Guild Wars 2

style.6173:

Allie Murdock.8152:

The players who will win this tournament SURELY have spent 100s of hours perfecting their craft and strategies, without earning legendaries for it in the process.

We are tipping our hats to those that have put the time and dedication into PvP, and have earned this as a reward.

We’re not just handing them out.

I agree with you and think the winner deserves one. That said, based on your logic, the same applies to WvW players. Some of them really do nothing but WvW. Since you opened this can of worms, I hope you have answer for that as well.

Oh wait, in wvw you can get tons and tons of bags with chances at precursors! You also get experience, gold and karma for capturing keeps/towers with champion bags!

You also get chests for leveling up with happens at an exponentially faster rate than PvP!

….

Loki.8793:

PeepMeDown.5017:

While you are right PW are easier to kill than the previous S/D meta build, the damage and cc they do is greatly increased. They are still very prevalent in high ranked team queue games and the build just crushes necros, rangers, ele and mesmer. I’d like to know what u think is a more valid and critical thing tocomplain about is. I think the build that cuts 2 classes completely out of the meta is something to complain about.
Altho i do hate decap engies twice as much.

How about conditions, and how horribly designed and implemented they are? How the only way to reliably survive against a conditions is to distinctly build for them, whereas conversely the only thing you need to do to survive raw damage is to avoid it with skillful play, no matter how you’re built.

How about how nearly all condition specs rely on passives and ranged auto attacks to do their damage, meaning you can’t reliably avoid them with skillful play.

How about why there are so many passives in an action/reaction orientated game and how stupidly effective and powerful they are? How about why there are so many pets and AI in PvP?

How about nearly all condition-oriented specs also being primarily defensive stat-wise? How about Clensing ire, and how it works with long bow? How it only takes 20 trait points to have the best reliable condition removal in the game and have one of the most survivable specs with healing signet and longbow, defending against both condition and raw damage, and then can put all the other traits and stats into offensive lines and still be one of the hardest things to kill in the game.

How about the complete and utter lack of build diversity in the game?

Pistol whip does counter some builds, but it mostly counters the stupid passive/pettingzoo builds that are so prominent in the game right now. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, to be honest. Unskillful builds that prioritize AI and passives like that need to be played less, and having a build that can more-easily deal with them is a good thing in my eyes.

Pistolwhip gameplay makes Warrior gameplay look complicated.

It’s not like attrition could ever kill a warrior anyway.

Ever try running barbarians or soldiers and fighting a good warrior? It’s not pretty.

Tournaments should be like 1g a win, 0 if you lose. Average of like 2-3g an hour with 50/50. It’s not like you are focusing less in a tournament than you would be in a dungeon or PvE world event where you literally just stand there spamming 1.

Rickster.8752:

From the looks of it the only balance changes will be those already spoilt in the “balance preview” which was months ago.

What does this mean?

It means no nerf to decap engis – so solo q is still unplayable
It means no nerf to pistol whip
It means no nerf to thief sustain in general (withdraw)
It means no nerf to AH guardian (so another year of bunker guardian required)
It means no nerf warrior (8% healing signet change doesn’t count sorry – espicially with sigil buff for them)

I kind of knew this would be the case based on:

1, Previously their announced balance changes (even when months before a patch) = their only balance changes.
2, Devs already announced they were “keeping balance changes to a minimum”

I think the rage when this balance patch comes out will hit new heights on these forums. Personally I would be astonished if they don’t address things like AR and pistol whip

Considering these are overview blogs are not only aimed at PvPers, but rather the community at large and that decap engi, AH guardian, PW thieves aren’t of great importance to them. I’d recommend that you should try and keep your panties out of a twist for a few more weeks, Rick.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Lock-traits-for-everyone/first#post3790432

This just makes me lol

Ithilwen.1529:

Ideally, each class would have strengths and weaknesses set up in such a way that any 2 classes could compete on level ground by playing to their respective strengths.

Anet basically deceived me by presenting a class and not telling me, “this class is incapable of beating medium to heavy armor class the majority of the time.”

