Pvp combat feels sluggish and unimpactful, eod specs reinforce this

[Hotride.2187]

14 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

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

I posted this in the EoD feedback section (that got archived 1-2 days ago), I don't know why it got moved to the spvp section. It definitely fits here less than in wvw. In spvp it actually is the new specs, I was sort of OK with how conquest played before EoD launched. It wasn't stellar but it was somewhat better than roaming in wvw.

21 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.

I don't really see how its "too late to complain". Its too late to complain when I've moved to another game (which considering how few players duel as of late, probably will happen sooner or later).

For wvw thief, yeah it deals more damage than in spvp but its not that crazy. Its their insane damage mitigation that I'm not a fan of.

[Mik.3401]

I have similar feelings about this, which is why I stay away from ranked. This balance/design philosophy is strange, it probably aims to draw inexperienced players into the mode. But eventually it ends up with pro gamers getting most broken combinations of the passive sustain, support AI pets and condi spam in their teams. Fun risky builds are not really rewarded. The way EoD specs are only confirms it is here to stay.

[Hotride.2187]

15 hours 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.

I don't know what you think the new player pvp experience is, I started learning small scale pvp 1 year ago. As a new player you get annihilated. Maybe its not instant, some of the time, but you usually die in 10 seconds (talking 1v1 with duelists in wvw).

For any mmo, new players should be matched with new players. When I started doing conquest (after a few months of dueling to learn pvp), I got matched with players who had no hands - even being new I could win 3v1s. Are you telling me those players are going to kill you in 2 seconds, if you are new too?

Not that this is relevant for wvw, which you are not talking about.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Kozumi.5816]

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

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.

This is why all my friends went back to WoW PvP and why I no longer PvP. Anets vision for PvP is BFA WoW and 4 tank Overwatch which nearly killed both those games and forced the devs to go in a complete opposite diection.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

22 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

and 4 tank Overwatch which nearly killed both those games and forced the devs to go in a complete opposite diection.

This. The current meta is pretty much GOATS from Overwatch, a meta which effectively killed that game off for loads of people.

I heard that Overwatch is doing the opposite now and that what they had come up with was actually pretty fun, but it can be difficult to bring back interest after so long in such a boring state. The sooner it goes away, the better.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 3/29/2022 at 2:08 AM, 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?

Yes, that's why shooters are so popular.

No one wants to play tank beats on tank with a feather for 6 minutes before someone loses health. That is boring gameplay.

[Swagg.9236]

On 3/26/2022 at 3:38 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.

You have discovered the core of GW2.  I haven't read this thread yet, but I'm going to preemptively assume that you've had to deal with a bunch of people who are still in the cave, thinking that GW2 has some nuance or complexity to its PvP interactions.

[Zizou.2358]

On 3/29/2022 at 5:18 AM, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

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.

Omfg that was hilarious but also funny to watch, thank you haha.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

On 3/29/2022 at 5:01 PM, Vancho.8750 said:

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

Nowadays it is but it wasn't sometime ago. 

I still remember people making thread after thread (including the person you quoted) asking for a specific nerf on a skill/trait just to have the wish granted in the next balance patch and then cry about some other skill/trait and have the wish granted again, time and time again. 

[Kozumi.5816]

19 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

This. The current meta is pretty much GOATS from Overwatch, a meta which effectively killed that game off for loads of people.

I heard that Overwatch is doing the opposite now and that what they had come up with was actually pretty fun, but it can be difficult to bring back interest after so long in such a boring state. The sooner it goes away, the better.

If you think PvP is slow you should never look at WvW. It's like playing GW2 PvP at 1/4th speed. Minstrels and trailblazers and celestials oh my!

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

45 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

If you think PvP is slow you should never look at WvW. It's like playing GW2 PvP at 1/4th speed. Minstrels and trailblazers and celestials oh my!

How I figure it is that if PvP is too slow, then WvW must be like the equivalent of the Great Molasses Flood.

I haven't touched it much since the Warclaw, but for every PvP nerf I see I swear I see about 2 more WvW-specific nerfs.

I don't think i'd really want to. In PvP at least there's always action. In WvW it can take time to find fights, and then you have to fight the bad balance to end that fight sometime in the next decade.  In which time you could easily be jumped by like 10 people.

 

Then like you said, there's total build freedom in WvW. CmC's style of balance has been very restrictive, and effective at killing build diversity. I don't think it was designed with stats like that in mind, anything naturally tanky or supportive in any way. That's why they purged almost every amulet with stats even close to these in PvP following the 2/2020 nerfs.

