DoomNexus.5324

> @"djemben.6924" said:

> So (correct me if I am wrong) from what I can tell the prevailing counterclaim in this thread is that a Black Lion themed reward track would have a significant impact on ArenaNet's monetary earnings. Where is the evidence / data to support this claim?

Wait.. isn't that just not common sense? Also.. isn't a bit hypocritical to suggest making cash shop stuff available ingame, so you don't have to spend money on it and then to ask for evidence why they'd make less money by doing this?

Also, you are the one claiming it wouldn't hurt their earnings in the first place. Where is **your** evidence/data to support this claim?

> (...) If PvP already earns more keys per unit time via gold earned, we can immediately dismiss the idea of a Black Lion reward track, because PvP already gives the player an advantage in earning keys. If, however, PvP is less lucrative then any other formats (say, PvE), we can take the difference in gold earned and use that to project a reasonable gold-value equivalent of Black Lion rewards in a reward track. That way, PvPing with such a reward track is no more profitable than PvEing without one and just buying keys outright with gold.

I don't know where this "all modes have to be equal" idea comes from. I don't expect a lot of rewards from PvP tbh, if I want to get money I'll just go to Istan or Silverwastes and farm for a couple hours there or flip stuff in the trading post or go raiding or what not.. I don't want to get it taken away from me that I have to do something else as well. I mean.. We have the luxury of not having to care for gear or getting skill points or whatsoever in sPvP so you already have very little incentive to play PvE as PvP player on top of already getting a shitton of gold, mats and other stuff to sell/use from sPvP. Especially for ranked matches during a season.

And even more importantly, I don't want all those Skritts in sPvP who are only there to get the rewards with 0 effort.

I wouldn't mind a black lion related reward track if reward points would be exclusive to the winning team so ppl have to tryhard and can't simply afk because they eventually get the reward anyway. But this isn't casual friendly so this will probably never come.

It's not broken lul. It's a feature that saves you from playing sPvP.

Also it's probably just Anet who wants to shut down even the last bit of interest of players in the game mode so they can finally stop pretending like they care about sPvP.

WvW will die out soon enough by adding more shinies so the lag spikes are getting even higher and there are probably too many people to just shut the game mode down so they'd get too many complaints, but apparently it works quite well for sPvP, especially since we already got used to this. They already conditioned us lul.

> @"Arafel.6895" said:

>

> > @"Happy Yes.1453" said:

> > A year ago was heaven compared to the current situation.

>

> wow. Is that seriously so bad? I dont understand that... I ve played a lot mmorpgs and gw2 has one of the best PvP.... its really pitty that pvp population is so declining... or is it the whole population of gw2 declining or only pvp population?

Simply put: Anet doesn't give a shit. Like.. really.. You can't imagine anyone bothering less about anything than Anet caring about sPvP and WvW. That's it.

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > > >To enter Stealth, a Thief must build for it through traits, utilities, and combos.

> > > Nothing about this is difficult.

> > Yes it is.. at least if you want any substantial amount of stealth time. Most of it only barely lasts long enough to try 1 backstab or something.. And if you want to go invis for just a bit longer (often not even long enough to outrun someone - since invis != invul and everyone's just spaming AoE and stuff which ofc still hits - you have to trait into Shadow Arts or something and therefore have to giveup something else extremely critical. As thief your traitlines are pretty much fixed, there are no real alternatives. You basically can't run any thief build without trickery and ditching deadly arts would also be very substantial. The third traitline then is either an elite spec or in case of s/d acrobatics and swapping it out would greatly reduce your utility (besides shadow arts being pretty much useless with s/d since you virtually never stealth)

> > It's funny.. thief is one the least stealthy classes nowadays. S/D basically provides no stealth other than a veeeeery occasional Dagger5 (which costs a fuckton of initiative and doesn't do a lot of dmg - its primary use was for D/D into backstab I guess)

>

> Right, but again, all I've said was that nothing about getting access to stealth or entering stealth is *difficult.* For Thief, there is absolutely nothing difficult about getting stealth on your bar or going into stealth. Whether or not going into stealth at any given point is "meta" is up for debate (particularly considering how almost no meta Thief build really utilizes it in huge amounts--outside of maybe the Deadeye gimmick--typically opting instead for extra evades and teleports), but what you're basically trying to argue is how just because stealth doesn't operate as a win-button or let you get away from every threat possible, it's "difficult" to use. **Seriously, just spare me. That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.**

I wanted to completely agree with you (because apparently I indeed didn't exactly address your issues with stealth with my commentary) - until you got condescending and insulted me (and the playerbase) unnecessarily. I guess I just quote you back on this: That's really just how damaged a lot of this game's playerbase is.

