Its becoming less of a l2p issue.

You have designed class balance to counter fundamental design and this games own mechanics that should take priority. What part of this is supposed to be fun? Pvp in this game...I just cant do it anymore. Pretty much at my breaking point.

Why do you have a Evade mechanic if:

• You can be pulled out of it. Literally midway, a guardian pull can work.
• Enemies can still damage you through it (Not conditions, actual damage)
• AoEs with a large enough radius that requires you to blow through both of them.

If that wasnt an issue outside of itself, the cleave of this game is the worst I have ever seen:

• Im tired of randomly just getting pounded by conditions when Im not even the main target. It wouldnt be a issue if the conditions didnt hit so hard and tick faster then the speed of light. How am I to outplay any sort of system that punishes me for the guy beside me not dodging.
• Some cleave is not seeable. A Hammer revenant just throwing hammers that go above and beyond all reasoning of damage with a #2 ability that hits harder then a lava font does altogether.
• Large scale fights have circles with no visual effects. Im sorry but not every circle does the same thing in this game. While I should be avoiding them, its impossible to do so when theres more circles then there is actual map. If your going to have the aoe this spammable, its about time you lower the effects on them.

Fighting against Spellbreakers (Personal Opinion)

• I found that only my renegade stands somewhat of a fighting chance, and thats with me spamming disenchantment. Why? Because a warrior with stability is not fun to fight against when there damage is unreasonable for how much they can get away with. Not many classes have spammable CC to be able to burn through a warriors pulsing stability. And if your not taking damage for over 5 seconds, Im gonna need you to not be bursting me down. If your going to allow this you may as well restore bunker stats, atleast then it was balance around the fact that if you cant kill me, I sure as hell cant kill you.

Fighting against Scourges (Personal Opinion...somewhat)

• Seriously just remove this class from PvP. This is the most unhealthiest class design I have ever seen in this game aside from mirages. While it is slow, its nothing but spam. Very unhealthy spam that fills the screen with massive redzone clutter. Tone it down.

High mobility or High Defense. Pick one not both. This shouldnt even be a discussion. If your class has high mobility and as a bonus, access to stealth, then why do you need tons of iframes? Vice versa, if your a tanking machine, why are you able to move across the map as if your as light as a feather.

Stealth Damage, I understand rogue archetypes. But you offered very little counterplay to this. Yes some classes have reveal, its not enough by any means. There needs to be a risk for both sides. If a player blocks a backstab or the rogue misses. It needs to be instantly revealed. One time deal due to the amount of damage it can produce. (There is no, It requires full glass argument anymore), when a class has many escapes then being full glass shouldnt matter. If anything they should require more risk. Also implement seeable players within a cone of being close to a player. Pets also should passively spot stealthed targets. (I hate to say it, but WoW did stealth great).

Bring back the design, "Long animation, more damage". Attacks you can barely see in the blink of an eye honestly shouldnt be hitting a player for more then 5% -10% of their hp depending on if they have toughness or not.

There is so much more I want to touch on, but ive calmed down at this point.

**Arenanet please do a better job in the upcoming months to balance out classes based on risk vs reward. Focus more on what the class should be excelling at and less on it needing to cover every single role.EX:You want a spellbreaker to focus on defense and support? Lower is damage.

Tone down a lot of the clutter and instantaneous damage. Reduce the effectiveness of cleave by making the main target take the mass of the damage while those around it take smaller chunks. If your going to have conditions burning down players, make single target abilities apply the current amount of applications while aoe's are on a lower scale of application and damage.**

which server you on and what timezone do you play? who's your enemies right now? they blob? or roaming? you in group? or solo? numbers even or not?

i ask to know some facts to see whats the issue.

Last time i check Im on dragonbrand. I play anytime of day. Enemies right now, honestly not really sure. Just know there major blobs vs our smaller forces, im sure our team gave up first night. I do a bit of everything. I blob mostly when we hit castle or if i been ganked by groups multiple times. Numbers, hardly ever even, but we retreat more then we fight.

mmm, if the enemy outnumbers you so much, then the issue is more on population imbalance. :/

Thats one of the issues, But it also boils down to terrible balance on a game design level when it comes to a lot of these mechanics. Getting pulled out of evade or even damage is definitely not a outnumbered issue.

