Stability Sucks, Stunning is Worse

[Lost Elegy.9276]

I've had a lot of time to think about why I hate Guild Wars 2's CC system so much. I've played since launch, after all. The system, while it _kind of works_, does not feel good to use. Let me explain:

Situation 1) You're playing against a Warrior who, of course, has Balanced Stance. Let's assume you're playing an Engi with a silly build. The only forms of disables in your kit are your Rifle 4, Throw Mine and Static Shock (A.E.D.'s F1). Assuming you PERFECTLY weave them together, that's only 3-4 seconds of disables. The Warrior, to negate your entire kit, uses Balanced Stance and proceeds to destroy you without a chance of you getting away, knocking him back or stunning him to buy time. In this instance, a single status effect of "Stability" negates any chance of you getting away. You can't match the Warrior's damage or survivability. So you die.

Situation 2) You're playing as the Warrior with Balanced Stance. You encounter an Engineer with a silly build. They desperately try to get away to shoot at you from range, but your combination of Bull Rush, Greatsword 5 and 3, and stability prevent them from standing a chance. You crush them without any effort.

 

In both situations, the players aren't having fun. Why? Well... The problem is the core design of Guild Wars 2's system:

1) The TTK, or Time To Kill, is so LOW that players have to run stun breakers or they're dead to 2-3 second stuns. This high damage would be fine if it wasn't married to one of the worst CC systems I have ever seen in a MMO.

2) The amount of CC built into every weapon and strong utility slot skill in the game allows players to permanently lock down foes into a kill combo that, if they don't run or have their stun breaker, will kill them with no chance of ever acting. This turns PvP into a stunlock fiesta instead of something gratifying. Anyone can kill a target that isn't moving. With all the CC in GW2, it turns your enemy into a glorified target dummy half the time. Call me crazy, but I don't play a PLAYER VS PLAYER mode to hit something that can't fight back. That isn't a challenge.

3) The lack of a real targeting system means everything is a projectile or sweeping melee attack that hits multiple people. This would be fine if the system was built around it, but the system is not built to support it. How? Without skills being EXCLUSIVELY single-target, it means everything is an AoE. This would be fine if the AoEs were designed with the number of potential targets in mind, but they weren't. This leaves some classes with absurdly strong AoE abilities that can break the game or damage high enough to one-shot entire teams. This means the only defense against these AoE stuns and disables is to stuff classes with stun breakers, stun immunities and damage immunities. None of those answers are fun to play with or against. "Oh... I killed that Necro by using a skill that makes me immune to CC and condition damage... W-W-What a sick outplay..." Is it any surprise that Firebrand, a class that can give AoE Condi Immunity and CC immunity on a whim, is so strong? It's like he was made in response to the overwhelming amount of CC in the HoT meta...

 

**The Result:** PvP becomes a frustrating mess. Your build can win or lose on the flip of a coin. Did they happen to use stability/evade/immune your burst at the right time? You lose. Did they mess up and use their cooldown early? You win. Cooldowns aren't long enough to be meaningful when you get an enemy to use them, with the longest cooldown being usable no less than 8 times during a 15-minute match. This means sacrificing yourself to eat a large cooldown isn't an option. That's as deep as the combat gets, sadly. Classes are a disastrous mess of heavy stun-locking, High Burst and every defensive tool they can fit. This makes every build a selfish, ME-FIRST build. There is little to no teamwork in PvP outside BEING with another player or ROAMING together. Almost all healing is for the caster player only. There are no creative builds that use weaker utilities, no builds that are weak by themselves but designed to combo and play off other classes. PvP is a 5v5 mode of 10 players only out for themselves. The problem is, GW2 isn't balanced around 1v1s. This means some of these selfish builds are outright better than others. This lack of dependence on other players creates another problem outside of balance: People treat others as the problem. It isn't my build! I got kills and top damage! THE OTHER PLAYERS HAVE A BAD BUILD! This leads to a toxic environment.

