Switching characters while waiting for the match to start should be stopped in the next patch!

[Link.1049]

This was the time in the game where teams were rage quiting because how crappy the meta was.

teams are still rage-quitting when against immortaguard and immortadruid

[Wichidi.9281]

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:i disagree. u should still be able to swap anytime b4 match starts. the problem is just the balance. its been 6 months we having the most annoying and

worst balance ever

lol. if anet was able to balance the game this wouldnt be an issue.

Why do people say that? It's demonstrably

false

. Post HoT was the defacto worse balance period ever. It was so bad that there's people rightfully embarrassed by the memory of that period. It was one of the big motives behind deflating most of the momentum PvP had gained pre-HoT.There were two classes (Tempest and Chronomancer) that were literally unkillable, but also impotent to kill anyone, so basically with 2-3 of those in each team, the match would be pretty much decided in the first couple seconds of the match, by who got the most points before everything got permanently contested, either that or it would become a Deathmatch game between a fraction of the teams.It took them i think two seasons to sort it out (consider also that the first season was 2-3 months after HoT released, so that dragged on for a while). Compared to a class that is strong, but can be easily countered, that loses as often as it wins since it's strong but not unbeatable, i'd say we're far from having the worse balance ever.

wrong. post HOT we had many viable builds. druid, rev, ele, scrapper, reaper, chrono. druid was a good support and so was ele. u could win without a reaper or scrapper or ele etc. those 6 builds were dominating pvp no question BUT none of those builds were INDISPENSABLE

today scourge and firebrand are indispensable

u can have as many spellbreakers mirages druids holos as u want. (basically all the meta builds) but if the enemy team has 1 firebrand and 2 scourges u simply have a huge disatvantage.

Dude, stop channeling Trump. "WRONG", lol, that's sad man...

Post HoT, the first couple of seasons just after HoT release, were utter crap, dominated by tempests and chronos far worse than scourge or firebrand ever do. And unlike scourge and firebrand, they couldn't be countered. If you didn't play then, or don't remember, ok. I do, because it completely took me off PvP for a loong kitten time.And as for your argument, there's even more build variety

now

. The only difference between now and then, is that Scourge and Firebrand can both be outplayed and defeated.A tiny refresher of how bad it was:

This was the time in the game where teams were rage quiting because how crappy the meta was.

i know how bad it was. but it was not only ele and chrono. it was ele chrono rev druid reaper scrapper.

basically every team in s1-s3 "pro leagues" had a rev on their team. also a scrapper was a must have for the bruiser ability and the speed res. reaper was a must have for the aoe dmg and condi pressure and druid was just very nice to have with the speed res and mobiliy.

thief war dh had no real use. but u could easily do fine in pvp when ur team had no ele or no reaper or any of those builds above.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@ArthurDent.9538 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:i disagree. u should still be able to swap anytime b4 match starts. the problem is just the balance. its been 6 months we having the most annoying and

worst balance ever

lol. if anet was able to balance the game this wouldnt be an issue.

Why do people say that? It's demonstrably

false

. Post HoT was the defacto worse balance period ever. It was so bad that there's people rightfully embarrassed by the memory of that period. It was one of the big motives behind deflating most of the momentum PvP had gained pre-HoT.There were two classes (Tempest and Chronomancer) that were literally unkillable, but also impotent to kill anyone, so basically with 2-3 of those in each team, the match would be pretty much decided in the first couple seconds of the match, by who got the most points before everything got permanently contested, either that or it would become a Deathmatch game between a fraction of the teams.It took them i think two seasons to sort it out (consider also that the first season was 2-3 months after HoT released, so that dragged on for a while). Compared to a class that is strong, but can be easily countered, that loses as often as it wins since it's strong but not unbeatable, i'd say we're far from having the worse balance ever.

wrong. post HOT we had many viable builds. druid, rev, ele, scrapper, reaper, chrono. druid was a good support and so was ele. u could win without a reaper or scrapper or ele etc. those 6 builds were dominating pvp no question BUT none of those builds were INDISPENSABLE

today scourge and firebrand are indispensable

u can have as many spellbreakers mirages druids holos as u want. (basically all the meta builds) but if the enemy team has 1 firebrand and 2 scourges u simply have a huge disatvantage.

Dude, stop channeling Trump. "WRONG", lol, that's sad man...

