Why PvP is so frustrating now.

[Kuma.1503]

1. Damage is too High

If you make a single mistake in today's PvP you just explode. If we're only talking 1 person, you might be able to survive a half of a full combo if you've built somewhat on the beefier side. The instant you throw in a 2nd person, you are just dead. Roaming around the map as 2+ glass canons and blowing people is a very viable tactic. 

While some may find this fun. It becomes a problem when you consider that...

2. Survivability has been gutted. 

With a few noteworthy exceptions (Bladesworn), survivability options have been systematically gutted in Gw2. Lets look at Engineer as an example. It's my main so I'm imtimately familiar with it's patch history. Engineer used to have a variety of tankier builds to choose from. 

We've had various tanky or bruiser scrapper builds in the past. Nades used to be an uncommon sight on scrappers because you're giving up an entire weapon slot for only damage. Instead of nades, you saw Elixir Gun, Elixir U, Bulwark Gyro, Purge Gyro on occasion, Elixir S. Options that would let them thrive in prolonged fights. What do Scrappers do now? They play to one shot out of stealth. Pretty much every Scrapper you see runs nade kit because every other option has been hit with the nerf bat. Your average scrapper has 1 stunbreak and no cleanse. 

In the past, Holosmiths used to run Alchemy. This gave them a buffer shield in Elixir E that would keep them from being one shot. I'll be the first to admit that Holo had way more sustain than it should, but nontheless... We've seen Holosmith's dropping Alchemy in exhange for tools. Less surviability. More Damage. Builds like prot holo are dead. You're going Tools, Explosions, and you're playing to blow up targets before they can react. 

Amulets like Knights, Cavaliers, Barbarian, Celestial have all been removed. Paladin's is a joke. We used to see bruisery Reapers running paladin amulet. That's no longer a thing. Even in the explosive Pre Feb2020 era, these options existed. 

The end result is that there's nothing most classes can do or build to avoid being one tapped by a sweaty duo running 2 power roamers. If a willbender + Herald wants you dead, you best one shot them back or pick a god and pray. For less experienced players, this means that you're dead before you even get to play the game. Playing off-meta is more frustrating than ever. 

 

3. The newbies have gotten frustraded by points 1 and 2 and quit

It's not fun to get blown up before you can react because you missed any of the... lets be frank, dubious tells in this game. It would be better if they could at least throw some skills back before they die, enjoy a bit of back and forth, watch their healthbar go down, adjust their strategy based on the feedback the game gives them, but increasingly these days, you're dead with little clue of what happened to you. 

So newbies quit. The matchmaker has fewer people to put into queue, so games get more imbalanced. Plats get matched with silvers. The game is no longer about trying to beat other players of roughly equal skill. It's about farming the opposing team's newbies harder than they can farm yours. 

 

4. What do we do about it?

Some people wont like this, but we bring survivability back up. We look at some of these builds that have been killed off over time, and we reintroduce tools to help these builds function. We reintroduce toughness amulets, bring back 1k healing power amulets. Put paladin amulet back to 500 vit/toughness. 

Variety is the spice of life, and its' what helps to balance out a game. Builds need natural predators, and a bruiser with moderate damage and above average durability is the natural predator to your average +1 roamer. These builds need to come back. Supports (other than core Guard and Tempest) need to come back. Build diversity needs to come back. Until that happens, PvP is going to continue to bleed players because the game isn't fun for the people getting farmed on repeat. 

 

[CallousEye.5018]

I think that one thing that should be mentioned is that because damage is so high, the current best builds have a way to do their full damage while being completely immune to damage.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

PvP isn't bleeding players because damage is generally too high. It's bleeding players because:

• the builds that deal high damage often also have a myriad of tools on low cooldown that help them survive,
• the outliers for damage dealing and damage mitigation remain undealt with for long enough stretches of time that they become extremely prevalent in pvp, while other classes are immediately acted upon. 

You wouldn't have people complaining about minute long stun chains, virtuoso blockstrings, and so on and so forth if it was this simple. 

