TamX.1870

> @"Draco.9480" said:

> you need some special system for that which requires some awkward coding and good funds. i personally prefer not.

For what? For adding shared rewards to instance achievements, or to prevent raid sellers to get them? For the first one, I really don't know, but thinking that e.g. T4 fractal completion rewards all the players, would it be difficult to add additional quest/event/task to reward players when there are newbies in the group? Not necessarily trivial, but not necessarily that hard either. For the second one, I think that I could accept that mercenaries would get these extra rewards, too. It would be really difficult to exclude fractal/raid selling from mentor rewards.

> game is already rewarding. i've boxes on boxes of ascended and kitten. all i need is gold to convert to gems for mounts skins blabla.

Yes. I was thinking that if your group has two choices, looking for some experienced instance crawler or try with player new to instance, the group could be rewarded somehow if they are willing to support new players to start experiencing the content. It does not need to be anything worth of huge amounts of gold, but something so that people would not need to feel embarrassed if taken to runs as newbie. Personally I would like to reward people who trusted me, but sending plain old gold for rest of the group feels bit - mundane?

In larger picture, for some odd reason, players in this game are pretty much concentrating on their closed groups (their static raid group, their guild, etc). I have wondered what causes this difference to the previous game I played, but have not yet figured it out. I could vote anything that would make it more acceptable to voluntarily (unlike ranked) start working with people you don't know. For example: in the game I played previously, taking new people to highest tier instances was more a norm than an exception. Of course, we preferred people we knew already, and we preferred experienced players, but many times we tried those instances with some strangers in the group - if it was disasterous, we disbanded and regrouped. But still, we made lots of contacts to other people in the process. Maybe LFG is just working too good, and people are not that willing to give at least one try new people?

> @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> **While interesting, this would also allow raid seller to double dip.** Once by getting payed, second by getting achievements associated with helping raid newcomers.

> This would ultimately lead to any titles gained or unique rewards potentially falling under scrutiny. Any type of mentoring system would have to be way more complex as to prevent such results.

That is absolutely true. Of course, one could hope that easing the people to take part of normal groups, raid selling would be not that profitable. But the truth is of course, that people trying to get in normal groups are different from people buying completions.

> @"phs.6089" said:

> Did you play Revelation Online by any chance, that game had very advanced mentoring system.

Sorry, no, can you describe it more?

> On top of anything else that made game very sociable, something GW2 lacks.

Yes, while playing this game now bit over a year, I have tried hard to figure out, why this game is not nearly as "social" as the previous one I played. Basically everything here is OK, and the previous game was horrible in some other fronts, but for reason or another you make contacts to other players (especially outside of your guild(s)) very slowly...

- - -

I was thinking mentor achievement system a bit more. In fractals and raids, it could be good to show a "completion counter" on each member, telling how many times that player has received the end reward. It was very good addition to show AR in fractals: there is no more need to try to guess how much AR player has, and if s/he claims something, if that is true or false. You know, you don't really need to hide if you are firstcomer or expert - if game client does not show it directly, people will ask for killproofs and such. If the game itself would show a counter how many times you have been completed specific instance, it would greatly ease all the hassle.

So, this way, you would see that someone in your group has never completed that specific instance / boss / tier. You would then know that you as a team are getting mentor chest if you complete that: and game client could even show this explicitly as an event. You'd then just need to be confident enough about the newcomer that s/he can do the minimum required to beat the encounter, and that's all.

My first post suggests that team would get mentor chest only from first run, but in reality, if you have been in an instance like 3 times, it is not yet much. Maybe completions 2 to 5 or 10 would give "small mentor token" which could be later traded to real one (e.g. 10 smalls for one regular). And with enough mentor tokens you would get titles, cosmetics and such things. Maybe you could convert them to some other currency, if you already have what you wanted.

Anyways, for players who are new in instances, it would be a relief if there would be clear non-fakeable indication that you are new in the instance, and it would be a huge relief that if you are accepted by the group as a potential player, they would be rewarded for their trust. Mercenaries already get their "shared" rewards when selling completions for gold, but how about those who don't want to go that way?

I really don't see much issues, if classes are not equal in zergs or roaming. You can make one class to take part to zergs, and another class to go roaming. It does not hurt if you have few choices, thought. It would also not hurt that those classes are different, and that no class can dominate entirely: for example, you would have necro-only WvW (roamers would all be necros, zergs would be full-necro-zergballs etc), or that you would have one class that dominates roaming and the same class is needed in larger amounts in zergs, too. It's in the end a thin line here, of course, but anyways.

