The only way to fix this issue is for the game to genuinely give you meaningful choices on each class instead of a bunch of noob traps in the form of “build choice”.
That said, there are a few builds that are actually kinda decent, just not good at the Conquest gamemode. Due to the nature of the gamemode it will always favor certain builds over others, I don’t think that can really be changed.
What I don’t know is why Tornado hasn’t been given the Rampage treatment. I’m not even talking about Ele. For trollz and lolz I’ve been running around on Engi with a heavy drinker elixir build and I cringe every single time I get Tornado instead of Rampage on Elixir X.
Meh. As soon as the expac hits balance will completely go to kitten all over again – Thief, Ele, whatever, it’ll all suck. All these changes at just one time + new class + new sub-classes is basically hitting the reset button on the last two years of balancing effort. Expect everything to suck horribly for about another two-three years after the expansion hits, considering how often they “shave” (once every six months it seems, I guess GW2 has low testosterone levels).
It only took… how many months to reach this incredibly difficult solution?
Maybe in 10 more years GW2 will be worth playing in any non-casual vein.
My experience is pretty horrendous as well. Not just in play quality, but in personality as well. I’ve had more 4v5 ragequits than before, too. The ride never ends. Had a game with a 4 man premade that didn’t care about capping home and when they did they capped as a group. The things you see in this game…
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Meh. My second or third match after I logged in today was against a premade and we got kitten d. Logged out. It’s really not that hard to realize why the PvP playerbase is small. Anet are just very skilled at bad decisions.
“1 step forward, 2 steps back” is the modus operandi for Anet. I spend just as much time browsing the internet as I do in combat when I’m supposedly “playing” the game.
Someone or some people out there have a real talent for making bad decisions.
I don’t think anyone really cares about Justin’s stats. I know I’ve had quite a few ridiculously lopsided matches vs. premades since the pvp changes. Solo queuers should simply NEVER be fighting premades. Getting steamrolled by some 5 man premade playing nothing but faceroll meta builds is not an enjoyable experience even if it is rare. There’s no justifying it, especially when we already had separate team and solo queues in the first place. If team queue wasn’t getting enough people to make reasonable queue times then maybe they should focus on improving pvp and making it more desirable instead of just ruining solo queue.
Yup. This system is nothing but pure, unaltered garbage. This alone makes me not want to play. Every time I check the other team and see 4 men vs my random pug team I roll my eyes and wonder why people bother to play this when you have other games that are actually good, that realize you don’t put pubs vs premades and have more people playing to boot.
That it even happens occasionally gives me cancer. It’s even more fun when you fight the same premade twice in a row with pubs.
He makes a few interesting points. If the current Celestial overlords are brought down in the future, this discussion will become more relevant.
I’m getting pretty tired of facing premades. Playing less and less. Will end up doing what I always do and probably take a 3-4 month break while the next “PvP Patch” that doesn’t improve anything arrives.
Let’s look at ele, the water attunement scales super well with Healing Power stats. Plus they have 4 blast finisher and 1 leap finisher (That’s how they get so many might stacking). Plus they have perma. Vigors, 80% up time protections, 90% up time regeneration, pretty much every boons in this game that they can access by themselves. They have blink and fire greatsword and RtL to compete their mobility with thief. A skill call Ring of Earth that blocks projectile without showing any blocking animation.
Elementalists have had those things for a long time. Why is it that they were never a problem before that “one” patch that introduced Cele amulet, redone runes, and buffs for Ele?
Even with all those things going for them, Ele wasn’t considered good at all before that patch.
That’s because it’s worse. Maybe not the algorithms or whatever, but the mere fact that premades get to play with solos is so stupid I don’t even. We have a system where we can actually do less than before the update. Can’t even hotjoin while in queue. The class dailies aren’t directly matchmaking related but yet another example of stupid things done for no reason that can impact the game negatively.
In the end, Anet consistently makes horrendous decisions and this is yet another example of why nobody can be bothered to care about this game’s pvp, despite the fact that it has a great deal of potential. The management and decision making is horrible and I’m amazed people get paid to make these changes.
