PvP is at its worst

[SoulBlaze.3059]

Wtf has happened to this game. PvP is the most kittenous thing ever these days. Just ran into a team that each person had 3 stun abilities of different forms. Literally couldnt leave spawn. There is 0 balance these days and the game has gone to kitten. I'm honestly about done, havn't uninstalled for years, but it just feels like there is no point in playing half the classes as everyone spams the same crap in PvP.

[Gibson.4036]

How can you even tell what’s balanced when there’s at least one afk player every other match?

😄

😭

[Caliboom.3218]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/forum/22-player-vs-player/

[Dante.1508]

I'm so glad i avoid that content..

[Hellissane.3041]

Well that has been discussed multiple times before.

You're thinking in terms of class-class balance. I.e. a core elementalist will lose to a willbender, for example. You have a choice of 36 different classes with dozens of skills and traits making a potential of millions(?) of possible combinations - such a thing cant be balanced. Try to find 1 RPG game that has this balanced - you won't be able to.

What you should be thinking is team-team balance.

All pvp/wvw maps are more or less mirrored(looking at you Eternal coliseum). You have X team members that can change at any point before a fight - so whatever the enemy can have, you can have. Afkers,  bots and generally "weak" people in SPvP in your team are based on MMR - its a luck factor that's equal for both teams. WvW fights never have the same numbers, but it don't need to - 20vs50 cant be won in an open field, but its doable in a well managed siege defense. That makes any fight practically balanced and has been this way for years.
 

So if the enemy can use "OP" stuff, why dont you? If you want to have fun with whatever class/build, then why care about an impossible balance? 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Hellissane.3041

[Gorem.8104]

Have you seen the pvp forums? It's been at its worst ever since the pvp players all left the game essentially, years and years ago. 

[Nico.9361]

12 hours ago, SoulBlaze.3059 said:

Just ran into a team that each person had 3 stun abilities of different forms. Literally couldnt leave spawn.

You gotta oustun them. Or outstun break them. I highly recommend Untamed. There are still lots of ppl struggling to counter it in Silver division.
I might report on Gold when I get there.

[SoulBlaze.3059]

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

Well that has been discussed multiple times before.

You're thinking in terms of class-class balance. I.e. a core elementalist will lose to a willbender, for example. You have a choice of 36 different classes with dozens of skills and traits making a potential of millions(?) of possible combinations - such a thing cant be balanced. Try to find 1 RPG game that has this balanced - you won't be able to.

What you should be thinking is team-team balance.

All pvp/wvw maps are more or less mirrored(looking at you Eternal coliseum). You have X team members that can change at any point before a fight - so whatever the enemy can have, you can have. Afkers,  bots and generally "weak" people in SPvP in your team are based on MMR - its a luck factor that's equal for both teams. WvW fights never have the same numbers, but it don't need to - 20vs50 cant be won in an open field, but its doable in a well managed siege defense. That makes any fight practically balanced and has been this way for years.
 

So if the enemy can use "OP" stuff, why dont you? If you want to have fun with whatever class/build, then why care about an impossible balance? 

I dont care about WvW, its a fun mess. 5v5 I care about though as balance is possible, but noone cares. The PvP is horrible, most of the games I have played were complete BS. Stun spamming and broken classes that are way too powerful do not make things fun.

[Skorpis.4372]

I think it's just imposible to balance pvp at all. Not only we have many classes, builds and skills to balance here is also a individual player skill level wich means even same builds can be played as a owerpowered or the oposite.

 

If you look at pvp forums acording to players pvp always has been in a worst state since launch.

I wont agree or disagree on that bicause I don't care much about balance -it's just imposible to atjust to everyones needs. 

What important is do you have fun ? I personally have the most fun in pvp just before a stun damage nerf. Now whenever I play I play other game modes. I suggest you to do the same and try to have fun.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

pvp is dead, and every balance patch kills it even more.