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:Thats one of the issues, But it also boils down to terrible balance on a game design level when it comes to a lot of these mechanics. Getting pulled out of evade or even damage is definitely not a outnumbered issue.

mmm... may also be a strat problem?

do u run in an organized or not organized group?

Its not a strategy issue. Midway through evading a attack, you can be pulled during it. Same with attacks that are filled with evasion frames yet still possible to take damage in them.

The fact that you don't even know what servers you're against (and that you're NA lul), and just the way you talk, shows you're a casual who isn't invested too much into wvw and is new to the gamemode. So... l2p.

Yes im not invested into WvW, because as you can see, the design is flawed in many ways. I dont know my enemy servers because it literally just switched a day ago, nor do I really care much because a enemy is a enemy, not like tactics change up much in my bracket, everyone just blobs around with the occasional power creeped roamers. Used to be hardcore about PvP back then but now im casual cause balance and class design has been in a full downward spiral.

OP, what server do you play?

@"iKeostuKen.2738" said:

Bring back the design, "Long animation, more damage". Attacks you can barely see in the blink of an eye honestly shouldnt be hitting a player for more then 5% -10% of their hp depending on if they have toughness or not.

I can tell you from playing a game that implemented this during one of it's updates that this will do nothing but drive away most of your serious pvp'ers . ( City of Heroes Issue 13 implemented this and other things, and was by far one of the largest unanimous pvp player exodus's that I have ever seen in an MMO)

It also doesn't fit the base design of this game.

Out of curiosity, what class do you play OP?

@Solori.6025 said:

@"iKeostuKen.2738" said:

Bring back the design, "Long animation, more damage". Attacks you can barely see in the blink of an eye honestly shouldnt be hitting a player for more then 5% -10% of their hp depending on if they have toughness or not.

I can tell you from playing a game that implemented this during one of it's updates that this will do nothing but drive away most of your serious pvp'ers . ( City of Heroes Issue 13 implemented this and other things, and was by far one of the largest unanimous pvp player exodus's that I have ever seen in an MMO)

Because what this game has now is exactly whats bringing in the playerbase for pvp =/ Sure.

It does fit the base design of this game, its how it used to be aside from thieves and mesmers.

I dont play a single class anymore, mostly different classes with different specs. Ranger/Soulbeast, Engineer/Scrapper, Renegade, Mesmer/Chrono, Deadeye.

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:

@Solori.6025 said:

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:

Bring back the design, "Long animation, more damage". Attacks you can barely see in the blink of an eye honestly shouldnt be hitting a player for more then 5% -10% of their hp depending on if they have toughness or not.

I can tell you from playing a game that implemented this during one of it's updates that this will do nothing but drive away most of your serious pvp'ers . ( City of Heroes Issue 13 implemented this and other things, and was by far one of the largest unanimous pvp player exodus's that I have ever seen in an MMO)

If we go by the last population estimate it's about 3.3 million active accounts in this game. So yes, I would say what they have now is fine, though if you think it's not you are more than welcome to do an official poll and find out from the playerbase.From the very first beta weekend this is how the system has functioned. It is base.But what system has it had that would contradict that?

3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

is it not lag though? can you record it?

@"iKeostuKen.2738" said:3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

Maybe I was unclear, as I was referring to "Long animation=more damage" That has never been something that I have seen going back to the launch of this game be a prevelant system or THE system for how damage is distributed between classes. We usually have something or have seen things like conditional situations where damage is increased for example Radiant guard having more crit chance under retal, or Warrior getting a damage bonus when they have full adrenaline. That's not even mentioning the active damage increases littered around different classes. "Long animation=more damage" would kill a lot of the active and action nature of this game. But that is my opinion, like I said you can make a poll if you feel that strongly about it. See what the rest of the community thinks about it. If you get overwhelming support for it then the devs are more likely to change the direction of balance to fit that model for spvp at least.