And your insults continue: v

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > Being able to outrun as thief has become magnitudes more difficult. Almost every class has either pretty good in-combat mobility (through teleports, blinks, leaps, charges, what not) or a huge range. Unless you have ez and instant access to LoS you realistically can't outrun ranger or mesmer for example.

>

> You're basically failing at a map-knowledge level: a "skill" so fundamental and superficial that anyone should have it after playing GW2 for more than a few weeks (or even just after watching a video on some of the gimmick teleport spots among the PvP levels). Know your gimmick teleport spots and terrain through which you can teleport.

Stop belittling me lol.. "Seriously, just spare me".

> You also can just juke people repeatedly by doing things like getting chased up to that bridge area which borders Temple mid, dropping down from the bridge, and then just Shortbow 5'ing back up to the top of the bridge again from underneath. How is this even difficult?? You have evades to cover yourself while you buy time and reposition for this stuff too.

Did you just describe how to kite? Because when I'm talking about "outrunning" I mean "catch up with me when I try to disengage because I'm about to die" not kiting.. because I call kiting kiting, you know? And I don't want to reposition when I try to outrun, I want to get away as far and as quickly as I can.

Don't get me wrong, of course thief has superior possibilities for resetting the fight and disengaging over a lot of other classes but my statement of "outrunning became magnitudes harder" still stands.

> @"Saharo Gravewind.5120" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > > @"Saharo Gravewind.5120" said:

> > > Most of my main classes

> >

> > Would you mind mentioning which ones are your main classes? A wild guess would be it's probably more a problem of your build choice or maybe lack of knowledge about spellbreaker. Always evade CCs, stay at a safe distance and poke and try to not waste stun breaks before the sb goes into Rampage for example.

> > Spellbreaker also gets magnitudes easier when you kite and poke properly.

>

> I've stuck to support FB most often recently cause meta but I also play power DH, Chrono and Scrapper.

> My main issue with going as guard is keeping distance and wasting stunbreaks.

I think your main issue here going into a 1v1 as support FB. Power DH and Chrono should in theory have a pretty decent change against Spellbreaker tho and depending on the exact Spellbreaker and Scrapper builds you should either be meant to win or at least stall the spellbreaker for ages, which would arguably be the main focus as side noder against another side noder anyway - not necessarily the kill tbh, since it's all about wasting time.

> I hate using scepter (feels and looks super lame imo) but is that a better weapon choice over Sw/Sh for FB or LB for DH? I know most people hate LB, but the knockback is one of the few things that I've been able to successfully use to put some distance between us, and the range is helpful for other matchups.

Mh nah I think you're better off playing what makes you fun because you automatically play better if you like your playstyle. I for example don't reeeally like the playstyle of s/d core thief so I also don't play extremely well. S/P deadeye on the other hand is quite fun atm imo (with which I can also pretty easily 1v1 spellbreaker actually) and I even used to play p/p deadeye when the big scourge plague came to the mists and I performed extremely well. Was it meta? Hell no, I got constantly flamed for my build choice to the point where people just straight up afk-ed while we were already in a massive lead, arguing we can't win with me as p/p thief in the team ... Really. But I nonetheless managed to sit comfortably in plat2 with a complete off-meta build.

And scepter isn't broken or anything anyway so I wouldn't swap, especially not with LB on DH. LB is actually pretty good, you just have to play a slightly different playstyle than without (obviously). However I'd suggest looking into Mace for Firebrand instead of Sword. Less damage/mobility but better support.

But as I said, as FB you shouldn't go for 1v1s anyways. Rather play DH. Since Scrapper should most of the time just stall 1vX fights as long as possible (and you apparently want to 'win' the fight) and Chrono.. v

> Reworked Chrono is basically dead vs Spellbreaker imo, and with Scrapper I've had a few success with a bunky build and an offensive build, but usually ends in me having to run.

