Guild Wars 2

Why bother with elementalist when there are other classes which give more solid results for way less work.

high risk / high reward? Oh yes, because Spirit Ranger is high risk. Because one-shotting other players in WvW as a thief is high risk. Because superbuffed necros are high risk (compared to ele).

And in PvE it’s the same garbage. Highest damage output? The most easiest thing to play: warrior or guardian.

high risk / high reward? No, not in GW2.

FirstBlood.7359:

So far I haven’t met a single decent elementalist in WvW. Most of them use staff and sit in one attunement all day. It’s more likely to see a black swan than a properly skilled S/D or D/D ele.

Going frontline with a super tiny health pool and light armor calls for trouble. Also everyone believes that the DPS of an elementalist is not that great compared to what other classes push out with far less risk involved. And finally water fields from staff is what is entry ticket to groups/zergs in WvW. If the elementalist hadn’t the waterfields you wouldn’t see elementalists at all in groups.

And one more thing: Guardian for groups > elementalist.

ANet’s balance leaves a lot to be desired. One year later and we still have the kings of DPS and … the rest. And engis even don’t get access to a 5% boost on their kits. Is it our fault that ANet forces us to use kits for max damage (which is still laughable compared to warriors)? Then if we must use kits why don’t they scale?

I agree with you, butch. But is a an investment nevertheless. And quite frankly, decision makers refuse to invest into something where the ROI (return of investment) is not ensured.

Because, to be honest, we all don’t know if GW2 would suddenly become very popular. What if it is too late already? Many have left and many are leaving. It would be very hard to get those players back.

For ANet it sure is a safer course to simply focus on PvE and their living story.

I’d say ANet lacks programmer resources in general. They might be able to throw out new content every two weeks. But most likely because they have tools for content creators.

But if we look at the core it becomes obvious that there are yet many, many problems to solve. Problems which cannot be solved by content creators. For those problems ANet needs real software developers or engineers.

And it seems that PvP suffers the most from these issues, because PvP not only has issues with class balancing (which also exists in PvE) but SPvP also lacks several much needed features and tools. Same could be said for WvW, too.

We don’t know about ANet’s internals. But it seems that they rather invest money in content creation in order to keep the PvE crowd happy than invest money in software development to address core issues of the game or even add new features.

Maybe content creators are more cheaper and maybe the gem store doesn’t create enough income in order to pay enough software developers.

What we see are the results, though. And what we see is what has happend very, very slowly or not at all.

So, yeah, we can expect lots of new content. But don’t expect changes to the core soon (if ever). And don’t expect new features. Because it would cost too much money.

Warriors are already the king of PvE. They deserve to be the king of PvP, too!

Neeho.3859:

Atherakhia.4086:

So ANet acknowledges there’s a huge imbalance when it comes to WvW participation on the servers and you’re still going to go forward with a WvW tournament?

Participation is not required for the reward, so spvp, pve, AND wvw players will all pay gems to transfer. Easiest way to get gems? That’s right, money in Anet’s pocket. I wonder why they could possibly be doing it this way?

This. In order to win and players have to transfer to high pop and high coverage servers. See it as an “entry ticket”. ANet sure knows that many players will transfer. The more players transfer the more money ANet earns. As simple as that.

MrRuin.9740:

The problem is these massive amounts of people don’t interact. They dont socialize, theres no reason for them to coordinate, no reason to help each other out, no strategy, no reason to learn anything at all.
If there ware different mechanics involved, it would likely be a different story, where the masses had to coordinate and use strategy, bring people together to work for a common goal.
Zerging has none of this. Zerging promotes anti-social behavior, where the goal is just make sure you press 1 quick enough to get auto-attacking on the mob to get credit before it dies.

I fully agree with you. But at the same time I am pretty sure that this is what like 90% of the MMO playerbase wants.

Just imagine these encounters required team work and coordination. I bet the forums would explode.

No, sorry, the modern MMO player prefers solo play and the online part is only for showing off.

Conncept.7638:

In certain things
-Successful removal of the trinity

Yeah, now we have the full zerker DPS “unity”. Some people actually loved to heal or tank, believe it or not.