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What I want to know is why TDM is in the same queue as Conquest.
They will remain in unranked. Sorry, I’ll go edit that other thread to include that information.
Obviously this means I’ll only play ranked, but why would you people want to torture those that play unranked?
I have to disagree with the assertion that it’s all Ele – there was a good analysis about it in one of the Balance forum threads that explained it pretty well. I mean, I think this point of view has a point, Ele certainly has a lot going for it right now because of it’s design, but nuking the class from orbit misses the point and will probably render other Ele builds useless as a byproduct.
I mean, here’s how it looks to me. Pre-patch, nobody gave one single iota of a kitten about Elementalist. It was garbage tier – you played it because it was funny and enjoyable to press lots of buttons, not for reals. Just watch Phanta’s play back then, every Ele could only ever aspire to Fresh Air Scepter and it was still not good enough to compete.
Suddenly – patch comes in, with a few changes for Ele, including a new blast finisher for D/D, with redone runes and amulet, and all of a sudden, Ele becomes death incarnate. Hmm… a mystery. Coincidentally, D/D’s strength has always been Might Stacking while playing with hyper defensive traits and stats. When daphoenix was running around 1v10ing people in WvW – the build was Soldier’s or Cleric’s, the objective – live long enough and your might stacks will outsustain your enemy. Same kitten that happens now. Only now there’s things that make Might Stacking even better than before and an amulet that perfectly synergizes with a class that uses everything no matter what it does. Ele got buffed and in that same patch new equipment came out that’s pretty much picture perfect for D/D’s strengths.
Based on what Ele was pre-patch and what it is now, it seems logical that the culprit lies somewhere in the changes done in that patch, not all the things that nobody had any problems with until now. Example: nerfing EA trait could help mitigate the build, but it buttkittens every other Ele build too, including those that aren’t a problem. You have to attack the source of the disease, not the symptoms. Else we get a new Dumbfire. Dumbfire was always the problem – but Anet nerfs a ridiculous amount of other stuff and then ends up nerfing Dumbfire anyway months down the line. A waste of everyone’s time.
To exaggerate a bit, Cele d/d Ele now feels as if there was a new rune set that had 500% extra damage on attacks done from stealth. Gee, I wonder which class will be most OP with that rune set?!
AFAIK, you can’t queue while doing Hotjoins now, which is what I used to do. What a pity.
This is pretty horrendous. You can’t even choose between what you want: getting trashed by premades or kittenty maps. There’s always some idiot that votes for the worst maps. The possibilities are always there. It’s like Anet want to make their PvP worse with every update.
It’s also great that the sole determining factor for participation is STILL the kittening useless score. Get farmed 0 500 in Courtyard? Sorry, you were afk. You get nothing. Get paired up with a high level premade? Sorry, you didn’t play the game.
This is so amazingly bad I don’t even.
- ICD removed from Cleansing Water – one of the most powerful cleanse traits in game; adding 6 from Elemental Attunement per minute and another 1 from Soothing Disruption per Cantrip – up to 9 per minute in 1 single trait.
- Reversion of the Signet of Restoration nerfs once the double proccing was bugfixed
- Evade Frames on Burning Speed and Blast Finisher to Frozen Burst
These could also help be responsible. Blast Finisher means more Might in the case of D/D. All introduced in the same patch, even. I would rather people think of these first, before deciding on changing other things that were never a problem before.
Meh. I think people’s solutions focus too much on attacking the symptoms of the disease instead of curing the disease itself.
Nobody gave even a single iota of a buck about Ele until the patch that introduced buffed Cele stats, revamped runes and revamped sigils. If I had to look somewhere for the culprits I’d look there – instead of changing elements that have never before been a problem and make D/D even worse than it already is at other builds. I don’t know what’s cool now but I remember that other classes could abuse the new runes/sigils/stats for might stacking as well.
They’ll probably just end up nerfing some random stuff on d/d, though. It’s what they always do.