>

> What I'm getting is try a condi build, something that can kite, and/or use stunbreaks and dodges very, very wisely.

Then either play condi thief or condi mirage - even tho it got gutted, relatively speaking, it's still pretty good. I know someone who is still in the top100 /top50 with condi mirage. You could also try burn weaver, found it pretty nice to play and the burn output is ridiculous. Survivability is also not too shabby, in fact I found it way better than say thief.

As far as kiting goes map knowledge and using the terrain/LoS is much more important than class choice actually. Pretty much every class has enough stunbreaks and dodges to their disposal to be able to deal with spellbreaker on 1v1. You just have to dodge Bull's Charge (which not every Spellbreaker uses so you might want to keep an eye out beforehand) and Shield Bash and then kite Rampage and you're pretty much good.

If you get cc'd Spellbreaker almost 100% casts Hundred Blades as followup (because it roots them so they are forced to pull it off after a CC and it's their biggest dmg output) in which case you should definitely break the stun then, otherwise you should be pretty good saving the stunbreak and eating the damage.

Also try to predict Full Counter. If hit successfully counter it they get Magebane Tether and it completely negates the attack so try to bait them with a decently large burst so they pop it and then just let them stand there until it's gone. Also learn the intervals in which they can use it (Adrenalin-gated).

Since you also play engineer you could give Holo a shot, they have been extremely good for quite some time now and with the recent nerfs to basically every other good spec, they are even better since they didn't get touched at all while everyone else got worse.

> @"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:

> > Secondly, in Conquest, it is status quo for the Thief to be "in a bad position" in terms of combat. Of course, a Thief can hide in the corner all day long and run along the edge of the map to avoid getting killed, but he is not contributing anything to his team if he does so.

>

> Thieves aren't actually that squishy. You still have perma vigor and evade frames on most weapon sets.

On the other hand thieves don't have anything else really. While most other classes have either blocks, aegis, prot, invul, reflects or at least some defensive passives, thief doesn't have anything from all of it. Only Instant Reflexes which is a 2 second evade on 90s cd. Not particularly great if you ask me. Or - if you are keen enough to run Daredevil on anything other than condi cheese nowadays - thief gets access to an active block, yes.

I don't count blind anymore since blind is pretty much useless nowadays if you don't have a single hit burst to heavily rely on which - realistically - no class has anymore (aside from maybe d/p thief with backstab but d/p is dead anyways so who cares). Like.. Every major burst now has multiple hits per skill which massively reduces the effect of blind or you can just spam it, like conditions, so you don't need to rely on that one single hit. Or the enemy isn't bursty in the first place and just eats your health away step by step.

So.. Thief only really has dodges to stay alive. In addition to the lack of basically every defensive mechanism thief has also a pretty low health pool.

Also.. high vigor uptime and endurance gain isn't something special.. Almost every class has quite a variety of endurance gain boosts (now).

The only thing thief has with really superior improvements to dodges is Daredevil but Anet killed Daredevil by making d/p useless. Only thing that's still getting used is Lotus Training for condi cheese.

Sadly, Anet just doesn't care enough tbh. About sPvP in general. They can't even fix shit that's been broken since ages.

What was the last thing they did to sPvP prior to Djinn's Dominion? I don't even know lul. And Djinn's Dominion also is like the best prove that Anet doesn't have a clue what matters in sPvP. You could as well just block of sides and make it a TDM map with its main fighting point on mid. No room for rotations since the map's small af, no real kite on side spots (a lil bit on the left side but well.. compared to Niflhel or Foefire it sucks ass), the side objective is kitten too. I really can't say a single positive feat the map provides as far as gameplay goes. It's nice to look at for sure, they've put quite some effort into designing it from an aesthetic viewpoint but level design-wise for a competitive mode it's awful.

Hope Anet will eventually hire some more ppl who know how to make content for a competitive environment and also give them their opportunities. Because as far as rumors go the PvP balance "team" for example can't do shit if the PvE balance team says otherwise.

But @topic again: Yea I'd appreciate giving ESL another shot tbh. I'm fully aware of GW2 not becoming the next LoL or anything, pro players almost certainly couldn't do it full time, but tbh it wouldn't be necessary.. Most ppl think the pro scene needs huge price pools and prestige but who gave a shit about esports like 10 years ago? Nobody other than some of the players themselves. And nobody complained back then either.

