Returning player, sadly, the current state of the game just makes to go away again.

Hi everyone.So... This post is gonna be weird. It's venting, but I'm gonna try to be as constructive as I can.I am a Guild Wars 2 day one player. I've been through beta and player a little over a year before leaving for IRL issues. A little less than a month ago, I decided to come back for a look at the game... Boy was that a ride... I'm not gonna smacktalk or anything, but the current state of the game makes me just want to jump back out as quick as I jumped back in.

World versus World is insufferable, pretty sad when the main aspect that makes you want to play seems to be the worst. I don't do PvE in Guild Wars 2 so I'm pretty much exclusively here for WvW. How much classes are there already in the game ? 9 if I'm correct adding the Revenant ? All I see all day long in WvW are the same classes and specs, Firebrands, Dragonhunters, Mirages, Scourges, Soulbests. Only ridiculously OP classes that just require to slam the face on the keyboard to win a fight like who cares.

Ascended gear is ridiculous. Back in the days of Exotic only, you had a chance against other people. Now, if you are not full Ascended, you're just gonna be a ridiculous dummy that gets stomped by literally everything without a single chance to win. And this is supposed to motivate players to gear up ? Does ANET really expect people to tank through the WvW BS and hope for the best that everything will change once they grinded several month to gear completely ?

Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing the fact that gearing is long, I am criticizing the fact that I really don't feel any interest in doing it in a game that is all about playing the latest meta class that rolls over everyone's face with zero pressure. If at least Ascended didn't give people such a huge power spike and if I had a chance just by skill to win fight, I'd take the chance, but right now I'm not even remotely going through the grind to get full Ascended and hope that things will go better since my class in not a meta one.

A month of play does not necessarily prepare one to be competitive against people with seven years experience. Practice. Learn. Adapt. Overcome. Be patient.

I think that the class comparisons in the OP are a bit exaggerated.

The gear comments are uninformed.

It is actually pretty easy to get ascended gear.

Excuse me, but it's hard for me to believe that getting downed in two hits by every other class is just a matter of experience and being uninformed. I also believe that it is not a coincidence that you cross the path of the same specs all day long.

@yoni.7015 said:It is actually pretty easy to get ascended gear.

By paying the seasons, right ? Sorry but no.

@Aigaion.7981 said:

@yoni.7015 said:It is actually pretty easy to get ascended gear.

No, by playing the game.

@Aigaion.7981 said:Excuse me, but it's hard for me to believe that getting downed in two hits by every other class is just a matter of experience and being uninformed. I also believe that it is not a coincidence that you cross the path of the same specs all day long.

Well it is, and maybe skill. Some specs are better or more popular in wvw

@Aigaion.7981 said:Excuse me, but it's hard for me to believe that getting downed in two hits by every other class is just a matter of experience and being uninformed. I also believe that it is not a coincidence that you cross the path of the same specs all day long.

@Aigaion.7981 said:

@"yoni.7015" said:It is actually pretty easy to get ascended gear.

To your first point no its not uninformed, its not a matter of practice. There are classes or I should say "Specs" that over-preform and offer way to many advantages over others and for a long time soulbeast had one shot builds so no its not just you. There are problems with the game and with the back door being wide open for hackers things ain't a bunch of roses.

To your second point Ascended gear REALLY doesn't offer much of a power spike its like a 1 to 2% difference I believe or some arbitrary number like that and you can earn them through WvW without ever spending a dime. The be competitive you will need the expansions however, which is to be expected as all MMO's require expansion purchases to remain relevant. What you are talking about is the passive traits and the over-tuned gimmicks of the specs which give them HUGE power spikes and crazy sustain/damage. Its not the gear and never has nor will be, its the fact that the dev's don't create the classes for anything outside of pve and raids as they don't care about pvp or wvw at all.. Im sure they wish both of those sub-communities would go away. Which is happening slowly~

@Thornwolf.9721 said:Im sure they wish both of those sub-communities would go away. Which is happening slowly~

Do you have a source for that or is it just a conspiracy theory?

@Aigaion.7981 said:Excuse me, but it's hard for me to believe that getting downed in two hits by every other class is just a matter of experience and being uninformed. I also believe that it is not a coincidence that you cross the path of the same specs all day long.

I cross paths with your listed specs, plus many more. I dont deny that not every spec is equally adapted to every aspect of every game mode.

I would argue that if you are getting two-shotted, consistently, by every (or every other) class it is exactly an example of being inexperienced or misinformed.

As PvE (mostly since lots of stuff to catch up on there) that also has returned after a loooooon break (from end 2013 until June 2019) I'm still happy with not having a gear treadmill here. Afaik legendaries are only for more convenience but stat-wise same as ascended. And I never had trouble with exotics (which are easy/cheap to get) in PvE so far.