[mistsim.2748]

Moving on to Lost Ark from 4k+ hours of GW2 was a breath of fresh air, I tell you. Every class is so well designed and combat is just on another level. EoD was the easiest non-purchase of my life. GW2 was a lot of good memories, long ago and I had a blast. But I'm so done with it. Mostly because I have no trust left in ANet's development and design processes/teams. Even a few years ago I became fully convinced they had zero clue what they were doing. EoD was very much more of the same.

Edited April 1, 2022 by mistsim.2748

[FarmBotXD.1430]

On 4/1/2022 at 2:17 AM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Yes, that's why shooters are so popular.

No one wants to play tank beats on tank with a feather for 6 minutes before someone loses health. That is boring gameplay.

honestly wouldnt be too bad if it took a while, but people can straight up heal to full from close to death.
It makes fights pointless. I get that peeps dont want to get 1shot but the sustain in this game is actually a joke.
Pure dps builds can pump out 10k+ heals like its nothing, not even mentioning specs build around healing.

[FarmBotXD.1430]

2 hours ago, mistsim.2748 said:

Moving on to Lost Ark from 4k+ hours of GW2 was a breath of fresh air, I tell you. Every class is so well designed and combat is just on another level. EoD was the easiest non-purchase of my life. GW2 was a lot of good memories, long ago and I had a blast. But I'm so done with it. Mostly because I have no trust left in ANet's development and design processes/teams. Even a few years ago I became fully convinced they had zero clue what they were doing. EoD was very much more of the same.

same, when you get hit, you feel it. but you dont get blown up unless something really specific happens.
buzzing on pvp with several classes, pvp so so sooo much better.
And sad thing is that pvp there is unbalanced but despite that its still 100x better.

[mortrialus.3062]

6 hours ago, FarmBotXD.1430 said:

honestly wouldnt be too bad if it took a while, but people can straight up heal to full from close to death.
It makes fights pointless. I get that peeps dont want to get 1shot but the sustain in this game is actually a joke.
Pure dps builds can pump out 10k+ heals like its nothing, not even mentioning specs build around healing.

Gw2 made the decision in the beginning to make everyone hybrids to some degree, with everyone getting a dedicated healing skill.  Which is why the game needs to be extremely careful with how low damage or tanky the game becomes.  Because between dodge, defensive skills, using the terrain like jumping puzzles, line of sight, you can easily tip into a place where you just can't kill other players 1v1.

Maybe if there just weren't dedicated healing skills for literally every profession this level of damage would be fine but this is the world we live in.

We obviously don't want true one shots from stealth, but if damage isn't high enough it becomes an insufferable slog which is where it's been since megabalance.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

I don't think the problem is lack of damage...there are plenty of skills that hit for 5k+, and many can hit much, much higher (like true shot hitting for 8k on a heavy armor target wearing rabid stats..I'm not bitter at all). When most toons have 15-22k HP, 5k+ is plenty of damage, and I'd make the case that some of those high dmg skills are a little too much as it is.

 

The problem is that there is an overabundance of damage mitigation in the form of protection, shroud, invulns, excessive amounts of aegis, etc. This, coupled with pretty easy access to healing, leads to some things being really, really hard to kill.

 

I think reducing protection/resolution to be -20% dmg reduction and shroud to be -30% power/condi dmg would go a long way toward speeding up the meta without reverting to one shot levels of damage.

 

 

[Dr Meta.3158]

On 3/31/2022 at 10:17 PM, Swagg.9236 said:

You have discovered the core of GW2.  I haven't read this thread yet, but I'm going to preemptively assume that you've had to deal with a bunch of people who are still in the cave, thinking that GW2 has some nuance or complexity to its PvP interactions.

You have great survivability through not taking damage or great survivability from greatly sustaining through damage. We had the same thing in HOT and POF.

[Swagg.9236]

5 hours ago, Metaologist.2487 said:

You have great survivability through not taking damage or great survivability from greatly sustaining through damage. We had the same thing in HOT and POF.

D/D cele ele and thief have existed since launch.  Every flavor-of-the-month or expac-based metagame since has been defined by effectively the same interactions generated by those two paradigms.  Players are either teleporting around and passively negating damage (and often attacking) or they're just walking into damage and passively healing while simultaneously dealing damage.  The point is that GW2 has no big choices to make.  The most obvious choices for builds exist because they are the builds which make players deal damage, move and negate incoming effects all at the same time.

[apharma.3741]

On 3/29/2022 at 7:24 AM, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

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. 

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.

