Is there a reason why GW2 PvP is so poorly balanced?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

Just now, ccccc.4963 said:

they could also ban every ele player

lmao

Nah the sweetspot for it being usable and not obnoxious is there, they just keep missing it.

 

Quote

Game mechanics =/= class balance

 

What are classes, if not a bundle of game mechanics?

What is class balance if not pitting a bundle of game mechanics against another and making sure both of them have a reasonable way to win out against the other (or, if one loses against another, it wins in a situation that would give the one it loses against trouble?) 

[ccccc.4963]

3 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

What are classes, if not a bundle of game mechanics?

My game mechanics post was about the OP/Mukkluk video -- Class balance is fine and needed when it comes to a singular class or build dominating multiple/every pvp role i.e sig cata that dominated 1v1s/teamfights/roaming 

7 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

and making sure both of them have a reasonable way to win out against the other

Okay but we cant use clips of roamers +1ing clueless players to push balancing discussions?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

24 minutes ago, ccccc.4963 said:

My game mechanics post was about the OP/Mukkluk video -- Class balance is fine and needed when it comes to a singular class or build dominating multiple/every pvp role i.e sig cata that dominated 1v1s/teamfights/roaming 

Okay but we cant use clips of roamers +1ing clueless players to push balancing discussions?

Oh.

We both agree.

Carry on. I just had a hangup with the solved thing.💀

[Alin.2468]

PvP of Guild Wars 2 died with the official vote for SoloQ from players, which was requested and organised in 2016. That moment marked the end of eSports scene for Guild Wars 2, as even ESL and Battlefy removed it from their lists a few months later. Since that vote in 2016, barely any content was added to PvP. This is why in my opinion PvP was killed at that vote which eliminated teams, and buried the whole concept afterwards using one expansion after another through no meaningful content designed for PvP.

The new expansion Secrets of Obscure already showcased nothing for PvP. I believe it to be crystal clear to anyone by now: this game is almost entirely about PvE, because players have chosen and voted. Decision of players must be respected, because it is their choice. Vox populi, vox dei.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Alin.2468

[Bazsi.2734]

A 5 month old video featuring builds that have been nerfed since, and very questionable gamelplay decisions that make me question if Muk is really plat... what is the point we're trying to make here?

[Psycoprophet.8107]

It's poorly balanced because the devs arnt great at balancing the classes, most the community feed back regarding helping the devs balance is gbage like 95% of the time as well. The matchmaking doesn't work very well these days because population is so low making balance feel worse. Players join pvp and either afk or don't even give a crap to rotate properly cuz they just want rewards and don't care about their performance or their teamates enjoyment of the match.  The game doesn't teach new players the mechanics of pvp and these players get stuck in matches against gold and plats which is frustrating on both sides leading to matches being either stomps or a waste of time because someone's afk. One thing I've noticed a lot recently is on many games ull be way up on the other team in points and all the sudden ur team will start acting like its their first match and ull go from like 350-120 and lose 400-500, its wierd but has happened so many times lately.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Szymon.5369]

3 hours ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

A 5 month old video featuring builds that have been nerfed since, and very questionable gamelplay decisions that make me question if Muk is really plat... what is the point we're trying to make here?

Content, the point is content. People too often treat streamers like unfallible oracles, while in reality Muk probably got tilted that day and made a YouTube equivalent of a rage tweet and now people overanalyze it.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Szymon.5369

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Not hating on him, but you really shouldnt listen to muk about the problems with pvp. He has basically no positional awareness and wanders out in the open by himself, then wonders why 3 people jump on him. He complains about cata but any high dps build would have done exactly the same. The overpowered problem with cata is their sustain which didnt even matter in any of these clips.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

15 hours ago, Alin.2468 said:

PvP of Guild Wars 2 died with the official vote for SoloQ from players, which was requested and organised in 2016. That moment marked the end of eSports scene for Guild Wars 2, as even ESL and Battlefy removed it from their lists a few months later. Since that vote in 2016, barely any content was added to PvP. This is why in my opinion PvP was killed at that vote which eliminated teams, and buried the whole concept afterwards using one expansion after another through no meaningful content designed for 

The reason it got retired from those handlers is because the pvp meta at that point was boring. Anet had balanced into a bunker meta and the matches showcased for the esports sprint were uneventful and uninteresting.

