Guild Wars 2

I don’t see a details panel anymore (since yesterday) just personal score. What’s up with that?

Reaper and DH, so broken…..

Actually that was a pretty good letter, well said. I more or less agree with all those points. I would also add pls fix hotjoin (ie remove spectate or change how it is implemented).

I know its cool to say hotjoin is for noobs so don’t spend any time on it, but if your suggestions were implemented then it would be good to have a place to play spvp while waiting for queues to pop.

Looks awesome, thanks for the update.

Ballitar Stryker.2109:

This damage screen is from a single 1 second (less actually) fight with a dragonhunter. The screen wasn’t big enough to list it all. there is still another 6k of damage that wouldn’t fit on the screen. Is this your idea of balanced?

Yeah if you get all the traps in the face and eat GS whirl while dazed from the traps it can be pretty savage. What I find interesting is that all those skills are aoe and really don’t require any set up other than to goad people onto the traps, or maybe try to bait dodges before the enemy reaches your traps.

Cozza.2836:

It’s not always a mess when up against a premade (see below).

I understand the frustration with being paired against a full premade, however. Most times I try and engage in conversation and tactics with my fellow soloers, other times it works out fine (see below). Other times they just flat out don’t listen – which is a very big problem. A lot of soloers go into sPvP as exactly that, solo, and ignore chat. This makes no sense when the objectives require working as a team.

It is really dependent on who you are teamed up with, though. For me, a big problem is being in a team with a bad collection of classes. No, I do not want two thieves on my team, or three warriors, nor four DH (actually happened once). If the game balanced the classes amongst the teams more efficiently, I think this would go a long way to helping a mostly-solo team against a premade.

Yeah, my screenshot above was even better: the 5-player premade only scored 5 points against the pug I was in. But usually premade teams seem to do a lot better than pugs. Give them a bit of time and that team I played against will probably be able to get 50 points, a force to be reckoned with.

I think one reason pugs are able to hold their own in many cases though is because GW2 pvp has a level playing field (in terms of gear etc). In other mmos, premades usually have grinded for the best gear, and the combination of overwhelmingly better gear and group coordination has a snowballing effect.

meow one twenty.4376:

coax.2951:

5 man randoms vs full Pro League teams. Neat.
Doesn’t help 1 of us left after 1 minute, but still, this shouldn’t be happening.

Yasha.5963:

This prepade vs pug thing is getting totally out of hand. I know it sounds like I am raging, but just look at this. How long do we have to endure this kind of rolf-stomping?!

Poor Elin Potatoe.

Too bad you didn’t look at my screenshot, here it is again for your viewing pleasure:

Sunfish.5970:

The V.8759:

Highlie.7641:

The V.8759:

can you define what you are talking about? Your post really doesn’t clear anything up.
If you are talking about rev downed skill 1, it’s not an autoattack.

Words of ego boosting.

How is that ego boosting? It is just a question. If you are talking about rev downed skill 1, you can’t let it automaticly attack. So it’s no autoattack. Just clarifying that.

ok let me clarify then, slow on a downstate “1 skill” that has no cooldown and can be spammed, aka perma slow is stooooooooopid.

not that that point mattered at all =]

Elite class needs elite downstate skills, what’s the issue?

PowerBottom.5796:

Acotje.5689:

They could just release a pvp version HoT for lets say 20€.
Unlocks all elite specs and rev ONLY in pvp.
Also unlock every rune/sigil/amulet.

Pretty sure you had this option in GW1
But then people may cry p2w even harder, cause thats how the GW2 community works.
Or PvE’ers will cry that they want a PvE version or w/e

I think this Idea could work pretty well, +1!

Something like that would be cool.

choovanski.5462:

all you salty soloqueuers should form a salty solo queue premade. there are absolutely enough of you to do so.

That could be a good idea, its quite sad when premades only score 5 points against your pug team, at least if it was team vs team they probably wouldn’t feel so bad getting rolf-stomped.

abc.5790:

Wake up people. Like Vapour said, Condi Reapers have 3 powerful counters. That in itself proves that the build is balanced.

Instead of learning how to counter, all I see are people throwing tantrums demanding to get builds nerfed.

It’s pretty disgusting to witness how lazy people are at attempting to figure things out on their own.

