo is the most watched guy when it comes to GW2, he plays probably the least played class, but people find him entertaining.

1 – No.
2 – Yes.
3 – Yes and No.

I played lots of classes in other MMOs, it was nice that playing a healer gave a totally different playstyle, a level of variety you just get in GW2. I’d also say it was more challenging, having to keep an eye on your guys, keep LOS with them, whilst trying to LOS the opposition, keeping yourself alive (not just with healing, but cleanses, cc, etc), whilst keeping an eye on key people (other healers, support classes, the top DPS guy), whilst of course being foused by the other team, generally required a level of awareness and multitasking you do not need on a DPS (or even DPS classes with a bit utlity / support tacked on like in GW2).

As for balance, in some ways I am sure it is easier to balance, less variety, simpler classes are easier, on the other hand healing smooths out things like burst. I also think in their effort to introduce some variety, they have made some classes that essentially have easier, more effective mechanics, especially for things like burst and that are unbalanceable.

But anyway all I can say is the last MMORPG I played was not noted for its PvP – Rift, yet structured PvP in GW2 has gone down the drain quicker than the Rift equivalent, whihc says a lot.

Erasculio.2914:

To give one more example: In other topic, I saw someone using the Graveling Scavangers to demonstrated how “broken” the combat system is. The Scavangers have a charged attack in which, if they hit, they knock a character down and basically kill it while it’s on the ground. The poster was using them as a way to illustrate how combat is either DPS – and you kill them before they use this attack – or dodge – the only way to avoid this attack – or you die, no other option available.

That comment showed a profound lack of knowledge about the game.

Against the Graveling Scavangers, a character can:

• Interrupt the charging animation. Any kind of crowd control works for this.

• If the character cannot interrupt the attack, use some kind of defensive skill to prevent the attack from hitting. Aegis for Guardians, Mist Form for Elementalists, and so on.

• If the attack cannot be defended against, use some source of Stability to prevent the knock down and thus avoid the killing attacks.

• If the character cannot prevent the knock down and is actually thrown on the ground, use any kind of stun breaker to leave the knocked down state and just walk away from the killing attacks.

• If a character cannot do any of that… Just ask for help. Party members can do all of the above, plus interrupt the killing attacks themselves.

Dodge is not the only, nor the best, way to avoid taking damage. It’s likely the simplest, which has led some players to assume it’s the only one.

Your example above also shows why some consider GW2 shallow and some focus on the dodge mechanic.

Other games have interrupts, equivalents of stability, stun breakers, etc, GW2 adds no new depth there, all it adds are dodges, combo fields, that your skill will go on cooldown if you fire it out of range and not a lot else.

On the other hand it lacks variety in that all classes are pretty much DPS + CC/utlity/heal tacked on, that can then be flavoured to varying extents through gear/traits/skills, but the variation is limited in comparison to most MMOs, there is no total change of playstyle such as you get from playing a healer.

The classes are also for the most part rather simple (but then they are DPS, so they would be), they play more like a glorified ARPG, that place less demands on you than the more complex classes in other MMOs, nothing in this game requires the level of thought, awareness or multitasking that I had to do on my loremaster in LOTRO when I raided, the same goes for PvP, it took far more to play my chlorodom in Rift than the arcadey classes in GW2.

Then you have that the classes are designed to be self sufficient and a system designed so any compoistion of classes can complete teh content, so you basically have a design which is anti-teamwork and feels “zergy” for many people, at the same time this design means the content has to have more forgiving tolerances than in a traditional MMO.

The good thing about GW2 combat is it is nice and fluid, but complex or having lots of depth, no, and some classes/builds such as thief p/d give a new meaning to simplistic and shallow.

Newsflash, this game has numerous desgin issues one of which is the general superiority of burst / direct damage over condition, isn’t the best DPS in PvE a direct damage warrior with life on crit food?

Not merely the 25 cap which renders more than one condi build in a party pointless (certainly of classes that can stack a bunch of bleeds), but things such as the poorly thought out way loot is calculated for events which again favours direct burst, becuase most mobs will go down before you apply enough damage as a condi build.

Then there is PvP, again, you can feasibly have an all direct damage team (as long they have condi removal), but thanks to the 25 cap the other way around would be ineffective, then there is the issue of counters, condi damage is easy to counter, you simply have to spec for a resonable amount of removal or simply get a team mate (necro) to handle it if you will be fighting alongside them, this is much easier to avoid than burst, where often if you fail to dodge in the 0.8 seconds allocated, even a build with reasonable toughness (say 1500) will go down or be put at such a deficit it is game over.

As the OP asks class rather than classes, I’ll limit it to the one that is furthest away from the alleged design and that is engineer.

In tPvP it is probably the least played class, as there is it is outperformed in any role by at least two other classes, nor does it have the all roundness of say a mesmer (let alone the utility).

I don’t PvE much, but from what I hear it is not exactly in demand.