If the battle zone could be balanced so that there is enough action at all scales (solo roaming, small groups, zergs) at majority of hours, that would be pretty good. Expecting of course that there is some class diversity in compositions.

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> This would be good for raids and cms

Yes, I was indeed initially thinking CMs and raid bosses / wings. Both Nightmare & Shattered Observatory fractal have already two suitable personal achievements (one to complete at T4, one to complete CM), that could grant rewards for the ones that have done it many times earlier. Raids have personal achievements for killing each boss, which I could also consider giving rewards to the entire group, even if others have completed it earlier 100 times. There could be others, too, but I initially thought it only for instanced PvE content with fixed group size, that is, you would not get mentor boxes from open world events, like world bosses or such (even that they have personal achievement from first kill).

"Mentor" achievement could have its own achievement, for example, when collecting 50 or 100 boxes you would become "The elder, whose wisdom the young ones gather around to listen in silence" :)

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> In future i suspect druid will be a memory

Druid is already only a distant memory in PvP side, so without balance patch it will be then obsoleted from all content :) Such a sad, just recently finally got harrier druid :)

@"FtoPScrub.5476", yes, simple win rates of classes would not tell much. For example, if Ben says "Reaper had one of the highest win-rates and play-rates in ranked last season", it can just mean that it is effective "noobkiller" that is very popular in low ranks.

I try to rephrase my earlier posting. I assume that ANet collects data from matches to design balance patches. If they don't, IMO then they should start. Now, what I would like to see, is to see this data shared to players. It is quite common practise in many competitive games. In this game, even that it would be interesting to see statistics of individual classes, I think that most of us would be more interested to see some data about team compositions and their effectiveness against other compositions. For example, we could have a top-20 list of compositions with highest win rates, and then a list how they perform against each other. Something like that. Something that could be used for you, as an individual player, to concentrate on right things and forget the weakest ones.

If ANet uses class win rates to design balance patches, then, IMO, that data could be published. It is far from perfect, because of many things mentioned also by you, but if it is the data ANet uses, wouldn't you like to see it? It is also probable that we can't have 100% accurate data from class / composition balance & performance. For example, we could think that in some compositions there are one or two key roles, and the majority of success is up to the player skills on those roles. We could see this kind of behaviour if we'd see some sort of mean deviation, if such could be calculated from match data. We could see that there are combos where individual player skill causes less deviation to the win rate, and so on. Maybe at best, we could see that there is no single "killer comp", but even if there is, it would not bother me much: then we would just start playing that.

TL;DR: It would be good if the data used to design balance patches would be shared to PvP players.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> I wouldn't mind it, nor do I need it. To me, helping people is the reward. ... I've gone through Hearts and Minds will people in my guild any number of times, often for no reward. It's a bit of work, I feel like something for my time would be nice.

Yes, true. I could ask this another way - wouldn't it be nice if you could share rewards you gained with those who were involved? So, maybe it could be done other way: those achievements would also list "mentor chest" reward (as a sort of shared reward), which would be given to anyone in your group once the achievement is done?

Well, not bad suggestion, although core & reaper necro are already shapeshifters. And yes, true, Norns are also shapeshifters by their "nature", although those elites have ridiculously long cooldown (for reason, I think). I also think that ele is currently the closest to a shapeshifter in this game, with four somewhat unique skills in its different forms (attunements): you could easily give ele four "skins" depending on the attunement s/he is. Revenant is also close to a shapeshifter with two "shapes". Soulbeast is not exactly one: soulbeast just gets some extra skills when merged (and all bonuses her/his pet had), but retain her/his own skills during merging.

@"Nimon.7840"

> Remove minions and transformations from necro -> make it competitive for raids and not so hard dependant on support

I sort of like that necro is dependent on support. I would like other classes to move to same direction, instead of going to direction where all classes are "self-sufficient". But of course my opinion is such only because I try to pick suitable classes for specific tasks, instead of trying to fit one class to all content.

When you finally finish some harder content, you get all sorts of rewards: you open up collections, get mastery points, finish all sorts of achievements and such. While this game does not directly punish experts taking newbies to runs, there's also no rewards from all the extra time & effort used to teach the mechanics to newcomers and taking some retries after wipes. It is only you who just completed the achievement /cheering around, and others nodding that "great, great, gz, ...", but wouldn't it be more fun if all could get something for such achievements? So, what do you think, should the entire group be rewarded when a member in a team completes some harder content first time?

I was thinking some sort of Mentor chest - some extra loot to members when someone completes content first time - and possibly a related achievement with few tiers. The reward should be enough to justify the possibly extra hassle, but small enough to prevent people to start calculating and abusing the reward. It's main objective would be to reward players who are willing to take players new to some instance in to their group.

