Guild Wars 2

BurrTheKing.8571:

The cooldown of burst skills and the effectiveness of Adrenal Health are the most common mistakes/exaggeration. Burst skills are rarely used on cooldown because doing so is typically a foolish thing to do. In the case of hammer you typically want to set Earthshaker up before using it, if you’re getting hit by it when it’s just being thrown out on CD then that’s an issue with you. You also have to account for things such as stability, blocks, blinds, and any other number of other factors. Just because it comes off of cooldown doesn’t mean you’re going to instant use it.

As for Adrenal Health, most Warrior builds currently use their adrenaline all the time to keep from being overwhelmed by conditions so very rarely do you actually get all that much healing from it. Many also seem to think that it procs every second when it’s actually every 3.

So which is it, you use f1 all the time so u have no adrenal health or u don’t spam f1?

Anyway, as there is only a 8 sec cd on f1 traited; it can be spammed with no downside.

Earthshaker-unnecessary to set up. Spamming it blows opponent cds, gives me a 8 sec cd. I win.

I nearly always have full adrenaline by the time my f1 cd is up.

Wow my f1 skill now goes on full cd if I miss! Was I just imagining the 3-4 sec cd before?

Arheundel.6451:

The majority of them will simply rush you without second thought, not bothering to check what boon you have at that time or what skills you are about to use.

They fear nothing, they know that it’s possible to win by simply spamming CC, they are not afraid of having an important skill on CD…because they’re extremely low.

Even though you may have stability up, these warriors just keep spamming CC with impunity.

Me as an ele, need to constantly check the enemy boons to make sure I don’t blow my few CC skills that have an overly long CD ( 40-kitten CD).

I get punished if I make mistakes and this should apply to warrior also, this CC spamm must end

1. Longer CD on burst skills
2. Burst skills lose all adrenaline if they fail

Yes its awesome, my f1 stun(s) don’t go on full cd even if I miss/ you invun (goes on 3-4 sec cd). Even if it does hit its only a 8 sec CD traited.

And my cc spam is actually really effective since u (or several people if using hammer) need to blow a long cd or dodge to avoid it, while I lose nothing muahahahahaha.

Oh but the sigil nerf really hurt, muahahahahaha.

runeblade.7514:

Excalibur.9748:

runeblade.7514:

Excalibur.9748:

runeblade.7514:

Excalibur.9748:

wow i did not know this. thanks OP. so the hammer, mace + shield stun build is better than I thought.

common sense says if an opponent dodges an F1 skill should lose all adrenaline at least and go on full cooldown. I could not have predicted this.

That will be a buff to warriors not a nerf.

If all F1 skills loses adrenaline no matter what, Cleansing Ire becomes way more stronger than before.

why should cleansing ire proc if an opponent dodged the attack? doesn’t make sense to me.

Because Cleansing Ire procs when you spent adrenaline, not when you hit someone.

That is how Combustion shot remove conditions regardless if you hit anything.

combustion shot is an AoE DoT. cleansing ire should not proc when earthshaker misses for example. adrenaline is expended but that doesn’t mean anything when you don’t hit anyone.

It doesn’t matter about what you think should happen. What matter is that cleansing Ire procs when adrenaline is spent because that is how the trait work.

Cleansing ire; might be fine as is except you can proc it to remove three conditions nearly every 8 secs, and the “side effect” of that proc is usually pretty good as well-like a ranged 2 sec aoe stun if using hammer.

I think the downside is kind of humorous though; if you don’t hit or the enemy has immunity you get a 3-4 sec cd to try again.

A ranged aoe 2 sec stun on 8 sec CD, which also cleanses three conditions- if you miss you can try again in 3-4 secs. Hmm.

Larynx.2453:

Yasha.5963:

I does seem easy, but I still don’t understand why the f1 skill on warrior does not go on full cd if you miss, is there some reason why warrior f1 is the exception to the rule?

Burst abilities go on full cooldown if you miss.

Unless this was patched in the last week, my hammer and mace burst (f1) skills do not go on full CD and adrenaline does not deplete if I miss, the enemy evades, or the enemy uses invun. In other words it is almost completely all reward no risk. Shocking right?

In fact, you can use hammer f1 as a sort of low cd movement skill, since it only goes on 3-4 sec cd unless you hit and damage someone. Quite a fun way to get around actually, since the animation is really cool for that skill. Its no where near as mobile as GS of course, but its nice to use to get out of a pinch with if I mess up using mace/shield-hammer.

Relentliss.2170:

I know what you mean. My Guardian feels like a weakling compared to my mace/mace hammer warrior. Its a mindless faceroll with zero downside. Not to mention tons of stability and amazing condition removal.

I does seem easy, but I still don’t understand why the f1 skill on warrior does not go on full cd if you miss, is there some reason why warrior f1 is the exception to the rule?

I also think the f1 skill is on too short a CD, but that is just my subjective opinion; things that are logically inconsistent like the f1 going on full cd if you get blocked etc on all other classes but just going on a short cd on warrior are more annoying to me.

skeppi.4856:

Funny I’d rather it have faster rate of fire than extended range

It used to have faster fire rate and a much greater range.

I think being able to throw axe further than sb can shoot is particularly interesting, looking forward for an incoming axe range nerf.

Crovax.7854:

The way this is written clearly indicates a troll but w/e.

The adrenaline not depleting is actually bad for the warrior as it would otherwise trigger cleansing ire, removing 3 conditions without the need to actually hit anything.
Adrenaline builds up so fast that you easily have enough after the short induced CD from missing a burst to use the skill again.

Now think again if depleting the adrenaline is a good idea

edit: i wouldn’t mind setting burst to a full cd after dodge/block but then make earthshaker 100% faster and much less telegraphed. The way it is now even a trained monkey could evade that big, slow, flashy sign saying:please dodge!