[Hellissane.3041]

6 hours ago, SoulBlaze.3059 said:

I dont care about WvW, its a fun mess. 5v5 I care about though as balance is possible, but noone cares. The PvP is horrible, most of the games I have played were complete BS. Stun spamming and broken classes that are way too powerful do not make things fun.

You should reread my post. 5v5 is balanced, as well as all other pvp modes. While you have skewed view on what balance is and blame a non-existing poltergeist, you'll never have fun in pvp.

[SoulBlaze.3059]

16 minutes ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

You should reread my post. 5v5 is balanced, as well as all other pvp modes. While you have skewed view on what balance is and blame a non-existing poltergeist, you'll never have fun in pvp.

I disagree, you cant say its balanced if your point of view is to ignore the problems and enjoy it anyway. Just because you want to say its balanced doesnt mean it is, a majority of matches are a shitshow with obviously broken mechanics and I will not ignore that. Fun to me is winning, which is made less possible with the current state of things.

[bethekey.8314]

12 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

Well that has been discussed multiple times before.

You're thinking in terms of class-class balance. I.e. a core elementalist will lose to a willbender, for example. You have a choice of 36 different classes with dozens of skills and traits making a potential of millions(?) of possible combinations - such a thing cant be balanced. Try to find 1 RPG game that has this balanced - you won't be able to.

What you should be thinking is team-team balance.

All pvp/wvw maps are more or less mirrored(looking at you Eternal coliseum). You have X team members that can change at any point before a fight - so whatever the enemy can have, you can have. Afkers,  bots and generally "weak" people in SPvP in your team are based on MMR - its a luck factor that's equal for both teams. WvW fights never have the same numbers, but it don't need to - 20vs50 cant be won in an open field, but its doable in a well managed siege defense. That makes any fight practically balanced and has been this way for years.

Not a good take. Class-class balance influences team-team balance in a major way; they're intrinsically linked. Not everyone plays every class to the same skill level, nor wants to. And you're making this vague concept of balance out to be more difficult ("impossible") than it is.

It's not 36 distinct classes. If you swap out the elite spec traitline, 2/3 of your traits and all of your utilities could still be identical per class variant. Often times they are. Yes, there are many possible combinations and making all of those viable at the same time would be difficult. Most of the people complaining on these forums aren't asking for anything near that level of diversity.

At least 3 whole classes (including all their elites) have seen little to no competitive play over the past 2-3 months. Making 9 builds (1 per class) competitive is definitely achievable and would be a big step in the right direction.

12 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

 

So if the enemy can use "OP" stuff, why dont you? If you want to have fun with whatever class/build, then why care about an impossible balance? 

There are a number of good reasons. To list a few:

1. Not everyone enjoys multi-classing or has the time to.

2. MMORPGs foster attachment to a single or few characters.

3. The same 3 "OP" classes fighting each other is repetitive and not fun to play or watch. This reduces the playerbase.

4. In a competitive environment, winning (getting kills, being useful etc) is fun. If the gap between OP classes/specs and yours is so great that winning is nigh impossible, you're probably not having fun. If you're not having fun, you probably swap to the OP class (see #3) or quit. This reduces the playerbase.

5. Hoping for situations to improve is a normal, human response. Better balance is not impossible. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by bethekey.8314

[JTGuevara.9018]

19 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

How can you even tell what’s balanced when there’s at least one afk player every other match?

😄

😭

I mean...that is a good point lmao!

[Hellissane.3041]

3 hours ago, SoulBlaze.3059 said:

I disagree, you cant say its balanced if your point of view is to ignore the problems and enjoy it anyway. Just because you want to say its balanced doesnt mean it is, a majority of matches are a shitshow with obviously broken mechanics and I will not ignore that. Fun to me is winning, which is made less possible with the current state of things.

And what exactly stops you from using these "broken mechanics" to win?
Yes its a "kitten show", there are many problems that make PvP less fun than it could be. "broken mechanics", class unavailability, match type unavailability, ranked dual joins, horrible desertion penalties and even worse anti-afk management that make the matchmaking absolute horror in some cases and many more. But statistically none of those affect your ability to win. 