I haven't thought the details much, and I hope others will point out the weaknesses in such system, as well as give refinements or totally different ideas for lowering the treshold for groups to take players new to specific instance / boss with them (other than mercenary groups taking gold as payment for completions).

@"Jumpin Lumpix.6108", I think I have sort of understood what you are after. Not sure thought, but if Queen's Gauntlet is one example what you are looking for, then I know what you mean.

I would count out WoW-like grinding of abandoned and outleveled instances from this. Yes, they may give you skins and such, as well as old achievements, outdated gear pieces and abandoned currencies, but they are hardly count as challenging & rewarding solo content. Yes, true, the previous game I played - happening to be one of those many WoW-clones - rewarded in to some extent if undermanning instances, but only if you undermanned the newest ones, at hardest tier. Soloing such were definitely challenging solo content, but most of those looking for such challenge did it only once, as it usually took too much time to be anything profitable - it was still better to grind them with groups.

Undermanning group content is probably always possible. If group content can't be undermanned when people are experienced enough, it is tremendously hard for experienced players when they are new with the content, and, more importantly, if it can't be undermanned, you can never take newcomers (players who are new with that instance, but hopefully experienced on their class) to a group to teach them the instance secrets. This game does not reward from that, which is IMO just fine: experts who can underman the instance are still not punished if taking some extra players with them.

The problem here is such, that if game has lots of rewarding solo content, it becomes from MMO to a single player game with in-game chat as option. On the other hand, if group content is kept rewarding and made soloable, it becomes a grind fest, because it is then far too easy for groups. Most MMOs, no matter if concentrating on PvE or PvP side, including WoW and all its clones, try to offer group content, and they try to give incentives for players to group up for content. It is their advantage over single player games.

I wouldn't mind if we see bit more content like Queen's Gauntlet, and hopefully 1vs1 ranked queues at some point, but at the same time, I think that an MMO PvE gives up its greatest strength over single player games if it is not based on grouping. Online PvP games you can have - and we have a lot - that are entirely single player games (like poker, chess, fortnite).

+1

Arrange characters two-dimensionally (e.g. 5 x 5), so we can use all four arrow keys instead of shuffling them through with just 2 arrows.

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> There has been a thread just a week or so ago, in addition to the many others that were already created in the past. ;)

Do you mean this: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/53097/suggestions-qol-quality-of-life-ideas - I think that's the "official" QoL thread :)

Anyways, yes, please. If it is much too hard to show enough wanted information (map completion, WP unlocks, gathering tools, ...) in logging screen, then please give us possibility to write character description so we know it's current status.

This - suggestion in OP - would be great. I feel that competitive game mode needs some statistics from matches, to judge your decisions when entering. I am not that afraid if published statistics show that some classes / combos are more effective than others, it is quite common in many other games. It would just shift player base to work with stronger builds & combos. I am not assuming that all classes are equal in PvP, instead I try to concentrate on classes and builds that promise some rewards from all the time & effort put to the class & build.

It would be great to see these kinds of statistics after all seasons, so that you could compare balance patches and their effects to statistics. IMO, ANet does not have many reasons to keep the data secret. Publishing it would not affect anyways to endless stream of threads crying for balance, buffs and nerfs. It could of course move those threads to more useful direction, in terms to have better competitive game mode later.

Of course, publishing builds & compositions that are generally stronger than others would mean, that some people would give up the entire match if seeing that they are not in that strong combo. Sadly, this happens nowadays, and it is not even based on facts, but subjective ideas. Publishing info would put some social pressure to PvP players to switch to stronger builds, but that also happens today, and it is very strict in fractal & raid meta, so nothing that we have not seen before.

+1 for seeing character faction (vigils, priory, whispers)

+1 for seeing it in login screen

+1 for other possibly useful info in logging screen to make decision which one to log (e.g. which toon has unlocked AB WPs, or unlocked some LW episode or so)

+1 for more space in login screen for toon selection, e.g. 3x3 matrix or larger

Suggestion: If not suggested before, would it be difficult to add a note field to friends list? For example, something like 40 characters long note so that you would remember in which circumstances you added a player to friends. Like: "PvPer", "officier of guild [XXX]", "leader of a raid group I want to join when good enough", "Great 1vs1, ask again some time", "Excellent DH player", etc etc

There are contacts you like to keep, but after some time you have forgotten the account name (as most players you recognize from toon name).

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said:

> Have you gone to Eotm?