Obviously, A net would prefer everyone play a warrior or guardian.

Uh, defeat in what scenario?

Mesmer is great at roaming and PU builds can easily kill 2 people at once who decide to stick around and fight you.

Mesmer is not good at zerging though

Power ranger is terrible. Terrible.

Most classes should be able to easily gap close with it. The only one I can think of which cant very easily is necromancer.

Also: projectile attacks have all sorts of counters with the numerous reflections in the game.

The fact is, ranger bows are clearly already balanced around the fact that the enemy SHOULD get hit a few times by the bow before they get close. I feel like everyone forgets this with ranged classes… What good is running a bow if you can literally just strafe it forever until you gap close?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Don’t worry about Power Block – Mesmers aren’t even viable in the current meta anyway.

So unless the completely rearrange things, you won’t ever have to worry about Power Block.

ESL today and the three top teams are all running mesmers

Any buff/buff option is good.

BUT

I agree, the fact that ranger needs huge trait investment in anything to make it functional is stupid…

bhagwad.4281:

+569 Vitality
+569 Toughness
+798 Healing Power

PvP Bunker’s Jewel

I feel like you are one of those people who clicks their dodge bar.

style.6173:

If you are losing to a thief as a mesmer, it is you. Mesmer is best 1v1 class.

Yeah, maybe PU mesmer, which is pointless to run in pvp due to:

1. Low mobility
2. Selfish traits
3. Bad team fight capabilities
4. No burst
5. Terrible both on home point and mid. Much worse than having a decap engi go far.

I would say that this trait is simultaneously OP and UP.

For one, mesmers are already good against many classes.

The only two classes that are really keeping them out of the meta are thieves and warriors, and this trait doesnt do anything to fix that.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Befor ppl start complaining about how OP this is, my I remind players that a Mesmer has a very poor acces to chill?
Yes, the trait is strong, however, if I would play Lockdown and had to choose between 30/20/20/0/0 and 20/20/30, I probably would still play the second one.

Interrupting a Heal and putting it on 10s CD seems nice,
however, as Lockdown builds have a huge variety of interrupts, I’d prefer Interrupting the Heal once and again after 5s, so I can get twice as much out of Halting Strike and Bountifull Interuption.

Not to mention, it is almost wothless against thieves.

The fact, that they probably only add GM traits means, that Mesmers won’t get a better way to deal with condis, as even if they would make a “anti condi GM trait” it will be placed unreachable for most builds.

I dunno about mesmer, but for necro they said they are reworking the Death Magic trait line, so I think we will also see minor trait changes in other classes

Why it’s bad:

1. Longbow damage sucks. I’d take thief shortbow over it any day of the week

2. MH Axe damage sucks. HORRRIBLE damage scaling

3. Sword stops you from dodging correctly in melee range. In other words, worthless against any class like warrior or thief

4. OH Axe #5 worthless.

5. GS Damage sucks. I have 3400 power in pvp right now and guess what my maul’s base damage is? 1500. So it crits for 3k. NICE! Almost as much as a thief auto attack!

6. Shortbow damage sucks for power builds.

7. OH Torch/Dagger have no power damage.

RaZaC.1963:

So the only good major trait is one that hard counters thiefs? Great post Sensotix really constructive and all.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/

40 new grandmaster traits I am sooooo pumped

Thedenofsin.7340:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Helly.2597:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Yep. The only puzzle piece left for this is making it so the sound will play through the ‘Mute game while minimized’ option. Then it will be caaaaaaaaaake.

Could there be another option that allows you to check a box that says “Play notification sounds even while minimized”? I’m not sure the difficulties around such a change, but then such a thing could be added to all queues (overflow/wvw/spvp/etc) and still leave growth for whatever else comes up during the games growth that could be classified as a notification.

Yes, you are describing the functionality that we need

This is something I don’t understand: how do you guys prioritize things? Notifications are a nice-to-have, but in the customer’s eyes, extremely low priority when compared to fixing 4v5’s, providing better match-making, new maps, bug fixes for trebuchets, profession balances, profession bug fixes, etc.