 

Tl;DR: The current problems in PvP are largely due to a horrible combat system that wants players to be as greedy and selfish as possible. GW2's PvP system actively encourages you to be a psychopath and coldly abuse everything you can to win. If that means watching the enemy team destroy your 4 other players with you just capping points, that's what you'll do. _Anything for that win._ The game isn't about the enjoyment of the combat system, but abusing it better than your enemy. Call me stupid, but I don't enjoy that.

[Malediktus.9250]

PvP in this game is horrible, nothing new

[JayAction.9056]

TTK is low only if you or your opponent sucks.

 

The issue with GW2 is like all things, the skill levels are not equal. They are drastically different.

 

For example;

 

Watching the average platinum thief (which is already high above average) you may think thief is low sustain.

 

On the other hand, watching someone who has near mastered thief... it seems unkillable.

 

 

I’m not going to teach you how to play (this is competitive game mode after all), but just skimming through your OP I notice **you have some major flaws in your logic** which is responsible for the issues you are facing.

[Curennos.9307]

Anything, cherry-picked and reduced to a bare-bones summary that excludes extremely important aspects of how the thing functions, can be made to look ridiculous.

 

That's what you just did. Your entire post falls apart when one realizes that classes have more than just one utility skill and other unique/mechanics.

 

Ranting is fine, but this seems to be totally non-constructive - you might be better off asking for matchup help on a class sub-forum.

[XECOR.2814]

Meanwhile they removed a stunbreak from necro without compensation last patch. Like they werent stunlocked and 1 shotted enough. Stun lock is not a good for game and is not fun.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

knock lock is definitely lame, I agree.

 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Another nerf warrior thread?

 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

i mean, ya. This is just one reason why the game is kinda meh.

 

Just had a few ranked matches where i just decimated the other team, me spamming one after the other stuns/fears/immobilize. Of course they would get demolished because there aren't enough stun breaks and condi-cleanses on the toolbar to clear everything. And in the time that you do clear any stuns, I've already smacked you for a 20k spin to win shroud 4.

 

and like you said, the environment for spvp is super toxic because everything is built from a selfish perspective. if my players are dieing mid because we went 1-3-1 split while the enemy team went 1-4-0 split, then i'm more apt to blame my team for dieing in mid. why? Because even though i screwed them with a 4v3 in middle just so i could contest far, i get mad because they "should know" not to run to the node with your pants down and fall face first in front of a scourge to fill you with aids. Likewise if i end up dieing on the far node, not only did i screw myself but i screwed my team and now they will blame me for the loss, rightly so, but There was no incentive for me to go mid, because the game is a literal coin toss.

 

The combat system itself is FUN. But there is something wrong with it...as if it's impossible to balance for one reason or the other.

[Swagg.9236]

> @"Curennos.9307" said:

> Anything, cherry-picked and reduced to a bare-bones summary that excludes extremely important aspects of how the thing functions, can be made to look ridiculous.

>

> That's what you just did. Your entire post falls apart when one realizes that classes have more than just one utility skill and other unique/mechanics.

>

> Ranting is fine, but this seems to be totally non-constructive - you might be better off asking for matchup help on a class sub-forum.

 

Dismissing everything and then distilling someone's complaints down to "just look up matchup help" really says a lot about people who might take GW2 PvP even remotely seriously: after all, if PvP can often be boiled down to match-ups, then it's effectively just rock-paper-scissors, isn't it? This paradigm is even more evident if you watch any sort of shoutcasting or streaming, and notice how everyone gets hype or distressed whenever both teams connect to a match and then press F4 to view classes. Why else would people make a big hubbub about how "their team has a better class comp than ours" or "what is this guy [our teammate] doing on [insert class here]" in a 5v5 match comprised of what are effectively RNG rosters due to how ranked limits pre-mades and also how dead the game is most hours?