Mists Arena? Aren't that exactly like WvW landscape, so that (1) you need to be on different server than people you like to duel with, (2) it's prone to have people around zerging the duels, and (3) discussing with your opponent can be bit rough. Correct me if I am wrong.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> I get why people would want dueling, it creates a space were people meet and interact with each other for the purpose of dueling. It allows for players to go up against almost any one participating in duels and you get to try out your build against multiple opponents. This is way more comfortable than meeting with 1-2 friends in a dueling spot like spvp arenas or guild halls.

sPvP arena is not exactly a dueling spot, it is all vs all arena. It is very hard to use it for practising except in very, very quiet hours or unpopulated maps. Guild hall is bit better in this regard, even that it is also all vs all (or team vs team), as the access to spot is somewhat controlled. But even then, it is quite common that guilds have people who like to ruin certain matches, although of course that should be dealt between guild members.

> That said, dueling also breeds:

> - harassment if not properly implemented by simple nature of people being toxic

Anything you implement has a change to increase toxicity. As pointed out above, fractals, raids, WvW, sPvP (especially ranked), they all bring up toxicity. Open world events have harrassers like DHs dropping traps so that bosses are immediately killed before people waiting for that can tag it. Even such things like merchant or bank access and such can be used to harass other players. If you judge all features if they can introduce toxicity, you most probably end up creating single player games.

> - an insane amount of balance demands based around 1v1 match-ups. GW2 not being balanced around 1v1 would make the spvp and wvw forums light up like a Christmas tree all year round

Compared to current situation, duels would probably not change this in any way. There are always demands for balancing, including 1vs1 balancing. Most of us can accept that there are just handful of classes and builds who make great duelists. Implementing ranked 1vs1 arenas - that is, 1vs1 fights for rewards - would greatly increase the cries for 1vs1 balance, even that I would accept that such game mode would be for certain classes and certain builds.

Hardest balancing issues are not 1vs1 balances. It is when some class excels in all game modes, or some classes do not have spot in any game mode. To certain extentn, in game like this, it is acceptable that certain classes and builds work better in groups and some work better alone, and that some are better at PvE and some are better in PvP.

> Maybe a large open world area could be added (some smaller ones already exist but do not really get used) where all players are flagged against each other as to allow people to meet in the open world for dueling purposes. Though now we are getting into an open world pvp area which too is not in high demand of this player base.

No, all vs all arena is not needed. There is already such (sPvP lobby & guild hall).

"Official" dueling, no matter how it is implemented, is a counter-act against people trolling duels which are arranged now. If you go to WvW dueling spots, there are always people ruining your duels. The same happens in PvP lobby. Private custom arenas and guild hall to some extent are areas where you can have some control to the access when trying to organize duels for practising things.

Duels have their spot for practising, but dueling rings have their function as a "sosialicer" as well. Of course, not the only one. I would like to see more things that would gather like-minded people to chat with each other. Don't yet know how, but I try to figure out some suggestions in the future.

EDIT: If we talk about controlled dueling, that is, you can invite one other player to a fight, and there is no means others can interfere the fight, few good spots for such could be PvP lobby (there is already practicing targets) and WvW neutral areas. You would need some room around, a spot that is easily accessible (like PvP & WvW waypoints), and a way to take a fight so that it can't be interfered outside. Chatting possibility is mandatory: people may want to switch builds, switch toons, they may want to compare traits, share tips - and of course, bully others. But PvPers in general are probably thicker-skinned for all that.

> @"DHung.5263" said:

> Hmm so it’ll be hard on a reaper for anything more complex? What about soulbeast?

Not necessarily. I have both ranger and necro, and they are both my "workhorses" for all sorts of content. I have mostly played hybrid support Scourge on my necro, and it is great for close anything, no matter if alone or grouped, no matter of the game mode. It's two weak points are WvW roaming and T4 fractals. Even that necro works great soloing PvE, it lacks certain abilities (mainly mobility) in all specs (core, reaper, scourge) needed in WvW roaming. Scourge is great for WvW groups - in general, Scourge is great in groups. Scourge is sort of "life insurance" in fractals, and I have loved how I can make the difference between failure and success, but sadly T4 groups rarely want Scourges, but more "optimized" setups whatever they be.

Ranger is another versatile workhorse. You can do well both as Soulbeast and Druid, but you can't do miracles. The only big drawback is that rangers don't have good spots for larger scale WvW fights - but it has several good (if not excellent) roaming builds.

Personally, I couldn't choose between those classes. They are both able and versatile even that they both have their weak spots with certain content. I would suggest to make and keep both :)

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> [Like this?](https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20747755616)

> ...

> [or maybe this](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feature-to-block-duels/54978)

> "There needs to be an option similar to block trades / guild invites to block duel requests ... I realize there are addons that do this, and after this happened I redownloaded the one I had before reinstalling the game, but I think it should be built into the game – or at least make it so players can’t re-challenge you after you’ve already declined.