In WvW it is not great either, it is outshone by other classes when it comes to support, it doesn’t provide any key utility like mesmer portal/timewarp or ele whirly thing to protect siege, grenade spam is useful sometimes, but then again you also see teh short comings, need to hit something a bit away from the wall, get an ele with meteor storm, your grendes can’t hit it. Nor is its damage or survivability anything to write home about, its mobility has indirectly got worse has they have buffed other classes speed signets.

Overall the class utterly fails to live up to its versatile design premise, the trait system does not fit an all round class well, neither does the idea of kits being crammed into the utility slots, more than any other class I play the engineer struggles to get okay levels of condi removal, DPS & survability (including stun/immob breakers) on a single build, something I can easily do on say my thief and as an all round, versatile class my mesmer is far superior.

And all that is without even goign into the bugs (the only class in the same ball park for this is necro), unfinished mechanics (like weapon stats not counting on a kit when you use a kit in PvE or WvW).

I hear it was the last class added (to a game already rushed out the door before it was finished), it shows.

Cathaoir.5467:

PvP I’d say is fine, SD/100nades/Dual Pistol Conditions are very powerful offensive speccs due to Burst Potential and our defencive ones are strong due to Knockdown/Survivabillity Cooldowns.

Erm no, PvP is not fine, firstly the defensive specs have been nerfed repeatedly, things like nerf to elixir R, nerf to smoke bomb, indirect nerf to elixir R with the downstate health change, removal of stabilty from juggernaut trait, etc, which is why engineer has gone from top tier node defender down to also rans behnd the likes of guardians & eles. And why as the engineers best role has dropped down the pecking order the number of people playing engineers has also taken a fall.

Secondly offensive specs, again really? Take 100nades, it is worse than a thief, mesmer, etc at delivering burst in just about every way – the burst is easier to avoid, is more difficult to apply & the build has less survivability (not to mention utility like portal, timewarp, illusion of life, etc), why would a team take 100nade engineer when other classes do the job better?

But anyway back to the OP’s question, the class needs more than buffs it needs some fundamental changes, it is meant to be versatile, yet it isn’t, take grenades for example, if I don’t trait 30 pts into that line for them, they hit like a wet kipper, the clusterbomb on my thief hits harder and provides more genuine AOE ability (on the alleged single target class) than untraited grenades give me on my engi. (and no it is still not worth slotting them untraited to get a chill and a blind, because utility slots are at more of a premium on engi than any other class).

I believe engineer was the last class added to the game, everyone knows the game was rushed out before it was ready, on engi it really shows.

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

im really confused and wondering were u are getting this information from that AOE is to strong in PVP?

Perhaps they got it from the December state of the game discussion, one of the players, a thief, Lowell said:

" but the third thing that makes it a real problem from my point of view is how strong AoE is right now, it is ridiculous to try and attempt to ress when you can just throw five aoes and make sure that guy is going to die and never be ressed anyway."

felivear.1536:

One thing that I’m curious about is they say AoE damage is the counter to stealth. Well, if they nerf AoE, does that make people in stealth unkillable?

See above.

nalenb.1425:

Sometimes I think people who don’t think thieves are a problem are playing a different game. I just don’t get it.

I play WvW almost exclusively and have just gotten used to the thief tax – i.e. I’m going to pay repairs a few times an hour from being ganked. I’m mostly roam alone or scout.

Last week I got ganked for 24.1k. Steal, backstab (then I mistakenly pressed #3 instead of mist form), heart seeker, heart seeker. Total time was about 3 seconds, I literally had time to press 1 key. Never saw the thief till they spiked me. Open plains west of Bay, just the 2 of us. If culling affects large groups as anet says, then culling wasn’t an issue.

I’m a d/d ele. in full exotic pvt gear. 1622 toughness, 2542 armor. Aside from food buffs that the maximum I can have. I’ve 1v1’d a lot in duels and have about a 50% record now, so I know I’m not terrible.

The way I see it:
ele – great movement, crappy damage, no stealth
thief – great movement, great damage, stealth

On my setup under fire attunement which is “heavy damage”, fire grab is the largest damage I can do, and the tooltip is 1103 (or 1765 against burning foes). Or I can try to cast my other “big” attack – churning earth. 3 3/4 second cast time, can’t move while casting, obvious animation, and the kicker? It hits for a whopping 2049.

So I had to decided – quit WvW or live with it. I really don’t think anet will fix it – they don’t see it as a problem. So I just live with it. Yeah it stinks, yeah it’s unbalanced and unfair, but WvW is still fun on the whole.

Whilst I agree that thieves are ridiculous in WvW, possibly the last class that should be complaining are Eles, as they they present some of the same issues as thieves, in particular risk vs reward, when a fight goes bad for a D/D ele they share the same ability has a thief to decide to disengage, too much reward for too little risk, just like theives.

Yes let’s homogenize classes even further and indirectly nerf classes that were designed to be more mobile even more…

tasbury.3674:

According to wikipedia Football is played by 250million people worldwide, using your figure of 23million viewers just over 9% of the population that play it also watch it (obviously this isn’t entirely true, many people watch but don’t play).

Comparatively 25% of the LoL population is interested in the World finals. Let’s not forget that LoL has been through only two seasons of play while Football has been around for over 100 years.

