Current state of pvp drove me away in less than 24 hours.

Im an old vet player. I used to pvp quite alot before HOT but quit for awhile post-hot. I came back about 6 months ago, and today decided to try pvping again.

I am not going to comment on balance, as i dont understand the current meta enough to have any opinion. I would just like to say that I had such a miserable experience that after 1 day of trying to get back into it I can safely say I have 0 desire to ever approach PVP in this game ever again.

Taking so much damage and having so many conditions on me in less than 2 seconds left me no way to understand what I was doing wrong or even where the damage was coming from. (playing meta ele build) I feel that I cant improve my own gameplay in this current state and I cant learn from my mistakes when im being killed in under 5 seconds. Yes this is my fault for not knowing the meta, but I still think its valuable feedback that for returning and new players that the games state is so unenjoyable and has such a big barrier to entry.

Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

I'd like to take this moment to thank all the guilds and players who help support those PvP Daily rooms.

The balance is embarassing, all the new pof specs are so blatantly op there's no way it's not on purpose to sell xpacs.

Meta ele build? Ele is out of the meta.

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

Your post made me reconsider my problems. I guess my main issue is that there is no clear tell for when these conditions and damage are about to be applied to you. They just appear on you with often no animation from the enemy to signal their appearance. They are applied so fast too and from so many different sources that its almost impossible to avoid them. I honestly cant learn how to get better when I cant see where the damage is coming from. Part of this problem is likely visual effect overload.

With old vanilla builds there weere usually animations that would signal an enemy was about to hit you. For hammer warrior, you could clearly see the warrior jump at you with a hammer, and then use a gs attack to deal dmg. This means you can learn next time to avoid the hammer blow or stunbreak before the gs attack. Same with shatter mes, whos illusions would run towards you.

I agree with you though that burst damage hasnt changed much.

Anyways the point of my OP was not to discuss if burst has gotten worse or not but to simply give feedback that returning as a new player in this meta has been the worst experience for me so far in gw2.

@zombyturtle.5980. Bro as a guild wars 2 vet player from the start i have my formula to enjoying pvp again in gw2 since ranked has been unplayable for about just over a year now.

Step 1: Play your 10 qualify matches. (Trust me there is a reason for it).Step 2: Play 4 games after that (To show how it's not worth the time)Step 3: Get extremely frustrated that circle dancing pvp doesn't work unless you have smart random pugs or a full team with voice chat.Step 4: A. Never click the ranked button again.B. Click the button for stronghold only.C. Click join unranked.Step 5: Enjoy pvp again.

No matter what you will never get away from the mindless random pugs, afks, match manipulators, and pve reward hunters in ranked. Circle dancing pvp should never have gone this far and it's a joke on the pvp community from guild wars 1. Least in unranked you know 95% of the time you will just have the not so intelligent pugs, unlike how you expect (lol) good players in ranked. Since the rewards aren't as flashy in unranked as ranked, most real pvp players are in unranked these days and there are less trash like afks, match manipulators and so forth.

It's just for good fun in unranked.

P.S Now i skip to step 4b - 5. After getting plat t2 seasons 5,6,7,8, i just stopped joining the cesspool of ranked play

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

Most things have a visual tell, just you'll have to learn what they are now, the same way you did back in the day. Some things are subtle (and they were back then too), but once you figure it out you should be fine.

@Flauvious.6195 said:The balance is embarassing, all the new pof specs are so blatantly op there's no way it's not on purpose to sell xpacs.

this

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

It shouldn't. You got it right the first time, damage and conditions got out of control and keeps driving away new/returning players. Genesis is just a silver player desperately trying to defend the broken state of conditions on every forum and making up completely nonsensical arguements.

I mean look at him shifting the blame to, what exactly? Power shatter Mesmer - used to be one of the hardest builds to play, has obvious animations, a burst on 10+ sec CD and next to no damage inbetween bursts, also hardcountered by thief and conditions. Ghost thief - a build that didn't even exist in PvP, only WvW. Hammer 100b warrior - lmao there are a million ways to avoid it and it's well telegraphed.

@witcher.3197 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

It is very enjoyable indeed, but I'm not surprised someone 'new' is not aware of the amount of damage sources at the moment. Some practice, and it will get a lot better (particularly staying away from scourges).

Just because you don't enjoy pvp at all for whatever reasons you don't have to discourage others to build their own opinions.

Agree with op have been saying it for a while now.