 

2 hours ago, bethekey.8314 said:

...

Making 9 builds (1 per class) competitive is definitely achievable and would be a big step in the right direction.

...

1. Not everyone enjoys multi-classing or has the time to.

Well the thing is what is "competitive"? Platinum? Don't we already have, not one, but multiple platinum+ viable builds? Maybe top 3 montly? But don't you need extensive training, including training with all classes to study their weaknesses, to reach it? 
And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the top monthly teams the same group of players that we see every month, playing more or less the same classes?

If you don't have the dedication to reach the very top, you can still have a lot of fun with any class at Platinum or below. If you want to go up more, you'll have to work for it and GW2 gives you the tools to do it. This is true for all MMORPGs I've played, multiclass training included. 

And then class-class expectations come. New classes and their abilities are always "broken"; there are useless classes; people see that their class is weaker/st without ever trying another; people quit because everything is unbalanced; etc; etc. In this sense class-class balance, a complete balance, is indeed impossible - you cant match everyone's expectations. Yes it can be more fun if we had more variety at the top of the meta lists, but will never be enough.
If we want to not lose people in pvp, focusing on class-class balance is not ideal.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Hellissane.3041

[bethekey.8314]

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

Well the thing is what is "competitive"?

Like balance, it can be hard to give a concrete definition. A good metric might be, say, the ability to reach top 10 on the ladder solo. Another way to frame it could be: where skill becomes the deciding factor in success. Right now, balance is so poor that differences between classes trying to occupy the same role greatly overshadow differences in skill.

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the top monthly teams the same group of players that we see every month, playing more or less the same classes?

Same players, more or less. Only a few people care enough in the current state of the game to tryhard at a team level. Same classes, no. They adjust to the meta.

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

If you don't have the dedication to reach the very top, you can still have a lot of fun with any class at Platinum or below. If you want to go up more, you'll have to work for it and GW2 gives you the tools to do it.

Every class should have a build that can reach the top. While the accuracy of metabattle can be debated, yes, ~4/9 classes are excluded from the "meta" right now. That is awful.

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

In this sense class-class balance, a complete balance, is indeed impossible

No one is expecting or asking for "complete balance". Anet's balance team has a terrible track record and most only expect the bare minimum now. Like a single competitive build per class.

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

Yes it can be more fun if we had more variety at the top of the meta lists, but will never be enough.

Might as well not do anything then huh?

3 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

If we want to not lose people in pvp, focusing on class-class balance is not ideal.

As someone who hasn't played in over a month due to a lack of class-class balance, they're losing people due to a lack of class-class balance. I'd love to hear your rationale for what other kind of balance they should do, and why that would keep/gain players. Especially since your description of team-team balance means they have little or nothing to do, despite constantly losing players:

17 hours ago, Hellissane.3041 said:

That makes any fight practically balanced and has been this way for years.

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by bethekey.8314

[Sahne.6950]

Till this weekend i was completly against buying EoD, because i felt that most classes were poorly designed and just a straightup powercreep. But after a long duell session against a harbinger in pvplobby.... i had enough. This guy was SO BAD! He was just mindlessly standing in my AoE´s, he was eating every CC skill that i had and i swear to god he did not dodge anything.... Yet i got completly clapped when playing my... id say pretty good Fireweaver......  i just had no chance... he could make 15 mistakes and i do 0 and still loose.

So i threw all my honor out of the window... bought EoD and created a Necro!

i NEVER....NEVER NEVER ever played Necro before.... well guess what.

People that were HUGE obstacles for me (after a while you know your few people that duell there alot) were suddenly freekills. No challenge whatsoever. Just PEW PEW PEW -> Dead. Guess who Queued Ranked right after this experience and got 12 Wins in a row... Yeah! How can anyone defend this?! When almost 5 years of exclusively playing Elementalis followed by 5 more Years of playing Ranger and Ele.... will not even bring me close to the level of performance that i will have when playing Necor/Harbinger for the literal first time... THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING OFF WITH THE BALANCING!