IKR? Even if you don’t have HoT there are three powerful counters, namely 3vs1, 4vs1, and 5vs1. You guys just need to wake up and figure this simple stuff out.

This prepade vs pug thing is getting totally out of hand. I know it sounds like I am raging, but just look at this. How long do we have to endure this kind of rolf-stomping?!

Cogbyrn.7283:

What is it that people think a Reaper should feasibly be able to do?

This is true: my cat walked across the keyboard and it managed to kill two enemy players as reaper, it was totally hilarious.

Israel.7056:

This build, like many other builds that have come out since HoT release, has profound strengths and FEW weaknesses. .

There fixed it for you.

Reapers, even my cat can play them well.

Most of the new specs are crazy OP: a common theme is that they are hard to kill, do lots of damage, have lots of cc, and just seem to spam aoe.

Would be great if we could buy the elite specs with gold or gems, its an especially attractive option for players who mainly or only play pvp.

I just wish they would let us buy the elite specs separately or with gold/gems since I only play pvp.

Snorcha.7586:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Removing people from queue on map travel is a decent middle ground and should be easier than temporarily removing them from the queue. However, even teleporting within a map can have decent load times and hooking up warnings to every way you can leave a map, like Elwinson listed, is still a moderate feat.

The new player argument is obviously not an ideal one, but at the time was decent. I’d argue its more important now that we’ve removed the tutorial, but ideally should not affect where you can queue from once you know how PvP works.

The WvW queue behaves much differently from the PvP queue and cannot be used as an example or launching point unfortunately.

Increasing match accept times I don’t think is an effective or fun solution to this problem.

Hi, software engineer of 14+ years. With a masters degree in the subject. While your current implementation of WvW queuing may work much differently, technically I would love to hear the argument for why you can not retool the sPvP queueing system to behave very similar. Although I don’t have privilege to your source code, I have a deep understanding of how such systems work and queuing is an arbitrary pattern for software engineers. I imagine the reason is because your queuing for sPvP is based on current instance of Heart of the Mist and perhaps you are doing some load balancing with how players are placed into instance? I don’t expect ANet to disclose proprietary design, but I do think you should be honest. Given enough effort the retooling for sPvP queuing to allow players to queue from outside Heart of the Mist is absolutely possible, it’s just right now certain powers that be do not want to devote resources to this retooling.

I think it absolutely is worth the effort if you will finally give us a premed vs solo queue. If it’s a difficult technical undertaking, make it worth it. If pre-mades have to wait 5-10 minutes to get a match at least they can be in world outside Heart of the Mist doing something else. I don’t think they would mind those long queues then.

I don’t understand why ArenaNet doesn’t invest in this. I think those responsible for leading the sPvP effort should really consider how damaging it is to continue to have pre-made vs pug groups. I imagine the general thinking is that league division play will take care of this, but I seriously doubt that it will. You’ll still have pugs vs pre-mades.

Nice post, but using the powers of deduction, they don’t care, or CBF.

They do care, but sometimes when they try to adjust or “fix” things it has consequences that many players don’t like.

As far as I can tell they are usually unwilling to rollback any changes they have made even if many players complain about it, or the changes have obviously created more serious issues than they solved.

However, to say the “don’t care”, in my opinion, is extremely harsh. This team has shown on numerous occasions that they are heavily invested in the game and community.

Jourdelune.7456:

Put some exceptions to what would be correct… like playing hotjoin?

Hotjoin had been the way we had wait for queue the first 2 years of the game. 1v1 server are nice while you wait with your team…

PLEASE.

This. Please let us queue from custom maps/hotjoin or whatever it is called now. Or allow us to pvp in the mists or something.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yasha.5963:

So what I don’t understand is, why did they take away the “solo queue” and “team queue” options and introduce ranked and unranked team queue? There must have been some very good reason right?

One of the greatest things about GW2 pvp used to be that there was no pugs facing premades (unlike almost every other mmo). Even hotjoin used to be pretty fair. Why did they take all of that away? Is there some grander picture I am not seeing?

Odds are it was rampant feedback about how there wasn’t an unranked place to queue for fun, so they needed to make unranked. In that situation, “ranked” could just be anyone who cared about MMR.

I don’t have any history to pull from to support that, but I’m guessing people yelled at them, similar to how they are now, about how they need to change the old system because it was flawed.