3.3million is amount of estimated active accounts.If you were to guestimate how much of that 3.3 million is playing exlusively spvp and or WvW I would guess your number would be around 500k ,with a more even spread amoung accounts that do everything.

But to the point. To say that the system in place now does not attract players is false, as we have seen ( since the bless fiasco) an uptick of accounts added to the game.For me , their is usually someone or group roaming on my server during my play hours, with NA prime seeing multiple guilds running ( My server is NA prime heavy). During Reset it's become common to see all borderlands with ques while other nights 1 or 2 bl's will be queued from large guild groups with pugs playing tag along.If you are looking for constant queues and large groups to follow I would suggest either going to BG or finding a server that is full sitting in T1 as they usually have a large population of people.During the Season I didn't have queues longer than 4 minutes and it was almost instantaneous when I let myself degrade down to silver. I think the majority of players may be sitting at that tier so that may be why upper gold through plat may have longer queues or they see the same people over and over again.But again, this is all speculation and anecdotal evidence on both sides of the fence as far as spvp population goes, and will continue to be until anet gives us a concrete answer about the population of the game mode.

@Sovereign.1093 said:is it not lag though? can you record it?

It could be lag and il try to grab footage of it next time I go on for WvW.

@Solori.6025 said:

@"iKeostuKen.2738" said:3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

Would say it was in the form of Ele staff Fire 5, dagger earth 5. Hundred Blades. Rifle Jump. Skills that had Longer animations/tells to justify their damage. Back then it was more about balancing High Risk skills to be very rewarding, unless you were a thief or mesmer. On proc damage traits was when the game started to go down the wrong path, hence for why power necro was constantly nerfed at a point in time since hitting a certain % just meant you died. Getting rid of the active damage traits wouldnt get rid of any action nature of the game. In its current state, there just a high amount of steamroll that can be done, reason why people are asking for a nerf to soulbeast's worldy impact.

The PvP system honestly doesnt attract much of any players. A game's flop brought in desperate players as there was no where else to turn to that wasnt a f2p model. Wouldnt really say arena net needs to give concrete evidence on numbers when you can see the state of the modes right now. Compare Hot join population from years ago to how it is now. Look through topics to understand why PvP matchmaking is in the mess it is now for many players. WvW on the other hand obviously has seen a large drop in players, which is why we are getting alliances. Unless all the empty servers hopped over to a small few. While EU may not have this problem, NA is honestly suffering more now then before.

do you feel like your fights are decided by luck ? then its no longer l2p.but if the same people consistently can win most of their fights, then it is still l2p.

You're playing on DB. Not to make this into a matchup thread, but you guys aren't a great fighting server, even with comparable numbers. I don't think I've ever seen your server above .7 KDR regardless of who they're matched with.

That said, you're not entirely wrong about this game having some serious flaws in recent design philosophy. The expansions have greatly increased CC, condi and general AoE spam. Stealth is about as poorly implemented here as I have ever seen in an MMO.

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

at least on your timezone you get queue, meaning you guys have numbers, whereas in my time it does not happen. hehe.

and the builds variety has more to do with people simply copying metabuilds so the prolification without actually doing their own research because testing is expensive.

but all in all, wvw isnt so bad. it just lacks an end game reason, a purpose, a goal. i say this in the sense that wvw does not matter anymore.

so hoping, in the future they do address the pop balance.

or you can do what my team does. find a few friends who does ts and then do what you can based on that. for us, despite the hard situation facing many, we do pull out a win or 2 daily. and is fun.

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:is it not lag though? can you record it?

@Solori.6025 said:

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

Channeled skills. I wouldn't call that an animation rather it was a skill that had a beginning and an end that did more damage if you allowed it to end. This is ignoring the rest of the weapons and using those three as an example like remember, Warrior also had Axe that was killing people with auto attacks. Ele had scepter which got buffed and gave them a spike build with freshair. Engineer had (after buffs) toolbelt spikes.Ignoring thief is rude ( and also strawmanning the argument). It was still a class in the game that also was high risk when you fought a player that knew what they were doing and it didn't follow your wishful mechanic either.