Very nice. And nice to see a Charr in action. But when it comes to dyes … your taste is rather special

I have an Asura engineer. Now working on my 2nd. This time a Charr. Back to the roots

Also I like the Charr story a lot. All this warband stuff. Roar!

@Malismo This is what I always thought, too. There should have been dedicated WvW servers and normal PvE servers right from the beginning. The whole “your server against other servers” idea sounds nice on paper and is a nice marketing idea. But in practice it doesn’t work. And never will. Such a system will always become unstable in the long run because players tend to switch. And the more players switch the more the system becomes unstable which in turn motivates even more players to switch.

The same is currently happening in Planetside 2, too. There are some servers where the population imbalances are so huge that many players have stopped playing the game.

Losing against a team because you get outplayed is one thing. However, losing against a team which outnumbers your team by a huge amount is nothing but frustrating.

Imaging football games where one team had 2x or 3x the number of players. Makes no sense.

Then again … maybe ANet never intended WvWvW to be “balanced”. I don’t know. What actually is ANet’s position on the huge server population imbalances? Is this working as intended?

Ah, and regarding those algorithms and whatnot. I want to have fun by playing WvW and not by watching Excel spreadsheets to see my “progress”.

1) More game modes. Maybe this would help to get rid of the current burst or bunker meta.
2) Balancing professions.
3) Reduce visual noise for spell effects

Krosan.2890:

woeye.2753:

snowaugar.1823:

Don’t be a band wagon person and go to an already stacked server that’s no fun

ANet bascially forces us to join stacked servers in order to have fun.

Because skillag and monsterblobs are extremely fun?

Lol, no, certainly not. You’re right. But guess what? Getting roflstomped two weeks in a row by servers who have 2 times more players than us isn’t exactly funny, too.

Maybe next week the luck will be on our side. But if not … I don’t know what to do?

Because you don’t need any tactics in WvW. Only combat tactics when zergs fight against each other.

For strategy and tactics we would need a way more complex system. How this might look, though, I have no idea Maybe something like chaining points together. Like, before you can take a keep the attacking faction has to claim all towers first. And in order to claim a castle you need both keeps. Or something like this. You get the idea.

Problem is, though, the huge population differences between the servers. Those servers with more player count and better coverage could easily beat servers with a lower population in this scenario.

I might add that M.A.G had some nice tactic gameplay in their 128vs128 mode. And Planetside 2 is also working kitten improving their “meta” game.

It’s not cool when instant abilities take like 5-6 seconds to cast. And rubber banding doesn’t help either.

beren.6048:

Fishbait.6723:

My guess would be that WvWs turned into nothing but a zerg fest, combined with the unbelievably stupid match setups they`re currently screwing over every player over with.
(http://mos.millenium.org/eu) ….

After months I come and try a bit of GW2 to find my server being matched up with 2 servers who are clearly 10 times more strong than us. WvW was no longer playable because where ever you go you ll find enemy zergs and all your people stop going to WvW, so now there is no zerg to run with. Matching up a rank 7 server with a rank 2 is just stupid.

Some here. Some commanders on our server switched to other servers and some even quit. Our TS server, once a funny place, is now very silent.

Well done, ANet, well done.

snowaugar.1823:

Don’t be a band wagon person and go to an already stacked server that’s no fun

ANet bascially forces us to join stacked servers in order to have fun.

So, it’s basically this: if you want to have fun in WvW then join a stacked server or quit. Well, ok …

ShinNakon.9085:

Anet should just drop down the number of players allowed in all borderlands. Seeing that the only ones that can fill them out or come close to are the higher tier servers. After a while the higher tier WvWers would get tired of even longer Qs and eventually move out. The Zergs would not be as massive as they are now.

This! It also would result in much less lag and more dedicated WvW servers (and not just a handful of super stacked servers).

Also they should revisit how boons work in WvW. AoE damage is capped at 5. Boons, however, not. Therefore the current system favors big zergs.

It would be nice to see more group/squad actions. However, ANet needs to add way more tools for squad leaders. Other games, like EvE or PS2, provide way better tools to organize squads and platoons.

Amadeus, thanks for sharing your ideas and experience! You really inspired me to once again try out an engineer. I failed two times before, because the engineer seems to be very weak at the beginning (compared to other professions). But then, one day, it was as if as switch turned on in my head and I was all in So much too explore and play around. Can’t wait to get to 80.