 

Except it's not subjective, look at most (when I say most I mean the 95% of games not that 1 dark souls franchise that has it's niche) RPG games that are successful, they don't throw you in at the deep end to get murdered in 1 hit and rolled over while you're just trying to figure out how to move and use skills. You're also comparing FPS, where the basic premise is incredibly simple - bullet goes in head = you dead, to an RPG, which has significantly more learning about skills front loaded where a skill =/= death, which is not helping your arguement.

This is all without pointing out different strokes for different folks. Pre Feb 2020 you had blow up gameplay and pretty much nothing else, 1 mistake you went 100-0 or close enough to make the difference irrelivant. In blow up meta supports were rapidly becoming pointless as they blew up when focused without a few invuln skills, in fact most roles were being edged out in favour of DPS roamer or 1v1 which was also becoming a rock paper scissors of if you had the right class match up. The net result was that there was very few roles for people to play and even less classes for those roles because you were so dependant on scalable defences like multihit/spammable blocks or invulns. Doesn't take a genius to figure out this was not a sustainable state of game especially if you want to continue to add elite specs.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

12 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

 

Except it's not subjective, look at most (when I say most I mean the 95% of games not that 1 dark souls franchise that has it's niche) RPG games that are successful, they don't throw you in at the deep end to get murdered in 1 hit and rolled over while you're just trying to figure out how to move and use skills. You're also comparing FPS, where the basic premise is incredibly simple - bullet goes in head = you dead, to an RPG, which has significantly more learning about skills front loaded where a skill =/= death, which is not helping your arguement.

It seems that you're are a no better a judge of your fellow player than you are a specimen of one. Just on a brief inventory I'd say you could use yourself a dictionary definition of the word 'subjective' and a brighter disposition. And if you don't mind me aspersing your taste in bideo games, a better understanding of the genre.

 

It is not so black & white, and that 95% number is totally contrived. There are plenty of games that are FPS with RPG progression and structure, and there's the entire ARPG subgenre as well. Both of which(ignoring games like Destiny) feature fast-paced action combat as a major feature, because believe it or not some people do actually enjoy that.

 

They even advertise it that way on the Guild Wars 2 steam page. Literally the first bit of information displayed about the game is "Guild Wars 2 is an online role-playing game with fast-paced action combat"

 

What a joke that is. Positively hilarious.

12 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

This is all without pointing out different strokes for different folks. Pre Feb 2020 you had blow up gameplay and pretty much nothing else, 1 mistake you went 100-0 or close enough to make the difference irrelivant. In blow up meta supports were rapidly becoming pointless as they blew up when focused without a few invuln skills, in fact most roles were being edged out in favour of DPS roamer or 1v1 which was also becoming a rock paper scissors of if you had the right class match up. The net result was that there was very few roles for people to play and even less classes for those roles because you were so dependant on scalable defences like multihit/spammable blocks or invulns. Doesn't take a genius to figure out this was not a sustainable state of game especially if you want to continue to add elite specs.

I can't say i've ever paid much attention to it, but this seems like a very generalized opinion of the meta over the past decade.

Even before 2/2020 there were bunker builds, there were support builds, it was not DPS or nothing. Some of these even became the most powerful builds of their time. I remember Chrono became immortal for a season or two around season 10 or 11. When PoF came out, support Firebrand + Scourge were the go to picks for pretty much every Ranked comp.

All I can say for certain, is that if someone were to prefer one or the other then that would be their opinion. My opinion for instance is that a bunker meta is a load of boring hot garbage, not worth a cent or a millisecond's worth of time. The very antithesis of fun itself, and just cause to skip an entire Ranked season or PvP entirely. 😴

I prefer my bideo games with the games part well-intact, thank you.

[Kozumi.5816]

2 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

All I can say for certain, is that if someone were to prefer one or the other then that would be their opinion. My opinion for instance is that a bunker meta is a load of boring hot garbage, not worth a cent or a millisecond's worth of time. The very antithesis of fun itself, and just cause to skip an entire Ranked season or PvP entirely. 😴

I prefer my bideo games with the games part well-intact, thank you.

Sadly I think Anets vision for PvP is bunkers with high sustain.

[apharma.3741]

9 hours ago, Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

It seems that you're are a no better a judge of your fellow player than you are a specimen of one. Just on a brief inventory I'd say you could use yourself a dictionary definition of the word 'subjective' and a brighter disposition. And if you don't mind me aspersing your taste in bideo games, a better understanding of the genre.

 

It is not so black & white, and that 95% number is totally contrived. There are plenty of games that are FPS with RPG progression and structure, and there's the entire ARPG subgenre as well. Both of which(ignoring games like Destiny) feature fast-paced action combat as a major feature, because believe it or not some people do actually enjoy that.

