Pvp combat feels sluggish and unimpactful, eod specs reinforce this

[Hotride.2187]

I spend most of my time in the game in 2 activities, doing some daily "farm" (fractals, hot metas) and dueling in wvw.

From the EoD specs that I've dueled so far, there are 2 variants. The spec is garbage and just gets mowed. Or the spec is garbage, but it has some bursty skills and a lot of sustain. Harbringer is the most extreme in this case. Vindicator was pretty bad on the sustain side (I think/hope that sustain got nerfed). Bladesworn, specter, condi untamed also. Dueling any of these is just a slogfest of nothing going on. You hit them for half their HP, a few seconds later they are full again.

If I compare this to dueling power herald, s/d thief (even d/p if the thief is not a kitten), spb, core war, power mesmer, power holo (also if not a kitten)... it just makes the game look bad. The game is capable of explosive combat, where you miss a dodge and things get ugly or your opponent screws 1-2 times up and you get them. But the game is not getting more specs and builds like that, and is not getting balance changes to go into that direction (what little balance changes there are anyway).

Instead you get boring, slow combat, where the spec does some half-assed attempt to burst, fails, and then just sustains until the next burst. There is all the room in the world for errors, nothing gets punished, and when 2 of those specs meet you can fall asleep watching. Why do you keep making/enabling slow gameplay? Is it to make the game boring on purpose? Or inability to do something fast-paced? Or there is no playerbase left, that wants fast gameplay? It really doesn't give me much hope for the future.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

feb20 dmg coefficient nerfs brought u this slow combat crap. deal with it, it's a bit too late to complain.

 

and the class balance in Wvw smallscale is even twenty times more off. way worse, several things in spvp that are balanced are broken in Wvw, for example thieves (all specs) are there just crazy. they deal like 5 times the dps a thief in spvp can deal.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Absolutely it is, and you can thank the 2/25/2020 patch for that.

It set us up for the end. This style of balance is boring and unsustainable. I don't care if its 'balanced' if this is what 'balanced' looks like.

I'd prefer to have fun with the game and the new elite specs I just spent 40$ on and not be held back by balance & subjective meaningless buzzwords like 'powercreep.'

[coro.3176]

3 minutes ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

Absolutely it is, and you can thank the 2/25/2020 patch for that.

It set us up for the end. This style of balance is boring and unsustainable. I don't care if its 'balanced' if this is what 'balanced' looks like.

I'd prefer to have fun with the game and the new elite specs I just spent 40$ on and not be held back by balance & subjective meaningless buzzwords like 'powercreep.'

This is satire, right? .. right?

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

1 minute ago, coro.3176 said:

This is satire, right? .. right?

no

 

I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I've died maybe twice in the past week 1/2 while operating at -420% brainpower.

I've seen multiple DC's. I even got into a game with Mukluk with my buddy while he was streaming, and it was honestly one of the worst matches i've ever taken part in. That vod can be found here https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1426814231 and the match at 2:40:00 ish. I'm too lazy to clip it. Their team was understandably demoralized by our team full of CC-spamming condi bunker supports all buffing up some weird power harbinger. 

This definitely isn't satire. I had to chug 2 red bulls to recover from that match mentally.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

 

On 3/26/2022 at 4:38 PM, Hotride.2187 said:

Or there is no playerbase left, that wants fast gameplay?

If there was, they were certainly pushed out by the people that didn't learn last time and want unkillable builds to prop up their gigantic egos. 

let the bunker meta RESUME. 

[ There was a quip here about how non specter thief builds are gone and people are still on the bunker trail despite specter being bad at 1v1 (vs the other builds that arent already pushed out by the currently forming meta), but I changed my mind] 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Prior to the patch that nerfed all damage, the forum was full of complaints about PvP combat being too fast and players instantly exploding, which cost us alot more players than slower combat has.

 

Imagine you step into PvP as a new player:

- You instantly die.

- You respawn, then you instantly die.

- You respawn again, then you instantly die. You lose the match, having accomplished nothing.

 

Tell me, do you think someone keeps playing after such an experience? The devs had the metrics to back this up before changing it, including that the most common way of death was high-damage CC never allowing players to get up again, effectively having no way to even play.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

6 minutes ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

Prior to the patch that nerfed all damage, the forum was full of complaints about PvP combat being too fast and players instantly exploding, which cost us alot more players than slower combat has.

Its all subjective. There's just as many if not more new players that dislike extended, potentially never-ending fights as there is new players that dislike instantly dying.