> @"Saharo Gravewind.5120" said:

> Most of my main classes

Would you mind mentioning which ones are your main classes? A wild guess would be it's probably more a problem of your build choice or maybe lack of knowledge about spellbreaker. Always evade CCs, stay at a safe distance and poke and try to not waste stun breaks before the sb goes into Rampage for example.

Spellbreaker also gets magnitudes easier when you kite and poke properly.

> @"Master Ketsu.4569" said:

> **TL;DR: Anet please start considering counterplay and interactive gameplay into your balance decisions more often. The current trend of not doing so is putting the excellent combat system GW2 has to waste and making people quit the game.**

And Anet skipping straight to TLDR be like "Y da heck you need counterplay against raid bosses?"

Really good post tho. Agreed.

> @"Swagg.9236" said:>

> >To enter Stealth, a Thief must build for it through traits, utilities, and combos.

> Nothing about this is difficult.

Yes it is.. at least if you want any substantial amount of stealth time. Most of it only barely lasts long enough to try 1 backstab or something.. And if you want to go invis for just a bit longer (often not even long enough to outrun someone - since invis != invul and everyone's just spaming AoE and stuff which ofc still hits - you have to trait into Shadow Arts or something and therefore have to giveup something else extremely critical. As thief your traitlines are pretty much fixed, there are no real alternatives. You basically can't run any thief build without trickery and ditching deadly arts would also be very substantial. The third traitline then is either an elite spec or in case of s/d acrobatics and swapping it out would greatly reduce your utility (besides shadow arts being pretty much useless with s/d since you virtually never stealth)

It's funny.. thief is one the least stealthy classes nowadays. S/D basically provides no stealth other than a veeeeery occasional Dagger5 (which costs a fuckton of initiative and doesn't do a lot of dmg - its primary use was for D/D into backstab I guess)

> >Of course, a Thief cannot naturally outrun or evade more than anyone either.

> Lmao teleports and Shortbow 5. No Thief ever dies unless it is blatantly their fault or they're going in for some bot-forward, dog-pile play in which they hope to get a positive outcome based on the rest of their team's efforts. There is effecitvely no match-up (aside from another Thief) that can consistently chase down a Thief who knows that they're in a bad position (which should be easy to recognize because this game has a huge field of view and a super helpful minimap with loads of freely given, real-time info; basically zero game-sense required).

Being able to outrun as thief has become magnitudes more difficult. Almost every class has either pretty good in-combat mobility (through teleports, blinks, leaps, charges, what not) or a huge range. Unless you have ez and instant access to LoS you realistically can't outrun ranger or mesmer for example.

While thief has evades on a lot of weapon skills it has to be mentioned that 1) with ez access to Vigor for a lot of classes or endurance regen it has become a lot more equal 2) the skills cost initiative which if you force a thief to spend for dodging it also means he has less resources to properly fight AND shortbow 5 away.

It's not like thief has unlimited access to everything. Force a thief to teleport around and he will be left with pretty much nothing. 3 teleports (2700 range) is all you can get.. Most of the time you can barely make 2 shadow steps when disengaging and then you are an easy pick off.

If they can successfully disengage from you every time maybe don't waste everything in your kit at once.. If I'm fighting a spellbreaker for example I also don't waste my stun breaks until he pops Rampage.

> > Everything about the Thief is about how you build, and you can't have it all. There are always sacrifices that must be made.

> Traits are nothing but benefits; never sacrifice. Shortbow is stapled to literally every Thief bar because it can allow them to move freely across any field far more rapidly than any other class in the game. There is no opportunity cost associated with Thief because GW2 combat is almost entirely governed by instant damage and instant movement. Thief already has so many teleports inherently stapled to its most popular skill bars as well as another surplus of teleports jostling around in its utility pool, that everyone just chooses the best ones and gets along fine. Arguably, teleporting and stationary damage negation are respectively better than stealth anyway, and it shows in how every Thief utility bar is typically Withdraw, Shadowstep, condi cleanse signet, [teleport signet/evade and gain initiative], and Dagger Storm.