 

They even advertise it that way on the Guild Wars 2 steam page. Literally the first bit of information displayed about the game is "Guild Wars 2 is an online role-playing game with fast-paced action combat"

 

What a joke that is. Positively hilarious.

I can't say i've ever paid much attention to it, but this seems like a very generalized opinion of the meta over the past decade.

Even before 2/2020 there were bunker builds, there were support builds, it was not DPS or nothing. Some of these even became the most powerful builds of their time. I remember Chrono became immortal for a season or two around season 10 or 11. When PoF came out, support Firebrand + Scourge were the go to picks for pretty much every Ranked comp.

All I can say for certain, is that if someone were to prefer one or the other then that would be their opinion. My opinion for instance is that a bunker meta is a load of boring hot garbage, not worth a cent or a millisecond's worth of time. The very antithesis of fun itself, and just cause to skip an entire Ranked season or PvP entirely. 😴

I prefer my bideo games with the games part well-intact, thank you.

You said: "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." last I checked this is basically an FPS, may have other elements but the basic premise is the same, shoot people faster and more accurately than they shoot you and you win, usually. RPG =/= FPS for someone asking others to use a dictionary it feels like you could do with one yourself. "What a joke that is"?

Ah yes bunker chrono, and what happened to that? Nerfed out of existence and that was over 2.5 years ago if it was PoF start. I'm talking about the months leading up to the Feb 2020 patch, the game was rapidly losing other forms of support. Firebrand had been nerfed and lacked the scalable defence to perform, Tempest sort of worked but you basically took all survival utilities and was largely pointless because people went 100-0 before you could do anything.

Also 95% isn't an arbitrary number or contrived but I guess you skipped statistics class.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

12 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

You said: "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." last I checked this is basically an FPS, may have other elements but the basic premise is the same, shoot people faster and more accurately than they shoot you and you win, usually. RPG =/= FPS for someone asking others to use a dictionary it feels like you could do with one yourself. "What a joke that is"?

How then do you explain an anomaly like the Borderlands franchise? Any FPS RPG? To call it an FPS would be objectively correct, just not in a holistic sense. 

 

The joke is Arenanet trying to market Gw2 as it used to be and was meant to be. And I was being sarcastic, as this is a bad joke if one at all.

Fast-paced action combat they say, as I duel some unlucky chap on far for 10 straight minutes. Surely they aren't serious.

12 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

Ah yes bunker chrono, and what happened to that? Nerfed out of existence and that was over 2.5 years ago if it was PoF start. I'm talking about the months leading up to the Feb 2020 patch, the game was rapidly losing other forms of support. Firebrand had been nerfed and lacked the scalable defence to perform, Tempest sort of worked but you basically took all survival utilities and was largely pointless because people went 100-0 before you could do anything.

Ok now I get exactly what timeframe you're comparing to.

Iirc it wasn't limited to just supports. I just have to imagine they saw the 2/2020 nerfpocalypse on the horizon(Yes, 1 year is 'on the horizon' for this balance team and you can't tell me i'm wrong there) and reasoned that it was time to ease people in. This is also when many damage multipliers from traits like Forceful Greatsword were changed to be additive power bonuses rather than the old flat multiplicative bonus.

Imo if they had kept the DPS nerfs reasonable like that, and buffed support classes to keep up with wherever damage landed afterwards, then there would have been 0 need and maybe even want for something like the 2/2020 patch. 

 

Personally I think a nerf like losing a multiplicative damage bonus in favor of an additive one is a reasonable and rational change.

Conversely, increasing the CD of and decreasing some type of coefficient with nearly every single skill in the game across all professions is more of an immoderate and irrational way to do things.

12 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

Also 95% isn't an arbitrary number or contrived but I guess you skipped statistics class.

As Gw2 Forum-goers we are both automatically masters of statistical analysis, and the random numbers we pull out of our rears are the equivalent of a professional gambler cheating at poker.

You are not wrong on this though. The fine art of watching bipolar numbers jumping up and down on digital displays is admittedly not one that I practiced in preparation for playing a bideo game.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

21 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Sadly I think Anets vision for PvP is bunkers with high sustain.

Reckon you're right.

If that's what they want, then give it to them, I say. 

 

Every immortal bunker running around conquest dealing & taking 0 damage increases the global awareness of just how 📯 🤡 this style of balance really is.

Storm Gw2 PvP, They Can't Nerf All of Us.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

The slower meta is fine with me. I don't long back to the days of being one-shot by thieves, mesmers and/or some Guardian builds back in the time around the release of PoF.