Guild Wars 2

They said this would be mostly bug fix patch and balance adjustments come in febuary. so no suprise there.

however I REALLY wish they made the cost of paid tournies 2 tickets instead of 3. That makes a huge difference in the farming tickets and honestly, comon 3 tickets for 1 round. when used to pay 5 tickets for up to 3 rounds.

Im extremely dissapointed the 1vs1 tourny costs three tickets. 1 or 2 tickets would have been way better. 3 tickets for a single round.

Used ot be 5 tickets for up to three matchs. COMON GUYS , get rid of those barriers to entry!

First off the balance changes and big pvp changes are coming in febuary, they said as much already.
Second there was small balance adjustments, as an incidental result of these changes.

Engineers got a tiny bit better, eles a tiny bit worse. which is fair. Further balance and big pvp changes are due febuary.

Lack of build choice, and power of build aren’t the same thing gintoki.

I mean i feel ya that the class has undergone alot of adjustments. But the fact is elementalists dominate Paid tournies to a way higher degree than any other class. Even see teams running triple ELes (ala orgins).

If your not doing paid tournies, and seeing it for yourself, i feel almost like its impossible to get it. But when stacked and played right with high coordination the double /triple ele combo is so powerful.

Stomp 2×. And hes not the only class the requires this.
Eles can move in downed state, so can mesmers.
It has a long cd, stomp , then move stomp again or dps em, or w.e depending on situation.

But this isnt unique to thief, ele can go much further in down state.

I know a match making system can be tough to impliment. But one Quick and dirty one that would be easy (though extremely limited).
Free tournies-
ADD up the ranks of the players quing. So 5 rank 10s, would be 50, then put them against the next lowest cumulative ranks. so 74 lets say. So a bunch of r10-12s fighting each other.

Take the two highest cumulative rank teams. And basically group them in the same way. So from top to bottom each team is matched up with the closest cumulative ranked team with a randomizer for the rare tie.
I know its not perfect as it doesnt identiifty premades. And low rank premades will destroy there low rank pugs, and high ranked premades will destroy high ranked pugs.

But thats better than high ranked premades destroying low ranked pugs.
It basically helps the first round alot, the two highest rank teams fighting each other first round. the 3rd and 4th highest ranked teams fighting each other first round. All the way to 7th and 8th highest ranked teams matching up.

This isnt a long term matchmaking solution, its a free tourny adjustment that would be (relatively) easy to code. all they would have to do is have a way to count up the pvp ranks compare and matchmake on that basis. ITs very crude, but it would help, not solve the current problem.

team rank 400 would be really high (team of five 40’s for example). Team rank 330 might be second highest, and they would face off in first round.

It would reduce, not eliminate the amount of bad match ups in free, and its a simple formula till they come up with a proper elo or w/e they have planned.

Making the most difference where its needed, in the first round.

lets not bust there balls too hard here guys, the 1vs1 tourny is coming in this week with a reduced cost.

so they are starting to do something about hte paids, lets hope they find a permanent solution.

i hate to say it but MMo dota would be awesome lol. towers and mobs spawn. But that would be a major patch and event, not sure its realistic on the horizon.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

What I see is a bad guardian. Back to the OP topic: A-net said they will take a closer look to the mechanics of ele and his buffs, for thief is nothing mentioned because he is not considered to be OP. As soon as you reach a high level in tournaments (paid 2nd, 3th round) you will understand why a thief needs no nerfs. Actually it’s from my point of view the hardest job to avoid diying. Because it’s much easier to counter a thief in an organized team / 5v5 then in a zerg where you have 5 ppl on you.

THIS
That isnt to say thiefs dont have issues. Culling needs to be fixed!

But even if we agreed that burst could use a revision because its not fun for new players (not inherently unbalanced, just not fun). Then thief must have compensation in some other way, or they would become useless in top play.

No weapon swap delay would also favor thiefs , who dont have ability cds but use initiative, they could rotate between there weapons for even more manuverability.