Back then it was more about balancing High Risk skills to be very rewarding, unless you were a thief or mesmer.I disagree, back then we were all still learning how to play the game, and people did really dumb things. Like not bring stun breaks and complain about bullscharge.Or complain about healing and refuse to use poison.Or complain about (X) because (Y) made them use skills to counter a mechanic they didn't like.We were dumb at launch :D

.......

On proc damage traits was when the game started to go down the wrong path,I disagree, The condition damage rework and post HOT balance is when the game started down the powercreep balance, and I think not addressing that since HoT is what started the downhill balancing decisions. But that is a subjective point of view for us both.

The PvP system honestly doesnt attract much of any players.Based on?

A game's flop brought in desperate players as there was no where else to turn to that wasnt a f2p model.GW2 is a F2P game as wellWouldnt really say arena net needs to give concrete evidence on numbers when you can see the state of the modes right now.This is anecdotal as what you see is not what everyone else sees and vice-versa. Stating an opinion as a fact does not make it true. Thus why the people with metrics would need to provide said metrics to accurately measure how well or not a gamemode or game is doing.Compare Hot join population from years ago to how it is now.They did. Estimated population total went from 2.6 to 3.3m active accounts.

Look through topics to understand why PvP matchmaking is in the mess it is now for many players.Yes, I believe we all can see the topics on matchmaking but that isn't what we are discussing

WvW on the other hand obviously has seen a large drop in players, which is why we are getting alliances. Unless all the empty servers hopped over to a small few. While EU may not have this problem, NA is honestly suffering more now then before.

WvW has dropped from launch population( like every game mode) I wouldn't be able to say we are getting alliances because of population decrease or because it gives them a way to better balance bandwagon servers ( Like for example the mass number of guilds that made a link server a non link server). You would need hard evidence to state that population across all of WvW is the reason we are getting alliances. Otherwise that is also subjective and anecdotal

@MUDse.7623 said:do you feel like your fights are decided by luck ? then its no longer l2p.but if the same people consistently can win most of their fights, then it is still l2p.

Not at all, but I do know when im at a full disadvantage due to my class choice.

@Optimator.3589 said:You're playing on DB. Not to make this into a matchup thread, but you guys aren't a great fighting server, even with comparable numbers. I don't think I've ever seen your server above .7 KDR regardless of who they're matched with.

That said, you're not entirely wrong about this game having some serious flaws in recent design philosophy. The expansions have greatly increased CC, condi and general AoE spam. Stealth is about as poorly implemented here as I have ever seen in an MMO.

I have no issue with my server aside from our groups never really dedicating ourselves to a fight unless we clearly outnumber the opposing force, but thats generally how WvW is in a nutshell. I dont really mind that we dont win or die to much, but fights just arent fun as its becomes a battle of who has the most powercreeped classes to cheese with.

That I can definitely agree on. Theres been so much added with little moderation on how to control it and absolutely no competent balance for long periods of time. I get that the devs may want to be different, but theres just a level of things you just do not do and they tested the limits time and time again.

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:3.3 million active in WvW/PvP? Cause PvP is sort of...dead. WvW, well i have yet to see more then 1 map have a queue for my server. Plus the alliances to solve the population problems...so yeah, Not so sure about that one.

The system was more balanced back then with a lot more variety. Trait system and a change to TTK that we have now is not base. Seige in its current state, was not base.

We may get queue but I think most of those numbers are afk. Numbers dont really match what the enemy is throwing at us a lot of the time.

WvW isnt bad, but its honestly no where near good either. Not only does it need a population balance, which may not even work depending on a alliance's players, but a complete overhaul on roles that do not only reward best for players who stick to a blob. Update siege design, npcs, objective points, etc.

Im with you there on the hope. Mostly that it doesnt just turn out to be 1 side getting lucky with all the WvW guilds that roll up 24/7 against a server thatl just give up since theres not much counterplay to the situation.