Such is feedback when you have a really large audience.

Yes, I remember now, you are spot on. Unfortunately, it was kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Very likely players still wanted something like unranked but also wanted to avoid pug vs premade, like in solo queue.

So what I don’t understand is, why did they take away the “solo queue” and “team queue” options and introduce ranked and unranked team queue? There must have been some very good reason right?

One of the greatest things about GW2 pvp used to be that there was no pugs facing premades (unlike almost every other mmo). Even hotjoin used to be pretty fair. Why did they take all of that away? Is there some grander picture I am not seeing?

assassin.7895:

When I fight DH, they often have invisible CC. I try to move, dodge etc., but I get knocked down.

What hack are they using and how can I prevent this?

One of the best threads in a while, made me laugh: ty OP.

Sinning.7483:

The problem i have with playing my thief as main is that to be effective I was limited to build and playstyle , more so than my other class’s. I have not played it since HoT so not sure re DD what is brought to the table BUT…..from my observations re thief.

Thief takes more skill to play effectively than prob most other class’s imho and YES there are alot of crappy ones out there because of this. When I see couple thieves on enemy team I always keep an eye out paranoid that they might be good ones which imho is one of the most dangerous opponents but most time they not.

So my question here is….DO they really need buffed if good thieves can be a most feared opponent? Or do they just need more build options (I certainly thought so pre HoT)? Or do ppl just truly need to l2p (I hate saying that but do they?)…idk

Good thieves can no longer be the most feared opponent. Its more about B2W than L2P I’m afraid.

If only we could at least duel in heart of the mist it would be so much more entertaining.

I just want to summarize:

Gun flame is a 1,500 range attack the takes 3/4 second to execute. It has a five second recharge, but uses up all adrenaline. It can hit for 20K and has an aoe daze, and the OP posted a screen shot of being hit twice for this amount during a fight (once when alive once when downed).

Unfortunately the OP won’t reveal what build he was using or give a more detailed screenshot so we can’ analyse further, but it is clearly possible to pull this off on the light golem without team buffs/debuffs.

ReaperJr.5967:

Vague Memory.2817:

Mes thinks gun flame is a bit broken with 20K hits don’t you think.

Since no one believes these statements without a pic, find it below. If anyone is wondering why I got hit twice by this, it is because the first one downed me (I usually have 21K health) and 2nd one was when I was downed. Note: the player who did this then started to boast how good he was.

Here’s your original post. Bottom line of the post: gunflame is broken. We then went on to tell you those numbers weren’t possible because we have never produced them with builds that are even remotely viable.

Then we did a little bit of theorycrafting, and changed our stance. It might be possible with builds fully specced for damage. So I went ahead and tested it and got a 17k gunflame with an extremely gimmicky build.

Surprisingly, some other warrior 1ups me with a 19k gunflame. But how did he do it?
-> went zerker ammy
-> went scholar runes
-> changed all utilities for the sake of granting might and inflicting vuln
-> popped all of them, including heal, for 22 might stacks and 10 vuln
-> had to build up adrenaline on other target golems
-> had to waste a dodge roll for that 10% damage
-> had to do it 6 or 7 times

Then presto, 19k gunflame. Still think it’s broken? We won’t try to convince you then. It’s like trying to convince an anti-vaxxer, i’m talking to a brick wall.

Tldr; gunflame isnt broken, to land a 20k hit you need the stars and planets to align.

I don’t know the OP, but the opening post is not inflammatory and basically provides actual evidence of a ranged attack hitting for 20K (twice), and asks the appropriate question “is something off here?”.

In return you guys have been totally rude (to put it mildly), claimed everything he said was false, impossible, etc. Well it turns out that you were the ones with no clue, even of the capabilities of your own class.

Anyway my question is w..tf is a 20k ranged attack doing in spvp? What is the range on that thing, is it the same as kill shot’s 1500?

So a 20K ranged attack is possible, like the OP said. Do you think all the people who have laid on the hate and derided the OP will apologize?

You guys should post the whole screen shot so we can see what’s going on better. Just scrub out the player names in paint if you are concerned about that.

Ara.4569:

Just screwing around, don’t take it seriously. :p
I was just saying it’s not a real poll: who in their right mind would say no ?