 

Ultimately, however, the rock-paper-scissors sort of combat paradigm stems from how damage is basically unavoidable once players enter into each others' respective ranges. This is why the game is ruled by LoS-peeking OHKO spikes and reactive blocking/invuln panic button tanks. Not even firebrand withstands a full set-up spike team anymore. Scrapper is probably going to be the next big meme tank since it can at least block and evade chain off of its baseline weapon skills. All in all, though, GW2 is an incredibly passive and reactive game sitting under the heel of a minimap and a suffocating metagame which encourages less real thinking than watching mainstream news coverage. It's a shame too, that baseline movement in GW2 is so borderline worthless as a combat tool, because using WASD and dodge in the game is a pretty smooth experience; and it's not like we haven't seen evidence of real movement mechanics with things like the raptor and rollerbeetle mounts.

 

Needless to say, I agree with OP. Stability never needed to exist if CC wasn't over-tuned in the first place; and it could very well be entirely culled if CC weren't just a throwaway thing that is passively slapped onto every PvP damage/kill rotation in the game.

[LaFurion.3167]

I do not agree with OP.

 

 

I come from world of war craft where cc is so long that it is different from stun lock.

 

Team compositions in that game can cx the healer for over 20 seconds easily even at the highest levels of play where everybody is trying to interrupt casts and free the healer.

 

You also get stun locked in that game over and over, it's not uncommon to be stunned intl a stun into another stun and die.

 

 

 

Gw2 the time to kill is very low, yes. Which is good. The amount of cc that this game has is for me, perfect.

 

 

With regards to engineer and warrior analogy I think it's just the match up. Engi isn't a cc heavy build. There are some weapons and kits that need updating sure, but you're comparing a highly mobile melee class and one possible utility skill to a weird ass medium range class that excels in other places (holosmith cc chain and damage for example). Even if you take rifle yeah you only get the one knock back but you also gain range damage and ways of kiting and your class has ways to deal with the warrior etc.

 

Back to cc though, I like it. It feels rewarding to chain daze into a backstab before they can break it, or to read an animation coming and put stability on yourself for an advantage. Much much better than wow where oh I don't have trinket to break stun I'm dead.

[EnderzShadow.2506]

While I like the game and I truly believe it is the best pvp on the market, the OP is spot on.

 

WoW started this "I CAN DO EVERYTHING. WHO NEEDS A TEAM?" kind of class system.

 

Consider DAOC where each class is only strong in a group.

And everyone has an assigned role, whether that be DPS, CC, Heals and buffs.

 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

While I agree the pvp kind of sucks in this game, I don't find that to be the problem.

My problem is that all weapon skills in this game are virtually the same. Damage, damage+condi, damage+cc, damage+evade.

There is no risk in the skills. I always give the frenzy from the previous game as an example (someone from a top gw1 guild said it and it stuck in my mind), for 8 seconds you attack 33% faster but take double damage, this is a great skill design.

Game is plagued with counters to counters to counters which might seem cleaver and tactical but in reality is a nonsense idea.

 

[Czerny.6530]

Your entire problem here is that your "silly build" is just a bad build. Meta builds are meta for a reason, and right now they're meta because they provide enough CC and stunbreaks to be competitive. As a normal elixir holo build I have no problem having long duels with Spellbreakers, but at the same time if we majorly screw up dodging or otherwise avoid CC we die very quickly.

[Abazigal.3679]

Stability is a huge problem in my opinion because there are too many " easy access " to it, and it makes it tough to prevent someone to roll a poor player.

 

Typically a situation i had several times :

- 2v2 situation , warrior necro vs warrior necro

- I'm running a warrior build that's made to chain knockdown the opponent ( + has 1 skill to remove boons). However, when there are 2 possible access to stability, there's usually a 3 seconds gap for the opponent where you're forced to actually dodge the damage. And that's where the problem lies, since you basically have to expect your teammate to dodge it.

 

But once again, my point is quite a " l2p " issue. There are no troubles from stability and stuff at high level. Not the case below..

[Wark.8324]

This seems like a "what if in an open field" situation.

You need to consider positioning too. Terrain is 1/3 of the battle.

[Ryan.9387]

You could use cc skills AFTER balanced stance expires.

 

Expecting to land your combo when you do no work tracking their cooldowns is foolish. Landing your high value skills, which is not rng.