Survivability isn't bad. buffing it across the board is another cycle of the same thing we did a couple years ago. When build X can obliterate people for 10k+ shots from stealth and you've telegraphed very clearly that doing so isn't the gamestate you envisioned (by nerfing other classes that can hit you for 10k+ without jumping through hoops, sometimes preemptively), you create a situation where one class dominates the others simply because it survives nerfbatting for longer. Do that routine for long enough, and people stop thinking you have the capacity to find a solution.

Most people on these forums have a clear intent to defend their classes when they overperform that they don't extend to other classes, so it is up to the developers to understand the game as it currently stands, determine what options are available to a player that is engaged by or engages one of the current flavor builds, and get that adjusted ASAP if there are no or limited options available that rely on something more nebulous than knowing how to use your skills or evade, like... say, knowing what side of a hut to stand on so you dont get thanosed by someone standing well out of melee range.  

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Kuma.1503]

4 minutes ago, CallousEye.5018 said:

I think that one thing that should be mentioned is that because damage is so high, the current best builds have a way to do their full damage while being completely immune to damage.

This is true. 

It's that, or porting on you through walls, or ganking from stealth. Put a Willbender together with a Scrapper/DrD and you can experience all 3. 

[Kuma.1503]

14 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

PvP isn't bleeding players because damage is generally too high. It's bleeding players because:

• the builds that deal high damage often also have a myriad of tools on low cooldown that help them survive
• the outliers for damage dealing and damage mitigation remain undealt with for long enough stretches of time that they become extremely prevalent in pvp, while other classes are immediately acted upon.

You wouldn't have people complaining about minute long stun chains, virtuoso blockstrings, and so on and so forth if it was this simple. 

Survivability isn't bad. buffing it across the board is another cycle of the same thing we did a couple years ago. When build X can obliterate people for 10k+ shots from stealth and you've telegraphed very clearly that doing so isn't the gamestate you envisioned (by nerfing other classes that can hit you for 10k+ without jumping through hoops, sometimes preemptively), you create a situation where one class dominates the others simply because it survives nerfbatting for longer. Do that routine for long enough, and people stop thinking you have the capacity to find a solution.

 

I'm actually going to agree and disagree. 

I think that it's a combination of both issues. Glass canons have too much damage while being able to chain blocks/invulns/blinds to avoid counterpressure. 

AND

Your traditional bruiser build (like Paladin Reaper, Sidenode Scrapper, ect) have been nerfed to irrelevance, forcing people to play these glass canons that rely on mechanics like blocks/invulns/stealth to survive. 

Scrappers are dropping all of their cleanse/stunbreaks/ect. and are running Nades + Stealth instead. They try to one shot out of stelath. Run away with superspeed and toss nades 180 degrees if it fails. 

Supp FB is dead, the best results I've had on it unironically, is turning it into a build that ports on to targets, spams aegis, blocks and blinds, and tries to blow them up with quickness. It simultanously kills targets while chaining instant cast defensives. 

 

I cut the post short because there are a lot of problems with PvP (Animations!), but the big issue here is pigeonholing people into one specific build archetype. 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

22 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Your traditional bruiser build (like Paladin Reaper, Sidenode Scrapper, ect) have been nerfed to irrelevance, forcing people to play these glass canons that rely on mechanics like blocks/invulns/stealth to survive. 

If you buff mitigation directly across the board, this:

• will make the oneshot builds more valuable (which will increase their playrate)
• will cause additional trouble for the builds that aren't oneshot builds/builds that don't build to survive the oneshot builds. 

Just axe the builds/skills that can erase you from stealth or have magnetic high damage skills that stick to you and autotrack if the initial damage packet hits. It was done for Deadeye DJ, why not for invisimaul/pigbeast/etc? Thief was rebalanced because the conquest game centered around who had the better one regardless of its relegation to roaming; I propose any other class denomination that takes that role should get similar treatment. It's the same desired end result that you want, but cleaner without introducing a bunch of immortal builds that we then have to balance as well. 