Like I already said before you don't have much choice as thief when it comes to traitlines.. Trickery is absolutely mandatory, DA is almost as important and the third one is pretty much pinned to the weapon set. Swap anything out and you lose A LOT of output. It's not like thieves aren't creative or something. You are forced to use that stuff.. Also like I already said: It's not like thief gets everything for free. "It can allow them move freely across any field" is simply not true. You won't even cover half the distance between two nodes and then you are completely out of initiative which renders you virtually useless for at least a couple seconds.

> GW2 is a shallow game. Thief, without sacrificing damage (which is the only thing that really matters in GW2), gets all of GW2's best mechanics in spades without really worrying about opportunity cost. It's effortless.

You **clearly** NEVER played thief yourself in sPvP or WvW.

> @"Erzian.5218" said:

> First off: I don’t believe than any mmo right now is popular only because of pvp: Even if your goal is to pvp, you start in pve where you acquire levels and gear, thus you have to play though the pve content.

mhh nah that's not particularly correct. A friend of mine started GW2 purely for PvP. He just did the tutorial, finished the rest for level 3 (or whatever level you need to get into pvp idk anymore) and went straight to HotM. He isn't interested in PvE in the slightest. Although that being said I also have to mention he already quit because the balance sucks ass and there's just not enough sPvP content to keep him interested. Fair enough I'd say..

> To, dr: Gw2 has great gameplay and well-designed content but not enough of it (especially not if you don’t enjoy gathering items in open world pve), eso has worse gameplay and worse content but the content can still be fun and, contrary to gw2, new content comes regularly.

That being said, eso offers an optional subscription service and dlcs come with a price tag too. The current dlc costs 13€ and when new addons are released they are fully priced as well. If Anet would monetize GW2 in a similar way they'd probably also be able to dish out content like that. Not that I want an optional subscription model (I hate subscriptions in general.. Coming from gw2 eso just feels like they made everything in a way that feels uncomfortable just to give the players an incentive to pay for the sub)

I wish living world would be buy to play honestly. Imo it's a luxury of Anet everyone has to pay for and only very few are actually enjoying. Like.. I honestly don't know a single person who really wants to play the living story. Apart from some exceptions which could have just been some events, I didn't like the living world since season 1. Imo it's just a huge waste of resources. Hope they recycle and expand existing stuff in season 5 so they can be on schedule for once and at least deliver an update that offers more than 2 or 3 hours of content without being time-gated.

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > > @"Shao.7236" said:

> > > > @"Ragnar.4257" said:

> > > > is arguably the weakest class in the game to condi pressure.

> > > That's really really REALLY wrong. Not in the slightest. Revenant in it's current position is perhaps the strongest class against condi pressure.

> > Excuse me? But you do play Guild Wars 2 right? Because to my knowledge Rev has like 2 condi removals one of which only removes 1 condition and is hard bound to their core functionality skill (legend swap - also only enabled by a trait) and one on staff. Please tell me more sensei since you obviously mastered the condi wars with Rev.

> > And inb4 flame: Riposting shadows only removes snares so it doesn't do kitten.

>

> Pulsating Pestilence transfers 3 conditions and is unblockable, counts as 4 conditions removal if you use cleansing channel, that's every 10 seconds. If you play Herald, you have shield that can remove 5 more without counting sigil of escape that can pair well with it for necessary conditions. True nature can transfer up to 3 if you trait for it, is unblockable and not possible to evade.

>

> If you're playing Mallyx/Glint Sage instead of Shiro/Glint Marshal, you become very good at Hybrid damage favoring conditions while weak to CC whereas the latter with Shiro is still hybrid but favor power and is still good against CC, both can counter pressure conditions which makes them good bruisers/duelist though like said Shiro is better against Power while Mallyx is better against conditions, this is evident by the trait choice.

>

> As Shiro corruption poison/sigil will slowly degrade anyone that you fight that has no good cleanses and passive healing, like healing signet warriors while Mallyx resistance can easily allow you to build up condition to pressure back with and in team fights this is awfully strong.

>

> You can add me in game so I can show you how I do it.

Very good insight thanks.

I don't say these builds aren't viable but.. realistically, who plays something else than Shiro/Glint with devastation, invocation, herald?

Like.. don't get me wrong, I almost only play my own self-crafted non-meta builds (which I sometimes get flamed for not being viable even tho I can comfortably stay in plat with them), but the majority plays the meta stuff and standard shiro/glint herald sucks ass when it comes to conditions.

