Guild Wars 2

A little poorly worded, but yes the quality of pvp has gone into the gutter since patch. Everyone who has grinded pve endlessly is swanning around pvp with no clue what to do and it’s horrendous in solo que, it’s worse than any hotjoin I’ve ever seen.

Matches are so volatile, most end up being a 500-100 type ending, people are making the most ridiculous plays, don’t have any pvp awareness and that ‘mentor role’ thing is BS, people do not want to be mentored, you just gave them a shiny title that used to have some amount of prestige credited to it and now they think they are the mut’s nuts/too good to be told to stay at close.

I hate what this patch has done, I hate it so much

Yes, he’s an idiot for trash talking.

But how do you view this patch as a positive to people who have been actively been playing pvp since before the patch?

He shouldn’t be flaming you, but the problem with the pvp community is that we are bottom rate citizens, and that’s a fact

butch.8136:

Hambow isn’t that great anymore. Ele is back. My necro is still viable.

Hambow is just as disgusting as ever

CratZ.6270:

Also zerkers stacking in a corner near capture points has been a common sight in SoloQ.

That;s how you do PVE dungeons

Would love a dev response/readyup notification tbh, but not hopeful

The time spent getting a legendary would equal the time spent ranking up in pvp long before rank 71.

Rank 71 pre patch would equal a minimum of three-four legendary items, if not more.

Static.9841:

bhagwad.4281:

We all saw this coming miles away. I loved PvP, but there’s nothing in it for me now. Us PvP’ers chose to discard PvE in the hopes of being special in our own isolated world locked away from the legendaries etc of PvE. We thought it was a good deal because PvE’ers could never bring their stuff into the mists. We were betrayed. Now we have nothing, everyone is dragon and random people are bringing in their stuff from PvE.

I get nothing except a tiny bunch of rank up chests with champ loot bags that I could have farmed in Frostgorge in two hours. All our hard work is down the drain.

Can’t bring myself to play after this betrayal.

Moral of the story: Don’t play an MMO that tries to be “different” (aka no grind) because they just hand out stuff for free and don’t value the hard work that others have put in before.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m playing the same game. Who cares what skins PvE players are bringing into PvP. Get this straight, you are NOT a unique and special snowflake because you chose to play PvP, nor were we ever “in our own isolated world locked away” when you can enter the mists at the click of a button. Furthermore, we all knew that playing PvP we were the minority of players that make up the game, we all knew that players could get the same skins we gain in PvP a lot easier/quicker than we could by grinding the ranks, this is nothing new.

This sounds like you have too much envy over what skins players who chose to PvE have gained and you don’t – we chose to PvP, some of them chose to pursue legendaries.

All you seem to do is find something trite to QQ about. What hard work is down the drain from the unification of skins? You have the same skins PvPers had access to bar legendaries and certain forge weapons. Big deal. What else were we ever getting that made our/your/your cousins-sister’s-nephew’s-fathers-former-roomate’s hard work down the drain?

LOL betrayal, get a grip.

Wow, cheese and crackers.

At what point has anyone prominent in the pvp community wanted to be a special snowflake?

All anyone has ever wanted was equal treatment, no special treatment, but a pvp player playing from day 1 and suppourting the game through gemstore purchases has been dumped one, while a pve player doing the same now has the best skins to use in both pve and pvp.

Being special snowflakes might be wanting a patch that puts all of our time spent in pvp to put us ahead of players in pve, even further ahead of players who have been playing pve since day 1 even though we might have never done pve even once.

You know, like exactly what happened to pve players who have never done any pvp this patch. They have everything we’ve been asking for since beta.

I’m now rank 80.

I have 6g and the exact same skins I had before patch.

There is literally a rank 1 next to me with a sunrise I’ve been coveting since day 1. I’ve posted about this before, because frankly I don’t know why people who play all of their time smashing away at a pve mob should get the best skins while pvpers get nothing and then further why the pvers have now gotten to transfer over their skins while pvpers got no form of compensation for their time whatsoever.

I really, really look at the Anet team differently post-patch. That was nothing to do with limited resources or lack of funds, or evil producer companies. That was an active decision to unfairly reward people who have played pve while choosing to be okay with dumping on people who have played pvp.

And that is BS.

I can’t foresee you gathering much support being against warrior and hotjoin nerfs

I do, however, foresee this thread turning into comedy gold

Would you care to elaborate as to why?

/popcorn

Condition warriors/engi

I’m going to drink every time;

-I see a rank 20 PVE hero rocking a legendary in the mists
-I see A skyhammer farmer with the Dragon finisher
-I see A condition engi
-I hear Anyone saying 8% less Healing Signet feels right
-I try out one of the new traits and wish I could unspend the 3 gold

Join me! If you don’t mind losing the use of your liver permenantly

It’s the same for most classes tbh.