Anyway, I wish ArenetNet had community managers like Blizzard’s. I’m tired of being kept in the dark, with the feeling of being completely ignored.

The people that wanted the change in the first place? I am pretty sure that some people actually requested the current system. I seem to recall complaints about how suddenly half of a team in hotjoin would just disappear. (Not me, I want to queue from anywhere)

Evan Lesh.3295:

morrolan.9608:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Ara.4569:

I hope it stacks exponentially because 15 min is nothing…

The 15 minute timeout is for the first offense. The dishonor lingers on your account for much much longer, resulting in a longer timeout if you abandon another match.

Since you’re answering in this thread and not the other one about the dishonor system. There is the related issue that the time for accepting a match is too short and now if we go for a bio break or even just to get a drink we risk getting a dishonor for 15 mins. Is it considered reasonable we sit glued to the computer for however long a queue takes without leaving the computer at all? Even if the queue is long?

Missing match accept only gives a 3 minute timeout unless you’ve recently gotten dishonor.

That is much more reasonable than what I had thought, thanks for the clarification.

hurrado.2346:

I think this was a dumb idea, who hasn’t missed a queue for one reason or another? It doesn’t cost your team the game like someone leaving does and it doesn’t happen all to often but it’s usually not due to intentionally missing it.

Yep, this exactly. Its slightly annoying if someone drops in queue, but completely frustrating when someone drops out in the actual game. The same punishment is being levelled on “crimes” of completely different proportions.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

knight.8926:

compared to warriors thieves should be in heaven still

Warriors have been week for maybe a month or so.

Thief has been weak so long I can’t remember the last time they were even at an average level of strength.

For me they were still good before the blinding powder nerf (last year?). There may have been other changes at the time because after that I basically couldn’t play d/p anymore. Used to be my favourite class, it was very exciting to play.

It was interesting how they totally shut down the thief, it was like there was no where he could move to be an effective +1 and pretty much got wrecked as soon as he was noticed. Hard to really analyse it though since the commentary (naturally) jumps around between fights a lot.

Power.2957:

Notice the top right where it wants everyone to go visit Spirit Vale. This screenshot was taken today and sent to me by a friend.

For over half an hour he ran around in Heart of the Mists with nothing to do.

This also links directly into why the new dishonour system (punishment if you miss the queue) is problematic.

Thiefz.3695:

Just do what other games do, allow people to purchase the specialization with money in game so that there is a play option. Multiple sPvP games do that. Put like 200 gold per specialization. Done.

Something like this would also be a great idea.

Great post OP, I totally agree.

I am quite surprised, seems a very player unfriendly way to implement a dishonour system.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yasha.5963:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yasha.5963:

Please listen and try to understand.

Your mistake is thinking that if I understood, I would agree. You’re wrong. I do understand what you’re saying, but I still disagree. I think hotjoin acts as a public server did back in old FPS days (no clue if games still handle public servers like this). You hop in whenever, teams are rarely balanced unless the server is full, and you just play to play. No additional logic required.

If you want my opinion (most probably don’t), I think one of the biggest issues is rewarding hotjoin with anything at all. You should get nothing for playing hotjoin, or everyone, win or lose, should get the same amount of glory/reward track progress/whatever. The latter is probably more reasonable given they’ve created an environment of reward, but I don’t think winning and losing should matter in an open, public game.

Why would you disagree with taking out spectator mode and letting everyone new to the game enjoy that wonderful ice-cream again?

As to rewards, yeah I don’t care about them all that much, not much point especially in hotjoin as it is now. That was one approach people discussed a while ago to try and help limit people from basically cheating the system.

Spectator mode is where you can go to view how someone plays and what their spec is, correct? It’s like popping to spectator in an public FPS server when someone is destroying you. Maybe you want to watch them for tips and gain some insight, whether they are your own class or they are a class you are having trouble with. You can analyze their traits, weapons, sigils, amulet, everything, and do some learning. Spectator mode has its purpose.

Is it because people use it as a staging ground, wait for someone to even up teams, then join the team they want to join to win? Is that how Spectator mode is being used? Would this be a problem if there was no incentive to win a game mode where you can just swap around teams easily, or leave on a whim?