Sure, one extreme feels frustrating getting blown up with little time to react, but at least it feels like something happens there. Right now it just feels like a clown fiesta of spammed effects that has little visual impact outside of burning your retinas. 

6 minutes ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

Imagine you step into PvP as a new player:

- You instantly die.

- You respawn, then you instantly die.

- You respawn again, then you instantly die. You lose the match, having accomplished nothing.

 

Tell me, do you think someone keeps playing after such an experience? The devs had the metrics to back this up before changing it, including that the most common way of death was high-damage CC never allowing players to get up again, effectively having no way to even play.

Yes, I think people keep playing after such experiences. Some of the most popular games in existence consist of nothing but respawning, shooting a few times, then dying. Billion dollar franchises are made this way. 

And CC is much worse now than it was before with every stunbreak getting a longer, sometimes even outrageously longer cooldowns and stab output getting lowered.

I guess the CC doesn't kill you at least. That's a plus. That still won't help the fact that you can't touch your keyboard for 30 seconds.

[Sahne.6950]

On 3/26/2022 at 9:38 PM, Hotride.2187 said:

I spend most of my time in the game in 2 activities, doing some daily "farm" (fractals, hot metas) and dueling in wvw.

From the EoD specs that I've dueled so far, there are 2 variants. The spec is garbage and just gets mowed. Or the spec is garbage, but it has some bursty skills and a lot of sustain. Harbringer is the most extreme in this case. Vindicator was pretty bad on the sustain side (I think/hope that sustain got nerfed). Bladesworn, specter, condi untamed also. Dueling any of these is just a slogfest of nothing going on. You hit them for half their HP, a few seconds later they are full again.

If I compare this to dueling power herald, s/d thief (even d/p if the thief is not a kitten), spb, core war, power mesmer, power holo (also if not a kitten)... it just makes the game look bad. The game is capable of explosive combat, where you miss a dodge and things get ugly or your opponent screws 1-2 times up and you get them. But the game is not getting more specs and builds like that, and is not getting balance changes to go into that direction (what little balance changes there are anyway).

Instead you get boring, slow combat, where the spec does some half-assed attempt to burst, fails, and then just sustains until the next burst. There is all the room in the world for errors, nothing gets punished, and when 2 of those specs meet you can fall asleep watching. Why do you keep making/enabling slow gameplay? Is it to make the game boring on purpose? Or inability to do something fast-paced? Or there is no playerbase left, that wants fast gameplay? It really doesn't give me much hope for the future.

Weird that your talking about your WvW duelling experience in the spvp section, but here we go.

I am duelling alot aswell and i have to say that you 100% notice a BIG performance gap between EoD specs(not all of them) and previous specs. You can be duelling a Holo or a Renegade for 20 minutes and win almost every fight. The same guy logs on his Harbinger and you can not kill him anymore. You ask him to change toon.... He logs on mechanist... Full Celestial Tank Mechanist...well have a guess.... you cant kill that either....

THE SAME GUY....  is a complete Pushover on all of his builds -> switches to Harbinger or Mechanist = Unkillable all of a sudden

Wait what? This dude is playing his Builds for multiple years now.... If the specs were equally strong he should be better on the spec that he has played for years, right?... right?   Why is he unkillable all of a sudden?

I find it strange that the same guy on PoF specs has not even a slim chance to win against me but as soon as he logs on the EoD specs he wins 100% of the fights.... This is not something  i noticed just with my buddy that i was fighting. This is a picture that you see everywhere around you. A Harbinger SHREDS every other Necro spec without any problems.... AND WE THOUHT NECRO WAS OP BEFORE!  IMO This is mainly due to excessive Stability/Quickness/Alac and skills with very shty animations... you cant even properly see the skill and BOOM your hit for 7k from some random Elixir that you cant even visually see thru all the clutter.

The Specs might be a little overtuned. most notably Celestial Mechanist and Celestial Harbinger... THEY DONT DIE.  (harbinger dies in Theory but the pressure he puts out while you try and kill him is too much to handle for most of the previous specs... you cant even CC him because all of a sudden Necro has Stability.....

I am well aware that no aspect of any gamemode is designed/balanced for duells, but i think it shows the performance gap really well.

 spvp is a even sadder story... when the only viable way to deal with a mechanist is to have your own mechanist stall him on a sidenode.... there might be something wrong.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

1 hour ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

Prior to the patch that nerfed all damage, the forum was full of complaints about PvP combat being too fast and players instantly exploding, which cost us alot more players than slower combat has.