If something hits you for 10k+ and it can come out of nowhere, it should only take a few documented instances of people getting wiped off the map by it to get an emergency patch for that specific class, like they did when sunspot was bugged. 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

edited, when you finish typing, btw. 

[Kuma.1503]

5 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

If you buff mitigation directly across the board, this:

• will make the oneshot builds more valuable (which will increase their playrate)
• will cause additional trouble for the builds that aren't oneshot builds/builds that don't build to survive the oneshot builds. 

Just axe the builds/skills that can erase you from stealth or have magnetic high damage skills that stick to you and autotrack if the initial damage packet hits. It was done for Deadeye DJ, why not for invisimaul/pigbeast/etc? Thief was rebalanced because the game centered around who had the better one; I propose any other class denomination that takes that role should get similar treatment. IF something hits you for 10k+ and it can come out of nowhere, It should only take a few documented instances of people getting wiped off the map by it to get an emergency patch for that specific class. 

 

 

That's a fair point.  

I'm curious, what is your opinion on reintroducing amulets to PvP? Do you think it's beneficial to remove toughness/vit/healing power from the game? Would bringing these back backfire and cause these high damage archetypes to become stronger? 

Say, for example. Deadeye started running Cavalier instead of Zerker amulet vs an opponent also running Cavalier. It's easy to point out problems, and difficult to propose solutions, so I am genuinely curious. 

[Sereath.1428]

On 8/28/2023 at 5:20 PM, Kuma.1503 said:

I'm actually going to agree and disagree. 

I think that it's a combination of both issues. Glass canons have too much damage while being able to chain blocks/invulns/blinds to avoid counterpressure. 

AND

Your traditional bruiser build (like Paladin Reaper, Sidenode Scrapper, ect) have been nerfed to irrelevance, forcing people to play these glass canons that rely on mechanics like blocks/invulns/stealth to survive. 

Scrappers are dropping all of their cleanse/stunbreaks/ect. and are running Nades + Stealth instead. They try to one shot out of stelath. Run away with superspeed and toss nades 180 degrees if it fails. 

Supp FB is dead, the best results I've had on it unironically, is turning it into a build that ports on to targets, spams aegis, blocks and blinds, and tries to blow them up with quickness. It simultanously kills targets while chaining instant cast defensives. 

 

I cut the post short because there are a lot of problems with PvP (Animations!), but the big issue here is pigeonholing people into one specific build archetype. 

Yeah pretty much this, many things have been pushed to only have one playstyle. Making sure people die within 2 seconds.

I'll use revenant as an example now.

Retribution traitline = nerfed to uselessness long ago
Last time vindicator got nerfed it received multiple damage and sustain core nerfs. Including a severe nerf to the utility dodge that used to be competitive, Imperial Impact. (And the barrier jump was essentially deleted from the game mode long ago)
So what do people do now?
Take the damage jump since its the only good one by far now, 3-4k dodge that comes with a 10s +15% damage buff and 10 vulnerability stacks.
Take Devastation which in average increases damage by 50% from modifiers and might.
And just so you can have an impact on the team, the spec feels like kitten to play with its 30s cd - 3ksomething channeled heals with a 9s cd on alliance swap, so theres no other way to play it but to PT from range and hope you can quickly kill someone not looking at you. Same with Herald actually, both specs play pretty much the same way, which is ridiculous.
Still not tournament worthy though, which is crazy since it means that other specs are even better at dealing damage and surviving.

Amulets need to return and be unnerfed, such as Paladins and even Marauders.
It's that simple, this is an MMORPG, equipment choices should be a big factor.
Balancing this game mode around 20 people has made it unbearable for everyone else.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Sereath.1428

[Lighter.5631]

damage has been tuned back to pre-2020 level, arent people happy?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

12 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

That's a fair point.  

I'm curious, what is your opinion on reintroducing amulets to PvP? Do you think it's beneficial to remove toughness/vit/healing power from the game? Would bringing these back backfire and cause these high damage archetypes to become stronger? 