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

One more day i cant wait.

ele’s are getting nerf rangers getting bug fix mesmers losing portal every other bug and exploit will be fixed. im so excited.

I dont recall any information about there being balance changes in this patch thats coming. Do you have a source for this belief?

I mean i know they commented on taking a look at d/d ele, BUT i havnt heard that this patch has anything to do with that.

Ok, those are some other ideas. Idk about voice system. alot of mmos dont have one.

However, what do people think of the live event? It would draw crowds at least, and assuming by the time they do it, spvp is a bit better, then maybe it would get people back into that scene.

Tots.3056:

I agree, every time I fight a thief I’m just completely and utterly overwhelmed by their ability to spam number 2. They are way too overpowered and should be removed from the game.

It’s just like…
>See thief
>enter fight
>thief uses> HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKERHEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER-HEARTSEEKER
> AND I’M DEAD!

Please remove heartseeker as it is clearly OP.

Thats funny because every time i run into a thief that is heartseker heartseeker , heartseeker. I find that they are dead and im at 90% life.

Davinci.8027:

mjharrison.3209:

Khalifahaze.6045:

With a lack of healers in this game downed state is one of the few things that can counter burst, being able to have 2+ people rez a downed target is a great thing in pvp. Removing downed state would only make competitive pvp a joke.

No, because removing downed state would allow Anet to rebalance burst. Burst is only in its present state because of downed state. Downed state permits burst to not be game-breaking; remove downed state, you can remove the burst.

Removing downed state at this point in the game would just not be possible. I like it. It adds a whole new dynamic to the game and allows good players to recuperate after a bad hit.
Burst is fine where it is, because the only specs that can apply the huge amount of burst that everyone is complaining are also extremely squishy and can be counter bursted just as easily. This allows for a high skillcap, because bad positioning and map awareness from glass cannon specs means dying.
I honestly believe balance is good where it’s at. The only reason certain specs and builds are considered successful is because GOOD PLAYERS USE THEM. We saw it with PZ. They ran a comp that no one would have thought was viable, and did well with it. We can see it again, but players have to be willing to explore different specs/setups instead of complaining about nerfing/balance. 2 months ago, rangers were considered unviable, and now they’re in almost every team. Mesmers were thought to be the king of 1v1s and a must-have on a team, and now I see less and less teams running a mesmer because they have become one of the WORST 1v1 classes. This is because people are learning how to play their respective classes and finding specs that work better for them.
The meta changes because good players change it, not specs or classes.

And no, don’t remove launches being unbreakable by stun-lock mid launch. It’s a player skill issue. Wait to be on the ground, then pop your stunbreaker. There would be no need for a launch or knockdown if stunbreakers could cleanse them at any time mid-launch/knockback.

Mesmers just recently had a nerf. Balance/bug fixes change the meta also.
Furthermore, while player skill is a huge variable, it would be nuts to claim all specs/builds are equally viable.
Skill washs out more and more as a variable in high end play (because everyone is really good) and therefore what your seeing expressed more is how the classes/specs actually perform.
Part of the reason rangers are seeing play is as back bunkres, repalcing mesmers in that roll since the nerf and mesmers no longer being sooo strong in 1on1.

Evo.9180:

Sky.9347:

There just aren’t enough players (right now) to spread around.

Having random vs. random as it’s own bracket would stress an already shrunken population.

I know some people don’t like it when other games are given as an example, but I think it’s fair to look at games which have found that a certain model works. If you are familiar with the process of LoL becoming popular the turning point was the implementation of solo queue and matchmaking. It was after the proper implementation of those things that LoL started to grow fast. Of course Riot invested a lot of money into the tournaments later on, but the initial surge of players came before that. Even today solo/duo queue is the most popular mode, despite there being several other modes, too. Everyone who is streaming LoL is streaming solo queue.