For example, take a look at the new heals added. There’s multiple, glaring profession imbalances, many profession traits that are broken or useless, many profession bugs (some horrible ones!), and what does the Balance Team do – spend, presumably, man-months of effort making new heal spells.

Where are your priorities and why are they not aligned with what the community wants?

Sound notifications on tournament queue pop is a key part of fixing 4v5 games.

I imagine we can expect this feature soon. (2017)

Chaith.8256:

infantrydiv.1620:

Chaith.8256:

Well, literally, you can still play for gold, increased rank points, and fun.

It’s funny how all these whiners are pretending like glory meant so much now that it’s gone.

Well.. yeah glory wasn’t all that, but it WAS convertible to a bit of gold. Alliance bags were nice, too. But whatevsies. Little difference for me, as you say.

I agree, but I think there are legitimate things to complain about, not an almost useless currency being removed. Especially when they’ve said they are releasing something more rewarding soon.

Chaith.8256:

Well, literally, you can still play for gold, increased rank points, and fun.

It’s funny how all these whiners are pretending like glory meant so much now that it’s gone.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Shinzan.2908:

infantrydiv.1620:

So why exactly do you like hotjoin so much? Is it:

No queue.
No penalty for leaving.
No leaderboard.
8vs8.

yes! basically these points! thanks Shinzan!

we can’t find such features in solo arena and team arena.

Well, how about we compromise:

1. Arenanet keeps the 8v8 public hotjoin servers open (as many as needed for everyone who wants to use them), but people need to manually join a match.
2. The ‘Play now’ button is removed and replaced with “Unrated Match”: An unrated queue with all maps on it. This queue will make use of a hidden MMR to pair players fairly and stop match stacking.
3. Skyhammer and Spirit Watch are removed from Solo Queue.
4. A new tutorial system which explains conquest, map mechanics, and generally how to navigate the Heart of the Mists

This way, players who wanna mess around in 8v8 still have the opportunity to do so
New players are directed more toward the more balanced unrated match system. Solo queue becomes a more fair game mode for rated play without the two most imbalanced maps.

I would suggest in stead of rewarding say, 54 chests retroactively to a player, Arenanet should give a ‘megachest’ for each 10, 20, 30, 40, rank achieved so far that has roughly 10x the mats that these chests have.

No. They made it seem like it would be for a while, but everyone has known for about a month now that the patch is coming in either april or may…

Let’s just make the hammer damage zero. People can just go in the cannon room if they feel like a scenic view.

Chicago Jack.5647:

entropy.9613:

Thieves are ‘OP’ 1v1 because that is broadly the role of the class.

They are largely useless in conquest because nubs who like to feel pro in duels run stealth/escape builds that can’t even prevent a decap.

No that’s not the role of the thief. In fact, what you described is the primary reason why people hate having more than one thief on their team and hope to god that, if a thief is on their team, they won’t be doing what you described. Not because some run perma stealth builds.

Yep, only beginner thieves in spvp think their role is to 1v1. Thieves’ real role is hard to catch burst in team fights. Basically they go into any size fight and down someone who has already blown a few cooldowns. They do run far point but only to decap it when it’s empty.

Double or triple thieves can actually be pretty scary in solo queue if they travel together and control one side of the map.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

style.6173:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

style.6173:

@infantrydiv

I think I miss-understood one of your original points. I thought you wanted to replace hot join with custom arena. I’m not a fan of that. I do like the following:

1. Hot join goes away. It is replaced with an unranked team queue. (This way people can play solo or with friends) All maps are part of the rotation.

people already can play solo or team, in solo arena and team arena. there is no need to remove hotjoin. hotjoin players play in the official anet hotjoin servers because they do not like playing in solo arena or team arena. removing hotjoin will not achieve anything at all.