Say, for example. Deadeye started running Cavalier instead of Zerker amulet vs an opponent also running Cavalier. It's easy to point out problems, and difficult to propose solutions, so I am genuinely curious. 

I think amulets should be added back in and have always thought that being unwilling to do the hard work to understand why classes running x amulet were immortal or unhealthy was why they got removed to begin with. 

A class running the bunkeriest amulet should STILL have cooldowns and trait stipulations that allow it to be killed by someone that knows what they are. That should be baked into the class.

A class running the most toxic damage burst setup should have that setup afforded only if they give up their mobility, more practical defenses, or cooldowns (or a mix of both. The harder and easier you hit, the easier you should fold. )

Anything in between that should be balanced appropriately. Theres a bunch of amulets that could return if the devs take the time to visit the builds they enable and make sure they have exploitable openings. 

[Sereath.1428]

Just now, Lighter.5631 said:

damage has been tuned back to pre-2020 level, arent people happy?

You cant be this dense, skills that were never buffed are this strong right now because of the constant nerfs to everything else. And also thanks to the removal of anything defensive coming from amulets and runes.
Power is relative.

[Kuma.1503]

33 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I think amulets should be added back in and have always thought that being unwilling to do the hard work to understand why classes running x amulet were immortal or unhealthy was why they got removed to begin with. 

A class running the bunkeriest amulet should STILL have cooldowns and trait stipulations that allow it to be killed by someone that knows what they are. That should be baked into the class.

A class running the most toxic damage burst setup should have that setup afforded only if they give up their mobility, more practical defenses, or cooldowns (or a mix of both. The harder and easier you hit, the easier you should fold. )

Anything in between that should be balanced appropriately. Theres a bunch of amulets that could return if the devs take the time to visit the builds they enable and make sure they have exploitable openings. 

Gotcha. I'm with you 100% on this. Building for high damage, high mobility, or high durability should come with trade-offs. 

Builds like pre-nerf Holosmith with high damage, sustain, tankiness, and mobility should not exist. Nor should bunkers with high sustain that never run out of steam. Like we saw with Mender Scourge. 

Nor should the current meta build archetype, which is glass canons with high mobility and high block/invuln/reflect uptime. 

 

Every build should have to give up something important to gain something important. Every build should have moments of vulnerability where the opponent can pressure them back and threaten a kill, and it should not take an unreasonably long time before they become vulnerable to counterpressure (Pre Nerf Catalyst and Virtuoso). 

Anet tried to impliment trade-offs in the past, but it was done in the laziest way possible.  They really need to dig down to the nitty gritty of each class if they want to add actual trade-offs to each class. Easier said than done, but hey... that's why game design is a field people go to college for. 

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[Shagie.7612]

1 hour ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

• the builds that deal high damage often also have a myriad of tools on low cooldown that help them survive,

i think you can generalize this a bit into some specs just having a ton of buttons that all do too much in general (whether that's damage, survivability, mobility, or whatever), where a lot of the underperformers don't have nearly as many or nearly as effective ones

the thing that tilts me the most currently:
playing something on the squishier side now that things like willbender and rev can bring a longbow or shortbow just gets you gatekept and ground into the dirt because you can't kite anymore, and the various high damage/one shot builds just having significantly more options and responses than you but still having just as much damage

[Mell.4873]

36 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

I'm actually going to agree and disagree. 

I think that it's a combination of both issues. Glass canons have too much damage while being able to chain blocks/invulns/blinds to avoid counterpressure. 

AND

Your traditional bruiser build (like Paladin Reaper, Sidenode Scrapper, ect) have been nerfed to irrelevance, forcing people to play these glass canons that rely on mechanics like blocks/invulns/stealth to survive. 

Scrappers are dropping all of their cleanse/stunbreaks/ect. and are running Nades + Stealth instead. They try to one shot out of stelath. Run away with superspeed and toss nades 180 degrees if it fails. 

Supp FB is dead, the best results I've had on it unironically, is turning it into a build that ports on to targets, spams aegis, blocks and blinds, and tries to blow them up with quickness. It simultanously kills targets while chaining instant cast defensives. 