In that case perhaps adrenaline builds up too fast with certain traits, and/or the cd is too low on the f1 skill. It would be ok if you depleted your adrenaline and removed the three conditions, if the cd was say 16 secs. It is one of the most powerful abilities in the game yet has a shorter cd than a relatively weak skill.

In terms of its animation, I think it is one of the more well designed abilities, very powerful but telegraphed so you can react to it. Skull crack on the other hand is not so well designed (especially on the small race) because it has a strong effect but is very difficult to read (and has a very short cd).

At any rate, I was mainly surprised that the way f1 worked was inconsistent with how other classes f1 worked. Surely that should be brought into line first, and then cds etc tweaked.

I was further surprised by the recent patch because people have told me- and also as seen in this thread- that the warrior issue has been ongoing for some months, apparently with a load of feedback on the issue, and yet the mechanic at the root of the problem was untouched.

Its hard for me to say whether healing sig is too strong because its really a synergy of several factors that likely creates a feeling that healing might be too strong. I also remember that warriors were seen as somewhat weak at the start of the game, so increased survivability s not a bad thing.

However, the f1 ability having no downside if u miss is something that sticks out like a sore thumb imo. When I played that build, frankly, I just had a big grin on my face thinking “wtf this is totally OP” (the f1 issue I am talking about). If u mess up your f1 on other classes its kind of a big deal, whereas here you have one of the strongest ccs in the game (and pretty good damage) and a free ticket to virtually spam it with no downside.

I don’t remember my adrenaline recharging so quickly in the past either (I played up until around the big ele nerf) so that kind of compounds the issue.

Void.4239:

There has been probably around 10.000 posts about this stun warrior issue in the past 3 months.
Devs just aren’t taking the issue seriously, or dont see how bad the problem really is.

And after months of trying to explain it to anet , and the resent patch not doing anything about the stun issue ( other then a bug fix to a sigil ). People just stop posting cause it clearly gets ignored.

In other words:

The ship is sinking , and instead of plugging the holes . They are adding holes. ( sinking it faster )

Kinda makes me feel sad, cause every1 saw what gw2 pvp had as potential. And that is probebly a reason why it gets people so angry.

So, just to confirm, have people pointed out how the f1 ability does not go on full cd and adrenaline bar doesn’t get depleted if the opponent player evades/invuns etc?

That’s probably the crux of what I find difficult to understand since it is inconsistent with how other classes f1 abilities work; I don’t see the logic or rationale behind it.

I was away from gw2 for a few months so probably only caught the tailend of the complaints about warriors and I didn’t see anyone mention this since I have been back.

Yes interesting comments.

I think the key points that I found difficult to grasp, were how the f1 skill differed from other classes.

For example a 2 sec aoe semi-ranged stun on an 8 sec cd might be ok, but it baffles my mind that my adrenaline stays full even if I miss or my opponents skilfully dodge/block the attack, and that the skill only goes on a 3-4 sec cd. That is different to how the f1 works for other classes I have played, and it was the thing that really surprised me.

For example if I miss with the f1 ability of thief, ranger, or Mesmer the ability goes on normal cd (and it is much longer than 8 secs!). I can understand to a degree a short cd for firing off an f1 if the enemy is out of range, but my opponent should be rewarded with a normal cd (and in warrior’s case a depleted adrenaline bar) if they are good enough to avoid my attack.

This issue is compounded by healing sig+adrenal health and cleansing ire. I found that I would spam away my aoe stun every 8 secs, and even if I missed/ opponents evaded the only penalty I got was a 3-4sec cd- I still had full regen, on demand condi-cleanse, and 2 sec aoe stun coming up in a few secs; meanwhile my opponents had either lost energy (evade), or blown a cd (dodge/invun/etc).

In other words my blind spamming cost me nothing, while every successful counter play to my aoe stun spam weakened my opponent.

So in conclusion, I have seen several complaints about that warrior build being OP etc, but to me the main issue is that the way f1 works, in combination with a few mid tier traits gives a killer build with little reward for anyone that plays intelligently against me.

It honestly just surprised me that this is actually in the game, and that no one seems to think it is unusual. The stun sigil issue seemed relatively mild in comparison imo.

First, let me say that I think the balance in this game is great for an mmo.

However, I rolled a stun lock warrior with healing sig/zerk stance/balanced stance/rage (hammer/mace-shield) for the first time the other day, and I have difficulty understanding the mechanic and how it fits in with the other classes.

I think the biggest thing I found hard to get my head around was that I was able to aoe stun with earthshaker every 8 secs or so with full adrenaline most of the time (and had access to a few other stuns/knockbacks as well).

Also, if my enemies dodged/(blocked?) my adrenaline did not deplete and the CD was only 3 or 4 secs? I could even use it as a short cd movement skill in a pinch.

I was also tanky, healed well, had swiftness/ fury/might most of the time, lots of armor, lots of hp and I didn’t need to learn any complicated combos to do well.

Sorry I just don’t get it can someone help me understand this? What’s the downside? Even the armor looks cool!

Note, I have tried other warrior builds and I found them hard, but this was just weird button mashing pawnage- like playing dynasty warriors or something.

Lux.7169:

Yasha.5963:

What class would be OK to play with high latency?

At the moment bunker warrior and Guardian are the most forgiving.

I can see spirit ranger and necro being pretty solid in high latency too. Basically spam evades on CD for spirit ranger.

Hmmm, the point is to evade important abilities, with high latency by the time you dodge in reaction to what you see on screen it is too late. I think ranged classes in general might be a bit more forgiving though because with melee you might be hitting on screen but the enemy is not actually in range (makes C&D hard to land).

What class would be OK to play with high latency?

I play thief from time to time in spvp, its not the main class I play. I find burst build thieves are good at quickly killing low hp players that have burned their cds and at stealth ressing.