I actually think that solo queue is going to help this game a lot rather than making it worse. Players who only want to practice as teams will get some actual practice against other teams instead of just rolling pugs and barely learning anything from it then going to paids get rolled there and come back to beating pugs in frees. It’s a vicious cycle, which isn’t fun for anyone.

It’s extremely frustrating for pugs to be playing against a team that has voice communication and synchronized builds. It puts off a lot of people from ever trying out tournaments again. And they are left with the horrendous hotjoins which will eventually bore you to death and force you to stop playing altogether. People who wish to play solo or with a friend are the majority. There are people who just don’t want the hassle of being part of a team and organize to play together at certain times. People who just want to play without feeling committed to a team. The casuals must be taken care of or this game will keep going downhill.

I understand that separating pre mades and pugs will initially make the waiting time for team queues longer, but quite frankly it needs to be done in order to give this game a chance to grow. Otherwise people will keep leaving until free tournaments become as dead as paid.

This, at least is an argument, with some fair points. However.

What about teams of 2-4 ppl. My guild often Ques with 3 or 4 of us. Thats a partial premade, where do we end up.

tournament community being split up=bad

better to have 1 system and an ELo. Then host monthly tournies and simply allow High elo teams to compete. or have daily/weekly tournies to get Qp.
Qp is a bad system anyway.

lets say team monster mayhem joins GW2, quickly learns the game, and a month from now is the best team. Winning every paid they do. lets assume they dont play that much , only a few hours a day. WEll it would take them MONTHS to farm up the qp to be at the top, surpasing those with over 1k qp already. so if some tourny launchs and the top Qp teams get invited in the meantime, despite being the actual best team monster mayhem doesnt get invited.

Poxxia.1547:

daydream.2938:

The closest measure of objectivity we have to balance in this game, IS paid tourny performance. That should be the primary guide, to what is, and what isnt balanced.

My point is that ‘i feel’ or ‘imho’, doesnt inform or tell us much about real balance. The ability to win vs top competition does tell us something.

Ah .. but you can’t say “fact is”, since we have no idea what the facts are either. That is based on the assumptions, that the meta is true, which we frankly have no idea about. the number of variables are huge, and my best guess is, that no one really knows entirely what is, and what isn’t possible. The underlying reasons could be way more complicated than the meta suggests. I am frankly not sure what is “the closest measure”, since that turns a very complicated situation into what I think is a false dichotomy. I find it to be infinite more complex and situational.
THAT is why I say “imho”.

Neither do we know, if the ones playing tournaments represent the best playerbase possible … the list is pretty much endless. Tournaments are also based on a certain way for things to happen, whereas it doesn’t really say anything about the balance between the classes if deathmatches were included.
Saying “real balance” again assumes some sort of god-like knowledge of what is right. I am sorry, but I prefer to play it humble .. if you don’t like my wording, then at least try to do the effort of understanding me and at the very least read what I wrote.

Everything is opinions, since you have to interpret the data in some way. The only two fields, that in some way can claim to move beyond that is math and philosphy imho
Peoples opinion of what is viable greatly influences what classes are brought in and hence skews the data.

And finally: Even if a class doesn’t perform well overall, that doesn’t mean that certain aspects are not.

I dont doubt for a second there are team comps/specs that are out there that nobodys using that are amazing.
What im saying is the best emperical guide we have to what works is top end play.

And alot of specs are called unviable, because nobody has found a way to make them work in high end paids. Doesn’t mean its impossible, but it does as scientists say ‘reduce prior uncertainity’ and allows us to have some confidence that some builds arent viable, and others are.

Its not that the meta is immutable law. this isn’t what im claiming and strawmans my positon. ( Besides the meta will change soon anyway because of class balance/bug fixs). What im saying is the meta is the current best understood ways( there is debate about the meta, necro vs ranger for example) of playing the game-because its how top teams ACTUALLY play in order to win. Other ways might be out there, but these are the ways we know work.