 

Imagine you step into PvP as a new player:

- You instantly die.

- You respawn, then you instantly die.

- You respawn again, then you instantly die. You lose the match, having accomplished nothing.

 

Tell me, do you think someone keeps playing after such an experience? The devs had the metrics to back this up before changing it, including that the most common way of death was high-damage CC never allowing players to get up again, effectively having no way to even play.

Imagine taking the pre-february patch, and simply adding +10k HP to every class. Suddenly you have fixed the oneshot bursts without causing Sustain Wars 2.

Edited March 29, 2022 by agrippastrilemma.8741

[Arheundel.6451]

7 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

If there was, they were certainly pushed out by the people that didn't learn last time and want unkillable builds to prop up their gigantic egos. 

let the bunker meta RESUME. 

[ There was a quip here about how non specter thief builds are gone and people are still on the bunker trail despite specter being bad at 1v1 (vs the other builds that arent already pushed out by the currently forming meta), but I changed my mind] 

My apologies but.....you are a necro and the necro playerbase was the one calling for dmg nerfs  so that people could tank dmg on their edgy class.

It was something along these lines :"QQ my shroud doesn't scale with number of enemies, pls anet nerf dmg...burst too high" .

Right now you have  people crying about high burst on the few remaining specs like thief and ranger...after Anet decided to cater to carebears and delete spec like FA ele, hammer guardian, one shot mesmer......and now you lot complain about sluggish gameplay? 

[Arheundel.6451]

The GW2 playerbase...cries that dmg is too high and they die too fast......

Anet nerf dmg....

The GW2 playerbase..cries that sustain is too high and nothing dies...

Anet nerf sustain

The GW2 playerbase..cries because due to design differentation between professions...only few are played after the sustain and dmg nerfs

 

And the main factors here are : an entitled.....unskilled...whining playerbase and a gaming company forced to apply godawful balance decisions to sell as many copies of their super casual MMO

[Vancho.8750]

4 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

The GW2 playerbase...cries that dmg is too high and they die too fast......

Anet nerf dmg....

The GW2 playerbase..cries that sustain is too high and nothing dies...

Anet nerf sustain

The GW2 playerbase..cries because due to design differentation between professions...only few are played after the sustain and dmg nerfs

 

And the main factors here are : an entitled.....unskilled...whining playerbase and a gaming company forced to apply godawful balance decisions to sell as many copies of their super casual MMO

Pretty sure the Arenanet just skim the forum, the balance is made based on the AT and the "pro" people in some discord.  

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

5 hours ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

My apologies but.....you are a necro and the necro playerbase was the one calling for dmg nerfs  so that people could tank dmg on their edgy class.

It was something along these lines :"QQ my shroud doesn't scale with number of enemies, pls anet nerf dmg...burst too high" .

Right now you have  people crying about high burst on the few remaining specs like thief and ranger...after Anet decided to cater to carebears and delete spec like FA ele, hammer guardian, one shot mesmer......and now you lot complain about sluggish gameplay? 

I'm not a necro main.

I'm a warrior main that occasionally wants to play necro and not feel pinballed back and forth like necro used to be when people would call target and wipe it off the map if it didn't arrive at a point after the fight was underway. Necro isnt even my second played class, I just have a shred of empathy to them because I've seen people bully the kitten out of them before.

I have -never- been for sluggish gameplay. I have always been for people learning to dodge the things they can, or otherwise having the tools they need to mitigate incoming damage they will take by design (As long as those tools are designed in a way that doesn't rescue them from poor decisions infinitely), but blowing up quickly if they just decide to not use those properly.

You must have the wrong person. Feel free to scour my posts with "necro" and "shroud", whatever you think you need. 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Dr Meta.3158]

Game play only feels sluggish when there's a good support on each team. Otherwise I think its fine. There's some exceptions outside of that but has more to do with bad decision making than anything else.

[otto.5684]

17 hours ago, kamikharzeeh.8016 said:

feb20 dmg coefficient nerfs brought u this slow combat crap. deal with it, it's a bit too late to complain.

 

and the class balance in Wvw smallscale is even twenty times more off. way worse, several things in spvp that are balanced are broken in Wvw, for example thieves (all specs) are there just crazy. they deal like 5 times the dps a thief in spvp can deal.

It never is. Many players, like me, quit spvp since. WvW is a hot mess. Not expecting change, but I will keep reminding Anet that they kittened pvp at every opportunity.