I could say that “most people who play football aren’t interested in watching it” my statement would be correct but ultimately meaningless.

Your maths are incorrect.

My 23 million viewers was the UK audience, as I was comparing it to the number of people in England who regularly play football.

So if you want to start doing a global comparision then you need to look at a global audience, which was around 700 million for the last world cup final, not 23m.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Hey kid totally glad you missed you the point but it’s okay kid. I will just re-explain it. E-sports needs to grow, and Anet is doing a good thing here by developing the game as one from release.

E-sports is still fresh after (since you want me to exact and accurate) 15 years. And after about 30 maybe even 20 years will have more revenue.

Again you probably won’t understand. Poor kid

EDIT: I am going to bed this was fun, maybe you will undetstand/stop trolling when you grow up.

It may need to grow, but then it may just be flawed as an idea, currently the facts are it is not popular, even amongst those actively interested in video games or even amongst those that play the “esport” games themselves.

When you grow up, you will learn to accept people have differing opinons and to respond in a less childish manner when someone puts forth an opinion you disagree with.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Okay, I am going to start calling you, “kid” because there is no way you can know that e-sports is only more than like 12 years old.

From someone using the phrase “more than like 12 years old”, that is pretty funny, but if you think it makes for a compelling logical argument to call me kid, rather than making you look silly, feel free.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

And you say the most popular e sport event was LoL. That tells me kid you don’t even know that people get net salaries for these games yada yada.

People get salaries for all sorts of things, they are not all popular, compared to other forms of entertainment or even compared to the number of people who play video games, neither are “esports”.

I believe LoL is currently the most popular, if there is another more popular event then give the figures for it .

Clunge.9164:

Well for one thing you’re comparing E-sports to T.V. Your saying “even the majority” of League players don’t watch League streams. How many people on this earth DONT watch football games? Football is a sport, alot of people watch it and even more don’t. Using the arguement that most players dont watch league streams, and using it in a negative way is possibly the most stupid arguement i have ever heard.

Surely the stupidest argument you have ever heard is the one you’ve just made? According to Sport England the number of people who regularly play football is a bit over 2 million, when England played Italy in Euro 2012 the viewing figures peaked at about 23 million.

That most of the people who regularly play LoL are not even interested in watching it, speaks volumes.

Clunge.9164:

Perhaps for you, but 32 million other people think otherwise. I’m not even sure those figures are correct, but if they are just look at what you’re typing.

32 million people don’t think otherwise, 32 million people regularly play LoL, most of them don’t watch it (the finals got a worldwide viewing figure of about 8 million, some watched on TV)

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Have you heard of opinionated facts?

The fact that only 13,800 results appear on google and the first entry is for urbandictionary suggests not having heard of it, is not a great loss, upon reading the urbandictionary entry, it appears I am correct.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

People have the right to do what the want when they want. Or even some people just can’t watch all the time . I know I personally choose to watch Dota 2 over LoL, because it’s my opinion that Dota 2 is a better game, not a fact.

When you have people with their darned schedules and real-life things (oh how real-life can get in the way) it skews numbers on monthly and daily things like that.

I don’t see the relevance, that applies to whatever people wish to do in their freetime, watching “e-sports” fares badly compared to other options, it is not popular, it is not even popular amongst people who play computer games or even amongst people playing the game itself.

Clunge.9164:

Sylosi.6503:

“e-sports” are a joke, the global audience for the most popular e-sports finals are less the equivalent of two episodes of what a daytime quiz programme used to get in the UK, if you take out China & South Korea out of the viewing figures it is even more feeble.

LoL apparently peaks at 3 million users a day, and 32 million each month, so even the majority of their own players are not interested in watching it, and that is LoL which is far, far more watched than any other “e-sport”.

Watching other people play computer games is simply not that interesting.

That infomation is incorrect. You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.. Just no

What exactly is incorrect then?

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Sylosi.6503:

“e-sports” are a joke, the global audience for the most popular e-sports finals are less the equivalent of two episodes of what a daytime quiz programme used to get in the UK, if you take out China & South Korea out of the viewing figures it is even more feeble.

LoL apparently peaks at 3 million users a day, and 32 million each month, so even the majority of their own players are not interested in watching it, and that is LoL which is far, far more watched than any other “e-sport”.

Watching other people play computer games is simply not that interesting.

And that is your opinion.

Well a little a bit is my opinion, but then that goes without saying, so quite why you feel the need to comment on it, is a mystery, most posts in this forum have opinion in them, you have a busy day ahead of you, informing people of the bleeding obvious.

How the viewing figures compare, how even most LoL players don’t even bother watching, how the viewing figures for other games are much lower than LoL, etc are not opinion, they are facts.

“e-sports” are a joke, the global audience for the most popular e-sports finals are less the equivalent of two episodes of what a daytime quiz programme used to get in the UK, if you take out China & South Korea out of the viewing figures it is even more feeble.

LoL apparently peaks at 3 million users a day, and 32 million each month, so even the majority of their own players are not interested in watching it, and that is LoL which is far, far more watched than any other “e-sport”.

Watching other people play computer games is simply not that interesting.