Most of the specs I play with I look at the new GM traits that I could have access to and they are all laughably below the current GM traits. I can\t even see power block being a thing tbh, the interruption Mesmer thing is cute but without phantasm or shatter speccing there really isn’t place to fit one into a team, and both phantasm/shatter are far too trait locked to even consider taking power block. Even in a dedicated interruption build lots of traits are super mandatory so you’ll end up losing a big chunk of your ‘advantage’ for power block, while phantasm/shatter are still sitting pretty with maxed efficiency, basically.

I also find it kind of stupid that for at least Mesmer/necro they seem to have taken one build idea [interruption/deathshroud] and put one trait in the GM tier for every traitline, making it impossible to make a working ds/interrupt build. They would have been better adjusting one full traitline to work around something like that rather than 5 new GM traits that are never going to see the light of day.

The only thing I’m looking forward to is that hopefully the lyssa nerf and the teeny changes to warrior might make me not want to stop playing for a change.

silvermember.8941:

Coloxeus.3480:

seems like Anet forcing all thief to play p/d condition or d/p 30 trickery burst only viable build

Cry me a river.

Anet has been forcing all elementalist into mediocrity since BWE2.

Agreed, basically every class has 1 build that works well in pvp and that becomes the only build that gets any development attention.

Unless you’re a warrior of course, then you have 1 signet/stance build that works with any weaponset and amulet combo you want.

Jekkt.6045:

there is no lower crit damage in pvp as far as i know. and i dont think that the meta will shift that much anyway.

^ The truth has been spoken.

95% of the new traits are garbage and the number 1 Godmode spec is only getting an 8% nerf in return for the biggest boost from the sigil changes

IDK, people are fussing over what you might consider ‘higher level’ changes like tournies etc. That’s great, and I want them, but you can’t be doing that while you don’t have the basics covered.

Look at balance, variety and general enjoyment and people will come back/stay. Those are all way off, and a tourney full of hambow/decap/zerk thieves isn’t going to suddenly bring the population back from the dead. The fresh feeling of having a well balanced meta, that might.

Liewec.2896:

viola, you have the current cesspool of filthy builds that we call hotjoin.

The builds are exactly the same in ranked matches. In fact I’d say moreso because at least in hotjoin you might see the odd person trying a new build or something, in ranked everyone already knows what they should be playing and just goes with that.

bhagwad.4281:

DanyK.3842:

You play decap engi, talking about unfair :P

Oh, I agree. But you know why I play a decap engi? Because most of my PvP time I was a mesmer. Different build, experiments etc. I was even a good close holder. Till one day I met a decap engi who rendered me irrelevant.

I realized that if I wanted to contribute the most to my team, I had to adapt. Never played an engi before, but I learned to be a darned good decap engi myself.

I’m totally with him on this, my advice to anyone who isn’t having fun in pvp anymore due to balance is to just stop trying to fight for your favourite builds to be viable and just go with the cheese. And tbh a lot of high ranks (50-60+) reflect that, from the ones I typically see often in ranked and hotjoins they all run one of the meta builds. I literally can’t remember a time when I have seen a high ranked player using a build that I couldn’t identify within seconds.

So yeah, you might find an axe necro fun for 1-2 games where you think to yourself ’_it’s not super strong or anything but It’s at least decent enough to have a go_’. And then mouth breather warriors or whatever lyssa-abuser specs are popular atm roll in and stomp you with ease, the kind of ease that makes you want to leave from embarrassment because you must be afk letting the cat play to have lost so easily and achieved so little in the process.

I’d get used to that now, because little is going to change come April 15th, the day that will forever go down as ‘we thought 8% was a good idea’

Abellus.2615:

The new PvP reward system will directly give things like Gifts of Mastery, completely bypassing many of the most stringent requirements for Legendaries. With the upcoming update, PvP will be the -only- game mode where a Legendary can be obtained without ever doing anything else.

So yes please, let’s hear about how hard it is for PvP players now that rewards from all aspects of the game are going to be handed to you for casual arena matches. How many dungeons do I need to grind to unlock the Dragon finisher exactly?

Please explain what is getting ‘handed’ to us when PVE players will be walking into pvp with the best skins available while pvp players are being graced with the opportunity to begin gathering parts to make those skins which were available to everyone else at launch.

And if you had actually read the article you’d know that pvpers will still need to go out and achieve map completion which means playing a hefty amount of pve and wvw, whilst pvp and wvw players need never step foot into pvp to craft a legendary if they so desire.