Post HoT, the first couple of seasons just after HoT release, were utter crap, dominated by tempests and chronos far worse than scourge or firebrand ever do. And unlike scourge and firebrand, they couldn't be countered. If you didn't play then, or don't remember, ok. I do, because it completely took me off PvP for a loong kitten time.And as for your argument, there's even more build variety

now

. The only difference between now and then, is that Scourge and Firebrand can both be outplayed and defeated.A tiny refresher of how bad it was:

This was the time in the game where teams were rage quiting because how crappy the meta was.

To be fair, at the very start of HoT when minstrel amulet was still around, every class got at least some pro league play. But as the meta settled, people quickly figured out there was no point to playing anything but bunk mes, condi rev, and to a lesser extent tempest.

Well, it's the same now, every class and build sees some game, but the meta settled a few months ago, and Scourge and Firebrand are seeing more play. But they are in no-way near as toxic as Bunker chrono or bunker tempest. There's one of the final matches that both tempests from a team went to mid, and it took like 5 minutes for one of the teams to cap it, the tempest health bars wouldn't even move.> @Link.1049 said:

This was the time in the game where teams were rage quiting because how crappy the meta was.

teams are still rage-quitting when against immortaguard and immortadruid

There are no pro teams, ESL is gone. That was a pro match with money on the line. Rage quitting with 25Grand on the line is very different than rage quitting because you don't want to spend the next 10 minutes losing.> @Wichidi.9281 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@Wichidi.9281 said:i disagree. u should still be able to swap anytime b4 match starts. the problem is just the balance. its been 6 months we having the most annoying and

worst balance ever

lol. if anet was able to balance the game this wouldnt be an issue.

Why do people say that? It's demonstrably

false

. Post HoT was the defacto worse balance period ever. It was so bad that there's people rightfully embarrassed by the memory of that period. It was one of the big motives behind deflating most of the momentum PvP had gained pre-HoT.There were two classes (Tempest and Chronomancer) that were literally unkillable, but also impotent to kill anyone, so basically with 2-3 of those in each team, the match would be pretty much decided in the first couple seconds of the match, by who got the most points before everything got permanently contested, either that or it would become a Deathmatch game between a fraction of the teams.It took them i think two seasons to sort it out (consider also that the first season was 2-3 months after HoT released, so that dragged on for a while). Compared to a class that is strong, but can be easily countered, that loses as often as it wins since it's strong but not unbeatable, i'd say we're far from having the worse balance ever.

wrong. post HOT we had many viable builds. druid, rev, ele, scrapper, reaper, chrono. druid was a good support and so was ele. u could win without a reaper or scrapper or ele etc. those 6 builds were dominating pvp no question BUT none of those builds were INDISPENSABLE

today scourge and firebrand are indispensable

u can have as many spellbreakers mirages druids holos as u want. (basically all the meta builds) but if the enemy team has 1 firebrand and 2 scourges u simply have a huge disatvantage.

Dude, stop channeling Trump. "WRONG", lol, that's sad man...

Post HoT, the first couple of seasons just after HoT release, were utter crap, dominated by tempests and chronos far worse than scourge or firebrand ever do. And unlike scourge and firebrand, they couldn't be countered. If you didn't play then, or don't remember, ok. I do, because it completely took me off PvP for a loong kitten time.And as for your argument, there's even more build variety

now

. The only difference between now and then, is that Scourge and Firebrand can both be outplayed and defeated.A tiny refresher of how bad it was:

This was the time in the game where teams were rage quiting because how crappy the meta was.

i know how bad it was. but it was not only ele and chrono. it was ele chrono rev druid reaper scrapper.

basically every team in s1-s3 "pro leagues" had a rev on their team. also a scrapper was a must have for the bruiser ability and the speed res. reaper was a must have for the aoe dmg and condi pressure and druid was just very nice to have with the speed res and mobiliy.

thief war dh had no real use. but u could easily do fine in pvp when ur team had no ele or no reaper or any of those builds above.

Unless the enemy had one... Which is the exact same thing we have now. Except, unlike bunker mesmer and bunker tempest which couldn't be killed, you can easily kill a scourge or a firebrand if you know wtf you're doing. That video is a professional match, that's pretty much some of the best pvp players at the time. There was simply no counter to bunker chronos. You have counters to Scourge (thief and ranger), and you have an excellent counter to firebrand (scourge). Claiming that current meta is worse than those times is ridiculous.I'm not saying it's great, just saying we've been worse.

[Wolfric.9380]

I still think confusion and boon corruption is out of control and supresses lots of builds/classes ... Also FB might be to good but i don´t know to much on this one to tell it. Rest doesn´t feel like a problem at the moment.