 

I cut the post short because there are a lot of problems with PvP (Animations!), but the big issue here is pigeonholing people into one specific build archetype. 

You know what I kind of agree, with the advent of all these one-shot builds. We have seen the return of both support and brawler builds.

Some Classes Like Warrior, Elementalist and Guardian are just inherently tanky and don't need extra stats but other fall behind since they lack defensive tools, mainly the Medium Armor classes.

[Sahne.6950]

13 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

knowing what side of a hut to stand on so you dont get thanosed by someone standing well out of melee range.  

I actually spat coffee on my Keyboard, because that made me laugh.

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

There are plenty of tanky builds that you can play, it just takes more skill to pull it off than previous patches. You can't just sit there and expect to live because you took amulet X and traitline Y. This game has moved away from passive tankyness to active defensives. Use your cooldowns properly!

There are a few DPS outliers that need a damage output reduction, such as soulbeast, NADES, and chronomancer, but the majority of builds feel fine. Deadeye also feels pretty ridiculous as well. 

Engineer is a bad example to point at balance ATM because it kinda sucks in general. The class either lacks damage or lacks stunbreaks. Engi needs an ammo skill stunbreak! Or toolkit F skill needs to be a stunbreak. 

Edited August 29, 2023 by WhoWantsAHug.3186

[Curennos.9307]

46 minutes ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

There are plenty of tanky builds that you can play, it just takes more skill to pull it off than previous patches. You can't just sit there and expect to live because you took amulet X and traitline Y. This game has moved away from passive tankyness to active defensives. Use your cooldowns properly!

There are a few DPS outliers that need a damage output reduction, such as soulbeast, NADES, and chronomancer, but the majority of builds feel fine. Deadeye also feels pretty ridiculous as well. 

Engineer is a bad example to point at balance ATM because it kinda sucks in general. The class either lacks damage or lacks stunbreaks. Engi needs an ammo skill stunbreak! Or toolkit F skill needs to be a stunbreak. 

Re: DE, as someone who has mostly mained that spec (I like my pewpew). I find it really bonkers that some specs are allowed to maintain easily accessed (either really easily, or relatively speaking) quickness while others are not. Best example of this - scrapper. Their quickness share trait was changed to give fury instead of quickness in spvp, yet harb still has quite easy quickenss share, DE still has quickness on mark, reaper still has it. Anet made a point to remove that quickness on weapon swap sigil a while back and to nuke specific sources of quickness on classes, but seems to have failed to maintain consistency across the board.

That isn't to say DE's quickness is the same as other sources, or that they're all 1-1 comparable. I still have people look me dead in the eye (heh) as I cast mark on them, gap close, and spam a burst skill. DE has, what, a 2 sec window - so it's not excessively broken, but still (and imo it has a rather large tell/distinct sound). My DE has to compete with mesmers, rangers (took 10k damage from two strike of one wolf pack the other day, ouch...), and so on - and it feels like I have to run crit strikes, zerk, etc to gain equivalent burst to my competitors who has more health and defenses anyway. I wonder how many DEs *aren't* running the quickness GM trait at this point, and how much harder is it to secure kills/contribute without it. I've tried M7 in the past, and while it is lovely for sustained damage, it doesn't really give DE the durability it needs to fully capitalize off it, imo. You're still a squishy thief and a few secosnd of prot isn't going to change that. Anyway I forget where I was going with this.

Edit: Wait I remembered. Yeah, DE has some issues. I'd like to see skrim shot damage nerfed, but three round burst buffed (consensus has been for quite a while that rifle 2 spam is superior in every way despite 3 being the dedicated 'damage' skill) and two round burst (is that even it's name? I don't know, never used it) changed to utility instead of an even worse version of TRB. A conal mid-range AoE would be super cool. Then decrease ranger longbow and kneeling rifle range to 1200 or something. 1500 is bonkers.