You can make some decent 1vs1 spvp builds, but its definitely not a cake walk unless the other player is bad and or has a bad build. Personally I have no chance against stun lock warriors as a d/d-sb burst build, but thief is a very high skill cap class so I’m sure the good thieves can do it.

On the other hand I rolled on my warrior for the first time in ages to try out the stun-lock hammer-mace/shield build and u just basically spam a few stuns to win. I actually have to try on my thief and think of combos and strategies, I can get a lot of kills if things are going my way but thief doesn’t seem OP to me in spvp.

Also, I notice that it is almost mandatory to go 30 shadow arts for the condition cleanse and health regen in stealth, which limits build variety (maybe different using sword, but I don’t play thief enough to know).

Anyway, thief is fun to play but takes a lot of skill to do well on and is definitely not OP in spvp, imo.

Tuknog.2691:

Grand Master trait (Skirmisher tree)
Improve shortbow dmg by 15 % , remove the bleed effect from auto shot.
Increase range to 1100(?)
Auto shot bounces to additional target.
What do you guys think?
Is this Op or ok?

I think using a GM trait to nerf a weapon is a bad idea.

The range was originally 1200, so a GM trait to take it to 1100 is underwhelming.
Its mainly used as a condition stacking weapon, so taking off that aspect makes the weapon kind of lame.
I like the +15% damage part and split sot idea though.

I also think you are on the right track with a SB mastery skill, it needs something to spice it up.

Wow, preventing stealth res is a HUGE nerf to thieves (no sarcasm), and 4 sec stealth debuff will also be major against some thief builds.

Its a nice buff for the shout/regen build for sure.

I think it would be fantastic to add a small scale WvW type map to spvp. WvW has some great elements, and all the parts are in place to make the best siege-based spvp game mode in any mmo.

“Poor positioning” is one thing, but some classes have a huge advantage when space is limited and moving to the wrong spot in that limited space means instant death.

A class that has access to a lot of knockbacks, aoe stun/knockback, aoe cc/damage, fear etc, has a huge advantage over a class that has few of these and/or is essentially designed to kite or rely heavily on mobility to win.

People used to complain that trap ranger was OP because you had to stand on their traps to take a point- in this map in some areas you have to stand on the trap/etc or be falling off the edge of the map.

Oh yeah the other day I stole fear off a necro on my thief and then feared three players off the edge. Things like that just confirm how silly this map is imo.

sorrow.2364:

Diage.6451:

Actually, this is the reason (in my opinion) devs chose this, and it is because capture points are EXTREMELY easy to understand. You hold a point, and you get points. There are extra dynamics in it, but that’s about it. The extra dynamics are things that contribute to the skill cap, but the bigger problem with capture points is that there is practically 0 skill cap. This means that you pick it up easily, but you learn to master it just as easily.

I think you see people running in hot join and being generally bad at that and you mistake it for them being bad. In reality, they just most likely have different motives, like glory.

Capture points is not intuitive. When you first join in PvP what you’re willing to do is kicking some kitten and that’s what every newbie wants to do. They have to slowly get used to the fact that killing is not that important as capping and this process usually takes quite a lot time.

In SoloQ, it isn’t rare that people are caught fighting off points or try to cap a point they clearly can’t cap instead of going for another node which is probably a freecap. Those things are, at least for me, a signal of the fact that conquest is way harder to understand compared to Annihilation (kill the enemy team), KotH (take and hold the hill) or CtF (run the flag and bash the runner).

Conquest is easy to understand if you have played any other mmo with spvp (battlegrounds etc) in it because point capture is one of the most common game types. So no I do not agree with you.

On the contrary I would say, it is extremely easy to understand, but with only three points offers limited strategic complexity.

I don’t really agree with any of your analysis; conquest is a standard mmo game mode and is well done in this game, but that is all it does which is the problem.

Four conquest maps are all that is needed, plus a few more game modes with there own maps and the overall game would be much more interesting due to the variety and fundamentally different strategy required in each game mode.

Harbinger.8637:

Conquest is a fine game mode. Problem is it’s the only game mode. So no I don’t get addictive, because doing the same thing after +4k games gets old.

+1. I like it, but it does get boring doing just the one mode all the time. Like you OP, I was really keen about the game for its spvp, and similarly disappointed that it only had one game mode.

Galandil.9641:

Is there people who still cares, after 14 months, about rank?

C’mon guys, rank it’s just a measurement of how much you play sPvP, not how good you play it. And apart from aesthetic rewards, glory doesn’t give anything else.

Ofc this exploit should be fixed, but it should not be one the primary concerns about sPvP atm, there’re a lot more serious issues to be addressed by Anet.

Its one of the main rewards/status we have as a spvper and its being exploited; its probably the most serious issue in spvp. Why the map wasn’t taken off the rotation until a fix is implemented is baffling.

If the farming/exploiting is still going on-well that’s just unbelievable to be honest.

Looks like your build is the first issue. Playing glassy warriors is very difficult, you should try and find a tough build, with healing signet and some defensive CDS- probably that long-bow/hammer build posted above is one.

Warriors are incredibly strong atm in spvp, just find that nearly immortal warrior build and practice for a bit and you should be fine. Maybe ask on the warrior forum about it.

Asche.5362:

Like jmatb pointed out in this thread, we have a few balancing problems (duh), making some builds and classes more rewarding than others. Like it or not, it will probably stay that way. No matter how many patches will balance this, there will always be some classes coming out on top, while others vanish from the meta for a while. That can not be helped, there is no perfect balance.

There is a way to work around this though.
Before GW2, Team Fortress 2 was my game of choice. Competitive matches had a similar problem there. In a 6v6 Fight the meta was: Two Soldiers, 2 Scouts, a Medic and a Demo. Which means only 4 out of 9 classes got regular use. That is until Higlander-Mode became a thing.
What is Higlander-Mode? Teams now had to consist of one player of each class, bringing a lot more variety to the matches.