Seemingly WoW has missed a checkbox to disable spar invitations. I know that anything that can be used for bullying, will inevitably be used for bullying by someone. In the previous game I played, if you didn't check the box to allow spar invitations, you didn't get those: and IGM harrassment was dealt by blocking players just like here.

But of course, my bias to this subject is such that quite shortly after started playing, I kept my spar invitations allowed and mostly accepted those, so I don't have much experience from "other side". My only experience from that side is the beginning of the playing, I played months before even realizing that there were an option to duel with other players.

@"Dawdler.8521":

> We can duel in WvW (WvW rules), we can duel in the guild hall (PvE rules) and we can duel in the PvP lobby (PvP rules). Literally all options covered.

Well, WvW duels require that you play on different servers with people you want to duel, and communicating with your opponents is bit rough (for example, discussing about tactics, learning etc). PvP lobby has free-for-all arena, and it is rarely suitable place for any kind of controlled environment to test and learn things: custom arenas do this better. Guild hall arenas are the best ones at the moment, even that there is no competitive game mode using PvE side skills. With these options practicing is possible, but by no means they are easy to use, and they don't serve other important purposes:

- - -

I think I know what people are looking for when wishing for opportunity to have spontaneous duels. For an MMO, this game has surprisingly little social interaction. It is a result of many different small things. For example, most things you do, need at maximum loose grouping (joining a HP train or similar) and you really don't have to be talkative. You really don't make any bonds to players in PvP matches, as it is very rare you meet same players again: same with fractal PuGs. Guilds are those few rare places where people talk.

I have been hoping to have small things that would increase the amount of players talking to each other, to gather together to spend some time. Duel circles can be such thing. Surely, they would work much better in PvP/WvW lobby, which gathers PvPers together. But I could hope these lobbies (WvW, PvP, raids, fractals) could be part of open world (not separate maps), or anything that increases interaction between different types of players, but would still collect players with similar goals to certain places.

> @"Veluna.7316" said:

> How do people feel about endgame content and their ability to survive on their profession? Looking at a number of builds most people seem to suggest doing high damage and I am wondering how do people just not die instantly for doing all of that?

I think there is no simple and short answer to this. First thing of course is to know your enemy. Many enemies have certain attacks that are more lethal than others, and you want to know how they look like to be able to avoid them one way or another: you may evade them (either by regular evade or using skills with evade frames), you may block them (applying aegis or using block skill), you may cut some of the damage by casting protection and so on, and so on. One efficient way is simply interrupt enemies casting those high damage attacks with fear, pull, push, stun or similar. So, next thing after knowing your enemy is to know where your protective abilities come: which skills have evade frames, where are your blocks and interrupts and so on.

Very offensive open world PvE builds need knowledge to use them. Before that, seek for builds that provide more sustain, they are generally more forgiving ones. But even in that case, don't forget to have enough offenses, otherwise you are just a punch bag to mobs, and they can try to kill you so many times that they finally catch you when your skills are on cooldown. One thing that generally helps when running alone in open world is to have enough AoE DPS in your build: with build specialized to single target damage you are in danger to be overwhelmed with adds.

Heals do not come from heal skill alone. Several builds have other ways to gain sustain, for example, thieves can trait to be healed when making critical hits, necros can be traited to be healed from their condition damage / leech heals from their attacks, rangers can be traited to be healed when gaining protection and warriors can be traited to gain healing when gaining might.

Then, last thing is that different classes have different abilities to make higher sustain PvE builds. Reaper/Scourge necro builds can be extremely tanky even with highly offensive gears. Druid-ranger builds can also be very forgiving. Guards and warriors also have high sustain builds, but they may need some practising to use.

There are two main sources I use to tailor my open world PvE builds: (1) open world builds listed by metabattle, (2) roaming builds from the same site. Pick the ones that say that they have sustain, or tailor them to have more sustain.

Open World builds: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World

WvW roaming builds: https://metabattle.com/wiki/WvW (scroll down to small scale section)

I usually prefer tailoring WvW roaming builds to OW-PvE side, because then I can use same gears. If you run group content like fractals and/or raids, you probably want to look builds that are tailored from that side. One additional source for high sustain builds is to look sPvP bunker builds.

> At least it feels like 2 dodges and a healing skill on a 20 second cooldown and some full berserker gear for other classes does not cut it at all for trying to survive fighting against Elite level enemies and higher or fighting like 4-5 veteran enemies at the same time. While its doable against solo enemies it feels like its impossible to ever have a fight that does not involve you being attacked by a minimum of 3+ enemies due to the enemy density. In those situations it feels like most classes would just die unless they threw all their survival stuff in. Particularly for confusing meta event content like Dragon's Stand where you can barely see where enemies are or where their grounded AoE stuff is placed and you find yourself standing on the Axeman's AoE or the Snipers AoE (F' the snipers by the way).

