Dumbing down the combat is making PvP less accessible, not more

I know this sounds weird, but it's true.

Normally new players would gradually get better at the game and build they play and as they are becoming more effective at damage and sustain. There's a balance to this process. Let's say you're playing a build at 30% effectiveness, so enemies still have a lot of time to react and figure out their build too. They then have to get their sustain up to match your skill level, after which you too will gradually build up your offense to overwhelm them - and the cycle continues until you git gud. But that's not the case in present day GW2.

By now doing damage in GW2 is so ridiculously braindead it's unreal. One button bursts are becoming commonplace, even if they aren't always the optimal combo, they do way too much damage for the effort. Guardian Mighty Blow + glacial heart proc can hit for 50% HP of an average player (without defensives), so can Revenant Shackling Wave, Necro Ghastly Claws, goddamn Mesmer Phantasms, Ranger Rapid Fire or Maul, Thief Unload spam and so forth. Then everything Scourge or Holo does is basically a burst combo because can't go wrong with spam, everything kills.

In the past we needed proper setup too. Now? Spite necro gets 25 stacks passively, so does Chrono and even Revenant without any effort. PP Thief is the most hilarious, because all its might stacking and damage is on the same skill - it's not meta by any means, but toxic enough to destroy gameplay quality at low levels. Of course most players now are bad at the game, they don't have an opportunity to learn anymore.

It leads to a situation where people already play builds at about (random estimate) ~70% of their effectiveness when it comes to damage, while their sustain is maybe a ~20% because there's just no way ANYONE could learn anything from getting oneshot when they start playing. It's discouraging and toxic gameplay that's killing population growth.

Damage and powercreep in general is a problem at every skill level, but especially harmful for new players.

TL;DR Damage is out of control and should be addressed, bursts should need more effort (shatter mesmer level at the very least). Spam shouldn't be this rewarding either.

On one hand, it makes your own character easier to play and less punishing ... just spam all your abilities. They all do a lot of damage so who cares if they dodge or if you have weakness or blindness... you got another skill that hits for 10k coming off cooldown.

On the other hand, more often than not you get blown up in seconds and have no idea what hit you or what you could have done to survive.

All in all, I agree with OP. I would HATE to be a new player right now in PvP.

i think all action rpgs should follow the counter strike / fps example... give em a taste but make skill progression take time and effort.

well said sir.

@witcher.3197 said:One button bursts are becoming commonplace, even if they aren't always the optimal combo, they do way too much damage for the effort.

lol painful truthbut not just the one shot powerceep . hard cc and op resing also make pvp not fun. do you know how many times me and my team downed a scourge but fail to cleave due to resing (6k auto not enough !!!) or fail to stomp due to hard cc (4 stab not enough to stomp !!!!)

I like how you bring up two bursts that are probably the least problematic of them all lol

But at the core I definitely agree. I've said that in t he other threads that are around as well. Something needs to be done and it has to be a sweeping change.

This game is six years old and the balance has always been atrocious. IF you think anet will fix anything balance-wise about this game... idk what to tell you.

@TheDevice.2751 said:This game is six years old and the balance has always been atrocious. IF you think anet will fix anything balance-wise about this game... idk what to tell you.

balance can get decent from time to time, i dont think thats the biggest problem. Problem is bad proffesion design and bad/unfun mechanics, followed by powercreep.

I know this sounds weird, but it's true.

Nah man, as someone who played WoW PvP competitively for years and left because they've been dumbing down the game for years as you've just described, I totally understand what you mean and I feel for you :(

Nailed it.

Gotta wait for gw3 if you want real balance / pvp game modes / competitive pvp. Currently gw2 is too old and was left to rot with one boring game mode that ruined the game. Dancing around circles zzz ZZZ zzz.

Sadly we will have to wait a few years before Guild Wars 3 comes and brings back the awesome feel of awesome games like GW1.

Either that or we get a Guild Wars 1 Remastered with new graphics / jumping and all. I'd toss money out for a 4k GW1 remaster. I haven't put any money into this game after buying the low end PoF exp. Hasn't been worth it if pvp is just left to die.

OP, you took the words right out of my mouth. Your post sums up exactly how I feel about pvp in this game. It. is. completely. braindead. Powercreep is at stupidly high levels and is dumbing down the game.