This way it pretty much caters to all the current player types.

no, this does not cater to players who wish to play in the original public anet hotjoin servers with default map rotation and settings.

and they can continue to do so in custom arenas.

no. they cannot do that. custom arenas are once public anet hotjoin servers, turned into custom arenas by players who bought them.

custom arenas do not have standard map settings and rotation.

would all the solo arena players stop being so selfish already?
solo arena players are the minority, the majority plays hotjoin.

also, asking to remove hotjoin servers is impossible, because the public anet hotjoin servers are custom arenas using default server names, map settings and rotation.

So why exactly do you like hotjoin so much? Is it:

A. The rampant team stacking?
B. Beating up on rank 1s who just started pvping?
C. Being able to leave your team and force autobalance so you can rejoin to the winning team?
D. Not playing the game modes/maps as intended?

style.6173:

@infantrydiv

I think I miss-understood one of your original points. I thought you wanted to replace hot join with custom arena. I’m not a fan of that. I do like the following:

1. Hot join goes away. It is replaced with an unranked team queue. (This way people can play solo or with friends) All maps are part of the rotation.
2. Solo queue stays the same with ranked leaderboards. (Matchmaking does need to be improved though)
3. Team queue stays the same with ranked leaderboards. (Matchmaking does need to be improved though)
4. Custom arenas stay the same as today.

This way it pretty much caters to all the current player types.

My ideal set up is:

1. Custom Arenas for messing around
2. Unranked queue with all maps
3. Solo queue (Forest, Khylo, Foefire, Temple)
4. Team queue

More people need to main two classes, or at least be proficient in a secondary class.

Right now in solo queue I main ranger, but when I feel our team is lacking burst or mobility I switch to thief and it usually works out better than staying ranger.

Chaith.8256:

ghaleon.2861:

It’s 2014, come on we should be able to speak to them in game, just like every other game out there. Nobody wants to type while in combat.

VOIP is intrusive. It’s not always possible to be on VOIP because of what’s going with your surroundings. Not everybody wants to be in a call, especially with potentially annoying or abusive strangers.

Teamspeak exists for a reason, if you need those features, everyone has it. Implementing voice chat into the game seems to be redundant. I remember voice chat being implemented into another MMO that I played, and it was low quality as well as hardly ever used.

So, that’s why I am all for empowering team-wide voice emotes.

Yeah, this is exactly what I think about VOIP

Zietlogik.6208:

other than voice communication, there are a few things that can be done.

1.) Communications Rose (LoL, Battlefield games, etc.)

Usage: Shift and Hold Left-Mouse button on your mini-map (or rebind to a better key) to display the Communications Rose / Pop-up Communications.

While the pop-up is active, a player can mouse-over several commands that they can issue to the location clicked onto the mini-map.

For ease of use, 4 Commands would include:
– Attack Area
– Defend Area
– Watch Area
– Do Not Go to area

This would be pinged onto the map for 1-3 seconds and display a graphic to indicate what command was used (such as a Red X for the “Do Not Go” Command) with a small, not overly audible sound with it.

2.) New Player Icons

When a match begins, players can opt to display a colored circle around their class icon to indicate the type of role they are using.

- Orange Outline: Indicates the player is a primary Damage source for the team.
– Teal Outline: Indicates the player is a Control source for the team.
– Green Outline: Indicated the player is a Defensive/Bunker for the team.

(colors may vary)

Along with player icons, perhaps, the icon of the player should be greyed out when they are defeated (currently it just displays their normal icon, and it looks like they are just standing still according to the map, meaning you must check the party bars to confirm.)

The color outline idea is cool! I’d also like to be able to specify which role I intend to play and have that role factored into matchmaking. Players could designate a role to themselves when they went into queue so that you wouldn’t end up with a team of four roamers or four bunkers.

Marcos.3690:

John Corpening.9847:

What can the game do to improve communication between teammates in-game through the UI?

A ping system like league of legend would be a great start.

Smite’s system is awesome too. There are a few prerecorded voice-messages that can be played by typing specific keys in your keyboard.

