Guild Wars 2

Dojo.1867:

OP is literally saying his internet is unstable and wants to join the game with this internet (which he clearly has no control over) the day after DCing 3 times AGAIN. Wow.

3 times.
Over 3 days.

That is far less extreme, especially if you play the game allot.

rhycochet.5268:

i’ll just refer back to your post about the absence of a “ready” button.

that button would do nothing.

it would not prevent dc’s from happening right after that button’s pressed.

Tweaks to match design, like a ‘ready button’, would prevent the majority of 4v5s…
That’s fixing the core of the issue.

rhycochet.5268:

it’s really as simple as this: if you’ve dc’d more than twice within 2 days, stop for a day and try again. don’t be stupid and keep trying when you’re one disconnect away from the punishment. you know the rules. common sense would have solved this problem.

???
You are justifying why the rule should be the rule with “you know the rules”.
Seriously?

“stupid and keep trying”…
You mean “playing the game he finds entertaining and paid money for”?
Having to stop playing a game for a few days is an abnormally harsh punishment for very occasionally spazy internet.

rhycochet.5268:

none of us would have said anything to him if he hadn’t decided to waltz in here complaining about the game while flaunting his enormous sense of entitlement.

the general consensus is this: get over yourself.

i never said that people who disconnect due to connection issues are the sole, or even major cause of 4v5s. the point is that they contribute to this imbalance, and there’s no reason they should be excused from the consequences that come with this if they insist on pushing their luck while ruining matches for others.

There is a difference between people who intentionally try to make a game worse for other players, and those that don’t do it near as often and have it taken out of their control.

Leavers should get punished.
People who intentionally and consistently make the game worse for other players shouldn’t be part of the game…
Someone who’s internet craps out on occasion is far from that… that’s what you guys don’t seem to grasp.

Different issues, different ‘punishments’.
If you’ve played any other online game you’ll know that ping/DC issues is just a rare’ish but inevitable part of playing an online game…

You guys speak like he’s devilishly selfish for wanting to play the game he paid money for…
What.
The.
kitten.

Chill out and calm down.
The issue with leavers is entirely around bad match design.
The vast majority of 4v5s have nothing to do with crappy internet so if you are kittened about 4v5s be kittened at the actual reason you have to live through so many of them… not some random guy being punished far more than any other game would for having crappy internet for a bit.

Last I checked you didn’t get banned from games like LoL for happening to have spastically high ping for a bit or a few DCs.
kittening hell, you guys make the LoL crowd seem nice when it comes to this stuff… and they aren’t.

rhycochet.5268:

this is why your reasoning is entirely egocentric and ridiculous.

you think your disconnects are so separated that it doesn’t affect much of the gameplay as a whole, and you might be right – but only about YOUR personal gameplay. what about those people you left hanging 4v5? you essentially screwed them over from the start each and every time you disconnected, no matter how “so separated apart” they seem to you. you think that doesn’t affect their gameplay? you think you’re the only dc’er who thinks this way?

please.

many of your ex-teammates would walk out of those matches losers, and head straight into (quite possibly consecutive) more 4v5s because people like you insist on queuing in spite of suboptimal connections.

You guys seem to think people like him are the cause of all these 4v5s you’re getting stuck in.

Hickups in internet cause a small, small fraction of 4v5s…
Play LoL, play any other game, it’s not many… it’s not enough for people to get frustrated and kittened off about.

Yes they suck, but it’s not the issue. The issue is a kittenty, kittenty match design.
There is no real ‘ready’ button.
You are forced into a match after matchmaking finds a place for you, or it ends as a 4v5.

That is the issue, that is what is causing the vast majority of 4v5s….
Beating up on kids with occasionally bad internet won’t make GW2 better.

Leeto.1570:

You know what disgusts me? People with dishonorable debuff.
Cant play? Fine stay in hotjoins but dont kitten up my games.

Everyone knows leavers/DCs screw up games.
No one wants it any more than it can be avoided.
That’s obvious, that’s in the clear.