Some of the tryhards and forum warriors may disagree with all their talk about embracing the "meta". I'm with you OP, this one-shot gameplay is DISGUSTING. I just don't see how it can even be defended on a basic level. Everything is faceroll now, deadeye, scourge, holosmith, mirage, firebrand. I know these builds are referred to as "easy to play", but the politically incorrect truth is that they simply don't take much skill to play, if any.

At the core, balance is easily the biggest problem. There's NO WAY this game can be balanced once every 3 months. It is impossible. Also, expecting new players to have fun, learn and enjoy pvp in this fast-paced, one-shot "meta" is a fantasy. With this dumbed-down pvp and elite specs, how do you expect them to? Dare I say, from what I hear, even WoW has better pvp than this game.

The professions will never be balanced. There are too many weapon combos/trait combos and variables to try to balance everything against everything else. I'm sure there are MMOs out there that got it right, but did they have the amount of combinations that GW2 has? (Possibly I'm sure). Every MMO that I have played in the past 15 years has had a problem balancing pvp in their game and they just made it worse and worse the more the devs of those games tried. GW2 is no different.

@Abraxxus.8971 said:The professions will never be balanced. There are too many weapon combos/trait combos and variables to try to balance everything against everything else. I'm sure there are MMOs out there that got it right, but did they have the amount of combinations that GW2 has? (Possibly I'm sure). Every MMO that I have played in the past 15 years has had a problem balancing pvp in their game and they just made it worse and worse the more the devs of those games tried. GW2 is no different.

This is mostly true, I've spent enough time jumping from game to game to know.

However, I think most of us would be happy with a shift towards center. By that I mean, a reduction in extreme offense, defense, and cc ability. Having classes that can block or evade for more than a couple seconds straight is bad for gameplay. Having classes that can down other players with one skill is bad for gameplay. And having classes that can cc chain other players for 3 or more seconds is bad for gameplay. These things seem relatively simple to fix.

Having a class(es) that can do all three of those things is broken and that's what we have now.

@Frostmane.9734 said:

@"Abraxxus.8971" said:The professions will never be balanced. There are too many weapon combos/trait combos and variables to try to balance everything against everything else. I'm sure there are MMOs out there that got it right, but did they have the amount of combinations that GW2 has? (Possibly I'm sure). Every MMO that I have played in the past 15 years has had a problem balancing pvp in their game and they just made it worse and worse the more the devs of those games tried. GW2 is no different.

I know what you mean. I main warrior and spellbreaker can completely lock down someone with chain CCs. I do it all the time with hammer, they can't even respond. I also abuse the you-know-what out of full counter. To show that this isn't just typical "salt", for SB I say nerf away.

My question is how is getting one shot from stealth by a deadeye or mesmer good for the game?There is practically zero counter other than hope you dodge randomly at the right timeYou could run a trait to save you but those traits that activate at 50% health can fail if you take 51% of your health in a single hitAny new player will immediately leave as they will not be able to understand why they diedHell ive been playing for years and i still have no idea how you are supposed to survive mantra burst

So pretty much every class except what? Rev and ele have been named as broken at this point with some spec or other? I'm not opposed to what you suggest (it might be an improvement!), but it strikes me that if all of these classes can one-shot, evade forever, and CC forever battles would either come down to whoever strikes first (they generally don't) or you would expect players to attempt to outmaneuver each other with their overpowered abilities, right? That latter case doesn't sound all that broken to me. Some minor tweaks can bring most classes in line.

I won't say their track record for balance is particularly good, but for having ONLY ONE GAME MODE, the combat system results in a lot of exciting, fast-paced battles. Maybe it isn't the methodical chess match you want and reaction takes a back seat to anticipation most of the time by necessity, but my concern is that we could end up slowing down the pace too much and destroy what makes the GW2 combat system so enjoyable.

Defense and CC spam are as braindead as dealing dmg.

Id say nerf those two into oblivion then wreck damage as hard as possible and build new functionalities from there. I cant do shit if im getting pinballed by every engie or warr while being hit by what it feels like 3 people, just to condi/power burst them to see that in 3 secs they are Full hp again with everything off cd (maybe not rampage). And what can i do? Spam every dodge heal stab or whatever i want and hope its enough cuz the next burst is coming in 2 secs.