Removing Spectator, which I think is a potentially useful tool for new players if they would only acknowledge that they are still bad and are working towards getting better, sounds like a patchwork solution. If they are going to try to fix it, they might as well try to make it better. For example, if you willingly switch teams mid-match, you get 0 reward. You only get reward if you switch via volunteer. Or if you go Spectator, you can only rejoin the team you left, unless you use Volunteer to switch.

Solutions exist that aren’t “rip out spectator mode”, and I support those more if they are going to fix it. However, I also think people need to worry less about losing and just play the game. Especially in hotjoin. Even CS public servers felt so much more about KDR, and much less about who won more rounds. It’s whatever.

See its not so much about losing as it is just the terrible experience that this team-swapping/ team stacking through abuse of spectator mode brings. Hotjoin actually used to be a fun experience for new players, and a good place to test builds. It doesn’t do a good job on either of those points these days.

Tweaking rewards as you suggest could be one way to address the issue (at least the swapping part), but ideally the rules would be changed to “if you go Spectator, you can only rejoin the team you left, unless you use Volunteer to switch”. Its a totally logical solution, right? Why it was implemented in a way that gives free reign to rampant abuse and then just left that way to rot all this time is … confusing. Preventing team stacking under the spectate system might be more difficult.

But basically yes, like you say in the best case scenario spectate would be fixed and then new players would have the chance to have an amazing experience.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Yasha.5963:

Please listen and try to understand.

Your mistake is thinking that if I understood, I would agree. You’re wrong. I do understand what you’re saying, but I still disagree. I think hotjoin acts as a public server did back in old FPS days (no clue if games still handle public servers like this). You hop in whenever, teams are rarely balanced unless the server is full, and you just play to play. No additional logic required.

If you want my opinion (most probably don’t), I think one of the biggest issues is rewarding hotjoin with anything at all. You should get nothing for playing hotjoin, or everyone, win or lose, should get the same amount of glory/reward track progress/whatever. The latter is probably more reasonable given they’ve created an environment of reward, but I don’t think winning and losing should matter in an open, public game.

Why would you disagree with taking out spectator mode and letting everyone new to the game enjoy that wonderful ice-cream again?

As to rewards, yeah I don’t care about them all that much, not much point especially in hotjoin as it is now. That was one approach people discussed a while ago to try and help limit people from basically cheating the system.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Yasha.5963:

NiloyBardhan.9170:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Kosard.9720:

does 8,000 damage for getting hit by one ability seem fair? i rest my case.

100b, rapid fire, melee mind wrack, back stab, unload, grave digger are among only a few skills that can hit that much, if not more.

My warrior, with your average zerk build, can hit 17k on his 100b (burn stun breaks and hit 50% HP and its insta GG). My thief can land 10-12k unloads. BP > HS+steal with procs is over 10k as well. My guard can whirl for almost 9k (a lot more of I throw in SoW).

You can argue everything else like how it covers the entire point, how they burn your dodges using LB2 and then daze you with traps so you can’t use your utilities and get eaten up all while fighting from 1200 range or how they have an kitten of CC, but let’s not cry about damage here like they’re the only ones that can burst.

What? 100b takes a huge effort to set up the attack properly and most of the times it doesn’t land all 8 strikes on the intended foe. 100b channel is actually 3.5 second long and with 8 separate strikes while traps’ are instant. How on earth did you compare the two?

Seriously bro, you need to L2P. 100b is instant cast hits everyone in a 240 radius applies an aoe daze, and gives stability, aegis, swiftness, blindness, vulnerability. It can also be easily set up using the warrior’s teleport ability.

But its not OP, because the daze is applied before the damage which gives you time to dodge out of the way.

I need to L2P? Since when does 100b apply CC and all those boons and conditions? O_o
C’mon, I’m missing something here >.<

Maybe in the next expansion?

Kayberz.5346:

You people keep saying to “FIX” hotjoin when its not broken. Hotjoin is working exactly as intended. All these things about hotjoin that you want to change/remove would defeate the whole purpose of what its for in the first place, if you started locking teams and not letting people join if it made the match uneven it would completely kill the whole quick joining with no queue functionality and just make it a more clunky version of unranked

The problem isnt the systems in hotjoin, the problem is YOU stubbornly refusing to use the correct game mode for competitive pvp.