The thing is, LoL’s leaver debuff isn’t even half as bad as this
And leavers in a LoL game makes the game far more lobsided, btw.

Anet is over-doing it with their version.
kitten happens, kitten can’t be much avoided.

Hickups in internet, maybe once a day make someone unable to play for days…
Ehh, that’s a bit much.

Maybe everyone is so but-hurt about leavers because Anet still doesn’t have a real ‘ready up’ button so leavers are all over the place for little reason, but issues like this aren’t anything that should be fiercely stomped on.

Chicago Jack.5647:

It’s actually pretty huge. Poison, at minimum, ticks for about 100 dmg per sec. Healing signet heals for about 400 per second. So that means 400(0.67) – 100 = 168. It basically looses about (at minimum) 58% of its strength when is poison applied to the warrior.

If you put a 6s poison on a burst heal (lets say 300 hps), you end up cutting around 45~% of the healing over the 25~ second CD.

If you put a 6s poison on a warriors heal you end up cutting around 15% of the warrior’s healing over 25~ seconds.

kittening Massive difference.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Engies have poison volly and nades. Thief has choking gas and steal. Necro has poison on auto attack and scepter 3. Rangers and eles (lawl @ eles, and maybe spider pet from ranger? though no one really runs it in favor of dogs). A lot of classes have easy access to poison.

And there is condi removal.
Long duration poisons don’t tend to stay on targets for long durations in this game.
Especially against warriors.

Choking gass will never get more than a tick off, and is almost never worth the initiative (that leaves steal and a 3rd attack in dagger chain, basically very low poison uptime at best).
Engineer poison nades is by far best used against downed enemies and volley misses half its shots most the time.
Rangers tend to have one poison tagged on to an evade skill.
Mesmers have none.
Warriors have none.
Guardians have none.

Chicago Jack.5647:

You can poison the heal.

I think the point is, poison is far less effective against warriors.
Most poisons last 6~ seconds.
Most heal skills cast for their 1.5~s and are done with.

Poison is typically a condi you toss on right around when someone needs to heal to cut back 33% of their healing.
If you do that to a warrior you typically only end up cutting back 5-10% since anything short of permanent poison up-time through their condi-removal is only cutting off a portions of time where their constant heal is ticking.

Sube Dai.8496:

There is no way to know what kind of player bought the game. There could be a much larger number of people who only do F2P games who have not tried it. I think its a good idea.

A large ‘only F2P MMO PvP’ market is an utterly massive ‘maybe’ to base an entire PvP-wide change on.
You don’t even seem to know much about it, at least from what you just wrote.
You seem to be winging it and saying ‘trying something is better than nothing’.

Liewec.2896:

but its also not the pvp devs fault, they can only do what they’re allowed to,

Uhm, with GW2, I’m not sure that that’s the issue.

These guys had ALLOT of free reign.
Like they re-did next to everything that was traditional in MMOs.

The thing is, from what I’ve seen, these guys don’t take feedback well.
From alpha onwards people, top tier intelligent people much smarter than me, have been telling Anet exactly how their game (conquest/condis/bunker/exc.) was going wrong… and Anet just kept on keeping on doing what they were doing.

That and maybe a time crunch, since the game was released kinda half-done.

Zodian.6597:

As a community we spent MONTHS trying get devs to separate the queues

People knew that there is an issue in the queue system.
They latched on to the idea that separating team/solo queue would fix it…
It never would.
It only would ever exacerbate previous issues (bad matchmaking from small population, long queue times from small population)

It’s the typical forum deal, their dead-on about an issue (queue design is terrible), just terribly wrong about a solution.
Making a separate competitive queue with a rank 20 requirement (along-side a normal queue, like what tournaments are at the moment) would have been a few dozen times better.
It’s what next to every serious PvP game does.

silvermember.8941:

Wildstar wont be the undoing of guild wars 2, believe me I also speak of experience.

I watched videos of its PvP… and yeah… nothing special.

Kinda tragic.
I’ve been dying for a good PvP MMO lately.

kitten.
Time to reroll.
Thanks Anet…

<3 Oidmetala

ANET, TAKE THE COMPLIMENT.
Improvement in your improvements is improvement.
Don’t be ashamed of what you have accomplished!