Meaning no disrespect towards OP, but returning players should perhaps take into account that the game has changed significantly. Consider that for people who have consistently played from the start until now, the game would have become stale if it were the same as at launch. Think of it as evolution of gameplay; more features are now available, more options, builds and variety. Obviously as before, there is a META and that META currently is very different to where GW2 was originally.

As for not understanding where conditions are coming from or their application - its probably better to learn a little about what the newer elite specs are - there are many which are condi-heavy and don't necessarily have a "tell" when each condition is given.

Perhaps the easiest way to learn and use this effectively is to ignore most of what you knew before and start from scratch. I can see how as a vet player, you may have a pre-conceived mindset that you know the game well and this is probably whats hindering you.

Best of luck exploring new class specs and builds.

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

Not completely true. Vanilla builds after some balancing had a lot of tells, AoE and really strong spells were scarce and had long CDs. Nowadays nearly everything is some kind of overtuned AoE on short CDs, preferably with little to no tells.During Vanilla people considered BP broken. Now look what is going on on points and compare this madness to BP.

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@"Genesis.5169" said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

The time to kill is so low that in lower tiers people explode in 2 seconds without knowing what happened. It is the farthest thing from enjoyable I can think of. They literally don't even get to play their builds, how is this fine? After 1 hour of this garbage you can't just tell them "hey, if you put in 200 hours of effort and suffer through the garbage balance it will be slightly fun", people won't stick around for that.

@"MarshallLaw.9260" said:Meaning no disrespect towards OP, but returning players should perhaps take into account that the game has changed significantly.

I don't understand why this is such a common attempt at an argument. I've played Team Fortress 2 for years, and I've played hundreds of hours of 6s with players on all levels, yet the game has been consistent with its skill expectations and levels of game knowledge which are required of a player to be "good." It's a fundamentals sort of thing. A game like TF2 has strong fundamentals such that they aren't compromised by all of the changes that the game has seen over the years while GW2 has never had any fundamentals which preserved its skill level identity throughout its existence.

TF2 players are good because they practice core classes and generally git gud at basic principles of playing a video game.

GW2 players git gud by buying the next expac or reading patch notes.

Yes, this is anecdotal, but the principles of a game's design shouldn't be so obfuscated by powercreep that a returning player just doesn't know anything whatsoever about why he or she died in a PvP encounter. That's insane. There should never be a need for a thread of people trying to explain the many ""subtle"" reasons about why some guy died in a single encounter in some random match. That's absolute insanity. A player's death in a game should be easily recognizable as their fault with hints of what to do next time. GW2 has really never provided this in its history because GW2 has never been a game with good design fundamentals.

You can die in TF2 and follow it up with self-criticism, a laugh and determination to correct your mistakes. Most deaths in GW2 are just salt mines with bewildered or self-depreciating comments. The latter is the sign of a bad game.

@Swagg.9236 said:

@"MarshallLaw.9260" said:Meaning no disrespect towards OP, but returning players should perhaps take into account that the game has changed significantly.

Surely this is like saying that it's not fair the game has changed?GW2 is an MMO - it has to continue evolving to survive, the genre has far more content and investment of time attached to it than FPS or MOBA games - if the META stayed the same it would be very stale and people would leave.

Addressing your TF2 example - it's also a great game - but its a completely different genre. Because pvp builds/professions are tied to what changes in PVE, and PVE needs to have new and exciting ways of playing, we end up with changes across the modes.

Not to be too rude, but I'm pretty sure most MMOs change over time if it hasn't already been noticed. Classes get added, skills get updated. Some people have taken a break from the game, others have not - and it is those consistent players who have seen more gradual changes.

TLDR - Games adapt, otherwise people get bored and leave. Find out what's new or be left in the dark.

@"witcher.3197" said:The time to kill is so low that in lower tiers people explode in 2 seconds without knowing what happened. It is the farthest thing from enjoyable I can think of. They literally don't even get to play their builds, how is this fine? After 1 hour of this garbage you can't just tell them "hey, if you put in 200 hours of effort and suffer through the garbage balance it will be slightly fun", people won't stick around for that.Most living world mobs are harder to kill than low tier PvP players. And as long as auto-survive-buttonmashing classes like Warrior give decent results it's easier to complain about imbalances than start to learn.

On the other hand the game has become pretty complex. But if you got some basic mechanical understanding it's often enough to visit metabattle and take a few minutes time to read the metabuild's skill- and trait-descriptions to get an overview. There are only very few scenarios where it's mandatory to actually play a class to be able to deal with it.