Having several HoT elites and veterans around will be hard anyways :)

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> Do you mean the MMO you played before this one?

Yes.

I'm not saying that I think duels would be top priority things in GW2. Definitely not. But it is definitely not a horror show as some seem to argue. I have heard of some games which have sort of PvP flag, which when turned on, makes you free-for-all punch bag to loot. Duels are not anything like that. It is not even anything like Runescape had at some point (maybe still has?), so that you lured unaware new players to PvP zone to kill them and loot them. If implemented, duels would be similar to many Hero Point challenges, with the exception that people around could not interfere (temporarily created faction maybe) - I'm not sure if we have already such mobs in GW2?

As the game already has options for practising PvP side, that's fine. I could hope that those things would be improved, for example, so that you could choose the game mode (PvE, sPvP, WvW) for your guild hall arena, maybe you could even choose map for GH arena, that is, guilds would have custom arena as a guild hall enchantment.

In my previous game, sparring used to be mainly "entry-level" PvP practicing, and just some fun while waiting for something. Nothing too serious, because it was not rewarded in any way, not even stats or counters about your spars.

In the previous game, we had sparring (dueling) option around the world. You got no rewards from loosing or winning, and you were not able to kill opponents entirely to rez circle: when either side lost health, spar was over (players were not targetable anymore) and loosing side was "exhausted" for like 5-10 secs before standing up again. You were able to enable/disable sparring invitations, just like other invitations, and I think it was disabled by default, so new players needed eventually to turn it on if they wanted to start sparring. Spars were entirely 1vs1, no other player could target the ones dueling (although some wanted to ruin certain spars by throwing heals in), and you could have only one spar running at time (you could not invite player sparring already to spar with you).

We used to have sparring circles in certain spots: mostly popular "hub" spots that were easy to access w/ instant traveling around the world. They used to be somewhat popular, people learning PvP basics and more experienced players trying out new classes & builds. But the game itself evolved to direction which made spars meaningless to practice for PvP. In this game, I could think that e.g. Lion's Arch would be one popular spot for duel circles, maybe also certain other places where you have easily accessible waypoint and some room around.

I have nothing to complain with the system, vice versa. As long as the game was somewhat balanced from PvP perspective, they were easy and cheap ways to practice, and it was always an option for quiet hours to have something to do.

In real life, I write stories. I can't help myself to start weaving something at the very beginning when making a character to a game. So, yes, all my toons have some sort of background story sketch, half made, half picked from in-game choices and events, all incomplete.

My ranger Tamyeth lived in Divinity's Reach with her little sister. As a responsible person, she joined to military ranks to protect their people against centaurs. In one of their patrols, they got ambushed, and Tamyeth got lost in Harathi Hinterlands near the border to Snowden Drifts. She would died to cold and hunger, if not found by Norn hunters. She has lived and traveled with Norns since that, and nowadays people who meet her first time think she's just bit short Norn.

My elementalist is Tamyeth's little sister. She is performance actor traveling with circus, and while not on tour, she used to aid in local tavern and entertain customers with fire shows. Eventually she learned that fire and flashlights can have also other uses than entertaining.

My guard is a Norn, who was initially a Raven shaman trainee, but her mentors said she is still too hotblooded for such art, and adviced her to go to find inner peace from world around.

My necromancer is a daughter of Elonian plantage owner. During the uprisal of their slaves, her parents were killed and she fled to north with her bodyguard (my warrior), to seek allies and mercenaries to help her take her property back, by promising them portion of wealth and slaves if they success. She was pulled to events against dragons making the road longer, but she has not forgotten her cause.

Oh, I forgot to say one thing, and I think it is worth another post quoting myself instead of editing the previous one:

> @"TamX.1870" said:

> It is true, but not long ago I was caught red handed by a warrior using so called Killshot build. I was definitely prepared to very different fight, and I was not that familiar with that specific PvP build. S/he managed to surprise me even second time, I was definitely not ready for fighting like that, but third time was finally more even fight. It is definitely true that encounters are dictated by builds that have been found out generally most effective, but under that there are several bit weaker or bit more specialized builds you can play quite well.