Keep in mind no teams that played in the esports sprint were affected by the soloq vote. Tournaments were not and are not solo q.

The solo q vote was a factor in population decline (because people with friends they like will tend to want to play with them repeatedly), but the ultimate cause of the esports fumble and anets (seeming) subsequent abandonment of the sphere was largely its own fault.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

What the hell? This balance team is awesome and this is by far one of the better games balancewise, that I've ever played! *wink*
(Got mod'ed for saying the opposite)

When you hire people with 0 experience, what do you expect?

Edited August 1, 2023 by Lincolnbeard.1735

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

On 7/30/2023 at 9:03 AM, Chronardis.4028 said:

Oh man, you should check WoW PvP if you think this is unbalanced. 

Yeah, people should take a look at WoW PvP and realize that giving people a lot of options and not equalizing gear can be made more balanced than GW2's PvP somehow.

[Altinar.1765]

On 7/29/2023 at 3:18 PM, Gehenna.3625 said:

Because it's an MMO. That's the short answer to your question.

That's honestly the most succinct answer to this whole discussion. Look at WoW, it's the exact same story and always has been: yes, if you're skilled you can compete on any class, but there will always be some large (often, in my eyes, accidental but left in intentionally) class tuning missteps that end up going unaddressed for a while, which leads to the timeless "flavor of the month" nature of MMO pvp. Take that along with there being entire subcommunities of players devoted to optimizing the best possible build for pvp and you will very rarely see a time where there isn't some build/spec/trinket/whatever that is balanced well in one context but completely outperforms most other things in another context. I could go on for ages on my personal take about pvp in general, but I'll just say that it's the nature of the beast, and you can either learn to play the meta yourself to compete or put in the work to figure out how to counter it on other classes/builds (note: there is not always a counter). If neither of those sound fun, pvp probably isn't for you, but don't sweat it because pvp in any live service game that has been around as long as GW2 or longer will always be a niche community because of how much better/differently high level players understand it than a beginner or even a veteran.

And for anyone who thinks WoW pvp is any more balanced, you clearly weren't around for Wrath when warriors could one-shot anyone with a bug where Bladestorm + Sweeping Strikes caused 10+ swings in a single second, or the entirety of Shadowlands where Rogues could one-shot coming out of stealth, just to name two prominent examples that lasted for months or even years.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Altinar.1765

[Chaos God.1639]

I also think that its mostly the pve players, that don't like the pvp/wvw in gw2, who complain here. they mostly play gw2 for the pve content and after they try pvp/wvw again for whatever reason they are not happy, complain and go back to pve.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Chaos God.1639

[Barabbas.8715]

OP is 100% right about this.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

If u go mid while ur whole team goes home to empty node at start of match...it's gona feel unbalanced hahahaha. Sadly this is the kind of rotations u see from the majority of gw2 pvp players these days, it's beyond bad.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Barabbas.8715]

3 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

If u go mid while ur whole team goes home to empty node at start of match...it's gona feel unbalanced hahahaha. Sadly this is the kind of rotations u see from the majority of gw2 pvp players these days, it's beyond bad.

Yeah, most GW2 PVP players are mentally stunted. I can't even count how many times I've seen one person charge in against 5 enemy players alone. There should be an IQ test before being allowed to play PVP. Really, how can anyone be that dumb? It has to be lead poisoning or something. It isn't natural.

[Spellhunter.9675]

13 hours ago, Altinar.1765 said:

And for anyone who thinks WoW pvp is any more balanced, you clearly weren't around for Wrath when warriors could one-shot anyone with a bug where Bladestorm + Sweeping Strikes caused 10+ swings in a single second, or the entirety of Shadowlands where Rogues could one-shot coming out of stealth, just to name two prominent examples that lasted for months or even years.

 While WoW pvp has a lot of it's own problems, warrior bug was fixed in 2 weeks, Shadowlands Rogue's oneshot (possible with OP pve trinket's) was fixed in a month. 