I finally got my dragon rank for PvP this year. Purely on my Elementalist. I totally can agree with topic starter that damage can be insane. Especially against the fairly weak Elementalist. While I had many fine matches and a win/loss ratio of about 50/50, some matches have been absolutely terrible in which I was mostly looking at the respawn timer.

Some time ago I

DPS is just inane here, no healing can save me from my fate and no time to switch to defensive skills. Also, even if I could start healing, I'm interrupted at the same time, putting my skills on recharge and I can't move because immobilized. Well GL surviving here. I could not.I even tried Celestial and Sage stats for some more health/defense/healing but against this damage, there is no victory.

There is few reaseon to hate the actual damage meta :

• You may have a bad build

What's the "meta" build you were using ? Write it here please : http://fr.gw2skills.net/editor/You need to know Ele only have 2 build that work in PvP, if you don't play them you are free kills.

• You don't understand what people are doing so you don't react well

  Scourge, the new Necro elite is full AoE heavy condition application : if you don't run a super condi clear build, you can't stay in there AoE, that's simple.-Daedeye, the new thief elite is a sniper heavy damage build : If you notice the mark on you, you will react proprely by dodging/using reflet projectils, blocking.-The list is long, but if you don't know how work classes and what to do for counter, you can't enjoy the meta.

There is 2 ways to play Ele :

In a tanky way so you will be tanky :

or in a glass canon way : you will have extremely high damage but will be in paper :

Let's take that :

It's the perfect exemple of the guy with a bad build (he run scepter + dagger and that's bad because focus give defense aka 10s+ of reflect projectile countering the sniper 100%, bad healing skill, bad ulitilies and bad ultimate, can't even think about traits) don't knowing what ennemies are doing (he has a RED MARK on him telling he will be sniped) and hwo doesn't react proprely (no dodge, no reflect using, no escape tool used) and die.

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@"Genesis.5169" said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

Nah you were right. Back before HoT the game was the best it has ever been from a pvp point of view. Burst and condition spam were alot less, the game was alot "slower" meaning you got more time to react to things and most abilites had serious cooldowns. You could even compare gw2 pvp to mobas like smite. But those days are gone and turned into the spamfiesta it is right now. Just look at the 100b ability from warrior. Back in the day it was a menacing dps skill, today it's almost completely useless (pitiful dmg and awkward mechanics)

@Ferus.3165 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@"Genesis.5169" said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

The game was not alot slower, the game had an absurd burst meta where everyone died quickly the reason why power creep exists now and all the invuls is because anet was trying to fix the insane burst we had then.

You never played vanilla please don't try and act like you did.

@Genesis.5169 said:Vanilla Wars 2 was more bursty then now. I have no idea what past your trying to look back on, power shatter mesmers, ghost thieves, Hammer warriors knock down into 9b etc etc.

This past you speak of never existed. The only difference between Vanilla Wars 2 And Guild Wars 2 PoF is that people are actually playing condition builds while not being a Necro. Ele's suck in sPvP from my perspective that could be another reason why your having such a bad time.

Wrong, again.

Power shatter didn't burst harder than it does now (not by any stretch of the imagination)Ghost thieves is a wvw build. It didn't kill you in 2 seconds (read: it has no burst )Hammer warriors still gave you a really huge window for counterplay and stun breaks.

I have no idea why you try to defend this horrible state of pvp so much. I honestly don't think you ever played vanilla pvp.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

GW2 is an MMO - it has to continue evolving to survive, the genre has far more content and investment of time attached to it than FPS

Then why do people have thousands of hours in TF2, CS1.6/GO, UT or Quake? Why does it often take hundreds or thousands of hours to be the best? Meanwhile, Scourge, for instance, wins out of the box, and it's hardly the only easy-mode expansion class. HoT, as another example, featured nothing but p2w specs which out-competed core specs without any investment.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

if the META stayed the same it would be very stale and people would leave.

Metagame shifts don't have to mean that entire class's suddenly take on entirely new functionalities which break all ties with what was already established. Scourge is just a spambot with no shroud. It's not really a Necromancer; it could be anything. Just change name and particle colors. Firebrand is a generic healer spambot; could be any class (for heaven's sake, virtues on DH and core Guardian are literally SIGNETS; HOW is "I get 3 signets slapped to my f-bar" a distinct class role or identity in the first place???). Mirage is just a better GS power-spiker. No innovation; just powercreep in the form of options that disregard what little established identity that some classes had.