Especially since op complains about the "op burst damage". Dunno if shiro/glint Marshal (with corruption then? since you've mentioned Pulsating Pestilence - and especially with Shield), Mallyx/Glint Sage or some hybrid or whatever you've suggested has equally bad burst damage.

> @"Lighter.5631" said:

> No way a blinking rev should do this much burst from out of no where specially far away behind walls,

> not a single class should do that

Really? Rev already got gutted, this is purely a l2p issue, I'm sorry..

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> > @"Ragnar.4257" said:

> > is arguably the weakest class in the game to condi pressure.

> That's really really REALLY wrong. Not in the slightest. Revenant in it's current position is perhaps the strongest class against condi pressure.

Excuse me? But you do play Guild Wars 2 right? Because to my knowledge Rev has like 2 condi removals one of which only removes 1 condition and is hard bound to their core functionality skill (legend swap - also only enabled by a trait) and one on staff. Please tell me more sensei since you obviously mastered the condi wars with Rev.

And inb4 flame: Riposting shadows only removes snares so it doesn't do shit.

As a thief main who also mained Rev and Holo for quite some time I'd recommend to just try Holo yourself and you'll get a pretty good idea how you outplay them (on other classes ofc. this is not a "Can't beat it -> join it"- advice). Once you get to know its toolset it's actually one of the easier classes to counter imo. One of the most critical things is to dodge photon forge 5 and keep a stun break off-cooldown so that you can break the knockdown if you couldn't manage to dodge it. Managing their CC output is key, so if you play a class with access to stab you should learn to time your stab application. If you have access to a (passive) reflect - like guard bubble or something - you should wait until they're out of their forge.

Stacking Holos or Holos who are firebrand carried are a different kind of bullshit tho.

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> The past is the past. Guild Wars 1 or 2 could not stand up to the influx of free mobas period. The day of the MMO PvP scene is not only over but has been for ages.

But you do realize that Blade and Soul for example has an active pvp esport scene since ages, right? And Black Desert OMEGALULnline is like 100% PvP oriented (unfortunately it is flawed in more than a million ways.. but it has a pretty big playerbase nonetheless). Aion and TERA are also very PvP focused and still strife.

PvP is NOT dead, no matter how much some people dislike it but a huge portion of players will always be competitive, mmorpgs are no exception to this.

Also.. I mean.. esport isn't about speedrunning raids or erp right? Never saw a 1 million $ price pool tournament about who has the best outfit.

> Edit: (...) And PvP would never have kept it thriving. It would be dead by now if that were the game's focus.

Quite the opposite probably would have happened imo. When GW2 came out a lot of ppl were lured in and pretty much immediately left since it was different and lacking some content and a lot of people didn't like it. A lot has changed and improved since then and I bet quite a few people would like the current state if they gave it another shot. But it's stunning how many people (who abandoned it waaaaay pre-hot) think GW2 is actually dead/offline or irrelevant, even tho it's still on probably almost every top5 MMO list.

If Anet didn't give shit about the class balance esport would've probably succeeded and maybe gained a lot of traction again. My wild guess would be that the entire esport stuff was initiated by NCSoft (they are also the devs and publisher behind Blade and Soul, which has still an ongoing pvp esport scene like mentioned before) but Anet just fucked it up. Even tho this might not be true I still think it's 100% Anet's fault that esport didn't succeed. I mean.. I didn't even know GW2 had an ESL going until it was already almost shut down. I remember seeing some announcements for a couple big tournaments but I honestly didn't know it was a proper ESL but thought it was just some one-time tournament Anet organized out of fun tbh.

Also they should highlight their content creators more, especially those in pvp oriented game modes. Every time I have a look at their stream schedule over on twitch they're just featuring some art stuff or GuildNews.

Anet is like "actively reluctant" when it comes to everything else than PvE, they're destroying their competitive game modes themselves, not because the game wouldn't support it or wouldn't appeal to a shitton of players.

Since the HoT hype backfired so massively, Anet somehow went into complete silence mode. Towards the community and basically every media that could let gw2 gain more traction again. The most influx in players I have noticed the last couple years were not when a new addon came out tbh but when LazyPeon decided to publish a youtube video about why he likes gw2 after trying it a second time and was streaming with over 1k viewers on twitch (that's actually A LOT for gw2) and when Bless massively failed and those people checked out twitch streams about whether or not they should look into it. Maybe my impression is skewed since I was very active on gw2 twitch in those times and helped out a lot of people deciding and stuff but still.