Imagine you putting YEARS into a profession... you feel yourself getting better and better.. you feel really good about your skillevel by now....        you then create a necro out of frustration and right in your first hour of playing it you greatly exceed the level of performance that you grew over the last 10 years.... DISGUSTING! 

You have so many people claiming Gw2 is about Skill.... when in reality it is all about playing the "Flavor of the Month". I think there is nothing that shows this clearer than this example.

#Please dont nerf Harbinger, as i just paid 30 Bucks to gain free elo in spvp. Thanks.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Guirssane.7082]

I'm still having fun (no I'm not playing wb and Harb :D) but pvp could use some love. More frequent balance patches, new maps maybe new concept.

 

They won't do it because the pvp playerbase is small but that would be nice. 

[Sahne.6950]

39 minutes ago, Guirssane.7082 said:

I'm still having fun (no I'm not playing wb and Harb :D)

I thought i was having fun too... i thought i was competetive.... then i bought EoD and realised how blind and mainly naive i was.  I honestly thought harbinger was good. I thought it was good but not gamebreaking overpowered.... THEN I CREATED A NECRO.... 

 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Sahne.6950

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Bdo 3v3 equalized gear arena's releases tomorrow. Don't get me wrong the pve is a grind fest with a convoluted mess 9f a story on top but for wvw and arena pvp the combat and animations should make for some great pvp, especially being equalized. Of course balance will still be trash as all mmos are but.

[Marxx.5021]

Issue with balance is not that there are overpowered specs. It is that it doesn't get better overall. Viable specs get nerfed and not so popular (or new) specs get overbuffed until they get nerfed as well. A balancing approach around how popular something is will never lead to balance in a sense of making specs comparable strong. Besides it feels like never ending beta testing.

[ASP.8093]

8 minutes ago, Marxx.5021 said:

Issue with balance is not that there are overpowered specs. It is that it doesn't get better overall. Viable specs get nerfed and not so popular (or new) specs get overbuffed until they get nerfed as well. A balancing approach around how popular something is will never lead to balance in a sense of making specs comparable strong. Besides it feels like never ending beta testing.

I think what frustrates me is that I wholly understand why massively overperforming specs can get catastrophic nerfs, but it feels like, as long as the meta moves on, someone will just declare "job's done!" while we're all left wandering through a big garden of broken-down stuff that will never be restored to a half-usable state.

Edited June 7, 2022 by ASP.8093

[vilesoldier.9826]

On 6/7/2022 at 9:28 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

Till this weekend i was completly against buying EoD, because i felt that most classes were poorly designed and just a straightup powercreep. But after a long duell session against a harbinger in pvplobby.... i had enough. This guy was SO BAD! He was just mindlessly standing in my AoE´s, he was eating every CC skill that i had and i swear to god he did not dodge anything.... Yet i got completly clapped when playing my... id say pretty good Fireweaver......  i just had no chance... he could make 15 mistakes and i do 0 and still loose.

So i threw all my honor out of the window... bought EoD and created a Necro!

i NEVER....NEVER NEVER ever played Necro before.... well guess what.

People that were HUGE obstacles for me (after a while you know your few people that duell there alot) were suddenly freekills. No challenge whatsoever. Just PEW PEW PEW -> Dead. Guess who Queued Ranked right after this experience and got 12 Wins in a row... Yeah! How can anyone defend this?! When almost 5 years of exclusively playing Elementalis followed by 5 more Years of playing Ranger and Ele.... will not even bring me close to the level of performance that i will have when playing Necor/Harbinger for the literal first time... THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING OFF WITH THE BALANCING!

Imagine you putting YEARS into a profession... you feel yourself getting better and better.. you feel really good about your skillevel by now....        you then create a necro out of frustration and right in your first hour of playing it you greatly exceed the level of performance that you grew over the last 10 years.... DISGUSTING! 