 

Also team support from non support classes does exist. It's just the generic pvp player now has less skill than in the past and won't use it to support you. Holo has a water field and blast finishers. Soulbeast has stance shares and a 9k aoe heal on f3 owl. Scourge has barrier. Warrior aoe 5x condi clear. Mirage portal (nobody ever takes an evac portal). Ele has water fields, blasts and direct aoe heals. Guard has aegis.

 

Its not the game's fault nobody takes advantage of these things to support teammates.

 

Honestly this just reads to me as a post by someone who fundamentally doesn't understand pvp at a high level in gw2. You make a lot of flawed arguments and I'm not going to answer all of them. Suffice to say your problems are mostly l2p issues.

[Swagg.9236]

> @"Ryan.9387" said:

> You could use cc skills AFTER balanced stance expires.

 

This isn't a turn-based tabletop. Waiting to take your turn in a game with no turn phases is infuriating for anyone, and a game that forces a player to warp their build just to deal with someone else pressing a single button or taking a single passive simply has a pretty poor design paradigm.

 

> @"Ryan.9387" said:

> Expecting to land your combo when you do no work tracking their cooldowns is foolish. Landing your high value skills, which is not rng.

 

Since everyone opens with as much impunity as possible, the very fact that players have to "track cooldowns" is more evidence to this game's fundamental issues. Any other decent game would simply allow a "better" player to body someone who walks into damage while spamming skills. In GW2, everyone has to watch those players do whatever they want while reactively pressing buttons which will keep themselves alive. GW2 is less about in-moment execution and more about playing a very, very slow rhythm game. Another huge issue for any non-turn-based PvP game trying to take itself seriously at any level.

 

> @"Ryan.9387" said:

> Also team support from non support classes does exist. It's just the generic pvp player now has less skill than in the past and won't use it to support you. Holo has a water field and blast finishers. Soulbeast has stance shares and a 9k aoe heal on f3 owl. Scourge has barrier. Warrior aoe 5x condi clear. Mirage portal (nobody ever takes an evac portal). Ele has water fields, blasts and direct aoe heals. Guard has aegis.

> Its not the game's fault nobody takes advantage of these things to support teammates.

> Honestly this just reads to me as a post by someone who fundamentally doesn't understand pvp at a high level in gw2. You make a lot of flawed arguments and I'm not going to answer all of them. Suffice to say your problems are mostly l2p issues.

 

* Water blasts will never save anyone from active PvP spikes.

* Soulbeast is an entirely selfish enterprise; it doesn't plus 1 to heal someone with an owl; it roams forever and sometimes plus 1s for a free kill or pressure because nobody can stop a Soulbeast when facing it 1v2.

* Scourge barriers are viable, but again they are mostly used selfishly because keeping a scourge on the point proper is the best play while anyone else who might benefit from a scourge barrier is probably trying to survive or close fights outside of point barriers. This is why Firebrand (another big, low-effort class who can reliably survive while standing still on a point) is a Scourge's best friend instead of a Thief.

* Nobody uses Winds of Disenchantment because it doesn't translate into easy kills like Rampage does.

* Guard has aegis for himself; one block every 30 seconds is worthless in this current meta. Only Firebrand has a chance to give any sort of viable team support and that's only because the guy can just mindlessly turn pages in a handful of books while spinbotting on a point.

 

GW2's PvP meta is saturated with incredibly esoteric, unnatural and obfuscating game mechanics which all work to stifle the efforts of any player approaching PvP from a logical perspective. GW2's combat paradigm restricts player expression and strangles the pace of PvP combat until it moves about as quickly as Guitar Hero on easy mode. It's not really fair to call out someone with "l2p" when everything that you said technically makes logical sense, but it is simply not the way that things work in GW2. That is because, ultimately, GW2 is not a fair game. It is not an intuitive game. It is a game played entirely outside of the moment of engagement; two or more players always stalling with rotations until someone's cooldowns run out while someone else still has some damage left in the tank. The only thing that GW2 has is the potential in its movement engine. Potential that has been vastly and lamentably wasted over the course of its development.