Another idea is that chat messages of the team leader pop in the center of the screen. The team leader would be the player with the highest MMR in the group

Yep^ these are all very good ideas

Also, adding a respawn timer to the party UI for defeated teammates would be nice (just showing the amount of time before they are back in base)

John Corpening.9847:

The problem is that they step out of Hotjoins and enter a highly competitive SA environment or they solo queue into TA to potentially face premades. From my experiences as a player, the latter option tends to be a better choice. I have often found groups grateful to pick up a fifth, willing to offer guidance on what they want me to do given my build and accepting that I’m a pug and probably not very good anyway. The attitude I often see in SA is that if everyone in this random group of pugs isn’t top notch then RAGE!.

Yes, this is essentially one of the main problems in the nutshell: Hotjoin doesn’t do a good job preparing people for competitive play. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that PvP currently doesn’t have a huge community, meaning that there is not enough padding between people just deciding to queue for the first time and veterans who have been competing for a long time.

An unrated queue would give newbies, or more casual players a place to play the game as intended. It would also be a great place to put the less balanced maps where they are still enjoyable without people playing builds meant specifically exploit their mechanics.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Just get a competitive balance, without passive kitten and unfun builds aka condi-warrior, decap-engineers or spirit-rangers. The game got totally unfun, since the dhuumfire-patch. Build a high skill-ceiling, make the game challenging instead of easy.

Yup. Game has got way worse. I hope staff ele doesn’t get buffed. It is more mindless AoE

Again, this thread is not about your views on class balance. Staff ele is not mindless, please take your opinions to the profession balance forum.

Iason Evan.3806:

I think as it pertains to solo queue there is a real lack of people playing to win. Most people I see run killing builds. They often fight off point even when down 2 caps to one or triple capped. On a map like Temple of the Silent Storm for example, I have seen many players ignore Tranquility and Stillness when down caps and to no surprise, the winning team sends 2-3 players often to Stillness or Tranquility. When a team triple caps after gaining Tranquility, I often don’t see players on the losing side even heading back to cap points.

I think a description is needed at the outset of matches to tell players how to win on each map. I think even a tutorial of the maps is a super idea. Have NPCs on the cap points to show players that they need to hold these points the majority of time to actually win. In solo queue, a lot of players care more about their kill count than they do actually winning the match.

I have also noticed a correlation between times when bonus items or rank points are given out and more players than usual playing. This isn’t surprising, but what is surprising is that players treat the matches as death matches.

I don’t know what your MMR is, but above top 500 in solo queue there is an abundance of people playing the best builds they can find who really want to win. This sounds like a problem of not knowing basic conquest strategies which is usually found lower on the leaderboards.

Einlanzer.1627:

I’m posting this again, because it clearly doesn’t get the attention it should.

A few weapons have #1 skills that are too strong. Warrior Longsword & Ranger Shortbow are just two that I can think of off-hand. Having a very strong #1 means they do well above average sustained DPS with virtually no strategy and little effort on the part of the player. This makes them boring to play and contributes to some extent to large-scale weapon/profession balance issues.

Many weapons, primarily certain ranged ones (Pistol, Staff, Scepter, Longbow) have #1 skills that are too weak (probably due to a poorly calibrated aftercast), making them struggle to compete outside of highly specialized situations and/or requiring bizarre gimmicks to even be playable. A few examples -

Elementalist (Staff and Scepter) require attunement dancing to be at all effective when it should just be a feature adding versatility in utility.

Thief (P/P) requires dumping all of your Initiative into Unload constantly to maintain reasonable DPS, which breaks the whole set by forcing you to sacrifice too much damage to get any utility and too much utility to get any damage.

Mesmer (Scepter) is just terrible because, while it offers reasonably good utility, it has nothing that even attempts to compensate for the atrocious damage of its #1 skill.

The list could go on, but you get the point. My point is that #1 skills need to all be balanced relative to one another instead of being all over the place. Since the #1 skill is the primary determining factor when it comes to sustained DPS, there are huge weapon/profession balance issues in the game almost entirely stemming from this issue that tuning traits and utility skills endlessly will never fix.