I’ve posted about this a lot before but now it’s actually come to fruition. While I think rank 55 is very high compared to how easily a legendary can be gained through pve, I’d still like to see something like this so that random pvers aren’t coming in on April 15th with the best skins available in pvp for zero work.

I hate that they posted the updates in the pvp forums as if ‘Here it is guys! We’ve listened to you and it’s party time!’ It’s not. All the rewards are for PVE players who already have the high level skins. People who have played pvp have nothing and are getting nothing. But 1.5 years after people in PVE have gained their legendary skins, the frozen skins, the fractal skins or whatever we’re allowed to start gathering materials for them.

Joke much?

Honeypie, this is the pvp forums. We have nothing to show for our time spent playing but 10-20g max, some leftover qualifying points and a box full of crushed dreams.

Legendries and precursors are for the PVE/WVW goldenchildren, we’re the ugly stepkids.

Lue.6538:

It was apparent all along that the rank system would recieve an increase in gain.. IMO people should’ve seen this coming and waited with ranking up. They chose to invest time and thats their own fault.

…

…

…what?
This is the most cancerously bad thing I’ve ever read. You are trying to say that it’s a players own stupid fault for getting kittened over because they should have known better than to play a game they bought?

Are you on mixed medication?

The feature build needs to be bigger than it is realistic to hope for. If the previewed 8% shave to healing signet are the extent of the changes then it would only cement the notion that GW2 is a game that could have been one of the greats but was deliberately driven into the ground. Even if I carried on playing sporadically, I’d still have a very jaded view of how things turned out.

Exile.8160:

why do they keep pushing pve rewards on us?

Reading between the lines, they are giving us T6 mats etc. so that we can craft a legendary or other items the regular way, and just farm the mats in pvp.

Terribly vexing to say the least, but I didn’t really expect anything more.

kittenguy who has played loyal to GW2 since beta, GG guy who joined yesterday

Nabbo.2845:

i watch TESO gameplay videos to fall asleep

ESO is trash for an MMO in this day & age, but people are actively looking for an alternative and ESO/WS are the only upcoming titles. GW2 pvp is nothing but a headache of OP mindless trash builds, 4v5, no progression and general lack of fun-factor, and that is driving people away.

So yes, ESO is garbage, but even that might be better than what we have here. TBH I’d love to see a preview of the upcoming patch, I think a lot of people are in the position of hoping beyond hope that the patch brings redemption and gives people a reason not to go.

With the current state of traits, never going to happen. Almost all powerful builds hang from 1-2 key traits, people simply wont join when their traits are banned. Then you’ll just have a server full of necros wondering why there are no warriors around on Healing Signet/Zerker stance week.

You also have to bare in mind that classes are blatantly balanced around those key traits, for example in pvp you can basically assume that when you see a condition necro you know they have terror traited, if you then banned terror you’d be left with a totally non-viable condition necro spec because everything else has been brought down in fear of making terror too powerful plus the other options in that tier do nothing for a condition spec.

I have to say, I haven’t played Warcraft in years but their new talent system is the best I’ve seen in any MMO, way better than the traditional ‘tree’ design

Not even one session on abusing lyssa runes
Not even one session on zerker amulet & damage immunity spams

Fail troll is fail, summer camp from hell

Agree with cuge, mesmers are too utility locked to fit it in.

Bunkers guards & warriors are pretty utility locked too, but their utility lcks include their sources of stability.

As a Mesmer you’d either have to give up portal/blink/decoy for a worse version of SYG that your guardian is going to have anyway, so why bother with it. Added to the fact that you wont be stood on point as Mesmer, that 240 range isn’t going to go very far.

silvermember.8941:

Anet has wise, IMO, decided to focus on bring in more PvEers to PvP which is the only way for spvp to grow at this stage. personally, the more top players that go the way of the dodo bird the better, I don’t know why, but I feel like it would be better.

It would be ‘better’ because nobody would be raging about OP zeroskill builds.

Why?

Because the only people left would the PVE people playing the OP zeroskill builds.

Evan Lesh.3295:

@Nettle,Silver: You’ve explained well the importance of attracting new players.

Specifically for the high-level players it sounds like balance is by far the most important feature to keep you going, which is no surprise. I can’t speak much to that as I program sPvP features and don’t deal with balance first-hand However, the balance patch is coming, so that will definitely be affecting top-tier players. Apart from that, giving feedback on the Ladder CDI would be most beneficial.

