Which is the more toxic meta: HoT or PoF?

[Stand The Wall.6987]

HoT: pirate ship, sustain game, and boon trains

PoF: shade spam, more pirate ship, and bubble bombs

[Elementalist Owner.7802]

Heart of Thorns gvgs were awful. Everyone went full sustain and trained a single target down at a time. Rounds could last 10-15 minutes of endless sustain.

[DemonSeed.3528]

I'm not sure which would be considered the lesser evil, but my eyes can only take so much red pulsing circles. Anyway, it's all just bad and I don't know if they can do much because people will always find a way to group up with the most nastiest stuff since there is not exactly a rule to fighting. Numbers, aoe, bombs, ranged, kite, etc. We need to really take in some ideas of what other games have done to similar modes and what makes them bad/good, and then apply it here in terms that the people can deal with.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

HoT marked the point which pick teams became less relevant (unless you fought worse groups...).

 

Furthermore, it also marked the point where ANET introduced power creep via SPAM (increased actions per minute) regardless if that is damage or sustain.

 

PoF is just a response to HoT with SPAM of HoT's counter. Boon rip, aoes, and subsequently condi.

 

I also stopped seriously roaming with HoT update given the roaming specs featured spam (either evades/blocks/chrono condi), more reliance on twitch reflexes (RIP if you lag), and the necessity for resetting fights. Of course, my memory could be faulty so feel free to correct me. Idc though.

 

D:

[DemonSeed.3528]

> @"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:

> more reliance on twitch reflexes (RIP if you lag

I hear you there, but at least if I can give enjoyment to the other person in the process I don't mind. Hate the 4k ping though. If they could allow users in aus/ocx/sea to proxy through a more localised amazon server I would be happy. Even with the added overhead to the packets, it would mostly come out as lower latency than a direct connection anyway.

[Voltekka.2375]

PoF, because of the endless boonspam and the natural result: scourge.

[Optimator.3589]

POF because it's the same meta as HOT but worse.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Both are kinda crap, but HOT Meta was probably the worst. It went from Pirate Ship to unkillable perma push 100% frontline and either was about who fell asleep first.

[XenesisII.1540]

Where's the option for both?

[Jski.6180]

Scorge all the toxic you need to make this argument for one vs the other. Boon meta was never this bad you could counter boons and healing you cant counter barriers.

[Kovu.7560]

I mean HoT wasn't _great_, but PoF was way worse in terms of meta toxicity.

 

~ Kovu

[LetoII.3782]

Scourge makes me miss Condi Reaper

[Asudementio.8526]

While HoT was at times slow and annoying, PoF is a literal hot mess of screen clutter and extreme mechanics.

[apharma.3741]

PoF because it reduced large scale fights to essentially 3 classes. A point can be argued that pug groups/blobs were reduced to 2 classes, scourge and firebrand.

 

Roaming while it has more “viable” specs is now mostly dominated by low risk, high reward builds and damage has increased to such a magnitude that once you’re out of scalable defences you are dead very shortly after, protection means a lot less than it used to because everyone is hitting harder.

[CrimsonNeonite.1048]

Probably HoT, because I know many guilds came back to the game and quit a few months later. Then again it was a bunch of issues with that expansion and a couple of months before launch, PoF just had the new elites and balancing to worry about.

[X T D.6458]

People seem to forget the godawful boonball epidemic meta. Best meta was pre stability nerf hammer train.

[Justine.6351]

HoT wasn't bad beyond deathly chill. Reaper was crazy good when anet started buffing gs. Sadly most just ran trailblazer deathly chill and camped staff. Guess they missed the fun.

 

 

[Kovu.7560]

> @"X T D.6458" said:

> People seem to forget the godawful boonball epidemic meta. Best meta was pre stability nerf hammer train.

 

You're right on both your points, but what we have right now is still less fun than boonball. At least back then melee was an option and there were more than two professions.

 

~ Kovu

[Malediktus.9250]

Scourge, Spellbreaker and Firebrand ruined WvW (final nail in coffin)

[JoEWas.1409]

Can we save the red carpet for the Hollywood stars?

[DemonSeed.3528]

> @"JoEWas.1409" said:

> Can we save the red carpet for the Hollywood stars?

 

I'm afraid there is no red carpet... only red circles.

[Hoodie.1045]

Path of Fire brought us the Scourge, the Mirage (two annoying condition specializations), the Deadeye (a specialization that goes against the thiefs' theme of being a silent killer), the Spellbreaker (core warrior set on easy mode) and Holosmith (the most pathetic excuse for an engineer specialization).

 

The Deadeye is without a doubt the worst thief specialization. I don't know what ArenaNet was thinking with this specialization. I guess it's fine in PvE, but in PvP I just don't understand how it could even work. Both core and Daredevil thief counter the Deadeye, especially if they are good.

 

Scourge and Mirage are both condition specializations and I hate condition specializations. Scourge could've been the support specialization which focuses on pulling allies out of fights and rallying them, but instead most Scourges are just selfish and focus on damage.

 

Spellbreaker is what neutered the warrior. It turned the warrior from a great war leader to a weakling. It took the skill of carefully timing your attacks and blocks and replaced it for a stupid Full Counter which is just a crutch skill that rewards bad warriors for not dodging or blocking at the right time. Spellbreakers would rather trade sustain for CC which to me it's one of the dumbest things any warrior would do.

 

And finally we have the Holosmith. I never liked the Holosmith. As someone who's been playing core engineer for 5 years, I have never been so disappointed in ArenaNet and how they managed to ruin the engineers' reputation with this elite specialization. All of the kit skill memorization, swapping from one kit to another, the weapons that made the engineer capable of fighting foes in almost every situation has been thrown out of the window and was replaced with a dumbed down, braindead fighter. You don't need to learn or know how to use kits. All you have to do is press a single button and congratulations, you've now become Super Saiyan Blue.

 

The main reason why I don't like the Holosmith is because it's easier to play than core engineer, but also because it manages to achieve more than core engineer by doing less. Comparing core engineer to the Holosmith is like the real life equivalent of a student taking a test that is more difficult than the test that his/her colleague is taking. The student with the harder test gets a 90% on the test because that student studied for days, if not weeks, whereas the other student barely studied and still managed to receive the same or better grade. That is why I don't like the Holosmith.

 

I'm not going to pretend that the HoT elite specializations were perfect. But what I can say is that the HoT specializations were better thought out than the PoF specializations.

[Lahmia.2193]

I can just remember the tank meta which nullified most builds outside tanky ones. At least with PoF you can run glassy again.

[morrolan.9608]

POF by far

[Justine.6351]

> @"Lahmia.2193" said:

> I can just remember the tank meta which nullified most builds outside tanky ones. At least with PoF you can run glassy again.

 

That is one thing I can appreciate right now, even glass condi builds running around that you can actually kill if they make a few mistakes.