If you keep it up, at this rate, imagine what the game would be like next year!
There might not even be a winter at all!!

gesho.9468:

garethh.3518:

And, what? saying that the game didn’t live up to most people’s expectations, and was bad enough to actually drive them away, is annoying you?

what is self-loathing neighbor if not annoying? enjoy what you do and dont do unless you enjoy it. if you dont like it – stop playing and let fun for those who do like it.

ahh, see, that’s the issue.

Sure, you can say ‘let GW2 be for those who already enjoy it!’
But…
????

You’re saying you don’t want people who aren’t currently enjoying the game to speak out… to ever enjoy the game?

Sure, that could be fine.
If
the game was widely popular and what I am saying is a small minority… but it’s not… most people in NA who played GW2 for PvP left it for some reason or other. I happen to share roughly the same opinion as the guys I played the game with so don’t mind hopping on occasionally and throwing it out there.

I mean, you can talk about how ‘if you have nothing nice to say do not say anything at all’ and its a fine ideal, but being positive about how things are wont shear the sheep, so to speak.

Immensus.9732:

in the begining it sounds crazy, but the more you think of this idea the more sense it makes

Here, let me walk you through it…

This game has no issues with people owning it or people knowledge about it.
It was B2P with millions of copies sold before launch and an outrageously large fallowing at release.

Most people who are into MMO PvP have tried this game.
Most people who are interested in MMO PvP own this game.

Yet the population is low…
So it isn’t an issue with accessibility, or knowledge about GW2.
If the game is worth their time, those people would be playing GW2 since it is utterly free for those millions who already bought it.

Ahh, there’s the issue, worth their time, the game, for most, isn’t worth playing.
Making the game free to play won’t change that.

Bombsaway.7198:

No one cares to comment on the notion that the way in which players enjoy the game turned out to be quite different than ANET expected and they are simply catering to what is now the new core? In short, WvW and PVE draw more people than expected and are much easier to monetize. They draw a broader customer base too.

I think the word’s you are looking for is “PvP flopped so now they are focusing on PvE/WvW”

BUT.
From what I hear, Anet is kinda ignoring PvE when it comes to balance, literally everything can be easily beaten by three warriors and two guardians. That and allot of the gameplay mechanics when it comes to PvE, end up being dull.
So I’m not really sure they decided to forsake PvP for other bigger things unless those other and bigger things are the next MMO…

gesho.9468:

garethh.3518:

I haven’t looked much, but if GW2 is the best, that’s only because there isn’t any good PvP MMO out at the moment.

GW2 had like the best shot out of any PvP MMO I’ve ever seen, swarms of fanboys, esports teams lining up to play it…. yet it lost the vast majority of everyone within a few months…

i dont mind losing fanboys. in fact one thing id love to see is the remnants of excitement and drama packing away.

btw, how long do you plan staying?

‘the vast majority of everyone’ includes far more than just fanboys.
And, what? saying that the game didn’t live up to most people’s expectations, and was bad enough to actually drive them away, is annoying you?

Do you see the situation differently?

gesho.9468:

yes, this is my fav game.

is there better mmo pvp currently? haven’t found any.

I haven’t looked much, but if GW2 is the best, that’s only because there isn’t any good PvP MMO out at the moment.

GW2 had like the best shot out of any PvP MMO I’ve ever seen, swarms of fanboys, esports teams lining up to play it…. yet it lost the vast majority of everyone within a few months…

zilcho.7624:

That’s not true at all. I agree that, as far as PvP goes, the launch was a miserable failure. But GW2 has a solid foundation. None of the problems are beyond repair.

They could bring all the hardcore PvP crowd back with an intelligent, exciting change. Basing their ratings system on Win Probability Added would be my dream.

If they made a change like that, and build on it with some massive balance fixes, they would be in a great spot. (And when I say “massive”, I mean 4-5 times more than what they are doing in the next patch. This game needs to wipe everything clean and start from scratch.)