I honestly have tried that, but friends always end up leaving due to terrible design choices. It was actually something that made me want to get back into the game. We never really won many fights, but we were able to take towers and camps while goofing around. But yeah, balance pushed them away and I cant really blame them on that.

Mirage laugh at that statement."You pulled me out of my evade?Who cares, I got another 10 evades to chain against you, ez."

The problem is, especially those new POF spec has so low risk high reward gameplay, look mesmer (mainly mirage), he has power build, condi build, boonspam build, evades, stealth, blocks, mobility higher than thief, screen cluttering with clone spam, oneshot burst in both power and condi.Seriously playing against a good mirage feels like they are cheating.

Spellbreaker yeah sacrifies little damage by not running strenght, but that's compensated all by the new sb traitline. They can be countered easily at least it's something. But the 10 seconds invuln while they can attack it's too much.

Thief doesn't give me much trouble unless it's really a pro player, and you can see the difference between a mediocre or pro thief. The only stupid mechanic is the deadeye stealth on dodge. Like wtf, can't be predicted nor interrupted, just the most lame mechanic in the entire game

Scourge is just a braindead spamming machine, I feel like who enjoys playing scourge is probably eating while playing, he spam and meanwhile eat something watching your enemies die. Just a noob friendly spec made for noobs and handless monkeys to get kills with.

Holosmith is really a cool design spec with great photon forge animations. The problem is the damage they pull off it's all worth a dodge. I was playing rev for the first time yesterday and a noob holo playing since 5 minutes as well just ganked from behind and spamming autos I was dead. I know it's my fault I die to autos, but with revenant i cant kill someone with autos that easily xD if you know what i mean, the skill ceiling between the two is so different, with rev, one mistake and you die. If you just play rev and holo for the first time, you will see how holo is crazy easier to get into and get kills with. With rev i was perma dead during 2 hours of gameplay.

Soulbeast, lately another cancer spec arrived, it is basically a spellbreaker with 1500 range plus stealth plus oneshot potential. Great escape capabilities and mobility, great healing capability and nasty unblockables for super low risk high reward.They can run zerk marauder and being able no problem escape or winning even 2vs1s. Recently in wvw seems every soulbeast run axe off hand for that axe 5 high damage burst as well thinking they are pro by perma rooting you. And they are tanky as hell. So much skill yeah.

Balance out all those things is such a big work and probably will never happens.

@iKeostuKen.2738 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:do you feel like your fights are decided by luck ? then its no longer l2p.but if the same people consistently can win most of their fights, then it is still l2p.

what you critizie here tho is that you are at a disadvantage. now thats another story. because this game has group balance. wich means every profession should be more or less equally valuable to a group, maybe in a different role but valuable. the big issue we have is that WvW is not a true competitive mode, so we dont have elaborate roles that people try to fill. instead everyone just does what he sees fit and expect the developers to tailor the game around their needs. if we had for example only 2h matchups with rankings, good rewards only for winning etc. then i highly doubt there would be a role for a necro to run around solo - yet i see them daily. small scale/ havoc would be at least groups of 5-10 people as it wouldnt be efficient to do it with less. the only ones that maybe would still be efficient solo are thieves as more like a scouting and infiltration unit(maybe escorting a mesmer). but why do i see soo many other people running solo ? cause they choose to, without any specific reason within the mode , because they see it fit. thats not a big deal if they are aware that they are not efficient and expect the results to be accordingly. many still get way better results than their setup should be providing, but that is caused by ...well l2p.

if this game had a 1 vs 1 arena, not custom but an official mode. then it would make sense to get some 1 vs 1 balance for that specific mode. but we dont have duel mode and i dont think it is on anets plans for the furute yet.

I think most problems OP has are more dueling /spvp problems, than blob problems. Nowhere is minstrel fb mentioned, for example. Most classes he/she plays are not blobclasses anyway. Dont get me wrong, wvw has big balance issues, mainly with populations. But when blobbing happens, sorry to say it, the best compositions and tactics win. Powercreep exists on all sides, who can play it better is another issue.So, this seems to me like another " 1 vs 1 is not good in wvw, pls balance classes for that purpose". Well, wvw was not really ever about that.