Deadeye

Playing against deadeyes has been the least fun pvp experience I have had in this game to date. I've stuck it out through everything else but at this point I'm done. The state of pvp in this game is a complete embarrassment.

Some thoughts:Toxicity this season is through the roof. People are angry and its showing. Nearly every single game I see players afking or raging in chat. Its not the players causing this, its the state of the game that is creating such anger. You've created this horrible rock paper scissors balance that removes skill from the game. If you spec the wrong build you can become absolutely useless all game. This creates a lot of feels-bad moments for players.

You've created so many get out of jail free cards that careful play is in many cases straight up punished. For example, if you stun a warrior. They can heal and gain toughness. Nerf the traits that remove the reward other players get for landing impactful skills. Rousing resilience, elusive mind, and conversion holo, come to mind.

Stop stacking so many defensive mechanics onto a class. Mirage comes to mind as potentially having: Reflects on dodge, sunbreak on dodge, target break on axe 3, target break on illusionary ambush, leap on jaunt, leap on blink, leap on sword ambush, invuln on distort, evade on blurred frenzy, stealth on torch 4. If they have a cheesy mechanic, that is fine as long as it is balanced by a lack of other cheesy mechanics. As an example, the target breaking mechanic is interesting, however it is obnoxious on a mesmer with clones and phantasms out. It would have been better as a leap + detarget on a class with no form of stealth (weaver?). For another example, stealth is fine on thief, just don't give them super high evade uptime with that stealth. You cannot expect players to reasonably keep track of so many different forms of defense.

Stop stacking defensive utility on top of sources of damage. No class should be able to apply huge damage without being susceptible to any form of counter pressure. None of these skills https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evade should do high damage. In general, more damage should correlate directly with more exposure to enemy damage and cc. Likewise defense should correlate with reduced damage. The spellbreaker 1v1 matchup is a good example of a decent job in this regard. The condi mirage 1v1 is not.

The game has fallen into this awkward state where the balance team makes classic well designed classes "balanced" in the current environment by jacking up their damage to counteract the effect of having a well designed kit. Reaper is a fantastic design on the high level. Very few sources of stab or protection, few leaps or stunbreaks, but a second health bar and excellent soft condi pressure. This worked well in its time but couldn't stand up to the swiss army knife power creep of PoF. What could a reaper do against a condi mirage? Absolutely nothing but die. So instead of fixing the matchup by reworking the specs with too many mechanics. You've compensated by increasing the damage to absurd levels. This doesn't actually balance anything. Eventually things reach a tipping point where the spec goes from horrible to over-the-top OP because of its massive damage. Just look at s/f ele for example. It has no way to fight a condi mirage, but absolutely destroys pretty much everything else in seconds. In competitive play is it viable? No. Is it well designed? No. Will you buff it so it becomes "balanced" against condi mirage? Please no.

This excerpt explains a similar situation happening with sc2, the whole article is a good read. The parallels are clear.

Designing a game suitable for professional play is an extraordinarily complex endeavor. It requires balancing three closely related but mutually antagonistic ideals: one, it must be enjoyable for the vast majority of players; two, it must be deep enough to retain the interest of elite players; and, three, it must be fun to watch. This balancing act is made even more treacherous by the fact that the lifespan of an esport is measured in years, and expectations about what makes things fun shift over time. Whatever other challenges “StarCraft II” faced, it was also hurt by the long-term decline of the real-time strategy as a genre, which gradually saw its player base migrate to MOBAs like “Dota 2” and “League of Legends”.

“StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty”, the first of three iterations of “StarCraft II”, was, by all accounts, a resounding success. During its first year, as players grew in skill and experimented with the game’s lattice of checks and balances, the professional scene conjured a vast array of viable strategies expressive of any number of playstyles. Some players gravitated towards early-game gambits, while others preferred long wars of attrition. At its best, watching great “StarCraft II” was like listening to a virtuoso jazz solo – improvisatory, kinetic, and yet never less than intentional. It was a joy, and the period’s best matches and series – Boxer vs. IdrA, Squirtle vs. MVP, Bomber vs. Scarlett, to name a few – rank among the finest in all of esports.

Understandably, expectations were high for “Heart of the Swarm”, the first major update to “StarCraft II”’s winning formula, which was announced in Spring 2012 and released about a year later. Despite months of beta testing, however, “Heart of the Swarm” undermined, rather than built upon, the foundation that “Wings of Liberty” laid, slowing down the game and stripping it of much of the dynamism that had made it a classic.

“‘Heart of the Swarm’ was not the best expansion. The game really slowed down, and it wasn’t as dynamic or exciting,” says Stemkoski.

For many, “Heart of the Swarm”’s failures were crystallized in a single unit, one that still brings shudders to long-time fans of “StarCraft”: Swarm Hosts. Initially pitched as a “crawling monstrosity [that] burrows into the ground in order to provide a seemingly endless supply of ferocious biological minions,” Swarm Hosts were, thematically, a perfect addition to the Zerg’s biological arsenal. In theory, Swarm Hosts would force defenders to defend against an infinite supply of weak units, like waves slowly wearing down a breakwater. In practice, though, Swarm Hosts were tortuously boring to use, and even more miserable to watch. Rather than the tense wars of attrition they were meant to create, Swarm Hosts largely led to stalemates. In January 2015, one such match reached an agonizing four hours in length (the Zerg player, Sébastien “Firecake” Lebbe, reportedly got so bored that he tabbed out to browse Reddit, a violation that led to his eventual disqualification).

“Backend data said [swarm Hosts] were balanced,” concedes Morten. “But, perceptually, Swarm Host games weren’t it fun to watch or fun to play. People got frustrated.”

And yet, Swarm Hosts won games. Though just about everyone agreed that the unit was deeply unfun, professionals who, above all, needed to win, were forced to rely on it, and it became a standard feature of professional matches to everyone’s dismay (Stephano jokingly apologized at once point during a WCS broadcast for using Swarm Hosts).

Meanwhile, players started to retire en masse, mostly blaming a lack of opportunities in professional “StarCraft II” and frustration with the game. In August 2013, just months after “Heart of the Swarm”’s release, Stephano, Western StarCraft II’s winningest and most beloved player, announced his retirement in characteristically dramatic fashion. As he was being eliminated from WCS Europe, instead of the typical missive of surrender (“gg”), Stephano typed out the message visible to all viewers that encapsulated the grim state of “StarCraft II”.

“Sorry for the fans. This game is not for me anymore. Goodbye.”

Two weeks later, “League of Legends” World Championship sold out the Staples Center in less than an hour.

you call this thread deadeye and talk more about mirage and other professions. do you even know what you have an issue with?

@MUDse.7623 said:you call this thread deadeye and talk more about mirage and other professions. do you even know what you have an issue with?

omg, i died.