Could this be a possibility for GW2 as well? Instead of 5-man teams, you’d have 8 players on each side. And while (as of now) you’d still have very strong Rangers, Necros and Stun-Warris, each team would have to find a way to implement less popular classes into their teamplay. Not only would this make team fights more exciting for the simple variety, but you’d likely see new builds popping up too.

The downside is that it would maybe not work on the current maps. We might need slightly larger battlefields with more objectives.

Tl;dr: Add a new gamemode with teams consisting of 8 players, 1 of each class.

Thoughts?

Feel sorry for the people that get to play the kitten classes?

I think it could be quite powerful if you time it right. A lot of thieves get off a stealth or shadow refuge at about 30% or so health and regen, coming back at you with full health.

Sick-em is an instant cast so it should be possible to use it almost as a form of anti-stealth cc, and give you enough time to burst them down. If you can also cripple the thief it could give your pet a chance to hit as well. The reveal almost seems more powerful than the original effect.

I think it will have a place in a BM and or BM regen build for sure.

Rufy.6093:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hi,

I wanted to just touch base with everyone and say that we are looking into making a few changes to the Sky Hammer map layout. The goal of these changes is to preserve the overall feel of Sky Hammer(Positioning = good), but hope to relieve the spam knock backs and get kills feel. We are listening to everyone both in-game and on the forums. Thanks for the feedback and see you in-game.

Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk

Don’t listen to the forum children. For every skyhammer call out on forums, 5 others that don’t waste time on the forums like the map. These forums are full of whiners and don’t represent the majority. Please keep fixing stuff in the right direction without taking the whiners serious. They will never be satisfied. Hugh you guys are doing an A+ job in all areas of GW2 and are not appreciated. If I could apologize for these forum kids I would.

How do you know that “For every skyhammer call out on forums, 5 others that don’t waste time on the forums like the map”? Sounds like you just pulled that number out of your kitten to me. Every time I play that map at least one person complains about it, that doesn’t happen for any other map.

If you look at my posts in the spvp forum, you will see that I consistently praise the game. However, this map needs work, we have an we have an official post now confirming that the devs think it needs changes and yet the map is still in solo tourney rotation. So why is it still in the tourney rotation?

It should be taken out, and in fact the farming issue on this map if it is still ongoing should have been fixed yesterday-and if it can’t be fixed the map should be pulled until it can be fixed.

Yes the devs are doing a sterling job imo, but I and many others have issues about this map that have been confirmed as valid by the devs, and yet all we get is variations on the “we really appreciate your feedback and have some ideas for fixes in the works”.

If it was just some class balance issue then who cares, but how can you take the competitive element of the game seriously if the devs admit the map is flawed and yet do not pull it? And outside of tourneys, why are exploiters allowed to farm game currency on this map? It truly baffles me that strong action has not been taken on these dev-confimed issues.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hi,

I wanted to just touch base with everyone and say that we are looking into making a few changes to the Sky Hammer map layout. The goal of these changes is to preserve the overall feel of Sky Hammer(Positioning = good), but hope to relieve the spam knock backs and get kills feel. We are listening to everyone both in-game and on the forums. Thanks for the feedback and see you in-game.

Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk

So please take it out until its fixed.

I mean that is the logical thing to do right? If you admit its not right and needs changes take it out of tourney queue temporarily, put the changes in, test in hotjoin, and the add back to queue if satisfied.

The question is why is it still in the solo queue if you say it needs to be changed?

I hope the new “maps” are actual new and different game modes and go beyond a simple deathmatch or variations on conquest.

I would like to see a siege type map (think small spvp version of wvw) and a map with MOBA mechanics such as victory being determined by physical progress/objectives within the game, not points.

Surprisingly for me the most interesting spvp “map” I have seen recently is the siege in Tera. However, Jon’s post doesn’t make me confident we will be seeing anything particularly fresh. Crossing my fingers for a pleasant surprise.

These are the ideas that I think would work (from your list):

1. Video Channels.
2. Formatting Hot Join. (5vs5)
3. Setting Team Que at Higher Incentives -also solo should be higher than hotjoin
4. Templates. Good idea for monetisation, I would buy.
6. Glory Boosters. Yes I agree, sell em, no need to give them out. In fact they are just a silly idea anyway.
6. *GvG mode- well should just be a standard feature imo, not something to charge for. Also I wonder about custom arenas in general. Does that make much money? I can’t imagine high enough demand for them to justify the cost of implementation, but I guess those who yell the loudest got their way.

The selling tickets idea I don’t like, same for charges to watch streams.

So out of all that there is one item I would be interested in buying if the price was right-templates.

The other things (apart from glory boosters) are just needed to help get the game running better, and many could be implemented by the community if someone wanted to go through the effort of doing it.

felivear.1536:

On the topic of “new players easily getting into conquest”: you don’t teach new players conquest. You funnel them to hotjoin which is a conquest map that actually rewards them to NOT play conquest. They then struggle to get into matches with friends, etc and many of them quit.

I am blown away by this. This is such a foundation element that has been missing FOR OVER A YEAR. Such a simple fix with high impact. (impact is diminishing day by day because new players are fewer and fewer).

I’m not sure if you guys discuss “low hanging fruit” in your office, but this would be a great example of this.

Edit: I went hunting (wow that was depressing btw) by searching through my past posts and found https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Big-Changes-before-Christmas/first#post912162 which was in December of 2012. I was begging for changes to hotjoin so that the players that get the game for Christmas would be encouraged to stay….

Did you notice that several of your ideas have been implemented? For example TPVP is just one round (2 teams), you can now access all the pvp options from the pvp tab, burst classes/builds were nerfed (unfortunately now virtual bunker can burst you with conditions or stuns, haha). That’s quite a lot actually; seems like someone is listening.