Have only played up until episode 6 of the living story season 2 so far though. And core Tyria without expansions/elite specs.Did manage to beat Turai Ossa though on my core engineer. (Which a lot of people considered hard even with their full ascended and elite specs.)

In PvP everyone has the same gear ... and yeah WvW ... I haven't tried it a lot yet. (Mainly using PvP if some of the PvE dailies for my 2 daily free gold are too annoying.) But there is still the option to zerg where gear probably does not matter that much as long as your zerg is bigger. :D

@Aigaion.7981 said:Excuse me, but it's hard for me to believe that getting downed in two hits by every other class is just a matter of experience and being uninformed. I also believe that it is not a coincidence that you cross the path of the same specs all day long.

It might be hard ... but I believe it.

and no, it's not a coincidence you see the same specs ... because this game has ALWAYS had meta builds for each game mode (this isn't recent ... it was a 'thing' even the first time you played)

In short, it's not the game necessarily, it's you. Maybe instead of being upset, be grateful that the steps to get ascended gear from whatever you have now is relatively simple and short compared to most of the gear treadmills you would have experienced if this game wasn't as great as it is.

@yoni.7015 said:

@"Thornwolf.9721" said:Im sure they wish both of those sub-communities would go away. Which is happening slowly~

WvW population has been on a steady decline, PvP is litterally small as shit. I go into the lobby and there is hardly anyone in there at least when you compare it to prior so just being in game you can see how the pop of those two game modes have dropped. As for the proof of A-net wishing they would go away? They've proven that enough by the neglect of the game modes, the lack of communication and the lack of actual effort put into anything to do surrounding them..

WvW's pop or at least server pop has stabilized and is looking better, Though im not sure how viable it is to use those server populations/WvW populations because of how they fluctuated. As you can see from the website I linked below this is a current showcase of the populations and this is not accounting for those actually doing WvW; We don't know how many of those are playing pvp or wvw and since it seems like the majority of the community are predominantly PVE focused its likely its a lot less for our game modes. This is off of deductive reasoning and when you come to the conclusion that many of the medium pop servers were once in the high, very high and full position (Magumma, Sea of Sorrows, Stormbluff) this paints a very bleak picture. We have ONE full server and one very high server, with a good handful of high servers the rest could be melded together and removed into a couple of servers and none would be the wiser.

Say what you will and shill as much as you want, but the numbers and the tracking for the populations say the same thing

https://gw2.altervista.org/gw2-utils/servers-populationhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Worldhttps://mmo-population.com/r/Guildwars2

All of these show a decline and they all showcase a dwindling audience for WvW at least, PvP Im not as familar with the current population but im going off of what my SPvp friends have told me and how they have said it feels and appears. To me they have admitted it feels like there are less people both in the lobby and seeking matches, this issue is compounded because truly we have no clue how many actual people are playing because all mmo's keep their numbers private. But considering A-net is begging for feedback on both WvW and PvP I can't imagine its good.

^ "As you can see from the website I linked below this is a current showcase of the populations and this is not accounting for those actually doing WvW; We don't know how many of those are playing pvp or wvw..."

World (server) populations are based only on WvW-participation. The have nothing to do with PvE population(s).

From the link above (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World [references]: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/page/5#post5326517

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

@"Aigaion.7981" said:All I see all day long in WvW are the same classes and specs, Firebrands, Dragonhunters, Mirages, Scourges, Soulbests. Only ridiculously OP classes that just require to slam the face on the keyboard to win a fight like who cares.

The game does suffer from balance issues, there are still classes that can do well with core builds though.

But in short, in 2014-2015 they gave up on ESL for PvP, and put the entire balancing into the hands of the PvE designers it seems. So they designed the elite-specs with quite some powercreep, which resulted in higher damage, and more active defenses to counter that. Then the next expansion pack sort of repeat that and it got downright silly.

So atm, the entire game is extremely high on damage, and unless you know what's coming and counter with chaining invulnerable skills or dodges etc, you'll be dead very quickly. (And I do agree that it is absolutely not enjoyable).

If you want to get back into it again, I recommend you to find a guild that will duel with you and explain how things works now, and train you until you can manage.

Ascended gear is ridiculous. Back in the days of Exotic only, you had a chance against other people. Now, if you are not full Ascended, you're just gonna be a ridiculous dummy that gets stomped by literally everything without a single chance to win. And this is supposed to motivate players to gear up ? Does ANET really expect people to tank through the WvW BS and hope for the best that everything will change once they grinded several month to gear completely ?