I don't want DE overall damage touched much - especially since judgement damage seems to be much lower lately. I think once we get out of this uber glass cannon burst meta and folks run a bit more durability, DE will be less of an issue since its burst (and its success or lack thereeof) is very dependent on the opponent's setup. Right now, I can get kills because everyone is bursty but also rather squishy - a little bit more tankiness and I think the issue will be diminished. Imo, at least. Could be wrong. But I'd like DE, particularly rifle, to be more fun to play against, cause rn it's just like ranger longbow.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Curennos.9307

[Khalisto.5780]

i dont think survivability has been gutted at all, the wrong things are abnoxiously tanky, like supp guard and scourge

[Downstate.4697]

Ideal PvP for me is core guild wars 2.  Low health professions had access to more boons to compensate and dedicated healers were not needed because everyone had a heal. 
 

Not really sure what ideal PvP looks like these days. I think part of the problem is the impact kills have on a game mode that involves holding nodes. Downstate and bleeding out durations have far too big of an impact on snowballing and map control which leads to a game state where pumping out damage will always be the best option. 
 

Too bad anet could care less 

[atshadow.8695]

53 minutes ago, Downstate.4697 said:

Ideal PvP for me is core guild wars 2.  Low health professions had access to more boons to compensate and dedicated healers were not needed because everyone had a heal. 
 

Not really sure what ideal PvP looks like these days. I think part of the problem is the impact kills have on a game mode that involves holding nodes. Downstate and bleeding out durations have far too big of an impact on snowballing and map control which leads to a game state where pumping out damage will always be the best option. 
 

Too bad anet could care less 

I can only imagine how much fun gw2 could be with just core profs. imo almost all elite profs are gimmicky bs.

classic gw2 when? 😁

Edited August 29, 2023 by atshadow.8695

[mesme.6724]

I 100% agree with you . i am not new to the game but also dont have 1000 hours in either . i am rank 32 spvp and 6 wvw . i have a level 80 of every class except rev. just started playing again about a month ago , but already considering not playing due to how bursty this meta is . feel like there is almost no build diversity at all . yesterday against a chrono died in about 10 seconds after 2 dodges 1 invul a block and a few heals . thats way to fast to die on a core guard built for defense .

[Sereath.1428]

40 minutes ago, mesme.6724 said:

I 100% agree with you . i am not new to the game but also dont have 1000 hours in either . i am rank 32 spvp and 6 wvw . i have a level 80 of every class except rev. just started playing again about a month ago , but already considering not playing due to how bursty this meta is . feel like there is almost no build diversity at all . yesterday against a chrono died in about 10 seconds after 2 dodges 1 invul a block and a few heals . thats way to fast to die on a core guard built for defense .

Oh no, you will now probably get lectured by a conquest fanatic. "Supports should never be tanky, they ruin conquest for the 26 of us that like it! A ttk of 2-10 seconds is just chef's kiss."

Edited August 29, 2023 by Sereath.1428

[Madam Pussycat.6153]

TRue, I can't even play healer anymore because even healer dies instantly in this 1 shot meta mess, also there hasn't been a good healer amulet in ages. I imagine it's very un-fun for newbies

[Flowki.7194]

5 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

i dont think survivability has been gutted at all, the wrong things are abnoxiously tanky, like supp guard and scourge

 

All my money on this. The real issue with this game is that effort is not equal to reward, not even close. If you take dodges out of the picture for just a second, you soon see the immense 4 button power creep in one sense (like SB/chrono/scrapper kill time) and the immense ''defense creep'' on the other (like gaurd/necro/BS/Virt being facetank friendly). Between the casual burst and causual tank, are specs that are simply not justified in effort, as they have to navigate the 2 extremes while having lower kill times or facetank, which make them more subject to being punised for error.

 

Nerfing ele into the ground was a big mistake, specs taking its place do way more dmg sooner, and require less effort, or tank dmg with much easier mechanics.

 

Personally im playing vindi support as tempest just doesn't give the reward to justify the effort. On dps I just sit back with chrono, doing 40/50% team damage for spamming the same 5 abilitys; why did I ever bother with the complexity of power cata?