No actually, in the first place hotjoin was all those things the OP and others have talked about. There was no “meta game” of team swapping and team stacking. It was still a fluid drop in drop out system, but the auto balancing actually worked because you couldn’t abuse the spectator mechanic to just swap teams and so forth.

nacario.9417:

Yasha.5963:

nacario.9417:

Yasha.5963:

nacario.9417:

If you want traditional battlegrounds/team deathmatch with sort of rules/even numbers, then unranked is the way to go.

As others have said, Hot join is random and is meant more as a testing ground, even the rewards are less.

Did you even read any of my posts? Jeez, its like talking to people with wool in their ears.

Why do you expect people to listen to you when you throw insults around? Is that how you are in real life, must be quite a breeze.
Since I am such a nice person without wool in my ears I will explain to you that I am writing to OP that is complaining about Hot joins, and how they work. Therefore I am merely explaining the take veteran players have on Hot joins, what OP wants in reality is unranked/ranked mentality – hence why he should go there.

And no I did not read any of your posts, sorry if that is insulting, but OP made the thread not you.

But you didn’t read any other posts in the thread explaining why veteran pvpers think hotjoin should be fixed, and furthermore decided to remain ignorant of other players’ opinions by still not taking the time to read anyone else’s posts on the topic, instead spending your energy on passive aggressive insult throwing.

Because I dont have to? Everyone has their opinion that they share, I addressed OP based on his concern and moved on as this is a dead horse, Hot joins have even been abused to rank farm, which is fine for Anet, that says enough. Your concern is that I didnt read your reply many posts below and therefore I got wools in my ears apparently Sadly I am not as adept and can have a 100% overview all the time, being able to read every little tidbit and prevent frustration.

Hotjoin used to be good before they implemented spectator mode, many games were fairly balanced and there was nothing like the team stacking and abuse of team swapping that goes on now.

When you entered this conversation, there were not that many posts, not even a second page. You just looked at the topic yelled out your totally unfounded opinion and only came back because I called you out on it. And you still refuse to listen to anyone else’s opinion about the matter. Its just arrogance.

nacario.9417:

Yasha.5963:

nacario.9417:

If you want traditional battlegrounds/team deathmatch with sort of rules/even numbers, then unranked is the way to go.

As others have said, Hot join is random and is meant more as a testing ground, even the rewards are less.

Did you even read any of my posts? Jeez, its like talking to people with wool in their ears.

Why do you expect people to listen to you when you throw insults around? Is that how you are in real life, must be quite a breeze.
Since I am such a nice person without wool in my ears I will explain to you that I am writing to OP that is complaining about Hot joins, and how they work. Therefore I am merely explaining the take veteran players have on Hot joins, what OP wants in reality is unranked/ranked mentality – hence why he should go there.

And no I did not read any of your posts, sorry if that is insulting, but OP made the thread not you.

But you didn’t read any other posts in the thread explaining why veteran pvpers think hotjoin should be fixed, and furthermore decided to remain ignorant of other players’ opinions by still not taking the time to read anyone else’s posts on the topic, instead spending your energy on passive aggressive insult throwing.

nacario.9417:

If you want traditional battlegrounds/team deathmatch with sort of rules/even numbers, then unranked is the way to go.

As others have said, Hot join is random and is meant more as a testing ground, even the rewards are less.

Did you even read any of my posts? Jeez, its like talking to people with wool in their ears.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Kosard.9720:

does 8,000 damage for getting hit by one ability seem fair? i rest my case.

100b, rapid fire, melee mind wrack, back stab, unload, grave digger are among only a few skills that can hit that much, if not more.

My warrior, with your average zerk build, can hit 17k on his 100b (burn stun breaks and hit 50% HP and its insta GG). My thief can land 10-12k unloads. BP > HS+steal with procs is over 10k as well. My guard can whirl for almost 9k (a lot more of I throw in SoW).

You can argue everything else like how it covers the entire point, how they burn your dodges using LB2 and then daze you with traps so you can’t use your utilities and get eaten up all while fighting from 1200 range or how they have an kitten of CC, but let’s not cry about damage here like they’re the only ones that can burst.

What? 100b takes a huge effort to set up the attack properly and most of the times it doesn’t land all 8 strikes on the intended foe. 100b channel is actually 3.5 second long and with 8 separate strikes while traps’ are instant. How on earth did you compare the two?