First of all:

"Ascended equipment is equipment of Ascended quality. All ascended equipment has a level 80 requirement and 5% stronger stats than Exotic quality equipment and equal to Legendary equipment. All ascended equipment is account bound."

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment

Ascended is not an "I win button", I keep seeing people in full exotics beat the ever living kitten out of fully Ascended/Legendary decked out players (with all the sparkles, makes for pretty corpses). I got guild mates that don't have the patience for grinding ascended stuff at all, and just keeps killing enemy players in exotics.

Game/Combat is still skill based, not gear based.

But as said, so many classes can 1-2-3-4 shot you in under a second atm. SoulBeast was so over the top silly for a while last year, that we joked it probably could 1-shot players while wearing nomads or ministrel gear. (because it could stack some crazy amount of damage modifiers) It still hurts like getting punched by Wolverine, but thankfully it doesn't hurt like getting punched by Superman any-longer.

I am wondering how OP managed to WvW without running into Heralds or scrappers.

OP what kinds of WvW have you been doing? Have you been roaming or grouping up with zergs. You will encounter different classes based on what type of play you are participating in.

And avoiding getting one-shot can be a matter of skill. I havn't roamed for a while so I don't know if it is still a thing, but deadeyes used to be great for sniping solo roamers, but you knew when you were marked and could time a dodge to avoid the damage. Heralds can trigger a skill that converts damage to health, many classes have evades or ivulns which, when you get into the timing of things you can learn to instinctively use to save yourself from being bursted down.

There is big difference in player experiences levels. You can't expect to pop into the game and beat someone who has been doing this for years.

@Mewcifer.5198 said:I am wondering how OP managed to WvW without running into Heralds or scrappers.

OP what kinds of WvW have you been doing? Have you been roaming or grouping up with zergs. You will encounter different classes based on what type of play you are participating in.

And avoiding getting one-shot can be a matter of skill. I havn't roamed for a while so I don't know if it is still a thing, but deadeyes used to be great for sniping solo roamers, but you knew when you were marked and could time a dodge to avoid the damage. Heralds can trigger a skill that converts damage to health, many classes have evades or ivulns which, when you get into the timing of things you can learn to instinctively use to save yourself from being bursted down.

There is big difference in player experiences levels. You can't expect to pop into the game and beat someone who has been doing this for years.

Sometimes people are just so good with their build it doesn’t matter how well you play, you just can’t beat them. There are also good and bad match ups. Can’t win them all.Though I am still a little pessimistic after WvW being neglected for so long, ANet does seem to want to tackle the issue of balance and have actually started communicating.

@GaijinGuy.8476 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:I am wondering how OP managed to WvW without running into Heralds or scrappers.

OP what kinds of WvW have you been doing? Have you been roaming or grouping up with zergs. You will encounter different classes based on what type of play you are participating in.

And avoiding getting one-shot can be a matter of skill. I havn't roamed for a while so I don't know if it is still a thing, but deadeyes used to be great for sniping solo roamers, but you knew when you were marked and could time a dodge to avoid the damage. Heralds can trigger a skill that converts damage to health, many classes have evades or ivulns which, when you get into the timing of things you can learn to instinctively use to save yourself from being bursted down.

There is big difference in player experiences levels. You can't expect to pop into the game and beat someone who has been doing this for years.

Oh yeah, there are definitely some matchups what are just no hope unless the one person is hilariously bad at playing and/or have a really bad build for their class.

Start with ascended trinkets, get some food and utility as well.

None of these is hard to get by and provide large bonus.

But in wvw, winning or losing will mostly be due to skills and build rather than stats (and therefore gear)

Ascended gear is a 5% increase in stats over exotic, but that doesn't mean the people wearing it are 5% better players. Players wearing full exotic gear can, and do, overwhelm opponents who wear ascended, by making good builds and learning to use them effectively. I'll admit zergs are often messy and filled with the best copy pasted builds currently known, but they basically always have been since the game came out.

I think ascended and legendary gear is only 5% better than exotic - so it's hardly a powerspike to write home about.

Don't get me wrong though, I think GW2 pvp (especially WvW roaming) is a somewhat broken mess whereby the person with the better mechanical knowlege will win 100% of the time - no ifs or buts. Worst thing is, unless you're a dedicated player or around the same skill level, you generally won't learn anything from deaths either. The whole experience can be somewhat unfun.

Yeah I rarely log in nowadays as well. Only so my roaming friends don't get too lonely facing gandara gank parties.Food change is shit, mount change is shit and whole concept of wvw is now disgusting. Unless you blob but no thanks to that and I don't even want to talk about most popular classes there lel

What many people seem to overlook is that "5% better" in item stats does not translate directly to "5 % more damage" or "5 % more hp".You cannot just ignore all the modifiers the game has in terms of skills, traits, runes and sigils.