This system sounds horrendous. Good old Anet, never disappointing, always making changes only halfway thought out. If I DC and have an autolose and have to wait 15 minutes to play again, I’m just going to log out and play some other game.
If Dota can bother to give us 5 minutes (pauses not included in timer) you can give us 2-3 minutes. In fact, why aren’t there pauses yet?
I think Sigil of Battle is wrongly blamed for problems with Might stacking on certain classes. It’s always been a great sigil, no question, but it wasn’t a problem in the context of Might stacking… until a certain patch introduced Runes that made super high Might stacks a breeze to get and maintain.
Meh. The way this game is designed, I actually think mobility and the ability to force battles or leave them at will is pretty important. Territory control means having that having the movement to do battle where you are needed is pretty great, as is the ability to create outnumbered situations and quickly return to whatever point you left. If your class neglects these characteristics, it should obviously be quite strong, perhaps you wouldn’t influence the rest of the map as much, but you’d need to have a great impact wherever it is you happen to be.
Even if in theory class X vs Thief is a 6 out of 10 1v1 matchup, which is pretty fair and a little bit in X’s favor, Thief’s mobility and ability to control the when and how battles are performed would still give the Thief massive value over class X. It would be as if Mutalisks in Starcraft 2 were not only more mobile and dealt good damage but traded evenly with other, slower units. In order for the other units to retain value (and for Terran and Protoss not to get rekt) they are much stronger and efficient in actual battle.
So for class X to ever really stand a chance to be picked over Thief it’d basically need to have an 8 out of 10 matchup against Thief and be really strong in general. Sure, it’d always be slower and it can’t kill the Thief if the Thief doesn’t overextend, but you trade that for sheer combat power. Once your stuck in, things get wrecked.
TL;DR No reason to play my zerker whatever instead of Thief if I’m just a less agile version of one. From what I understand, there are now a few zerker classes that actually can trade pretty well against Thief if not dominate the fight, though I honestly have no idea. Read a post by someone, I think was Caed, that said zerker Guard plowed Thief, which would be a pretty good example.
Devs shouldn’t be balancing around a 1v1 gametype.
A pity most MMO forums seem to think this way. 1v1 could have so much potential, especially in games where players are typically expected to gain mastery and attachment to their class/character. No giant explosions of particle effects, easier to see what moves each person is doing and how it influences the match and ironically it is probably easier to balance than team fights because they are less variables at play (2 players and their abilities/builds vs 4-10 ppl in a fustercluck).
The more time passes the more convinced I’ve become that many lower quality games don’t bother trying to encourage 1v1 simply because it would highlight how badly the game’s balance actually is and not because of some grand team based vision, like they try to sell it. Much easier to hide imbalance when underperformers can be argued to “suck at 1v1 but be good in teamfights I swear”, when clearly OP idiocy can be hidden behind “but the game isn’t about 1v1 its about teamfights and i swear i can’t contribute”, or any other excuse that can be conjured from thin air that’s really hard to prove right or wrong in any direction simply because of how chaotic team battles and dynamics can be.
Course, it’s probably too late to do anything about it now, and it’d be too much work and testing to change how the game plays. The only real problem I have with 1v1s in this game are circumstances when not only one class is stronger than another but it is also fast enough to literally just sit on top of that player and shut him down completely. That’s pretty stupid. I don’t know if this is still the case, since I rarely play now, but I can remember a time when I’d play and watch people use Ele or Mesmer and Thieves were not just stronger, but also so fast that you could do absolutely nothing to defend yourself except pray that your friends babysat you. Circumstances like those are pretty unacceptable in a game like this one.
I don’t know about SoloQ since I don’t do it because of Skyham, but I’ve definitely felt this on TeamQ. Heck, right now every single one of my last matches has been at least 7 min queues. Only reason this has been bearable in my current session is because I’m watching Dota on twitch while I wait.
I get faster queues in the disaster that is Mechwarrior Online and it can have solo and group queues for 3 game modes.