> @"ugrakarma.9416" said:

> the real mistake is they thinking that modes are mutually exclusive, when they in really extends the lifetime of the franchise, i remenber in Neverwinter, when i was finally get bored of Pve(because i become too rich), i going to Pvp and stay there for more 6 months til my account was hacked... Same on GW2, the WvW make-me stay there for 1 year or more, after i have done with HoT content. I only had come back to Pve, when LS3 lauched and PoF.

Exactly! But I think it's more in the mindset of players than Anet actually. I mean.. Just look at all those scrubs spamming "Gw2 Is A pVe GaMe DeAl WiTh It pVp PlEbS" in the forums and stuff. Never saw any similar statement from a dev.

Funnily enough a huge portion of newer players would actually say GW2 is more a PvP MMO than PvE.. I mean just look at some threads on reddit or first impression vids on youtube or something.

There's a (german) youtuber called Entenburg who made a 10 minutes vid about GW2 pretty recently in which he also states that it feels more like a PvP oriented game than PvE. Just one example.

> @"Burnfall.9573" said:

> **+1**

>

> In the end, there it is

>

> The Truth

>

> The 7 Years+ Toxic Profession

>

> For Once

>

> **Remove This Toxic Profession**

Mesmer? Yea I 100% agree.

Everytime they "balance" the class, Mesmer can find a way how to spiral out of control by multiplying its brokenness with clone spam.

Anet being forced to completely disable traits (temporarily) is really evidence of its pure toxicity. Thanks for pointing this out.

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

> If you are not satisfied, should be easy to take a break until something happens.

No because that's exactly what brought us into this situation. People leaving until something gets better. But this only lead to a population so small that anet doesn't even care.

Just quitting and waiting is the entrance into a vicious circle.

Just give us a separate full team queue in ranked so we aren't forced to constantly flip coins with random plebs in random team comps. In regards to this: please stop using the "population-is-too-low-so-waiting-time-would-be-too-long"-argument as an excuse before the population is too low to even sustain one ranked queue. You simply can't leave ranked unchange and expect everything to improve once completely different systems are in place (Swiss, Mini-Seasons and stuff, which have nothing to do with ranked queue).

Also fix your balance. PvE changes have no place in PvP and vice versa. Also how hard is it to just split the skill effect between game modes? just like in GW1 .. find your roots again Arenanet.

Also bring back caps on condition stacks for competitive game modes for example so that you can't just put 15 stacks of burning on a target and watch it die within seconds without any form of counterplay since you just keep reapplying burn and nerf the shit out of literally every spec for PvP since just because everybody can oneshot everyone else unless everybody sustains by spaming iframes and invuls as skill-less counters to instant-death, doesn't mean it's a good balance.

NO!

I honestly can't say how much I dislike the idea of even more rewards in sPvP. We already get a lot of gold and stuff and even more rewards would only lure in more casual PvE players who think they can just grab ez shinies while destroying any form of competitiveness and after getting beaten up - because even your starting rating of gold 2 is way too high for them - they just come to the forums and whine even more.

Give ranked sPvP a full team queue and I won't say anything but in the current form with solo/duo Q it's just way too much coinflip already, so no thanks we don't need more coinflip due to unexperienced and uninterested wanna-be-skritts trying to get a quick item grab.

Tell me more about how you play 3 completely different builds as Holo Support or Firebrand DPS in competitive. Or how you have a variety of team fighting builds for thief. I'm interested in how the current balance is not exactly what you're describing and we have a plethora of builds for basically every role on every spec.

Also. Anet doesn't know shit about balance, if they did, they'd nerf the shit out of all classes until every spec is only as good as pre-HoT classes so there wouldn't be 30k dps perma stun bullshit builds anymore.

But oh no the casuals will hate it when their favorite class gets a nerf because everything always needs to get buffed because if everything is broken nothing is broken right?

so if every class can oneshot every other class with 1 autoattack it's perfectly balanced right? And if every class on top of being able to one shot with 1 AA is completely invincible it's a perfect mix between dps and sustain right? Because that's the casual logic and Anet loves casual logic because this is what earns them money.