You have so many people claiming Gw2 is about Skill.... when in reality it is all about playing the "Flavor of the Month". I think there is nothing that shows this clearer than this example.

#Please dont nerf Harbinger, as i just paid 30 Bucks to gain free elo in spvp. Thanks.

((Opinions of a player who has never touched Necro in PVP, expects & invites Harbinger nerfs at June 28th patch, and strives to meet every challenge head-on))

Sahne, this is less about you specifically and moreso this general flavor of PVPer (especially since Harbinger & Willbender are the latest in combat-mentality brainrot), but put plainly;

Hours playing a class, by itself, does not matter when it comes to combat-effectiveness.

 

While your anecdotal experience with this Harbinger player is very common and reasonably true, the outcome you derived from it is a strong indicator why you are not at the combat-effectiveness you want to be.

-------------------------------------------

Quick definition aside

Now combat-effectiveness, personally, is a simple combination of;

(Personal Skill) + (Class Rank)

Personal Skill encompasses things like;

i) Experience (basically data, ie Raw play hours, familiarity from similar games) 

ii) Integration (ie HOW you process experiential data and translate that to tangible improvement)

iii) Tangible Skillset (things that are directly affected by improvement, ie reaction time, skill-timing, CC placement, dodging, combo construction, decision-making, etc)

Class Rank encompasses mainly; 

i) Mechanics (how does your class fair both in isolation and in relation to other classes)

-----------------------------------------------

I won't begin to pretend like I have any idea how the fire Weaver/Harbinger matchup is like (it really could be as depressing as you claim it to be), but what you have to realize is that whatever it is, the Class Rank between *your class of choice* and *top tiers (ie Harbinger and Willbender)* are (mostly) out of your control.

 

^This is, granted, a fairly straightforward realization, but it is where many players stop. They say things like "I've played 900 hours on my class and I cannot beat (x) new class/build = ALL i need to win is to play (x) class/build = (x) class/build is broken = Anet fix your game".

>This kind of player banks their success on patch-to-patch balance, and therefore they are very likely to be dominant in a favorable patch, but weak-to-nonexistent in an unfavorable one. (this is the degenerate "Flavor of the Month" mentality you talked about, but you also exhibit it but on the receiving end)

 

However, if the two barriers to success in combat are Personal Skill and Class Rank, and one of those is fundamentally OUT OF YOUR CONTROL, then it raises two crucial (but difficult to swallow) realizations about your future experiences with this game;

1) You are not entitled to success.

The most consistently good players have accepted the following;

>In ANY patch, there are going to be matchups that you are VERY likely not to win

>Anet has the power to make your build as unviable as they wish, and other builds as viable as they wish

>10 years of experience is just that. Experience (Data!). There are players that have only been playing for <2 years that will smoke you, easily.

>You will lose against low-skill players on meta builds

>You will definitely lose against high-skill players on meta builds

>You will lose against high-skill players on non-meta builds

>You'll even lose against "low-skill" players on your own build ((this might the hardest to accept, even for me))

 

These are all situations and events that are likely to trigger the version of you that tries to protect yourself (blaming balance, reinforcing how much experience you have, going to PVP-forum.com to type out your frustrations, etc), a.k.a your Ego. I'm sure we've all heard about ego here and there, but in relation to PVP, an overactive ego puts up deceptive mental blocks that focuses our attention on external outcomes and blinds us to any possibility of personal responsibility. It's up to you to recognize these blocks and streamline your improvement.

Your 10 years of experience does not entitle you to beat a player with 1 year of experience (same with PVP rank). That player could have a combo that you've never seen before, you could have a poor judgement of your spacing, you could be having an off-day, or they simply just rolled you with their beefy Harbinger autos. The result is still the same;

You can't beat everybody. You won't beat everybody. It's not about beating everybody.

 

2) GW2 really is about skill

In that it is your only constant solace against the uncontrollable nature of Class Rank. Even at its best, it will not carry you above and beyond EVERY top-tier class/build (see point 1 if you still feel any resistance to this), but pure & outright success is not realistic. Remember Class Rank is not up to you.