The game needs more than 1 change.
The game was released half baked, which left it full off issues.
Not an un-savable thing in and of itself, but the devs… they haven’t more than touched on any core issue (condis/tourny setup/rewards/conquest).

With how the game was released, getting it to a healthy, able-to-be-popular state, well that requires constant well thought out fundamental changes.
The devs haven’t done any of that (timely/well thought out/fundamental), so, I mean, sure these guys could turn GW2 around… it’s not literally impossible… but after a year and a half they showed no signs of being capable of it…
Lets put it this way, I wouldn’t bet on these guys with 1:20 odds.

cymerdown.4103:

1. They do care about the success of PvP. As a smallish company, their resources are limited, but it seems that they have been growing their staff over time. The launch of their biweekly stream shows their growing efforts to make pvp a priority. I think 2014 will be a good year for us.
2. Balance has progressed, and is getting close to being in a good spot. Anyone who says that balance was better on release is looking through rose-tinted glasses, and that’s just a simple fact. D/D thief instant gibs, time warp lich forms, lack of viable condi comps, immortal bunker eles, block bug guardians, and one spec warriors are all a thing of the past.
3. The communication is getting a lot better, from what I see. The last Ready Up is a good example of that. I may not agree with every last thing they implement, but I do see more and more feedback being listened to with their changes, and with Grouch in place, I expect that is only going to increase over time.
4. Kinda agree here, but I think they are already working at this. More unlocks are going to be added, which is part of their future business model plans, I believe.
5. Ok, I can’t argue with this point. A PTR would be amazing for testing and feedback purposes.

They care but haven’t been able to do anything notable to help (which is effectively the same as not caring)

Balance has progressed.
Gameplay has stayed the same, a few improvements a few bad calls, nothing crazy has happened here.
GW2’s gameplay was bad around beta.
GW2’s gameplay hasn’t improved by much after a year and a half of tweaking…

That’s REALLY BAD.

They post more on the forums, sure.
The whole reason for ‘we want more communication’ is to make patches better.
The patches aren’t any better.

As a AAA MMO with no concept of ‘how we are going to make money’ it kind of makes you wonder how well these guys think things through.

Cynz.9437:

mmmm it is actually more like 1k (if not higher)

so 2 procs is 2k+ initial attack, let’s say backstab for 7k= you are looking at 9k backstabs in pvp from thieves that are not even specced full glass; given that crit thieves have 100% crit chance from stealth, another such BS and you are dead

this is just an example, i am sure other classes will do similar dmg

Sigh…
I did the math.
You lose 40~ dmg on average on a 100% crit chance 7k backstab by taking that sigil, you’re better off with 5% dmg.

The sigil can’t crit and has a low power coefficient so doesn’t tend to scale very high (+.1dmg/power).

So much QQ.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Those fresh air ele/thieves/mesmers gonna 1 shot you with fire and air procs now

They only trigger for 800~ dmg.
Sure that’s helping burst dps, but it’s not anything crazy enough to turn specs into 1-shot kills….

And people are kittening freaking out.
I straight up laughed when Helseth said that theives will now be insta-gibbing you since they can deal 800 dmg on 1/3 of their crits at most every 5s.
Bad change, but nothing wild.

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

only who got a low CD on elite can use it (runnable only for thief)

Lyssa has a 60s internal CD so under 60s doesn’t mean kitten.
Thief, necro (charge on a 36s CD), guardian (instant invuln on 90s CD fully cleansing is amazing), warrior (signet).
At least off the top of my head.

The only issue, at least big one that I see, is that the game randomly tosses you between sides. If a faction is always red and another is always blue, then sure, those colors would be fine, you would get used to them through consistency. But a game randomly switching between the two… and one is a universally known color for ‘enemy’… you can’t try much harder to confuse players.

hihey.1075:

Jackums.3496:

MM Necros have no stunbreaks

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Traversal

Death shroud → fear, is also as good as a stunbreak.

Rallad.3802:

But is there a reason for you to constantly appear on the forums being blatantly negative?