This is a longshot but here it goes;

When you say balance patch, would it be possible for your just to answer whether the balance changes go beyond the scope of the announced changes such as 8% healing signet reduction/revamp of sigils? Are those announced changes representing the majority of the changes coming or are they the tip of the iceberg? Have they gone through any further iterations internally?

A response would be good, I know you guys don’t want to talk about tentative dates but I think I’d be understanding the situation more if there were absolutely huge groundbreaking changes coming rather than waiting so long for the minor changes that have been announced.

If you’re a warrior you might look forward to celebrating the 1 year birthday of the hambow era

Iason Evan.3806:

There is a difference. Jane knows she has zero control over how the devs implement balance patches. johnny does too, but he just wants to be a jerk.

All I am saying is: Don’t be Johnny

And what I’m saying is that Johnny was probably similar to Jane at one point, but it isn’t reasonable at all to expect the Jane approach to last forever in the face of being ignored for an utterly ridiculous amount of time. Nobody buys a GW2 account just to post hate on the forums.

I’m not saying people are right to get personal or overly venomous when they post or that I’d advocate it, but It isn’t exactly wrong at this point either. You can’t tell people that being Johnny is unreasonable after this long – it’s perfectly logical.

If you actually look back at the threads that have been closed the past week due to being ‘toxic’ almost none were of the nature you described, most were well reasoned, justifiable and not overly harsh arguments. Yes people were upset but what do you expect?

I did read what you said, in depth, in your OP;

_’It’s past time to start focusing on the things we like about this game and keep our opinions to ourselves’

’We can’t offer criticism to the devs without looking in the mirror and asking, “Am I really actually trying to make this a place that other gamers want to come and try this game out or am I a part of the problem?”_

That’s telling people to stay positive and stop whining, if what you meant was ’it’s time to stay critical and stay upset just don’t swear’ then that isn’t what you said and is not the tone of your OP.

There is too much White Knighting that even the OP hasn’t constructed a point.

Toxic would be bad if the devs were in here daily discussing concerns/actively making changes on a regular basis and people were spewing hate at their face despite best efforts to make things right, that isn’t good and it isn’t right.

We get very little dev response outside of locking threads and telling us that they can’t tell us anything, balance changes are few and far between despite completely nuking pvp by introducing signet/stance warriors [amongst other cheesemode specs] into the game – really, what else do you expect? That people are just going to keep smiling and saying nice things?

I can tell you, take a look at the Gazillion forums for Marvel Heroes, a small-medium F2p game with micro-transactions and look at how the devs treat that game, that is how it is done. Balance patches are meaningful and frequent, as is content, and the devs post actual discussion points/answers multiple times daily on their forums. Then take a look at the nature of the threads there compared to here. That community is positive and happy – why? Because they’re being treated with good custom.

Are we?

I find it quite offensive tbh that you believe the community is ‘doing a bad job’ it isn’t our job, this is our leisure, if you spent your $50+ elsewhere at a hotel and the people running the hotel ruined your experience and then did it repeatedly despite you giving them more than ample time and money to make amends, would your advice still be keep positive?

Lordrosicky.5813:

Besides it really doesn’t matter. You guy have waited 2 years for a pvp patch so what is an extra couple of months?

An extra couple of months = time enough to get bored and move to greener pastures set to release soon. Now I’ll be honest, I think GW2 is a better game than anything else in this genre coming out soon, but that doesn’t mean it’s good enough or that it will indefinitely retain even me who is in support of it, pvp is very un-fun atm, highly frustrating and that isn’t what you should expect from a leisurely pass time.

ESO looks grim, poorly animated and just generally not my thing, Wildstar looks alright but I just don’t personally feel the future cyborg vibe. GW2 looks better than either of them mechanically, but you can’t look past the glaring problems here like it’s fine.

It’s like driving a Porsche along the French valleys while someone punches you in the back of the head all the way; technically you are getting something great but the experience is being ruined. And even if the new car models coming out in the next few months don’t appeal to you quite as much as your Porsche does, you might just take one out for a test drive and see how it feels to not get punched constantly.

.5 could be done if you’re fastest hands in the west and are actively looking out for a specific telegraphed cast.

IMO 1 second is the first acceptable average breakpoint for ‘if you see this telegraph and want to interrupt it you have been given reasonable time to do it’

And I have played against you/experienced the rage and still see no reason why this thread turned into backhanded kittening when mesmers severely need help.

All that experience I’d expect more from you tbh but somehow remain unshocked at how you act when posting given how you act in game when you lose. You don’t speak for everyone, far from it

I’d love to know exactly what qualifies you as a real Mesmer and not me.