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Celestial wouldn’t matter as much if you couldn’t Might Stack as well as you can now thanks to the improved Runes. You could always Might Stack before but the stacks would run out before they got too high, but now it’s very easy to get them really high and turn a balanced build into a damage dealing machine.
They were never that good in the first place. Best is Greatsword so you can “cya” to guys kicking your butt and when you just gotta go fast.
I haven’t watched a GW2 steam in a long time but I’m glad I randomly tuned in just to watch Hiba play this. Freakin’ hilarious. Loled for realz.
You guys are doing this all wrong. Anet doesn’t have to do anything because people are just complaining about this stupid map. I don’t know why they haven’t removed it, but it’s clear they aren’t going to unless you force the issue. What this means is that you have actually stop playing this stupid map. By that, I mean AFKing, DCing, or just YOLOqueing Team Arena. If Anet sees a good number of people actively resisting the map, to the point where SoloQ actually suffers, then they might do something about it. Until then, this thread is just dumb noise, easy to handwave away with “LOL BUT SOMEPPL LIKE IT”.
The discussion of this thread has side trailed.
It’s the only way Thieves can defend their idiocy – that and by insinuating that in the years this game has been out people haven’t learned to fight Thieves.
It doesn’t matter because perma stealth is useless in the “competitive” gamemode where you sit on a small circle all day. Since sPvP is the best and most popular mode in the game, what happens in WvW doesn’t matter.
I think it’s good to show more info for these types of things, but keep in mind that if we add too much, it can be overwhelming for some players. Due to that we’d want to find a nice balance between too little and too much.
You guys really do think poorly of your players, don’t you?
I’ve heard you guys say this off before and I’m still not sure when it’s ever been relevant.
Not when you charged us for unlocking skills in sPvP, and not now.
Who are these “some” players and why do they matter? Are these “some” players relevant only in this game or do they exist in other PvP games that are both more popular and more complex than yours? Why are random numbers on a scoreboard “overwhelming”? Do their brains explode? Do they have to uninstall when they can’t understand that the number under damage means how much damage was dealt?
If I were you I would personally not play the class. Too much effort for little in return. Right now Celestial with Might stacking is nifty, but in my experience anything but will still get wrecked by all the things that wrecked the class before. And even so, I find that good Thieves still just train me all game and just kill you. I’m also assuming they’ll nerf the might runes eventually, and that will certainly suck, since I find that to be the only thing carrying the class.
For complexity while still being good, Engi is a solid choice. They can also abuse might stacking well.
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Actually “everything is subject to change” exist because players like you tend to complain how they broke their promises. So they put disclaimers so that they can invalidate any arguments such as yours.
I don’t think you understand what you read. Your first reply would seem to betray the same thing, as I talk about a new player and you talk about “they” being able to store up gold… for which they need to have had the game beforehand, therefore not being new. The disclaimer prevents me from taking legal action, no doubt, but you are fighting against an imaginary argument, because mine was that a smart consumer would be wary of a company who so easily misleads its consumers on their paid product’s direction. The cited text doesn’t change that at all. You should actually try reading what people type instead of typing arrogant and grandiose nonsense.
I enjoy being snarky especially when I m destroying person’s argument. Even more so when the resort to a fallacy.
I see. I didn’t even contradict or refute anything you said, I just added my own spin on being “smart”. I can just imagine the compulsion to frantically searh the article, desperately looking for anything that could possibly dismiss a criticism towards Anet from some dude who dared reply back. Can’t help but wonder the type of person that regularly defends a company from a consumer’s skeptical eye. Marketing shill? 16 year old fanboy? Who knows? What an amazing picture, the snark combined with the early claim “of destroying an argument” you haven’t addressed paint a picture of much insecurity indeed.
And just because I’m feeling generous, here’s a hint: you should read more about fallacies – wikipedia isn’t enough to know when and where they apply. If I wanted to conjure up a fallacy to attack your position, I’d do something like: “So what you’re telling me is that because of that disclaimer I can’t trust anything Anet says? Your telling me that nothing they say is true and they can’t be trusted?” What I did was follow your reasoning, which you didn’t even bother to explain, as if a citing the dev would defeat my point by magic alone. Apologism never ceases to amaze.