??
Blatantly negative…

So it’s bad to be ‘obviously’ negative about something?
GW2 has many issues, there is no denying it.
And I have never been a fan of glossing over large issues when it comes to something like someone spending money and tons of time, doing that is just unsympathetic.

Flexxi.5768:

upon recommendation of a friend.

Your friend is an kitten.
I mean, there is no other real PvP MMO out at the moment, but telling a competitive guy to play GW2… for PvP… ouch.

There’s a reason why every competitive team left GW2, there’s a reason there were only a few hundred people on the NA leaderboards, for a week, after the leaderboard reset.
The game just isn’t made to be taken seriously and its casual gameplay is mediocre at best.

Mrbig.8019:

Conquest mode is too hard, even in top 100 solo q, i can assure you.

It’s easier than what goes on in a MOBA.

The issue is that a game has to play well, it has to be taken seriously for people to play it seriously.
Few are going to care about sitting at a back point or switching toons ‘to help the team’ in an utterly uncompetitive game…

If GW2 was taken seriously, the map, combat, specing, exc. were worthy of competition, conquest (in terms of ‘how hard it is to play’) would be fine. Conquest is a kittenty map type for a dozen other reasons, but by no means is it unworkably complicated.

style.6173:

What is sad is that the two newest maps that ANET has built are 2 of the 3 worst. There are only 4 good maps right now…. forest, temple, foefire and kyhlo. The rest are just terrible.

And they took half a year, or more, perfecting it too….
Makes you really wonder if their play testers/designers really know what they’re doing.

Adian.8756:

You’re insinuating that a MOBA style PvP would be bad, and that the traditional MMO style is good.

I’m insinuating that the MMO style works.
Gearing a game more towards which skill should I use instead of when should I use one of my few skills isn’t unworkable…
I am not and was not saying anything more or less.

That means the main issues in GW2 are elsewhere so this fix by OP, it would increase depth and so make the game a lil less mindless, but it’d be a shoddy fix at best since it doesn’t actually address any of the major underlying issues in the game.

ilcane.3081:

There is too much damage/damage avoidance/healing/crowd controlling/stun-breaking/boon application/condition application/condition cleansing/gap closing/mobility available to players at any given time, on too short CDs.
I’ll be honest, for the most part this is all remarkably balanced (yes, I said it), because you can counter their “too much” with your own “too much”.

It’s not too much.
It’s too much badly made.

When it comes to skills ‘how should i use this skill right now’ and ‘which of my skills should i use at the moment’ is basically the MMO gameplay style. Saving/timing next to every ability is EXTREMELY moba.

Where GW2 goes wrong is that it is based on conquest which points out how shallow and unengaging every other part of the game is since it’s a bad MMO map type. It forces small/scattered fights and boring roles (afk’ing at a back point/bunkering) those put extreme focus on each spec in and of itself…

And, I mean, the specs are terribly made, like there wasn’t much good thinking going on there. Conquest forces the game to survive off of class/skill design… and GW2 can’t.

Fixing that is not something so simple as longer CDs or less effects, its an issue of the devs and their choices.
Only large, constant and well done fixes can save GW2.
Tragically the current guys haven’t done ANY of that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

GW2’s genre and design does not works well with instagib combat.

Yes and no.
MMOs don’t work well with easy to pull off CC-lock literal insta-gibs, sure.
But fast paced, sometimes over-in-under-5-seconds combat… that’s fine, that’s actually a favorite of some people.

GW2 is just riddled with mindless CC-rotations or ones that are entirely spec based to counter (how many stun-breaks/cleanses do you have) and bad visuals which leads to bad quick combat instead of engaging. Straight up buffing stuff in GW2 (power creep and power creep allone) won’t fix a single issue in the game and only worsen existing ones, but power creep in general isn’t necessarily bad.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Except that there is no such thing as “good power creep”. Power Creep is already and deliberately a word with negative conotations.

???
That makes no sense, can you reword that if you just typed it wrong or something?

DiogoSilva.7089:

PvP turns into a shallow and unfun instagib game, and PvE’s content becomes trivialized.