TyPin.9860:

I remember ANet introducing WvW before release as massive unballanced Server vs Server. It was never intended to be ballanced.

Who could have thought, it would turn out like that? * sarcasm *

Althoug I very often find myself in an attempt to make ANet balace WvW, I think it aint possible. The only way to really ballance it out might be to make server transfers free and for WvW oriented guilds to spread arround the servers and ballance it out themselfes. This should be combined with a reward system revarding challangeing situations in WvW and make steamrolling a server almost worthless…

I feel it would be very hard to find a way for rewarding. At the moment, though, why would you transfer to a low-pop server? It would only hurt you. WvW scales with power. The bigger your zerk the better your performance. The more coverage you can provide the better. And because of this we see “dedicated” WvW servers and … the rest.

Sometimes I wonder if it had been a better idea to have only some servers with WvW enabled. Like those PvP and PvE servers in WoW.

Then again things will even out in some weeks when the new “matchmaking” has balanced out servers. Though I bet it will only show one thing: more players → more power → better ranking.

Number or players > any magical ANet math. As simple as that.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Khayoss.2019:

You need to stop thinking in terms of tiers too… they don’t exist in this format. You are what your rating and rank # says you are. Dropping to the next ‘tier’ doesn’t mean anything anymore. You lose rank points or gain rank points, and are then matched with appropriate (a term we use loosely for the time being) opponents.

The “tier” thought process is what created this problem, IE population shifts. “we are going into t1 we need more people” created stacked servers, if guilds in T1/2/3 would spread OUT to other servers we wouldn’t see these insane blowouts purely based off 1 servers ability to out-man the others.

This.

I am really, really kitten ed off. Either you’re on a high-pop server or have basically have to gtfo. Zerging, bubbeling, lags, lags and lags. Another week, another slaughtering by a high-pop server.

Man, if only there was another fantasy game with decent WvW I would change in a blink of an eye …

Thrumdi.9216:

woeye.2753:

Kimbald.2697:

Thrumdi.9216:

Who wants to bet that when this “rebalancing” is over the match-ups will be exactly the same as they were before it started? (Give or take a server or two).

my point exactly.

Out of 20 servers with such differences, there are only a few that can match your own server to some degree.
No matter the system used…

Exactly. No math can fix the core problem: the huge disparity of population count between the servers and the fact that numbers/coverage are the most important factor in the current state of WvW. The only way to fix this would be to artificially limit the maximum number of players able to participate in WvW. But high pop servers wouldn’t be happy at all when facing low pop servers – for sure.

The hole WvW thing wasn’t thought out very well it seems.

It really seems that they don’t have out-and-out WvW’ers/RvR’ers on their staff (the kind who live for it).

The sPvP dev team seems to have dedicated PvP’ers, and the same could be said for PvE. But the WvW dev team almost seem like amateurs when it comes to designing this kind of stuff.

That being said, there probably isn’t a lot of available expertise for RvR, as there just haven’t been that many games based on it. And those RvR designers that are still around are actually working on other projects (Matt Fior on ESO, Mark Jacobs at Camelot Unchained, both veterans of DAoC).

Well, I bet to differ. SPvP was in a bad state for a looong time. And it still is though ANet is finally keeping up. And PvE dungeons have their issues, too: warrior/mesmer/guardian or GTFO.

I often feel GW2 has good ideas but when it comes to implementation the process got stuck somewhere at something like 70%.

Kimbald.2697:

Thrumdi.9216:

Who wants to bet that when this “rebalancing” is over the match-ups will be exactly the same as they were before it started? (Give or take a server or two).

my point exactly.

Out of 20 servers with such differences, there are only a few that can match your own server to some degree.
No matter the system used…

Exactly. No math can fix the core problem: the huge disparity of population count between the servers and the fact that numbers/coverage are the most important factor in the current state of WvW. The only way to fix this would be to artificially limit the maximum number of players able to participate in WvW. But high pop servers wouldn’t be happy at all when facing low pop servers – for sure.

The hole WvW thing wasn’t thought out very well it seems.

ewokee.7819:

Thurin.5610:

Keep making dumb decision ANET, ur matching system is making people not playing for a week, that including ur stupid AC’s and the skill lag is enough for many people to stop playing ur game.

totally agree.
but don´t forget wvw players are the minority. and anet doesn´t care if some of them quit. so don´t expect anything from them.