I love how in your attempt to undermine me you actually helped me more, why don’t you read the last paragraph of the article you link. Don’t worry, since I am feeling generous I am going to do all the work for you, read the bold part.
Don’t worry internet friend. I also hate it when I am wrong. You were saying?
That doesn’t change anything. “Everything is subject to change” is a catch all justification for anything. In fact, by your reasoning, they could decide to remove all the gear from the game, remove leveling, or change the game to an FPS and I’d be able to justify it the same way.
Also, I love the snark. You mad, bro?
After a few more games I actually don’t know how mad I’d be without Stone Heart. It’s a genuine pity and a rather distasteful that it’s locked in PvP for new players, since it can really help carry you knowing you have a “block” button just by switching to Earth. Liking it more on hybrid/damage builds than bunker.
What do you mean locked in PvP. They can use gold to buy it or if they were smarter they would have played the other half the game they bought.
A “smart” consumer would hold a company/developer to their word.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/
Specifically,
The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well. As these additional skills and traits are added, they’ll be automatically unlocked and available for competitive PvP just like all existing skills/traits work today.
I also wouldn’t appreciate being locked out of a trait as a new player if it does end up being standard for the class. It has nothing to do with “smarter” – it has to do with wanting the mode’s competitive principles be upheld.
After a few more games I actually don’t know how mad I’d be without Stone Heart. It’s a genuine pity and a rather distasteful that it’s locked in PvP for new players, since it can really help carry you knowing you have a “block” button just by switching to Earth. Liking it more on hybrid/damage builds than bunker.
It put in a cute new UI thing and let you grind for PVE mats in PvP. Some balance changes.
That’s about it.
Compare and contrast with: a map removed – Skyhammer? Nope. Re-rolling nerfed. Taxes on unlocking traits when we were told we weren’t going to have to (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/):
The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well. As these additional skills and traits are added, they’ll be automatically unlocked and available for competitive PvP just like all existing skills/traits work today.
Have to pay gold to get weapons and armor we didn’t have. Have to level up to use all of your cosmetic equipment slots when we didn’t have to before. Less customization and variety in both amulets/jewels and runes (no switching jewels or mixing and matching runes). Have to pay charges to change your look – additionally multiple appearances will always take up bank space/inventory space when before they simply existed in the locker.
This patch wasn’t for us. Once you look past all the public relations beauty speak, this patch is just an attempt to get PvE’ers to try out PvP. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. It’s designed to make it more “inline with the rest of the game” aka. PvE land.
Trying Stone Heart and I’m not really liking it. It delays getting completely dominated by Thieves but in Earth you can’t do anything. Even when trying to bunker I’m not finding it useful at all – but that might just be bad teammates getting us all butchered.
Edit: Had to have a 1v1 with a Thief on a point – he couldn’t kill me but I did need to keep my eyes open, which is very different from when I fight Thieves on my Warrior or even Necromancer.
I couldn’t kill him either, though. Earth doesn’t have much damage and switching to other attunements places you in a way more vulnerable position. This is even with 3k armor. I suppose if you just want to frustrate Thieves and power builds this isn’t too bad, but I think Ele is still quite squishy when attacked by multiple people when compared to say, a tanky Warrior or Guard.
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“Just deal with it”
Thanks, bro.
I logged in just to post about this.
Rofl.
What a joke.
I actually thought it was some sort of glitch – but nope, you cannot buy your level 2 rerolls shoulders and gloves.
Their official stance is that this is a form of horizontal progression and does not give players any meaningful advantage over other players.
I disagree, but what do I know.
That excuse made me laugh quite a bit.