>Vindicator got slapped, Mechanist got slapped, MM Necro got slapped, Holo is outshined, Herald is outshined, Crev got slapped, Firebrand got slapped, the list goes on. If you put stock into any of these builds solely by their Class Rank against other builds at the time, you're probably long gone onto the next meta build.

 

I forget which video exactly it was, but I watched one of Sindrener's recent thief gameplays, and in the comments someone asked what he thought about the upcoming balance patch in terms of Necro changes. Sindrener replied with tbf the most beautiful response about balance I've ever heard; "Idc about balance".

>It sounds like a doomer take, but what I got out of this was that the best players accept hard matchups for what they are. Hard. Unfair. Rage-inducing. Disgusting. Degenerate. Broken. *insert Expletive*. And in spite of it, they struggle, practice, and experiment their way around it. And even if they can't, they are still much a better player for all the effort.

 

^This is the stance I've personally been trying to remind myself of more often. And believe me it's not easy (imagine doing it with infamously underperforming classes like Warrior or Core Engi). Disgusting builds will come again and again. We've had plenty before Harbinger, we'll have plenty after. Again it's OK, remember;

You can't beat everybody. You won't beat everybody. It's not about beating everybody.

 

**In defense of Class Rank

None of what I've laid out is to say that advocating for overperforming classes to come down or underperforming classes to come up is wrong. Anet clearly has trends of ignoring both, and addressing both is objectively good for the fun of the most players possible. People want the builds that they play to be good, and if you've had your favorite build nerfed out of existence (beyond any reasonable effort of personal improvement you may want to invest), then you are entirely justified to move to a new class or even to a new game to find fun elsewhere. It's a sad reality, but it happens.

 

TLDR;

12 confuses, 3 crying faces, I have no idea what I'm talking abt, I'm not bad you are, Nerf Harbinger plss (but actually tho)

Edited June 9, 2022 by GeneralBM.5781

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Don’t expect much. Anet’s use of the word diversity in their posts, along with their contradictory application of nerf balance changes, to those statements, implies that Anet also does not know what or how diversity works, or how it’s connected to balance…in other words they have no idea what they are doing.
 

Sorry but you don’t get more diversity on Earth by dropping nukes on the planet, or paving the whole planet in a homogenous layer of cement. The moment people (Anet included) realize how stupid the current balance philosophies are is when we will see some meaningful change…until then…

Edited June 7, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Kuma.1503]

37 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Don’t expect much. Anet’s use of the word diversity in their posts, along with their contradictory application of nerf balance changes, to those statements, implies that Anet also does not know what or how diversity works, or how it’s connected to balance…in other words they have no idea what they are doing.
 

Sorry but you don’t get more diversity on Earth by dropping nukes on the planet, or paving the whole planet in a homogenous layer of cement. The moment people (Anet included) realize how stupid the current balance philosophies are is when we will see some meaningful change…until then…

ANet: Wow we didn't think about it that way. I think we will nerf core engi again. 

It would help if some of the more prominant voices/streamers would stop advocating for this...  ahem... "balance". The voices of these people hold real weight in the community. The major win trade drama should be proof of that.

 

Community voice also matters. Everyone complained about mechanist because "It doesn't belong in PvP"  and it appeared in every cough... "balance" patch as a result. The general sentiment once it was finally dead "good riddance"

(Dwayna forbid the Engineers, the builders and inventors of this fantasy world start building things to help them in combat in this combat oriented game. Stop hiding behind your inventions you cowards!)

Hearing one particular british streamer unironically applaud Anet for these ''balance'' changes, and then seeing others agree with him... It's positive reinforcement for bad decisions. 

The only way I can see this changing is if someone else with a large enough voice starts to challenge the "Nerf X" rhetoric that permeates so much of the community. Once the overwhelming community feedback changes, Anet may very well listen. They've been receptive up until now.