Warrior Greatsword? Ranger Shortbow? Warrior greatsword auto is weaker than axe auto and hammer auto I’m pretty sure. Ranger shortbow will deal no bleed damage whatsoever if you run straight at it.

If we are talking about strong auto attacks how about Necromancer Scepter or Thief Sword? Both of these are absolute monsters

I’ve never been killed by FGS 4 and the only players I see using it are usually pretty skilled to begin with. It has a chance to become a real problem, but for right now it isn’t a big deal.

Guys, many of you are saying that removing the leaderboard wouldn’t help solo queue and would actually make it more like hotjoin.

What I would like to see is something more a long these lines:

1. Remove hotjoin, keep custom arenas
2. Add “Unrated match” which is a queue that has all maps and a hidden MMR
3. Keep solo queue, but remove skyhammer and possibly spirit watch
4. Players under rank 20 may only compete in Unrated matches to begin with, their performance in this mode will be used to calculate their Glicko rating for when they start in solo queue.

Now, I’ve made these suggestions before and people have said “But I don’t want to have to queue, hotjoin allows me to get a quick game in and leave whenever I want”. I don’t really think this holds up, GW2 games are quite short compared to MOBA games, and the queue time + game time rarely adds up to more than 20 minutes.

Pixels.6532:

Archaon.6245:

Attention and rewards for casuals is what destroyed gw2 pvp..just saying…

That’s absolutely incorrect. No sense of urgency in fixing broken specs and a penchant for creating easy specs that are far too effective is what is destroying gw2.

A healthy and large base of casual players is necessary for any pvp to survive. Do you suppose the 32m yearly LoL players are all pros? The millions of concurrent viewership for championships is all sponsored players?

If GW2 wants to be esports it needs 2 things.
1. Large, healthy population of people who will tune in to watch tournies (this is why you need a large casual player base, pro teams only have so many grandmas who will tune it)

2. Frequent balance updates to ensure certain specs and classes aren’t out of line with others.

The rewards updates are steps in the right direction for #1. It’s #2 that’s currently lacking.

I absolutely agree! A large fanbase who also plays the game is what the game needs to succeed both from a gameplay aspect and from an ‘esports’ aspect.

John Corpening.9847:

Thanks for the post infantrydiv. Your take on the situation is incredibly insightful and well thought out. I really appreciate your constructive feedback on where the game is and where it should go to accomodate players at all levels.

Do you feel that Solo Arena has any benefit to a player for learning how to play as a team?

Thanks for the response! I do think that solo queue helps players learn and have appreciation for the conquest game type, far better than hotjoin does, but also slightly less than team queue would.

From my perspective, the skill required to play this game can be broken into three parts:

1. Mechanical: Has to do with APM, keybinds, cooldown/activation time knowledge, muscle memory. This is the ‘sport’ aspect of the game, where faster reaction times lead to better performance.

2. Tactical: Knowledge about matchups, other classes skills, positioning in a fight. Examples would be: knowing how to position correctly on a necromancer, knowing how a hammer warrior attempts to CC chain, knowing what a thief heal looks like and how to interrupt it

3. Strategic: Map awareness, opening plays, splits, regrouping mid-game, knowing when it is acceptable to push far, when to lord rush, etc.

I think playing Solo Queue will clearly increase your performance both mechanically and tactically, but from a strategic standpoint it is lacking compared to team queue.

The main reason behind this is that generally with team queues you decide on a set opening split, who should be responsible for getting which buffs. If you overextend in team queues, many times your teammates will help correct your strategic knowledge. In solo queue, I see players ranked even in the top 100 who still do not understand basic splits or rotations.