One thing to understand in at least WvW roaming meta is that meta builds are created by experienced players. Those builds work for those players, because they are also familiar with all kinds of variations in the classes. For more newbie player as I am, they don't usually work in their full potency. An experienced player, who is familiar with classes and their variations, create a build that has some counters to different variations. S/he knows what opposite builds are hard encounters you can win hands down, what encounters are soft counters, and what are the weaknesses against specific other builds and how to try to handle them if the opponent is not skilled enough to utilize them, or how to escape such encounter entirely. Many of those counters are anything but obvious at least to me. That is why I can not necessarily benefit meta builds, just because I am not yet on the level to utilize them fully, and at the same time, I am much more vulnerable to more rare ways to play classes than the ones who have been there, and done that already.

So: at least WvW small scale meta builds can be the best you can get in general, but it really depends on you as a player, as well as your opponent as player. Except against experienced players, you can be very effective with builds that work well in certain encounters, even if they are totally stomped against certain builds. From this perspective, PvE group meta is much more restricting. Because you know what you are facing, you don't exactly have much choices. You can try several things, of course, and you may be able to adapt for PuGs, but the meta is meta in much more strict sense that it is at PvP side.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> Very nice reply. I certainly don't expect people to agree with everything or anything I say but I hope that it at least gave an idea why people may feel that class definition is lacking. I'm also not saying that people who do see class definition are wrong. We all have our perceptions and they can exist at the same time.

Ah, yes, definitely, I agree with you with those points and I should have said that more explicitly. My bad.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> Your last comment about weapons indicating the skill set is something I hadn't considered. You still need to know the class and what that skill set would be. However, I do not see any problem competitively or otherwise in hiding what skill set you are using and well weapon or not, ...

I need to rephrase it. There are competitive games like chess and go, where nothing is hidden. Then there are competitive games where everything is initially hidden, like Magic: The Gathering. Most games (Texas Hold'Em poker, most MOBAs, CS:GO, Fortnite, WoT, etc etc) are something in between. Like said, in the previous game I played skill set was defined by the class entirely: the weapon you had didn't have any effect to that in the end (the initial weapon specialities were watered down in the process).

Here the skill set is defined by class (including specialization) and your choice of weapons. What is initially hidden to your opponent, is your choice of traits (excluding expansion specializations) and gears (including runes and sigils) as well as your choices as your utility skills (and maybe your secondary weapon set, but quite rarely that is a game-changing secret). It is definitely possible to change that, so that weapons are only cosmetic choice and not affecting your skill set, but you would then need a balancing pass, and players would need to adjust to that change.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> people do tend to gravitate to specific builds so it won't take you long to figure it out anyway I suppose.

It is true, but not long ago I was caught red handed by a warrior using so called Killshot build. I was definitely prepared to very different fight, and I was not that familiar with that specific PvP build. S/he managed to surprise me even second time: I had a hunch what I was expecting, but not yet in the level I was able to utilize. Third time was finally more even fight. It is definitely true that encounters are dictated by builds that have been found out generally most effective, but under that there are several bit weaker or bit more specialized builds you can play quite well.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> As for balancing issues, I think you have them no matter what.

That is definitely true. But IMO ANet does quite good to try to keep classes on par, even that not all classes are equally powerful in all game modes and all roles. I can't hope to be stuck in one class and one gear set and hope that I can play everything. What I hope is that regearing toons will not be too hard, time-consuming and extensive, and that you could have some longer term perspective to choose a class for your needs. What I mean is that I could commit much more efforts to certain classes to make them for open world, fractals, raids, WvW roaming and WvW large scale, if I would not need to worry that chosen class or build for that specific game mode would drop out entirely after few game patches.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> As for leveling tanks or healers and such I never had that problem. I usually level healers first because that's my preferred class.

In that game I was playing, my favorite role to play was a tank. I had ranged DPS class which I used when first times in instances to make observations of instance mechanics and such. I also had a healer, which eventually was my raid work horse: it was so much easier to find DPS, but finding raid-ready tanks and healers was painful. I would have liked to tank those raids, but the class I much earlier made for tanking was not anymore suitable as raid tank at those times - it was more a hybrid tank for smaller teams and special crazy "black ops" efforts.

> @"Gehenna.3625" said:

> Trinity systems also do have their downsides in the end. As much as I prefer it gameplay-wise since boss encounters are so much more interesting than here, I cannot disagree that having to wait a long time to get a group together is also a pain in the rear end.

Yes. I have wrote it several times, that I feel that GW2 PvE instances are not as creative as they were in my previous game. The company behind that game didn't do that well in many other fronts, but the people behind instances did (and maybe still do) excellent job. Like I said in another post today, here at least in fractals quite many of them revolve just around spanking mobs as hard as possible while avoiding one-shot mechanics at the same time. In the previous game I played, a raid encounter that needed only one tank was usually considered simple tank'n'spank style encounter (but there were exceptions to this, making also one-tank encounters revolving around totally different co-operation). If you like to hear more, you can ask: but if you are former or present WoW player, you probably know already, as that game was/is one of those many WoW-clones.