Your ideas for the scoring didn’t make it, but I don’t like them so that is good imo. However, I know and like what you are shooting for, and your other ideas like giving spvpers something to take with them to other parts of the game, are also themes that the community keeps asking for. I was a pretty insightful post really, for something 10 months old.

Shiren.9532:

I think eagle eye is a horrible trait. The increased range on the shortbow definitely matters but on the longbow it hard marginal use in WvW and doesn’t really matter in PvE unless you want to lame world bosses by standing outside their maximum range. Currently Eagle Eye competes with both piercing arrows (fundamental for effective bow use in PvE) and Spotter (the most useful tool a ranger has to contribute to a group). It has even more competition if you use signets, one of the few viable power builds.

Allowing eagle eye to boost the shortbow range to it’s former not OP state would solve nothing because the 20 and 30 point traits in marksmanship are already loaded with some of the most important DPS traits a bow ranger has. Eagle Eye needs to be merged with Piercing Arrows or Quick Draw (or both) in addition working with a shortbow. All three combined would probably be too powerful, but all three on their own is underwhelming and bloats rangers with weak trait choices.

Yes, I totally agree with this, and I think given the huge nerfs to ranger it would make a lot of sense. It would make running a power/bow build much more attractive if those traits were merged.

There are no arenas, it is more like battle grounds, called spvp in GW. The spvp is of just one type a conquest mode, kind of like Arathi Basin in WoW. However, there are several different maps with different dynamics/sub objectives to help score points. The teams are either 5vs5 or 8vs8

The competition comes in three main flavors:

1) Hotjoin: This is the casual mode where you learn a bit about the maps, how the game works and how the classes work. Also good for having fun in between tournaments. This is the mode most like wows bgs.

2) Solo queue tourney: You join a more competitive game and you get a ranking on public leaderboards. It is 5vs5 on a random map. As the name suggests this is the “pug” mode- no premades .

3) Team queue tourney: Same as above but you queue with your pre-made and receive a ranking on the “team” (premade) leaderboards.

The pvp is really fun. Necro and warrior are OP at the moment (but the devs rebalance fairly often so in a few months something else could be OP).

I don’t think any class plays like feral druid, but they are all quite fun in their own way, and as you can start competitive pvp at level two and no “gearing up” is needed, you can try them all out.

Rym.1469:

To be fair, the problem with SB was always the same : auto-attack. It’s basiclly faceroll damage, working incredibly well with power, much better than Longbow. Skill ceiling of SB is kind of non-existing if you don’t go for flanking bleeding. From my experience, it’s just more rewarding to run around target, spamming #1 shot than swapping to LB to burst. As it was and is a big problem, they’re trying to reduce ranged-like effectivness of SB, as you don’t really flank going for further distance and make it something it was, I believe, meant to be – condition short range skirmish weapon, oriented in nearly melee encounters when you have possibility to hop on foe’s back.

It was intended to have a 1200 range-that’s why it did have a 1200 range. You guys just make things up, seriously. Faceroll damage? Power? Its best used in spvp as a condition stacking weapon. It used to be able to burst with power when we had 100% quickness, the quickness trait in 5points BM, and a more rapid rate of fire- even then it was probably better used to stack bleeds though.

Also you say “just more rewarding to run around target, spamming #1 shot than swapping to LB to burst….it was and is a big problem”. None of the nerfs to SB change this. You want to change that dynamic give the weapon some synergy outside of pressing 1 and 5 to interrupt. If you make it so that it is useless at doing what it was made to do (as you are suggesting) it just becomes a useless weapon.

Now, I don’t think it is useless, far from it, but the combined effect of the nerfs has made it mediocre. Give it back range, or even putting the quickness trait back to 5 BM and it would shine again.

Mrbig.8019:

The main reason why tourneys are seen as “too hard” is , again , system fault.

Hotjoin doesn’t teach you how to play, the rewards system doesn’t teach you how to play.

People playing hotjoin up to rank 50 have absolutely no idea how to play, most of the time they’re not even skilled enough to even step in tourney due to running totally selfish builds ( like shatter mesm with double stealth+ blink+ mass invisibility, or P/D stealth spam thieves).

If you keep the rewards this way and THEY WAY they’re awarded, people will never learn, will think tourneys are too hard, nobody will steap out from HJ.

At the same time, if you change HJ to make them similar to “other games” unranked matches ( so you give glory ONLY to the winning team, rebalance the ratio glory is given to players instead of promoting mindless killing near the point etc. etc.),
still Hotjoin population will rage because now suddenly playing requires some thinking.

It’s a dead end, in any case.

During my studies regarding business comunication and decision making, the one aNet is in is kinda one of the worst possible scenarios, where you basically need TONS of resources in order to avoid the disaster.

No matters what you do, it will be bad. Still you need to do something.

If they don’t do anything, PvP will mostly like slowly die of starving, and from a business perspective, they would be better off cutting all the resources and give them to WvW and PvE, maybe hoping WvW will flourish as the new PvP mode.

It’s just called abandonement, and it’s nothing more than a part of the life-cycle of the product, in this case of a failed one.

I don’t disagree entirely with you here, but I think its a matter of degree; also I still think the game is great-not a failed product at all.

It has given me pretty much what I was looking for-pvp without a gear grind, action combat (not totally but close), stamped out those annoying pug stomping games, 24/7 on demand pvp.

Reward systems are complicated, and in all mmos I have played people rage about the spvp reward systems. GW2 system is actually better than some other games I’ve played.

Hotjoin is amazing. I absolutely learnt all the basics of the game in hotjoin, and I absolutely stepped up my game when I moved on to tourney and again to team play.

In terms of making the rewards “like other games”, well other games do reward you even if you lose. I don’t recall any other mmo that has three very accessible (as in you can join right at the start without gearing/levelling) levels of pvp, catering to beginners/casuals through to very competitive players.