Buffs don’t make a game shallow.
Game design determines that all on its own.

Intagibs…
Well, allot of games like time halo and other first person shooters end up being insta-gib fests… yet they are EXTREMELY popular, yet they can be extremely funny to watch.

Sure GW2 isn’t a FPS, but it’s also not a MOBA, that doesn’t mean that the perks of each genre are bound to it.

Meglobob.8620:

Really, players abandon games completely, usually after bad mouthing the game wherever possible if you nerf there favourite character/build.

Have you played any other MMO?

Nerfs happen in every MMO to most every spec… yet people are still playing them for PvP.
Sure it doesn’t make people happy to get nerfed, but if it’s a justified and well done nerf of something that actually helps gameplay (read any LoL patch notes) people get by, they keep on keepin on.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Just look at the current cheese builds in PvP. Powercreep does not makes the game funnier, imo.

garethh.3518:

(at least if mildly well done)

Anything done badly will be bad.
GW2 was tweaked badly, so its’ power creep ended badly.

DiogoSilva.7089:

It makes the game a lot less funnier.

It makes the game funnier, but allot harder to take seriously.

Having stupidly strong abilities tends to appeal to casuals and people just looking to mozy on through some games every now and then since there typically is a decent skill floor with one-shot kills and other extremely strong abilities. That and the shear amount of rediculous things going on keeps the game from getting stale.

(at least if mildly well done, so unlikely for GW2)

@Swagg.9236

You’ve been touching on the big issue with the thief class, I don’t now if you ever outright said it since I didn’t bother to read through all the 100~ posts but I’ll type it out here anyways.

The class is time starved, in its very design it needs to make each action net the thief allot of value or the thief fails (low health, med armor, typically low healing). Since there are only 5 attacks and Anet wanted lots of mobility/blind/stealth to make up for the classes squishy nature, the attacks ended up being super attacks (teleport+blind+dmg, leap+dmg+stealth, unblockable high dmg, blind+combo field, exc, exc.) or else the thief can’t work, or else the thief can’t net enough value with each action to work.

The thing is, with no CDs that means the class is made up of extremely strong spammable attacks…

The class desperately needed some secondary mechanic on top of initiative, like if all of its attacks where in the form of infiltrator’s strike, they had a chained second ability. The first ability would typically cost little if any initiative and then pop up the second ability for 7-20~ seconds and that ability would cost a fair deal of initiative.
It’d be a psuedo CD system.

You could buy an ability off CD or specific perc (the second ability in the chain) by spending the 3-5~ initiative, or you can wait the CD (7-20 seconds for the chain to reset) and spend little if any initiative. It’d make initiative regen traits a playstyle choice instead of necessity. It’d give TONS of room for depth, and numerous ways to build/play a thief, without requiring cheesy spam.

Qaelyn.7612:

People complain about all game mechanics that are effective: summons, clones, stealth, burst damage, conditions, AOE spamming, high mobility, tankiness, etc. It’s all basically just whining because people somehow want things to be easy (though how they themselves would kill others isn’t thought out too well). Variations in ways of killing opponents are part of what makes the game interesting, for me at least, and I wouldn’t want to see it neutered.

So I simply find ways to deal with minion classes. I’m far from exceptional (63% in solo queue atm) and I don’t find it that big of an issue, so I find it hard to believe that better players do. Most of the complaining is based on some philosophical objection about “how things should be” – even though my understanding is that GW2 has always been like this.

You think exactly like these devs.
People ‘should respect and cherish what is there’, not ‘the game is made for people to enjoy’. One leads to trying to bend people to fit the game, the other bends the game to fit what people find entertaining.

And I play LoL.
Trust me, I don’t want things to be easy.

Locuz.2651:

Coming from wow myself where we see balance patches like once every 5-6 months. Is it normal that games get like monthly balancepatches or something? I mean where do people get expectations like this?