I honestly don't know why we can't have both. Why is everybody saying "Oh.. this game was advertised as a casual PvE game - therefore you are not allowed to request improvement on their also existing PvP modes, which they even wanted to push as far as establishing a eSport scene".

This just doesn't make sense at all imo.

Either care for your game as a whole or just dump the stuff you don't want to succeed imo.

Another option for the current system imo would be to only match similar team setups together.. if one team has a duo the other one needs to get one too or if one team gets 2 duos + 1 solo then the other team has to consist of 2 duos + 1 solo as well.

However I think such systems are inherently flawed because if you get a duo with say two thieves it's obviously going to work worse than a fb+scourge duo for example.

As a sidenote, I think the impact of duos is way overrated tbh. It probably just happens that 1) good players tend to duo Q a lot more often than full plebs and 2) it's much more memorable if you lose to a duo than to a full solo team especially if you're biased against duos so the impression of duos being broken is kinda skewed. I've also won a lot of matches against duo Q teams in a full solo team myself and I bet that everybody in here has either probably the same win rate independently to the solo/duo setup or would've lost some matches either way because the other team was just better skill-wise or had a better team comp.

Btw I'm like 95% of the time solo Q with a few occasional duo Q matches in between. And I'm not really overperforming in duo Q.

Not that I'm defending duo Q at all, I'd prefer a solo only + mixed + team only Q a lot more, I just think a lot of people are blaming the wrong things here imo.

Everybody who's complaining about solo/duo Q would probably perform the very same way in the very same frustrating manner than solo Q only just because the entire game mode stays the exact same coin flip with bad balance.

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> > @"DoomNexus.5324" said:

> > Neither of the two options tbh.

> > Imo the best option (regarding possible balance and quality of gameplay) would be 3 separate queues: solo only, (2man + 3man) mixed queue and full team only.

>

> That's uh... That's split queues. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job explaining it myself, but that's more or less along the lines of what I meant.

As far as I understand your post you're suggesting splitting into solo only Q and duo only Q.

Especially since you're adressing the 5v5 issue with duo Q which in return I understand as specifically excluding other mixed queues (2+3 and 4+1) or full team.

> Obviously 2 + 2v2 + 2 wouldn't work. Conquest is a 5v5 gamemode. I don't necessarily think that it has to be that way though. 6v6, or 4v4 would work fine for this...

Neither of the two options tbh.

Imo the best option (regarding possible balance and quality of gameplay) would be 3 separate queues: solo only, (2man + 3man) mixed queue and full team only.

I would argue this would cover pretty much every preference with minimal amount of split Qs and unreasonable alterations (like changing 5v5 into 6v6 or 4v4 just to enable duo Q only). Mixed queue could include solo, duo, 3 man and 4 man participants with full team excluded since full team vs any mixed team would be broken. Mixed queue would need the limitation of only including 2 groups so 4+1 or 2+3 only, not 2+2+1 or something.

Literally the only downside with this would be longer queue times due to the low player count, which has been THE counter argument for basically every change in sPvP from Anet for years.

However I'd argue that Anet can't hide behind this argument anymore since whatever they're doing now is complete garbage. There has been a vicious circle for years now of people leaving because Anet doesn't do shit and Anet not doing anything because there are not enough people. And since you can't argue about people leaving a unfun and broken game mode I'd say Anet urgently has to take responsibility for their own game and improve the systems before queueing times are unbearably long because nobody's playing the game mode anymore.

Just make d/p great again.

We already had this situation before.. Solo+DuoQ and everybody was whining about DuoQ being broken, Anet then removed duoQ and everybody was like "bRiNg BaCk dUoQ!1! Q_Q" and now we have it again and everybody's again "dUoQ Is BrOkEn"...

get the fuck over it and play duo yourself if you think it's soooooo busted..

Unless we get a full team only queue or a good equivalent (like maybe on demand AT or something) the game mode will always be a clown and coinflip meme fiesta anyway.

Also.. who cares if the current top players were not top players 2 years ago.. they are undeniably now so I don't see the point flaming them.. Especially since they had a lot of time to improve since ESL while the former top players who quit don't have a clue about current GW2 sPvP so arguably the current top players would still be top players even if former top players would return. At least for a while (if those former top players would reach their skill level again at all).