Just returned to GW2 to see if improvements have been made to further their esports aspirations. There is a lot of complaining about the condi-heavy meta on these boards and in-game. However, there are niche counters to a condi-heavy team. Having niche builds, imo, is a very good thing. The problem is the system of how the tournaments are started. You enter your team and if you don’t swap out characters to optimize your strat then you will be at the mercy of a blind match-up of two teams. If your tournament doesn’t allow you to swap characters and you randomly happen to go up against a team that has the right counters to your groups make-up, gg. There is no skill in countering your opponent. There is only the skill in designing a team that will be good and at least have a chance against the most possible enemy team comps.
What has this done to the meta? It has prioritized general builds over niche builds. General builds are polished and eventually turn into generic builds and you get pretty much the same builds over and over again because they are strong against most teams. Niche builds are only strong against certain team compositions, so very few teams run them because you’re unlikely to randomly be matched up against consecutive teams who are running the perfect composition for your niche builds.
A lot of people are complaining about the CC meta and focusing their ire on certain classes that have changed the general meta. However, I believe there is a more fundamental change that should happen: add a character select system at the beginning of every tournament match.
League of Legends does this very well: alternate selections and once the selection is made lock it in. For GW2, I would suggest that each player has a couple minutes to select his character and set the traits/gear. Once a character is selected, the traits and gear are locked for that particular match and all players (and viewers) can see the traits gear of the characters as soon as they are locked into place.