Did Soldier ever get a minigun? No, he got gunboats, a pickaxe, a shovel, and a load of rocket launchers; each one changes a user's playstyle dramatically without compromising the fact that Soldier is "Rocket Jump Straight-Projectile Man."

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Addressing your TF2 example - it's also a great game - but its a completely different genre.

This is such a cop-out non-argument. You can easily compare games across genres. You know what makes a game good regardless of genre? Elegant simplicity. It's why soccer is an internationally beloved sport (kick ball; no hands allowed; ball goes in net). It's also why things like Quake Live are still the esports premium for skilled players and exposition (go fast; control map power-ups; shoot other guy). TF2 is simple; that's why it's good: all of the information needed to understand the flow of a game or gravity of an action can be understood at a glance. That's why it's fun to play and watch.

GW1 was like this as well. Your abilities were all there on a bar. Everything was paced so that you could see where you were and who was doing what, and even when whole teams went to spike a lone target down in HA or GvG, a monk could still recognize the signs of danger and save someone. There was nothing to hide, and if you died, you and your team knew the cause.

GW2, on the other hand, is an utter mess. I mean, the reason this very thread exists is because someone played PvP and didn't understand how their death occurred. That's a lack of elegant simplicity. And don't you dare come back with "But some people like complex games," because there is nothing complex about GW2. It's bloated and obfuscated; not complex. Whereas the simplicity of good games can utilize only a small, focused surface area of gameplay design (i.e. how players move or the speed or angle of a projectile on flight) in order to create deep skill thresholds which facilitate top level play, GW2 just takes a shallow base and smears it wide in hopes that would-be players mistake a puddle for an ocean.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Because pvp builds/professions are tied to what changes in PVE, and PVE needs to have new and exciting ways of playing, we end up with changes across the modes.

Again, GW1 did this just fine without outright replacing core skills or classes with shamelessly superior expac options. You know how? GW1 PvE just gave players varied monster types and mob groups to challenge player parties. Instead, GW2 gives you the same monster you saw earlier but just 15 levels higher. Even in the expacs, the new monster diversity is pretty low. Although, to be fair, GW2's monster diversity and unique mob compositions were doomed to die the moment that the game went with the "open world" model.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Not to be too rude, but I'm pretty sure most MMOs change over time if it hasn't already been noticed. Classes get added, skills get updated. Some people have taken a break from the game, others have not - and it is those consistent players who have seen more gradual changes.

There has been nothing gradual about the changes in GW2. Every patch has been either a wall of patch notes which change nothing or concussive, knee-jerk whiplash to various extremes. And, the saddest part of all, is that in the end, GW2 is just as shallow as it was when it launched.

@Swagg.9236 said:

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

GW2 is an MMO - it has to continue evolving to survive, the genre has far more content and investment of time attached to it than FPS

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

if the META stayed the same it would be very stale and people would leave.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Addressing your TF2 example - it's also a great game - but its a completely different genre.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Because pvp builds/professions are tied to what changes in PVE, and PVE needs to have new and exciting ways of playing, we end up with changes across the modes.

@MarshallLaw.9260 said:

Not to be too rude, but I'm pretty sure most MMOs change over time if it hasn't already been noticed. Classes get added, skills get updated. Some people have taken a break from the game, others have not - and it is those consistent players who have seen more gradual changes.

Quite a details analysis there - I will try to keep mine concise .

The alternative combat games you mentioned are solely arena/FPS - the PVP scene in GW2 is less than 20% of game content. Although it is understandable that both MMO and FPS can be liked by the same people, the genres are aimed at different segments of the gaming market."Elegant Simplicity" is massively preference-orientated. Many people within the MMO playerbase wouldn't want their game to be simple.Greater changes are implemented to give the opportunity for more professions to fill different roles efficiently and give players diversity. If somebody only uses 1 profession, they can have many different ways of gearing and using that character. This is a great part of development and saying all professions should remain mostly the same is backward-thinking.I mentioned earlier that it would be advisable to read and check changes made because otherwise it may be very difficult to guess why a certain class is able to beat you in pvp.

In conclusion, you seem to have so much to criticize about GW2 and so many praises to sing about TF2 and other titles - perhaps you're playing the wrong game?

TLDR: this is like coming back to the game after being on hiatus, seeing that the layout of Lions Arch has changed, refusing to check the map and being angry that you can't find anything.