Dont get me wrong. Id really like pvp specific updates. But more stuff like new gamemodes, fixes to existing maps, improved laddersystems/seasons, etc

The issue isn’t entirely the time-frame.
GW2 was released half finished, the game was running but the gameplay was half baked.
Since the developers didn’t get lucky, the game requires large and well done changes to have a shot at holding on to any sizeable population.

The issue is that Anet isn’t releasing large or well done changes…
People complain about timeframe because few are willing to wait the years it will take for issues to be worked out, in the current way of things.
One way to fix that is for the devs to just spew out changes faster.

But they aren’t.
More shockingly, they haven’t really done anything.
Sure the devs twiddle their thumbs and balance specs, but the gameplay has plateud out where it hasn’t gotten worse.
The main thing Anet has actually accomplished (company, not necessarily devs) is drowning any hope most anyone could ever have in this game.
People will always be skepticle about big name PvP MMOs now.

Caffynated.5713:

Strictly for sPvP:

1. 100% new balance team. Clean house.

GW2 might get somewhere then.
These guys care, these guys listen, but they can’t help.

So far they have been focusing on fine tuning balance, in a game with crippling issues throughout its core (conquest, conditions, exc).
It’s kinda like what they were doing with matchmaking, tweaking an MMR formula for half a year while 4v5s and low ranked players stopped any of those tweaks from ever helping the game.

Biomanz.9302:

Do other teammates even care to take advantage of your fields? Me as an ele, in hotjoins at least, I always start with 4 stacks of might out the gate. But hardly anyone steps into the field or blasts it. Seems like all these finishers just happen randomly. Also consider ele’s with staff provide arguably the most usable fields and can blast them by himself, yet aren’t viable in higher-tier tournaments.

I suggest buffing blast finishers for Retaliation, Chaos and Frost Armor to 5 sec.
I’m not sure of the others but Whirl and Projectile finishers don’t seem to do all that much.

fields were just terribly made, much like conditions.
If combo fields were more regulated, if the map was setup for more team (2+ people) based fighting…
Like if the game wasn’t conquest and every class had one utility slot dedicated to a combo field ability and that was largely the only way to get a combo field, then combos could be strongly balanced since they aren’t just additions to utterly random weapon attacks.

Then they could be built around and played around, they could bring large amounts of teamwork, exc. exc.

But how they are right now… they will only ever fall into rotations on guardian/thief/ranger/engi weapon sets. If combos were buffed those rotations become stronger…
The game doesn’t get any better.

Silentshoes.1805:

The numbers of people in the Mists has more than doubled after the Dec 10th changes.

Structured PvP is more integrated into the game world. You can now level your character in the Mists with sPvP. You can earn gold in sPvP.

I hear people saying it is dying because their friends from beta have moved on to other games, but I don’t see any evidence that GW2 sPvP is dying.

You find out if a game is dying by averages, not spikes.
After any notable change populations tend to go up, the real key is to see if whether players stick around after a few months.

In this case, the gameplay hasn’t changed at all and many, many, many people left for that reason alone, so I wouldn’t get all giddy about this.

MarkPhilips.5169:

I’m asking how it will work

If you have been fallowing GW2 at all over the past year… it won’t.
The devs, they listen, they care but they can’t help.

People wanted less insta-gibbing… Anet pushed for condi/CC spams and passives.
People wanted to tweak maps since conquest gets dull… Anet made ‘custom’ arenas.
People wanted better matchmaking… Anet’s been tweaking an unworkable MMR when the issue is elsewhere (4v5s, account bound rank, no minimum glory to queue for ranked)
People wanted more game modes… Anet made Skyhammer.

Sure they listen and they will pay attention to the new sub-forum, but that’s not the issue.
Input has never been the issue.
People have been telling Anet exactly where GW2 has been going wrong since alpha, many times in great and well thought out detail, mind you… yet it hasn’t helped the game.

The issue is that somewhere in translation, after hearing what people say, the solution Anet comes up with isn’t productive, if it doesn’t make the game worse off.
That isn’t going to be fixed by shifting around where people are posting their thoughts.

You are touching on a big issue, but your solution is terrible.

If conditions (since they are so dps heavy) had the same sort of counterplay power did, the game would be much better off.