Purely hypothetical (arbitrary numbers) example:Lets say those 5% better stats gave your attacks just only 3% more damage. But wait, you may also do more crit damage now - and maybe even crit more often. So maybe the overall damage increase is not just 3% but a total of 5%. Add in a traits/sigils/runes that trigger an additional bonus or effect when you crit, and possibly now we are at 7% and not 5%. but we aren't done yet, there are also skills. Pop a skill that increases your attack speed. Oops. Now instead of 3% or 5% or 7% more damage you suddenly do 10% more damage. There are a lot of modifiers which may make you end up perform better than just 5% from 5% higher item stats. There are SO many possibilities. Like "doing more damage to chars under 50% health". Adding 10% damage will not just kill them 10% faster. Because they reach their 50% earlier, so that the additional damage sets in earlier too. Synergy can be VERY powerful.

Once again, all these numbers are arbitrary and made up on the fly. I have no idea how much different chars with their different skills, traits and items increase their performance. I suspect that for some characters it will result in less than 5% more damage, while for others which have suprior synergy in their trait/skill/item choices, it exceeds that. By far in some cases.

@"Shikigami.4013" said:What many people seem to overlook is that "5% better" in item stats does not translate directly to "5 % more damage" or "5 % more hp".You cannot just ignore all the modifiers the game has in terms of skills, traits, runes and sigils.

Purely hypothetical (arbitrary numbers) example:Lets say those 5% better stats gave your attacks just only 3% more damage. But wait, you may also do more crit damage now - and maybe even crit more often. So maybe the overall damage increase is not just 3% but a total of 5%. Add in a traits/sigils/runes that trigger an additional bonus or effect when you crit, and possibly now we are at 7% and not 5%. but we aren't done yet, there are also skills. Pop a skill that increases your attack speed. Oops. Now instead of 3% or 5% or 7% more damage you suddenly do 10% more damage. There are a lot of modifiers which may make you end up perform better than just 5% from 5% higher item stats. There are SO many possibilities. Like "doing more damage to chars under 50% health". Adding 10% damage will not just kill them 10% faster. Because they reach their 50% earlier, so that the additional damage sets in earlier too. Synergy can be VERY powerful.

Once again, all these numbers are arbitrary and made up on the fly. I have no idea how much different chars with their different skills, traits and items increase their performance. I suspect that for some characters it will result in less than 5% more damage, while for others which have suprior synergy in their trait/skill/item choices, it exceeds that. By far in some cases.

I got you. Have a nice little revenant damage calculator I made in google sheets.

Full ascended+infusions herald with invo/deva/herald and all possible damage mods, and notoriety so 25 might is 1k power.Hitting a 2271 armor target (Heavy armor with no toughness increase)Force SigilImpact SigilImpact Sigil if CCedScholar BonusFerocious AggressionRising TideVicious Lacerations (Using max of 1.09)Targeted DestructionSwift TerminationReinforced PotencyForceful Persistence(Herald) (Using 1.08)Burst of StrengthVulnerability

Power: 4121Crit: 233.67%Weapon Strength: 1166 (Max damage of ascended hammer)Phase Smash: 33867.9 damage on crit.

The above but with an exotic hammer (still ascended armor and trinkets + infusions)Power: 4108Crit: 233.13%Weapon Strength: 1111 (Max of exotic hammer)Phase Smash: 32090.1 (94.75% of the above, or a 5.25% damage decrease)

The above but with exotic armor as well (still ascended trinkets)Power: 4057Crit: 232.07%Weapon Strength: 1111Phase Smash: 31555.7 (98.3% of the above, or a 1.7% damage decrease compared to ascended stat infused armor, and 93.1% of the full ascended weapon included, or 6.9% damage decrease from full ascended stat infused)

So get an ascended weapon and trinkets and you have barely a noticeable difference.

@"Shikigami.4013" said:Once again, all these numbers are arbitrary and made up on the fly.How much better ascended is isnt so much arbitrary. How much better you and your build are over the enemy and his build however, that is arbitrary.

In smallscale combat its incredibly rare for a fight to be so close that you would see a ascended vs exotic effect. Most fights are either a clear loss or a clear win. Only when you start counting the effect of a zerg having exotic instead of ascended will the numbers advantage begin to show. Each person having just "5% more" adds up. But really... in reality most will have at least ascended weapons and trinkets. Hell, most will probably have 50+ junk trinkets in the bank because they drop so much or is easy to buy. I was recently cleaning out stuff and saw like "8 in bank" when scrapping a ring, lol.