Seriously bro, you need to L2P. 100b is instant cast hits everyone in a 240 radius applies an aoe daze, and gives stability, aegis, swiftness, blindness, vulnerability. It can also be easily set up using the warrior’s teleport ability.

But its not OP, because the daze is applied before the damage which gives you time to dodge out of the way.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I always treated hotjoin servers like FPS servers of old. People are constantly coming and going, and you aren’t guaranteed a fair fight. Whenever I roll into a hotjoin and it asks for a volunteer to join the other team, I always take it.

I suppose ANet could only allow someone to join a team with fewer players, or if someone attempts to join a team when they are even, then they get put in stasis until someone joins up on the other team, to keep teams even. Then when someone leaves, because hotjoin is come-and-go, they can put people on the team with more in stasis to keep teams even. That’s about as far as I can think they can make it.

Otherwise, it’s a free realm to join and leave at will. If people couldn’t abuse spectator mode, or whatever they are doing, then they’d just leave and unbalance teams that way. Unranked is the best place to get your more even fights. If you’re worried about teams being unbalanced (they often aren’t in my experience), make a friend or two and queue up with them to get some semblance of teamwork.

I just don’t get why people put so much weight into hotjoin. It’s like if I went and complained to Valve because some Counter-Strike servers get unbalanced and I lose sometimes.

Please listen and try to understand. For the first year or so when there was no spectator mode hotjoin basically functioned exactly as your second paragraph above describes.

And yes, people did leave as in your third paragraph, but the system then did a great job of rebalancing the teams. And yes, of course if you want to expect a fully committed team working together on winning then unranked and ranked is the way to go.

As to the why, it is nothing like the example in your final paragraph. The issue now is not about whether it is balanced, its the constant cheating, the necessity to play the team stacking and team swapping “meta”.

Hotjoin was originally quite amazing. Imo it was the most well implemented version of “battleground” type pvp in any mmo. Like so much about GW2 it was unique, innovative, and fun. It actually worked very well, no fighting premades, no waiting times, no (or limited) team stacking, none of this team-swapping abuse. Hang out with friends, or indeed make many friends, since being on a specific server you were able to face the same people over and over, and the majority of games I played were fairly even. It was a very refreshing change from similar types of pvp in other mmos.

I played it all the time, almost compulsively. But now I don’t play it, can’t play it at all. I only play unranked or ranked now. So why do I care? Because its like they took my favourite ice-cream and then decided to put kitten in it. Then they forced all new players to eat this ice-cream with kitten.

When I started GW2, I got addicted to eating the most delicious ice-cream ever made and so I am still always coming back for more (although now I have to go to unranked/ranked to get it). How do you expect new players to react to being force fed kitten though? They are just going to think, “are you kidding me I am not eating this kitten!” And go and play something else.

To the above people saying “why are you demanding ANET change things just play unranked”:

Hotjoin used to be good. The teams were essentially locked, and team stacking rarely happened. This whole problem started when they introduced spectator mode into hotjoin.

Ironically, the people that wanted spectator mode were the esports crowd, not the casual hotjoiners. Don’t change it- revert it back to the quite enjoyable and functional state it was in before you dropped spectator mode in and ruined it.

Crinn.7864:

Is it just me, or do most of “just do this to beat DHs easy” depend on the DH being a scrub.

Some of us don’t put our traps dead center of the node. Some of us take advantage of longbow skills. Evading the traps just mean you have one less evade to use against trueshot.

Also the virtue #3 is insane, it blocks everything, include unblockable things like a Necro’s marks.

Yeah they presume the DH is a terrible player and demand that the opponent plays pretty much perfectly.

AWACS.6537:

Just ban players from hot join if they constantly move from team to spectator to team.

That is probably a bit extreme and hard to do. The system was actually working really well before they added spectate, so someone just has to look at the rules for spectate and modify them.

For example, to address team swapping abuse, prevent people from rejoining a game once they go spectate and not count players who are spectating as part of the maximum number of players in a server.

There also needs to be some way to prevent players from stacking teams by waiting in spectate until they work out which team has the better players before they join the game. This seems to be a harder issue to tackle, but there must be someway around it without just taking out spectate.