[Dr Meta.3158]

49 minutes ago, otto.5684 said:

It never is. Many players, like me, quit spvp since. WvW is a hot mess. Not expecting change, but I will keep reminding Anet that they kittened pvp at every opportunity.

Why?

[BobbyT.7192]

53 minutes ago, Metaologist.2487 said:

Why?

Maybe people find sluggish gameplay boring?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

9 minutes ago, BobbyT.7192 said:

Maybe people find sluggish gameplay boring?

Hi I am heavy armor guy, whacking people with nerf bat while pretty colors flash for 10 minutes functionally identical to pve. 
If I want chess match, I play chess.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[BobbyT.7192]

3 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Hi I am heavy armor guy, whacking people with nerf bat while pretty colors flash for 10 minutes functionally identical to pve. 
If I want chess match, I play chess.

Mock all you want, doesn't change what i said.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

2 minutes ago, BobbyT.7192 said:

Mock all you want, doesn't change what i said.

I'm not mocking you, you're absolutely right.  

I originally came to PVP to choose violence and what I have found is a bunch of people that want to never die while quietly hoping their opponent plays a build glassier than theirs so the fight actually ends. 

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Morwath.9817]

"You hit them for half hp (...)" - main reason why I duo roam, two people slap for half of health pool each with CC on top of it makes things done... One shouldn't expect super fast combat in 1v1, while playing group based game where multiple people CAN and SHOULD focus single target.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

"You hit them for half hp (...)" - main reason why I duo roam, two people slap for half of health pool each with CC on top of it makes things done... One shouldn't expect super fast combat in 1v1, while playing group based game where multiple people CAN and SHOULD focus single target.

The problem is more nuanced than that.

Damage can be adjusted to be less high if the blow delivering it is easy to land, and higher if it is harder to land.

2v1ing  will always be fast combat, but it should not be the only way to get fights finished quickly. "Just 2v1 them" has never been a satisfying solution to any competitive grievance here, because it is obvious this is the solution to anything that involves player interaction and doesn't address any of the nuance that people try to indicate they want. 

Things that you should be able to dodge should slap you for half health, with smaller, faster attacks tapping you for less. The more telegraphed your attack, and the more vulnerable you are to damage yourself, the more you should hit someone for. 

If your opponent doesn't know the matchup, you are specced to do only damage, and you have a bunch of weaknesses that can easily be exploited in that 1v1 match, the fight should -absolutely- end almost instantly the moment they make a string of (or, alternatively, a couple of key) mistakes.

Forcing the fight to run longer by making the person who specced to do nothing but raw damage do less damage, and handing  the person who may or may not have specced bunker large additional windows to avoid that damage just ends up punishing the glass build player, because they still have those weaknesses that they accepted in order to do large damage. 

1v1 combat time is relative, and in some cases fast downing is absolutely fine. People don't wanna lose and -also- don't want to learn the matchup, though; so stagnant hitting each other with sticks it is. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

13 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

- You instantly die.

- You respawn, then you instantly die.

- You respawn again, then you instantly die. You lose the match, having accomplished nothing.

This is just the first couple of hours of Elden Ring. 
 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Morwath.9817]

22 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

The problem is more nuanced than that.

Damage can be adjusted to be less high if the blow delivering it is easy to land, and higher if it is harder to land.

2v1ing  will always be fast combat, but it should not be the only way to get fights finished quickly. "Just 2v1 them" has never been a satisfying solution to any competitive grievance here, because it is obvious this is the solution to anything that involves player interaction and doesn't address any of the nuance that people try to indicate they want. 

Things that you should be able to dodge should slap you for half health, with smaller, faster attacks tapping you for less. The more telegraphed your attack, and the more vulnerable you are to damage yourself, the more you should hit someone for. 

If your opponent doesn't know the matchup, you are specced to do only damage, and you have a bunch of weaknesses that can easily be exploited in that 1v1 match, the fight should -absolutely- end almost instantly the moment they make a string of (or, alternatively, a couple of key) mistakes.

Forcing the fight to run longer by making the person who specced to do nothing but raw damage do less damage, and handing  the person who may or may not have specced bunker large additional windows to avoid that damage just ends up punishing the glass build player, because they still have those weaknesses that they accepted in order to do large damage. 

1v1 combat time is relative, and in some cases fast downing is absolutely fine. People don't wanna lose and -also- don't want to learn the matchup, though; so stagnant hitting each other with sticks it is. 

 

Even if you 2v2 or 2v3, you can turn it into 2v1v1 or 2v1v1v1 by focusing targets better and coordinating bursts and CC.