The closest measure of objectivity we have to balance in this game, IS paid tourny performance. That should be the primary guide, to what is, and what isnt balanced.

My point is that ‘i feel’ or ‘imho’, doesnt inform or tell us much about real balance. The ability to win vs top competition does tell us something.

They dont, they help you stomp non movers on down state( ie not thief, not mes, not ele).

Lordrosicky.5813:

The thing is, no other part of the game has gated content. And yet paid tournys do. You have to spend real money to enter into a paid tourny just to get crushed by some rank 55+ premade who play all day. And Arenanet actually thought people would pay money for the pleasure of getting crushed in round 1??? lol

Its simple maths that paid tournys will continue to shrink as the oldest and best teams will just accumalate all of the “wealth” in pvp and basically push all the competition out of business.

SO now we have a situation where the pvp in this game is utterly crippled. A large part of this is due to the crippling effect of paid tournies.

Let me summarise, with logical facts, the state of pvp in this game. I am giving Anet 2 more months before I join the rest of the pvp community and head for the exits:

1, Hotjoins – meant to be casual friendly. But its just an absolute shambles. It really is no fun as all the games are always imbalanced messes (as people join and leave). Even a game with balanced numbers is a joke as the scoring system rewards zerging from point to point. This means your option is to join the mindless zerg and crush solo runners 4 on 1 OR run solo and cap points and win the game but never win a fight before everytime its time to fight you are against their zerg.

2, Free tournies – bizaarely structured in an 8 team format so even these dont run at all hours of the day in the EU. At peak times they pop almost instantly but when you queue solo the chances are you will run into a premade/partial premade and just get stomped. The times you do play vs a PUG the statistical chance you will get stomped by a premade in round 2 is exceptionally high as all the other PUG teams will of bee eliminated in round 1 by the premades. Thus, by queuing solo you are condeming yourself to a demoralising 500-0 in round 2 very often and sometimes getting destroyed in round 1 instead.

3, Paid tournies – The ticket cost is just ridiculous. Apart from liking to think you are “uber pro” I see no reason why anyone would want to waste tickets on getting stomped by teams which have been honing their skills and teamwork for months. I could lose 2 months worth of tickets in a few days AND just get stomped everytime and have no fun. SO whats the point? Join a team you say? NOPE. No team is going to take players without QP. Or if they do then they are most likely bad and you will get stomped anyway. Thus the whole thing is a mess and a shambles.

Nobody can disagree with the logic I have put forward in this reply. So please dont troll me fanboys. I love this game. But its just got so many problems and there seems no appetite to fix ANY of these problems.

These changes would help:

1, Get rid of tickets to enter paids.
2, Introduce a solo queue so we can find out who the best players are and so solo queuers dont just get stomped.
3, Make all tournaments 1 team vs 1 team so that a matchmaking system is viable without increasing queue times to an unsustainable level.
4, Make a matchmaking system.
5, Change the points system to promote team play in hotjoins.

They want pvp to become popular? they should make it as easy as possible to particpate.

After you have tested this 1on1 map, and made a few more changes youve got already planned i have an idea, to win people back into spvp.

Right now, the game has a huge issue with casuals learning to play, its either hotjoins which dont teach the game, or tournies where they get stomped, or experience afkers, which causes alot of ppl to quit fast.

When you feel your Tpvp is a bit more ready i suggets a tournment focused ‘live event’. You normally have holiday ‘live events’ like the toymaker , or halloween. I mean one strickly for Tpvp.

Everyone who does free/paid tournies in that week gets a reward of tokens (even if they lose, more tokens if they win-alot more for 2nd/1st place). Maybe unique prizes for first place wins. These can be used to make silly/fun items like you have in other live events (the winterday pets for example or candy cane stuff).

That way we get huge Ques popping in the frees for a week, and maybe win some people back to, what hopefully with ur next few patch changes, is a more polished product. Also consider merging heart of the mists or something, its to sparce for anyone to find teams unless they are on anvil rock. Even if you have hotm overflows thats not a bad thing.