One of my own experiences when I was new in solo queue was when I was learning to play thief. I picked up the thief class and thought “Ok this is the Assassin class, my job must be to assault far point all game and duel whoever is there”. Now, as many top PvPers could tell you, the role of thief is not as farpoint assaulter. Thief is supposed to roam between home and mid, cleaning up fights fast and decap far when it is empty. I probably played 200 solo queue games before I finally understood this to be the thief’s role, when just playing one team queue with good players, they probably would have told me what to do immediately (“Stop getting into fights on a capped far point!”).

skyhammer requires smart positioning

Signed,

Decap Engineer with 5 knockbacks

Prysin.8542:

In WvW, you are better off with axe/torch and Sword/Dagger combo. That way you get 1 condi spike set and 1 evasion/condi upkeep set.

Sword torch is nice, if you become very skilled at utilizing the fire field of Bonfire to keep flameshield on you as much as possible.

Sword/Torch Axe/Dagger is very strong to have hard evades on both weapon sets.

Sword/Dagger only has #5 for heavy condi application, but S/T A/D is a more balanced set up.

@OP, You can run Sword/Torch with Shortbow, or Axe/Dagger in a few different builds: Dire/Rabid/Carrion Traps, Settler’s/Apothecarie’s Beastmastery, or Dire/Carrion Spirit Shout hybrid build. All of these are very strong roamers.

What rank is J sharp? That’s what I’d like to know.

I can confirm that what Lux said seems to be correct.

I don’t consider Guild Wars 2 to be terribly imbalanced. Yes, there are specs which are over the top, and specs which are very annoying to play against.

What I really think is killing the game is lack of variety and lack of change. When League of Legends first released, the creators were releasing new champions every 2 weeks. Now, this would obviously create some imbalance in the game, but it also kept the game exciting.

The meta in Guild Wars 2 has been the same (or extremely similar now) for at least 4 months. There were new skills added but it was clear Arenanet was too scared to make them even close to being decent.

If Arenanet started adding new skills to each class every two weeks or one month while doing basic balance tweaks as well, the game might actually become less balanced, but it would actually make the game feel alive and progressing rather than dead/stagnant.

If you look at the Ranger CDI thread, it has tons of views and posts, and many of them are PvErs as well. People from all sectors of the game would be happy and excited for new skills and weapons.

When I hear Jonathan Sharp say “Oh, that wouldn’t give enough time to let the meta settle” it makes me cringe. NO! Don’t let the meta settle, make the game in a constant state of change where people are always looking for the best things on their classes.

[TL;DR] Basically what I’m saying is:

Everyone is interested and excited in new skills/weapons
Flavor of the Month is OK. Flavor of the past 6 months is NOT.
Changing it up frequently isn’t bad
A metagame that is constantly changing makes things interesting

Rickster.8752:

Your Game My Rules.5324:

Well let’s be honest..

THIS PvP is “competitive casual” because there’s no competition at all. It’s not even close to be any competitive since it doesnt reward anything (#eSports)

As an exemple, the difference between a good and a bad guardian is fairly less important than a good and a bad prot/heal monk in GW1.

If you want an online game to be “casual competitive”, GW2 in its current state is perfect for you, considering it doesnt reward good players

The difference between good and bad anything is almost non-existant in this game. Too many spammable skills, passives and immunities. It takes no skill to be immune to all condis at 25% health. No skill to passively heal with AH. No skill to proc that dhuumfire passively. No skill to give aoe dhuumfire passively with sun spirit.

The game is utterly brainless. Those are the facts.

Please stay on topic on this thread, if you’d like to comment on specific builds and such, I’ll refer you to my other thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-Are-you-kidding-me-specs/first#post3760934

ronpierce.2760:

Oh, Caith, I was just being trolly. I wish minions did like a quarter of their auto-damage but supplied more healing and the minion traits were merged so the necro could take more to benefit themselves, of course of course. I just like being a butthead. GW2 pvp is so far down hill, fixing MM isn’t even going to scratch the surface for issues.

For me, I’d like to have an overall big nerf to minion damage, and a few traits removed, a few traits merged. But, new traits for specific minions added. For example, I’d make Bone Minions explode in a cloud that pulsed poison and weakness for a short duration, and reduce the explosion damage to say, around 500. Then, add a master trait where Bone Minions remove two boons from foes hit by the explosions.