You write off the game as a failure, when at least in comparison to existing released games it is light years ahead in many ways. I’m not saying that any of the issues you touched on are not real to some degree, but your conclusion that the game is a fail and should be abandoned lacks perspective. Indeed, the dilemma you present above pretty much applies to all spvp in other mmos I have played.

The reality is that no game has got it 100% right, all pvp forums are full of people whining, and doomsday sayers are on the forums of every mmo. We are very demanding clients. Sixty bucks, what’s that? Less than a new console release, which even if I like I might only play for 50 hours or so. I have played many hundreds of hours and am still enjoying it- and that is nearly exclusively spvp!

Keep up the good criticism but put it in perspective.

Mrbig.8019:

It’s very simple to understand why it happens.

It’s not about “more people playing unranked, like any other game”, it’s about that the very system is designed to reward you better if you don’t play the way the game should be played.

Glory gives you rewards, glory is obtained via killing. Conquest is not about killing.

tPvP has no real rewards aside few easy accessible skins, there’re no rewards for playing the game and you’re rewarded for not playing ( leadeboards).

You’ve no incentives to play the game competitively, while you get incentives ( more glory, chest, finishers, bags) to play the game NOT ONLY not competitively, but ALSO in the most wrong way possible.

Again, the whole system needs to be rehauled, and the fact they’re not doing it has also a clear answer: since the biggest part of the PvP population plays hotjoins for these very reasons, removing them would make this “spoiled” population to stop playing PvP, basically showing how the system was broken from the start and how unhealthy the PvP part of this game is, since without hotjoins all the people left would be those few hundred people playing tPvP for the lulz ( since nobody high ranked plays anymore).

I would be scared too to take any action, thus they do nothing.

And we complain as usual.

Yeah I agree with your reasoning here. However, instead of taking away current rewards for hotjoin/glory, if rewards were boosted and/or new rewards introduced for solo/tourney wins (I have many ideas for that!) I think you could keep hotjoiners happy and incentivise the more competitive side.

Having a high population of casual/hotjoin is important for the game too, but one of the problems with spvp is like you said, that solo/team queue needs to be more popular.

There is one thing you didn’t touch on that keeps tourney play down, and that is the perception of it being too hard. I started playing the game at launch but I didn’t play tourney for a long time because I didn’t think I was good enough. Many people I meet in hotjoin say similar things about why they don’t play tourney. I don’t know what the answer is to this issue, and on the other hand I really hate it when people with no clue end up on the same solo team as me.

Also, perhaps I am just naïve, but I truly believe the devs do their utmost to make the game great, although I don’t agree with all their decisions. At any rate, its going to take more than the upcoming patch to address the issues in your post, but I’ll likely still be playing.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Ranger killed because of a range nerf? Get off the Kool-Aid man, it’s not that kitten bad. RARELY are you ever able to keep 1200 against enemies in dungeons outside of bosses, and in WvW that condition damage that hits ONE ENEMY won’t help you much. Stop QQing when the SB is still a viable weapon.

No one on this thread said ranger “was killed because of SB nerf”. And I do not see how anything in your comment justifies the series of nerfs, both direct and indirect, that SB has suffered. You are asking me to shut-up because ranger can’t keep 1200 range and the condition damage applies to only one enemy (in bold for some reason)? Doesn’t make any sense. Why not just make it a melee weapon given that logic?

The point is that at the SB was not OP at release. It has been nerfed by 1) reduced rate of fire, 2) quickness nerfed by 50%, 3) quickness BM trait moved to GM trait, and 4) range reduced by a quarter.

I do not understand why a non-OP weapon has to be so heavily nerfed, and certainly the range nerf is just completely unjustified.

SuperHaze.4210:

NevirSayDie.6235:

moiraine.2753:

Edo Tensei and NevirSayDie,

I don’t want to play Team Arena or Solo Arena because i’m not a competitive player and never will be.I don’t play for rankings or for place on the leader boards.I just want to have some fun with 1 or 2 of my friends while playing casually Hot Join.
I don’t want Auto balancing to break my group because one of the teams is weaker and is leaving the Arena non-stop.

Also Custom arenas are not for me because for a week i play maximum 8 hours.I don’t want to buy something and to rent it afterwards so i don’t play it at all.

One of the biggest issues developers have to avoid is allowing an organized group of several friends to play against a “weaker team” of unorganized people. If you’re playing together and making the other team ragequit, you’ll be just fine in a team queue. You don’t have to be trying for a “high rating.” You could say a similar thing about PvE: “I’m not really trying for a legendary, so I don’t PvE.” If it’s fun, do it. If not, don’t.

I didn’t mean to rent a custom arena, I meant you can join one already existing. You’ll find things like 5v5 servers, duel servers, etc. Look for something that seems interesting to you and fits your group size.

If you try out custom arenas and team arenas and don’t like them, that’s fine. But don’t judge them if you’ve never tried them, especially when there are so many people telling you that they’re probably exactly what you’re looking for.

What the OP was trying to get at is that it shouldn’t take jumping through hoops to play hotjoin with friends. Coming from WoW myself, I liked the fact that me and a couple of guildies can queue up for BGs and have fun together. It might be imbalanced from time to time in our favor, but it can also happen vice versa when a guild from another server joins the same BG and gives us a run for our money. It’s a different kind of competitiveness because it becomes server vs server. Nothing beats seeing another guild from a different server and knowing you’re going to have to work your butt off for the win, yet at the same time we don’t worry about rank or forced to play strictly in a 5v5. Sometimes there would be a lone player that we would invite into our group or guild but since the WoW BG maps are large enough with plenty of players from multiple servers, there’s room for both group AND solo play. I can hop in solo and find a group from my server and we’d go at it in BGs for a couple hours. That’s the kind of casual pvp that I believe the OP (as well as myself) is looking for.