[Myror.7521]

@Chaos God.1639 100% disagree. I played PvP for about 10 years. Still i now left it behind. Not only matchmaking is Bad  (cause of too low Population) but also the actuall Balance is totaly garbage. This Games PvP is now Balanced around AoE plus Boon spam. Just nothing fun here anymore. It should be balanced around Burst skills and burst combos (that you can Play around Counter Play and stuff but also react to) not just Spam buttons. If i want to mindless spam skills i go to PvE. Although i sweaped to PvE for exactly this reasons and could say im happy i did it. Can't hold this clown fiesta called PvP anymore xd.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Myror.7521

[doozer.7063]

In short: Bad devs

[Flowki.7194]

On 8/1/2023 at 6:44 PM, Altinar.1765 said:

That's honestly the most succinct answer to this whole discussion. Look at WoW, it's the exact same story and always has been: yes, if you're skilled you can compete on any class, but there will always be some large (often, in my eyes, accidental but left in intentionally) class tuning missteps that end up going unaddressed for a while, which leads to the timeless "flavor of the month" nature of MMO pvp. Take that along with there being entire subcommunities of players devoted to optimizing the best possible build for pvp and you will very rarely see a time where there isn't some build/spec/trinket/whatever that is balanced well in one context but completely outperforms most other things in another context. I could go on for ages on my personal take about pvp in general, but I'll just say that it's the nature of the beast, and you can either learn to play the meta yourself to compete or put in the work to figure out how to counter it on other classes/builds (note: there is not always a counter). If neither of those sound fun, pvp probably isn't for you, but don't sweat it because pvp in any live service game that has been around as long as GW2 or longer will always be a niche community because of how much better/differently high level players understand it than a beginner or even a veteran.

And for anyone who thinks WoW pvp is any more balanced, you clearly weren't around for Wrath when warriors could one-shot anyone with a bug where Bladestorm + Sweeping Strikes caused 10+ swings in a single second, or the entirety of Shadowlands where Rogues could one-shot coming out of stealth, just to name two prominent examples that lasted for months or even years.

Wow had issues like any game, but you cannot sit their and say its pvp balancing was anything less than superior to GW2. Just the fact that stuns and immobs had deminished effects put it leaps and bounds ahead of this game. In GW2 being able to stunlock people for 10 seconds (even after using stunbreks), in a game where every class can do over 30k dmg in 10 seconds, is not good balance. There are multiple specs in this game that can jump from stealth, and kill people in under 5 seconds, which is brushed off and justified by ''just dodge''. Removing dodge would be the best step this game could ever take.. becuase the developers would then be forced to deal with the absolutely toxic amount of dps that is being thrown around. They also may then have to deal with stealth and target drops, which are way over used in this game with not near enough downside. 

 

The damage, stealth jumps, stuns and immobs are so bad in this game, that healing barely even matters. The very reason tempest has been meta for so long is entirely down to its ability to reflect block and -% mitigate damage. Core gaurd mostly does the same through block and stability spam, while rev support is just way too complicated+high skill floor in a game where the average dps smashes 5 buttons to kill another player. In wow, multiple players had to coordinate CC and damage to kill things. The game, since I have played it, has degenerated into less and less buttons required to achieve the same or more sustain/dps.

 

The guy is right, this game plays more like an FPS, you are litterally punished time and time again for trying to play any spec that resembles any level of complexity, since more simple specs (scrapper etc) do it better, or more consistantly.

 

Imagine being a DD thief, where just about all of the specs that have stealth/target drops are more simple to play, but are out right better than you in group fights. All you have to keep you feeling relivant is backcaps...

Edited August 3, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Imagine being a DD thief, where just about all of the specs that have stealth/target drops are more simple to play, but are out right better than you in group fights. All you have to keep you feeling relivant is backcaps...

...And then theres a 7 page thread in wvw claiming you have it too easy because of stealth, 3dodges, ports, shadow arts and initiative, with explanations that betray a lack of understanding, resentment, or both?

After nerfs took specter out of sidenoding?