Er, what? I know many players who still play this game only because of WvW.

It’s a dangerous path. Because pets might become OP in dungeons. Like “Ok, just send in 5 pets, sit back and watch”. Not cool.

I feel it’s more a general flaw in game and pet mechanics. ANet decided to not have tanks in the game. Instead we use dodging for evading damage. It’s a nice idea. Too bad that our pets cannot dodge.

And regarding BM bunker:
It don’t like this build at all. It’s a really dumb build imho. But it IS a solid build against the 1.000.000 pew-pew ganking thieves out there ;-)

Antisceptic.9174:

Longbow just needs a faster fire rate. It should at least be on par with the Warrior’s Longbow fire rate. How can a warrior fire 2 arrows faster than a Ranger fires 1. That is not consistent with the philosophy of a Ranger.

Indeed. Just increase the fire rate, even if they have to lower the amount of damage per hit in order to keep it balanced.

Didn’t they say that GW2 is an “action” game? Longbow #1 doesn’t feel like action at all. More like Zzzzzzzzz – oh, sorry, what?

Necros feel like a big slow heavy battleship, equipped with medieval cannons only, fighting against racing frigates with laser beams.

Mobility was, is and always will be king in PvP. The best damage mitigation is to get not hit in the first place.

And as others said condition damage is pointless with all the condition removal. There’s are reason why classes who can dish out respectable white damage dominate. Even the ranger BM bunker build, because the white damage comes from the pet. But rangers not only have better pets (mostly due to run speed → better uptime on target) they also have way more evasions and mobility to not take damage.

Necros are a waste of time, unfortunately. They lack in PvE/dungeons, they lack in WvW and they lack in S/TPvP.

But yeah, I guess have just have to learn to use DS properly, lol … :.(

@cuge Well said. DPS in GW2 is more important than anything else. And from a marketing PoV it actually makes sense. Everyone loves to pew pew pew. And ANet said multiple times that they wanted to create an “action” game. And not a tactical game.

Because of this we ended up with certain classes who can burst on the one side and certain classes who can go bunker on the other side.

I wonder if the devs simply wanted to create a shooter but they were told to produce an MMO instead

Jonesy, there’s a good thread about thiefs and rangers:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/how-do-you-kill-a-stealth-thief/first

Look at the posts from Puandro and Xsorus. It’s quite interesting.

@Pendragon Indeed. On the one hand you have classes such as Engineer or Necro. And on the other hand you have the ultimate faceroll DPS monster machine, also known as Warrior.

It’s okay to have a noob class. But it’s not okay that this class performs the best (speaking of PvE) with the least amount of work. If this isn’t bad game mechanics then I don’t know what it is …

Lots of nice input. Thank you guys.

Puandro and Xsorus, let me ask you: Why do you bother with the Ranger class if you have a thief? Just wondering.

I bet most thiefs are going to tell you that you most probably have fought only bad thiefs so far. Because the 1vs1 crown is reserved for these guys. And be asured that ANet will “fix” Rangers to keep things “balanced”

kito.1827:

Farry.8259:

…
Why I think that ArenaNet has not implemented a good 1v1 or 2v2 in the game is, because then you can really find out that the combat is unballanced….

of course it is unbalanced in 1v1 situations, because it is intended to be about TEAMS.
it makes absolutely no sense to balance a team-game around 1v1 – nonsense.

if you want balancing around 1v1 – anet would have to make a completely different game for you.

besides to have a duelling function and to want gamebalance around 1v1 situations are 2 completely different things – so i really dont get why people want this kind of balance, because it would be gamebraking

Teams? What a nonsense. Teams are only for the weak. For those who are too bad to fight on their own. Real men always fight alone. They don’t need teams. They are their own army.

I am Rambo. And I am a thief.

I wouldn’t mind if WvW did go away in favor of proper battlegrounds with some real objectives. WvW is all about numbers and mindless zerging. Not very well suited for long time entertainment.

But I guess we won’t see any changes. Development cost of new maps or real battlegrounds is probably too expensive. And GW2 is driven by PvE players.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Let me try:
GW2 is undoubtably the best MMO ever, Anet is so generous in giving out free content, the updates are nice.