Take Elementalist for example. They are keeping the balance changes to “a minimum”, beyond the changes to Runes and the new traits. As it stands right now, Ele isn’t that good, right? So, basically, Ele’s best hope is that one of the new grandmaster traits is OP enough to carry them. If one is…
Whelp, hello there new player. Guess your ele sucks lol GG
“No disadvantage”
Just excuses. Same thing with PvP’s infinite wardrobe now costing us charges.
Meh. They can’t even be bothered to act like they aren’t taking us for a ride: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/
The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well. As these additional skills and traits are added, they’ll be automatically unlocked and available for competitive PvP just like all existing skills/traits work today.
Helpfully provided in the other thread by Jamais vu.5284, whom is clearly an intelligent consumer with critical thinking skills and a memory: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/
Specifically,
The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well. As these additional skills and traits are added, they’ll be automatically unlocked and available for competitive PvP just like all existing skills/traits work today.
I’m confused, Arenanet. My poor and small brain can’t understand why the things you told us before are not like the things that I’m reading now. Surely PvP is an important game mode that prioritizes competitive play and good developers like you guys that respect us would never do anything to change that by going against the principles behind the game mode. The cognitive dissonance is rotting away my sanity and reason. Pls help
I find Taino’s post hysterical for other reasons,
Actually, you’re right. No sense in wasting more money when I can just stick with DOTA and wait and see if this miraculous Jesus patch fixes the game. Perhaps Anet going back on what the post directly above mine states will be worth it.
I like to think reasonable people don’t appreciate it when others blatantly do exactly what they say they won’t do but at this point, why bother caring?
^ Pure gold. I think some people forget how good they have it as a PvP-centric player in GW2 compared to other MMOs.
Yeah, those months without meaningful updates were great. I’m just loving how now I get to play 3 weeks without the one currency so even if I reach Bear rank I have no way to use the tokens until the feature patch (presumably).
It’s hard to put into words how stupid Anet is with its PvP, but they really are bad. Literally every patch makes sPvP a little worse. “Tons of new traits and balance changes!”
Hooray!
“Oh, but you have to pay to unlock the new features in the competitive esports gamemode LOL”
Oh…
This is hilarious. I knew it ever since they charged skillpoints and said on some stream that you’d have to pay to unlock new runesets and stat amulets. What a joke. They really do want sPvP dead. The entire premise of the stupid thing is that everyone is equal, always. I’d really love to ask for a refund. Who do I talk to? Screw you guys, I’m going home.
I can’t wait till PvP gets what it really needs and what the playerbase really wants; to have to grind skillpoints or gold or whatever to use new skills, runes or stat amulets.
That’ll really show how much they care and respect the PvP community.
Staff is actually my favorite Ele weapon after S/F right now. I feel it outclasses the daggers at everything as well, it has a better Ride the Lighting, plenty of damage at a safe distance, and can heal up your friends better too. The only thing I don’t think it can do better than daggers is auramancing. I honestly feel like daggers make you into a bad Warrior.
If Thieves didn’t exist, I’d actually say it’s pretty decent overall. Provided you run like a girl you can avoid many threats that would otherwise murder you and to kill you guys have to go way off point if you stay at a safe distance.
I personally prefer full support Staff or full glass – can’t say I find this specific iteration all that effective. Maybe if Celestial were a little better.
If a smart Thief player picks up on the fact you’re dodging on the stun animation he can just cancel it with esc to make you blow dodges for free.
And what my good sir should we do instead? Black powder and auto attack? LOL! I’m sure you would find that enjoyable. You want something to complain about because… I don’t know…
Have to use the skills on the set intelligently.
I point this out because I want this game to be good.
This ability is pretty dumb. I was amazed when they buffed the aftercast some time ago in the first place.
Even if you don’t play the game all it takes is watching good streamers to see how stupid it is now.
I much preferred it when the ability required genuine setup to get the damage portion in.
Now, “3,3,3,3,3” isn’t that much of an exaggeration. To paraphrase Phanta’s moments of suffering on stream “Time to deal damage? Pistolwhip. I’m getting focused? Pistolwhip. Downed guy? Pistolwhip. He’s healing? Pistolwhip.”
What a joke.