But tank concept is very, very problematic everywhere outside instances and their mechanics. I have already wrote about the subject few times here with greater level of details, and thus I wont repeat them here unless asked.

First I want to state, that PvE instances are mechanical circuses, they are amusement parks with shooting targets for players to run through. You practice the route and location of targets, you develop most optimized way to run it through. Even thought I chose the words deliberately bit offending, that that PvE instances are predictable mechanical circus to run through is one of the most important things that makes them fascinating to players. We used to play games like Asteroids and such, and we didn't want the levels to be anything else than predictable. There is absolutely no reason to change it any ways. You don't need intelligent, unpredictable enemies and encounters in PvE instances, you have PvP side for that.

Tank as concept is a deliberately made flaw to mob AI. You won't need it when soloing (all the mobs are anyways hitting you, no matter if you are tank or not), and not in PvP (as you don't have freedom to choose what your opponents choose to beat). To justify the tank spot, mobs need to hit hard enough to make only the one that is dedicated for beating to survive. That is the thing that radiates this deliberately made flawness in mob AI to other game modes, including PvP. This is why I am very much against making tank classes, that is, baking this artificial flawness in AI to fighting mechanics.

Tank concept may make instances more fascinating, because it adds another role to a fight. I would compare this to an instance mechanics, that requires one player to play chicken dance(*) at certain points to prevent the team to wipe. The way how regular Trinity games do this, is to bake chicken dancing to a class, so that only certain classes can play chicken well enough to prevent wipes. My suggestion to this is to make this chicken dancing as an instance mechanics. Here in GW2, you could (1) have special skill that performs chicken dance to prevent wipe (in WoW terms, special skill would be force taunt, single target or AoE, caster-centric or ranged), or (2) you could have Mistlock Singularity type prop, and the member pushing that would become the group's chicken dancer - or a tank.

EDIT: (*) And now you need to remember that I absolutely loved to play tank.

This way you could not only implement the traditional Trinity tank concept inside instances without letting the concept to radiate to other modes (landscape, PvP), but you could also make instance and tanking mechanics way more interesting than a traditional Trinity game can do. You could have three different props: each of these props would make you to attract specific types of enemies and you would be able to move them around the platform. You could attach either buffs or debuffs for the one(s) chosen to play tank: in some instances, you could buff them up so that without a dedicated tank it would be hard to sustain the damage. In some other instance, you could apply a debuff to tanks, so that the ones that are responsible to take the mobs to certain locations would be unusually hard to be kept alive. You would have lots, lots more options to design these mechanical circuses called PvE instances to amuse the ones that take them, including of course myself.

> But that's why I play as a casual here and the combat system doesn't quite inspire me to delve into it, so it's better that way... for me :smile:

Yeah, it is understandable :)

> @"MUDse.7623" said:

> you could either try duelling spots ...

Yes, I need eventually to find enough courage to go there :) In my previous game, people had all sorts of unwritten "rules" for duels (what skills, gears and such to use and what not), and they got mad if someone tried to practice actual fighting. I eventually gave up those sparring circles. I tend to make bonds to other players around slowly (and it does not speed it up that generally better players have bit rough personalities), and I would not like to piss too many people off by not knowing unwritten rules before I have had even change to get to know "usual suspects" better.

> or use a build that can pick its fights, therefor builds with lots of mobility/stealth. (stealth >> mobility for picking)

Yes. In my previous game I (accidentally) started PvP with such class. It pleased me for some time to be able to pick the fights, but I eventually found out that I don't have the right mindset for stealth type fighting, and no ambition to try to change my mindset. I shifted towards "visibles", and eventually I shifted more to knight/paladin type melee classes. I have always appreciated in-fight flexibility in my PvP side toons. I tend to like to have my own mind game inside my head to adjust and adapt to the opponent in the front of me, instead of practicing to force the opponent to play with my rules (although in the very end those are the same things).

> if you do not pick the fight you might see yourself just dying to the opener of someone else without learning much how to deal with them, because given they are experienced they will know what you will try to avoid it.

That is absolutely true. I will definitely try Thief builds here, too, but I am not sure if I meet the same things here that I met earlier. I try to try out several builds in hope that I will eventually find a build that has strengths that suite to my purposes, and its weaknesses are something I can commit effort to learn to overcome. Druid was something like that.

P.S. Thanks for the link in your signature, very good article even for not-that-seriously-for-winning kind of player I am!