Acandis.3250:

Sepreh.5924:

A better question that I have posed in the past is why do thieves get an inherent passive immunity to one aspect of chilled (cooldowns on 1-5 skills)

That’s a really good point, if anything it should decrease initiative regeneration by some amount.

That’s far more brutal than CD increases.

Chill should just put a 1s~ CD on all skills after each skill use (besides auto attack) and maybe a 15% movement speed debuff.
It’d create a bit of depth, you can’t spam one skill after another and can finesse into/out of melee range a bit more, but it won’t utterly shut down anyone.

Right now its generally a pretty long duration extreme condi.
It’s in many situations useless or scooped up in blanket cleansing.
If you are fighting pure melee… 66% movement speed reduction means they are useless.
If you are fighting an ele… 66% CD increase means you are going to suffer terribly.

It doesn’t need to be such a hardcore condition, a general debuff would be much better…
Anyways, condis as a whole are utterly kittened up in this game.

Soul.5947:

TL;DR GW2 is about builds not skill

Balance is impossible.
Good gameplay isn’t.

No MMO has the first, GW2 doesn’t have the second.

People like to think heavily skill based gameplay makes a game successful, it really doesn’t, it is all about engaging gameplay and that just means “feeling involved and purposeful”, but that’s another discussion for another day.

Kagamiku.9731:

It’s 8 seconds, unless you trait for it to be 10; which most warriors wont do because the defensive line has a lot of traits better than sure-footed. And it’s only condition immunity, other forms of damage still work…

Wait, so you expect specs to switch over to physical dmg and movement based defenses to counterplay the immunity… have you played GW2?

Specs can’t change how they work in the middle of a game, there is no counterplay in complete immunities if you are playing an at all condi reliant spec.
If there is no counterplay, there is no chance at winning, if there is no chance at winning, no one is going to want to play the game.

Qaelyn.7612:

People with this attitude are why 99% of GW2 players avoid PvP. I’m serious.

Hahahah.
Have you ever played GW2 PvP???
Believe me, it drives players away just fine all on its own.

Dardamaniac.1295:

This is ridiculous.
A SB/GS Ranger with boar-wolf, aoe cc-feared me to death…2 knockdowns-2 aoe fears for a long duration-2 daze stuns from Boar and another 2 dazes in 20s cd from GS-SB….

They had the petting zoo so far now they have huge amounts of CC and aoe Fear..

I remember doing so much stuff like that back when swapping reset pet F2 skills…
God, I had the krytan drakehound knock or imob->wolf knock->fear down pat.
It was beautiful, but required a fair deal micro and action-canceling on the pet side (and luck!! that AI is hell) to actually pull off.

Anyways.
If they are running boar, they are silly.
The knockdown has like 200 range and a chargeup.
If you are moving when the animation starts, the attack will miss.
Oh and the boar tends to be utterly useless short of that one skill.

Mijo.3274:

Hi guys,
But is this game improved in the last 3 months?
How is the meta now with the last patch?
Please help me cause tomorrow i’ll play this game OR delete it and download Path of Exile

Thanks

Same old, same old.
Slow off-point patches and an ever worsening meta.
If you got bored of the game before, you’re not in for rainbows and sunshine now.

Anyways…
The game had such ridiculous potential, kinda sad it got thrown away by headstrong devs and cut-backs in funding.

I’ve seen plenty of fine shatter mesmers.
It’s a good setup.

Sure the instantaneous burst isn’t absurd, but it’s just overall, a decent spec (condis are a weakness though)

Distortion is amazing if you use it well.. that and the spike isn’t on a long CD and pretty secured if you land the imob. Having the ‘mirror images’ and illusionary persona makes for nigh unavoidable solid deeps… the confusion on shatter is also pretty notable, the dmg will tick for quite a bit even without any condi dmg stats.

The issue is it takes skill.
Allot.
Especially keeping track of the ‘recharge shatters at 50% life’
There are easier, just as if not, more effective builds out there.
So ehh.
It’s more than playable, you just have to know what you are doing.