Way ahead of you 💀

Edited August 3, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Sweetbread.3678]

I think on some level they know that the PvP in this game is inherently impossible to balance because the game's PvE focused mechanics don't translate to functioning PvP. For example, active defenses are designed around mitigating damage from world bosses bigger than the screen with already unclear animations (that are further hidden under 50 layers of visual noise), packs of 15+ pocket raptors that completely surround their target, and underwater combat where the player can get hit from any direction on the x, y, and z axes. Active defenses have to be strong and they can't be precise skillshots, because if, for instance, blocks had a directional requirement, how would someone be able to tell which direction the damage was even coming from when fighting most meta bosses? That's fine enough (if kind of a lazy bandaid for unclear animations/targeting) for PvE, but doesn't translate to something like small-scale, competitive PvE at all. It's easy to see why burst damage and CC are so over the top in PvP, because it would be functionally impossible to kill any build with strong active defenses that have been designed from the ground up to not have any real skill check from the user or counterplay from the opponent outside of 100-0ing them in the short break between cooldowns. Essentially they've been forced into a binary situation of creating Unstoppable Forces that can meet the Immovable Objects, while all nuance in-between gets obliterated.

And that's just one mechanic, basically everything in the game is designed that way from the ground up, and even worse for pvp, soley from a "Is this fun and interesting to play?" PvE mindset that completely ignores the "Is this fun and interesting to play against." viewpoint that PvP also requires. I can't really blame them for spending less of their focus on PvP balance when they're stuck in a situation where unless they get the resources to completely overhaul almost all of the game's mechanics for PvP it's just a completely sisyphean task. The best they can do with this system is basically to trade off which specs are completely busted and fotm.

 

[Saiyan.1704]

On 7/29/2023 at 1:05 PM, Whiskiz.3091 said:

From builds that pull in and cc then 1sec spin 100 - 0, to cc'd 3 times in a row by a specter then deleted almost as quick, to basically everything once in the know - being 100 - 0 almost instantly.

If I have 3 glass af players on my team and we target a person at mid, some one is going to get blown up no doubt about it. Muk was running a Druid that I 'guess' is support, but he wasn't tanky and his team definitely wasn't doing anything to support that burst from 3 glass classes.

Every single support class in the game is 100% dependent on their team to make pog plays. The first clip shows a core guard on his team... that core guard should have been support helping mid but I'm betting he was condi guard... which is (awkwardly) popular to use in Ranked but also a very bad spec. Burn guard doesn't work in Plat and he was probably Gold1 in a Plat game.

Muk definitely got blown up quickly but I would argue that if Matchmaking did its job, it wouldn't have been that extreme. But matchmaking IS terrible and we ALL experience these kind of games.

Muk should have gone LB soulbeast vs that comp and attempted to carry on side node. He would have farmed the Engi at the very least.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Saiyan.1704

[Burnfall.9573]

On 8/2/2023 at 5:31 AM, Myror.7521 said:

@Chaos God.1639 100% disagree. I played PvP for about 10 years. Still i now left it behind. Not only matchmaking is Bad  (cause of too low Population) but also the actuall Balance is totaly garbage. This Games PvP is now Balanced around AoE plus Boon spam. Just nothing fun here anymore. It should be balanced around Burst skills and burst combos (that you can Play around Counter Play and stuff but also react to) not just Spam buttons. If i want to mindless spam skills i go to PvE. Although i sweaped to PvE for exactly this reasons and could say im happy i did it. Can't hold this clown fiesta called PvP anymore xd.

"Don't Blame A Clown For Acting Like A Clown Ask Yourself Why You Keep Going To To The Circus"

The best decision I ever made was to stop going to Guild Wars 2 clown fiesta circus shows

Edited August 4, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[michixlol.9340]

I mean come on.. PvP in GW2 has been pretty sh** for a very long time. Devs don't develop anything for PvP anymore. You only have a chance if you go full meta. And there still is a Dragonhunter or something that can twoshot you. And for everyone who says, because MMO, no! In WoW there are never classes that have not chance. When I did PvP in WoW years ago I could improve, I could with every class be helpful. And when I was killed in just a few blows I knew, with better gear this could change. GW2 does nothing with gear tho. Everybody is the same. And still you get two shotted. in some cases. It's stun stun stun dead. 

I try to get into PvP in GW2 very often, but it's poorly designed and it gets no love anymore in any way. There hasn't been a light at the end of the tunnel for many years. And it's always been the same since I started in 2016.