This is exactly why the current system in GW2 is far better than WoW etc. You just described you and your mates having fun running a pre-made stomping noobs in casual spvp and occasionally having a challenge when by chance you play against another guilds’ premade.

I absolutely despise that system in WoW, Rift etc, after being stomped by such groups sometimes repeatedly in the course of a night. Indeed, one of the things I like the best about this game is the elegant way that Anet has implemented hotjoin and auto balancing to avoid that kind of thing.

Note also that there are no “hoops to jump through” if you want to play with one or two friends, it is exceedingly simple to join the same server and hop on the same same team.

Fordel.3208:

stale.9785:

Kilandros.2098:

I think SB should be 1200 and LB 1500 base and that the increased range trait be changed to something else. Ranger is, after all, supposed to be the ranged heavy hitter.

truth here. Also, +1 and 15 chars. rawr.

Yea, was going to post that too.

SB Default to 1200 again, LB default to 1500, and eagle eye goes bye bye. You put the 5% damage bonus onto spotter instead to justify it’s master tier.

Yes this sounds like an excellent idea, and the increase in range to longbow is what I expected to happen, not another nerf to SB.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

1. peter and jane are friends.
2. peter and jane join a hot join public server 001.
3. peter joined red team, jane joined blue team
4. round ends.
5. next round starts.
6. peter joins red team first.
7. jane waits for teams to be balanced and joins red team.

it is not perfect, but it works.

Its actually easier than that. At the start of the new round just open the score board and manually join the team you want, I can play on the same team as 1 or 2 other friends nearly all the time doing that.

moiraine.2753:

Why there isn’t more casual PvP?Hot join can’t be played with friends and i don’t won’t go play Tournaments.Actually i will never play tournaments and that is the only place where i can be grouped friends.
Look now i’m a casual pvper and just want to have some fun with my friends.I want just to log to go smash some heads and that’s it.I’m not interested in ranking and never will be.My foot won’t ever step in the Arena.

Every MMO till GW2 had Competitive PvP and more casual one.And both modes gave you the option to play with friends.Why GW2 is so different from the other MMOs?It is punishing me because i’m more casual player and just want to have some fun.Let professionals play with professionals but please give me an option to be able to make a party with my friends while playing Hot Join.

Looks like i will for ever play alone because i will never step in the Competitive stage
Casuals are punished for being casuals…It’s so sad and not funny anymore

Well you can play with your friends in hotjoin, just join a server and press the arrow on the score page to join the team you want.

However, perhaps you mean “why can’t I take a group of friends and rofl stomp casual noobs for fun like I can in other mmos?”. Again, you can do that to a degree if you want to by just manually joining either red or blue, although it is hard to get more than three people on the same team. But I think that is a good feature of the game, not something to be sad about.

Mrbig.8019:

Yasha.5963:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Phantom Master.9582:

Every time I go on these forums Its only to get even more depressed

This could be part of the problem. If you enjoy GW2, play it. If you don’t enjoy it, stop.

The only option that doesn’t make sense is kind of enjoying it, but then going to the forums to talk about how bad it is, then logging in and playing for a bit, then logging out and going back to the forums.

So you mean ppl that write stuff here, enjoying the game? The majority of us is still here because the game has potential and there is some little hope left, which have been completely shattered by the development for several times (that’s why ppl tend to write cynical and negative)

I’m being completely sincere. If you don’t enjoy playing the game, don’t force yourself to stick around just because it has “potential.” That’s a waste of your own time.

If it’s not fun for you without _ (better leaderboards, balance tweak X, etc) it won’t be fun for you with _, either.

Nevir, you are one of the few people on the forum with a good sense of perspective.

I am not even sure what most of the people who say “the game had potential but Anet ruined it” want. What will make the patch good enough for the whining to subside? I just don’t see the answer from the crying here, it just seems like mindless mudslinging most of the time, outside of a few people who take the time to write out exactly what they think is an issue with the game.

80 % ( maybe 90%) of PvP population plays hotjoin ( in prime time, when i was still playing, there were dozen of HJ servers FULL), this means HJ population was constantly around 800-1000 every minute.

Meanwhile soloqueue takes 15 minutes to find a match for me, and when it does i’m matched with people not even on the leaderboard ( as former top 300, but it is just an example, i had only 4 days to climb the ladder before leaving).

Of course nobody joins solo queue. Team queue is even worse.

Meanwhile 800-1000 people per minutes play hotjoin, not playing the game as it had been designed ( killing each others randomly) OR glory farming OR doing dailyies.

.

I think this is a really good observation and we, or rather the devs, need to think about why its happening.

Mrbig.8019:

Yasha.5963:

This question reminds me of the patch that was hyped to be “the” pvp patch that would change the game about 6 months ago.

tbh, it EFFECTIVELY changed the game.

Necros, wars, S/D thieves, spirit rangers.

Aside S/D thieves and (MAYBE) wars the skill cap for these classes was ridicolously low, they had broken mechanics ( Inf strike, Healing signet, Condi bursts, AI) paired with other “softier” very strong mechanics ( condi spam, AoE spam, evade spam, CC spam), making them ridicolously broken and favoured in favor of high skill cap prfessions ( mesmer, ele, engi, burst thief).

It completely changed the way this game was played.

If they’re capable to do it again, hoping this time will be in the right direction, than: YES, 15 october patch will change the game.

How it is going to be, i don’t know.

One other thing, just changing class/build balance is not going to radically alter the game.

Balance changes just shift the balance around. Outside of a few extremely OP builds that have been toned down, I don’t see the balance now as having dramatically improved from day 1. It is just that different classes/builds have the ascendancy. That will be tweaked as a matter of course and different classes/builds will become OP.

Changes/fixes/improvements to things like skyhammer farming, leaderboard issues, pvp rewards, asura size, no spectator mode in tourney, new pvp game modes, aoe, overload of effects and the like are core issues; balance changes are just a given and not something to particularly fixate about, especially in this kind of game.