But I feel it is more important to rebut whiners and critics on the forums than it is to have fun playing GW2 itself.

If you play the right class, sure. Otherwise no. The PvE balance in this game is terrible imho.

I am done with this game for now. Rerolling isn’t an option for me. If ANet refuses to balance classes properly then I refuse to invest money into this game. As simple as that.

It really makes me sad for I like GW2. But it’s not worth the trouble.

I think it’s perfectly fine that Robert speaks for us since he plays a ranger himself.

Myst.5783:

I guess I’ll go make a warrior now or something.

Yeah, because we need more warriors/guardians/mesmers …

Yesterday I was leveling my necro. And I swear various maps were full of warriors or guardians. But can you blame the players? Gw2LFG speaks a very clear language.

Sansar.1302:

Are we on the same planet? i main a ranger in sPvP and having a blast, actualy i have 2 ranger so i can have my 2 favorite build, migth buy a new slot so i can have a third.
been doing a fair bit of wvw too, and cant say that i have any issues there (my bunker build dosent work that grate in wvw but i expected that)

Most of the hate comes from PvE/dungeons. Because pets are completely useless there. And therefore DPS suffers considerably. Also utilities from other classes are generally better than those of the ranger (for dungeon running). Take banners vs spirits, for example.

In WvW pets are pretty much useless in ManyVSMany fights, too.

Better skill should always reward better performance. This is not the case with Guild Wars 2. There was a video on the forums comparing a high DPS engineer build against a warrior. Compared to the warrior the engineer has to work MUCH harder. And yet the warrior is still better.

Why take a non-soldier class if you can get the best results for the least amount of work? This is where the balancing in GW2 fails hard.

And looking at the history of GW1 I doubt that ANet will ever change this. Back in GW1 ANet was perfectly ok with the fact that only certain classes and builds where viable for certain tasks. Remember the mesmer and PvE?

phys.7689:

making your pet essentially completely set and forget, is a bad game mechanic, people talk about WoWs solution, but remember wow is a game with and equipment based focus, most of the game and encounters are built around stats, GW is more active, and more about positioning and reaction, hate it or love it, thats the game. Making pets able to survive without positioning/reaction/planning at all, is not a feasible answer in this game. It wasnt even an answer in GW1 with heroes (high level hero play essentially involved actively managing your heroes, position, disabling abilities, enabling, making them target specific enemies etc) and gw1 was more stat focused and less anyhow.

come up with solutions for pets that dont involve making them undefeatable without the player being involved.

100% this. I feel that the ranger gameplay is already dull as it is. At least compared to other classes such as the Elementalist and the Engineer. I wouldn’t mind if a good ranger had to micro management his pet in order to get maximum performance.

One would expect that the PvE warrior should have some drawbacks, to balance it off, no?

Then again, the problem “why should I take class A if class B is better” isn’t a GW2 only thing. Oh, all those funny threads on the WoW forums …

Have you read the comments in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/What-do-you-want-from-my-ranger

This makes me really sad. I somehow doubt that better pets will make things so much better. Because Warrior/Mesmer/Guardian seem to be better anyway: better DPS, better utility.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Explorable mode is supposed to be a challenge, if you want to do a dungeon introduction, do story. Colin Johanson said this himself in London with gw2guru, Dungeon explorables are considered hard-mode.

Then the game should make this VERY clear! Like let non-level 80 players not enter.

If ANet’s position is that dungeons are ONLY for level 80 players then they should communicate this well. This way things wouldn’t be so confusing.

I am seriously considering reactivating my WoW account. I really LOVE the artwork and the general world in GW2. But both PvE class balancing (engineer, necro, ranger) and ANets attitude (gtfo non-hardcore gamers) makes it very bitter for me.

Make no mistake, it’s perfectly fine to have very challenging dungeons, really. But ignoring new players isn’t fine.

As it stands I won’t recommend GW2 for anyone who is used to run dungeons as a method to level up and gear up.

GW2 dungeons = only for properly geared level 80s

Pets can also be one-shotted in dungeons easily due to high damage AoE attacks. And a ranger without a pet is only a half DPS.

This thread has plenty of information about this topic:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-2-26/page/6#post1568959