This would actually promote smart play, and minions for a specific purpose (I like the role Flesh Wurm has in high tier play currently). For example, if you are a backpoint condition necromancer, you can bring bone minions to rip that warriors stability and poison/weaken him as soon as he switches into hammer.

The point would be to make minions actually much better utility wise while making them less troll in 1v1 situations. Specific minion traits and abilities would encourage people to only take one or two minions rather than loading up their entire bar and making the spec uberclutter

Your Game My Rules.5324:

Well let’s be honest..

THIS PvP is “competitive casual” because there’s no competition at all. It’s not even close to be any competitive since it doesnt reward anything (#eSports)

As an exemple, the difference between a good and a bad guardian is fairly less important than a good and a bad prot/heal monk in GW1.

If you want an online game to be “casual competitive”, GW2 in its current state is perfect for you, considering it doesnt reward good players

Well, I came up with a better definition. Competitive casual is like people on a high school sports team: everyone there wants to win, but generally the emphasis, or the reason people join, is to have fun. Most people aren’t expecting to go to the Olympics, or the National Championship.

And yes, you are largely correct that there isn’t very much competition. This thread is about how normal fans/players of the game can enjoy playing the game more, which is very important if we are ever going to have competition.

Your Game My Rules.5324:

Sorry mate but competitive and casual are 2 different things that cant be matched together

Well, if your definition of casual is ‘uncompetitive", I suppose that’s true.

However, I think of the ‘competitive casual’ as an average player who wants to improve and become good at the game, but doesn’t plan on participating in major tournaments and doesn’t always want to take the game extremely seriously. This contrasts with the plain casual players who are literally just in pvp to do dailies or goof off and don’t really care if they get better or not.

I’ve been thinking about the way Guild Wars 2 handles matchmaking, and match options for a while now. As for myself, I initially bought this game for the PvE and ended up getting hooked on PvP instead because I didn’t find the PvE engaging/challenging enough. I’ve been ranked in the top 50 of both solo queue and team queue but I’ve never considered myself a ‘competitive’ player. I enjoy playing the game (sometimes) and watching streamed tournaments/matches. In short, I consider myself the kind of player that Arenanet needs if they want the PvP scene to grow

The problem I have currently is that options available for casual/noncompetitive players who just want to have fun learning different classes and fighting conquest in a less stressful environment are really lacking.

Team Queue: Team Queue is great but after I get home every day I don’t necessarily feel like trying to find another four players to join with me.

Solo Queue: This mode is a step in the right direction but is actually probably the most toxic aspect of PvP. I see almost everyone running builds like Decap Engineer or Minion Necro or bunker warrior, and the imbalanced maps Spirit Watch and Skyhammer are frustrating to anyone who wants to play a specific class.

Hotjoin: No one plays hotjoin to try and learn the conquest game mode. It is a disorganized deathmatch with rampant team stacking.
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My suggested solutions:

1. Remove the leaderboards from solo queue or create an unrated queue. This will instantly stop the majority of the complaints about Skyhammer and create a friendlier environment for new and less competitive players to enjoy playing conquest as intended.

In addition to the above reasons, I believe that removing the leaderboards from Solo Queue would increase the amount of teams being formed because there are people seeking recognition on the Solo Queue leaderboards (even though they are broken) who would now move to team queue.

2. Remove hotjoin, keep custom arenas. Why? Hotjoin is a mess and is a terrible place for new players to try and learn the game. It is not uncommon to see a full team of rank 40-50 players against eight 1-20s. The games are invariably blowouts because even if both teams have even numbers of players, you can still join the one ahead by 200 points. The new unrated queue with a hidden MMR would serve as a much better place for new players to learn the game and feel like they are participating in something meaningful.

3. At a certain point, if participation in team queue picks up, teams should be grouped together under their guild name on the leaderboards. Arenanet has not done enough to make pvping as a guild group rewarding. Winning matches with your guild should give upgrade points to your guild the same way doing guild missions or world events does.