What does the community think of this idea?
Id like to see spvp suceed in this game.

Also the community needs to brain storm a way to make it more casual friendly.

For paids on north america? Or EU?

stability stomp(guardian), mistform stomp, (ele), haste stomp, theres alot of ways to basically guartuneee a stomp.

Making premades can be really hard if u didnt roll on anvil rock. This is an issue.

I hate downstate. but its here to stay, and tbh it does add another element to the game. Its not unlike someone coming by and getting a res off on a target you killed.

Poxxia.1547

Venom-builds and condition-builds are not weaker than all other classes condition-builds (imho),

Opinion has nothing to do with It. Its a matter of fact that they dont perform well in the high end competitive tournaments.
That is what really determines what is, and isnt viable.

1on1 as a ladder system is pointless, its too much rock paper scissors, based on specs and class match ups.

1on1 for dueling system would be great. However, its a low priority right now.

I mean hotm doesnt overlap, but hotjoins -tournies do.

however, Na -EU are completely seperate.

Well i dont have 100 Qp, so i wont ask but i think i saw apploos team looking for more people , they have a few 100 qps each. Nerf dialogue or some such guild.

If you need people to just do tournies w for fun feel free to send a tell :P

Also wherent u team alfa or something?

cero.1209:

EaGrimdarK.7849:

cero.1209:

Are all the pvp servers segregated? I thought that the hotm was like the over flow and you got to play against people from other servers. If that is not the case then I have a serious decision I have to make.

Correct, they are all segregated. Each Home World has it’s own HotM.

It doesnt make sense to segregate them. How can there be any way to tell the best of the best if your just stuck fighting on your own server.

your not. The heart of the mists are segretated. The hot join servers and the tourny pops are not.
so if you join hotjoin server 205, its the same for all servers (Na or EU).
If you get a tourny pop , it can be with anybody from any server (NA or EU).

but the actual HEART of the mists area is server specific.

they are segreated in heart of the mists, but not the tournies /hotjoins.

The heart of the mists is by far the most populated in anvil rock (NA)
so its the easiest to find groups there.

Statistically:

Theif is OP: Hot join player, free tourny pugger.
Thief isn’t op: premade tourny player, paid players.

Hmmmm

I dont enjoy terribly much pug vs premade, my big issue with it, is the blasted afkers/quitters who levae bc ur fighting a premade.

There is one thing about premade vs preamde thats bad though. New teams, like guilds who pve and are like ‘ooh, lets do a tourny for fun’ will be sent crying by experienced premades.

Premade vs premade only makes it nearly impossible for teams that are newibish to learn how to play.

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

Arheundel.6451:

Rika.7249:

mjharrison.3209:

daydream.2938:

Thats my point about the nerf thief threads. thieves are annoying wvw, and hotjoin. I get that, but if u nerf em they would become underpoewred in proper tourny play.

then the design is broken, pure and simple.

Pretty much.

Arenanet believes thieves are effective at flanking and assisting through traps, while delivering massive single target burst.

Thieves can only do that one thing, massive single target burst.

I’d like to see some more dirt-fighting pirate style rather than being made of explosive paper.

So you could have a thief who can participate in a team fight and actually stay alive for a while, of course at the cost of damage.

Hmm…I believe you can already do that perfectly by equipping a soldier amulet ( like the “OP” bunkers) rather than a berseker amulet….

And what will the thief be able to do in tourneys when equipped like that ?

A thief doesn’t have boons stacking like the ele, neither great support options like eles and mesmers, neither condition spreadt like the necro, neither control like a mesmer or a guardian ( altough we had it, but aNet wisely decided to nerf the only decent alternative to dagger burst into oblivion, because HEY, LET’S ALL BE NUKED BY THIEVES, IT WILL BE FUN).