[Dahkeus.8243]

FB are frustrating, but I’ll take that over the early HoT bunker Mesmer any day. Not only were they incredibly strong bunkers, but back when quickness affected rez speed, they would almost instantly revive teammates and there was nothing you could do to stop them.

As for Scourge...they’re ridiculous too, but mostly because of how low effort their damage is. I’ll put them almost on par with the old turret engis. (Almost)

[Mr Godlike.6098]

Why I need 2 thiefs in my team?

What's wrong in showing brain?

Do you seriously guys think that good mulitclasser is often seen in pvp?

[Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2]

Yeah I need some insurance from A-net first that matchmaking and balance is at an adequate level to a point that I don't get consistently matched up with hardcounters or rather the effect of hardcounters due to increased balancing is decreased in such a sense that it doesn't determine the match before it even began.

[Vieux P.1238]

I don't agree with OP. Not until Anet comes out with templates bcuz i often switch from my power mesmer to my condi mesmer depending on what's on the other side. I'm sure there's lots that does the same

[Thane.9421]

Guys, it's high time we got to the core issue of balance in this game: matching players against other players. What I'd like to suggest is a revolutionary concept where players will be pitted against computer-controlled player simulations we will call 'npcs' for the purpose of this discussion. By eliminating the skill difference between opponents, we can finally see truly fair matchups where an individual player's skill can be clearly seen. Some of these 'npcs' will have artificial minds we will call 'AI' and some of them could be just inactive, like motionless golems, so that players could objectively measure their ability to do damage against these golems creating 'benchmarks' kind of like when you're seeing how much a bro can lift. Finally balance will be 100% guaranteed and everyone can feel like a winner in PvP.

[Sombra.3246]

@Thane.9421 said:Guys, it's high time we got to the core issue of balance in this game: matching players against other players. What I'd like to suggest is a revolutionary concept where players will be pitted against computer-controlled player simulations we will call 'npcs' for the purpose of this discussion. By eliminating the skill difference between opponents, we can finally see truly fair matchups where an individual player's skill can be clearly seen. Some of these 'npcs' will have artificial minds we will call 'AI' and some of them could be just inactive, like motionless golems, so that players could objectively measure their ability to do damage against these golems creating 'benchmarks' kind of like when you're seeing how much a bro can lift. Finally balance will be 100% guaranteed and everyone can feel like a winner in PvP.

Lmao

[LightofConduct.1693]

I Agree with OP. This needs to be addressed if we want more balanced teams in SPvP. The way it is now only experienced players take advantage of switching their chars before match starts.

Some less experienced or stubborn players will not switch and you find yourself in really weak, unbalanced teams for example 2 thieves, 1 warrior and 2 mesmers against 2 scourges, 1 firebrand 1 mirage and 1 weaver.

The only influence we have is if we duo with a friend, but still you don't have any influence on the other 3 in your team. And this can really effect your SPvP rating especially if you want to be competitive and want a high SPvP rating.

[Jacobin.8509]

Its only a problem because of scourge.

A lot of people have a pocket necro just to double up on scourges every game as that will dominate most teamfights.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@Jacobin.8509 said:Its only a problem because of scourge.

Because its never been complained about before. ..

[rank eleven monk.9502]

Yea let's get locked in the most impossible matchups ever. With this balance, character locking would be disastrous and would unleash epic rage in game and the forums.

This has been voted before, there is a reason it works like this.

[Wolfric.9380]

no it won´t. Matchmaker is actually fine and it avoides stacking (shure FOTM class will get doubled often due to population inbalace). Locking is the way to go ...during the poll matchmaker had been in a much worse shape. Of couse adding custom build templates would be very good as class leaderboard will be top.

[whoknocks.4935]

The main issue is that not all professions are viable, if all professions were almost good the same that wouldn't be an issue that much, but for example if you see the enemy comp with a support ele, you just go cancerbrand and you know you will be 10 times more support than him, or if you see condi revenant or whatever, you go scourge and yoiryour team is better.

If all the professions were viable could be only a pure healthy counter profession choice, now instead the choice is better profession and worse profession.

Like mesmers die a lot to dragonhunter, and you could swap to have an advantage, but now some classes do not even have a real counter, so yeah...

[Urud.4925]

I necro this thread (sorry) because I wanted to write a new one on the same topic: please consider to remove the possibility to swap character before a match. At least in unranked.I understand that a character swapping can be considered a strategy, like in a Pokémon fight... but in unranked!? Players play unranked to do some practice. What's the point of a "good" match-making algorithm, that considers our elo and class, if after the match all the rangers and elementalists switch to scourge and mirage?Playing with a revenant, ele and ranger against 2 scourges + mirage isn't funny. Only good thing is that it's over after 4 minutes.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Urud.4925 said:I necro this thread (sorry) because I wanted to write a new one on the same topic: please consider to remove the possibility to swap character before a match. At least in unranked.