Mrbig.8019:

Yasha.5963:

This question reminds me of the patch that was hyped to be “the” pvp patch that would change the game about 6 months ago.

tbh, it EFFECTIVELY changed the game.

Necros, wars, S/D thieves, spirit rangers.

Aside S/D thieves and (MAYBE) wars the skill cap for these classes was ridicolously low, they had broken mechanics ( Inf strike, Healing signet, Condi bursts, AI) paired with other “softier” very strong mechanics ( condi spam, AoE spam, evade spam, CC spam), making them ridicolously broken and favoured in favor of high skill cap prfessions ( mesmer, ele, engi, burst thief).

It completely changed the way this game was played.

If they’re capable to do it again, hoping this time will be in the right direction, than: YES, 15 october patch will change the game.

How it is going to be, i don’t know.

I am pretty sure that was a more recent patch, not the one I am referring to. Certainly the change to ranger spirits and warriors came while I had quit the game and “the pvp patch” of yor came while I was still playing (well I am playing again now).

NevirSayDie.6235:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Phantom Master.9582:

Every time I go on these forums Its only to get even more depressed

This could be part of the problem. If you enjoy GW2, play it. If you don’t enjoy it, stop.

The only option that doesn’t make sense is kind of enjoying it, but then going to the forums to talk about how bad it is, then logging in and playing for a bit, then logging out and going back to the forums.

So you mean ppl that write stuff here, enjoying the game? The majority of us is still here because the game has potential and there is some little hope left, which have been completely shattered by the development for several times (that’s why ppl tend to write cynical and negative)

I’m being completely sincere. If you don’t enjoy playing the game, don’t force yourself to stick around just because it has “potential.” That’s a waste of your own time.

If it’s not fun for you without _ (better leaderboards, balance tweak X, etc) it won’t be fun for you with _, either.

Nevir, you are one of the few people on the forum with a good sense of perspective.

I am not even sure what most of the people who say “the game had potential but Anet ruined it” want. What will make the patch good enough for the whining to subside? I just don’t see the answer from the crying here, it just seems like mindless mudslinging most of the time, outside of a few people who take the time to write out exactly what they think is an issue with the game.

This question reminds me of the patch that was hyped to be “the” pvp patch that would change the game about 6 months ago.

If you don’t like the game now, I doubt this patch is going to change your view.

The “gamechanger” patch will be the one where actual new pvp content (ie new games modes) are released. That is unlikely to help the esports scene (so it won’t make it a “serious pvp game”, whatever that means), but it will definitely breathe life into spvp if it turns out to be any good. Until then its just incremental refinements of what we have now, which is good but probably not enough for you.

dday.9532:

We also need to get exp.
it took me from launch to july to play wvw
because it took me 11 months to get an 80 because i cant stand pve.
in the end i had to pay gems and craft to 80.

gold+exp would bring alot of spvpers to wvw, and alot of pvers n wvw players to pvp because they wouldnt have to halt their progression.

So true, I could only get to level 40 before I quit and went looking at other games. The pve is fine in GW2 its just I too can’t stand pve in general. I spend nearly all my time in spvp and there is nothing that crosses over to other parts of the game except bags and class knowledge.

Probably like many other spvpers I would love to pvp in WvW as well but I just can’t do the pve/ WvW grind- it literally makes me quit playing the game.

I don’t know if the answer is gold or xp or karma or whatever, but I would love some way to leverage my hundreds of hours of spvp play time to be able to join WvW at a competitive level.

Stooperdale.3560:

You might get 1000 to make it the same as warrior longbow, but Anet won’t give back 1200. The shortbow is a mobility weapon, similar to thief shortbow, and mobility fits a short/mid range weapon better. Thieves are far worse off with a 900m maximum on all their weapons and they are not going to get extra range on their shortbow either.

You can try and rationalize it, but it was a mobility weapon all along and started with 1200, and had that range for a long time. Thief SB has always been 900 range, and has incredibly powerful utility, aoe, and auto damage. That is, at least in part, why it had a 900 range to start with and why it is appropriate.

SB has been nerfed so hard that now, as you can see, people say it is not worth using anymore. Its not like rangers were ripping everyone up with SB in the past in spvp, in fact rangers were considered a weak class when the SB was at its peak.

I saw no overwhelming complaints about SB range from the community- unlike say for eles when they were totally OP, and basically everyone was complaining about it.

The main thing I saw was rangers complaining about long bow being weak, and I see the nerf to SB as a mainly a response to this, giving LB a boost by weakening SB. And I don’t like it and I don’t think it is balanced.

SB has been over-nerfed, please give the signature ranger weapon (SB) some love.

I agree. Three of the top four on the leaderboard have played 20 games or less. Number 2 and 4 haven’t played since mid-September.

Also I find it highly unlikely that the stats like 14-1 or 19-1 etc are due to only luck or skill (although I am sure those players are excellent- its just that one good player in a team of baddies cannot guarantee a win) .

The short bow has had its rate of attack and range nerfed. Please extend the range back to 1200.

Note also that quickness has been nerfed and the BM quickness trait moved to the GM slot. This combined with the nerfs to the weapon itself has made SB quite weak. It has gone from ranger’s best weapon to mediocre. It wasn’t even OP to start with, it was just better than our other choices.

There is a lot more I could say about the SB and how it compares to other classes weapons, but seriously you have gone too far with the nerfs in this case.

Please at least put the range back to 1200.

Not sure if trolling, but the auto-balance in hot join is a feature designed to keep team numbers balanced, so if a couple of players drop out and the game goes to 3vs5 it will auto balance, randomly swapping one player over so the teams are 4vs4 (even).

By the way you can also change teams manually in the score page by pressing a red or blue arrow, but only if there is a spot available (u can usually do it at the start of a new round to play on the same side as your friends.)