We only have damage, all our good abilities are focused on damage: the rest is worthless, starting from weapons to arrive into traits.

Seriously, any decent thief knows he won’t be able to do anything else aside burst, even Lowell, who before used to play a venom share thief ( before the nerf to venoms, because HEY, BEING NUKED BY A THIEF IS FUN YA KNOW) had to reroll to burst in order to compete.

All thief options are sub-par ASIDE burst, and that’s the only reason why certain top teams use a thief.

Nothin more.

Did you try it personally? Like timing skills with somebody else?
A venom share/trap build is viable..for me personally, because I can see where others may come in and apply secondary effects….

if people arent winning paid tournaments doing it, and consistantly, then its not really top end viable.

I wasnt aware the 28th patch had any balance changes.

Thats my point about the nerf thief threads. thieves are annoying wvw, and hotjoin. I get that, but if u nerf em they would become underpoewred in proper tourny play.

ya idk whats up with 8vs8 , its just so annoying.

Strange, given how ‘op’ thiefs are , its wierd that there are top teams that dont even run one.
How do they compete?

misda.2859:

Ladders are based largely on quantity of games. Not to mention that in a team game, ones ladder rank can be much more debated.

Ladders only measure measurables. People who play to that a lot and on good teams make it to the top.

Says nothing about people who get carried up, and great players who don’t play on great teams (or even play teams at all). The only judge of whether a player is a top player or not is by viewing and ranking his play yourself.

No. An elo ladder doesnt just measure quantity of games, because if you lose, you go down the ladder.

Someone with 40 wins 0 losses will be ranked way higher than someone with 200 wins 180 losses.
Unless those losses are old and hes gotten better and won like 70 games in a row or soemthing.

Ladders are a very high proxy for skill.

it was once a week. But as of the 28th of this month free xfers end. so, once. Or youll have to pay gems. Which means either trading gold u earn in game for gems, or buying em with real life money.

YOul get the same answer dude.
Heart of hte mists in anvil rock has people on it 24/7 , sometimes teams get going in map chat, and its where all the top Qp players on Na play.

so you can wait, but if you want a populated heart of the mists, anvil rock is the place.
Everyones going to tell you that .

Anvil rock, no contest.

Thrills.3974:

I just came back but I really need to learn how to deal with stealth and mesmer’s images. I wish there was a “target nearest enemy PLAYER” in the ui so I could instantly re target after they pop images. I can’t call anyone overpowered at the moment since I’m still new but those two classes are really frustrating to fight.

Yap. These classes have the steepest learning curve to fight. Once you learn though u can deal with alot of there stuff.

If you want to win 1on1s roll a ranger or ele. and once you master those classes youll pretty much trash any thief or mesmer in a solo fight.

Also with theifs you want to watch for shadowstep as thats likely there backstab so if they port to you -dodge or use an invul.
Vs mesmers the clones dont have the offhand weapon in there apperance and they likely have less buffs, a sigil boost from a weapon is a dead giveaway.

Idk how khalifa could have stoped that if he used f4 on the stomp which he did.

Ya you have to wait till your on the ground not bouncing anymore to stun break. SO you can reduce the Cc but u still get ‘stunned’ for alittle bit.

If you have a stun break like blink or shadowstep it will still port you away but ull end up on ur kitten wherever u port 2

Good video, im curious why u running mass invis as ur elite, instead of time warp though o0.

Anyone with a blink or port can do it. Thiefs, mesmes, ele, necro. Ports of this nature are actually pretty commoon on all three maps. Idk know if it they consider it to be an exploit…
But you can definately port places you cant quick path to in alot of cases.

As it stands now if thieves had to get out of combat to restealth, they would become pretty useless fast. Its an annoying mechanic to fight, but if you ever play a thief youll find you completley rely on it because of how squishy you are at full burst.

And if your not a full burst thief, your pretty much a useless thief.

I agre with u sabre that warriors need some love, as it is only 100b is viabl.e