Oh good, one of the few threads that gets dev attention about pvp balance and here people are arguing over who is/isn’t a scrub [quite ironic since I’ve been personally yelled at in PM twice after beating Sensotix but hey].

Maybe instead of ‘you know nothing’ and ‘X > X’ garbage, you could post reasoning, suggestions and evidence that might actually help the Mesmer class, rather than turn the tiny dev spotlight into a cry fest

I’m on the fence tbh, every time patch notes get leaked like this they are spot on, however nobody usually comes out and denies it from Anet.

I am sincerely hoping that ‘they are not real’ does not mean ‘these are the changes that are going through however the leaker mistakenly put in necro staff changes from an old patch and made some typos, therefore they are technically not real’

Some of the changes look good, some do not

It’s a cute idea, but there are glaring issues in pvp that need addressing before we can start to look at throwaway maps to match living story events.

This would serve no purpose and take away valuable resources from the stuff that actually needs to be looked at.

For strictly MMOs, it saddens me to say it but probably warcraft. The balance isn’t perfect, it never will be, but even the ‘bad’ specs are still seen as viable just not optimal. Unlike here where for example weaponsets like axe necro or utility focused specs like thief traps/Mesmer mantras are just shockingly underperforming, given no attention etc.

At least in Warcraft you can set your sights on a spec you enjoy and be confident that you’ll be able to play and enjoy success as that spec without the need to reroll from it. Here you might love your little axe necro but hate the feeling of pulling teeth.

Brigg.6189:

Is there a better pvp mmorpg? Just curious.

For mechanics? No

For balance/diversity/game modes/popularity/dev attention just throw darts at a board and pick whichever game advert it lands on

felivear.1536:

bobomb.5209:

I don’t understand why you guys haven’t been able to listen to previous posts by the developers. You claim they don’t listen to you but why can’t you listen to them? They posted that they will focus on other aspects of GW2 after the Living Story arc is completed. That means PvP will be changing. I mean honestly they have taken out Glory and specifically stated that they will be implementing a new reward system for PvP. They are blatantly telling you what will happen and you guys can’t be patient for one month or so? It’s not like you are paying a subscription after all.

I for one am looking forward to the focus on PvP that the developers will be bringing. I understand that they are working hard to bring new content to all of their fan base because ArenaNet is NOT some sort of big corporate monster that can do everything that we could ever want if we could only complain enough (though I admit it has worked in the past). They are human beings with limits, not machines.

I have been playing only PvP since head start…so, no, it’s not “just one more month”. For me, it’s been 18.

Exactly, I could have been patient for ‘just one month’ if they listened to people when the warrior patch dropped, here we are now and we will have been putting up with it for nearly a year by the time they get around to reducing by 8% which doesn’t even begin to address the whole situation.

GW2 was not done at launch, but I didn’t care; it was amazing. But the lack of care since then is really souring my opinion of the experience, which for how hyped I was for release – is a feat I didn’t think would be possible. Balance in pvp is not something that can be left unchanged for so long, especially when it is un such as state as it is now. Stop looking at ladders/titles and start looking at the fundamentals.

That GW2 started with the foundations to be one of the greatest designed MMOs ever if given the right amount of love, but instead is slowly backpeddling into a lonely grave?

Boomstin.3460:

Cynz.9437:

i am sure more ppl from wvw would pvp more if it was offering more rewards and pvp in this game desperately needs more players, so overall i like this changes but pvp system definitely needs more…we will see~

Sorry , no chance. Distracting people with shinies only works for a short while. Things like fun gamemodes , good balance , interesting maps and gameplay that rewards skill instead of team comp are the things that keep people playing.
Too bad none of those things exist in pvp.

Very much agreed, reward swill be a short term fix at best, and one that should have been in at launch.

If people still can’t play their favourite spec because they get hambow’d down in seconds they’ll simply get the shinies and leave as quickly as they entered.

I think if you took the time to read the thread you linked you’d realize what you look like.

Hint: It’s nothing to do with the bonus weekend.

That, unfortunately is as far as your point goes

Actually nobody has objected to removing barriers to pvp, what we’re asking for is recognition for time spent in pvp in the same way that time spent in pve is rewarded. If they removed gold tomorrow and let people buy high level fractal/legendary skins for glory the boards would explode.

Considering we were universally blessed with skins that pve players have had easy access to for over a year, then yes, glowy parts might be setting your sights a little high.

While I agree that time spent playing in pvp is a reward in itself and that you are intangibly rewarded with ‘the experience’ of playing. PVE players get both the reward of playing and amazing exclusive skins, and tons of gold and are going to be more favored in the upcoming rewards patch.