Doing this would be explicitly going against the will of the players at the time the question to keep, or remove, the feature was asked. I'd suggest you ask ANet to rerun the poll, and see if the community views have changed, rather than simply asking for this to change.

[bravan.3876]

@Sombra.3246 said:One thing I have been noticing is that a lot of times when you get a team for ranked PvP some of the players switch their characters depending on what their team mates are playing or what the other team is playing.

This allows more experienced players to take advantage of this situation and make very unbalanced team that can easily wipe out the other team. Many casual players or new players do not do this because either they do not know that this is possible or because they do think what class you play will have an effect. But the truth is this has a huge effect on the matches.

I have been up against teams that are hard to counter unless you have a strong team balanced team. For example, a team with 3 scourges, 1 holosmith and 1 firebrand.It is bad enough that we can only duo in ranked PvP and get our other team mates at random.

You have to have been blessed with so much luck by the 6 gods to be able to maintain platinum rank or above (a minor miracle).

In any case I just wanted to start a discussion on this topic. Hopefully the devs will see it and do something about this problem.Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions down bellow.

Wait so you just want to dumb down the game even more that every experienced and/ or skilled player is handicapped to a newbie lvl instead rewarding knowledge and mulitclass ability? Yes lets also delete mesmer completely for all the noobs can't even deal with a pure glass power shatter when we go this way. The meta is so monkey friendly already there is no need to dumb down this game even more. Every newbie can take some time and watch some guides and wiki and get the knowledge that he can switch classes before game start...

[Gwaihir.1745]

@Sombra.3246 said:One thing I have been noticing is that a lot of times when you get a team for ranked PvP some of the players switch their characters depending on what their team mates are playing or what the other team is playing.

This allows more experienced players to take advantage of this situation and make very unbalanced team that can easily wipe out the other team. Many casual players or new players do not do this because either they do not know that this is possible or because they do think what class you play will have an effect. But the truth is this has a huge effect on the matches.

I have been up against teams that are hard to counter unless you have a strong team balanced team. For example, a team with 3 scourges, 1 holosmith and 1 firebrand.It is bad enough that we can only duo in ranked PvP and get our other team mates at random.

You have to have been blessed with so much luck by the 6 gods to be able to maintain platinum rank or above (a minor miracle).

In any case I just wanted to start a discussion on this topic. Hopefully the devs will see it and do something about this problem.Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions down bellow.

Could be fixed with hiding classes on B tab until match has started and not allowing viewing into spawn area.

[Kathul.1280]

@sephiroth.4217 said:. Class switching gives the player at least a little bit of control over the RNG match ups

Due to the fact that Anet, by a long dead forum vote, supports such sentiments people will view this kind of thinking as NOT match manipulation.

[Marxx.5021]

The ability to switch classes before match starts is a form of match manipulation. It allows you to optimize your team which is positive. But it has also influence on the classes in the opponent team which is bad when class balance is an issue, e.g. don't queue as mesmer and switch to it.

I would limit character switching to classes not already in team to prevent class stacking.

[FyzE.3472]

I agree that the profession switching is not a problem as long as you can only pick one profession per team. That way, even if you have a broken fotm profession, it will only be 1 player AND if you have a bad/sub-optimal profession in your team, it will also be only one player. The only thing is, it would be great if this system could tell the difference between, say, soul beast and druid. Because, more often than not, elite specializations are quite different from their core versions and other elite of the profession.To sum up, leave the profession switching, implement "profession lock" so that 1 team can have only 1 of each profession/elite.

[Poelala.2830]

I don’t think restricting class swapping before matches will fix this. I was on a team with 2 necros, 2 thieves, and a ranger vs a team with 2 warriors 2 necros, and a firebrand. If we weren’t able to swap, we would have been dead immediately against the superior matchup. Your proposed idea has no remedy to this.

[Gamble.4580]

This is a stupid. Everyone should learn more than one class in ranked. Or at least if you only play (eng) have one toon bunker one toon dps one may not be meta but at least u took time to switch to what you are lacking for a better chance to win. Ranked is not about I play for fun. Its for the people who want to win and win by out playing the other team. Poeple need to stop trolling ranked and ranked players because they are not good enough and experienced enough to be there, because they want their crappy rewards for their pve crap.